Newsday October 10, 2006
Wanting to act, but what to do?
Bush seeks rapid global response to N. Korea nuclear test, wants UN council involved, but hints forceful U.S. action might follow
By Craig Gordon
WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush called for a swift global response to North Korea's purported nuclear test yesterday, but Bush's options are limited at best and unthinkable at worst, analysts said.
At the same time, senior U.S. government officials cast doubt on North Korea's claims of barging across the nuclear threshold, saying the device was relatively small and may not have been nuclear at all.
Still, the United Nations Security Council began weighing tough new sanctions designed to punish the already impoverished Communist nation. The United States is pushing for a new trade ban on military and luxury items, stringent cargo inspections and new steps to curb its drug and counterfeit money trade, as a way to squeeze North Korea's top leaders.
"Once again, North Korea has defied the will of the international community, and the international community will respond," Bush said yesterday.
Bush's representative at the United Nations, John Bolton, said even usually reluctant nations such as Russia and China were calling for tough steps against the North Korean regime, after being angered and surprised by the test.
Bush signaled there would be no immediate military action in response to the North Korean test, saying this was a time for an "immediate response by the United Nations Security Council" -- a clear nod to diplomacy.
However, Bush also hinted that might change if North Korea sold nuclear materials or technology to other nations or terror groups such as al-Qaida. He called such a move "a grave threat to the United States," and said, "We would hold North Korea fully accountable."
North Korea claimed that it had conducted a successful nuclear test on Sunday at 9:36 p.m. New York time. U.S. intelligence has long suspected that North Korea had the capability to produce nuclear bombs, but it was North Korea's first test.
U.S. officials almost immediately began to question North Korea's claim -- noting that earthquake-monitors detected a blast from a device with the equivalent of several hundred tons of dynamite, less than the standard kiloton-size blasts of standard nuclear weapons.
"We can't confirm that it was a nuclear test," said one U.S. government official.
The United States believes that "more likely than not it was a nuclear test, albeit not a very successful one," the official said, adding that the test results suggested the bomb was either very small, a larger bomb that only partially detonated or not nuclear at all.
Either way, several experts in non-proliferation said the options available to Bush to respond are greatly limited -- particularly in the case of a possible military response. That's because of fears that an attack on North Korea would prompt retaliation against U.S. allies such as Japan and South Korea -- raising risks of war across the Korean Peninsula, or even the broader region.
"It seems to me our level of risk-aversion is such that we don't want to go there," said John Pike, an expert in military capabilities at GlobalSecurity.org, a Web site specializing in defense issues. "The reason that North Korea has developed that deterrent posture is so nobody would want to mess with them."
North Korea is widely believed to have produced at least a few nuclear devices, though its ability to turn them into warheads or deliver them remains unclear -- but enough of a risk to avoid wanting to find out, Pike said.
In addition, the U.S. military is stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan, making it more difficult to take on a third military conflict at this time, experts said.
Surgical U.S. air strikes in North Korea might take out some nuclear infrastructure -- but the United States doesn't know where all of the nuclear facilities are, experts said.
Even a conventional retaliation by North Korea could be disastrous for the region, with a million-man army and thousands of artillery pieces pointed at South Korea, many at the capital Seoul. And on the sanctions front, it wasn't clear yesterday that China and Russia would go along with tough new measures, including international inspections of all cargo to and from North Korea.
That's because Bush would have to get China to do something it has been unwilling to do up until now -- take a hard line with North Korea, one of its major customers in the region.
But "we don't have a whole lot of leverage with China," said Derek Mitchell, an Asian affairs expert in the Pentagon under former President Bill Clinton.
Still, others say North Korea is susceptible to other forms of international pressure by the United States -- like having its communication lines and shipping cut off -- that wouldn't necessarily invite full-scale retaliation.
"North Korea's neighbors are running out of patience with the Pyongyang government, and that makes it easier for the U.S. to take action or form an alliance with them for dealing with North Korea," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute.
© Copyright 2006, Newsday Inc.
