Neocons Call for Japanese Nukes, North Korean Regime Change

Encouraging Japan to build nuclear weapons, shipping food aid via submarines, and running secret sabotage operations inside North Korea's borders are among a raft of policy prescriptions pushed by prominent U.S. neoconservatives in the wake of Pyongyang's nuclear test.

Writing in publications from National Review Online (NRO) to the New York Times, neoconservatives claim, contrary to the lessons drawn by "realist" and other critics of the George W. Bush administration, that Monday's test vindicates their long-held view that negotiations with "rogue" states like North Korea are useless and that "regime change" -- by military means, if necessary -- is the only answer.

"With our intelligence on North Korea so uneven, the doctrine of preemption must return to the fore," wrote Dan Blumenthal, an Asia specialist at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) who worked for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during Bush's first term, in the NRO Tuesday. "Any talk of renewed six-party talks [involving China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas] must be resisted."

The North Korean test "has stripped any plausibility to arguments that engaging dictators works," according to Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist at AEI, who added that the Bush administration now faces a "watershed" in its relations with other states that have defied Washington in recent years.

"This crisis is not just about North Korea, but about Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba as well," according to Rubin. "Bush now has two choices: to respond forcefully and show that defiance has consequence, or affirm that defiance pays and that international will is illusionary.

"...(He) must now choose whether his legacy will be one of inaction or leadership, Chamberlain or Churchill," he added in a reference to the pre-World War II debate between the "appeasement" of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the war policy of his successor, Winston Churchill.

The neoconservatives, whose influence on the Bush administration has generally been on the wane since late 2003 when it became clear that the Iraq war that they had done so much to champion was going badly, nonetheless retain some clout, particularly through the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Rumsfeld.

They are opposed by the "realists" who are concentrated in the State Department and also include former secretary of state Colin Powell; his chief deputy, Richard Armacost; and a number of top national security officials in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush, such as former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, and secretary of state James Baker, who just last weekend publicly called for Washington to directly engage its "enemies," including North Korea, Syria and Iran.

That stance is anathema to the neoconservatives and their right-wing allies, such as Cheney, who, at one national security council meeting on North Korea several years ago, was reported to have said, "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it."

The neoconservatives' main area of concern has historically been the Middle East -- indeed, their central focus in recent months has been publicizing the threats to the United States and Israel allegedly posed by Iran and Hezbollah and opposing any realist appeals to engage Tehran and Damascus in direct talks. But they have also been warning for some time against "the appeasement" of North Korea and its chief source of material aid and support, China.

In their view, Beijing has always had the power to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arms programs, and the fact that it has not done so demonstrates that China sees itself as a "strategic rival" of Washington, a phrase much favored by administration hawks during Bush's first year in office.