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| Author: | Michael Mandelbaum, Christian Herter Professor, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University |
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June 26, 2003
Newsday
President George W. Bush's Axis of Evil had three charter members. Iraq, North Korea and Iran, he declared last year, had governments so dangerous and aggressive that they could not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. With Iraq now under American control, the other two countries are moving to the top of the American foreign policy agenda.
Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that no issue was of greater urgency than North Korea's nuclear weapons program, which is thought to be well advanced, and on the same day the president declared the obligation of the international community to keep Iran, which has been reported to have a more elaborate weapons program than previously believed, from acquiring these deadly arms.
Coping with the nuclear ambitions of these two countries is likely to dominate U.S. foreign policy in the months ahead. And while the outcome of the looming confrontations with them cannot be foreseen, it is clear that U.S. policy toward North Korea and Iran will differ from recent policy toward Iraq in three important ways.
First, disarming them by force is considerably less feasible than it was in the case of Iraq. North Korea may already have a few nuclear weapons. Even if it does not, the Communist regime has deployed massive non-nuclear forces on the border with America's ally South Korea. This means that it could do horrendous damage to Seoul, the capital of the South, in a war. For this reason, the South Korean government will not agree to war to stop the North Korean nuclear program. Without its agreement, the United States will not fight one.
Nor is the United States likely to fight in Iran. That country is larger than Iraq and almost three times as populous. Its army, although not equipped with modern weaponry, could be expected to offer fiercer resistance to an American assault than did Saddam Hussein's forces. Besides, there is no public support in the United States for a war to unseat the regime in Tehran.
The infeasibility of war leads to a second difference. In trying to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of North Korea and Iran, the United States will have a much greater need for allies than it did in confronting Iraq. China could apply powerful pressure on North Korea if it chose to cut off the oil it supplies to that country, or if it opened its borders to people seeking to flee North Korea.
In Iran, similarly effective pressure could come from European Union members if they cut off their trade and investment with Tehran and from Russia if it stopped supplying technology for an Iranian nuclear power plant that the Islamic government is believed to be using secretly for making bombs.
The first order of business for the United States in dealing with these two would-be nuclear powers is therefore to form effective multinational coalitions against them.
The best solution to the problem that North Korean and Iranian nuclear ambitions pose is to change the regimes that govern the two countries, just as the March war ousted Hussein from power. Here is the third difference, for this will be at the same time both more and less difficult than it was in the case of Iraq.
It will be more difficult because the most direct and reliable way to accomplish it - war - is such an unattractive course. But neither North Korea nor Iran enjoys significant domestic support, and both have failed economies. So either or both might collapse or be overthrown without the use of U.S. military power. In that case, the task confronting the United States would be easier than it has been in post-Hussein Iraq. This is because the United States would not have to assume the responsibility for governing either one, as it will for some time to come in Iraq.
With the fall of the North Korean regime, South Korea would - reluctantly but inevitably - assume responsibility for the people of the north, as West Germans did after 1989 for their East German compatriots. As for Iran, full-fledged domestic opposition already exists that could govern the country once the clerics, who now hold power by force, are removed.
So while North Korea and Iran pose serious problems for the United States, in contrast to Iraq neither American troops nor American taxpayers are likely to be required to play a major role in solving them.
Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World," is a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and professor of American foreign policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
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