TRIP WIRES AND HAIR TRIGGERS

There are 35,000 American troops stationed as a trip wire south of the Korean Armistice line. Fifty years ago their mission made sense. They were deployed to delay a North Korean invasion just long enough for the United States to mobilize its forces stationed in Asia and move them into position. Today they, along with the inhabitants and industry of the South Korean capitol, can best be described as “sitting ducks”. They look North to the world’s third largest army, more than one million strong.

Fifty years ago North Korea had no nuclear capability of its own and depended upon its Soviet and Chinese allies to provide the muscle to provide a tenuous balance of terror. Fifty years ago the North Koreans had no realistic capability to project atomic terror across the sea of Japan, much less across the Pacific. Today they have that capability and are fast approaching the ability to send a nuclear warhead to Honolulu if not Los Angeles and, if our intelligence estimates are correct, the warheads are ready to be mated to the missiles. But we are busy elsewhere.

Today the South Korean Government in whose independence and development we have made a half-century investment broke away from making a united front with the United States and opened an independent diplomatic offensive partnered with Russia and China. It has been a wake up call. As high as the stakes are for the United States, the stakes for the South Koreans are that much higher and we are busy elsewhere. The South Koreans understand from their vantage point on the front line of any conflict that a policy of isolation, sanctions, and containment simply will not end the nuclear crisis.

North Korea, like the United States, is an energy dependent nation. It has insufficient reserves of its own and an economy that will not support the purchase of fossil fuels from abroad. The only avenue open to it for a modicum of energy independence in the near term is nuclear. The only market open to it to earn substantial hard currency with which to purchase its energy needs is that for its short range ballistic missiles and its only customers are those in whose amity we can only place the most tenuous trust.

The South Koreans and their friends in Moscow and Beijing understand that you cannot starve an already starving nation into submission. The 1994 Accord provided for engagement with a regime of support for developing a proliferation proof nuclear energy program coupled with a reliable supply of oil in the interim. With the issue of bellicose rhetoric from Crawford and the cut off on internationally subsidized energy supply the United States seems to have put the confrontation on a hair trigger with the slightest tremor poised to loose the explosion. It should give us pause to remember the reaction of another oil starved Asian nation when we cut off their supply in 1941. But we are busy elsewhere.

There is a new regime poised to take the reins of South Korean government. Our most reliable ally in Asia is at hazard from across the Sea of Japan. It is time for the President to engage in a direct dialog with the parties directly involved and convene a conference of the two Koreas and Japan to chart a course to defuse the nuclear threat while extending assistance to a starving people. It was that kind of engagement that brought down the Berlin Wall and ended the cold war. It is that kind of courage that will end this stand off.