Time for China To Step Up

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Source: Newsweek, 3/3/2003, Vol. 141 Issue 9, p39, 1p

Plutonium is forever. If we don’t stop this chain of events here and now, this stuff will be out there to haunt our children and grandchildren.

The Bush administration continues to insist that developments in North Korea do not constitute a crisis. Well, here’s how things stand. North Korea has announced that it will restart its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which would mean the ongoing production of plutonium, the key ingredient in a nuclear bomb. Worse, it appears to be on the verge of moving its existing fuel rods away from the reactor, where it could extract enough weapons-grade plutonium to make six nuclear bombs. Once this happens the plutonium will be untouchable: out of sight of any future inspectors and out of reach of a military strike. It will almost certainly be on the open market because North Korea sells everything it can to anyone who will pay. And once reprocessed, plutonium is forever. It’s half-life is 24,400 years. If we don’t stop this chain of events right now, this stuff will be out there somewhere to haunt our children and grandchildren. The administration is right, this is not a crisis. It’s a catastrophe.
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The United States and North Korea are currently stuck in a bad, "After you, Gaston" routine. North Korea says that it will not reverse course unless Washington begins direct talks with it. Washington says it will not begin talks unless North Korea reverses course. Ten years from now the world is not going to remember who went first. It will remember only that North Korea went nuclear.

North Korea says it wants bilateral talks, the United States says it wants multilateral ones. Fine, have a multilateral setting in which the two sides can hold some bilateral talks. This administration hardly needs reminding that process doesn’t matter; the outcome does.

Talks do not mean concessions. The administration rightly worries about rewarding blackmail. The talks should give the North Koreans a stark choice. If they continue on a nuclear path, it will mean total isolation from the world. It might even mean a limited military strike to destroy their nuclear reactor. The administration has unwisely taken this option off the table and must put it back. Were North Korea to start churning out plutonium that was then being hidden in mountains and caves, any American president would have to consider all necessary means to stop this. On the other hand, were the North Koreans to reverse course, the United States should make a very generous offer of aid and other goodies. The stick must be large but so must the carrot.

The only way such a policy would work is if it were backed by the other major player in the region--China. More than any other country, China has tangible leverage over North Korea. It provides the country with most of its fuel and a large chunk of its food. Were Beijing to stop its aid, the Pyongyang regime would probably collapse. Of course, that is why China has never used its power. It fears an implosion--or worse a war--with all the instability and refugee flows that this would trigger.

Washington’s task now is to make China understand that what it should fear most urgently is Kim Jong Il with nukes. A nuclear North Korea will probably produce China’s strategic nightmare, which is a nuclear Japan. North Korea already has missiles that can reach Japan. Once they have nuclear weapons to place atop these missiles, Japan will almost certainly choose to create a nuclear capability for itself, to deter a potential nuclear strike. China should do anything to stop this spiral.

This crisis actually presents a golden opportunity for China. It could show the world that it can use its power and act beyond its borders in a constructive way to defuse a crisis and produce stability. For the rest of Asia, which is watching its rise with fear, such behavior would send a powerful signal that China will be a responsible great power that they can trust. To the United States, it would suggest that China could be a strategic partner and not a competitor. Well handled, this crisis could truly consolidate the modernization of China.

It will not be an easy move for Beijing. Over the last three decades China has been largely inactive on the world stage, fiercely protecting its own narrow interests but doing little to shape the world beyond. This was largely to focus on economics but also a backlash against Mao’s revolutionary foreign policy. Mao’s vision placed China on the wrong side of history--allied with a ragtag bunch of third-world misfits like Libya, Syria and Cuba--and bloodied it needlessly in wars. In the entire Mao Zedong era, only one of China’s "bold" foreign-policy moves proved worthwhile--the opening to the United States in 1972.

Beijing faces a historic opportunity. Today the United States, Japan and South Korea are all actively urging it to play a large international role. Such a chance might not come again. Washington is right to urge it to act boldly. There are only two powers that can effectively resolve the North Korean crisis, if they move creatively and quickly. China is one. The other, of course, is the United States.