A Failure of Policy

American officials believe North Korea is preparing to test-fire a new long-range missile, possibly next month, one year after it raised tensions in Northeast Asia by launching a rocket that passed over northern Japan.

A successful firing of the Taepodong-2 missile, which has an estimated range of 3,750 miles, would bring Japan, Hawaii and parts of Alaska within reach of North Korea’s weapons. And it would underline the failure of the accommodationist policies adopted by the United States, South Korea and Japan toward the Stalinist state. The Clinton administration has tried for years to modify Pyongyang’s behavior by offering numerous economic and political incentives. It has little to show for that effort. North Korea must be told, unambiguously and forcefully, that U.S. and allied aid will end if it tests its new missile.

The aid takes two main forms. Besides joining with South Korea and Japan to build North Korea two light-water nuclear reactors--at a cost of $4.6 billion--the United States gives the north 500,000 tons of fuel oil a year. This was the deal struck in 1994 in exchange for Pyongyang’s promise to suspend its nuclear weapons program. Additionally, the famine-ravaged north has been getting hundreds of thousands of tons of food from the United States and South Korea. North Korea, which for half a century has made the United States anathema, is now the biggest recipient of U.S. aid in East Asia. In a further major initiative, Washington has offered to ease its economic sanctions and improve political relations if Pyongyang stops developing and exporting missiles.

North Korea’s response has been a series of humiliating rebuffs and extortionate demands for more costly gifts and political favors. Pyongyang’s paranoid suspicions have not abated, its threat to the security of its neighbors has not diminished, its missile sales to Iran, Syria and Pakistan have not been curbed. Now it is getting ready to flaunt a new weapon, one whose success would encourage the north to demand further concessions under the implicit threat that its increasingly advanced weapons could one day be turned against South Korea, Japan or even the U.S.

It’s time this blackmail was identified for what it is, and it’s time to admit the futility of appeasement. The challenge from North Korea requires a new form of response.

September 1998 N. Korea missile test

Source: Jane’s Strategic Weapon System 1997