Nuclear North Korea
Standing at just five-foot-two, North Korean
president Kim Jong Il wears platform shoes and a
bouffant hairdo to add a few extra inches. It's not
hard to imagine that his nuclear arsenal
compensates for some other type of shortfall. But
whether it's testosterone, terrorism or tyranny
that drives him, the fact remains that he's got the
free world by the short hairs. It's easier to deal
with a rogue nation such as Iraq that does not yet
possess nuclear weaponry, even if the mopping-up
incurs almost daily casualties. But when such a
nation gains the power of thermonuclear fire, few
options remain for dealing with an unstable
dictator with his fingers on a couple of
A-bombs.
The situation is complicated by a lack of viable
solutions. The U.S. already tried to buy off North
Korea in 1994, promising aid in exchange for
dismantlement of the country's nuclear program.
That went nowhere, as Kim Jong Il's regime pocketed
the money and continued its nuclear program in
secret. Similar diplomatic efforts would likely
meet the same end. North Korean defector Hwang
Jang-yop, former North Korean secretary of foreign
affairs and mentor to Kim Jong Il, recently warned
Congress that the regime is "profoundly unstable"
and could not be trusted to abandon its nuclear
ambitions.
The U.S. can tighten the economic screws,
shutting off food aid and instituting harsh
sanctions for North Korea's violation of the
nuclear arms proliferation agreement. But this
would only worsen a humanitarian crisis in North
Korea that has already claimed millions of lives
since the country's allies stopped shipments of oil
and other aid in the 1990s in response to Kim Jong
Il's nuclear saber-rattling.
Alternatively, the U.S. could launch a military
strike, which would likely trigger an all-out war,
complete with radioactive, chemical and biological
fallout. But with a well-trained army over one
million strong, North Korea would prove a much more
formidable opponent than Iraq or Afghanistan.
That leaves the final option of accepting North
Korea as a nuclear power, keeping tabs on what the
regime does with its nukes and allowing the
country's neighbors to keep the pressure on. But
can President Bush remain on diplomatic terms with
a country that has threatened to "turn the citadel
of imperialism into a sea of fire"? Capitulation
from Washington seems unlikely from an
administration that has labeled Kim Jong Il's
regime part of an "axis of evil." A cowboy from
Texas doesn't seem like the sort to put up with a
tin-pot dictator trying to blackmail the world's
greatest superpower into submission.
Though the U.S. acted quickly and decisively to
depose Saddam Hussein, Iraq was ironically the
least nuclear-capable of President Bush's "axis of
evil." North Korea already possesses at least one
or two nuclear weapons, and Iran seems well on its
way to weaponizing its spent nuclear fuel rods. Did
the U.S. simply follow the path of least resistance
by invading Iraq first? Or was the war in Iraq a
warm-up act for the main event in North Korea or
Iran?
©2003 Michael
Strickland ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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