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October
24, 2002, 9:00 a.m. By NR Editors, from the November 11, 2002, issue of National Review |
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o the surprise
of no one but the veterans of the Clinton administration, North Korea
turns out to have a nuclear-weapons program. In 1994, Clinton, with an
assist from Nobel Prize-winner Jimmy Carter, struck a deal in which Pyongyang
was to stop developing nuclear arms in exchange for U.S. aid, including
help in building "peaceful" nuclear reactors. The deal was struck
because the Clintonites were unwilling to risk a military confrontation
with North Korea — a fact that they more or less openly admitted.
North Korea's response was to pocket our aid and keep on trying to get
nukes. The worst the Clinton administration ever did in response to North
Korean provocations — including a missile lobbed over Japan —
was to label the regime a "state of concern" (unless, that is,
the sending of Madeleine Albright to croon for Kim Jong Il was meant as
a punishment). When the Bush administration asked them about intelligence
reports on their nuclear program, the North Koreans admitted their breach
of the agreement and declared it null and void.
There goes the last of the Clinton administration's great alleged foreign-policy achievements. Momentum on free trade stalled even before Clinton left office. The peace process in Northern Ireland is unraveling, and the one in Israel and Palestine . . . well, everyone knows how that's turned out. In each of these areas — as in North Korea, as in Iraq — Clinton's accomplishment was, at best, to kick the can down the road a few years.
That still seems to be the foreign-policy ideal of liberals. The lesson they have drawn from the North Korean revelations is that we ought to kick the can down the road on Iraq. Bush isn't treating North Korea's nukes as a reason for war; so, the argument goes, there is no cause to use force in Iraq because it is merely trying to attain nuclear weapons.
To the (considerable) extent that North Korea's weapons inhibit us from attacking it, that's an argument for preventing Iraq from following its example. The doves have scoffed at the idea that a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein might be able to blackmail the United States into changing its foreign policy. In 1994, North Korea blackmailed us without nukes. And it's deterring us from acting now.
Which is not to say that an invasion of North Korea would in fact be advisable. Even superpowers have to pick their battles, or at least the timing of them. Iraq is an easier target than North Korea; it can be taken with less risk; and regime change there has the potential upside of changing a regional political culture that currently promotes a potent and deadly brand of anti-Americanism. A side-benefit of successful action in Iraq would be that it would frighten America's enemies elsewhere, including in Pyongyang.
The immediate imperative is for the administration to cut off aid to North Korea, as it is doing, and to persuade our allies to do the same. Bellicose rhetoric should, at least for the moment, be avoided. Ultimately, however, there can be no avoiding the conclusion that to protect both our regional allies and ourselves, it will be necessary to see regime change in North Korea.