[Kabar-indonesia] WP Analysis: NKorea Test 'Fundamentally Changes Landscape' for U.S. [+NYT]

[Joyo at aol.com]

5 reports: 

- WP Analysis: Reported Test 'Fundamentally 
  Changes the Landscape' for U.S. Officials

- North Korea's Test Fans Fears Of Asian 
  Nuclear Arms Race

- NYT: N. Korea Reports 1st Nuclear Arms Test 

- NYT: North’s Test Seen as Failure for Korea 
  Policy China Followed 

- WSJ: Leaders of Japan, China Agree On North 
  Korea Threat

The Washington Post
Monday, October 9, 2006

Analysis

Reported Test 'Fundamentally Changes the Landscape' for U.S. Officials

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer

North Korea's apparent nuclear test last night may well be regarded as a 
failure of the Bush administration's nuclear nonproliferation policy.

Since George W. Bush became president, North Korea has restarted its nuclear 
reactor and increased its stock of weapons-grade plutonium, so it may now have 
enough for 10 or 11 weapons, compared with one or two when Bush took office.

North Korea's test could also unleash a nuclear arms race in Asia, with Japan 
and South Korea feeling pressure to build nuclear weapons for defensive 
reasons.

Yet a number of senior U.S. officials have said privately that they would 
welcome a North Korean test, regarding it as a clarifying event that would 
forever end the debate within the Bush administration about whether to solve the 
problem through diplomacy or through tough actions designed to destabilize North 
Korean leader Kim Jong Il's grip on power.

Now U.S. officials will push for tough sanctions at the U.N. Security 
Council, and are considering a raft of largely unilateral measures, including 
stopping and inspecting every ship that goes in and out of North Korea.

"This fundamentally changes the landscape now," one U.S. official said last 
night.

When Bush became president in 2000, Pyongyang's reactor was frozen under a 
1994 agreement with the United States. Clinton administration officials thought 
they were so close to a deal limiting North Korean missiles that in the days 
before he left office, Bill Clinton seriously considered making the first visit 
to Pyongyang by a U.S. president.

But conservatives had long been deeply skeptical of the deal freezing North 
Korea's program -- known as the Agreed Framework -- in part because it called 
for building two light-water nuclear reactors (largely funded by the Japanese 
and South Koreans). When then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell publicly said 
in early 2001 that he favored continuing Clinton's approach, Bush rebuked him.

Bush then labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" that included Iran 
and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, further riling Pyongyang. U.S. officials say Bush 
carried a deep, visceral hatred of Kim and his dictatorial regime, and often 
chafed at efforts by his advisers to tone down his language about Kim, who within 
North Korea is regarded as a near-deity.

The missile negotiations with North Korea ended and no talks were held 
between senior U.S. and North Korean officials for nearly two years. Many top U.S. 
officials were determined to kill the Agreed Framework, and when U.S. 
intelligence discovered evidence that North Korea had a clandestine program to enrich 
uranium, they had their chance.

A U.S. delegation confronted Pyongyang about the secret program -- and U.S. 
officials said North Korean officials appeared to confirm it. (Pyongyang later 
denied that.) The United States pressed to cut off immediately deliveries of 
heavy fuel oil promised under the Agreed Framework. North Korea, in response, 
evicted international inspectors and restarted its nuclear reactor.

Pyongyang moved quickly to reprocess 8,000 spent fuel rods -- previously in a 
cooling pond under 24-hour international surveillance -- in order to obtain 
the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration, hampered by internal disputes, struggled 
to fashion a diplomatic effort to confront North Korea. Unlike the Clinton 
administration -- which suggested to North Korea that it would attack if 
Pyongyang moved to reprocess the plutonium -- the Bush administration never set out 
"red lines" that North Korea must not cross. Bush administration officials 
argued that doing so would only tempt North Korea to cross those lines.

