The Korean nuclear crisis marks the bankruptcy of one style of post-Cold War diplomacy and should be the midwife of wholly new methods. It is not only essential that Pyongyang itself be punished for its flagrant act of provocation. The crisis must be resolved in such a way that no other rogue state is tempted to pursue the same reckless path. The eyes of Iran’s rulers are fixed on the Korean peninsula to see how much Kim Jong-Il is allowed to get away with. But other regimes with nuclear ambitions — Syria, Venezuela — are watching too. This is a test of the West’s resolve, and of the principles it intends to apply in the new geopolitical landscape.
Those who blame the Bush administration for this nuclear test satisfy only their parochial prejudices. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and preparation long predate the President’s 2002 State of the Union address in which he linked the Hermit Kingdom with Iraq and Iran in an ‘axis of evil’. By then, the die was cast, in the sense that Kim Jong-Il had grasped — correctly — that the West’s threats were hollow and that diplomacy would simply buy him more time to pursue his nuclear objectives.
In 1994 North Korea signed the so-called ‘agreed framework’ in Geneva, pledging to freeze its nuclear programme in exchange for two nuclear reactors and fuel deliveries. As Colin Powell has admitted, the regime began cheating on the framework ‘as the ink was drying’, establishing a secret uranium enrichment programme and thwarting inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Yet transgression was invariably rewarded. In 1998, after North Korea fired a missile over Japan, President Clinton authorised food aid, and South Korea strengthened its ‘sunshine policy’ of engagement with its neighbour.
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