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| North Korea |
October 10, 2006 |
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Dear Friends,
China, Japan and South Korea have been rebuffed twice in the last three months by a dictator who relies on the generosity of others to feed his starving people.
In late June, U.S. intelligence picked up on indications that the North Koreans were readying a missile launch. China sought to convince their small, dependent neighbor not to launch. On July 4th they launched anyway. Again over the weekend, when North Korea threatened to conduct a nuclear test, those with the best levers over Kim Jong Il`s behavior sought to warn him off. It didn`t work.
On Monday, North Korea`s Ambassador to the UN spoke to television cameras in New York and enthusiastically praised the scientists and engineers who accomplished this feat, suggesting that the world should praise them. The world was having none of it. Condemnation has been universal. China in particular is unhappy with it`s difficult neighbor.
So, what do we do now?
Let`s start with a little background.
In 1994 the North Koreans agreed to stop pursuing nuclear weapons in exchange for energy and other help for their collapsing regime. They started cheating on the deal almost as soon as the ink was dry.
In October 2002, North Korea admitted they had been cheating and they had a secret highly enriched uranium program for nuclear weapons. In December 2002 they withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and started reprocessing spent fuel for use in weapons.
On the diplomatic track, the United States has been working closely with four important allies to get North Korea to choose to forgo the nuclear option. Japan, South Korea, China and Russia have much more influence with North Korea than we do. Ninety percent of North Korean oil and forty percent of its food comes from China.
Flat on its back economically and with many of its 23 million people on the brink of starvation, North Korea is a proliferating state. They sell missile technology to other countries -- including Syria and Iran. They also counterfeit American money, which led to U.S. sanctions on an Asian bank that was doing their money laundering about a year ago.
So what actions should we take to contain this menace?
1. North Korea`s test should be condemned because it jeopardizes the security and stability of the region. That looks like it is happening. No one is defending this rogue regime.
2. We need to expand and enforce strong sanctions. In particular, if we can get the UN Security Council to endorse extending sanctions that the US has in place on their participation in international banks that launder money and some strict import/export limits technology that can be used for weapons, that will put pressure on the regime to change course. This will take a few days, but spines seem to have been stiffened by the North Korean test.
3. We need to reinvigorate the Six Party talks and have high level bilateral talks in the context of those meetings. Our partners -- particularly China and South Korea -- have bigger levers than we do. There is no need to go it alone. But if the atmospherics of a prominent American delegation -- preferably a bipartisan one -- get North Korea to walk back from the ledge, we should do so. And China and South Korea are more likely to know if the North is cheating on any deal.
4. We need to continue to deploy missile defense. The world is a dangerous place with rogue dictators and jihadist terrorists. If North Korea ever launches a missile toward the United States, we need to give ourselves a fair chance of shooting it down.
Warm Regards,
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