The North Korean test

NORTH KOREA'S announcement of a nuclear test raises the specter of a nuclear arms race in Asia. Monday's explosion may also set off a sequence of events that changes radically the balance of power in Asia and weakens current constraints against the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. The test also represents the most preventable, and one of the most damaging, failures of President Bush's foreign policy. The administration has stubbornly rebuffed the North's offers to cede its nuclear and missile programs in exchange for economic and security benefits in direct, two-party negotiations.

Unlike Iran, North Korea has repeatedly declared that it is willing to divest itself of its nuclear weapons capabilities for the right price. That price would include a guaranteed provision of energy -- which might or might not include light-water reactors ill-suited for a weapons program -- and also economic aid and security assurances that would end what the North calls the relations of ''enmity'' between it and the United States. Acting on the unrealistic assumption that he need not and should not stoop to bargaining with "evil" regimes such as those in Pyongyang and Tehran, Bush has allowed hardliners in his administration repeatedly to prevent or sabotage genuine negotiations with the North. For their part, North Korean representatives have made it plain that they will respond to rebuffs from hardliners -- be they in Tokyo or Washington -- with missile launches, or with the extraction of plutonium from nuclear fuel rods, or now with an underground nuclear explosion.

If this cycle of thwarted negotiation and North Korean riposte is allowed to continue much longer, Asia's ultimate nightmare may be realized. Japan's new nationalist government could seize its chance to set the wheels in motion not only for a revision of the country's pacifist postwar constitution, but also for the development of a nuclear deterrent. This development would be unnerving for both China and South Korea. Beijing would see its worst fears about a remilitarized Japan realized, and would almost certainly opt to modernize its own nuclear arsenal and accelerate its conventional military buildup. South Korea and even Taiwan could eventually be pushed in the direction of developing their own nuclear deterrents.

Instead of pursuing yet more harsh and futile sanctions on North Korea in the UN Security Council, as the US ambassador to the UN John Bolton was doing yesterday, Bush ought to reconsider the wisdom of his refusal to test the seriousness of North Korea's repeated offers to trade away its nuclear and missile programs for the end-of-enmity agreement that only Washington can provide.