So the dour old lawyer still has it wrong. The Honorable Warren
Christopher, Mr. Clinton’s first secretary of state, wants
President Bush to put Iraq on the back burner and deal first with
the problem of nuclear North Korea. Writing in the New York
Times last week, Mr. Christopher said that this “crisis
requires sustained attention from top government officials…”
Putting Iraq on the back burner is necessary because “Anyone who
has worked at the highest levels of our government knows how
difficult it is to engage the attention of the White House on
anything other than the issue of the day.” As Dave Barry often
writes, I am not making this up.
In Mr. Christopher’s day, I’m sure it was difficult to gain Lil’
Billy’s attention for any longer than it took for the interns to
change shifts. Fortunately, we now have grownups in charge again,
and our government can walk and chew gum at the same time. But
having said that, it is clear that while the North Korean mess may
not be a crisis yet, the connection that apparently exists between
Kim Jong-il’s nukes and our sort-of-ally, Pakistan, is something we
need to investigate.
Mr. Christopher’s idea is, natch, to resume the negotiations he
participated in during the early 90’s when the now-broken treaty
was made. Nothing should distract the president, Christopher
believes, until this one situation is sorted out. Diplomacy is
indeed required but not to the exclusion of the Iraq campaign, or
the other myriad problems we have to deal with now. Instead of
forgetting Iraq and looking eastward, we need to keep a high level
of what the fly-guys call “situational awareness” and use it to our
advantage. Situational awareness means you have a vision of what is
going on all around you, and take all of it into account when you
climb, dive, turn or shoot. If you don’t have a high sense of
situational awareness, bad things happen, such as crashing into
some unnoticed mountain or the other guy getting on your 6 o’clock
and shooting you out of the sky. The same principle has to hold
true for a president in peace or war. Ours — a former fighter
driver himself — seems to have grasped that fact.
On one side of the world, we need to engage with China, Russia
and Japan to get their cooperation in containing North Korea. The
chances of jawboning Kim Jong-il out of his nukes is precisely the
same as those that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction are going
to be eliminated by the U.N. inspectors: zero. North Korea wants to
capture South Korea, and wants nukes for offense, not defense. We
do need to talk, but not only with China, Japan, and both Koreas.
Containment can work if we get the cooperation of South Korea and
Japan. We may also get the cooperation of China. It doesn’t want to
lose the billions of dollars in trade it does with us every year.
China should be asked — ungently if need be — to help contain
North Korea and prevent its proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction. For starters, China should help us stop Kim Jong-il
from selling ballistic missiles to anyone willing to buy them.
We should be telling North Korea that the next time a shipload
of missiles is found headed to the Middle East, we will stop it.
When North Korea threw the U.N. weapons inspectors out, the
hollowness of the U.N. was demonstrated redundantly. We are about
to go to war against Saddam Hussein, without the U.N. and over the
objections of its General Secretary, Mr. Annan. To deal with North
Korea, we cannot rely on the U.N. We and our few real allies will
have to interdict shipments of North Korean missiles. If
intelligence reports show that the North Koreans are sending out
nuclear weapons as well, we will have to find a way to stop that
too. I am not convinced that a strike against North Korean nuclear
sites is a bad idea. The fear is that they would respond by
invading the South and from that belief comes the South Korean
opposition to any preemptive strike. The South is negotiating
intensively with the North at this moment. We need to work closely
with Seoul to ensure it doesn’t make a deal we can’t live with. At
the same time the president needs to be looking very hard at
Pakistan.
Persistent but unverified reports say that the North Koreans’
success in developing nukes was propelled by advice and assistance
of Pakistani scientists. My sources tell me that the Paks have an
assembly line for nuclear weapons, and are producing them almost
constantly. We worry — rightly — about Saddam gaining the ability
to produce nukes. The Islamic bomb, though, won’t likely come from
Iraq. Saddam is a secular leader, and his allegiance is only to
himself and the Ba’athist party thugs that surround him. Pakistan’s
Pervez Musharraf’s courage is impressive, in cooperating with us
against the Taliban while radical Islam is a major force in his
nation. Nevertheless, we cannot permit Pakistan to become the
nation that makes the radical Islamic terror network the world’s
next nuclear power.
Musharraf is a dictator, but his control over his nation, its
army and security service are questionable at best. The ISI,
Pakistan’s intelligence service, still has Taliban supporters among
its leaders. The Pakistani “border guards” who opened fire on our
troops last week were trying to interfere with our pursuit of
Taliban and al-Qaeda elements still active there. That attack was
answered appropriately, by a 500-pound bomb dropped by the friendly
neighborhood F-16 flying cover for our ground-pounders. Pakistan —
ally or not — must understand that we will allow no sanctuary for
terrorists and their ilk.
There is great danger from a nuclear-armed North Korea. But it
is a danger that now is susceptible of deterrence. As isolated as
Kim Jong-il is, the certainty of his nation’s utter destruction if
it engages in nuclear aggression will reach him if it hasn’t
already. North Korea is selling missiles, but if Pakistan is
proliferating nuclear weapons, then it may be a greater threat than
North Korea and Iraq put together. Meanwhile, our priorities are
correct. First Saddam and then, perhaps, others in the Middle East.
And we can do all this while maneuvering to thwart North Korea. We
don’t have to wait for it to be the topic of the day, or for Monica
to be ushered back in once Hillary leaves the building.
