America is stretched in the war on terror, and its options over Pyongyang are limited

[milmor_1]

Rupert Cornwell: America is stretched in the war on terror, and its options over Pyongyang are limited

The move had been anticipated - a well-nigh inevitable climax to years of failed diplomacy

Published: 10 October 2006
It is unrecorded whether the famously early-to-bed US President had to be woken from his sleep when his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, brought the news at 10pm on Sunday. But the announcement by North Korea that it had just carried out its first nuclear test can surely have come as no surprise for George Bush.

Ever since last Tuesday, when Pyongyang said it planned a test and US satellites detected unusual activity at the suspected site in the north-east of the country, diplomatic speculation had been intense that a test was imminent. But in the longer term too, the move had been anticipated - a well-nigh inevitable climax to years of failed diplomacy between the world's lone superpower and the paranoid, obsessively secretive Communist regime that governs the northern half of the Korean peninsula. In the end, one senior US diplomat said yesterday: "There was just no stopping them."

Ever since Pyongyang in 1993 declared it would leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the White House has wrestled how to deal with the challenge posed by North Korea, as a nuclear armed state that would threaten not only America's close ally South Korea, where up to 37,000 US troops are based, and whose new weapons would raise the spectre of a wider nuclear arms race in east Asia.

Bill Clinton offered a deal, of two peaceful nuclear power stations and other aid to North Korea in exchange for a freeze, and subsequent abandonment, of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme. In 1999 the US went so far as to relax sanctions, and in 2000 Madeleine Albright became the first secretary of state to visit the North. But the agreement fell apart amid mutual accusations of backsliding, and when Mr Bush became President the following year, hard-liners in the new Republican administration resolved on a much tougher line, rejecting all contact with the Communist regime in Pyongyang until it demonstrably scrapped its weapons programme.

Then came 9/11 and Mr Bush's naming of North Korea in his 2002 State of the Union address as a member alongside Iraq and Iran of the "axis of evil".

But in late 2002, with the world's attention fixed on the impending US invasion of Iraq, North Korea staged its own pre-emptive strike, expelling the remaining United Nations inspectors and departing from the NPT, this time for good.

The past three years have seen a variety of initiatives, most notably a framework of six-nation talks that in late 2005 fleetingly seemed to have extracted a promise by the North to give up its quest for nuclear weapons.

However, those hopes faded after barely 24 hours. The six-nation process came to a standstill. A North Korean nuclear test, demonstrating Pyongyang's refusal to capitulate to what it saw as a US-orchestrated campaign to destroy its regime, was the logical outcome.

The basic point of disagreement was ostensibly merely one of timing. The North insisted that the US must sign a non-aggression pact and a comprehensive aid package before it ended its nuclear programme. For Washington, it was exactly the other way around; first the North had to scrap its quest for weapons, and only then would it hold bilateral talks about an economic and security package.

But that stern line masks uncomfortable truths, which Mr Bush tacitly acknowledged in his statement. The President's language was outwardly uncompromising: the North's behaviour had been "provocative" and "unacceptable". Most important, he declared that Washington was still committed to diplomacy. As he had to, because even the mightiest nation on earth, has no good military options.

Like his predecessor Mr Clinton (who came close to ordering strikes on the North's nuclear sites), Mr Bush has concluded, however reluctantly, that there is no good military option - short of an inconceivable nuclear strike to obliterate not just the nuclear programme but North Korea's huge conventional forces as well. Anything less would trigger war on the Korean peninsula, the most heavily armed region on the planet where 1.2 million North Korean troops deployed against a 650,000-strong force from the South.

Despite the 1953 armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War, no peace treaty has been signed. Seoul, the South Korean capital, is within artillery range of the border, and would be effectively impossible to defend in the event of an attack by the North. The US, desperately stretched by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but which still has 30,000 troops in the South, would be dragged into a major ground war. But if a military solution is not feasible, the diplomatic route will scarcely be simpler.

Washington is demanding immediate action by the UN. Whether China and Russia, both veto-wielding powers in the Security Council, will agree to meaningful sanctions is doubtful. China, supplier of energy and food to the North, has more leverage than anyone. But if there is one thing Beijing fears more than a nuclear North Korea, it is a failed North Korea.

