THE Korean problem poses more than one difficulty of foreign-policy analysis. Aside from the central question of what to do about the unsettling possibility of a nuclear-armed rogue regime, one has to ask questions about one’s own government. Hypothetical solutions serve little purpose if they cannot be executed. In this case, a policy of confrontation, which might ultimately lead to war on the Korean peninsula, would have to be executed by an Administration that has been hesitant and often inept in its handling of the American military. It is, moreover, an Administration that has (in its own mind, at any rate) divided its relations with Asian countries into compartments. The Clinton Administration appears to believe that confrontations with Japan over trade or China over human rights will have no effect on the willingness of those countries to cooperate with the U.S. on security matters. It is a curious, and probably unfounded, assumption.
Mr. Cohen, an NR contributing editor, is a professor of strategic studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
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