Making North Korea Pay

Thus far in the North Korean nuclear nightmare scenario, misbehavior has brought only benefits to Kim Jong Il. In his essay Kim Jong Il's Nuclear Winter, American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt makes a persuasive argument for employing sticks, not carrots, in dealing with the lunatic dictator:

We in the outside world can only speculate about the timing of North Korea's self-proclaimed entry into the nuclear-weapons club. As we reflect on the sorry record of events that has led us to this juncture, however, a most worrisome possibility is that the North Korean state has actually been learning from its interactions with the United States and the rest of the world.

To date, an ever more menacing North Korean nuclear program has in practice encountered only token resistance from the United States and others, despite the obvious and increasing threats that program poses to national interests in many countries. Each new round of North Korean nuclear provocations has generated clear-cut benefits for the North Korean state, rather than incontrovertible costs. It will be very unpleasant--and very expensive--to un-teach Pyongyang the lessons of the past two and a half years.

"We don't have any red lines" for dealing with North Korea, Colin Powell confided on camera in October 2004. So far as can be told, he was telling the absolute truth. The message was intended to be reassuring. In fact, it is chilling. Far from deferring or mitigating the peril of conflict with North Korea, such Western fecklessness only magnifies the eventual scale of the expected disaster.