Somehow Washington must square this circle and dissuade Japan, South Korea and Taiwan from seeking their own nuclear weapons. In the end there may be no alternative to what the Bush administration has said it will never do - negotiate. "It is not appeasement to talk to your enemies," James Baker, secretary of state under the first President Bush, said at the weekend. Mr Baker was referring to Iran and Syria. But his words could apply equally to North Korea.

It is unrecorded whether the famously early-to-bed US President had to be woken from his sleep when his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, brought the news at 10pm on Sunday. But the announcement by North Korea that it had just carried out its first nuclear test can surely have come as no surprise for George Bush.

Ever since last Tuesday, when Pyongyang said it planned a test and US satellites detected unusual activity at the suspected site in the north-east of the country, diplomatic speculation had been intense that a test was imminent. But in the longer term too, the move had been anticipated - a well-nigh inevitable climax to years of failed diplomacy between the world's lone superpower and the paranoid, obsessively secretive Communist regime that governs the northern half of the Korean peninsula. In the end, one senior US diplomat said yesterday: "There was just no stopping them."

Ever since Pyongyang in 1993 declared it would leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the White House has wrestled how to deal with the challenge posed by North Korea, as a nuclear armed state that would threaten not only America's close ally South Korea, where up to 37,000 US troops are based, and whose new weapons would raise the spectre of a wider nuclear arms race in east Asia.

Bill Clinton offered a deal, of two peaceful nuclear power stations and other aid to North Korea in exchange for a freeze, and subsequent abandonment, of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme. In 1999 the US went so far as to relax sanctions, and in 2000 Madeleine Albright became the first secretary of state to visit the North. But the agreement fell apart amid mutual accusations of backsliding, and when Mr Bush became President the following year, hard-liners in the new Republican administration resolved on a much tougher line, rejecting all contact with the Communist regime in Pyongyang until it demonstrably scrapped its weapons programme.

Then came 9/11 and Mr Bush's naming of North Korea in his 2002 State of the Union address as a member alongside Iraq and Iran of the "axis of evil".

But in late 2002, with the world's attention fixed on the impending US invasion of Iraq, North Korea staged its own pre-emptive strike, expelling the remaining United Nations inspectors and departing from the NPT, this time for good.

The past three years have seen a variety of initiatives, most notably a framework of six-nation talks that in late 2005 fleetingly seemed to have extracted a promise by the North to give up its quest for nuclear weapons.

However, those hopes faded after barely 24 hours. The six-nation process came to a standstill. A North Korean nuclear test, demonstrating Pyongyang's refusal to capitulate to what it saw as a US-orchestrated campaign to destroy its regime, was the logical outcome.
The basic point of disagreement was ostensibly merely one of timing. The North insisted that the US must sign a non-aggression pact and a comprehensive aid package before it ended its nuclear programme. For Washington, it was exactly the other way around; first the North had to scrap its quest for weapons, and only then would it hold bilateral talks about an economic and security package.

But that stern line masks uncomfortable truths, which Mr Bush tacitly acknowledged in his statement. The President's language was outwardly uncompromising: the North's behaviour had been "provocative" and "unacceptable". Most important, he declared that Washington was still committed to diplomacy. As he had to, because even the mightiest nation on earth, has no good military options.

Like his predecessor Mr Clinton (who came close to ordering strikes on the North's nuclear sites), Mr Bush has concluded, however reluctantly, that there is no good military option - short of an inconceivable nuclear strike to obliterate not just the nuclear programme but North Korea's huge conventional forces as well. Anything less would trigger war on the Korean peninsula, the most heavily armed region on the planet where 1.2 million North Korean troops deployed against a 650,000-strong force from the South.

Despite the 1953 armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War, no peace treaty has been signed. Seoul, the South Korean capital, is within artillery range of the border, and would be effectively impossible to defend in the event of an attack by the North. The US, desperately stretched by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but which still has 30,000 troops in the South, would be dragged into a major ground war. But if a military solution is not feasible, the diplomatic route will scarcely be simpler.

Washington is demanding immediate action by the UN. Whether China and Russia, both veto-wielding powers in the Security Council, will agree to meaningful sanctions is doubtful. China, supplier of energy and food to the North, has more leverage than anyone. But if there is one thing Beijing fears more than a nuclear North Korea, it is a failed North Korea.

Somehow Washington must square this circle and dissuade Japan, South Korea and Taiwan from seeking their own nuclear weapons. In the end there may be no alternative to what the Bush administration has said it will never do - negotiate. "It is not appeasement to talk to your enemies," James Baker, secretary of state under the first President Bush, said at the weekend. Mr Baker was referring to Iran and Syria. But his words could apply equally to North Korea.

