Stardate 20021228.1948

(Captain's log): Well, the US has been in the international doghouse for the last year for the crime of unilateralism, of not consulting its allies and letting said allies tell it what to do. So let's try an experiment. The world faces a really serious problem, and it's called "North Korea". So, world, what are we all going to do about North Korea?

We can negotiate. We can try to make an agreement with them, keeping always in mind that they completely ignored all their obligations under the last major agreement we made with them in 1994. While we delivered tens of thousands of tons of food and half a million tons of oil per year to them gratis, they proceeded to continue working on nuclear weapons even though they promised not to, which they admitted in October and deny now. Nonetheless, that's what China says we should do. We should negotiate with North Korea to preserve the 1994 agreement, which North Korea never even made a token attempt to comply with.

Um, we can use inspections. Of course, North Korea just ordered all international inspectors out of its territory and just removed all surveillance equipment from a critical nuclear facility designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium, all of which violates its obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty that it signed.

There's always the ever-popular passage of a UNSC resolution. That'll sure work, you bet. The Bush Administration intends to ask the UN to consider the situation starting January 12.

There's the ever-popular trade sanctions, which were so spectacularly successful against Iraq. Given how little international trade North Korea actually does, even if it were properly enforced (which, admittedly, would be easier than for Iraq) it's pretty much a token gesture.

We can try to buy them off. Give them what they ask for, and maybe they'll calm down. After all, their demands are not unreasonable, at least according to them, and they say that only the US can solve the situation (by giving in to their extremely reasonable demands). They want an apology and reparations. They want acknowledgement of their right to continue to develop nuclear weapons. They want huge amounts of aid given to the North Korean government to use within the nation as it sees fit, without international supervision to make sure it's actually going to the people who need it most. They want the fuel oil shipments to resume. They want more food shipped in, to be distributed by the government without international supervision. They want no limits on their foreign trade. (Of course, about the only thing they make for export that anyone else in the world has any interest in buying is things like Scuds and anti-ship missiles.) They want a "non-aggression pact" with the US, though it's not at all clear what that would imply. (For instance, it may include a requirement for the US to remove all its military forces from the region. Given that they don't seem to care about any equivalent pact with anyone else, such as South Korea, I think it's a good chance that this is actually what they mean.) And what are they willing to give up in order to get all this? Basically, nothing so far as I can tell. There's no indication that there are any concessions at all that they're willing to make, except perhaps to stop being quite so loud and aggressive. That seems fair, doesn't it?

We can resort to force. That could manifest in several ways. For instance, we've stopped shipping them fuel oil under the 1994 agreement, which they admitted in October to having violated and now deny having violated. The US is also considering decreasing food aid to North Korea unless distribution of that food is under direct control of international agencies.

We could go even further. We could implement an actual blockade, cutting all shipments in and out, or seizing all exports of weapons. Every ship leaving North Korea could be intercepted in international waters and checked, with all weapons being seized and destroyed.

We might even have to consider a complete and total blockade, including deliberately blocking all food imports. (Doing so would violate certain international treaties, and would be considered a war crime under the ICC treaty.) At a lesser level, we (the international com