Whereas Clinton had reached the Agreed Framework through lengthy bilateral 
negotiations, the Bush administration felt that North Korea would be less likely 
to wiggle out of a future deal if it also included its regional neighbors -- 
China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. But it took months of internal struggles 
to arrange the meetings -- and North Korea insisted it wanted to have only 
bilateral talks with the United States.

It was also difficult to coordinate policies with the other parties. The 
talks largely stalled, as North Korea continued to build its stockpile of 
plutonium.

After Bush was reelected, new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched an 
effort to revitalize the six-nation talks, which a year ago yielded a 
"statement of principles" to guide future negotiations, including the possibility of 
major economic help, security assurances and normalization of relations with 
the United States if North Korea dismantled its nuclear programs. To the anger 
of conservatives within the administration, the statement also suggested that 
North Korea might one day be supplied with light-water reactors as envisioned 
in the Clinton deal.

But that proved to be the high point of the talks. The administration issued 
a statement saying the reactor project was officially terminated -- and North 
Korea would need to pass many hurdles before it could ever envision having a 
civilian nuclear program. The Treasury Department, meanwhile, focused on North 
Korea illicit counterfeiting activities, targeting a bank in Macao that 
reportedly held the personal accounts of Kim and his family. Many banks around the 
world began to refuse to deal with North Korean companies, further angering 
Pyongyang.

With the end of the negotiating track marking the likely advent of sanctions, 
Pyongyang's action will test the proposition of those Bush administration 
officials who argued that a confrontational approach would finally bring North 
Korea to heel.

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North Korea's Test Fans Fears Of Asian Nuclear Arms Race

SEOUL, Oct. 9 (AP)--The specter of an Asian nuclear arms race loomed over the 
region Monday after communist North Korea shocked the world by announcing it 
conducted its first-ever nuclear test. 

Officials from Washington to Seoul were warning of a possible arms race even 
before North Korea's claim Monday that it had joined the elite club of nuclear 
powers. 

South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said a nuclear North Korea 
could give Japan a "pretext" to go nuclear next, triggering countermoves by 
suspicious Asian neighbors in a cascade that upends regional security. 

While an arms race is unlikely to dawn the day after a test, long-term 
anxiety abounds. 

"There's no equalizer like the bomb," said Peter Beck, head of the Seoul 
office of the International Crisis Group think tank. "It's safe to say it will 
lead to an arms race - will push all the governments in the region to increase 
defense spending." 

Nuclear arms in the hands of Pyongyang and Tokyo would put some of the 
world's biggest cities in the shadow of atomic weapons. It might also prompt 
previously reluctant powers such as South Korea or Taiwan to seek nuclear arms. 

On a wider scale, North Korea's dabbling with atomic weapons could spur other 
nuclear powers, including the U.S., India or China, to resume their own 
nuclear testing, a move that raises the risk of proliferation, analysts say. 

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had warned Thursday that allowing 
North Korea to test a bomb would have a far-reaching fallout. 

"The lack of cohesion and the inability to marshal sufficient leverage to 
prevent North Korea from proceeding toward a nuclear program...it will kind of 
lower the threshold, and other countries will step forward with it," Rumsfeld 
said. 

The current North Korean nuclear standoff dates from 2002, when the U.S. 
accused North Korea of conducting a secret nuclear program in violation of a 1994 
agreement. 

North Korea announced Monday that it had safely conducted an underground 
test, saying the development "will contribute to defending the peace and stability 
on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it." 

But a top concern is the possibility of North Korea mounting bombs atop 
missiles aimed at Seoul, Tokyo or even parts of the U.S. 

While the North's ability to accurately deliver a warhead this way is in 
doubt, the communist nation shocked the world in 1998 by firing a long-range 
ballistic missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. 

In July it test-launched seven missiles, although a long-range rocket 
believed capable of reaching American shores exploded shortly after liftoff. 

Abhorrence of nuclear weapons runs deep in Japan, where memories of the U.S. 
atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are burned into the collective 
consciousness. 

But just last month, a think tank run by former Prime Minister Yasuhiro 
Nakasone proposed in a policy paper that Japan "consider the nuclear option." 

