WE HAVE REACHED the crisis point in the War on Terror. The ranks of the faint hearts are growing, and their voices are echoing ever more loudly. Yet tomorrow could be the day that an explosive packed with radioactive material detonates in Los Angeles, or nerve gas is unleashed inside a tunnel under the Hudson River, or a terrible new disease breaks out in the United Kingdom. If the people responsible for the 9/11 attack could have killed 30,000 Americans, or 300,000, or 3,000,000, they would have done so. The terrorists are cruel, but they are not aimless. Their actions have a purpose. They commit terror to persuade their potential followers that jihad can destroy American power. Random killings — shootings in shopping malls, bombs in trash cans — may be emotionally satisfying to the terrorists, but they are ultimately useless. Only a truly spectacular act of mass murder provides the propaganda the terrorists’ cause requires. They will try again — they have to.
The things we need to do to win the war on terror are simple, but they will not be easy. Foremost, and fastest, we have to deal with the interrelated nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea. The world’s first Islamic republic and the world’s last Stalinist autocracy have been co-operating for years on nuclear bomb making. North Korea claims already to possess some bombs; Iran is very close — perhaps three years away in the optimistic view of US intelligence, maybe 12 to 18 months by the less sanguine Israeli estimate. Iran is itself a terrorist state, the world’s worst. North Korea has committed terrorist atrocities too. Both regimes are nightmarishly repressive; both regimes present intolerable threats to American security.
It’s often said that all our options in North Korea are bad ones. This is because the South Korean capital, Seoul, lies less than 40 miles from the armistice line with the North. In the hills along that line the North Koreans have concealed thousands of artillery tubes and rocket launchers. These tubes would not last long in a war against the South. But the sheer number means that a North Korean barrage would continue for many hours, perhaps even some days.
The fear of the damage from that opening barrage understandably terrifies the South Koreans. But the North’s nuclear weapons do not worry them over-much because they believe that the North would not use the bomb against them. Kim Jong Il may be a lunatic, but he is not the kind of lunatic who kills the goose from which he intends to collect his golden eggs. Accordingly, the top priority of South Korea’s current government has been to ensure that the United States and Japan join them in appeasing Kim Jong Il. To that end, they wish to keep as many American troops as possible deployed as far forward as possible so that Americans share their vulnerability to North Korean artillery. American interests are, however, very different from those of South Korea. Put bluntly: a North Korean nuclear warhead that might be sold to al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group is more dangerous to us than a war in the Korean peninsula. The Japanese Government feels the same way, and even more strongly, for their cities lie within range of North Korean missiles.
The key to the North Korean problem may well be China. Although the United States is the largest source of foreign aid to the hungry people of North Korea, it is China that sustains the North Korean Government and its military. Chinese leaders appreciate that a second Korean war would end with the destruction of the North Korean regime, the unification of the whole peninsula under a democratic government in Seoul, and an unfriendly army deployed on China’s borders. China went to war in 1950 to prevent such an outcome; if China wants to avoid unification today, it will have to use its influence on its client to prevent war.
The Bush Administration, like the Clinton Administration before it, has pressed China to use that influence. Unlike the Clinton Administration, the Bush Administration has refused to offer the North Koreans bribes to drop their nuclear programme, knowing from past experience that if they sign an agreement they will cheat on it. It is time for stronger medicine. We would propose a three-point checklist.
First, no agreement is worth having if it does not provide for the immediate surrender by North Korea of all the nuclear materials they are known to possess. Second, North Korea must close its missile factories and bases. Third, North Korea must submit to the permanent presence of an International Atomic Energy Agency inspection team that is based in North Korea and free to go anywhere at any time.
It is unlikely that North Korea will accept such terms. We fear that the North Koreans crave a nuclear arsenal even more desperately than they hunger for American aid. If those fears are correct then the US must ready itself for the hard possibility that our choices really shrink to two: tolerate North Korea’s attempts to go nuclear — or take decisive action to stop it.
Decisive action would begin with a comprehensive air and naval blockade of North Korea, cutting it off from all seaborne traffic, all international aviation and all intercourse with the south. Of course, North Korea’s land border with China will remain open. That’s good. It underscores our central contention, that the North Korean nuclear programme is a Chinese responsibility, for which China will be held accountable.
Next, we must begin the withdrawal of American ground troops from the Korean peninsula while developing detailed plans for a pre-emptive strike against North Korea’s nuclear facilities. A credible buildup to an American strike will almost certainly persuade the Chinese finally to do what they have so often promised to do: bring the North Koreans to heel. In return, the Chinese get peace on their frontiers — and a North Korean government friendly to them. It may be that the only way out of the decade-long crisis on the Korean peninsula is the toppling of Kim Jong Il and his replacement by a North Korean communist who is more subservient to China. If so, we should accept that outcome. However menacing China may become over the long term, it is much more sane and predictable than communist North Korea has been. And a more pro-Chinese North Korea would also probably institute more rational economic policies, thereby saving millions of North Korean people from famine and misery.
IRAN
Iran poses a much larger danger than North Korea. The mullahs of Iran are sheltering much of the surviving leadership of al-Qaeda. They created and supported the terror group Hezbollah and continue to harbour and support terrorism, yet many of our leaders continue to insist that we can and should do business with “moderates” in the leadership of Iran. Like who? How moderate can a leadership be when it holds more journalists in jail than any country in the world? Where satellite dishes are illegal and where the state bans all private internet service providers?
And as for the idea that multilateral agreements can somehow restrain the Iranian nuclear programme, forget it. All those non-proliferation treaties in which softliners put so much faith are based on the assumption that we can trust the world’s least trustworthy regimes to tell us their deepest secrets. In any event, the problem in Iran is much bigger than the weapons. The problem is the terrorist regime that seeks the weapons. The regime must go.
