Indeed, the perception that the crisis is approaching a dangerous new level is not confined to Pyongyang. According to the Kyodo News Agency, Tokyo might soon deploy two Aegis-equipped warships with missile-tracking technology near the Korean Peninsula. In Washington, meanwhile, the Pentagon put 24 long-range bombers on alert for possible dispatch to the region and signaled that the departures of some 2,900 troops scheduled to complete tours in South Korea might be delayed to keep America’s combat presence at full strength. The moves followed more North Korean saber-rattling, including its claim to have restarted a five-megawatt nuclear reactor frozen since 1994 and the possible transfer of plutonium-laden spent fuel rods, which could be reprocessed into bombs.
Washington, Tokyo and Seoul agree on one thing: Pyongyang’s bluster can’t be taken at face value. Trouble is, the allies see eye to eye on little else. That includes how best to initiate dialogue with North Korea, what the emphasis of negotiations should be and, above all, where to draw the so-called red lines–the unspoken tripwires for military action. Unlike in 1994, when Pyongyang’s efforts to covertly develop a nuclear arsenal were the focus, today’s crisis encompasses two discrete nuclear programs (plutonium- and uranium-based) as well as ballistic missiles, chemical and biological weapons and Seoul’s ongoing diplomatic campaign to forge better North-South ties. Setting agendas–both diplomatic and military–has proved infinitely more complex than eight years ago. “There are those in Seoul who believe that more prudent handling by Washington could have brought about different results without going through a vicious circle of accusation, brinkmanship and standoff,” says Moon Chung-in, a foreign-policy adviser to South Korean President-elect Roh Moo Hyun.
The Bush administration defends the clarity of its message. A senior State Department official says the North Koreans have been told not to restart their plutonium reprocessing plant at the Yongbyon nuclear facility, and not to conduct missile tests. “We have made absolutely clear through a number of channels that that would be an important escalation that we don’t want to see,” the official said. “It would be a qualitative change in the situation.” That doesn’t mean the administration sees either move as a red line for military action against the North, though. “I don’t want to say that,” says the senior official. “It implies certain things.”
Officially, the Bush team hopes to end North Korea’s nuclear ambitions–rather than freezing them as the Clinton administration did in 1994 (see box). Bush officials have repeated that any agreement with Pyongyang must never allow it to restart its nuclear program. But the emerging consensus, according to some analysts, is that the North may not be willing to part with its nuclear program–at any price. “Clinton thought the North could be negotiated out of its nukes,” says L. Gordon Flake, director of the Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs in Washington. “The answer is no.” Which may explain why the current administration speaks with two minds. While insisting it’s ready to conduct talks–at least as a side meeting to a bigger international session involving the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council–it has continued its war of words with Pyongyang.
Yet the talk of red lines may be the very thing working against Washington’s diplomacy. After hectoring North Korea for two years, the Bush administration is now “doing everything it can to erase red lines” for the simple reason that establishing them only dares Pyongyang to cross, says Flake. Since the Soviet Union’s collapse, the North’s modus operandi has been to paint itself into corners, then challenge the world to help it get out. To prevent that from happening again, the Bush team wants to deny Kim Jong Il the ability to set a time line of events–and buy enough leeway to put a solution in place before a full-blown crisis erupts.
Here China may play a critical role. The United States has put on a diplomatic full-court press of late, convinced that Beijing has sway with the regime in Pyongyang. It has pushed the Chinese to back a plan to condemn the North when the U.N. Security Council meets on Feb. 12 to discuss the North’s expulsion of international inspectors and rejection of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Both Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and Under Secretary of State John Bolton have visited Beijing recently, and Vice President Dick Cheney will make a trip in April. Just last Friday President Bush made a point of noting that he had spoken to Chinese President Jiang Zemin by telephone to discuss the North Korean situation.
Experts worry that China has few options short of denying North Korea food and fuel–a surefire way of triggering the very crisis Beijing wishes to avoid. And Chinese fears–a full-blown refugee crisis, the collapse of a cold-war ally and the possible arrival of U.S. troops to their doorstep–are well known. But for the first time, Washington is taking pains to try to convince China of the downsides of not constraining North Korea. Not only might Japan follow the North’s lead in going nuclear, but a wider regional arms race could soon be in the offing–all coming at the expense of China’s prestige for failing to help contain the crisis. At a conference in Washington, D.C., last week, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also raised an idea that might ease Chinese fears: treating North Korean refugees like Vietnamese boat people by providing countries of first asylum–principally China and Russia–with assurances that the refugees would be transferred to other locations for final resettlement.
The rub is that Pyongyang won’t sit idly by while Washington engineers its extinction. At a minimum, many analysts–especially in Japan–believe the North may conduct a missile test in a matter of weeks. And, once Washington commits to military action in Iraq, many more fear North Korea will seize the moment to realize its nuclear ambitions. “The North Koreans will exploit uncertainty,” says Peter Hayes, executive director of the Nautilus Institute in Berkeley, California. “They feel that if they wait for the U.S. to crush Iraq, they lose.”
In that case, Washington may discover that it has a red line after all. Some in the administration say that reprocessing the fuel rods at Yongbyon could be a trigger; an outright North Korean nuclear declaration would create even more pressure for a forceful American response. “All options are on the table,” Bush told reporters outside the White House last Friday. That’s exactly what makes the current standoff so confusing–and frightening.
