Globe Editorial
NORTH KOREA'S launching of seven missiles into the Sea of Japan Tuesday was not merely a reminder that Pyongyang plays hardball, but also that President Bush's refusal to engage in give-and-take negotiations with the North reflects an incoherent policy.
Administration officials issued dire warnings against the launches before they took place. Afterward, the event was downplayed, with officials stressing that the long-range Taepodong 2 had failed and that the North Koreans were not yet able to fit a nuclear warhead on the missile.
The unspoken reason for downplaying the missile firings is to pretend they do not bolster North Korea's argument that the only way to make it cede its nuclear and missile programs is to conduct direct negotiations with it.
Instead, the administration is pursuing new sanctions on the North. The fallacy of this approach is not simply that China and South Korea remain reluctant to impose sanctions. It is that sanctions invariably make North Korea less rather than more pliant.
Indeed, the standoff that led to the missile launches originated in financial sanctions slapped on North Korea for its counterfeiting and money-laundering operations through a crooked bank in Macao. The North refused to return to six-party talks in Beijing until the sanctions were lifted. And after Bush declined the North's invitation for the lead American negotiator in Beijing to come to Pyongyang for direct talks, the North warned it would have to strengthen its deterrent.
In a statement last month reiterating the invitation to US Ambassador Chris Hill, North Korea said: ``We will not need even a single nuclear weapon once we get convinced that the US does not antagonize us and confidence is built between the DPRK [North Korea] and the US and, accordingly, we are no longer exposed to the US threat. . . . The DPRK has already made a strategic decision to abandon its nuclear program. . . . We are fully ready to discuss the issues of bilateral relations, peaceful coexistence, the conclusion of a peace agreement, the provision of light water reactors and other points mentioned" in the statement of principles agreed upon last September at the Beijing talks.
A resort to new sanctions cannot solve the problem posed by North Korea's nuclear program. The Bush policy of refusing to explore a deal with the North and pursuing sanctions instead might be defensible if there were any realistic chance of achieving regime change in Pyongyang at a tolerable price any time soon. But while administration hard-liners entertain that fantasy, the North's store of fissile material for nuclear weapons continues to grow. So the Bush policy is not only incoherent; it fails utterly to cope with the threat of a nuclear arms race in Asia and a potential source for a terrorist nuclear weapon.
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