The Last Stalinist's Last Resort

Kim Jong Il's nasty, bankrupt regime has an atomic ace in the hole.

NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN

North Korea Takes on the World

By Gordon G. Chang

Random House. 327 pp. $25.95

In his timely book, Gordon G. Chang turns the spotlight back onto the world's worst regime and most egregious state proliferator of nuclear weapons. As Chang, a longtime Asia hand and accomplished writer, correctly notes, the world in general and the United States in particular are too inclined to forget about this dangerous region in their constant focus on Iraq and al Qaeda. These days, even Asia-watchers think far more about China's rise than about North Korea's nukes.

Nuclear Showdown has several other virtues. First, Chang can be a rather good writer. His prose is lively and crisp, making this book an easy read on a difficult subject. Second, Chang convincingly argues that China and South Korea have each failed to do enough to pressure North Korea to eliminate its nuclear arsenal -- which now probably numbers about eight weapons (up from one or two warheads since the first Bush administration). Most of these bombs were built in the two years after the 2002-03 breakdown in the so-called Agreed Framework, the 1994 diplomatic deal whereby the outside world got a commitment from Pyongyang to freeze and ultimately dismantle its nuclear program while North Korea was promised fuel oil in the short term and a more proliferation-resistant form of nuclear reactor later.

Third, Chang is right (if sometimes slightly melodramatic) that a North Korean nuclear arsenal is a very dangerous thing for the world. The world's last remaining Stalinist regime -- first under its founder, Kim Il Sung, and now under his son and successor, Kim Jong Il -- has sold whatever weaponry it could abroad (including missile technology to Iran and uranium gas suitable for weapons-related enrichment to Libya), committed despicable acts of terror against South Korea and inflicted ongoing atrocities against its own people. No such ruling clique can be blithely allowed to obtain a nuclear arsenal. But in many ways, that is just what has happened since 2002.

But for all the book's strengths, it is ultimately disappointing. To begin with, Chang can be flip -- or even wrong -- about key issues and people. These flaws are not fatal, but they are highly distracting and sometimes badly misleading. For example, the first chapter is called "Ku Klux Korea," a clever attempt that falls flat. The same can be said for the book's description of the country's quirky dictator, a man given to "wearing curlers at home and four-inch heels in public," as "the Wizard of Odd." China is breathlessly called " the other side's best friend " -- hardly a fair overall depiction of Beijing's sometimes helpful role in the current crisis. Jimmy Carter is described as a "dictator groupie," Henry A. Kissinger as "Lucifer." Such throwaway lines, many of them ad hominem, give the book a self-indulgent feel.

Worse are the sweeping, unsubstantiated asides about world affairs. The United States is blamed for "simply underestimating its ability to win" the Korean War, topple the communist regime in Pyongyang and reunify the Korean Peninsula back in 1950-53. This charge of U.S. meekness crops up frequently in the book but is never properly developed. (It also badly colors the author's take on how to handle North Korea today, about which more in a moment.) Japan is described as having been on the verge of adopting an appeasement policy toward North Korea, when in fact Tokyo has consistently been closer to Washington than to any other country on the Korea issue throughout the past decade. And Carter -- having been knocked at one point for coddling tyrants and reprimanded at another for his willingness to consider withdrawing U.S. troops from the peninsula over South Korea's then undemocratic ways -- is later criticized for not having been stern enough with that country's leaders during the Kwangju massacre of 1980.

But the book's main flaw is its poorly described set of policy alternatives. As critical as Chang is of America's allies and past policies, he is cavalier about what it would take to do better. He discusses how the United States might have to threaten the use of overwhelming force against North Korea to get it to abandon its nuclear arsenal and further suggests that the United States alone could use force against North Korea if need be. Not even Bush administration hardliners would go this far; they may favor limited military strikes, blockades or economic coercion, but they do not back all-out war -- and certainly not war without South Korea's blessing and help. (Even in a conventional war, Seoul could be flattened by North Korean artillery pieces.) Indeed, given the need for regional bases for airpower and other military capabilities, Chang is simply wrong to claim we could fight another Korean war alone -- leaving aside the huge diplomatic repercussions of doing so.

Chang does better when he suggests that the United States could be highly threatening to North Korea by acting in a more multilateral way. If only America eliminated (or at least deeply reduced) its own unnecessarily massive nuclear stockpiles and then offered North Korea what some (including Mike Mochizuki and myself) have called a "grand bargain" -- deeper North Korean reforms and weapons cuts in exchange for more Western and regional aid and recognition -- America might finally convince South Korea and China to go along with its basic approach. If Pyongyang turned the grand bargain down, all concerned would clearly recognize Kim's regime as the core of the problem, making coercive measures more feasible. This part of Chang's argument is more convincing, but he barely spells it out. And his conflation of this type of diplomatic strategy with casual talk of massive military threats gets confusing. This issue has by now been discussed often enough that, whether looking for hawkish, dovish or middle-course views, one can find much shrewder versions elsewhere.

Give Chang his due: I know of few books on the subject, with the exception of Don Oberdorfer's masterful The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History , that are as well-written (despite the groaners). And for all his slips, the author knows the region, the subject and the literature fairly well. If you're looking for an accessible and up-to-date introduction to some of the main issues about North Korea and can take Chang's sweeping assessments about world affairs with a grain of salt, Nuclear Showdown may be a useful contribution to your library. ·

Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the co-author, with Mike Mochizuki, of "Crisis on the Korean Peninsula."