In the waning days of the Clinton administration, the momentum for engagement with North Korea, building from the earlier agreement to freeze its nuclear program and a moratorium on ballistic missile launches, accelerated to the brink of full-scale normalization of relations. The U.S. presidential election in 2000 brought that diplomatic freight train to an abrupt halt.

Will the 2008 election bring yet another dramatic change in U.S. Korea policy?

The answer, based on the published positions of the two candidates and conversations with his senior Asia policy advisors, seems to be NO. There are important differences of emphasis in the approaches of both candidates, which I will discuss, but the bottom line is that both men are likely to pick up where President George W. Bush leaves off.

There are two fundamental reasons why U.S. policy toward Korea – and more broadly in Northeast Asia --- will not change dramatically. First, Asia will continue to suffer from a deficit of presidential attention. The arc of crisis – Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan -- will necessarily still command, as it has for almost 8 years, the attention of senior American policymakers. Even that will have to fight for space with the growing global financial crisis.

Second, both candidates agree on the broad outlines of an Asia policy, one that does not depart radically from the one pursued by the Bush administration. As a senior McCain advisor put it to me: “There is not a huge difference on Asia between Obama and McCain.” Privately, Obama advisors also stress that there will not be a huge break with current U.S. policy.

Both campaigns are critical of the lack of attention paid to Asia and the need for the U.S. to be more proactive to strengthen existing alliances and to join the discussion about new forms of regional integration. Both candidates support the need to engage, rather than confront, a rising China. Both men call for the U.S. to pay more attention to management of our alliances with South Korea and Japan. And both Obama and McCain support the North Korean nuclear negotiations carried out by President Bush in his second term, although privately both campaigns are critical of the deal that has been struck.

If there are differences, they can be found in two areas – support for the Korea US free trade agreement and the willingness to directly engage North Korea and its regime.

Free Trade and the KORUS Free Trade Agreement

If there is one single issue regarding Korea on which Senators Obama and McCain clearly part company, it is the future of the free trade agreement negotiated with the Bush administration. Senator McCain is an unambiguous supporter of the FTA, not only as a trade pact but also as a symbol of the broader partnership between the U.S. and South Korea.

Senator Obama also supports free trade but is critical of this and other agreements, such as NAFTA, for failing to ensure market access and the protection of labor rights and the environment. Privately, Obama’s advisors understand the symbolic value of the FTA to the alliance, but they plan to ask Seoul to reopen talks on market access, particularly for the automobile industry. Their position reflects the importance of trade unions and the role of some key states – Michigan most of all – in the election outcome. Even if Obama loses, the Democrats are likely to strengthen their control of Congress, making approval of the FTA difficult under any circumstances.

Negotiating with Pyongyang: Back to the Future?

Both the McCain and the Obama camps publicly back the Bush administration’s negotiations with Pyongyang, but both are also privately critical, though for different reasons.

The Obama team is heavily populated by former Clinton administration officials who were involved in the negotiation of the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea. They see the current deal as an inevitably flawed bargain, the result of the refusal of the administration to seriously engage the North directly until it had crossed the red line of nuclear weapons testing. With little leverage, not least the credible threat of coercion, we are left with containing the plutonium production of the North, and hoping that a grand bargain down the line can yield full denuclearization.

Obama recognizes the need for “close coordination and consultation with our allies South Korea and Japan,” as one of his advisors put it in a published interview, and supports continuing the Six Party Talks. But the emphasis is clearly on direct talks with North Korea, though conducted with a principled toughness that the Bush administration has not exhibited in its final months in office.

That readiness to conduct direct negotiations, up to conclusion of a peace treaty with Pyongyang and full normalization of relations, is where the two candidates part company. The Republican nominee is clearly uncomfortable with direct dealings with Pyongyang – his position resembles the first term of the Bush administration more than the second in that respect. His advisory team combines realists, mainly veterans of the Powell State Department, and neoconservatives, reproducing the divisions that thwarted coherent policy-making in that first Bush term.

In the end, the views of McCain himself may be decisive. He was an opponent of the Agreed Framework, an agreement he characterized as “appeasement.” He maintained this stance into the Bush administration, vocally opposing any direct negotiations with the North Koreans as long as they maintained the right to develop nuclear weapons. He has been critical as well of the main deal struck by President Bush in his second term – “I didn’t believe in the KEDO agreement that President Clinton made and I don’t believe in this one,” he said in January.

McCain, according to an interview with one of his senior Asia advisors, would “seek a return to the core principles of denuclearization known as CVID, or complete, verifiable, irreversible, dismantlement.” The demand for CVID was the watchword of the Bush administration’s earlier stance, in effect a call for Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear option as a first step. But that demand was dropped after Pyongyang called the Bush administration’s bluff by exploding a nuclear device in October, 2006.

McCain also wants to “broaden our policy goals related to North Korea” beyond nuclear issues, to including human rights, economic and political reform, and reduction of the conventional military threat from North Korea, goals also set out at the outset of the Bush administration. McCain has repeatedly referred to the North Korean regime, and its leader, Kim Jong Il, in harsh terms and embraced a policy of “rogue state rollback.”

Realistically, however, McCain offers no credible, practical means to reach these goals. He reserves, as does Obama, the option to use force. But concretely he comes back to the strategy of pressing China to bring North Korea to heel. Unfortunately the Bush administration also relied on China and found there were clear limits to Beijing’s ability to control or its willingness to press its North Korean client. In the end, McCain may have little option but to follow Bush to Pyongyang’s doorstep.

One Caveat – Events Matter

Despite the powerful impetus to maintain continuity in U.S. policy toward the Korean peninsula, no matter whom is elected in November, there is one important caveat to keep in mind – events matter. Unplanned, and unforeseen, developments could force Korea to the top of the President’s agenda. Already we have seen the reports of Kim Jong Il’s serious illness trigger fresh concerns about a possible collapse of political authority in Pyongyang. A simultaneous rush by China, South Korea and the United States to fill a vacuum of power in the North could upset all calculations. For South Korea, and President Lee Myung-bak, it is always best to prepare for the unexpected.

As the world’s most dynamic and rapidly advancing region, the Asia-Pacific has commanded global attention. Business and policy leaders alike have been focused on the rise of China, tensions on the Korean peninsula, Japan’s economic recovery and political assertiveness, globalization and the outsourcing of jobs to South Asia, Indonesia’s multiple transitions, competing forces of nationalism vs. regionalism, and the future of U.S.-Asia relations.

What is the near-term outlook for change in the region? How might developments in the economic, political, or security sphere affect Asia’s expected trajectory? And how will a changing Asia impact the United States? These were among the complex and challenging issues addressed by a faculty panel from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) and the Eurasia Group at the Asia Society in New York on January 23, 2006.

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Q. COIT BLACKER: WHAT IS THE MOST DIFFICULT, CHALLENGING ISSUE YOU SEE?

