Korean War 2, Day 4: Gates Hints at Military Action if North Korea Proliferates Nuclear Material

Three days after North Korea repudiated the Armistice agreement it had never complied with anyway, and as North Korea was seen preparing for yet another long-range missile test, Defense Secretary Robert Gates used the occasion of a security conference in Singapore to issue a veiled threat to Kim Jong Il:

“The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States and our allies,” Gates told officials gathered at an Asian defense summit here. “And we would hold North Korea fully accountable for the consequences of such action.”  [L.A. Times]

The reporter makes this out to be an epiphany shattering a deliberate official ambiguity, but if this wasn’t already made very clear to the North Koreans long ago, that would be the most frightening part of the story.  Indeed, the fact that the North Koreans have specifically threatened to sell nuclear weapons to terrorists suggests that they know how seriously we’d take that.  Then again, when you look at our complete failure to react to the revelation of North Korea building the Syrians their own nuclear reactor — reportedly paid for by Iran — you have to wonder how seriously the North Koreans take our “red” lines at all.

Gates also gets credit for quote of the week, as he called for America to respond to North Korea’s provocations with tougher sanctions:

“They create a crisis and the rest of us pay the price to return to the status quo ante,” Gates told the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual meeting of defense and security officials. “As the expression goes in the U.S., I’m tired of buying the same horse twice.”

“There are other ways perhaps to get the North Koreans to change their approach,” Gates said. “I think this notion that we buy our way back to the status quo ante is an approach that I personally at least think we ought to think very hard about.”  [AP]

My money is still on us doing exactly that.  I don’t doubt that over in the State Department, they’re waiting out all of this resolute talk and engineering the next giveaway as we speak.  The bigger question really revolves around the intentions of the North Koreans.  I don’t doubt that extortion and domestic propaganda are two of them, but if Kim Jong Il thinks he’s dying, that would suggest a much more dangerous situation.