The blowback from North Korea’s nuclear test has been swift and furious. Over the weekend, the UN Security Council unanimously passed a tough resolution that, if enforced, would punish Pyongyang by cutting off materials and funding for its nuclear program and banning travel for its leaders. Sounds good. But then there are those two little words: if enforced.
Will tough words be backed by equally strong action, particularly from China and South Korea, the countries with the most leverage? That’s hard to figure since the rules of engagement are still being written.
Over the weekend, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the resolution “a powerful tool” and suggested that China would cooperate fully. Within hours of the vote, however, the Chinese were already backpedaling. Chinese officials said that they would not participate in inspections or seizures of suspected nuclear and missile materials going into and out of North Korea. But then on Monday, there were reports that the Chinese were inspecting trucks at the border.
China has an 800-mile-plus border with North Korea. If the Chinese don’t fully and aggressively enforce the resolution, the effort to rein in North Korea will be hobbled.
North Korea’s program poses a peril to the entire world. With a moribund economy and a despot at the helm, the odds are good that the North Koreans will try to add nukes to the menu of weapons for sale to some of the most dangerous regimes in the world. With a nuclear North Korea, the odds increase that other states will follow. Japan could build a bomb in months. Egypt is talking about nuclear power. South Korea may not be far behind. On Monday, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei warned that as many as 30 countries could soon have technology that would allow them to produce atomic weapons “in a very short time.”
That’s frightening. But China probably fears instability, a flood of North Korean refugees, more than it does a nuclear arsenal in the hands of North Korea’s erratic dictator Kim Jong Il. So, it seems, does South Korea, which has not yet changed its policy of economic and diplomatic engagement with the North.
What all this means is that Iran, next on the Security Council’s docket for its unrestrained nuclear ambitions, must be watching with glee while the decades-old international deal to stop the spread of nuclear weapons unravels.
Iran is rich and North Korea is poor. Iran has many friends and trading partners, North Korea few. If the world can’t muster the gumption to stop North Korea, what chance does the Security Council have against Tehran?
Ideally, the new sanctions would be painful enough to drive Pyongyang back to the negotiating table, with more incentive to bargain in good faith, or help topple this monstrously repressive regime. Either outcome is better than the status quo, in which North Korea builds more nukes.
So far, North Korea has blown through all the warnings and “red lines” with impunity. Now comes the test. Will the mightiest nations in the world set the price for nuclear ambitions prohibitively high? Or will they huff and puff helplessly while the nuclear dominoes fall, one by one?
