DIPLOMACY: Down the Risky Path

Bill Clinton went to Europe last week to honor the brave men and decisive leaders who made D-day a great victory 50 years ago. At ceremonies in Italy, Britain and France, he basked in the symbolism of past wartime glory, dining with royalty and renewing links with leaders of the Atlantic alliance that had its roots in World War II. But all the grand remembrance could not keep his focus entirely on the battles of what is often called the last good war. North Korea was forcing him to recall one of the bad ones -- the Korean War of 1950-53, in which 2 million soldiers and 2 million civilians on both sides were killed. The same leader, Kim Il Sung, still rules in Pyongyang, and he was sounding no less aggressive now than he had been then.

Though the Stalinist dictator has been playing a complicated game of nuclear now-you-see-it, now-you-don't for the past two years, both leaders raised the anxiety level a few notches last week. After North Korea's nuclear technicians blocked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from verifying whether Pyongyang has already secretly diverted enough plutonium for a bomb or two, Clinton for the first time asked the U.N. Security Council to take up the issue of economic sanctions. In the past, North Korea has vowed to consider sanctions an act of war, a pledge that will surely be on the minds of council members as they discuss whether to try to coerce Pyongyang into compliance with the rules of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Behind a smoke screen of diplomacy and bluster, Kim Il Sung may have produced at least one atom bomb; the CIA says the odds are "better than even" that he has. Last week he gave signs that he might be gathering plutonium to produce five others, and even more when a new and larger reactor begins operating next year. In that case, would Clinton use force to uphold the policy of nuclear nonproliferation, or would North Korea resort to war to preserve its right to have the Bomb?

If the standoff with North Korea worsens over the next few weeks, Bill Clinton will be facing the biggest crisis of his presidency, the kind of crisis, in fact, that he so far has shown little aptitude for handling well. After 18 months of Clinton's vacillation and weakness toward Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia, Americans and their allies have sufficient reason to be concerned. Though Kim Il Sung has not explicitly said he would respond to sanctions by invading South Korea, it is a chilling fact that he did invade once before. For his part, Clinton has vowed that North Korea cannot be allowed to acquire an atomic arsenal. A nuclear-armed Pyongyang could not only frighten Japan and South Korea into building the Bomb but also might be willing to sell atomic weapons to any rogue states that would pay, such as Iran and Libya.