Tokyo weighed the nuclear possibility in 1995 to counter the threat of a 
nuclear-armed North Korea. But the government ultimately rejected the idea because 
it might deprive Japan of U.S. military protection and alarm neighboring 
countries. 

So far, Japan's post-World War II pacifist Constitution keeps its overseas 
strike ability in check; it has no aircraft carriers, bombers or long-range 
missiles. But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a staunch North Korea critic, wants to 
amend the Constitution to give Japan's military greater leeway in international 
action. 

If Japan decides to go nuclear, it wouldn't take long to convert the nation's 
huge stockpile of plutonium from the spent fuel of its nuclear power plants. 

That would undoubtedly rattle China and South Korea, which have viewed Tokyo 
with suspicion since their neighbor invaded and colonized them in the early 
20th century. 

Both South Korea and Japan have largely relied on the U.S. nuclear umbrella 
as insurance against attack. But when faced with the verified presence of 
atomic bombs on the other side of the border, South Korea may consider arming 
itself. 

In 1991, U.S. tactical nuclear weapons were removed from South Korea as part 
of arms reductions following the Cold War, according to South Korean defense 
experts. In the same year, the two Koreas signed an accord pledging not to 
deploy, develop or possess atomic bombs on the peninsula. 

But back in the 1970s, Seoul was actively pursuing its own atomic program. 

Fearful of a regional nuclear arms race, however, the U.S. forced 
then-dictator Park Chung-hee to drop the plan, partly by threatening economic penalties 
for a nation that was then poor and still recovering from the 1950-53 Korean 
War. 

Shen Dingli, the executive deputy director of the Institute of International 
Issues at Fudan University in China, thinks Japan and South Korea are unlikely 
to seek nuclear arms today for many of the same reasons. 

"This is bound to erode their alliance with the U.S., thus subjecting the 
East Asian security situation headed by the U.S. to even greater challenges," he 
wrote in a report on North Korea's latest threat. "The chances of Japan and 
South Korea developing their own nuclear programs are not great." 

But other countries might still use North Korea's test as an excuse to build 
atomic arsenals, says Ralph Cossa, president of the Honolulu-based Pacific 
Forum. 

"If North Korea is 'justified' because it faces a threat from a bully 
superpower, Taiwan can make the same argument," Cossa said. 

"Let's not overlook south-east Asia either. Burma is talking about obtaining 
a research reactor and both Indonesia and Vietnam are exploring nuclear energy 
options, although these dominos are a long way from falling." 

---------------------------------------

The New York Times
Monday, October 9, 2006

N. Korea Reports 1st Nuclear Arms Test 

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Monday, Oct. 9 -- North Korea said Sunday night that it had set 
off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and 
arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to proclaim that it has joined the 
club of nuclear weapons states.

The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United 
Nations Security Council that the action could lead to severe consequences. 

American officials cautioned that they had not yet received any confirmation 
that the test had occurred. The United States Geological Survey said it had 
detected a tremor of 4.2 magnitude on the Korean Peninsula. 

China called the test a “flagrant and brazen” violation of international 
opinion and said it “firmly opposes” North Korea’s conduct.

Senior Bush administration officials said that they had little reason to 
doubt the announcement, and warned that the test would usher in a new era of 
confrontation with the isolated and unpredictable country run by President Kim 
Jong-il. 

Early Monday morning, even before the test was confirmed, Bush administration 
officials were holding conference calls to discuss ways to further cut off a 
country that is already subject to sanctions, and hard-liners said the moment 
had arrived for neighboring countries, especially China and Russia, to cut off 
the trade and oil supplies that have been Mr. Kim’s lifeline.

In South Korea, the country that fought a bloody war with the North for three 
years and has lived with an uneasy truce and failed efforts at reconciliation 
for more than half a century, officials said they believed that an explosion 
occurred around 10:36 p.m. New York time — 11:36 a.m. Monday in Korea. 