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A. HARRY HARDING:

In China, we are seeing a darker side of the Chinese success story. Millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, China's role in international affairs is on the rise, and China is an increasingly responsible stakeholder in an open, liberal global economy. Yet, the world is now seeing the problems China's reform program has failed to resolve. China's new five-year plan seeks to address a number of these issues, providing a plan for sustainable economic development that is environmentally
responsible and addresses chronic pollution problems, for a harmonious society that
addresses inequalities and inadequacies in the provision of medical care, insurance
and pension systems, and for continuing technological innovation, as part of China's
quest to become an exporter of capital and technology.

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The world should be deeply concerned about developments on the Korean peninsula. Two pressing issues are U.S. relations with South Korea and the nuclear crisis with the North. It is not clear when or whether we will see a solution. Time may be against the United States on the issue. China and South Korea are not necessarily willing to follow the U.S. approach; without their cooperation, it is difficult to secure a successful solution. The younger generation emerging in South Korea does not see North Korea as a threat. Our own relations with South Korea are strained and we are viewed as preoccupied with Iraq and Iran, as North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons.

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In Southeast Asia, a key problem is uneven development, both in and between the political and economic spheres. Potentially volatile contrasts are seen throughout the region. Vietnam is growing at 8 percent per year, but will it become a democracy? It has not yet. Indonesia has shifted to democracy, but absent faster economic growth, that political gain could erode. Indonesia's media are among the freest in the region;
multiple peaceful elections have been held--a remarkable achievement--and nearly all Islamists shun terrorism. Older Indonesians remember, however, that the economy
performed well without democracy under President Suharto. Nowadays, corruption
scandals break out almost daily, nationalist and Islamist feelings are strong, and the
climate is not especially favorable to foreign investment. While Burma's economy
lags, its repressive polity embarrasses the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN). How long can the generals in Rangoon hold on? Disparities are also
international: dire poverty marks Laos and Cambodia, for example, while the
Malaysian and Thai economies have done well.

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Japan is a "good news/bad news" story. The good news is that Japan has found a new security niche since the end of the Cold War. Previously, when a security problem loomed "over the horizon," they expected us to take care of it while, if prodded, they increased their financial support for U.S. troops stationed in Japan. During the first post-Cold War conflict in the Persian Gulf, Japan had neither the political consensus nor the legal framework to permit a sharing of the risks, as well as the costs, and this cost them politically. Since then, they have passed legislation that permits them to participate in U.N. peacekeeping activities, contribute noncombat, logistic, and other services to "coalition of the willing" operations, and even dispatch troops to join reconstruction activities in Iraq. Clearly, their more ambitious role is helping to make the U.S.-Japan alliance more balanced and more global.The bad news is a reemergence of stronger nationalist sentiment in Japan and more generally in Northeast Asia. In part this is attributable to the collapse of the Left in Japanese politics since the mid-1990s. This has left the Conservatives more dominant, and they are less apologetic about Japanese conduct in the 1930s and 1940s, more inclined to regard North Korea and China as potential threats, more assertive with respect to territorial issues, less sensitive to their neighbors’ reactions to Prime Ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, and more eager to be regarded as a “normal” nation. Many Asians see the United States as pushing Japan to take on a more active security role and, in the context of rising Japanese nationalism, are less inclined to view the U.S.-Japan alliance as a source of reassurance.

Q. COIT BLACKER: WHAT ARE THE COMPETING AND CONFLICTING TENSIONS BETWEEN REGIONALISM AND NATIONALISM?

A. HARRY HARDING:

In China, there has been a resurgence of nationalism over the past 10 to 15 years. Since the end of the Maoist era and the beginning of the reform movement, the leadership has embraced nationalism as a source of legitimacy, but this is a double-edged sword. It places demands on the government to stand up for China’s face, rights, and prestige in international affairs, especially vis-à-vis Japan, the United States, and Taiwan, at times pushing Beijing in directions it does not wish to go.

A. DONALD EMMERSON:

In Indonesia, it is important to distinguish between inward and outward nationalism. Outward nationalism was manifest in Sukarno’s policy of confrontation with Malaysia. ASEAN is predicated on inward nationalism and outward cooperation. Nationalist feelings can be used inwardly to motivate reform and spur development. But there are potential drawbacks. Take the aftermath of the conflict in Aceh. The former rebels want their own political party. Hard-line nationalists in the Indonesian parliament, however, are loath to go along, and that could jeopardize stability in a province already exhausted by civil war and damaged by the 2004 tsunami.

A. GI-WOOK SHIN:

Korea is a nation of some 70 million people, large by European standards, but small in comparison to the giants of Asia, especially China, India, and Russia, making Korea very concerned about what other countries are doing and saying. Korea is currently undergoing an identity crisis. Until the 1980s, the United States was seen as a “savior” from Communism and avid supporter of modernization. Since then, many Koreans have come to challenge this view, arguing that the United States supported Korean dictatorship. Koreans are also rethinking their attitudes toward North Korea, seeing Koreans as belonging to one nation. This shift has contributed to negative attitudes toward both the United States and Japan

Q. COIT BLACKER: GENERATIONAL CHANGE IS ALSO A MAJOR ISSUE IN CHINA, THE DPRK, AND JAPAN. WHAT DOES IT BODE FOR POLITICAL CHANGE?

A. MICHAEL ARMACOST:

Japan has had a “one and a half party system” for more than half a century. Yet the Liberal Democratic Party has proven to be remarkably adaptive, cleverly co-opting many issues that might have been exploited by the opposition parties. It is clearly a democratic country, but its politics have not been as competitive as many other democracies. As for the United States, we have promoted lively democracies throughout the region. But we should not suppose that more democratic regimes will necessarily define their national interests in ways that are invariably compatible with ours. In both Taiwan and South Korea, to the contrary, democratic leaderships have emerged which pursue security policies that display less sensitivity to Washington’s concerns, and certainly exhibit little deference to U.S. leadership.

A. GI-WOOK SHIN:

In both North and South Korea, a marked evolution is under way. In the South, many new members of the parliament have little knowledge of the United States. Promoting mutual understanding is urgently needed on both sides. In the North, the big question is who will succeed Kim Jong Il—an issue with enormous implications for the United States.

A. DONALD EMMERSON:

Indonesians have a noisy, brawling democracy. What they don’t have is the rule of law. Judges can be bought, and laws are inconsistently applied. The Philippines enjoyed democracy for most of the 20th century, but poverty and underdevelopment remain rife, leading many Filipinos to ask just where democracy has taken their nation.

A. HARRY HARDING:

China has seen a significant increase in rural protests. There has been an increase in both the number of incidents and the level of violence. People are being killed, not just in rural areas, but also in major cities like Chengdu. We are seeing a new wave of political participation by professional groups, such as lawyers and journalists, galvanizing public support on such issues as environmental protection, failure to pay pensions, confiscation of land, and corruption. A new generation has been exposed to the Internet, the outside world, and greater choice, but it is not yet clear at what point they will demand greater choice in their own political life.

WHAT WOULD YOU ADVISE THE PRESIDENT ON U.S. POLICY TOWARDS ASIA?

In the lively question-and-answer session, panelists were asked, "Given the chance to talk to the U.S. President about change and improvement in U.S.-Asia policy, what would you say?"

