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A new game plan for N. KoreaThursday, May 05, 2005
No good can come of the harsh invective between Pyongyang and Washington. The nasty words take on a life of their own, preventing a return to six-nation talks and setting the stage for a new escalation on the peninsula. When President George W. Bush says Kim Jong Il is a dangerous person who "starves his people," and Kim's minions rip back that the U.S. president is a "hooligan" and "philistine," before plopping a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan, it's time to worry. Even though the missile North Korea fired off Sunday is believed to be a small one incapable of carrying a nuclear weapon, it's an indicator that the cutting words are progressing to something worse - including a possible nuclear weapons test. More must be done to cool the rhetoric and to smooth egos - including egos in Beijing ruffled by America's seeming indifference to whether China can get the talks going again. Granted, China could and should do more to push North Korea back to the table. Pyongyang is the only nation refusing to talk. America, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia all stand ready to parley. Yet Chinese officials who have been trying to keep the talks going believe - with some justification - that the key problem is that Washington regards North Korea's threats more or less as bluster, and so isn't ready to tone down the war of words. That is a dangerously inaccurate assumption. North Korea is a land without original thought or insight. Kim's commissars play the game only one way: ratcheting up the nuclear blackmail until the United States and its allies fork over dollars, technology and oil. It's a ridiculously unworkable and naive approach, of course. The Bush administration is entirely right to refuse to cut a deal unless it thinks Pyongyang is serious about putting the brakes on its nuclear weapons program. But without a return to negotiations, it becomes ever more likely that the harsh words will soon escalate out of control into an actual nuclear weapons test by North Korea. Recent excavations and equipment movement at a possible test site in the North have stirred concern that Kim may be preparing for such a test. The North Koreans, on the other hand, could be playing a favored game of chicken by going through the motions for U.S. spy satellites, without the intent. Ambiguity is the hallmark of their strategy, after all - keeping up the appearance of nuclear weapons and plutonium production without providing proof. Yet ambiguity takes one only so far; it may lose its appeal if America stops negotiating altogether - as has happened now. Lately, Bush administration spokesmen and officials have started to talk about "other steps" they may take next month - the anniversary of the last round of talks - if Pyongyang does not return to the table. They seem to mean taking the matter to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. It's a potentially divisive tactic that could backfire if China or Russia should part company with the United States, and the rift prompts North Korea to feel it has nothing to lose if it openly acquires nuclear weapons. We all have something to lose if that happens. Thousands of American soldiers, Marines and sailors in the region stand in the path of the possible nuclear hurricane, along with millions of innocent Koreans and Japanese. Negotiations remain the best option, even if such talks seem doomed to stalemate. Face-to-face negotiations have a way of easing tensions and providing a forum for smaller breakthroughs that could prove meaningful down the road. That is the best option we've got for now. � 2005 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. | |||||||||||||||||
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