No War With Pyongyang
Ellen Bork
Asian Wall Street Journal
April 14, 2003

With the war to remove Saddam Hussein from power going well, the rhetorical cries of "what's next?" by opponents of the Iraq policy take on greater consequence. Critics have warned darkly that the administration's decision to use force in Iraq portends attacks on North Korean nuclear facilities.

It would indeed be surprising if the U.S. were not studying every option for dealing with North Korea's nuclear threat. However, if their past statements are an indication, senior Bush officials are skeptical about whether there are any viable military options. Instead they are focused on a different objective -- dispelling the illusions that have driven recent U.S. policy and improving America's conventional deterrent on the peninsula.

Before they entered the Bush administration, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz were members of a bipartisan working group on North Korea chaired by Mr. Armitage. In March 1999, the group's recommendations were issued as "A Comprehensive Approach to North Korea," also known as the Armitage report. Also that month, Mr. Wolfowitz, then an advisor to the Bush presidential campaign, testified before the International Relations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The situation they were addressing was not so different from the situation today. Public confirmation from U.S. intelligence that North Korea possessed nuclear weapons only came in 2001. However, by 1999, there was already evidence that North Korea had enough plutonium for nuclear bombs and that it had not stopped trying to develop nuclear weapons despite its commitments to do so under the 1994 Agreed Framework.

Messrs. Wolfowitz and Armitage concluded that the Agreed Framework had drawn the U.S. into a cycle of threats and extortion. The Armitage report questioned the belief then prevalent in the Clinton administration that the agreement had ended Pyongyang's nuclear program, would contribute to North-South reconciliation, and reform and a soft landing in North Korea. On the contrary, the Armitage panel concluded, "For Pyongyang, the lesson of the past four years is that brinksmanship works."

Mr. Wolfowitz was equally damning. He considered it "totally implausible" that North Korea, "a regime that cares about very little except its military capabilities, would voluntarily give up the ultimate weapon, in exchange for a promise of nuclear power reactors sometime in the next century."

He warned committee members the 1994 agreement had only created a cycle that would lead Pyongyang to believe it could extract ever more concessions. 'The last time we caught them,'" Mr. Wolfowitz said he told a senior negotiator of the Agreed Framework, "'we sent you over there to negotiate a $4 billion reactor deal. The next time we catch them, what price are we going to pay to get them back on the reservation?' I don't think the record suggests to the North Koreans that they pay a price for cheating or being caught at cheating."

Nonetheless, when the Agreed Framework was initially concluded in 1994, Mr. Wolfowitz, despite his skepticism, regarded it as a fait accompli and counseled the U.S. Congress to accept it.

Despite the danger it posed, Messrs. Armitage and Wolfowitz believed focusing exclusively on the nuclear problem was a mistake. "What really makes the North Korean nuclear capability so dangerous," Mr. Wolfowitz told the House panel, "is the fact of their conventional military capability. . . . [T]o the extent that we're not able to solve the nuclear problem, it becomes extremely important to improve the conventional one."

The Armitage report recommended consultations with South Korea and Japan about "force enhancement options", including the expansion of counter-battery radar around Seoul, deployment of Patriot batteries to Japan from Europe and the continental United States, missile defense cooperation and military exercises tailored to respond to actions taken by Pyongyang. The report called for a review of Seoul's defenses including surveillance and radar to improve protection against bombardment or surprise attack. The Armitage report also called for "red lines" which the U.S., along with South Korea and Japan, should identify and respond to if crossed.

Of particular significance today, Mr. Wolfowitz poured cold water on the idea of an attack on North Korea's nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, an idea often ascribed to the administration's hawks. In March 1999, he dismissed the idea of a "neat and safe military operation, that in some antiseptic way could eliminate the North Korean nuclear problem. . . . First of all, we wouldn't know what to attack. . . . [W]e are . . . reasonably certain that there's a lot there that we don't know about and couldn't get at." Moreover, North Korean retaliation, and the resulting war on the Korean peninsula, he said, would be "absolutely devastating."

This is not the first time the U.S. has been in a nuclear standoff in which conventional forces may play a decisive role. During the Cold War, the U.S. maintained a serious conventional capability in Europe precisely to deter a Soviet threat that, with the use of theater nuclear weapons, could have devastated Europe. The same approach is necessary on the Korean peninsula.

The U.S. has recently moved to bolster and protect forces. Bombers and fighter aircraft have been deployed and plans are underway to reposition American forces in South Korea. These are signs of a new U.S. policy, as is administration diplomacy seeking cooperation from allies on multilateral talks that would deny Pyongyang the leverage to demand concessions from the U.S. Just this past weekend, North Korea has hinted it may accept the U.S. position on talks.

It will not be easy to extricate U.S. policy and its critics from the cycle of demand and capitulation that become so commonplace during the Clinton administration and which North Korea has come to expect. Nevertheless, as Messrs. Armitage and Wolfowitz have argued, the U.S. needs to wean itself and North Korea away from old bad habits.

Ms. Bork is deputy director at the Project for the New American Century in Washington, D.C.