MICHAEL ARMACOST: I am struck by a mismatch between our interests and our strategy in Asia. In some respects our Asia policy has become something of an adjunct of our policy toward the Middle East-where we confront perhaps more urgent, if not more consequential, concerns. Asia is still the most dynamic economic zone in the world; it is the region in which the most significant new powers are emerging; and it is where the interests of the Great Powers intersect most directly. Also, it is an area where profound change is taking place swiftly. We are adapting our policies in Asia to accommodate current preoccupations in the Muslim world, rather than with an eye to preserving our power and relevance in Asia.

HARRY HARDING: It is striking how much Asian nations still want us around- as an offshore balancer and a source of economic growth. Yet they want us to understand the priorities on their agenda as well as our own. We are seen as obsessed with terrorism and China. We should exhibit more support for Asian institution building, as we have with the European Union. We also need to get our own economic act together-promoting education, stimulating scientific research and technological innovation, and reducing our budget deficits-and quit resting on past laurels. Requiring Japan to accept U.S. beef exports and then sending them meat that did not meet the agreed-upon standards has been a setback for our relations, since the Japanese public regards the safety of its food supply as critically important.

DONALD EMMERSON: Most opinion-makers in Southeast Asia are tired of Washington's preoccupation with terrorism. To be effective in the region, we must deal-and appear to be dealing-with a wider array of economic, social, and political issues, and not just bilaterally. The United States is absent at the creation of East Asian regionalism. For various reasons, we were not invited to participate in the recent East Asia Summit. Meanwhile, China's "smile diplomacy" has yielded 27 different frameworks of cooperation between that country and ASEAN. We need to be more, and more broadly, engaged.

MICHAEL ARMACOST: The establishment of today's European community began with the historic reconciliation between France and Germany. I doubt that a viable Asian community can be created without a comparable accommodation between China and Japan. Some observers believe that current tensions between Tokyo and Beijing are advantageous insofar as they facilitate closer defense cooperation between the United States and Japan. I do not share that view. A drift toward Sino-Japanese strategic rivalry would complicate our choices as well as theirs, and I hope we can find ways of attenuating current tensions.

The six-party agreement reached last week in Beijing to cap North Korea's nuclear program was a triumph for diplomacy. But contrary to much of the conventional wisdom in recent days, the fruits of the victory fall mostly to the North Koreans.

In the short term, the deal will halt the country's production of nuclear materials, limiting its ability to expand a nuclear arsenal tested in October. But for this concession, the North Koreans get to keep that arsenal intact, at least for now, and stand to make significant economic and political gains in relations with the United States, China and South Korea.

Some critics say the Beijing agreement is a lesser version of "the Agreed Framework" reached in 1994 by the Clinton administration, later cast aside by President Bush. Former Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Perry, speaking Tuesday at the Asia Society, characterized the new agreement as "thin gruel," while backing it as "a small but a very important step forward."

The ultimate judgment will await the uncertain implementation of numerous crucial, but still vaguely defined, steps down the road. The North Koreans are certain to exploit every ambiguity in the text and to drag out the phase that calls for actual dismantlement of their nuclear program and weapons.

Unfortunately, the process that led to this moment suggests that this will not go well. Contrary to the administration's version of events, Pyongyang was not dragged to this deal by pressure -- not from Washington and not from North Korea's angry patrons in Beijing.

"We don't have the North Koreans on the ropes," a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst who has watched that closeted country for decades said. "We don't have them on the run."

On the contrary, there is ample evidence that this agreement is yet another demonstration of North Korea's uniquely successful brand of negotiation via escalation: a use of brinkmanship and willingness to go up to and over the line that converts weakness into leverage.

Against that approach, the Bush administration's preference for using tools of coercion and threat, even of pre-emptive war, failed. If anything, it brought about the very opposite outcome than the United States envisioned: it encouraged North Korea to move even more rapidly to develop and test a nuclear weapon.

The pattern of brinkmanship was already clear during the Clinton years -- what Korea expert Scott Snyder famously termed "negotiating on the edge." When confronted, Snyder noted, the North Koreans typically responded by accelerating the crisis, unworried by the consequences. The fear of appearing weak has underlined all North Korean behavior.

The Bush administration came into office almost seeking a confrontation, as the president and many of his advisers were convinced the 1994 deal was fatally flawed. Ironically, the North Koreans thought they were on the verge of strategic breakthrough, after a deal to halt missile tests and preparations for President Clinton to visit Pyongyang in the final weeks of his administration. An improved relationship with the United States would balance the power of its Chinese patron, whom North Korea deeply distrusts, and give it legitimacy in an ongoing struggle with South Korea for leadership on the Korean peninsula.

Instead Bush froze the Clinton framework and sought a new, tougher approach. In January 2002, Bush delivered his famous State of the Union depiction of North Korea as a member of the "axis of evil," along with Iran and Iraq. That October, U.S. negotiators confronted Pyongyang with accusations of cheating by pursuing a clandestine uranium-enrichment program.

The 1994 agreement collapsed amid a tit-for-tat series of escalatory moves -- beginning with a U.S. cutoff of heavy fuel oil and leading to North Korea ousting international inspectors, withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and restarting its reactor and recycling facility to produce plutonium. Bush vowed that the United States would not "be blackmailed."

Meanwhile, preparations for war in Iraq were mounting. The Bush administration was convinced the awesome display of U.S. power would successfully intimidate the other two points on the axis of evil, North Korea and Iran.

"We are hopeful," then senior State Department official John Bolton dryly said as the invasion came to a close, "that a number of regimes will draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq -- that the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is not in their interest."

American threat

The North Korean officials drew an entirely different conclusion: they could not afford to seem weak in the face of what they perceived as an American threat to terminate their regime.

"Only tremendous military deterrent force powerful enough to decisively beat back an attack supported by ultra-modern weapons can avert a war and protect the security of the country," said an official statement issued April 6. "This is the lesson drawn from the Iraqi war."

A drawn-out process of negotiations began later that month, beginning with a three-way meeting in China and moving that summer to six-party talks that also included South Korea, Japan and Russia. The U.S. position was to deny Pyongyang what it wanted most -- direct talks with Washington -- and to demand verified dismantlement of its nuclear program, on the model of Libya, before any rewards, economic or political, were provided.

As the war in Iraq wore on, and the threat of military force became less credible, the administration looked for other coercive tools. It forged a multinational agreement to intercept suspicious cargoes and launched a crackdown on illicit North Korea trafficking in drugs and counterfeit currency and goods, which are believed to be the main source of support for the regime's elite.

The North Koreans countered with their own demands, offering a plan to freeze their nuclear program, with compensation, followed by a coordinated series of reciprocal steps leading toward eliminating the program. Their offers were accompanied by statements that they already had the bomb and were prepared to test it.

When the Bush administration started its second term in 2005, it attempted to escalate pressure -- this time with charges that North Korea was exporting nuclear materials to the Middle East and calls for China to put pressure on its difficult clients. Pyongyang moved to unload a second set of spent fuel from its reactor and reprocess it -- American experts believe North Korea created six to eight bombs worth of plutonium after 2002.

