
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994                    TAG: 9406080010 
SECTION: FRONT                     PAGE: A14    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Medium 
DATELINE: 940608                                 LENGTH:

CLINTON AND NORTH KOREA: SANCTIONS AND SABERS

{LEAD} President Clinton's schizophrenic policy toward North Korea and its putative atomic bomb - alternating between appeasement and bellicose rhetoric, unilateral and multilateral proposals - has had the predictable effect of increasing North Korean recalcitrance. As the world looks headed for some kind of showdown, the president should be preparing Americans for the possible consequences. That in itself might have a salutary effect on Pyongyang.

North Korea's unstable regime has been working on a nuclear weapon for some years now, a project that has become more urgent as its Stalinist economy collapses and its friends have abandoned communism. President Clinton first tried diplomatic pressure to force North Korea's compliance with a crucial requirement of the non-proliferation treaty: independent confirmation that a member nation's nuclear-power program does not include nuclear-weapons development.

{REST} Months of dawdling diplomacy produced mostly broken promises from Pyongyang. Now Mr. Clinton is pushing for stiff economic sanctions, either through the United Nations or by the United States and any ``willing partners.'' North Korea insists it will view any sanctions as an act of war, though given the leaky sanctions now imposed on Haiti, the prospect can't frighten North Korea all that much.

Some have wondered whether it is worth getting excited about a North Korean bomb. After all, it was widely thought a disaster when the Soviet Union and China developed theirs. The danger with North Korea, however, is not necessarily that it will use nuclear weapons against the south or against Japan - though such an unpredictable regime might do so - but that it will seek to rescue its economy by selling the warheads to nations like Iran, Iraq or Libya, as well as the missiles to deliver them.

The end of the Cold War has heightened rather than curbed many of the international threats the United States faces. The North Korean crisis has also underlined the continued need to develop a Star Wars-type anti-ballistic missile system to defend the United States and its allies. The Patriot missile system that has been dispatched to South Korea is a positive step, but hardly adequate in the event several such ``crazy states'' develop nuclear weapons.

North Korea does not desire ``better relations'' with the United States, as we have held out as a carrot for their good behavior. It is more accurate to say North Korea appears to have contempt for the United States and retains its clear designs on South Korea and the 37,000 U.S. troops still stationed there.

Sanctions almost never have the desired effect on the targeted nation, and they are especially unlikely to be effective against a hermit nation like North Korea. The United States should be conspicuously building up its forces in the northwestern Pacific in an effort to show the North Koreans we intend to stand by our allies, as well as to be able to win in the event the North should strike. The president should also be preparing the American people for any clash that might occur.

by CNB