Posted on: Friday, February 14, 2003

One more reason to solve North Korea first

The "if" about a U.S. invasion of Iraq was all but forgotten this week as the Pentagon confirmed that it already had Special Operations forces on the ground there. With 135,000 U.S. troops in the Iraq area and U.S. and British aircraft pounding Iraqi targets almost daily, there seemed little chance of derailing this juggernaut.

Decision time for U.S. allies is at hand, as President Bush urged them to "show backbone and courage" and U.N. weapons inspectors Han Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei prepared to deliver their latest reports to the Security Council today.

Few people now doubt that Iraq is, in some measure at least, failing to live up to its U.N. obligation to "disclose and disarm." But large numbers, both in America and in Europe, continued to doubt whether the transgressions were dangerous enough to justify war, either on moral or pragmatic grounds, or that delay of the invasion by a matter of months would make any great difference.

But in recent days a new and different reason has arisen to doubt the advisability of the Bush administration's haste for war in Iraq — the growing crisis with North Korea. A Los Angeles Times story in yesterday's Advertiser discussed Pentagon concerns about the possibility of its having to fight two wars at the same time.

Little in that story was really new; it discussed contingencies that have been debated in think tanks and congressional committees for many years. But as the White House pursued its virtual obsession with Iraq, while seeming to swing from near-denial to a curious fatalism on North Korea, a new and potent worry has been added: If war in Iraq is under way when the balloon goes up in Korea, then Korea becomes the second-front war.

A war in Korea, one of the most heavily armed regions in the world, would be bloody and difficult under any circumstances, engendering, in the estimation of one Korea theater commander, a million casualties. But in the case of a two-front war, analysts say, the Pentagon's goal would be to focus first on the war in Iraq, and then to shift full attention to Korea when Baghdad was conquered.

The Pentagon says a second-front war in Korea would take longer, be more difficult and much bloodier. The destruction of Seoul, an affluent, modern capital, is generally assumed. The additional casualties entailed by putting Korea on the back burner would largely be civilians from one of America's closest allies.

We've suggested before that it makes sense to resolve the North Korea crisis before going to war in Iraq. The contingency plans for fighting two wars at once make clear why.