Agreement sours

A return to the bargaining table in September 2005 yielded an agreement on the principles that would underlie a denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. But that sign of progress disappeared within hours as both sides sparred over the meaning of a pledge to build nuclear power reactors for North Korea as compensation for it dismantling its nuclear weapons.

The imposition of measures to curb the flow of North Korean "illicit" money through Chinese and other banks added to the acrimony. Administration officials described this as a legal issue driven by Treasury Department efforts to curb counterfeiting. But as Bush admitted recently, it was used as leverage in the nuclear talks.

Throughout the past year, Bush administration officials expressed confidence that these measures were causing serious pain to the North Korean leadership. Some even talked boldly of "turning out the lights" in Pyongyang through such sanctions.

But Pyongyang could read the news from Iraq as well as any American voter. Instead of having its lights turned out, North Koreans put up their own light shows. On July 4, a date chosen with apparent intent, they carried out a test of a battery of ballistic missiles, in defiance of warnings, including one from China. A U.N. resolution condemning the action -- and other steps, including a South Korean suspension of food and fertilizer aid and Chinese attempts to slow trade -- followed.

In October, again in defiance of pressure from all fronts, the North Koreans tested a nuclear device. This prompted another U.N. resolution, backed by China, to impose limited economic sanctions. But although China was clearly angered, there is little evidence it moved to cut off the lifeline of trade, particularly energy supplies.

North Korea's willingness to cross what everyone believed was a "red line" changed the equation permanently. It allowed Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks, stalled for more than a year, but now from a position of strength. At the meeting in December, the North Koreans refused to discuss any other issues unless the U.S. financial sanctions were removed. North Korean officials hinted of preparations for a second test.

The United States blinked, agreeing to hold long-sought direct talks, held in Berlin in mid-January. The talks yielded the outlines of the Beijing deal but also a separate U.S. concession to lift the financial measures within 30 days of signing a broader deal.

The Beijing agreement more closely resembles North Korea's June 2004 freeze proposal than it does the U.S. insistence that dismantling nuclear weapons precede any substantial rewards. Clearly, this is a deal the Bush administration would not have made, says Scott Snyder, "if it were not tied down with so many other problems."

North Korea made its own concessions in the Beijing agreement. But "it doesn't necessarily mean Pyongyang is backing down or preparing to abandon its nuclear weapons," argues Kim Sung Han, a senior analyst at the South Korean Foreign Ministry's research institute.

N. Korea's rewards

Administration officials point out that the initial freeze of North Korea's nuclear program, to be implemented in two months, yields only minor compensation, about 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil. But that is not what Pyongyang sees as its real reward. The lifting of financial measures will facilitate its rapidly growing trade with China and South Korea. Even more important, the South Korean government has already signaled it will now lift the ban on large-scale fertilizer and food shipments -- which are crucial to North Korea's spring planting.

Less visible, but no less vital, the North Koreans are trying to hold off a conservative comeback to power in the South Korean presidential election in December. A North-South summit meeting may take place, which would be part of an effort by the progressive South Korean government to shore up its support.

Ultimately, the Beijing agreement may yield a trade of nuclear facilities for economic and political relations, leaving the nuclear arsenal capped but still intact. For some U.S. experts, that is sufficient.

"It will limit the size of the nuclear arsenal and the amount of bomb fuel," observes former Los Alamos nuclear laboratory director and Stanford scholar Siegfried Hecker. And that, he says, should make it less likely North Korea would sell its nuclear materials or expertise to Iran.

The bargain made in Beijing flows inexorably from North Korea's skillful playing of the escalation game. But it may be the best outcome possible, given that North Korea has already crossed the nuclear threshold and that the Bush administration has squandered U.S. power in the deserts of Iraq.

Reprinted with permission from the San Jose Mercury News.

To read the seismic signal sent from an abandoned coal mine in the mountains of North Korea's coast, you must first recognize that it represents four major failures, two grave dangers, and one big opportunity.

The apparent explosion of a nuclear device, coming after two decades of trying to stop North Korea from achieving this goal, is a manifest failure of policy on four fronts -- a failure of U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy, a failure of international diplomacy, a failure of Chinese leadership and a failure of South Korea's strategy of engaging the North.

Having failed so completely, the world now faces two grave dangers. The first is the very real threat of war on the Korean Peninsula, triggered by a series of escalatory actions in the wake of the bomb test. The second is the danger that North Korea will proliferate its nuclear technology, materials or know-how to others -- not the least to another nuclear hopeful, Iran.

But there remains a lone and tenuous opportunity. Having removed all ambiguity about its nuclear ambitions, North Korea may finally have created a common sense of threat that will galvanize the kind of concerted international action that so far has been absent.

THE FOUR FAILURES

Non-proliferation failure

The United States has spent two decades trying to stop North Korea from going nuclear, a turbulent period of crisis and negotiation that even went to the brink of war. At least three administrations confronted this problem and none, certainly not the Bush administration, can escape blame.

North Korea agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985, but it stalled before signing an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1992 to place its nuclear facilities under international safeguards and inspections. During that time the North Koreans reprocessed some spent fuel from their reactor into plutonium - an amount that American intelligence believes was enough for building one or two warheads.

North Korea's resistance to full inspections, while it kept pulling spent fuel rods out of its reactor, provoked a crisis in 1994 and led the Clinton administration to ready military forces to strike the North's nuclear facilities. In a last-minute deal, North Korea froze its reactor and reprocessing facilities, effectively halting plutonium production under IAEA supervision. In exchange, the United States, Japan, South Korea and others agreed to construct two light-water reactors for North Korea and to supply fuel oil until the reactors came online.

The deal was troubled from the start. Neither party was satisfied with the compromise or the way it was to be implemented. By the late 1990s, the North had begun a secret effort to acquire uranium-enrichment technology from Pakistan and, in 1998, tested a long-range ballistic missile. Despite this, the plutonium freeze remained in place. But it did not survive the Bush administration.

The Bush administration came into office challenging the value of the agreement and froze contacts with the North. After receiving intelligence showing moves to build enrichment facilities, it confronted North Korean officials at an acrimonious meeting in Pyongyang in October 2002.

The United States halted fuel shipments a month later, and, in early 2003, the North Koreans expelled IAEA inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They proceeded to reprocess the fuel rods they had stored for a decade, producing enough plutonium, intelligence estimates say, for four to six nuclear warheads. In February 2005, the North Koreans announced they had manufactured nuclear weapons. Last week, they apparently made good on that declaration.

Blame aside, North Korea's emergence as the world's ninth nuclear power may be the most serious failure in non-proliferation history. Unlike India and Pakistan, which remained outside the system of international treaties, North Korea acted in defiance of those controls. Who might be next?

Diplomatic failure

Unlike Iraq, the attempt to stop North Korea's nuclear program has relied on the tools of diplomacy, accompanied by economic incentives and coercive sanctions.

