[Asia/Pacific on Today's Paper] from [The New York Times]
Tested Early by North Korea, Obama Has Few Options
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 25, 2009
Facing the first direct challenge to his administration by an emerging nuclear weapons state, President Obama declared Monday that the United States and its allies would “stand up” to North Korea, hours after that country defied international sanctions and conducted what appeared to be its second nuclear test.
Mr. Obama reacted to the underground blast as White House officials scrambled to coordinate an international response to a North Korean nuclear capacity that none of his predecessors had proved able to reverse.
Acutely aware that their response to the explosion in the mountains of Kilju, not far from the Chinese border, would be seen as an early test of a new administration, Mr. Obama’s aides said they were determined to organize a significantly stronger response than the Bush administration had managed after the North’s first nuclear test, in October 2006.
Speaking in the Rose Garden after returning to the White House from Camp David and meeting with his top aides in the Oval Office, Mr. Obama vowed to “take action” in response to what he called “a blatant violation of international law” and the North’s declaration that it was repudiating past commitments to dismantle its nuclear program.
But as they had meetings every few hours — including a lengthy session in the Situation Room on Monday evening — some of Mr. Obama’s aides acknowledged that the administration’s options were limited.
Much depends, they said, on the new president’s ability to persuade Russia and China to go significantly beyond the strong condemnations that they issued Monday against North Korea, their former ally and a vestige of cold-war communism.
“I think we were all impressed with the fact that the Russians and the Chinese denounced this so strongly,” Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, said in a telephone call.
Yet turning that into effective action will prove a challenge.
Efforts by the Clinton administration to entice the North to halt its weapons program by providing it with oil and nuclear power plants, and by the Bush administration to push the country to collapse and then to try to seize its leaders’ assets, all failed.
So did Mr. Bush’s second-term strategy reversal, when he alienated hard-liners in his administration by reaching a deal with the North to dismantle its main nuclear plant, a step the North began last year.
In recent months, the North has renounced the accord and taken the first steps to restart operations and manufacture more plutonium for bomb fuel.
Now Mr. Obama must decide how to mix what he called “stronger international pressure” with a new set of diplomatic overtures at a moment when, his aides are acutely aware, Iran and other nations are taking his measure, examining the confrontation with North Korea for hints of how he will handle complex confrontations to come.
While Mr. Obama delivered a Memorial Day speech and then took the afternoon off to play golf, aides tried to sift through the sparse data to determine exactly what abilities North Korea had proved, if any.
Initial seismic readings showed the blast at Kilju, exactly where North Korea conducted its 2006 test, was “a several kiloton event,” according to one senior administration official. If that judgment is correct, the test yielded a somewhat bigger explosion than the 2006 test, which was later judged a partial fizzle.
But it will take days or weeks of testing radioactive particles vented into the atmosphere to calculate the size of the device, and even then there will be continuing debate about whether the North has the engineering ability to make a weapon compact enough to fit in the warhead of a missile, much less to deliver it to a target.
The White House said that on Monday evening Mr. Obama called the leaders of the two strongest American allies in northeast Asia, President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea and Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan, promising that he would press for “concrete measures to curtail North Korea” and vowing an “unequivocal commitment” to the defense of both countries.
While hardly unexpected, that statement was considered an important signal by American officials who are eager to tamp down any nervousness among Asian allies about whether a new and untested president is willing to face down a regime that has been defying Washington since Eisenhower was in the Oval Office.
But as Japanese and South Korean officials acknowledge, they are less concerned about a direct attack from the North — which would almost certainly result in a devastating, American-led response — than about North Korea selling its twice-tested nuclear weapons technology on the black market, much as it has sold missile and reactor technology in the Middle East.
“We’re back to the same problem Bush had,” one intelligence official said. “The threat is not that they will shoot off a nuclear weapon; it’s that they will sell nuclear material.”
In emergency conference calls after the North gave less than an hour’s notice through its mission to the United Nations that it would conduct a test early Monday, Mr. Obama’s team agreed on some preliminary strategy.
One senior administration official said that the United States would never grant full diplomatic recognition to North Korea, or sign a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War, unless its nuclear capability is dismantled.
