Only a lawyer could come up with the idea of punishing North by threatening it with diplomatic and economic isolation, which is a bit like telling a Buddhist monk he may not go to McDonald's for lunch anymore. But then only a lawyer, or rather a team of lawyers, could have gotten us to the point where such an idea could seem to make sense in the first place. North Korea is a nation that has thrived for 40 years on isolation. It has no economy, no trade, no friends; it clings to its isolation like a drunk to a lamppost, a pathetic but determined gesture by a man who's told the world to go to hell. Strangling a skeleton is unrewarding work.
The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, one of those noble efforts to imbue the messy relationships between nations with the majesty of law, has brought us to this strange pass. Back when there was a real chance to prevent North Korea from taking steps to build a bomb, the reassuring legal logic of the NPT regime droned earnestly and ineffectually along. Like all good laws, it is a lawyer's delight, full of procedural labyrinths. The North Koreans solemnly signed the treaty in 1985, before their reactor even went into operation, then set to work on the loopholes. Signatories are supposed to complete an inspection agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency within 18 months. The North Koreans waited 18 months, then said they had received the wrong form. So the IAEA sent them the right form and gave them another 18 months. More delaying tactics followed. Meanwhile, their reactor developed "problems" that required the removal of plutonium-laden fuel rods. By the time the IAEA inspectors finally showed up, the loot was safely stashed away.
It is a perfect reflection of what happens when legalism substitutes for common sense that, now that it is too late, the lawyers are outraged that the dignity of the law has been affronted and rouse themselves to demand punishment. Safeguards that are so far still in place effectively block the diversion of any more plutonium; that is not yet the issue. The current crisis has instead been precipitated by North Korea's refusal to turn over evidence of what happened back in 1989. So the State Department mumbles about the "integrity" of the NPT regime and crafts its impotent sanctions, while some former Bush administration officials, enjoying the luxury of taking potshots from behind the walls of Washington think tanks, go so far as to call for pre emptive military strikes. The cop on the beat who stood by obliviously while John Dillinger robbed a bank may not be the best person to scream later on that no one has arrested him for income-tax evasion.
The fundamental problem of diplomacy -- how to get countries to do things they are disinclined to do -- is not changed by the comforting notion that there are such things as international laws. Significantly, the nonlawyerly minds in the Pentagon believe that the important thing is to stop North Korea from diverting any more plutonium rather than worry about hollow principles long ago sacrificed. As usual, the lawyers have a way of winning.
