SIXTY YEARS TOO LATE, BUT IT'S TIME

The Thinkable (BILL KELLER, May 4, 2003, NY Times Magazine)

The idea of nuclear pre-emption did not begin with the Iraq war. Robert Litwak, director of international studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, has found five earlier instances when states seriously considered using military force to prevent the spread of unconventional weapons. President Kennedy contemplated a preemptive strike on China's nuclear facilities before its first test explosion in 1964, but decided America could cope with a nuclear China. Israel in 1981 bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, enduring much criticism but setting back Saddam's nuclear program significantly. The 1991 gulf war plan targeted Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, although it was a secondary motive for the war. President Clinton thought hard about taking out North Korea's nuclear facilities in 1994, but instead managed to negotiate his way out of what advisers feared would be a new Korean war. And U.S. cruise missiles destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan in 1998, ostensibly linked to production of nerve gas -- a claim that has been disputed.

Litwak told me he intended his research, published in the winter issue of the quarterly Survival, as ''an antidote to both right-wing triumphalism and left-wing hysteria about pre-emption. The bottom line is, it is an instrument of policy, but not a silver bullet. ''

That is exactly the reality the Bush administration has run into in North Korea. While the Pentagon has a contingency plan to bomb the country's nuclear facilities, and it could become a serious option, a senior official told me, ''Nobody's really seriously arguing that within the administration -- that we should do it soon, anyway.'' The North Korean leader may just be crazy enough to respond by raining artillery shells on the metropolis of Seoul, or lobbing a missile at Japan.

So, what does a counterproliferation strategy for North Korea look like? I asked two Bush officials, both senior enough to have a say in what the administration ultimately decides. The first official argued that the best way to deal with North Korea is to encircle it, cut off all aid and wait for Kim Jong Il to fall. Buying his disarmament with food and oil, even if Kim was willing to bargain, would just perpetuate the regime and would be ''morally repugnant,'' he said. And the administration is pretty sure Kim will not bargain away such a powerful weapon.

''If we could have containment that's tailored to the conditions of North Korea, and not continue to throw it lifelines like we have in the past, I think it goes away,'' said this official. ''It's a bankrupt economy. I can't imagine that the regime has any popular support. How long it takes, I don't know. It could take two years.''

And what is North Korea doing during that time?

''I think it'll crank out, you know, half a dozen weapons a year or more. We lived with a Soviet Union that had tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, including thousands of them pointed at us. We just have to cope.''

I recounted this fatalistic view to officials in Asia and to American experts, and most were horrified. As they pointed out, it has some rather serious holes. First, North Korea, unlike the Soviet Union, will sell anything to anybody for the right price. Second, a collapsing North Korea with nukes may not be as pretty a picture as my official informant anticipates. Third, if this collapse means a merger of the peninsula into a single, unified Korea -- that is, if South Korea becomes a de facto nuclear power -- that will bring little joy to Japan or China. The second American official I spoke to agreed with his colleague that the Bush policy should include economic sanctions, and that a failure of the regime would be a desirable goal. But he was uneasy with the idea of letting North Korea's nuclear arsenal grow until the day of collapse. Before that would be tolerated, the administration would take a closer look at a military strike. ''The only acceptable end state,'' he said, is ''everything out.''

Toleration of a nuclear North Korea, he said, would send a message to the Iranians and others: ''Get your nuclear weapons quickly, before the Americans do to you what they've done to Iraq, because North Korea shows once you get the weapons, you're immune.''

I asked this official whether he would favor letting nuclear weapons fall into the hands of friendly countries in Asia. After all, say some of the most ardent hawks, there are no bad weapons, just bad regimes. Some say this would produce a grand strategic result: China, which they see as America's most likely threat in the long run, encircled by nuclear-armed allies of America. We could even bring home our troops and let our friends police the region.

The official weighed his answer for a minute. ''I notice a lot of my friends are saying, By God, give them to the Japanese, give them to Taiwan,'' he said. ''I'd rather not. My ideal number of nuclear-weapons states is one.''

This last should have been our policy since 1945, enforced by the nuclear weapons and effective delivery weapons that we had uniquely then and nearly so now. Disarming N. Korea, Pakistan, France, and China would be relatively easy--if bloody--because of their military weakness. Britain, Israel, and India would be more difficult, but should be possible on the basis of mutual defense agreements. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 4, 2003 11:58 AM