Faking it and making it.

• Author: Sokolski, Henry
• Position: US campaign against proliferation of strategic weapons

Tell Washington insiders that your work is focused on preventing the spread of strategic weapons - instead of reacting to it- and they'll think you're somewhat "intense" or at least unable to hold down a real job. Businessmen generally view this effort with suspicion; like promoting human rights, it is a concern that if taken too seriously might confound the ultimate liberalizing diplomacy of (their) commerce. Executive and legislative officials, meanwhile, might be eager to speak against the spread of nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile-related systems, but are squeamish about doing much about it.

Indeed, for our diplomatic corps, "engaging" the worst proliferators - China, Iraq, North Korea, and Russia - through government-sanctioned handouts or bribes almost always seems more realistic and effective than enforcing existing non-proliferation laws or, in the Iraqi case, mandated UN sanctions. Those in Congress troubled by such engagement generally seem willing to settle for executive reports on the latest proliferator (at least ten such reports are now required annually by law), the creation of some new nonproliferation directorate or program (the executive branch sports over sixty such offices), sanctions laws laden with loopholes (there are easily a dozen of these), or - the latest congressional initiative - a blue ribbon commission that somehow is supposed to make sense of all this.

This phony war against proliferation is full of tactical theatrics. Indeed, no administration has said as much about its non-proliferation commitments and "accomplishments" as Clinton's. Yet, when analyzed, most of its efforts simply amount to one or another form of surrender.

Consider North Korea. The government in Pyongyang violated its 1985 pledge to open its nuclear facilities to international inspections and was suspected of having diverted at least a bomb's worth of material when it announced its intention to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1994. When the administration threatened sanctions, North Korea responded belligerently and the administration backed down. The outcome: the United States agreed to provide $5 billion in new nuclear reactors and hundreds of millions more in fuel oil to Pyongyang if only it would freeze its declared nuclear activities and eventually uphold its non-proliferation inspection pledges sometime after the year 2000. In this deal, which frontloaded North Korea's benefits but deferred its responsibilities, the important thing seemed to have been to keep North Korea from leaving the NPT, a treaty the White House was then trying feverishly to get extended. South Korea's initial reaction: With its U.S. ally and nuclear guarantor cutting deals directly with Stalinist North Korea, perhaps it was time for Seoul to develop its own "civilian" plutonium production option.

Then there is Iraq. Shortly after the Gulf War, the United States cared enough about Saddam's violations of the UN inspection and dismantlement resolutions to get the UN to find Iraq in "material breach", a finding understood to permit unilateral military action by UN members. And in January 1993, just before Bush left office, the United States, with British and French help, hit Iraq with cruise missiles to get Saddam to open his country up to unimpeded inspections and to respect the no-fly zones in the north and south.

For several months Saddam behaved. But in June 1993, Baghdad again impeded UN inspections and the UN, again, found Saddam in material breach. This time, however, with the Clinton administration now in office, no military action was taken on that account. It also was the last time the UN felt moved to find Iraq in material breach. Later in 1996, of course, the United States staged another cruise missile attack against Iraq, but this was in reaction to Iraq's attack on the Kurdish city of Irbil, not for its numerous inspection violations.

Not until Saddam first demanded the expulsion of U.S. inspectors from UN inspection teams on October 29, 1997 was the White House forced to act. Anxious to appear finn, it sent two aircraft carriers to the Gulf, but in the end (with the whole world watching) it blinked and used Russia's pro-Iraqi Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov to negotiate with Saddam. U.S. inspectors were allowed back into Iraq, but the sovereignty of Iraq and Saddam's rule were triumphantly reaffirmed, along with the cultivated recognition that perhaps the UN sanctions were too harsh and would soon have to be loosened. By late January, Saddam's continued defiance of UN inspectors seemed likely to prompt a U.S. military response. After so many months of inattention, though, such a response is likely to be read as being more a reaction to Iraqi badgering than a serious strategy to eliminate the threat.

In the case of Iran, the White House has tried to be more serious. Initially, Clinton officials insisted that the world cut off all assistance to Tehran's civilian nuclear program and military, and it followed Congress' demand to sanction states that invested in Iran. Yet, when China and Russia tested Clinton's resolve with dangerous missile, chemical, and nuclear transfers to Tehran, again the administration essentially backed down. The process of buckling began with China's sales of scores of advanced long-range C-802 anti-shipping missiles to Iran's armed forces. The U.S. commander of the Fifth Fleet, Vice Admiral Scott Radd, described these missiles as a direct threat to our forces stationed in the Persian Gulf: "It used to be we just had to worry about land-based cruise missiles. Now they have the potential to have them throughout the Gulf mounted on ships."(1) The administration, however, demurred, insisting that the missiles were insufficiently destabilizing to warrant sanctions as authorized by U.S. law. The White House then went on to approve hundreds of millions worth of sensitive U.S. missile-related exports to the very Chinese firms known to be proliferating missiles.

Beijing also has tried to sell Iran reactors and uranium facilities useful for making nuclear weapons...