Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/world/asia/01sanger.html
July 1, 2009
On Washington
Second Thoughts on North Korea’s Inscrutable Ship
By DAVID E. SANGER [obama white house] [continuity in USFP from at least Clinton to W. Bush …] [NSC generally and NSC bureaucratically] [bureaucracy] [state department, DoD and Pentagon, IC] [DPRK’s odd behavior; since putative stroke last August, things have really been more bizaare than usual] [use psci355, psci469b] [what is DPRK attempting to do-cause?] [cross in external] [*]
Inside the White House, they are beginning to call it “The Cruise to Nowhere.”
For more than two weeks now, White House officials have been receiving frequent updates on a rusting North Korean ship, the Kang Nam 1, as it makes its way dead-slow across the South China Sea. Earlier this month, Mr. Obama’s aides thought the aging hulk — with its long rap sheet for surreptitious deliveries of missiles and arms — would be the first test of a United Nations Security Council resolution giving countries the right to hail suspect shipments, [but not now?] [*]and order them to a nearby port for inspection.

But now some top officials in the Obama administration are beginning to wonder whether Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, ordered the Kang Nam 1 out on a fishing expedition — in hopes that a new American president will be his first catch. [let me be the first to advise the Obama administration: stop worrying about whether the DPRK is attempting to embarrass the new team in some way or not and worry about their potential for malfeasance] [ultimately, the DPRK typically embarrases the DPRK more than anybody else] [*]

“The whole thing just doesn’t add up,” said one senior administration official who has been tracking the cargo ship’s lazy summer journey. “My worry is that we make a big demand about seeing the cargo, and then there’s a tense standoff, and when it’s all over we discover that old man Kim set us up to look like George Bush searching for nonexistent W.M.D.” [so don’t bite until-unless a darn good reason] [*]

Are the North Koreans really that wily?

Maybe so. For a country that prides itself on its hermetic seal, it has played a pretty impressive game for the past eight years. As the United States headed for Iraq, it amassed the fuel for six or eight nuclear weapons. Mr. Kim set off a nuclear blast in 2006, then got the United States to take the North off the terrorism list in return for hobbling its main nuclear facility. Now it has set off another test and appears to be reactivating that facility, prompting Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to vow he would not “buy the same horse” a second time.

With the world on high alert to intercept North Korean shipments — maybe a load of missiles like it sent to Yemen a few years back, or reactor parts like those that helped Syria start a secret program — imagine the headlines if the United States and its allies chased after a ship full of innocuous cargo. [*] [get ahead of it in terms of HUMINT] [surely, apart from a small handful of nation-states, the US has some resources in most of the ports where it might end up?] [*]Inside the administration, officials ranging from Vice President Joe Biden to the deputy secretary of state, James Steinberg, have cautioned the administration to go slow. The Navy seems to need no convincing. [*]It has kept the the U.S.S. John McCain — named for the senator’s father and grandfather — well beyond the horizon, so there is no sense of a low-speed chase at sea.

Pentagon officials are clearly not eager to confront the Kang Nam 1. The intelligence about what is on board is typically murky. Some say they suspect small arms, which are banned by the United Nations resolution but hardly a major threat. Members of Mr. Obama’s team who served in the Clinton administration remember past embarrassments, including the interception of a Chinese ship suspected of carrying chemical precursors in the early 1990s. When the ship was finally cornered, the cargo turned out to be benign. [*] [and hardly anybody remembers it] [in other words, embarrassment aside (and it was mostly lost in the other stuff going on) DPRK’s odd game wasn’t all that important] [it probably has more to do with internal machinations than anything] [*]

Mr. Obama’s top aides say they are acutely aware of the dangers if the same happened with the Kang Nam 1. Whatever momentum the administration has created to confront the North Koreans would be lost if the first intercepted ship was carrying sea bass, or Ping-Pong balls. [so don’t bite unless-unti a damned good reason] [meanwhile, squeeze intel sources elsewhere] [*]

The Kang Nam 1 is hardly the only slow-burning confrontation with North Korea these days, or even the most important. The country’s nuclear tests, while less than impressive, indicate that Mr. Kim’s engineers are getting better at nuclear detonations. They are learning from the many mistakes made during their missile tests, and they may have scheduled another one for coming days. [if they do, consider what that must mean about supply] [they’d be unlikely to burn through so many (especially since they have been duds so far) unless they had stockpiled some?] [*]

(In 2006 the North set off missiles on July 4, and the nuclear test came on Memorial Day, showing a particular affection for American national holidays. Many expect the next missile test — one the North has suggested might be aimed at Hawaii — could come on Saturday. But if your holiday plans call for spending the day on Diamond Head, it is probably not worth cancelling your plans: There is no evidence yet the North’s missiles can reach that far, and their aim is singularly unimpressive.) [note: another July 4 celebration to be expected?] [*]

But the Kang Nam 1 is a test of whether United Nations sanctions have some teeth. And in a bigger sense the caution about intercepting the ship reflects a bigger concern about going about sanctions in the right way — a way that keeps the allies and other nations on board. Mr. Obama is eager to demonstrate, his aides say, that he is not Mr. Bush and will not stretch the authorities granted by the Security Council. So American officials say they have no intention of boarding the Kang Nam 1 or any other North Korean-flagged ship at the on the high seas, a step the North has warned it would consider an act of war. They have been telling members of Congress that this is not the Cuban Missile Crisis — it is an effort to bring the Chinese and the Russians aboard for gradually escalating sanctions. [don’t waste the consensus on small poteatoes] [*]

The country watching all this most closely, officials say they assume, is Iran. [absolutely; Iran’s leader have almost certainly taken the que that their best move it to rush to detonate, which means building at least a few before detonating even one!] [*]When the headlines about the election and potential vote fraud in Iran begin to fade, its nuclear facilities could be the next targets of a United Nations-sanctioned inspection regime.

The Iranians have, in the past, ranked among North Korea’s biggest customers for missile parts, some shipped directly from North Korea. Now that there renewed talk of sanctions aimed at Tehran — a likely subject of conversation at the meeting of leaders of the largest industrial nations in Italy next week — the outcome of the world’s most lethargic race at sea may appear as important in the Strait of Hormuz as it does in the South China Sea. [let’s assume that it’s headed to Iran] [what can the US get done it advance with HUMINT assets?] [what about Oman on the Pakistani side?, for example that deep-water port whose name I can’t remember, which is no longer Oman’s] [is it Pakistan?] [*]
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company