To devise a common response, administration officials began planning to meet with Asian leaders, and eventually with the central player in the diplomatic drama: China. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will begin the effort this week on a previously scheduled trip for an annual defense meeting, and his spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said, “There is simply no greater security challenge facing Asia than a nuclear-armed North Korea.” He said Mr. Gates would work “to figure out how we collectively can prevent that from becoming a reality.”
Outside experts say it is probably a reality already. A C.I.A. assessment concluded that North Korea had built one or two nuclear weapons during the administration of the first President Bush, and in the spring of 2003, while the United States was focused on Iraq, the North expelled inspectors and harvested the fuel for six or more weapons. The second Bush administration said it would never “tolerate” a nuclear North Korea, but by the time it left office, none of that fissile material had been recovered.
Perhaps the most powerful untapped sanction available to Mr. Obama and his allies is contained in a United Nations Security Council resolution passed after the 2006 test. It authorizes the United States and other nations to halt and inspect shipping into and out of North Korea for contraband missile parts or nuclear materials. The sanction has never been enforced, partly because of concerns that it could escalate hostilities with North Korea, the poorest and least predictable state in Northeast Asia.
When asked whether Mr. Obama would seek to intercept North Korean shipping, a step that could paralyze the country’s trade, a senior administration official said, “That’s getting ahead of ourselves.”
Another senior official, however, said, “Other than having the Chinese cut off their oil, it might be the only step that would show them we are serious.”
The calculation about how hard to press the North is made more complex by doubts about who is making decisions in Pyongyang. Kim Jong-il, whom North Koreans call the Dear Leader, appeared to have suffered a debilitating stroke last year. Mr. Kim reappeared recently, looking gaunt, thin and greatly aged, but intelligence officials say they believe he is again making day-to-day decisions. Nonetheless, they say, a succession struggle has begun.
In the past, the two countries most cautious about pushing North Korean leaders to change course were China and Russia, so it was significant on Monday that when work began at the Security Council on a new resolution, both appeared to support stiffer penalties, after having blocked steps in that direction after the North’s test of a missile in April.
The Russians were surprisingly adamant. Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, said that the world had to face down threats to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which many view on the brink of collapse, and the still-unapproved Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Tested Early by North Korea, Obama Has Few Options
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 25, 2009
Facing the first direct challenge to his administration by an emerging nuclear weapons state, President Obama declared Monday that the United States and its allies would “stand up” to North Korea, hours after that country defied international sanctions and conducted what appeared to be its second nuclear test.
Mr. Obama reacted to the underground blast as White House officials scrambled to coordinate an international response to a North Korean nuclear capacity that none of his predecessors had proved able to reverse.
Acutely aware that their response to the explosion in the mountains of Kilju, not far from the Chinese border, would be seen as an early test of a new administration, Mr. Obama’s aides said they were determined to organize a significantly stronger response than the Bush administration had managed after the North’s first nuclear test, in October 2006.
Speaking in the Rose Garden after returning to the White House from Camp David and meeting with his top aides in the Oval Office, Mr. Obama vowed to “take action” in response to what he called “a blatant violation of international law” and the North’s declaration that it was repudiating past commitments to dismantle its nuclear program.
But as they had meetings every few hours — including a lengthy session in the Situation Room on Monday evening — some of Mr. Obama’s aides acknowledged that the administration’s options were limited.
Much depends, they said, on the new president’s ability to persuade Russia and China to go significantly beyond the strong condemnations that they issued Monday against North Korea, their former ally and a vestige of cold-war communism.
“I think we were all impressed with the fact that the Russians and the Chinese denounced this so strongly,” Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, said in a telephone call.
Yet turning that into effective action will prove a challenge.
Efforts by the Clinton administration to entice the North to halt its weapons program by providing it with oil and nuclear power plants, and by the Bush administration to push the country to collapse and then to try to seize its leaders’ assets, all failed.
So did Mr. Bush’s second-term strategy reversal, when he alienated hard-liners in his administration by reaching a deal with the North to dismantle its main nuclear plant, a step the North began last year.
In recent months, the North has renounced the accord and taken the first steps to restart operations and manufacture more plutonium for bomb fuel.
