WASHINGTON, April 23 (UPI) -- And now to the real crisis. Loathsome and dangerous as he was, to his own citizens as much as his neighbors, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was never an existential threat to world peace. He had no nuclear weapons, and no prospect of incinerating 37,000 U.S. troops, a city of 15 million people and the world's second-largest economy.
North Korea, with its suspected one or two crude nuclear weapons, its medium-range missiles and its tradition of militant ruthlessness, presents all three threats at once.
Even without using the nukes it may or may not yet have, North Korea can destroy the American garrison in South Korea and reduce the city of Seoul to rubble with its artillery. And it can fire missiles at Tokyo, which would panic Japan, provoke an economic tsunami across Asia and could plunge the world into a repeat of the Great Depression.
That is why the tri-partite talks opening in Beijing on Wednesday are so important. The question is whether they will do any good. The North Koreans finally and grumpily consented to the Beijing meeting because they finally came under real pressure. The Chinese closed the oil pipeline across the Yalu River, just long enough to make the point about Pyongyang's vulnerability.
At least the talks got under way, thanks to some subtle compromises. The North Koreans gave up their earlier insistence on direct talks with the United States only and accepted the presence of the Chinese hosts at the table. The Americans gave up their earlier insistence on five-way talks that also included Russia and Japan.
So U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelley will go face to face for three days with Ri Gun, deputy director in charge of American affairs at North Korea's Foreign Affairs Ministry. Holding the ring (as the North Koreans want), or taking part (as the Americans want), or acting as referee, will be Fu Ying, director general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Asian Affairs Bureau.
The talks are based upon the premise that the North Korean crisis can be handled by diplomacy. This may not be the case.
The North Koreans know that they are being taken seriously by the Americans, as a potentially serious menace, because they are presumed to be making -- or to have -- nuclear weapons.
And they are known to have large numbers of short- and medium-range missiles, and absolutely no scruples about selling them to anyone, nor firing them off into the waters near Japan and South Korea, just to make a point. The last time they put one near Japan, the Tokyo stock market dropped 4 percent.
Nor are the North Koreans much worried about the diplomatic niceties. South Korea's new President Roh Moo-hyun was elected on a promise of "more sunshine" to open up relations with the North and "less America" to curtail the role of the country that saved South Korea in 1950 and has guaranteed its security ever since. The North Koreans could hardly have hoped for a more supportive new counterpart.
How did they welcome his arrival? They marked the new president's inauguration by firing off a new missile and canceling more North-South talks, while demanding even more supplies of rice and fertilizer. There is nothing subtle about North Korean diplomacy.
These are not people to be talked into dismantling their nuclear facilities or their missiles. The North Koreans have learned the lesson of Saddam; do not take on the almost omnipotent Americans without a nuclear equalizer. They now have one, or at least have convinced the CIA that they do. And Pyongyang suspects that the moment they negotiate their nukes away is the moment they probably will not be able to get a meeting with the State Department doorkeeper, let alone Kelley.
Against this grim North Korean calculation, what can Kelley and diplomacy achieve? Should not the United States simply start mapping out the targets for a strike to defang the North Koreans? Some hawks in the Pentagon seem to think so.
But it may be Mission Impossible. The North Koreans have sunk their 14,000 conventional artillery barrels deep into the mountains and tunnels of their country, making them very hard to destroy in a pre-emptive attack, at least before they can destroy Seoul. Their nuclear facilities will be at least as well hidden and protected.
The North Korean asset is the fear of their nukes. The American asset is the fear of their readiness to use force. Looking at the rubble of Saddam's palaces, North Korea's leaders must know they are playing poker with a very dangerous gunslinger. And the Americans played this card Tuesday, letting it be known that the Pentagon tried to get Kelley replaced at the Beijing talks by neo-conservative superhawk John Bolton.
The American message was clear. If the North Koreans refuse to deal with the soft-cop U.S. diplomats led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, they will then have to face the hard cops of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