They identified the source of the explosion as North Hamgyong Province, 
roughly the area where American spy satellites have been focused for several years 
on a variety of suspected underground test sites. 

That was less than an hour after North Korean officials had called their 
counterparts in China and warned them that a test was just minutes away. The 
Chinese, who have been North Korea’s main ally for 60 years but have grown 
increasingly frustrated by the its defiance of Beijing, sent an emergency alert to 
Washington through the United States Embassy in Beijing. Within minutes, 
President Bush was notified, shortly after 10 p.m., by his national security adviser, 
Stephen Hadley, that a test was imminent.

North Korea’s decision to conduct the test demonstrated what the world has 
suspected for years: the country has joined India, Pakistan and Israel as one of 
the world’s “undeclared” nuclear powers. India and Pakistan conducted tests 
in 1998; Israel has never acknowledged conducting a test or possessing a 
weapon. But by actually setting off a weapon, if that is proven, the North has 
chosen to end years of carefully crafted and diplomatically useful ambiguity about 
its abilities.

The North’s decision to set off a nuclear device could profoundly change the 
politics of Asia.

The test occurred only a week after Japan installed a new, more nationalistic 
prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and just as the country was renewing a debate 
about whether its ban on possessing nuclear weapons — deeply felt in a country 
that saw two of its cities incinerated in 1945 — still makes strategic sense. 

And it shook the peninsula just as Mr. Abe was arriving in South Korea for 
the first time as prime minister, in an effort to repair a badly strained 
relationship, having just visited with Chinese leaders in Beijing. It places his 
untested administration in the midst of one of the region’s biggest security 
crises in years, and one whose outcome will be watched closely in Iran and other 
states suspected of attempting to follow the path that North Korea has taken.

Now, Tokyo and Washington are expected to put even more pressure on the South 
Korean government to terminate its “sunshine policy” of trade, tourism and 
openings to the North — a policy that has been the source of enormous tension 
between Seoul and Washington since Mr. Bush took office. 

The explosion was the product of nearly four decades of work by North Korea, 
one of the world’s poorest and most isolated countries. The nation of 23 
million people appears constantly fearful that its far richer, more powerful 
neighbors — and particularly the United States — will try to unseat its leadership. 
The country’s founder, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, emerged from the Korean 
War determined to equal the power of the United States, and acutely aware 
that Gen. Douglas MacArthur had requested nuclear weapons to use against his 
country. 

But it took decades to put together the technology, and only in the past few 
years has the North appeared to have made a political decision to speed 
forward. “I think they just had their military plan to demonstrate that no one could 
mess with them, and they weren’t going to be deterred, not even by the 
Chinese,” a senior American official who deals with the North said late Sunday 
evening. “In the end, there was just no stopping them.” 

But the explosion was also the product of more than two decades of diplomatic 
failure, spread over at least three presidencies. American spy satellites saw 
the North building a good-size nuclear reactor in the early 1980’s, and by 
the early 1990’s the C.I.A. estimated that the country could have one or two 
nuclear weapons. But a series of diplomatic efforts to “freeze” the nuclear 
program — including a 1994 accord signed with the Clinton administration — 
ultimately broke down, amid distrust and recriminations on both sides. 

Three years ago, just as President Bush was sending American troops toward 
Iraq, the North threw out the few remaining weapons inspectors living at their 
nuclear complex in Yongbyon, and moved 8,000 nuclear fuel rods they had kept 
under lock and key. Those rods contained enough plutonium, experts said, to 
produce five or six nuclear weapons, though it is unclear how many the North now 
stockpiles.

For years, some diplomats assumed that the North was using that ambiguity to 
trade away its nuclear capability, for recognition, security guarantees, aid 
and trade with the West. But in the end, the country’s reclusive leader, Kim 
Jong-il, who inherited the mantle of leadership from his father, still called 
the “Great Leader,” appears to have concluded that the surest way of getting 
what he seeks is to demonstrate that he has the capability to strike back if 
attacked.

