home > about cfr > leadership and staff > eric heginbotham > Bush Plays Trump Card on Iraq, but Little in Hand for North Korea Gamble
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February 17, 2003
The Australian
US preoccupation with Baghdad has allowed Pyongyang to slip under its guard, write Lee Feinstein and Eric Heginbotham
THE US is running out of time and options on North Korea. The Bush administration bet that it could put off dealing with Pyongyang until after a showdown with Baghdad. It gambled and lost.
North Korea is possibly weeks or months away from building nuclear weapons. Washington must confront that reality, playing with a much weaker hand and as war with Iraq looms. Two years of delay by Washington and belligerence by North Korea have narrowed American options. Whether it was to get Washington's attention or to deter it, Pyongyang has now travelled far down the nuclear road.
It has announced that the US "nullified" the 1994 Agreed Framework, which required the North to freeze and dismantle its nuclear program.
It has removed cameras and monitoring equipment from its nuclear facilities and evicted international inspectors. Last month, it became the first country to ever withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Pyongyang has moved its stockpile of 8000 spent nuclear fuel rods -- enough for half a dozen nuclear weapons -- out of storage and out of view. Earlier this month, the North announced that it had restarted its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, the facility shut down by the 1994 agreement.
The fateful next step would be for North Korea to reprocess nuclear fuel from the spent fuel rods to separate plutonium for nuclear weapons. US officials estimate that Pyongyang could then begin to produce nuclear weapons by the end of this winter. That would transform the North from a threshold nuclear nation, which the CIA recently estimated "probably has produced enough plutonium for at least one and possibly two nuclear weapons", to one in possession of half a dozen or more actual nuclear weapons.
A cash-starved North Korea, which has sold missiles and missile technology to Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt and Yemen, would then be in a position to export nuclear weapons as well.
A nuclear-armed North Korea would also produce a cascading effect on the region and on the world, as countries in the region and fence-sitters elsewhere reconsidered their nuclear options.
Until now, the administration's reaction to these events has been to downplay them. Secretary of State Colin Powell questioned the significance of a decision by the North to build nuclear weapons. Contradicting the more reticent CIA estimate, Mr Powell said, "During the Clinton administration, the North Koreans already had nuclear weapons."
Mr Powell also appeared to take force off the table by saying the US still wanted to settle the issue through diplomacy.
The administration also ruled out the incentive of direct talks with the North on the grounds that one-on-one diplomacy with Pyongyang before it terminates its nuclear programs would be rewarding bad behaviour.
In recent days, the administration has begun to treat North Korea's nuclear threats somewhat more urgently.
Mr Powell adjusted his language to say that "we have no intention of attacking North Korea as a nation" -- implying that the US might consider a precision strike under some circumstances.
The Pentagon also put bombers on alert for possible dispatch to the region. These steps followed the script used in 1993, when the US bolstered air defences and other forces in response to the North's nuclear threats.
Diplomacy backed by force was the recipe that produced the foundation for the 1994 Agreed Framework. Putting the toothpaste back in the tube now will be much more difficult and, at this late stage, US options have narrowed. The first step must be to set up a process that would buy time.
That would require the US to enter into direct talks with the North. The North in exchange would permit international inspectors to verify that it is not reprocessing spent fuel and to reseal the facility for as long as the negotiating process continues.
North Korea would save face and both sides would get a chance to regroup.
It is possible that having gone this far, nothing we do, short of war, will prevent Pyongyang from going all the way. But the dangers of a nuclear North Korea require that we try.
Lee Feinstein is director for strategic policy at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and Eric Heginbotham is a senior fellow at CFR.
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