Wednesday, February 26, 2003

NICK EBERSTADT'S SOLUTION TO THE NORTH KOREAN CRISIS: SQUEEZE KIM JONG-IL ECONOMICALLY;
What's a superpower to do? Despair not, America. Fortunately, there happens to be an approach to countering Pyongyang's proliferation threat that is ideal for timid and querulous posses: a campaign of coordinated and sustained economic pressure, tailored to punish Kim's regime for its nuclear violations.

Here's the idea: Washington lobbies the northeast Asian neighborhood to curtail or terminate foreign aid to Kim's regime. It also organizes a consortium to interrupt North Korea's illicit revenues from counterfeiting, drug trafficking and missile sales. And it keeps up the pressure until Kim shows, and shreds, his nuclear homework—or until we get a new and improved Dear Leadership in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (dprk).

His blithe dismissal of South Korean and Chinese reluctance to get on board such a program is, to me, a bit naive
The weakest links in my pressure program are, admittedly, the Chinese and South Korean governments, two of the North's biggest benefactors. But incoming President Roh's new administration might not be able to continue funding the North's protection racket even if he wants to. Outgoing President Kim Dae Jung is leaving office in disgrace over recently revealed secret payments to Kim Jong Il to secure the "historic" Pyongyang summit of 2000. Furthermore, South Korea's legislature, which has to sign off on the national budget, is in the hands of an opposition party bitterly opposed to such subsidies.

And what about China? Forget the country's tired "lips to teeth" blather about its affinity for old dprk allies—North Korean nukes are a foreign-policy nightmare for Beijing, a trip wire that could ultimately leave China encircled by nuclear neighbors (including Taiwan) and U.S.-assisted missile defense shields. During the North Korean nuclear crisis of the early 1990s, Beijing slashed its food shipments to North Korea by two-thirds (and probably triggered the subsequent dprk famine). Beijing has been more publicly critical of Pyongyang during this current nuclear drama—and Sino-American relations are distinctly warmer since 9/11 than they were during the Clinton era. All in all, coaxing Uncle Zemin or Uncle Jintao to reduce China's allowance for Kim hardly looks like a diplomatic mission impossible.





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