Assessing the nature of that ability is difficult. If the test occurred as 
the North claimed, it is unclear whether it was an actual bomb or a more 
primitive device. Some experts cautioned that it could try to fake an explosion, 
setting off conventional explosives; the only way to know for sure will be if 
American “sniffer” planes, patrolling the North Korean coast, pick up evidence of 
nuclear byproducts in the air.

Even then, it is not clear that the North could fabricate that bomb into a 
weapon that could fit atop its missiles, one of the country’s few significant 
exports.

But the big fear about North Korea, American officials have long said, has 
less to do with its ability to lash out than it does with its proclivity to 
proliferate. The country has sold its missiles and other weapons to Iran, Syria 
and Pakistan; at various moments in the six-party talks that have gone on for 
the past few years, North Korean representatives have threatened to sell nuclear 
weapons. But in a statement issued last week, announcing that it intends to 
set off a test, the country said it would not sell its nuclear products.

The fear of proliferation prompted President Bush to declare in 2003 that the 
United States would never “tolerate” a nuclear-armed North Korea. He has 
never defined what he means by “tolerate,” and on Sunday night Tony Snow, Mr. 
Bush’s press secretary, said that, assuming the report of the test is accurate, 
the United States would now go to the United Nations to determine “what our 
next steps should be in response to this very serious step.”

Nuclear testing is often considered a necessary step to proving a weapon’s 
reliability as well as the most forceful way for a nation to declare its status 
as a nuclear power. 

“Once they do that, it’s serious," said Harold M. Agnew, a former director 
of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, which designed most of the nation’s 
nuclear arms. "Otherwise, the North Koreans are just jerking us around.”

Networks of seismometers that detect faint trembles in the earth and track 
distant rumbles are the best way to spot an underground nuclear test. 

The big challenge is to distinguish the signatures of earthquakes from those 
of nuclear blasts. Typically, the shock waves from nuclear explosions begin 
with a sharp spike as earth and rock are compressed violently. The signal then 
tends to become fuzzier as surface rumblings and shudders and after shocks 
create seismologic mayhem. 

With earthquakes, it is usually the opposite. A gentle jostling suddenly 
becomes much bigger and more violent. 

Most of the world’s seismic networks that look for nuclear blasts are 
designed to detect explosions as small as one kiloton, or equal to 1,000 tons of high 
explosives. On instruments for detecting earthquakes, such a blast would 
measure a magnitude of about 4, like a small tremor. 

Philip E. Coyle III, a former head of weapons testing at the Pentagon and 
former director of nuclear testing for the Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory, a weapons-design center in California, said the North Koreans could learn 
much from a nuclear test even if it was small by world standards or less than an 
unqualified success. 

“It would not be totally surprising if it was a fizzle and they said it was a 
success because they learned something,” he said. “We did that sometimes. We 
had a missile defense test not so long ago that failed, but the Pentagon said 
it was a success because they learned something, which I agree with. Failures 
can teach you a lot.” 

William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York, and Thom Shanker from 
Washington.

-----------------------------------------

The New York Times
Monday, October 9, 2006

North’s Test Seen as Failure for Korea Policy China Followed 

By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, Monday, Oct. 9 -- The North Korea nuclear test amounted to a major 
failure for China, which mounted one of its most extensive diplomatic efforts 
in years to find a negotiated solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis and 
to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula.

The Chinese expressed their anger in unusually strong terms, saying the test 
was “flagrant and brazen.” 

Last week, the foreign ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, took the unusual 
step of publicly warning North Korea not to follow through with its planned test. 
Chinese leaders had also warned of “grave consequences” if the test was 
conducted.

China and North Korea fought together against the United States and its 
allies during the Korean War and were ideological partners during the cold war. 
Today, China remains North Korea’s most important source of food and oil.

But China, which also has worked hard to keep good relations with the Bush 
administration, has tried to bring the United States and North Korea to the 
negotiating table. President Hu Jintao has met Kim Jong-iIl, the North Korean 
leader, several times, and the Chinese side tried to persuade the North Koreans to 
follow a strategy of peaceful opening that focused mainly on economic 
development, like the Chinese themselves did after Mao’s death.