Now Mr. Obama must decide how to mix what he called “stronger international pressure” with a new set of diplomatic overtures at a moment when, his aides are acutely aware, Iran and other nations are taking his measure, examining the confrontation with North Korea for hints of how he will handle complex confrontations to come.
While Mr. Obama delivered a Memorial Day speech and then took the afternoon off to play golf, aides tried to sift through the sparse data to determine exactly what abilities North Korea had proved, if any.
Initial seismic readings showed the blast at Kilju, exactly where North Korea conducted its 2006 test, was “a several kiloton event,” according to one senior administration official. If that judgment is correct, the test yielded a somewhat bigger explosion than the 2006 test, which was later judged a partial fizzle.
But it will take days or weeks of testing radioactive particles vented into the atmosphere to calculate the size of the device, and even then there will be continuing debate about whether the North has the engineering ability to make a weapon compact enough to fit in the warhead of a missile, much less to deliver it to a target.
The White House said that on Monday evening Mr. Obama called the leaders of the two strongest American allies in northeast Asia, President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea and Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan, promising that he would press for “concrete measures to curtail North Korea” and vowing an “unequivocal commitment” to the defense of both countries.
While hardly unexpected, that statement was considered an important signal by American officials who are eager to tamp down any nervousness among Asian allies about whether a new and untested president is willing to face down a regime that has been defying Washington since Eisenhower was in the Oval Office.
But as Japanese and South Korean officials acknowledge, they are less concerned about a direct attack from the North — which would almost certainly result in a devastating, American-led response — than about North Korea selling its twice-tested nuclear weapons technology on the black market, much as it has sold missile and reactor technology in the Middle East.
“We’re back to the same problem Bush had,” one intelligence official said. “The threat is not that they will shoot off a nuclear weapon; it’s that they will sell nuclear material.”
In emergency conference calls after the North gave less than an hour’s notice through its mission to the United Nations that it would conduct a test early Monday, Mr. Obama’s team agreed on some preliminary strategy.
One senior administration official said that the United States would never grant full diplomatic recognition to North Korea, or sign a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War, unless its nuclear capability is dismantled.
To devise a common response, administration officials began planning to meet with Asian leaders, and eventually with the central player in the diplomatic drama: China. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will begin the effort this week on a previously scheduled trip for an annual defense meeting, and his spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said, “There is simply no greater security challenge facing Asia than a nuclear-armed North Korea.” He said Mr. Gates would work “to figure out how we collectively can prevent that from becoming a reality.”
Outside experts say it is probably a reality already. A C.I.A. assessment concluded that North Korea had built one or two nuclear weapons during the administration of the first President Bush, and in the spring of 2003, while the United States was focused on Iraq, the North expelled inspectors and harvested the fuel for six or more weapons. The second Bush administration said it would never “tolerate” a nuclear North Korea, but by the time it left office, none of that fissile material had been recovered.
Perhaps the most powerful untapped sanction available to Mr. Obama and his allies is contained in a United Nations Security Council resolution passed after the 2006 test. It authorizes the United States and other nations to halt and inspect shipping into and out of North Korea for contraband missile parts or nuclear materials. The sanction has never been enforced, partly because of concerns that it could escalate hostilities with North Korea, the poorest and least predictable state in Northeast Asia.
When asked whether Mr. Obama would seek to intercept North Korean shipping, a step that could paralyze the country’s trade, a senior administration official said, “That’s getting ahead of ourselves.”
Another senior official, however, said, “Other than having the Chinese cut off their oil, it might be the only step that would show them we are serious.”
The calculation about how hard to press the North is made more complex by doubts about who is making decisions in Pyongyang. Kim Jong-il, whom North Koreans call the Dear Leader, appeared to have suffered a debilitating stroke last year. Mr. Kim reappeared recently, looking gaunt, thin and greatly aged, but intelligence officials say they believe he is again making day-to-day decisions. Nonetheless, they say, a succession struggle has begun.
In the past, the two countries most cautious about pushing North Korean leaders to change course were China and Russia, so it was significant on Monday that when work began at the Security Council on a new resolution, both appeared to support stiffer penalties, after having blocked steps in that direction after the North’s test of a missile in April.
The Russians were surprisingly adamant. Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, said that the world had to face down threats to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which many view on the brink of collapse, and the still-unapproved Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
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