In proliferation stare-down with North Korea, Obama takes a round

A sustained diplomatic, military and intelligence effort led by the United States apparently has convinced North Korea that the secret cargo in the hull of its cargo ship, Kang Nam I, should remain a secret.

The world may never know if the freighter, believed headed for the pariah regime of Myanmar, contained missile components or even, as some suggested, nuclear weapons technology. Whatever it contained, the prospect of unloading it under the watchful eye of the U.S. military has convinced Pyongyang to order the ship to come about and set a new heading for a destination as of now unknown.

American intelligence officials raised an alarm two weeks ago when the ship left North Korean waters, speculating that it might be carrying illicit arms meant for the military dictatorship in Myanmar. More seriously, anonymous “intelligence sources” suggested that impoverished Myanmar is just a way station for a more nefarious technology transfer.

The ship has been shadowed for the past week by warships including the U.S.S. McCain, a destroyer named for the former GOP presidential candidate’s father, Adm. John S. McCain. The cargo vessel had been expected to stop en route to Myanmar — a cruise of some 4,100 miles — to refuel. The most likely refueling port, analysts believed, was Singapore.

But as the McCain shadowed the Kang Nam I, American, South Korean, and Japanese diplomats have mounted a campaign aimed at ensuring that a stop by the ship in any port along the way would trigger a full inspection of its cargo and a reporting of its contents to the United Nations.

United Nations Security Council sanctions passed after North Korea tested its latest nuclear warhead authorized the world’s navies to monitor such traffic. China, which has traditionally protected Pyongyang from the harshest Security Council rebukes, even voted for the sanctions this time, a significant symbolic shift and a victory for U.S. diplomacy.

But Beijing still blocked efforts to authorize boarding parties to inspect suspect North Korean vessels.

That was never likely to happen, of course, leaving the Obama administration is the absurd position of having less leeway to deal with a potential transfer of nuclear weapons technology than it had with a bunch of teenaged Somali pirates.

Now, a very dangerous moment may have passed. The ship, of course, could still turn around again and head back toward Myanmar, though the North would have to find some way to fuel it at sea, which is not a capability its navy is thought to possess.

The ship could also try to dump its cargo on the high seas, though such an action would be captured by satellite photography.

More likely at this stage, the Kang Nam I is headed, fantail between its legs, back toward North Korea.

If so, Obama has prevailed and dodged a difficult moment. He could have ordered the U.S. Seventh Fleet to go beyond the U.N. Security Council’s writ and board the Kang Nam, imposing the kind of naval quarantine on North Korean shipping that John F. Kennedy did during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961. But, then, Kennedy knew what was on the Russian ships — Obama had no such certainty.

Obama had to weigh the risks of halting the Kang Nam I against the possibility that that the increasingly irrational North would respond with a wild retribution of some kind against South Korea and the American troops based there. The North need not go nuclear to cause thousands of deaths. Within the range of its tens of thousands of artillery tubes on the 37th parallel is the entire city of Seoul and some of the U.S. garrison, too.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/worldview/090701/proliferation-stare-down-north-korea-obama-takes-round