Dan Rather
THIS WEEK, while the United States Senate wrangled over the so-called nuclear option the bid by the Republican leadership to lower the voting threshold for ending filibusters on judicial nominees the United States Department of State and the National Security Council were busy reviewing their actual options for dealing with a nuclear North Korea. It is a concern that has returned to the front burner of an overloaded U.S. foreign-policy stove because of two recent developments: the North Korean Government's announcement this month that it had pulled spent fuel from a nuclear reactor which could be used to make nuclear weapons and suspicions that North Korea might be preparing for a nuclear test.
PYONGYANG'S STANCE
United States officials do not like to specify what they would do in the event of a North Korean nuclear test, beyond saying that 'Actions would have to be taken.' Such is the precariousness of trying to deal in any way with Pyongyang. But if one looks around at the options available to the U.S., it at least seems as if there are not a great many "actions" at the government's disposal.
The U.S. just does not have very much to hold over the head of North Korean despot Kim Jong Il. The collapse in 2002 of the 'Agreed Framework', the Clinton-era attempt to deal with North Korea's nuclear ambitions by offering alternative fuel, removed one of the very few official interchanges between the U.S. and that country. Meantime, repeated North Korean demands that the U.S. sign a non-aggression pact have largely been viewed as a non-starter by U.S. policy makers.
TENUOUS DIPLOMACY
One begins to see why the Bush administration continues its insistence on multilateral talks with North Korea on the nuclear issue talks that also include China, Japan, South Korea and Russia despite Pyongyang's corresponding insistence on face-to-face, bilateral negotiations with the U.S. China, for which North Korea is a kind of unruly and unpredictable client state, would be the key to making meaningful any contemplated economic sanctions against North Korea (although China continues to disapprove of such measures). South Korea can use aid granted and requested as leverage with the North (as it has in pushing for renewal of six-party talks while Pyongyang asks for agricultural aid). And Russia, like China, wields a veto in the United Nations Security Council, through which sanctions proposed in the U.N. would have to pass.
At present, the various parties seem to have different ideas of how things should proceed, with a unified international front on North Korean nuclear testing apparently far from assured. Maybe this is all just diplomatic positioning that would change if and when an actual nuclear test occurred, but right now it is impossible to judge.
Meantime, the issue looms ever larger amid Pentagon statements that North Korea has a theoretical capability to strike U.S. territory with a nuclear-armed missile. And the way the world deals with the North Korean nuclear stand-off assumes even greater urgency and importance when one considers the parallel march of Iran's nuclear ambitions. International actions taken in reaction to either one of these nations' nuclear programmes are likely to be seen as setting a precedent for the other, as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan seemed to hint this week.
So what to do about this long-gathering crisis? In the absence of good military options, diplomacy must somehow find a way. Sixty years after World War II, and more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the world once again faces an immense test. How it meets this test might have more bearing on our shared futures than we care to think about.
Dan Rather is a television broadcaster.
