It is a Crisis — page 2

What Washington really wants is some help from North Korea's neighbors, especially China and South Korea. But both of those countries are deep in flummox about the crisis. China is a past patron of Kim, and still provides the North with much of its food, oil and aid money. But the old days when the two countries were "as close as lips and teeth" are over. China's biggest worry is a North Korean collapse, which would bring all sorts of calamities—a tide of refugees, a powerful, unified neighbor, and the possibility of U.S. troops marching back toward the Yalu River. But it also abhors the possibility of a nuclear North, which could trigger an arms race on Beijing's front porch, undermining China's long-term strategy of becoming Asia's dominant power. Meanwhile, there are prominent signals that Washington and Beijing are not yet agreeing even to disagree. In Washington last week, U.S. Under Secretary of the State for Arms Control John Bolton told a news agency, "We don't see any way in which we can get the North Koreans to move without China's help." Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Senate hearing recently that China has "something of a responsibility and obligation to play a role in finding a way forward and not simply saying the United States has to solve this by talking directly [to North Korea]."

Yet Washington is reluctant to push too hard, lest it lose China's support in the Security Council on any potential resolutions authorizing use of force against Iraq. And China, in the middle of a leadership shuffle, has become even more internally focused than usual. Hu Jintao, who replaces Jiang Zemin as President next month, has yet to get his foreign-affairs team into place. Many younger Chinese diplomats are frustrated that the country isn't playing a greater role in resolving the crisis; in strategy sessions they have suggested limiting Beijing's aid to influence North Korea's behavior. That is something Vice Premier Qian Qichen, China's most experienced diplomat, has so far dismissed. (China has actually increased aid to the North since the crisis began, according to a Western diplomat who visits Pyongyang frequently.) "How can you expect an old man like Qian to prepare something very different on North Korea just before leaving?" says a Beijing-based academic. There are indications that China might be forming a harder line. On Jan. 23, a Beijing-controlled newspaper ran a signed editorial far more critical of North Korea than anything the government has yet dared to say. "It is not out of the realm of possibility that China may be subjected to nuclear blackmail," wrote Shi Yinhong, a professor at People's University in Beijing, "when North Korea becomes desperate."

South Korea, on the other hand, is Washington's ally and it formally condemns the idea of a nuclear North. The crisis is starting to pinch where it hurts: last week, Moody's Investors Service downgraded the outlook on the country's credit rating because of tension on the peninsula, signaling to investors that risk is increasing. But South Korea is going through its own seismic transition, both politically—Roh Moo Hyun will be sworn in as President next week—and in respect to its global standing. "Here's a country that has the 10th largest economy in the world, they've had the Olympics successfully, they had the World Cup successfully," said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage recently, "and they're tired of the big boys playing basketball over their heads, whether it's China or Russia or the United States." Roh, 56, is part of the newly confident generation that sees the North less as an omnipresent threat than a crumbling basket case. (Many younger Koreans don't fret about a nuclear-armed North: those weapons, they believe, would be used outside the Korean peninsula.) The U.S. is pushing Roh to take a harder line. But as long as Washington refuses to negotiate with the North, it is not clear how that would help. "What is it we are trying to convince South Korea to do?" asks Stephen Bosworth, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a former U.S. ambassador to Seoul. "As someone who follows all this very fully, if I had to go back over the last two years and say, 'This is what we've been attempting to do,' it would be very difficult." Ashton Carter, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration, agrees: "We can't repair our relationship with South Korea until and unless we show we're on top of this issue."

While North Korea seems to live on the brink, the startling saber rattling by pacifist Japan last week doesn't necessarily mean Tokyo is also ready to take up residence there. In fact, Japan's vast Self-Defense Forces aren't well equipped or trained for pre-emptive attacks. Japan can't detect by its own surveillance whether Kim has started fueling missiles. It would need U.S. intelligence—and, ergo, permission from Washington.

Japan, however, is launching its first two spy satellites by the end of March, in response to the North Korean missile that landed in its waters in August 1998. For five decades Japan has resisted the temptation to arm itself with nuclear weapons, but it has five tons of plutonium inside the country and could produce nuclear weapons within a few months. While Kim may want a few nukes merely to prop up his shaky regime, he may end up triggering an Asian nuclear arms race. That's a race that could end very badly, a race in which nobody will win.

—Reported by Perry Bacon Jr./Washington, Matthew Forney/Beijing, Donald Macintyre and Michael Schuman/Seoul, Toko Sekiguchi and Hiroko Tashiro/Tokyo

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