Obama's North Korea Dither and Drift

For the Obama administration to argue that the sanctions against Pyongyang are working is a colossal farce. North Korea is still trying to evade them and Kim's regime seems as strong today as it did yesterday.

Thursday, the White House announced that the sanctions are working, and John McCain is headed to North Korea.  Excellent news!  What better way to symbolize America's bipartisan gratitude for a diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis than to send the President's defeated opponent to Pyongyang to smooth out the final details of the new peace agreement? Eh, what's that you say? Ah.  The White House claims the sanctions on North Korea are working, but that has not stopped the regime from test-firing more missiles.  And we're not sending Senator McCain to the Korean Peninsula, but the U.S.S. John S. McCain, which was named after the maverick errant's grandfather and father.  Three days ago, the McCain did the civilized world a favor by turning back a North Korean vessel carrying weapons or weapons material to God knows where.  (Iran, perhaps?) For Robert Gibbs to argue that the sanctions against Pyongyang are working is a colossal farce.  North Korea is still trying to evade them, Kim's regime seems as strong today as it did yesterday.  Over the past decade, we have watched North Korea smuggle weapons (nuclear and otherwise) to America's enemies: missiles to Saddam's Iraq, a nuclear reactor to Syria, and possibly uranium to the militant Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime in Iran.  Meanwhile, we have taken no action against Kim's provocative missile launches and nuclear tests, undermining the faith that the South Koreans and Japanese have in America's ability to act in their defense. We all know that there are no good options on the table vis-a-vis the Korean dictatorship.  War would be far too costly (both in terms of blood and treasure), and would surely result in the incineration (by nuclear means or otherwise) of the South Korean capital of Seoul.  Our one hope for the past seven years has been that Beijing would either be worried enough that America would invade North Korea (sparking a flood of starving refugees across the Chinese border) or fearful enough of Kim's nuclear ambitions to simply remove the despot from power.  This scenario is unlikely at best. Our best option remains building a missile defense capability that we can share with our Asian allies, thereby nullifying some of the nuclear leverage that Kim holds.  The threat of a transfer of nuclear materials to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda would remain a grave concern, but a world where Kim's missile launches could be ignored at will would still be a better world. Until we construct such a missile defense system, the United States should remain committed to the policy of (to borrow a term from Madeline Albright) "keeping Kim in a box."  This means declaring that any further missiles launched in the Sea of Japan will be shot down by America.  We need to shrink the size of Kim Jong-Il's playpen back to his own nation-state. Unfortunately, President Obama has not taken either action.  His vacillation on North Korea seems in line with the general thrust of his foreign policy (fearful that American "meddling" will only make the problem worse; unless we're dealing with Israel or Honduras).  And the President's support for missile defense programs has always been tepid, at best, throughout his entire political career.  As a result, we're doing nothing and declaring it works, a policy not unlike the Bush Administration's approach to the peninsula from 2005 to 2009. Simply because we have no good options on the table does not mean that we can only do nothing.  As Ronald Reagan noted, a world where the forces of freedom are weak, or perceived to be weak, is a more dangerous world.