November 4, 2002

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: U.S.-North Korea Policy

Tomorrow, President Bush’s National Security Council will hold a “principals” meeting to discuss U.S.-North Korean policy. At the moment, the best that can be said about the administration’s policy is that it’s treading water. Although the White House has said it’s in no rush to resume talks with Pyongyang while it stands in open violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the administration still has done nothing to stop oil shipments to North Korea and, last week, allowed North Korean nuclear experts into the country for discussions associated with operations of the two light-water reactors we promised to help build if the North got out of the nuclear arms business. No wonder Pyongyang still thinks it can cut some new deal with Washington given the mixed signals the administration is sending.

It is understandable that administration officials are having a difficult time coming up with a comprehensive approach to handling this crisis given what’s already on their plate. It’s also the case that developing a policy is complicated by the fact that North Korea does have nuclear weapons and our allies in the region have invested considerable political capital recently in trying to open normal relations with North Korea. Of course, it is precisely for those reasons that Washington must take the lead in setting out a fresh policy course – containment, with the long-term goal of regime change – or see itself dragged by inertia into some new dressed-up version of engagement.

Critics of a new course toward North Korea are quick to suggest that, if U.S. policy is not engagement, the alternative could well be military conflict. But that ignores the fact that for decades a policy of containing and deterring North Korea worked and that, indeed, the past decade’s worth of engagement has only increased North Korean ambitions and, in the end, tensions in the region.