US Strategy Report Does Not Rule Out Pre-Emptive Strike on North Korea

Text of report in English by South Korean news agency Yonhap

Washington, 16 March: A new US national security strategy report gives more attention to North Korea with emphatic warning about the regime’s illicit activities, but it continues to focus on diplomacy over the use of force.

The report, released every four years, is the first done by the second George W. Bush administration. It labels North Korea a tyranny with a “bleak record of duplicity and bad-faith negotiations.”

It calls the communist regime a “serious nuclear proliferation challenge” and presses it to give up its policies of financial crimes and missile threats.

The report reiterates the principle of pre-emptive strike, specifically that the US does not “rule out the use of force before attacks occur.”

“When the consequences of an attack with WMD (weapons of mass destruction) are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize,” it says.

The notion clearly can be applied to North Korea, long suspected of proliferating WMD material and technology.

The report is emphatic about confronting North Korea’s illicit activities and vows the US “will continue to take all necessary measures to protect our national and economic security against the adverse effects of their bad conduct.”

President Bush in June 2001 named four agendas the nation wanted to take up with North Korea – nuclear weapons, conventional weapons, missiles and human rights.

The report’s emphasis on illicit activities suggests that they have become a de facto fifth agenda. North Korea’s financial crimes, said to range from counterfeiting of American dollars to trafficking of narcotics and contraband, have already become a major sticking point in addition to Pyongyang’s ambitions to build a nuclear arsenal.

The confrontation over these crimes could intensify since, unlike the other four issues, the US position is that illicit activities are matters of law and thus not a subject of negotiation.

Nevertheless, the US focus is still on diplomacy, according to Michael Green, senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

“I don’t think this is being put in the report in any way to undermine the diplomacy in the six-party talks but rather to emphasize the nature of the regime,” he said about the highlight of North Korea’s illicit conducts.

Green had worked on the report before he left the White House last December, where he was director for Asian issues at the National Security Council.

The report reaffirms US commitment to the six-party process, a multilateral arrangement involving South and North Korea, the US, China, Russia and Japan. Under an agreement made in September, North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons and programmes in exchange for political and economic benefits.

“Along with our partners in the six-party talks, the United States will continue to press the DPRK to implement these commitments,” the report says, referring to Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.

The idea of US pre-emption, a source of jitters for North Korea’s neighbours, at this point looms in theory only, according to Green.

“If North Korea’s activities posed an imminent threat, then pre- emption is obviously an option,” he said, “but I don’t think you should assume from this that the administration is contemplating a military option very actively. In fact, the option is very remote.”

“At this point, the focus is overwhelmingly on diplomacy,” he said.

Green said the report certainly pays more attention to North Korea than in previous ones. But he took more note about where North Korea was not mentioned, in the fact sheet the White House issued with the report.

“It’s worth pointing out,” he said.

“It (fact sheet) doesn’t mention North Korea. It’s clearly not the central theme at all.”