But serious questions have been raised from the start about the sincerity and methods of the diplomatic efforts, particularly on the part of the United States and North Korea. The Bush administration has insisted -- and the president continues to make this argument -- that direct talks with North Korea do not work. Pyongyang has tried to frame everything as an issue with Washington, undermining talks that involved others, including South Korea.

Bush's stance lends credibility to those who charge the administration seeks "regime change," not a compromise that it believes will lend legitimacy to Kim Jong Il. The North Koreans now appear to have used the talks to buy time and build bombs.

Diplomacy has, at American insistence, consisted of six-party talks, held under Chinese auspices and including both Koreas, Japan and Russia. In truth, little real negotiating went on at these gatherings, at least until the last full round of talks in September 2005. In contrast to the thousands of hours of negotiations between Americans and North Koreans that led to the 1994 deal, there have been only tens of hours of actual give and take.

It is intriguing that the September agreement on a statement of principles for denuclearization came only after the State Department's chief negotiator was finally allowed to talk to his North Korean counterpart at length. Even then, their agreement evaporated almost immediately as they dueled publicly over the deal's meaning. American financial sanctions against North Korean currency counterfeiting further clouded the atmosphere, and direct contacts ground to a halt.

China's failure

The North Korean nuclear crisis is also a failure of China's bid for regional, if not global leadership. North Korea is an ally of China, a relationship that goes back more than half a century to the Korean War, when Chinese "volunteers" poured across the border to prevent an American victory. Their relationship has become more difficult since China embarked on market reforms while North Korea clung to its peculiar brand of Stalinism.

China has been torn between its loyalty to Pyongyang, its desire to maintain a stable balance of power in the region and its fear that the North's nuclear ambitions could provoke conflict on its borders. By becoming host for the six-party talks, Beijing stepped into an unusual leadership role.

The Bush administration was eager to move the burden of the North Korean problem onto the Chinese. Some administration hard-liners argued that China had the power to trigger the collapse of Kim Jung Il's regime by cutting off energy and food supplies.

Time and again, Beijing dragged the North Koreans back to the negotiating table, while also pushing Washington to engage Pyongyang in the talks. But Chinese irritation over American inflexibility has now been trumped by North Korea's defiance. Chinese policy-makers now wonder how they can punish the North without creating chaos, or war.

Failure of engagement

The final failure lies on the doorstep of South Korea's 10-year-long policy of engagement. The "sunshine policy" asserted that the North could be induced to give up its nuclear option by opening up the isolated communist state and promoting the forces of Chinese-style reform.

After a historic summit meeting in 2000, South Korean aid and trade, even tourists, flowed into the North. South Koreans lost their fear of a former foe, seeing it more as an impoverished lost brother than a mortal threat. Tensions with their American allies rose because of a gap in the North's perceived threat. The United States wondered why its troops should continue to defend South Korea.

Now South Koreans must confront the possibility that the North may have used engagement only to buy time.

THE TWO DANGERS

Threat of war

With eyes on Iraq and the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula has been far from the center of American attention. American forces based in South Korea and Japan have been dispatched to Iraq.

Yet the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas remains the most militarized frontier on the planet, with hundreds of thousands of well-armed soldiers poised against each other. Clashes along that frontier used to be commonplace and there are signs of a renewal of tensions. The danger of unintended escalation cannot be dismissed.

What might happen if a U.S. naval vessel, moving to inspect a North Korean freighter - as the U.N. resolution may authorize - is fired on or even captured, as the USS Pueblo was in 1968? It is a frightening scenario already worrying some at the Pentagon and the State Department.

Risk of proliferation

More than anything else, American policy-makers fear that North Korea, emboldened by its nuclear success and perhaps desperate for funds amid economic sanctions, might sell its nuclear expertise to Iran and others, including terrorist groups.

For Pyongyang, an alliance with Iran is a logical response to American and global pressure. The North Koreans have sold ballistic missiles to Tehran since the 1980s and rumors of nuclear cooperation persist.

An American effort to interdict the movement of ships and planes to Iran -- with possible U.N. backing - is probable. But the most likely transit is across the long and loosely controlled land border with China. The amount of plutonium needed to make a warhead is the size of a grapefruit and hard to detect - creating yet another nightmare scenario.

THE OPPORTUNITY

In this otherwise bleak landscape, there is an opportunity. For the first time, there is a chance of a consensus among the key players -- China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States. The passage of a U.N. resolution is a small step in that direction. But the real test will come next, as the nations must cooperate to put pressure on North Korea, while coolly navigating the perils of war and making sure to leave open a diplomatic exit.

There is a slim chance of such concerted action, and a limited window for achieving it. Not everyone sees the dangers the same way. Signs of rethinking errors of the past are no more evident in Beijing and Seoul than they are in Washington or Tokyo. Ultimately, however, if they are to seize this moment of opportunity, all parties must face up to the fact that the policies of the past have failed.

The increasing sectarian conflict in Iraq and the rise of Islamist parties like Hamas and Hezbollah have put American efforts to democratize the Middle East on hold and raised doubts among experts and policy makers about whether democracy is compatible with the Muslim faith. But in a campus appearance yesterday afternoon, former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim offered an ardent defense of democracy in the Muslim world, telling a standing-room-only crowd in Bechtel Conference Center that "men and women are born free, even in the Islamic construct."

Alternating between serious and sporting through his two-hour speech, Ibrahim broached many of the issues aggravating relations between Islam and the West, including gender relations, American foreign policy, cultural assimilation in Europe and Pope Benedict XVI's recent comments about Islam. However, he was most outspoken regarding his home country - he was a political prisoner in Malaysia for over four years - and rejected the race - and religious-based affirmative action policies that benefit the Malay majority there.

Returning repeatedly to the topic of Muslim democracy, Ibrahim drew from historical references and personal experiences, citing the democratic regimes of Indonesia and Iran of 1950s.

"There was no debate then whether democracy was compatible with Islam," he said. "Fifty years later, we have our leaders in the Muslim world telling us we're not ready."

The fundamental nature of democracy and human rights is universal, Ibrahim emphasized, adding that problems begin with cultural miscommunication.

"We have to debunk and reject the notion, held by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, that to support democracy and freedom is to support America, "he said. "And it is important for Americans to realize democracy is a value cherished as much by Muslims as it is by Americans."

"Misperceptions are unfortunate," he added, elaborating on his impressions of American culture. "This is a country full of contradictions. The level of sophistication and intellectual flavor is unparalleled. So why must people be so prejudiced? Why is misunderstanding so pervasive? To say that Muslims are entirely anti-America is wrong."

Ibrahim offered scathing criticism of his fellow Muslims for violent reactions to both the publication of caricatures of Mohammad in a Danish newspaper in 2005 and to the more recent comment by Pope Benedict XVI referring to elements of Islam as "evil and inhuman." The cartoon spawned riots killing 139 in Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan, while the Pope's remarks fueled a maelstrom of controversy, including the firebombing of Catholic churches throughout the Middle East and the shooting death of a nun in Somalia.

"There is a right to disagree but no one has the right to cause destruction or destroy life," he said. "No one has the right to call for the banning of newspapers."

