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The North Korea Lesson for Iran
(Wall Street Journal) Editorial - President Trump decided to use military force to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon after diplomacy failed. This was a risky choice. But the U.S. experience with North Korea suggests the alternatives were even riskier. That history shows the limits of nuclear diplomacy with a determined foe, as well as what happens when the U.S. puts conflict-avoidance above all else. During the Clinton Administration, North Korea denied International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to camouflaged nuclear sites and announced it would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Clinton threatened sanctions. The U.S. military drew up plans for strikes on nuclear installations, and Defense Secretary Bill Perry presented a plan for a large military buildup in the region. Clinton deployed Patriot missile-defense systems to South Korea. Former President Jimmy Carter informed the Clinton Administration that he intended to visit North Korea and try to defuse the situation. Clinton decided to let Carter proceed as a private citizen. Carter feared conflict above all and even opposed sanctions. He went beyond what he had been authorized by Clinton to discuss and announced a tentative agreement on CNN. The press and foreign-policy establishment hailed nuclear peace in our time. Military options came off the table and Clinton embraced the deal, which became the 1994 Agreed Framework. For a time the deal seemed to work. Yet weaponization research continued on the sly. The regime's intent to build a bomb never changed. In 2002, North Korea reneged on the Agreed Framework and expelled inspectors. The George W. Bush Administration employed threats, sanctions and diplomacy but ultimately ruled out the use of force. In 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test. After that, U.S. military options became riskier. North Korea is now believed to possess 50 warheads, and it tests ICBMs that will one day be able to reach the continental U.S. The lesson is that U.S. presidents waited too long to stop North Korea. The risks of war were always said to be too high, it was never a good time, and there was always another diplomatic option to exhaust. North Korea is now a nuclear power. Iran's radical regime will not have a nuclear program when the current Iran conflict ends. This has made the world a safer place.