Test completes ‘axis of crisis’
WASHINGTON – Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an “axis of evil” comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first-ever nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment programs and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion.
Each problem appears to feed on the others, making the stakes higher and requiring Bush and his advisers to make difficult calculations, analysts and U.S. officials said. The deteriorating situation in Iraq has undermined U.S. diplomatic credibility and limited the administration’s military options, making rogue countries increasingly confident they can act without serious consequences. Iran, meanwhile, will be watching closely the diplomatic fallout from North Korea’s apparent test as a clue to how far it might possibly go with its nuclear program.
“Iran will follow very carefully what happens in the U.N. Security Council after the North Korean test,” said Robert Einhorn, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If the United Nations is not able to act forcefully, then Iran will think the path is clear to act with impunity.”
Michael O’Hanlon, a Brookings Institution scholar and co-author of the new book, “Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security,” said the U.S. response to North Korea will have ripple effects. “Iran will certainly watch what happens. North Korea watched what happened with Pakistan and decided that the world didn’t punish Pakistan too hard or too long,” he said. “Iran will certainly notice if North Korea gets treated with kid gloves.”
Political strategists debated the domestic implications of the North Korean test with midterm elections four weeks away. Some Republicans predicted it would take the focus off the Mark Foley scandal and remind voters that it’s a dangerous world best confronted by tough-minded leaders. Some Democrats argued it would be seen as another failure of Bush’s foreign policy and moved quickly to try to pin blame on the Republicans. “Is this going to help Republicans?” asked Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “The answer to that is absolutely not. This is another significant foreign policy failure for the administration.”
In Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address, a speech designed to shift the political debate from a battle against al-Qaida to a possible confrontation with Iraq, the president mentioned North Korea, Iraq and Iran and declared: “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. … In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”
All three issues came to head in 2003: The United States invaded Iraq and discovered Saddam Hussein’s government had no weapons of mass destruction; North Korea began to obtain weapons-grade plutonium from fuel rods that previously had been under international observation; Iran disclosed that it had made rapid progress with a previously secret uranium enrichment program.
In contrast to Iraq, the administration has tried to resolve the North Korean and Iranian nuclear breakouts with diplomacy. But progress has been slow, in part because the U.S. has been reluctant to hold bilateral talks with either country except within the context of broader talks with other nations.
Former Democratic senator Sam Nunn faulted the administration for focusing on Iraq first, when greater threats loomed in North Korea and Iran. “We started with Iraq in the axis of evil side, when we thought they did not yet have nuclear weapons and that sent the signal to others that they better get them quick,” he said. “I think we started on the wrong end of that.”
Monday, the administration launched a full-court press at the Security Council, proposing elements of a tough resolution that would call for imposing an arms embargo and a series of legally binding U.N. financial and trade sanctions. The United States also called for international inspections of all trade coming in an out of the secretive country to enforce the sanctions.
U.S. officials Monday were focusing especially closely on the reaction of China, long North Korea’s main benefactor. The Chinese government publicly denounced the test in unusually strong language, and a senior U.S. official said the private comments of Chinese officials were equally strong. While China has been reluctant in the past to pressure North Korea, fearing a collapse of the government and mass refugees on its border, “the question is whether a chaotic North Korea is worse than a nuclear North Korea,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivities.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appears likely to make a trip to the region soon to further build support for a tough response by China, Japan and South Korea. Several experts predicted that while China’s leadership is angry enough to support some sanctions, it always will stop short of putting enough pressure on Pyongyang to force its collapse. “Full-up sanctions I don’t see happening,” said former White House Asia expert Michael Green, now at CSIS.