The art of the bluff: why Kim is not Saddam

WITH MAJOR combat operations in Iraq consigned to the history books (we hope), the United States can now give greater focus to North Korea's rogue regime. Kim Jong-il has captured public attention as a dangerous lunatic in the Saddam Hussein mold, and therein lies an error. Kim is not the next Saddam. This has serious policy implications, for the U.S. strategy that removed Saddam is not the most advantageous way to deal with Kim.

There is no mistaking Kim's--ahem--eccentricities. He claims to have been born atop a sacred mountain, under a double rainbow. In the 1970s, Kim ordered thugs to kidnap his favorite South Korean director and forced him to make films celebrating the glory of his regime. Meeting with then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Kim propounded the Swedish model for his country's development. He traveled nearly a month by sealed railroad car to see President Putin in Moscow. He favors dark glasses and platform shoes. Clearly, Mr. Kim has issues.

The similarities between North Korea and Iraq are equally obvious: a despicable authoritarian regime, an impoverished and oppressed population, a history of flouting international obligations, and a penchant for weapons of mass destruction. But there is one critical difference. When it comes to the survival of his regime, Kim Jong-il is risk-averse.

This was not true of Hussein. When he thought the odds were right, Saddam was often ready to roll the dice on the future of his rule. The decision to tear up the Treaty of Algiers and invade Iran in 1980 was based on Hussein's assessment that the United States, its allies, Iraq's Warsaw Pact backers and the Arab Gulf states would, at least tacitly, support him. In this he was right. In his expectation that Iran would crumble militarily, he misjudged catastrophically. Such was also the case when Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990. This time, he misjudged American tolerance for Iraqi adventurism against an ally rather than an enemy. His tendency to run irrational risks was also at the center of his 1993 plot to assassinate the elder President Bush, which would certainly have initiated his regime's demise had he succeeded. Again and again, Saddam ran regime-threatening risks based on little more than his own flawed judgment.

Leaving aside Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction and its dubious links to Al-Qaeda, this was President Bush's primary reason for ousting the Iraqi leader. In a region of critical strategic importance for the United States--marked by increasing political instability and a growing tendency for that instability to reverberate beyond the region--leaving a risk-taking Hussein in power was unquestionably dangerous. It was far more preferable to remove him earlier, when he was relatively weak, rather than later, because here was a leader who, given enough time, would take one reckless chance too many.

IN MARKED contrast, in his relations with the United States, Kim Jong-il has, in his assessment, been as cautious as Saddam was rash. Several examples make the point.

First, the most surprising aspect of the North Korean crisis is not how much trouble Kim has instigated but why he waited so long to do so. After all, upon taking office, President Bush said he did not trust Kim and would not deal directly with his regime. Bush further labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" way back in January 2002. In June of that year, the Bush Administration raised the bar for continued food aid, signaling that further aid should be conditioned on North Korea's good behavior on humanitarian and security matters. Without question, Pyongyang had been in breach of the 1994 Agreed Framework for years. But the North Koreans really only escalated the conflict last December, when they kicked international inspectors out of the country and announced plans to reactivate their nuclear facilities. So why the delay?

In part, the North Korean regime took a long time to acknowledge the reality that its relationship with the United States was deteriorating. Pyongyang is accustomed to hearing threats from Washington and responding in kind while business as usual continues beneath the surface. After all, North Korea has been on the State Department's list of "state sponsors of terrorism" for years, and this status had little effect on the longstanding Agreed Framework between the two countries. There was no obvious reason for Kim to believe that anything had changed.

The best explanation for the delay, however, was the fear that last December's elections in South Korea would result in a victory for Lee Hoi-chang of the Grand National Party. A victory for Lee would likely have spelled the end of the "sunshine" policy and, with it, a critical element of North Korean leverage against the United States (leaving China as Kim's sole remaining hope of maintaining power). Having just weathered a tense scrape over a gun battle with a South Korean naval vessel in June 2002, (1) they needed to cool the diplomatic climate. North Korea's logical reaction was to try to initiate a new dialogue with the United States to avoid antagonizing the South Korean electorate before the election. Roh Moo-hyun's victory in Seoul meant that the specter of a more cynical South Korean government had receded for the time being, giving Pyongyang more room to react to the change in American policy.