Independent Online Edition > Commentators

[milmor_1]

A further article with relvance to the ongoing situation;

North Korea: epicentre of a new nuclear arms race
By David Usborne in New York
Published: 10 October 2006
World leaders reacted with grim dismay to news that North Korea had successfully conducted its first nuclear test, an act of wilful defiance which threatens to redraw the strategic map of the entire Asian region and precipitate a global diplomatic crisis of uncalculated proportions.

The blast, at an underground facility in North Hamgyong province, was believed to have occurred at 11.36am North Korean time yesterday. Although seismic experts in other countries were trying to verify the claim, there seemed no reason to believe North Korea was bluffing.

Russian experts said they believed the claim was accurate and that the explosion may have had the power of about 15 kilotons of TNT, roughly the same as the Hiroshima bomb in 1945. "We have no doubt that it was a nuclear explosion," said Russia's Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov. Counterparts in South Korea and the US speculated it may have been on a smaller scale.

North Korea forged ahead with the test in the face of demands that it desist, issued by the UN Security Council last Friday. An emergency meeting of the Security Council was convened yesterday after news that a test had taken place.

The only warning given by the North Koreans was to their counterparts in China about half-an-hour before the device was detonated. Chinese officials sounded the alarm in a telephone call to the US embassy in Beijing.

The US, backed by Britain, France and Japan, went to the UN demanding the imposition of a series of punitive measures.

It has taken North Korea almost four decades to piece together the technology to bring its nuclear ambitions to a head. With one detonation yesterday morning, it inserted itself into the club of so-called "undeclared" nuclear powers, previously made up of Israel (which still has never admitted having such a capacity), Pakistan and India.

The crisis comes at a time when Japan has a new, more nationalist-minded Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. Japan was already debating whether its previously sacred tenet, held since the Second World War, that it should remain free of nuclear weapons should be reviewed. Mr Abe said the test marked the start of a "dangerous nuclear age" in northern Asia. Pressure will also be applied to South Korea to end its so-called "sunshine" policy of trying to thaw relations with its neighbour.

Yesterday, the Security Council formally approved the selection of Ban Ki Moon, the current South Korean Foreign Minister, as the next UN secretary general, taking office on 1 January. He vowed to use the office to engage North Korea in closer discussion with the UN.

Aside from the ripple effects that North Korea's new nuclear status may have on other countries in the region, there is deep concern over the threat of nuclear proliferation with Pyongyang possibly looking to sell its technology to clients in other regions of the world.

The blast demonstrates the failure of years of diplomatic efforts by the US and other nations to deflect North Korea from its nuclear path. Even China, North Korea's only ally, had recently made clear its disapproval of a nuclear test. North Korea had signed an agreement with the Clinton administration in 1994 to freeze its nuclear activities, but the pact unravelled and, three years ago, the country ejected international nuclear inspectors from its complex at Yongbyon.

The North Korean News Agency said the test "marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the [Korean People's Army] and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defence capability".

In London, the test was condemned by Tony Blair as a "completely irresponsible act" as the UK joined members of the UN Security Council in preparing sanctions which are likely to include freezing the bank accounts of the regime's leaders. The Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said: "The UK will be pushing for a robust response under Chapter 7 of the [UN] Charter. Put simply, this means we shall be pushing for sanctions ."

President Vladimir Putin said the test "doesn't just concern North Korea; enormous damage has been done to the process of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the world".

In July, the UN passed a resolution banning trade with North Korea in any goods and technologies related to weapons of mass destruction after the regime launched several ballistic missiles without provocation.

The resolution did not have Chapter 7 backing - which gives any resolution maximum legal backing - and it was rejected by officials in Pyongyang.

In New York, China's ambassador, Wang Guangya, said his government was ready to "join Security Council members to discuss a firm, constructive but prudent reaction" to the test. Russia's Vitaly Churkin said keeping "cool heads" remained important, suggesting Russia was wary about Chapter 7 authorisation. Diplomats acknowledged that the positions of Russia and China were key to the prospects of adopting a text with any real bite. "We don't know what they mean at this stage, but we will see as discussion of the resolution starts," a source close to the Security Council said.

