Walking Into Trouble
Spy flights prove North Korea is making plutonium. It may have four nukes already. But don’t panic ... yet

The sense of calm may also have a more unsettling explanation: it’s too late to panic. Until recently, U.S. officials thought Kim had no more than one or two nuclear devices. But administration aides now tell NEWSWEEK that he likely has three or four—primitive, but dangerous nonetheless. The new estimate changes the geopolitical calculation. If the North already has a mini-arsenal, the latest threats—including the claim that it has already finished reprocessing 8,000 fuel rods—lose their power to shock. “The clear intention is to try and drive the process with blackmail,” says one senior U.S. official. “That is why we make clear we will not be intimidated.”

That may sound OK from Washington’s side of the globe, but South Koreans are scared. North and South Korean soldiers at the demilitarized zone exchanged shots last week for the first time in 20 months. Nobody was hurt, but it added to the jitters. And South Korea’s military experts predict that its neighbor’s next nuclear step will come soon. One expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses says the reprocessing will probably be finished in October, followed by a nuclear test. Paik Jin Hyun at Seoul National University is more pessimistic. He thinks Pyongyang could announce possession of nuclear weapons in time to celebrate the anniversary of the Workers’ Party on Sept. 9.

Neither side seems ready to blink. Still, the White House cannot ignore the risk that a cornered Kim might try to raise cash by selling the bomb to another rogue leader or to terrorists. Although the Bush administration insists it has no plans for military strikes on the North, one senior aide says the North could trigger war by exporting its nukes or fissile materials. Officials in Washington may still be sleeping tight. The worry is that they could be in for a very rough awakening.
[more]

  thanks to The Agonist