Brinksmanship

In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Then-President George H. W. Bush drew a "line in the sand," letting the Iraqis know that their naked aggression "would not stand." While Bush could (and did) wrap himself in the mantle of human-rights defender, foreign-policy realists knew it was all about the oil: Kuwait's an oil-producing state that borders the Mecca of oil-production, Saudi Arabia. Like it or not, for Bush not to have threatened Saddam Hussein would have been an act of foreign-policy malpractice.

Flash forward twenty years. The US busily prosecutes two wars, one an unprovoked attack on that same Iraq because Bush, Jr., felt the need to finish off Daddy's business; the other a semi-provoked war in the wasteland of Afghanistan. In both places, US involvement is at best tolerated and at worst openly hated. A majority of Americans thinks it's high time for the troops to come home.

What's striking, in light of recent events, is how quick the US administration was to mass troops along the border of Saudi Arabia--a fundamentally despotic regime with medieval ideas about women, Jews, and, frankly, personal freedoms--and how comparatively restrained they act when North Korea launches an unprovoked attack on South Korea, a staunch ally and thriving democracy.

Sure, the US has made some symbolic shows of solidarity and called for further sanctions against the North. But isn't it about time for the US--indeed, the entire international community--to state firmly and unequivocally that this aggression, too, will not stand? To tell North Korea once and for all that any further unprovoked attacks will be met with overwhelming force?

What about Seoul? The main objection to outright belligerence towards the North is that the paranoid regime, if cornered, might launch an all-out attack that would destroy Seoul, the capitol of the South. A legitimate concern. Remember, though, that the North Korean regime mainly cares about maintaining its hold on power--indeed, most analysts feel this week's attacks were launched to help establish the militaristic credentials of the next "Dear Leader," Kim Jong-il's son. As seemingly out-of-touch as these leaders are, however, they know that any attack on Seoul will be met with overwhelming force from the US, which will mean the end of the regime.

More to the point, no one can state with certainty that the North won't launch an attack on Seoul anyway. We assume the South Korean government has planned for this very scenario and has steps to minimize the loss of civilian life. It may be time to put those plans into effect.

What ab0ut China? In the Korean War, the US and its allies weren't really fighting North Korea: They fought China. Even now, China remains the one country with anything like normal relations with the isolationist North. A concern in diplomatic circles is that, if the US comes down too hard on the North, China will react badly. Frankly, though, it's kind of China's fault the North is acting badly. China could say to North Korea, "Look, you keep this up, you're on your own." That might get the Kims' attention.

China doesn't want to see the North destabilized because they don't want a flood of refugees crossing the Yalu River. Presumably, China also likes having North Korea as a buffer zone between itself and democratic, Western-backed South Korea. But what would China do if the South, backed by the US, just said enough is enough and sought to topple the Kim regime? Today's China didn't exist in 1950: The leaders now are still nominally Communist, but they're motivated less by ideology than by economics. China is the number two economy in the world: Will they really throw that away for the sake of the lunatic regime to their south?

Hell, the South could cut a deal with China and let them install the leader of their choice in the North. Yes, it would be nice if North Korea merged with South Korea to form a functional democracy on the entire Korean Peninsula. But given a choice between the Krazy Kims and a puppet regime ruled from Beijing, most people would probably prefer the latter.

North Korea has some parallels with Afghanistan: Both are resource-poor nations that, because of extremist governments, have assumed a disproportionate level in world affairs. It's North Korea's turn to decide whether it wants to become a responsible member of the community of nations.