Acknowledging that his comments were not necessarily indicative of Islamic public opinion, he said, "This view may not be shared by all Muslims, but I am prepared to confront them."

Ibrahim's penchant for speaking his mind and sticking to his principles has dogged the leader through a career of controversy. As a young Malaysian activist in the 1970s, he was arrested during a student protest and spent 20 months in a detention camp. Following a meteoric political ascent, he was named Deputy Prime Minister in 1993, and many expected that he was Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohammad's chosen successor.

But their relationship turned sour, and in Sept. 1998 Ibrahim was stripped of party membership and incarcerated under charges of corruption and sodomy. The charges were eventually overturned and he was released in Sept. 2004.

Regarding Malaysian politics today, Ibrahim expressed distaste toward his nation's system of bumiputera - a system of economic and social policies designed to favor ethnic Malays.

"I reject affirmative action based on race," he said. "Our policies should benefit the poor and the marginalized."

Finally, he described the need for engagement between the Islamic world and the West, criticizing the "extreme" foreign policy of the United States and its refusal to negotiate with regimes like Hamas.

"That policy is flawed," he said, adding that "to refuse to engage is a recipe for disaster."

GWS (Gi-Wook Shin): Dr. Hecker, could you please briefly explain the technical dimensions of what has happened? North Korea is claiming great success, but there are some questions about whether this presumed nuclear test was really successful or meaningful.

SH (Siegried Hecker): At this point, as I understand it, the North Koreans have conducted what they call a nuclear test.

South Korea has said seismic signals appear to indicate a 0.5 kiloton, or sub-kiloton, explosion. From reports I have seen, the Australians and the French believe the blast was about 1 kiloton. Thus, three countries have given assessments on the power of the underground explosion, ranging between 0.5 kilotons and 1 kiloton, or 500 and 1000 tons. This likely indicates a nuclear explosion of a relatively low yield, compared to what one would typically expect. Although the Russian defense minister has apparently commented that the explosion was between 5 and 15 kilotons, I have not heard any other nation estimate in this range.

By comparison, the Nagasaki bomb was approximately 20 kilotons, and the initial tests of the five major nuclear powers were all quite large, on this order. Also, when both India and Pakistan tested multiple devices in 1998, some of these tests were of a substantial yield, at least 20 kilotons. But each country also tested three devices that were said to result in explosions of less than a kiloton. Whether these devices did not work or were experimental in nature is still unknown. So, a test on the order of that conducted by North Korea is not unheard of, but it is apparent that the North Korean device produced an explosion considerably smaller than most countries' first nuclear tests.

Regarding the technical dimensions of this event, I would offer two provisos: first, we must give scientists more time to analyze the seismic signals, and second, we must allow more time for analysis of how those seismic signals translate to the yield of the device. This latter task involves a thorough understanding of relevant geology - scientists make models to predict this, but there is always some uncertainty.

GWS: Given the relatively low yield of the test, is it possible that what North Korea has "tested" is not a nuclear device but very powerful conventional weaponry?

SH: It is most likely that this was indeed a nuclear device. There are two plausible explanations for why this test resulted in a relatively low yield. One possibility is that the North Koreans attempted to test a relatively simple nuclear device that was meant to be large, but it did not work quite right. There are two reasons the test of such a device might not have gone as planned. First, the detonators might not have exploded at exactly the right time or the explosive might not have been of the right quality, thus producing a lower yield. Second, if the timing of the "initiator" (additional neutrons that are introduced) was not quite right, this could also decrease the expected yield of the device.

Another possibility is that North Korea was actually trying to test a smaller, much more sophisticated nuclear device, one with a lot of instrumentation to monitor implosion. North Korea could have learned a great deal from such a test, but I would be surprised if the country had really designed the device to be that small.

GWS: This test marks the failure of the disparate policy approaches of South Korea and the United States - neither nation was successful in arresting DPRK nuclear development. But just how advanced North Korea's nuclear program is remains unclear. In the Korean media, there has been debate over whether North Korea's nuclear test was a success or a failure. What do you think?

SH: I would not say that the test failed. It is simply too early to judge, and we do not know exactly what North Korea had hoped to achieve. If North Korea wanted to use this test as a demonstration, then perhaps it was not very successful. It may be the case that the test did not work as well as anticipated if the device in question was a simple nuclear device. If North Korea was testing an advanced designed that was very well instrumented and monitored, it may have learned a great deal from this test.

It is important to wait to see an accurate yield for this test and then to look at the range of possibilities for why it might have been executed. From a scientific perspective, it is important not to overreact and not to go beyond what is actually known.

GWS: You said previously that when India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in 1998, they both set off multiple explosions. Is it correct that North Korea has set off a single explosion?

SH: From what we have learned so far, it appears that North Korea has tested one device. This is what the North Koreans announced they would do. Scientists will have to carefully analyze the seismic signals to be sure, however, as for example, when India tested, it set off two devices simultaneously. We have not yet seen all the seismic evidence.

GWS: If North Korea were to use such a "low yield" device as a weapon in a major metropolis like Seoul, what kind of impact would it have?

SH: A 1 kiloton bomb in a major metropolis, though a relatively "low-yield" nuclear device, would still be devastating and catastrophic. Many thousands would experience instant death, and due to radioactivity, there would also be many delayed deaths. A device of this size would not wipe out the entire city, as was largely the case in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it would cause major, significant damage.

GWS: Based on the scale of the explosion, was this device something that even terrorists could assemble?

SH: One kiloton in terrorist hands would indeed be catastrophic. I am very concerned that North Korea's nuclear material might fall into terrorist hands.

GWS: The possible marriage of this demonstrated nuclear capability and North Korean missiles is extremely dangerous. With reference to the North's nuclear and missile capabilities, is testing useful for making smaller nuclear devices - devices small enough to be placed on a missile?

SH: If North Korea is intent on making a nuclear warhead, this test could be a step in that direction. Making smaller nuclear devices by nature means making more complex nuclear devices. For much of the Cold War, this was a major goal for both the Soviets and the Americans. For North Korea, at this point we cannot say that the test was successful in terms of this aim of miniaturization, though again, North Korean scientists may have learned a lot in this regard. It is extremely difficult to say how soon North Korea could achieve miniaturization with the limited information we have about this test.

Miniaturization is a very big step, and it cannot be accomplished without nuclear testing. This could have been one of the most important reasons that North Korea undertook this test. It must be noted that their missiles are the other part of this equation, and there is not great confidence in the reliability of these missiles, especially those that performed poorly during the July test.

GWS: North Korea has certainly made a political statement with its nuclear test, but from a technical perspective, do you expect additional testing? What is your assessment of North Korea's technical capabilities, in light of your recent visits to the nation?

SH: At this point, North Korea could want another test for two technical reasons. First, if this was a simple device, they will want to fix the problem and demonstrate an explosion of a higher yield. If this was a more advanced design, they may have learned a lot but would still desire another test in order to gain an appropriate level of confidence in the device.

