US rethinks North Korea strategy

But any pressure that put sticks in front of carrots is unlikely to budge the North, and risks alienating the US from its regional partners, experts say.

Robert Einhorn, a former assistant secretary for nonproliferation at the State Department, says "pressuring North Korea to back down with no quid pro quos is unlikely to work," primarily because the North's neighbors are "unwilling to use all available leverage."

Now a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and Security Studies in Washington, Mr. Einhorn says he thinks the move toward "engagement" will continue over coming weeks. But he adds that talks won't be able to begin "under duress." As a result, he says the North will have to offer something - such as the suspension of any reprocessing of spent fuel at its Yongbyon nuclear plant. In return, the US could offer guarantees, for example a promise not to strike the nuclear complex at Yongbyon.

The current crisis was set off by the North's announcement last fall that it was reactivating the suspended Yongbyon plant, which experts say is capable of producing enough radioactive fuel for the development of nuclear weapons. The North kicked out international inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency who were monitoring the suspended operations, and it subsequently announced its withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a global accord aimed at limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. Pyongyang has also threatened to restart ballistic missile testing.

Some observers say the problem with the "get-tough" approach of the Senate bill is that it "ignores the reality of the Korean Peninsula," as Mr. Bandow says. "You certainly want [the sticks of sanctions and even the military threat] floating in the background, but you don't put them up front," he says. "It's a nonstarter, if only because China, which fears the North's collapse, would never go along."

Marcus Noland, an Asia expert and author of the book, "Avoiding the Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas," says another problem with a confrontational approach to the North is that it makes it more difficult to discern what the North really wants.

Early in 2002, he says, before setting off the current crisis, the North signaled interest in economic reforms, suggesting it was ready to consider demobilizing some of its million-man army, if they had jobs to go to. Mr. Noland says the White House "failed to probe those intentions," a slip-up he now calls "a blunder."

Still, Noland also says it remains crucial for the US to achieve a shutdown of the North's nuclear program. Otherwise, the situation could present a "disastrous precedent" for the region and the potential, given the North's weapons-export history, that its nuclear arms could fall into worse hands. The US can't achieve that shutdown without convincing the North there are other ways to attain what it seems to want, Noland says.

A worse problem arises if North Korea's focus is not economic survival but security enhancement. In that case, the time for sanctions and the tough-cop approach may still come, experts say - especially if North Korea is determined to be a nuclear power.

"If North Korea has already decided that it must have a nuclear arsenal come what may," Einhorn says, "then any amount of negotiation is not going to work." And the corollary to that, he adds, is not very encouraging.

"If they insist on developing and keeping [that arsenal], the international community will have no choice but to penalize North Korea for that choice."

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