FOCUS
'Axis of evil' odd man out

By Tom Plate

He often sounds less like his father, a smooth diplomat by breeding, more like Ronald Reagan, whose rugged rhetoric about the "evil empire" suffused his presidency with a popular glow and ignited a second term. In his pivotal "axis of evil" speech last month, President George Bush pounced upon North Korea, Iran and Iraq as the world's true terror troika.

A demonstrator prayed during an anti-U.S. protest Friday in Seoul. Many say President Bush's labeling of North Korea as part of the "axis of evil" has heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Associated Press

The inclusion of tottering though still dangerous North Korea is a puzzlement. The American media had been speculating that Iraq is evil poster-boy No. 1 on the Bush scale of justice, but North Korea appears to be almost tied for co-evilness with Iran.

It's hard to fault the administration's taste in enemies. There's not exactly much to like about North Korea. It is selling strategic missile parts, it once did support terrorism (but now doesn't have the money to throw at that), and it has replaced the former Communist state of Albania — and indeed the former Afghanistan of the Taliban — for the honor of being the nation Least Likely to Succeed — and Least Pleasant to Deal with.

The current administration is unwilling to sweep these realities under the rug, and it has a solid point. But it may be a domestic political one rather than a useful launching pad for serious international diplomacy. The Republican administration talks up North Korea's nastiness as an unmistakable slap at the prior administration, which supported a relatively go-soft policy that inveterate anti-Communists — some now working for Bush — sincerely believed to be naive and irresponsible.

The Clinton administration believed, with equal sincerity, that it had came close to nailing down a peace agreement on the Korean peninsula before the clock ran out on it. Bush officials suspect the North Koreans played Clinton for a fool, squeezing aid out of the gullible administration like a wife-murderer begging the jury for sympathy because he suddenly finds himself widowed.

The Bush administration has been accused of hardening the line on Pyongyang by including it in the axis of terror because of a need to justify the hugely expensive missile defense system. It also is speculated that North Korea made the list because the administration wished to defuse the explosive charge that the only serious enemies it could find are Islamic.

In truth, this president believes he has put the right suspects on his terror watch. Always seeking to identify a moral dimension behind a foreign-policy decision, he regards the Stalinist government in Pyongyang as evil incarnate: Its starvation of its people — out of incompetence or evil — is arguably as horrific as any of the atrocities perpetrated by Japanese occupying forces during World War II.

Yes, Bush sees the North Koreans as another form of Talibanism. So he is prepared, as necessary, to conduct battle between good (U.S.) and evil (N.K.). True crusaders never run out of moral gas.

The case for action against North Korea is not hard to make. The hermit regime does have nuclear weapons, has been peddling ballistic-missile parts to anyone who can afford them and has been governing incompetently for years. But moral clarity doesn't necessarily lead to policy clarity. In important respects, the North Koreans are a different breed from al-Qaida in Afghanistan. For one thing, the former have had a true (if Stalinist) government for decades, whereas the latter were more like a foreign occupying force.

Moreover, the North Koreans have an important ally — China — and a million-man army with fire-ready artillery only 30 miles away from Seoul that could reduce South Korea's capital to one big urban forest fire.

Everyone knows an aerial bombardment of North Korea would take months to be effective, and America might have to go it alone. Worse than that, it would have to go against China, which instinctively shrinks from messes on its borders, and would exercise its veto on the U.N. Security Council. The United States needs a friendly and internationally involved China far, far more than it needs a disintegrated North (not to mention a thoroughly shaken South) Korea.

By all logic, then, there is but one option: negotiation and diplomacy. For if the United States wants to add to the peace and security of the region, its worldwide anti-terror campaign — now seemingly on the road to Korea — will be going the wrong direction.

Tom Plate, a columnist with The Honolulu Advertiser and the South China Morning Post, is a professor at UCLA. He also has a spot on the Web.