In January 2004, I visited the Yongbyon nuclear reactor and in August 2005, I visited Pyongyang. On the basis of those visits, I would estimate that North Korea has enough plutonium for 6 to 8 nuclear devices, though there is some degree of uncertainty in that estimate. Overall, I estimate the North has 40-50 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, and generally 6-8 kilograms are required for each weapon. I also estimate that North Korea could gain one additional weapon per year, given the current rate of reprocessing.

In terms of skilled people and facilities, North Korea has very good capabilities, up to the point of and including reprocessing plutonium. However, to go from reprocessing plutonium to building the device itself takes a whole new set of engineering and physics skills.

GWS: Given North Korea's limited amount of weapons-grade material, its government would presumably want to conserve as much as possible, right?

SH: Yes, and this is probably one of the reasons North Korea did not set off multiple explosions like India and Pakistan did. North Korea has very limited material, and therefore it will want to be judicious. With this conservation imperative, North Korea will want to fully assess what has been learned from this first test before it attempts a second test.

GWS: From a technical perspective, is it difficult to say how long it may be until North Korea conducts a second test?

SH: Yes, it is very difficult to say, because it depends on factors related to this test about which we are still uncertain. If North Korea was satisfied with this test and all preparations have already been made, a second test could take place within a few days. Yet if the findings from this test surprised North Korea, the device may have to be rebuilt, and that could take weeks or months. One thing we know for sure is that they do not have a lot of weapons-grade material, and they will have to carefully judge how to use it.

GWS: You have said that a major danger from the North Korean nuclear program is the possibility of plutonium transfer. How serious is this possibility? Are you also concerned about transfer of nuclear technology?

SH: Well, a test does mean that there is now less material that could possibly be transferred.

I feel strongly that the principal danger from the North Korean program is the plutonium itself, and the possibility it would find its way to a third party, perhaps into terrorist hands or into the hands of other nations. The reason I believe this is the biggest danger is that North Korea could be restrained by its neighbors from ever actually using a nuclear device, but a third party, especially a non-state actor, may not be "restrainable."

The nuclear test will not have an impact on how marketable the plutonium is. Yet, for the export of nuclear technical know-how, a successful test could make a big difference in the appeal of North Korean technology, especially to a nation like Iran.

GWS: The current nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002, when U.S. officials confronted North Korea about its possession of a uranium enrichment, or HEU, program. North Korea has thus far denied having such a program. I understand this type of program is much more difficult to detect. Would a uranium-based device require testing?

SH: North Korea has stated that it does not have an HEU program. My own opinion is they have some type of enrichment program, owing to Pakistani President Musharraf's statements that his nation provided Pyongyang with some of the required technology and equipment. We simply do not know how far North Korea has progressed in this program.

The HEU program is very difficult to detect - there are fewer signatures than for a nuclear reactor and this type of program is easier to conceal, given the smaller size of the facilities required. However, if we assume statements made by A.Q. Khan and President Musharraf are accurate, it may be some time before North Korea can produce significant quantities of HEU.

Once North Korea has accomplished this, a uranium bomb will be easier to make, and North Korean scientists will have more confidence in this type of device without testing.

GWS: All indications are that North Korea will be further isolated after this test. Will this increased isolation impact the country's continued nuclear development?

SH: At this point, from what I saw at Yongbyon, current North Korean operations do not depend on external help or supplies. Thus, isolation makes little difference in this regard. For the uranium program, technical isolation would probably cause a slowdown, because North Korea would benefit from additional technical purchases from the outside world. But the uranium program does not appear to be a centerpiece of North Korea's nuclear efforts.

GWS: After this nuclear test, is the situation more dangerous?

SH: I believe the major threat came around 2003 when North Korea reprocessed a major amount of plutonium, thus crossing the threshold to become a major threat. I have always taken the North Korean threat very seriously, and I believe all the governments and peoples involved should take it very seriously as well. First and foremost, the imperative should be to make sure that nuclear materials stay in North Korea and are not transferred to third parties.

Transcript prepared by Kristin Burke, Shorenstein APARC Research Associate

North Korea's response to the United Nations resolution demanding that it suspend its ballistic missile program and resume a moratorium on launches was typically belligerent. But like the multiple launch of seven missiles earlier this month, the North Korean vow to continue to fire off its missiles should not be dismissed as mere political theater.

The missile tests were neither a gesture of defiance nor a desperate bid for negotiations. Nor can they be dismissed as the impulsive act of an irrational leader. It was, as Pyongyang itself so succinctly put it, a "military exercise."

The launches are only the latest evidence of a decadeslong effort by Pyongyang to redress the military balance in its favor. For North Korea, missiles are an attempt to compensate for weakness. The communist state has a large but technologically backward army, lacking the air power to compete with the United States and its South Korean ally. Rockets give it the firepower to back an assault on the South and to hold U.S. forces in Japan, the rear base for Korea, at bay.

The late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung set this goal as far back as 1965 when he established an academy to develop missiles and other modern weaponry.

"If war breaks out, the U.S. and Japan will also be involved," he said. "In order to prevent their involvement, we have to be able to produce rockets which fly as far as Japan."

I encountered one crucial tentacle of Kim's program some 14 years ago, in late October of 1992.

A group of 64 Russian rocket scientists, accompanied by their wives and children, were stopped just as they were about to board a flight to North Korea. The scientists were employees of a super-secret facility in the Urals, the V.P. Makeyev Design Bureau, responsible for the development of the Soviet Union's submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

As the bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor, I pieced the story together later from Russian press accounts and interviews with the scientists and others. A middleman with apparent official backing had offered the bureau, starving for orders and left adrift by the sudden end of the Cold War, work in North Korea.

Scientists who were making the equivalent of $15 a month jumped at offers of up to $4,000 a month to help a former Soviet ally. In the spring, a group of 10 scientists had gone for an initial foray. The Koreans, one of the scientists told me, initially never directly asked about nuclear warheads or missile designs. They claimed only to be interested in rocket science.

The Russians came home that fall and signed up dozens of their comrades as recruits. But the project was not officially sanctioned, and the KGB held them outside of Moscow for two months while the broker tried to re-negotiate their departure. Russian officials later described the North Koreans' aim, without mentioning them by name, as an attempt to build "combat missile complexes that could carry nuclear weapons."

North Korea began with copies of Soviet short-range Scud missiles and moved on to medium-range "Nodong" missiles, but they lacked the range and accuracy to meet Kim's target. A decade after the airport incident, in 2003, credible reports emerged that the North Koreans were deploying a new, far more accurate missile based on the Soviet SS-N-6, a submarine-launched rocket developed by Makeyev in the 1960s. The Nodong-2, as some labeled it, could reach all U.S. bases in Japan and possibly even to Guam.

In the 1990s, the North Koreans developed a long-range missile, potentially reaching U.S. territory, to lend credence to claims they could deter a pre-emptive strike on their nuclear or missile facilities. Some experts believe the Nodong-2 also functions as the second stage of this missile. American intelligence officials believe an otherwise inexplicable leap in missile technology was thanks to the help of Russian scientists.

