Let's Calm Down

* Deterrence still works for most players in the international system. Almost from the outset, the Bush administration has found it convenient to argue that cold-war-era deterrence is outmoded, period. Administration officials used this argument even before 9/11, when they sought to justify the president's centerpiece program, missile defense, by suggesting that small rogue states (such as North Korea) might be so reckless or crazy they would not be deterred by the threat of retaliation. After 9/11, the Bush team also sold deterrence short. In June 2002, President Bush told West Point graduates that deterrence "means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend."

But the actual number of such networks is tiny, in fact this description still really only describes the crazed apocalpytos of Al Qaeda. Most other terrorist or insurgent groups have more realizable political goals, which means they can be deterred. Think of Hizbullah, for example, which has its growing political prestige in Lebanon to protect. Even in the case of Al Qaeda-style terrorist attacks, deterrence can work when it comes to terror-sympathizing states, argue Jackie Newmyer of Harvard and Thomas Wright of Princeton in a new study. "The U.S. should explain that in the event of an act of nuclear terrorism that cannot be traced, Washington will have no choice but to hold all rogue nuclear regimes and known proliferators responsible," they write in an unpublished paper, a copy of which was obtained by NEWSWEEK, calling this the "doctrine of Root Causes." This "provides an incentive for dictatorships to eschew nuclear weapons entirely by underscoring how the preservation of the regime could turn on the behavior of a few corrupt scientists or generals. Critically, it also links the fates of nuclear rogues; North Korea may be held responsible for Iran's crime and vice versa."

* Finally, let's acknowledge that the United Nations, that most demonized and paralyzed of international agencies, can actually work at times. Indeed it is quite remarkable that the Bush administration, which had little taste for U.N.-style solutions in its first term, is now using the U.N. Security Council as its chief forum for resolving an array of crises in Iran, North Korea and Lebanon. Yes, bringing united U.N. sanctions against North Korea and Iran has proved to be brutally difficult and full of holes. But these nations cannot resist the opprobrium of the international community forever. Because of the inexorable logic of the post-cold-war world—in order to gain power and influence countries must prosper, in order to prosper they must join the international system and in order to join the international system they must work with its major players—countries that spurn the Security Council's collective will find out just how hard that makes life for them.

Countries are finding that international sanctions, however mild, can be very powerful when the target is isolated. This was one lesson of the Bush administration's decision to sanction a Macau-based bank used by Kim Jong Il and other North Korean elites, Banco Delta Asia, by forbidding any other banks that had business in the United States from dealing with it. To the astonishment even of the Treasury Department, everyone fled at once, and Kim and his cronies found themselves without a launderer. "The repercussions were much greater than anticipated," says Michael Green, who until last year was President Bush's senior director for Asia on the National Security Council.

Does all this good news mean that we don't have to worry about North Korea's plutonium, or terrorist groups that might get hold of it? Of course not. But it does mean that we ought to have a little more faith in the international system than is sometimes expressed. While the tinpot dictator in Pyongyang putters about, Asia is continuing with its vibrant life, as is the rest of the world. And that is leaving him further and further behind.

© 2006