The test will almost certainly force the Chinese to take a more assertive 
stance and to join the United States and regional powers into exerting more 
pressure on the North. 

It remains unclear what leverage China might be willing to use against the 
North. Beijing has long argued that along with denuclearizing the country it 
also intends to preserve peace and stability there, and Chinese leaders are 
likely to reject any proposals for military action.

They may also seek to water down any sanctions to ensure that restrictions on 
the North’s trade do not topple the government, an event China fears could 
set off an influx of refugees and a volatile political environment on its border.

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The Wall Street Journal
Monday, October 9, 2006

Leaders of Japan, China Agree
On North Korea Threat

By SEBASTIAN MOFFETT and MEI FONG

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's meetings yesterday with Chinese leaders 
marked the end to a long standoff between Asia's two biggest powers, a 
rapprochement that might boost the effort to dissuade North Korea from its nuclear 
ambitions.

The meetings were the countries' first summit in five years and could lessen 
the chances of a flare-up in the region. Japan and China still dispute 
territory, such as a small group of islands near some gas fields in the East China 
Sea. These have been the subject of recent spats over drilling rights; 
yesterday, the countries agreed to seek a deal to jointly develop the area.

More immediately, just days after North Korea threatened to carry out a 
nuclear test, Mr. Abe and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed they were both "deeply 
concerned" by this development. They said they will work to stop North Korea 
from developing nuclear weapons, something that would have the potential to 
trigger an arms race in the region.

"We agreed that [a North Korean nuclear test] would be a great threat and 
would be unacceptable," Mr. Abe told reporters after the meetings. "We will 
strengthen cooperation to get North Korea to answer to the demands of international 
society."

Yesterday's meetings were largely symbolic. The wider significance of the 
visit is an attempt by Mr. Abe, who became Japanese prime minister last month, to 
give Japan greater influence in East Asia. A new Japanese leader's first port 
of call customarily is Washington. Mr. Abe was scheduled to travel on to 
South Korea today. By first visiting Japan's two neighbors, he is showing a 
determination to engage them.

His predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, made Japan a more-assertive player in 
regional affairs. He also angered China by visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, 
dedicated to Japan's war dead, which honors convicted war criminals as well as 
conscripted soldiers. Because of this, China has refused summit meetings since 
2001.

Mr. Abe is a supporter of the shrine and is reported to have paid his 
respects there quietly in April -- though he won't confirm this. Japanese officials 
say no promise was made as a condition for this visit that Mr. Abe won't visit 
the shrine as prime minister. Still, because shrine visits have become an 
international political issue, Mr. Abe told reporters yesterday, "I decided not to 
say whether or not I'm going."

By taking a less-strident line than Mr. Koizumi has, Mr. Abe hopes to win for 
Japan a greater ability to influence regional affairs -- in particular over 
North Korea, of which China is a traditional ally.

"For Japan, the summit is a major triumph as it regains its political voice 
and begins to assert a political role in the region," said Kenneth Pyle, 
founding president of the National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle. "Greater 
influence could be critical as North Korea goes through a new phase of military 
tests and threats."

In recent years, Japan has joined the U.S. in taking a hard line on 
Pyongyang. If Mr. Abe can improve Japan's relations with its neighbors, that could help 
the countries form a joint strategy toward Pyongyang.

Beijing's leaders, for their part, also are anxious to repair ties with 
Japan, China's second-largest single-country trading partner after the U.S. Trade 
between the two nations totaled $188.4 billion in 2005, exceeding the trade 
value between Japan and the U.S.

"There are two things we want to achieve during this visit," said Zhang 
Yunling, director of the Institute of Asia Pacific Studies at the Chinese Academy 
of Social Sciences. "To turn the tide against the worsening diplomatic ties 
between the two countries and to try to create a favorable environment of 
wide-range cooperation."

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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