Still the self-imposed missile test moratorium that Pyongyang agreed to in 1999 made it difficult to move ahead. Late last year, according to a recent Wall Street Journal story, the North Koreans delivered a dozen Nodong-2 missiles to Iran, a close collaborator on missiles since the 1980s. Unconfirmed reports from Germany say Iran tested the missile in January.

The Nodong-2 may have been tested this month, one of the six short- and medium-range missiles set off in a wave or as a stage of the long-range missile. Data from the launch is not yet conclusive, according to U.S. and South Korean officials. Despite the failure of the long-range attempt, it may be more significant that Pyongyang carried out the first successful launch of a Nodong since 1993 and a nighttime barrage of Scuds and Nodongs.

The display of diplomatic unity at the United Nations may give Pyongyang pause. But the relentless nature of North Korea's pursuit of its ballistic missile strength suggests that this is not a bargaining chip that will be readily traded away.

Japanese politics have long been driven by patronage and pork. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has managed to add personality to the mix. Issues, when they mattered at all, were deeply domestic -- the last election, for example, focused on deregulation of the postal savings system.

So it is a bit of a shock to find Japan embroiled in a political struggle with foreign policy topping the agenda. The contest to succeed Koizumi has become a surrogate battleground for a debate over how to repair Japan's tattered relations with its Asian neighbors, China and South Korea.

Put simply, this war of ideas has two schools -- Conservative Realists and Assertive Nationalists.

The Realists fear that Japan has become dangerously isolated from Asia, its influence waning to the benefit of China. Constant tensions with China and South Korea put Japans economic recovery at risk, they worry. The Realists blame Koizumi for his provocative visits to the Yasukuni shrine to Japan's war dead and worry he tilts too far in his embrace of Bush and his policies in places such as Iraq and Iran.

The Nationalists see China as the principal national security threat to Japan. Their priority is to strengthen the alliance with the U.S., even at the cost of ties to Asia. They believe it is crucial to stand up to what is seen as Chinese bullying, symbolized by Beijing demanding that the Yasukuni visits stop as a price for high-level contacts.

This debate harkens back to the Meiji era and Japan's emergence as a great power. But the tortured history that ensued has left a clear legacy -- both camps accept the U.S. alliance as the foundation of Japanese security. The issue now is one of balance and relative independence in the formation of Japanese policy.

Each camp has a champion in the unofficial campaign for the September vote to replace Koizumi as president of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party -- a post that carries with it the premiership. Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, the frontrunner and Koizumi's preferred successor, represents the Nationalists. Yasuo Fukuda, who served as chief cabinet secretary for four years, until 2005, carries the Realist flag into battle.

Abe and Fukuda are cast from almost identical molds. Both are veteran politicians, scions of famous political families, even members of the same faction within the party. Yet they offer remarkably contrasting positions on Japan's diplomatic path in Asia and, less visibly, on how to manage relations with the U.S.

Abe, at age 51, is considered a representative of the younger generation. Like Koizumi, he has personal appeal, at ease on television and able to speak directly and emotively. Abe is the son of a former foreign minister and grandson of former Premier Nobusuke Kishi, a towering figure in post-war conservative politics.

Fukuda, who turns 70 in July, is an old-style Japanese politician, more comfortable working behind closed doors than in front of the TV cameras. "Fukuda is cool, rational, calculating, practical, nonideological and noncommunicative," comments William Breer, a former senior U.S. diplomat in Japan. Fukuda, too, is the son of a major conservative leader, former Premier Takeo Fukuda.

Abe is the front-runner, scoring well in polls and among party members. But Fukuda's star has risen in recent months, tied largely to the rise of tensions with China.

"Fukuda looks more mature, serious and experienced," says Breer. "People want better relations with China, though not at any cost. Fukuda can probably deliver that. Abe may not."

The starkest gap between the two men is over Yasukuni. Fukuda led an effort five years ago to create a secular memorial that would allow a prime minister to honor the war dead while avoiding the issue of the 14 Class A war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni and the unabashed lack of remorse over the war displayed at the shrine's museum.

Fukuda decried the defiant rhetoric in Japan surrounding the shrine, which has become a symbol of defying Chinese pressure. "Discussions in Japan have escalated too far," he said in a speech in late May. "Voices raised here reach China and South Korea, creating a vicious cycle."

Abe, like Koizumi, sees China's interference on Yasukuni as the problem.

"China's diplomacy is high-handed," Abe said recently. "If we permit China to engage in such diplomacy, China will also take a similar attitude on other issues."

But recently Abe pointedly avoided directly answering the question of whether he would continue the shrine visits. That has led some to speculate that Abe may want to find a way out of this cul-de-sac.

The Japanese public, according to recent polls, is evenly divided on the question of whether the next prime minister should visit Yasukuni. They overwhelmingly support the goal of improving relations with Japan's Asian neighbors, but a majority is also sympathetic to Abe's stance against Chinese pressure on Yasukuni.

Beyond Yasukuni, the two men offer contrasting visions of Japan's relationship to Asia and response to growing regional integration.

Fukuda points to the example of the "Fukuda Doctrine," a 1977 initiative by his father that responded to rising anti-Japanese sentiment by declaring that Japan would not become a military power and would try to build relations in the region as an equal partner.

In a series of recent speeches, Fukuda advocated integration of the region through an economic partnership agreement and called on Japan, China, and South Korea to cooperate toward this end. He visited South Korea in March along with former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and met with the South Korean president.

Abe, in contrast, echoes the Bush administration in calling for a strategic dialogue with India, Australia, and other democracies in Asia, as well as the U.S., unifying on the basis of common values -- widely interpreted as a thinly disguised attempt to counter China's rise.

They differ on other issues. Abe is a hardliner on North Korea, while Fukuda has pushed for negotiations. Abe puts revision of Japan'a antiwar constitution at the top of his priority list. Fukuda warns about hasty steps that would alarm Japan's neighbors.

When it comes to managing the U.S. alliance, the choice is subtle. Both have strong ties to the Bush administration. Fukuda played a key role in forging the Japanese rapid response to the September 11 attacks, including the decision to send ships to support the war in Afghanistan. Both supported the dispatch of peacekeeping troops to Iraq.

"Fukuda, however, might be a little more honest in evaluating U.S. foreign policies," suggests Breer. "He might not be as pliable as Koizumi."

Abe remains the favorite to win, particularly among LDP members. But Fukuda's fortunes may have been aided by the emergence of Ichiro Ozawa as leader of the main opposition party. Ozawa, a remarkable political operator and former LDP leader, believes in issue-based politics. He visited China this week and met with Hu Jintao, which suits his clear Realist agenda.

Other events could shape the fight. Koizumi has signaled his desire to visit Yasukuni on August 15, the anniversary of Japan'a surrender. Some analysts suggest that could strengthen Fukuda's appeal. Alternately, the North Korean test missile launches could consolidate Abe's bid for power.

Whatever the outcome, this succession fight will likely mark a turning point for Japan. It could slow -- or perhaps accelerate -- the slippage toward Sino-Japanese tensions. And it will mark the re-emergence of a Japan that looks outward. It is time for the rest of the world to pay attention to Japanese politics.