Unimposing, pudgy, two-dimensional, yet Kim Jong Il rules with an iron fist

By Carol Clark

Wielding absolute power in one of the most volatile regions on the planet, the personality of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, is hidden in a fog of propaganda as secretive as the nuclear arms programme.

He has allowed his voice to be broadcast only once. That was eight years ago during a Pyongyang military parade, when he said: "Glory to the Korean People's Army."

Scholars of the Pyongyang regime are unsure what lies behind the figure only occasionally glimpsed in public. He looks unimposing in photographs, but the short, pudgy and bespectacled man has managed to pull off the first communist dynastic succession in history. The dictator of the "Hermit Kingdom" has made only three known trips abroad and he rarely receives outsiders. The South Korean intelligence agency has portrayed Mr Kim as an unstable madman, a cognac- swilling playboy serviced by a team of women known as the "Pleasure Squad". But in recent years the rhetoric has changed considerably. A senior South Korean official was recently quoted as saying that Mr Kim possesses a genius IQ, and intelligence sources are now calling him a "computer wizard".

North Korea gives Mr Kim's official birthplace as Mount Paektu. The peak is the site where Korean legend says the nation came into existence 5,000 years ago. But Mr Kim was actually born on 16 February 1942 in the Soviet Union, where his father, Kim Il Sung, had fled from the Japanese. When the family returned after the Japanese surrender in 1945, Josef Stalin anointed Kim Il Sung as the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. After graduating from Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung University in 1964, Kim the younger took over cultural affairs. In 1980, Kim Il Sung formally designated his son as his successor. He took on the title "Dear Leader" and the government began spinning a personality cult around him patterned after that of his father, the "Great Leader".

GEORGE BUSH, US PRESIDENT: 'The transfer of nuclear weapons or materiel by North Korea to states or non-state entities would bea grave threat to the US'

BAN KI MOON, SOUTH KOREAN MINISTER: 'I stand here with a heavy heart'

SHINZO ABE, JAPANESE PM: 'The development of nuclear weapons by North Korea will transform the security environment in North Asia and we will be entering a new nuclear age'

MARGARET BECKETT, BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY: 'We shall be pushing for sanctions'

FOREIGN MINISTRY OF CHINA: 'China expresses its resolute opposition'

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT: 'Enormous damage has been done to nonproliferation'

World leaders reacted with grim dismay to news that North Korea had successfully conducted its first nuclear test, an act of wilful defiance which threatens to redraw the strategic map of the entire Asian region and precipitate a global diplomatic crisis of uncalculated proportions.

The blast, at an underground facility in North Hamgyong province, was believed to have occurred at 11.36am North Korean time yesterday. Although seismic experts in other countries were trying to verify the claim, there seemed no reason to believe North Korea was bluffing.

Russian experts said they believed the claim was accurate and that the explosion may have had the power of about 15 kilotons of TNT, roughly the same as the Hiroshima bomb in 1945. "We have no doubt that it was a nuclear explosion," said Russia's Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov. Counterparts in South Korea and the US speculated it may have been on a smaller scale.

North Korea forged ahead with the test in the face of demands that it desist, issued by the UN Security Council last Friday. An emergency meeting of the Security Council was convened yesterday after news that a test had taken place.

The only warning given by the North Koreans was to their counterparts in China about half-an-hour before the device was detonated. Chinese officials sounded the alarm in a telephone call to the US embassy in Beijing.

The US, backed by Britain, France and Japan, went to the UN demanding the imposition of a series of punitive measures.

It has taken North Korea almost four decades to piece together the technology to bring its nuclear ambitions to a head. With one detonation yesterday morning, it inserted itself into the club of so-called "undeclared" nuclear powers, previously made up of Israel (which still has never admitted having such a capacity), Pakistan and India.

The crisis comes at a time when Japan has a new, more nationalist-minded Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. Japan was already debating whether its previously sacred tenet, held since the Second World War, that it should remain free of nuclear weapons should be reviewed. Mr Abe said the test marked the start of a "dangerous nuclear age" in northern Asia. Pressure will also be applied to South Korea to end its so-called "sunshine" policy of trying to thaw relations with its neighbour.

Yesterday, the Security Council formally approved the selection of Ban Ki Moon, the current South Korean Foreign Minister, as the next UN secretary general, taking office on 1 January. He vowed to use the office to engage North Korea in closer discussion with the UN.

Aside from the ripple effects that North Korea's new nuclear status may have on other countries in the region, there is deep concern over the threat of nuclear proliferation with Pyongyang possibly looking to sell its technology to clients in other regions of the world.

