North Korea claims it has successfully conducted a nuclear test. How significant is this? What should the U.S. do? National Review Online asked some experts.

Resident Fellow Dan Blumenthal

Dan Blumenthal

Overnight the world is a different place. With a rogue and outlaw state testing a nuclear weapon we are one step closer to a nuclear catastrophe. North Korea is cash strapped and irresponsible, willing to sell anything to anyone for hard cash. What are we to think next time we sees North Korean missiles atop a launching pad? Can we take the risk that those missiles will not be nuclear tipped? With our intelligence on North Korea so uneven, the doctrine of preemption must return to the fore. Any talk of renewed six-party talks must be resisted. We cannot let Kim Jong Il define international deviancy down. Again and again he had defied us and broken his commitments. Our message must be clear: Your defiance has gotten you isolation, relentless pressure to bring down your regime, and a more robust nuclear arsenal pointed at you.  We must remember that Iran is watching and learning.

Senior Fellow Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich

Our goal in North Korea should be peaceful regime change. Our model for leadership should be Ronald Reagan.

President Reagan entered office in 1981 with a clear vision of allying with Prime Minister Thatcher of Great Britain and Pope John Paul II to defeat the Soviet Empire. Without firing a shot they worked to strengthen the Solidarity trade union in Poland, to increase the resources available to the Polish people, and to undermine the effectiveness of the Communist dictatorship. Within eleven years of Reagan’s inauguration the Soviet Union disappeared. The Cold War was over. We had won.

North Korea is a vicious dictatorship in the middle of a famine. Its policies have shrunk the height of the average North Korean by over three inches over the last generation through malnutrition. There are over 200,000 North Koreans imprisoned in concentration camps. It is an evil regime grinding down the lives of its people.

A Reaganite strategy would funnel every penny of help and every bit of food aid through a system of private activity consciously designed to undermine the dictatorship. A Reaganite strategy would isolate the government while helping the people. It would seek every angle to get humanitarian help to the people. Food might be parachuted into the country, delivered from submarines and small boats by clandestine services, shipped in from China and Russia through anti-regime middlemen and delivered in every way possible to divert energy and authority away from the government and toward an alternative organizing system of individuals dedicated to a better more prosperous life. Just as in Eastern Europe, we would rapidly discover a lot of people willing to subvert the regime for better lives for their families and we would find the regime beginning to splinter and fragment in the face of opportunities for food, goods, and prosperity.

And a Reaganite strategy toward North Korea would mean what it says, and say what it means.

Last July, the entire civilized world said it would be “unacceptable” for North Korea to fire missiles. In response North Korea chose our Independence Day to fire seven missiles. They tested the “unacceptable”. It turned out to be acceptable. Is it any wonder that North Korea has now tested a nuclear weapon?

Reagan would have found a variety of steps to make it extremely expensive for the North Koreans to display contempt for the entire civilized world.

For President Reagan “unacceptable” would have meant “unacceptable.”

Resident Scholar Michael Rubin

Michael Rubin

The North Korean nuclear test is significant for two reasons. First, it has stripped any plausibility to arguments that engaging dictators works. Our failure was bipartisan. Clinton’s strategy was ill-conceived, but when push came to shove, the Bush White House drank the same Foggy Bottom Kool-Aid.  Second, we are at a watershed. We know our opponents’ playbook. Will we think several steps ahead? Or embrace short-term illusion? This crisis is not just about North Korea, but about Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba as well. 

Bush now has two choices: to respond forcefully and show that defiance has consequence, or affirm that defiance pays and that international will is illusionary. Diplomats crave wiggle room, but it has just run out. Multilateralism is like Diet Coke; it may taste good, but it lacks substance. Conversations with foreign leaders aren’t enough if they do not produce results. Nor should consultation or declaration substitute for results. Bush must now choose whether his legacy will be one of inaction or leadership, Chamberlain or Churchill?

Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow at AEI. Newt Gingrich is a senior fellow at AEI. Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.