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社説：ブッシュ政権に北朝鮮との対話を求める
December 26, 2002
The Korean Crisis
North Korea's decision to reopen a plutonium reprocessing plant and disable international monitoring equipment at the site is an extremely threatening move that puts the rogue regime on a course to building new nuclear weapons within a matter of a few months. Since pre-emptive military action to disable the plant and other North Korean nuclear installations could not likely be conducted without igniting a catastrophic war on the Korean Peninsula, the United States and its allies must find a peaceful way to persuade Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. Even though Kim Jong Il's autocratic regime has a history of negotiating in bad faith, as shown by its breach of a 1994 agreement, diplomacy still looks more promising than the Bush administration's wishful policy of trying to prevail by simply isolating Pyongyang.
While Washington is preoccupied with Iraq, North Korea has abruptly re-emerged as an ominous threat to international security. Given its erratic leadership, its record of exporting missile and other military technologies to American foes and its rekindled nuclear weapons program, North Korea is at least as threatening to global security as Iraq, and probably more so. American intelligence officials suspect that North Korea already has one or two nuclear weapons. North Korea has missiles that can strike Japan and may soon have intercontinental missiles.
In an effort to curtail North Korea's weapons programs, the Clinton administration reached a deal with Pyongyang in 1994. In exchange for oil shipments and international assistance in building nuclear power reactors that would not produce material easily upgraded into bomb-making elements, North Korea agreed to forgo its plutonium-based nuclear program. This fall, confronted with hard American intelligence, North Korea admitted it was pursuing an alternative uranium-based program. The Bush administration reimposed economic sanctions in response, and North Korea has now decided to reactivate a reprocessing program that extracts plutonium from spent reactor fuel.
In deciding how to manage the escalating crisis, the Bush administration is understandably wary of rewarding bad behavior and sending a signal to other nations that rich rewards await those who violate nonproliferation agreements. But by itself, engaging in negotiations does not amount to appeasement. Washington could pursue talks without necessarily rushing to lift the economic sanctions, or forswearing the possibility of pursuing sterner measures in the future.
The alternative policy of refusing to engage North Korea unless and until it abandons its nuclear weapons program only serves Pyongyang's ends and is unlikely to isolate it. That is because the Communist regime is astutely trying to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul. South Korean public opinion strongly favors further engagement. The recent election of Roh Moo Hyun, who campaigned on a platform of reconciliation with the North and more independence from Washington, will only embolden Pyongyang's eagerness to test the solidity of the half-century-old Seoul-Washington alliance. President-elect Roh takes office in late February and it would be a bad idea to hand him a crisis in relations with Washington as his first challenge.
The Bush administration must engage in multilateral talks to diffuse the crisis. It must continue to press China and Russia to use their leverage with Kim Jong Il to advance certain points. One is that the international community cannot tolerate the existence of North Korea's nuclear weapons program, and that Pyongyang cannot expect new security guarantees or economic aid until it shows a willingness to abandon it. Another is that any new deal must have ironclad, on-site monitoring and inspection requirements. Though ultimately detected, North Korea's uranium-based program remained secret for far too long.
Such a stern but diplomatic approach strikes us as more likely to moderate North Korea's conduct and to avert an explosive confrontation. It will also solidify our alliance with South Korea and other regional players. As with Iraq, Washington will have a stronger case to make in favor of alternative action down the road, if needed, if it first engages in diplomacy.
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ウィリアム・サファイア論説員：米軍を韓国から撤退させて、北朝鮮は同じ共産主義国家の中国に任せろ
December 26, 2002
N. Korea: China's Child
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
With a naive Jimmy Carter as his agent, President Clinton caved in to North Korea's nuclear blackmail in 1994 by agreeing to a $5 billion payoff, mainly in oil.
We've been delivering the black gold, but the Communist extortionist has been secretly building new nuclear facilities. Confronted by the Bush administration with incontrovertible evidence, North Korea shamelessly admitted its duplicity and demanded a new round of appeasement.
Burned once, the U.S. refused. Instead, we turned to the rogue nation's neighbors--South Korea, Japan, Russia and, most important, China --to pressure Pyongyang to stop its buildup of nukes and shipments of missiles.
But the North Korean dictator refuses to deal with his neighbors. "There is no need for any third party to meddle in the nuclear issue on the peninsula," said the government-controlled newspaper. The North's defense minister added a promise of "merciless punishment" to the paper's warning of "uncontrollable catastrophe" unless the U.S., and only the U.S., accedes to the latest blackmail demands.
What of the neighbors most directly threatened by the nuclear buildup? Our Asian friends are quite content to let the U.S. "engage" the threat alone. Unilateral U.S. appeasement suddenly looks good to them; let the sunshine in.
A majority of South Korea's voters, who owe their freedom over the past half-century to the U.S. military, are angry at the continued presence of 37,000 American troops on their soil. Last week, they elected a leader (Roh, pronounced No) who wants a repeat of Clinton's fruitless 1994 cave-in.
Japan is wringing its hands. Russia's Putin sees no problem with the spread of weapons of mass destruction by totalitarian regimes in Iran, Iraq or Korea. And China? Its foreign ministry merely shrugs: "We hope the relevant sides" (not including China, of course) "reach a resolution to the issue through dialogue" ・as if to say, "we don't have a running dog in that fight."
If our strategic goal is to stop North Korea from becoming the Asian arsenal of terror, here is what we should do:
First, begin withdrawing our troops from South Korea.
Because the U.S. is not an imperialist power, it does not belong where a democratic nation decides America is unwanted. Moreover, our ground forces have never been there to resist an invasion by an army well over a million, but as a tripwire to make certain American air and sea power would be used immediately to help the South's army resist aggression.
Few realize that the deterrent of the past has now been reversed. After a half-century, we no longer need a tripwire of troops to force our decision to defend Seoul from ground attack; our primary concern is to defend our homeland from nuclear missiles. We would have far greater freedom of action to take out a dangerous nuclear facility in North Korea if our nearby ground troops were not hostage to massive counterattack across the old DMZ. This denial of a local American target would not be lost even on the irrational tyrants in Pyongyang.
Next, make clear to China that we hold it responsible for restraining its Communist partner in Korea.
North Korea exists as a totalitarian state now threatening world peace only because China's army saved it from defeat by U.S. forces under a U.N. flag in the 1950's. Ever since, China has been the dark regime's main supporter. Today's rogue state of North Korea is China's child; Beijing cannot feign irrelevance.
The Bush administration has in the past year embraced China, overlooking its brutal Xinjiang crackdown, tolerating its espionage, ignoring its military buildup, smoothing its way to world trade, gobbling up its exports. But it's been a one-way street.
The North Korean blackmail presents Hu Jintao, new leader of 1.3 billion Chinese, with his first global test. So far, by pretending he has no responsibility for the Communist partner on his border--whose missiles will soon be able to take out Beijing as well as Tokyo--Hu is failing.
The U.S. and its allies will stop the danger in Baghdad. An onrushing generation will wrest power from the danger in Tehran. But Bush must make plain that if China wants to join the war on terror, it must rein in the danger on its doorstep.
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