The blast demonstrates the failure of years of diplomatic efforts by the US and other nations to deflect North Korea from its nuclear path. Even China, North Korea's only ally, had recently made clear its disapproval of a nuclear test. North Korea had signed an agreement with the Clinton administration in 1994 to freeze its nuclear activities, but the pact unravelled and, three years ago, the country ejected international nuclear inspectors from its complex at Yongbyon.

The North Korean News Agency said the test "marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the [Korean People's Army] and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defence capability".

In London, the test was condemned by Tony Blair as a "completely irresponsible act" as the UK joined members of the UN Security Council in preparing sanctions which are likely to include freezing the bank accounts of the regime's leaders. The Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, said: "The UK will be pushing for a robust response under Chapter 7 of the [UN] Charter. Put simply, this means we shall be pushing for sanctions ."
President Vladimir Putin said the test "doesn't just concern North Korea; enormous damage has been done to the process of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the world".

In July, the UN passed a resolution banning trade with North Korea in any goods and technologies related to weapons of mass destruction after the regime launched several ballistic missiles without provocation.

The resolution did not have Chapter 7 backing - which gives any resolution maximum legal backing - and it was rejected by officials in Pyongyang.

In New York, China's ambassador, Wang Guangya, said his government was ready to "join Security Council members to discuss a firm, constructive but prudent reaction" to the test. Russia's Vitaly Churkin said keeping "cool heads" remained important, suggesting Russia was wary about Chapter 7 authorisation. Diplomats acknowledged that the positions of Russia and China were key to the prospects of adopting a text with any real bite. "We don't know what they mean at this stage, but we will see as discussion of the resolution starts," a source close to the Security Council said.

Unimposing, pudgy, two-dimensional, yet Kim Jong Il rules with an iron fist

By Carol Clark

Wielding absolute power in one of the most volatile regions on the planet, the personality of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, is hidden in a fog of propaganda as secretive as the nuclear arms programme.

He has allowed his voice to be broadcast only once. That was eight years ago during a Pyongyang military parade, when he said: "Glory to the Korean People's Army."

Scholars of the Pyongyang regime are unsure what lies behind the figure only occasionally glimpsed in public. He looks unimposing in photographs, but the short, pudgy and bespectacled man has managed to pull off the first communist dynastic succession in history. The dictator of the "Hermit Kingdom" has made only three known trips abroad and he rarely receives outsiders. The South Korean intelligence agency has portrayed Mr Kim as an unstable madman, a cognac- swilling playboy serviced by a team of women known as the "Pleasure Squad". But in recent years the rhetoric has changed considerably. A senior South Korean official was recently quoted as saying that Mr Kim possesses a genius IQ, and intelligence sources are now calling him a "computer wizard".

North Korea gives Mr Kim's official birthplace as Mount Paektu. The peak is the site where Korean legend says the nation came into existence 5,000 years ago. But Mr Kim was actually born on 16 February 1942 in the Soviet Union, where his father, Kim Il Sung, had fled from the Japanese. When the family returned after the Japanese surrender in 1945, Josef Stalin anointed Kim Il Sung as the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. After graduating from Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung University in 1964, Kim the younger took over cultural affairs. In 1980, Kim Il Sung formally designated his son as his successor. He took on the title "Dear Leader" and the government began spinning a personality cult around him patterned after that of his father, the "Great Leader".

GEORGE BUSH, US PRESIDENT: 'The transfer of nuclear weapons or materiel by North Korea to states or non-state entities would bea grave threat to the US'

BAN KI MOON, SOUTH KOREAN MINISTER: 'I stand here with a heavy heart'

SHINZO ABE, JAPANESE PM: 'The development of nuclear weapons by North Korea will transform the security environment in North Asia and we will be entering a new nuclear age'

MARGARET BECKETT, BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY: 'We shall be pushing for sanctions'

FOREIGN MINISTRY OF CHINA: 'China expresses its resolute opposition'

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT: 'Enormous damage has been done to nonproliferation'

Independent Online Edition > World Politics

[Carnage_59]

What's even worse is the long conceived but stupid plan that the US could fight two wars on two fronts and still have enough reserves... that's BULL!!!

Pyongyang, Beijing, Moscow, al Qaeda and others know full well the US is overstretched. When that plan came out in the late 1970s I know it was BS.