10/24/00 12:55 p.m.
The Surrealists
Madeleine Albright visits North Korea.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department.

estern visitors usually use the word "surreal" to describe North Korea. Even so, Madeleine Albright's trip there has given new meaning to the term and its applicability to a country that makes Orwell's totalitarian state in 1984 look like a functioning liberal democracy.

Consider, for example, the spectacle to which the Secretary of State was treated by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il yesterday: According to a UPI wire report, it involved 100,000 Communist Youth Leaguers who performed with automaton-like precision "an array of goose-step marches, acrobatic plunges, gymnastics and fireworks…. At one point, thousands of schoolchildren paid homage to North Korea's nuclear program by joining together in the shape of atoms, whilst throwing red balls to symbolize orbiting electrons. Between 17,000-25,000 students in the arena's bleachers flipped picture cards to create the image of a North Korean rocket launch."

Needless to say, this demonstration was not only surreal; even though she managed to applaud the performance and coo that it was "amazing," its message had to be just a tad discomfiting to Mrs. Albright. After all, she was in North Korea for the express purpose of sweet-talking Kim into giving up his ballistic-missile program and other threatening capabilities.

Quite apart from the stupefying scale of this testament to the abidingly Stalinist nature of North Korea, the in-your-face character of the affront to the highest-level U.S. delegation to visit Pyongyang since the Korean War speaks volumes about the kind of man with whom President Clinton wants desperately to "do business" before leaving office.

To be sure, Mrs. Albright made a point in her press conference today that the "Dear Leader" had "quipped" after the simulated rocket launch was displayed that the Taepo Dong missile it showed "was the first satellite launch [by North Korea] and it would be the last." U.S. policymakers would be well-advised not to give much weight to either statement.

The fact is that the Taepo Dong, like Pyongyang's Scud and No Dong programs before it, is being pursued not for the purpose of launching satellites but to deliver weapons of mass destruction over ever longer distances. Its first test flight in August 1998 may or may not have had a satellite on board; in any event, it apparently failed to place one in orbit.

What it did do, however, is conclusively demonstrate that North Korea has mastered the technique of manufacturing and operationalizing multiple rocket stages — the critical step toward reaching intercontinental ranges.

As a result, Kim Jong-Il is not only in the position to pull off the sorts of murderous terrorist attacks that blew up a South Korean airliner in 1987, and much of the South's cabinet in 1983--acts for which he is considered personally responsible and that have contributed to North Korea's status on the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT). He is now able credibly to threaten his neighbors and perhaps even U.S. territory with missile-delivered weapons of mass destruction.

No one should be under any illusion: It is this threat that has placed North Korea on the map over the past two years, after nearly 50 years of desperate isolation. It is Kim's capacity for long-range missile attack — against which the United States still has no defense — that has caused the Clinton-Gore administration to make the American taxpayer the world's largest provider of foreign aid to his regime. And it is the missile threat that has caused Madeleine Albright to travel to Pyongyang for the purpose of treating with the Dear Leader.

Unfortunately, there is very little likelihood that the sorts of concessions Mrs. Albright evidently has on offer (e.g., removal from the SSOT list, satellite launches, technology transfers, unilateral and multilateral financial assistance, investment guarantees, and other affirmations of political legitimacy) — all aimed at persuading Kim to give up further production, stockpiling, and/or transfer of his principal export commodity, namely ballistic missiles — will actually have that result.

For one thing, the North Korean despot understands from personal experience with the Clinton-Gore administration that he can expect to obtain the U.S.'s part of the bargain without living up to his own. The deal his father, Kim Il-Sung, conjured up in 1994, whereby he traded promises to stop his nuclear-weapons program for two new reactors (capable, by the way, of producing far more plutonium that can be used in such devices than the two obsolete reactors they will replace), food and fuel, is a case in point.

While the U.S. and its South Korean and Japanese allies have been forthcoming in implementing the deal, there is reason to believe that Kim the Younger already has one or more atomic weapons--and is still pursuing the acquisition of more. American intelligence may be able to do a better job of monitoring North Korean missile launches than covert weapons manufacture. But, as recent, unexpected transfers of Pyongyang's wares to Libya, Syria, Iran, and Sudan suggest, a devious regime with Kim's contempt for international agreements, and those who put faith in them, may keep us in the dark about the actual state of North Korean missile development, manufacture, and deployment programs.

In short, the Clinton-Gore administration is evidently prepared to perform yet another, unwarranted leap of faith for reasons that appear to have more to do with President Clinton's insistence on undertaking a "legacy-making" trip to Pyongyang in his upcoming, post-election visit to Vietnam and other Asian nations. If so, it appears that Kim Jong-Il is perfectly prepared to take him to the cleaners, yet again.

The difference is that this time the price for President Clinton's monumental egotism and self-indulgence will be paid by the American people on his successor's watch. If Gov. George W. Bush has reservations about the wisdom of this course of action — as he should — he must act quickly. Just as he has done with other important strategic issues, like a new START III treaty with the Russians and the deployment of missile defenses, Gov. Bush should immediately call on Mr. Clinton to defer to the next President any further openings or concessions, let alone a presidential visit, to North Korea.

The old adage, "You want it bad, you'll get it bad," is particularly relevant with respect to Bill Clinton's lame-duck diplomacy. The trouble is that, when dealing with the surreal North Korean dictator, what we'll get is not just bad, but dangerous.