While much attention is being paid to events in Iraq, North Korea continues to smolder. In July, for example, the North Koreans claimed they had enough plutonium for several bombs; it was not clear whether they were merely blustering. There also were more cries that the United States was far too extended, with so much of the deployable Army tied down in Iraq that it could not be used in Korea. Critics of the war in Iraq asked why the United States had concentrated on that country, whose threat of weapons of mass destruction seemed more remote, when a clearly aggressive dictator in North Korea had quite publicly announced that he was building his own nuclear weapons. What was he trying to do, and what should the United States and other Far Eastern countries do about it?
North Korea's principal cash export seems to be the medium-range ballistic missiles it makes. Such missiles are of little value unless they carry mass-destruction warheads; otherwise, a rather expensive missile probably destroys property substantially less valuable than itself. It is a weapon of terror, but the terror wears off as the potential victims discover its limits. It would seem to follow that the North Koreans' customers want something better than high-explosive warheads. It is not obvious, at least publicly, that the North Koreans are offering special warheads, but that certainly would be plausible. If they get a bomb, will that too be offered? The answer might well be no; bombs are difficult to produce, and a really paranoid North Korean regime probably would want to build its own deterrent before it sold anything abroad.
Whatever the reality, the feeling in Northeast Asia seems to be that a possibly terminal crisis is at hand. For years, the North Koreans have been building the ability to destroy Seoul using massed artillery and rocket firepower. The main deterrent, it was thought (at least in the United States), was that such an attack would also wipe out U.S. troops on the border. They might then be avenged with nuclear weapons. Kim Jong-Il might now think that this problem has been solved: any U.S. nuclear attack on North Korea would bring retaliation. If the North Korean missiles currently lack the range to hit the United States, some in the United States believe that a window of effective deterrence still is open, but that it will close within the next decade or so. Should the United States do something about North Korea while that is still practicable or possible?
One U.S. move in the ongoing Korean war of nerves was announced this spring: the relatively small U.S. ground force is being moved back from the border. The North Koreans correctly read this as preparation for possible battle, because they would no longer be able to destroy the U.S. force from across the border. Moreover, for decades there was an unspoken U.S. policy to keep the peace on the peninsula by precluding any South Korean attempt to go north and reunify by force. A U.S. Army force on the border would, coincidentally, block any South Korean push.
Given the geographic situation, the most natural way to defend South Korea would be to mount a spoiling attack to the north. Such an attack, were it successful, would create the strategic depth needed to protect Seoul. If the North Koreans have long planned a push south, then the area just north of the border must be its staging ground. It is likely to have been cleared for that purpose; for example, it is unlikely to have been heavily mined, and it probably is provided with roads. Much would depend on the intelligence the South Koreans would be receiving, because they almost certainly would make no move except in what they considered extremis.
A third part to the potential crisis is Japan. Many Koreans on both sides of the border are quite bitter about wartime Japanese atrocities and the long-term refusal of Japanese nationalists to acknowledge them. The Japanese might believe, possibly correctly, that North Korean missiles and nuclear weapons are intended for use against them. This belief explains ongoing intense Japanese interest in theater ballistic-missile defense, and in using their Aegis destroyers for that purpose.
The great question for Japan has been how to deal with the North Korean nuclear program. One approach was appeasement: North Koreans were starving, and, in return for good behavior, Japan could help enormously. That also was the U.S. approach, in the reactors-for-peace deal. The West would supply light-water reactors that could not produce weapons-grade material, as well as massive food aid. In return, the North Koreans would renounce their ambitions. The crisis began when, reacting to President George W. Bush's speech about the "axis of evil," the North Koreans admitted they had never kept up their side of the bargain: they had continued exactly the bomb program they had apparently bargained away.
Another possibility would be that the ongoing economic crisis in North Korea would cause collapse before any nuclear weapons become operational. That is open to question; other tough Communist dictatorships have survived even worse famines (the Soviet Union in the early 1930s and China about 1960). The Soviet collapse occurred when control was relaxed. It is true that it came at a time of economic stagnation that caused many to wonder whether the system had failed. Their questions, however, would not even have been raised had social control been what it was in, say, Stalin's day—which was much like Kim Jong-Il's day now.
For most people in East Asia, the most frightening potential consequence of a North Korean nuclear-armed missile would be a dramatic change in Japanese defense policy. Japan spends far more than its neighbors on defense but much of that money seems to pay mainly to keep large companies interested in defense production. Japan gets notoriously little for its money—in terms of production. It probably does get an impressive mobilization base, which means that if policy changes, the considerable money now being spent can translate rapidly into a much larger force. There is little question but that Japan has the necessary technology, moreover, to build a substantial strategic missile force, and probably to build nuclear warheads as well. What restrains Japan is strong antimilitary sentiment, which might reverse if the Japanese public saw an overt military threat.
Although it is nearly 60 years since the end of World War II, Japanese aggression is still an important theme throughout East Asia. In China, it is a unifying theme, much as German aggression helped keep the old Soviet Union unified. In both countries, a proclaimed proof of governmental success was the victory over the historic aggressor. A Chinese government would probably find it very difficult to accept large-scale Japanese rearmament, whatever provocation the Japanese might cite.
At present, China supplies the oil that keeps North Korea afloat, without which it would be impossible for North Korea to present a conventional military threat to the South. China also is the destination for refugees from the disastrous North Korean economy. Exponents of a diplomatic solution see China as the key because the North Koreans regard China as friendly, and because China seems to have some leverage over the North Korean regime.
What of the Chinese point of view? The current crisis can end in three ways. One would be for it to continue indefinitely as a war of nerves. That would be acceptable to the Chinese, so long as it seemed more or less stable. There is nothing really stable, however, about the current situation. A second possibility would be for some sort of war to break out in Korea. If the North Koreans lost, that would leave a Western-oriented non-Communist regime on the border. A North Korean defeat, moreover, might be taken as proof that Communism itself had failed. Although most in the West regard China as post-Communist, further failure of a Communist regime might bring into question the legitimacy of a Chinese regime that still advertises itself as Communist. Much the same might be true of a North Korean collapse without war, perhaps as a consequence of further economic disaster. In either case, a wave of refugees crossing the border would carry word of Communist-centered disaster. Many Chinese in border areas already are aware of what is happening in North Korea, but large numbers of refugees would make that difficult for the Chinese government to ignore.
There is one interesting option for the Chinese. They want a Communist North Korea, but not one that is a constant embarrassment. They might imagine that, given close ties with the North Korean military, they could foment a coup that would bring a far more reasonable government to power that might be encouraged to follow the Chinese "socialist" path. The South Koreans would be more than glad not to fight. The Japanese might find the result reassuring, particularly if the postcoup regime renounced its nuclear ambitions as part of accepting a Chinese security umbrella.
Can something like this happen? One reading of the events of 1989 in Central Europe suggests that it can. There were plausible reports tying Soviet-associated security forces to the coups that unseated hard-line Communist governments throughout the region. It seems that Mikhail Gorbachev feared that these regimes would be refuges for his political enemies in the Soviet Union. He seems not to have imagined that bringing softer regimes to power would foment a quick slide out of Communism. The reality, however, that it was relatively easy for the Communist superpower to oust its local allies, would seem intriguing from a Chinese point of view.