Paris, Tuesday, May 30, 2000 Questioning the Rationale Of the 'Rogue' State Peril Issue of U.S. Missile Defense Goes International
By Steven Mufson Washington Post Service
WASHINGTON - In North Korea, a dozen U.S. arms experts began their second annual inspection of a mysterious tunnel complex. In Moscow, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, haggled with Russian officials over amending a 28-year-old arms agreement. In Washington, the Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush made a strong pitch for a still-unproven global missile defense system. And addressing graduates at the U.S. Military Academy, Vice President Al Gore called for a more limited missile defense. The common goal of these disparate events last week? Stopping a ''rogue'' state - irrational, reckless and armed with nuclear missiles capable of striking American shores.
The existence of such a threat has become an article of faith, widely accepted by the Clinton administration and some of its Republican critics, but questioned by some experts in the United States and by many abroad. Many U.S. policymakers warn that a rogue state - whether an isolated and paranoid North Korea, a religiously motivated Iran or a vengeful Iraq - might attack the United States even if the inevitable result would be retaliation so harsh that the attacking state would be obliterated.
''There are new threats in the world,'' said Samuel (Sandy) Berger, President Bill Clinton's national security adviser. ''One of those is the growing capability of North Korea and Iran, who may not be as susceptible to deterrence as the Soviet Union was.''
When Mr. Clinton visits Moscow next week for his first summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin, rogue states will be the ghosts at the negotiating table. Fear of their still-theoretical capabilities has made winning Russia's agreement for a limited U.S. missile defense the Clinton administration's top priority in Russia policy, overshadowing the war in Chechnya, economic reform and future NATO expansion.
Yet some policy experts question the assumption that there are such irrational rogues.
''The unexamined assumptions about this are extraordinary, and the biggest is the presumption that a variety of misbegotten states are not subject to the same constraints of nuclear deterrence that everybody else has been subject to,'' said Jonathan Pollack, an Asia specialist at Rand Corp., a consulting firm.
Robert Litwak, a former director for nonproliferation policy at the National Security Council, argues in a recent book that the rogue epithet ''demonizes a disparate group of states'' and ''significantly distorts policy-making.''
There is ample evidence that North Korea, Iran and Iraq have sought, and may still be seeking, weapons of mass destruction and long-range missile technology. North Korea unexpectedly fired a missile over Japan in 1998, and UN inspectors discovered huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq after the Gulf War.
But critics of the theory of rogue states say the allegation that these countries are irrational or suicidal is more questionable. Their leaders appear to be very concerned about self-preservation, and the United States has successfully employed diplomatic as well as military initiatives to engage or contain them.
Nearly a decade after the end of the Gulf War, Iraq remains bottled up by sanctions and a steady U.S.-British bombing campaign. Following electoral victories by moderates in Iran, the Clinton administration has made some conciliatory gestures to Tehran while still seeking to block technology transfers.
North Korea, meanwhile, has largely complied with a 1994 agreement aimed at making sure its nuclear program is peaceful. Within the past two months, workers under the supervision of an Atlanta-based company finished putting spent fuel from a North Korean nuclear reactor into sealed canisters, bringing to roughly 8,000 the number of radioactive rods sitting under lock, key and camera in a murky pool. Only about a dozen fuel rods are missing, a U.S. official said, far short of the amount needed to build a nuclear bomb. Last week, North Korea also fulfilled a commitment to let U.S. inspectors return to the mysterious tunnel complex once suspected of concealing a nuclear weapons or missile program. It is also preparing to hold its first summit meeting with South Korea, its longtime foe.
''You speak about North Korea as an irrational country when you have been negotiating with North Korea for six years,'' a European diplomat said. ''The 1994 agreement was a rational agreement.''
The French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, noted that there is no translation for rogue state in French. ''It's not a geopolitical category we use,'' he said. ''It is difficult for Europeans to imagine one of these rogue states attacking the United States.''
Noting that U.S. officials could just as easily call Libya, Pakistan or India rogue states, and that the United States appropriately pursues different policies toward different so-called rogues, Mr. Vedrine suggested the label was simply a rhetorical tool.
Dmitri Rogozin, chairman of the international relations committee in the Russian Duma, said the United States was exaggerating the North Korean threat. ''A cannon is not the best weapon to shoot at flies,'' he said.
Moreover, Mr. Rogozin predicted that the United States would react strongly if it detected North Korean preparations to fire a missile. ''I highly respect the U.S. military, and I can't imagine that the U.S. military would sit idly by and watch the threat from North Korea,'' the Russian legislator said. ''They will simply smash this country.''
A U.S. official who has been deeply involved in negotiations with impoverished North Korea said that despite its philosophy of self-reliance, Pyongyang has always relied on outside assistance. Now that its former patron, the Soviet Union, is defunct, North Korea is clumsily seeking a new sponsor.
''North Korea is one of the few totally parasitic countries,'' the official said. ''It has lost its host. But parasites don't commit suicide.''
Richard Garwin, a member of a commission headed by a former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, that enshrined the rogue state threat as official doctrine in a 1998 report, argues that it would be easier to put a lid over a handful of rogues than to put an umbrella over the entire United States. He favors a modest missile defense known as boost phase, which would be based close to the borders of rogue states and intercept missiles on their way up. Other experts warn that rogue states could deliver weapons of mass destruction in boats, suitcases, cars or vials instead of intercontinental missiles.
Still other policymakers warn of letting concern about small rogue states prompt the shredding of major accords, like the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the administration is trying to persuade Russia to amend.
But missile defense remains an alluring prospect for those worried about preserving America's latitude for action in a crisis, when a small country with nuclear missiles might threaten to use them.
''Deterrence is probably good enough,'' Anthony Lake, a former national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said in an interview. ''But when the stakes are so high, I'm not sure that 'probably' is good enough.''