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To the contrary, now that the North has restarted its nuclear program, every day it increases both its nuclear capabilities and the price it will demand to give them up. Hoping that regime change will stop North Korean nuclear weapons before they wreak havoc would recklessly gamble with our security. Then, as now, North Korea had a brutal, failing regime. Then, as now, the United States faced no good options: allow North Korea to build nuclear weapons but try to deter their use, try to force North Korea to give up its program, or seek a diplomatic solution with an untrustworthy regime. Deterrence had worked against Soviets targeting America with thousands of warheads. But to sit back and watch Pyongyang build a sizeable nuclear arsenal that could only be deterred, not prevented, would have been irresponsible. Coercive steps remained on the table, but no one thought international sanctions would hurt enough to force the isolated North to surrender its nuclear option. And while a military strike against the facility housing North Korea’s known plutonium stocks would have set the nuclear program back by years, it could have unleashed a second Korean War leading to tens or even hundreds of thousands of deaths. Diplomacy offered the least bad first option to solve the crisis, as well as a prerequisite to building international support for stronger measures. So the United States engaged in a broad multilateral effort, including direct negotiations with North Korea, to present North Korea a clear choice: comply with its nonproliferation commitments and reap the benefit of enhanced security and energy cooperation, or defy them and face increased hardship, isolation and, possibly, military action. By June 1994 the President came within hours of ordering thousands of U.S. troops to Korea when former president Jimmy Carter’s meetings with Kim Il Sung produced a series of steps leading to North Korea’s agreement to freeze and eventually dismantle its plutonium-production program, and to ship all its plutonium-laced spent fuel out of the country, all under continuous monitoring by the IAEA. Unchecked, Pyongyang would by now have amassed an arsenal of nearly 100 nuclear warheads, to threaten its neighbors or to export. But North Korea cheated on its 1994 pledges by secretly obtaining uranium enrichment technology. When confronted by the United States, it kicked out the inspectors and abandoned the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pyongyang has since boasted that it has reprocessed all 8,000 spent fuel rods; its erstwhile supplier A.Q. Khan now claims to have seen North Korean nuclear weapons. How can diplomacy advance U.S. interests despite these setbacks? Three lessons from the last Korean nuclear crisis might help find a way. First, go after the bomb material. September 11 teaches that Cold War doctrines of containment and deterrence won’t stop suicidal terrorists who seek martyrdom through our destruction. We must go after the North Korean program urgently, not just watch it crank out bomb-grade material as we negotiate about how to negotiate about it. The languid pace of current diplomatic efforts represents a direct threat to U.S. national security. Second, present a clear choice. We should offer the North security assurances and energy assistance if it verifiably gives up its nuclear program, under more ambitious monitoring than the 1994 agreement provided. As with Libya, showing a path to improved relations could prove pivotal. At the same time, we should tell the North that failure to accept that offer will result in international sanctions, and enlist the Chinese and other key players to help enforce them. Third, design a package that leaves us better off even if Pyongyang cheats. No one can be confident that North Korea won’t cheat on another deal. The 1994 deal did buy a verified, eight-year moratorium on plutonium production, in exchange for an annual U.S. contribution of about $50 million worth of heavy fuel oil, and for South Korean and Japanese efforts to build nuclear reactors in North Korea that never reached the point of sending significant nuclear components there. The point is not to trust but to verify, while ensuring that Pyongyang never gets what it really wants until we do. Continued diplomatic wheel-spinning just buys Pyongyang time to build more bombs that could fall into terrorist hands on their way to American soil. As the President has said, we cannot remain idle while dangers gather. Daniel Poneman and Robert Gallucci served in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, with responsibilities for U.S. nonproliferation policy. They are coauthors of Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis.
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