North Korea's nuclear test makes it no likelier that the regime will actually launch a nuclear attack, but it adds a scary dimension to another threat: the defiant North as a facilitator of the atomic ambitions of others, potentially even terrorists.
It presents another major security crisis for President Barack Obama, already saddled with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a nuclear problem with Iran. He said Monday the U.S. and its allies must "stand up" to the North Koreans, but it's far from clear what diplomatic or other action the world community will take.
So far, nothing they've done has worked.
At an earlier juncture of the long-running struggle to put a lid on North Korea's nuclear ambitions, the administration of former President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s discussed with urgency the possibility of taking military action. That seems less likely now, with the North evidently nuclear armed and the international community focused first on continuing the search for a nonmilitary solution.
‘Clear violation’ of U.N. resolution
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that if the North Korean claim of a successful nuclear test can be confirmed it would represent "a clear violation" of a U.N. Security Council resolution. The council called an emergency session Monday to discuss the matter.
The North's announcement that it conducted its second underground test of a nuclear device drew quick condemnation across the globe, including from its big neighbor and traditional ally, China. The Obama administration, which said the North's action invited stronger, unspecified international pressure, has consistently called for Korean denuclearization but seemed not to have anticipated a deepening nuclear crisis.
Just two weeks ago, the administration's special envoy for disarmament talks with North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, said during a visit to Asian capitals that "everyone is feeling relatively relaxed about where we are at this point in the process." If so, they are no longer.
Obama, appearing in the White House Rose Garden, condemned the nuclear test and North Korea's subsequent test-launch of short-range missiles.
He called the actions reckless and said they endanger "the people of Northeast Asia."
North Korea conducted its first atomic test in 2006 and is thought to have enough plutonium to make at least a half-dozen nuclear bombs. It also is developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, in defiance of U.N. actions.
Could try to revive talks
Obama made clear his intention to work with other world leaders to bring diplomatic pressure to bear on Pyongyang, and the United States could still try to resuscitate so-called six-party talks with the North as well as work with other members of the United Nations. North Korea has vowed not to resume participation in the six-party talks with the U.S., Japan, South Korea, China and Russia.
Reflecting his view that only unified international action will compel North Korea to change course, Obama said that Russia and China, as well as traditional U.S. allies Japan and South Korea, have come to the same conclusion: "North Korea will not find security and respect through threats and illegal weapons."
Clinton plans to speak to Russia, China
The Bush administration worked hard to get China, in particular, to press the North Koreans to denuclearize, and it seems likely that Obama will push equally hard with Beijing, which sided with the North Koreans against U.S. and United Nations forces during the 1950-53 Korean War. In recent years the Chinese have openly criticized the North Koreans for the nuclear arms program.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke by phone Monday to her counterparts in Japan and South Korea, and she planned to speak later with the Russian and Chinese foreign ministers in what Clinton spokesman Ian Kelly called intensive diplomacy in response to the North's nuclear test.
"The secretary stressed the importance of a strong, unified approach to this threat to international peace and security," Kelly said.
Nuclear attack would be likely suicide
Such broad language leaves unsaid at least two of the main worries about North Korea: Would it use a nuclear bomb to attack a neighbor or the United States? And might it continue an established pattern of selling nuclear wherewithal and missiles to foreign buyers?
Launching a nuclear attack would be an act of likely suicide by North Korea, given overwhelming U.S. military firepower and U.S. defense commitments to Japan and South Korea.
Graham Allison, an assistant secretary of defense in the first Clinton administration and now director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, said Monday that the latest North Korean nuclear test should alert people to the fact that the international community regularly underestimates North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's willingness to do the unexpected.
"Could this guy believe he could sell a nuclear bomb to Osama bin Laden?" Allison asked in a phone interview. "Why not?" It would be easier, he said, than helping Syria construct a nuclear reactor, which the North Koreans are accused of having already done.
The U.S. has believed for years that the North Koreans pursued the bomb mainly to use it as political leverage, or blackmail, against its perceived enemies. That is a main reason the Bush administration pushed hard to build a missile defense system, which it explicitly described as protection against a North Korean threat. It was more a matter of preventing nuclear blackmail than expecting an attack.
Victor Cha, a former director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council and now an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Monday that one of the first things he expects the Obama administration to do is send a high-level official to the region to reassure allies like Japan that their security is guaranteed by U.S. nuclear weapons superiority.