PHOTO BY: AP

When the North Korean crisis is defined as being just about proliferation or restoring the economy, Kim Jong Il has already won. The issue is no longer a moral one about bringing an evil tyrant to justice and holding him accountable for crimes against humanity, it is reduced to a merely technical problem.

Foremost, North Korea poses a moral question. Between them, Kim Il Sung and his son are responsible for the deaths of more than seven million Koreans - three million civilians in the Korean War, and by some estimates, three million in the famine and at least a million deaths of political prisoners during the past 50 years. After a succession of statesmen - Jiang Zemin, Vladimir Putin, Kim Dae Jung, Sweden's Goran Petersen, Madeleine Albright - have returned home to tell us how rational, well-informed, witty, charming and deeply popular Kim Jong Il is, President [George W] Bush's judgment that Kim Jong Il is loathsome seems the only honest and truthful one.

The moral case against the North Korean regime was already strong in 1994, but has been strengthened immeasurably with the famine. After Kim deliberately allowed three million of his own people to die in the famine, should he be allowed to stay in power? Genocide is normally interpreted to mean the mass killings of another race ... but this too is a form of genocide.

Rarely, however, has the world community acted against a state because it was murdering its own people. In March 2004, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for a change in international law to legitimize pre-emptive military action against rogue states "whose leadership cared for no one but themselves; were often cruel and tyrannical towards their own people; and who saw WMD [weapons of mass destruction] as a means of defending themselves against any attempt external or internal to remove them.''

Ever since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, a country's internal affairs have not provided grounds for outside interference, but according to Blair, "we surely have a responsibility to act when a nation's people are subjected to a regime such as Saddam Hussein's.'' Blair defended the notion of intervening on humanitarian grounds, which had been used by NATO to attack Serbia over Kosovo and to intervene in other cases such as Sierra Leone. He argued that there needs to be a change in the way the United Nations operates in other ways to legitimize forceful action against rogue states like North Korea.

In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the issue of how to deal with rogue states has polarized opinion in Britain, the United States and the rest of the world. The issue evokes strong passions because it touches on everyone's core beliefs about how to respond to evil and how to defeat it. This is not merely a geopolitical issue; it is a philosophical attitude that determines how people instinctively act in private and public affairs.

Years ago people were equally divided about the best way to deal with the Soviet Empire. Some now credit the tougher and confrontational approach of [former US president] Ronald Reagan and [former British prime minister] Margaret Thatcher for its downfall. Others praise the role played by [former West German chancellor] Willy Brandt and his Ostpolitik in the 1970s and other forms of engagement such as the lengthy arms reduction negotiations or the Helsinki accords that recognized the importance of human rights...

It is hard to draw practical lessons from the Cold War and apply them to North Korea. It is in most ways unique. Unlike other East Bloc countries, in North Korea there are no non-government organizations like the Catholic Church or the Solidarity trade unions in Poland to provide a nucleus of a legitimate alternative authority. North Koreans do not sit down each evening and watch South Korean TV as East Germans watched West German TV. The North Koreans remain hopelessly ignorant of the world around them. Even if they do become better informed, it may not make a difference.

East Germany ultimately collapsed because its leader Erich Honecker's authority ultimately derived from Moscow, and when Gorbachev refused to back him, his authority collapsed. Kim is not vulnerable in this way. And one must remember too that when trying to borrow from recent history, Kim has also had plenty of time to draw his own lessons from the mistakes of Honecker, Gorbachev and Ceaucescu.

Another favorite comparison is between China and North Korea. [South Korean] President Roh has urged Bush to follow the example of [former US] president Richard Nixon, who in 1972 undertook a visit to Mao Zedong seven years before formal diplomatic relations were established. Roh says that Nixon's daring gesture led to major improve-ments in China's human rights.

This is a little misleading. Thirty years later, China remains as undemocratic as before and the economic changes, profound though they are, are only distantly related to Nixon's visit and any policy of engagement. Within months of Mao's death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping organized a conspiracy with other military leaders, staged a coup d'etat, arresting Mao's wife and other loyalists, and formed a new regime. Deng then ushered in a deliberate program of economic reforms drawing on the lessons he learned in 1961 during the Great Leap Forward famine.

Those who urge engagement, and cite precedents such as Nixon and Mao, Brandt and Honecker, Reagan and the "Evil Empire,'' are not necessarily offering a guide to future events. Rather, they are saying that even if a Western leader considers his counterpart to be "evil,'' to have committed crimes odious enough to put him beyond the pale of civilized society, it may still be necessary and advantageous to deal directly with him.

Another line of thinking holds that it is misleading to describe North Korea as a rogue state because Kim Jong Il and his father have always acted quite rationally, consistently and indeed predictably. Perhaps one will even see them as sane if one regards them as trying to preserve North Korea's "unique way of life.'' Israel, South Africa, South Korea and Taiwan have also in the past felt it necessary to try to develop nuclear weapons to secure their survival, so why not North Korea?

If Kim Jong Il and his father have a legitimate right to keep their dynasty going, then it could be argued they have acted with shrewd calculation, successfully outmaneuvering opponents at home and abroad. Kim Jong Il could thus be termed "rational'' for rejecting any political or market reforms. Look at how other communist leaders in the Soviet Union and its allies were swept aside once they opened up their economy. Having seen what happened to Saddam Hussein, who failed to acquire a nuclear bomb in time and could not keep the Americans at bay, it was logical for Pyongyang to acquire more WMD as a deterrent.

By the same logic, we can say that Kim was right to reject a policy of following China's example and embracing economic reforms. Once the Democratic People's Republic of Korea starts to imitate the Republic of Korea, then it has no further reason to exist because it would no longer offer the Korean nation a credible alternative. That was the fate of the German Democratic Republic. Moreover, Kim has correctly judged that once the full extent of his cruel record and his greed are revealed, his bogus claims to divinity will evaporate and with them his hold over the minds of the North Koreans.

Whether Kim is deemed rational and a cunning preserver of the North Korean state or simply a madman or rogue, there is something abhorrent about the thought that engagement could leave him and his family in power and handing out construction contracts worth tens of billions of dollars...

Anyone proposing to offer Kim cast-iron security guarantees and unconditional aid thus has to engage in a kind of "double think.'' They must ignore their better instincts in order to justify engaging him and simultaneously believe that, given his track record, he is capable of unleashing nuclear weapons. Chinese diplomats routinely claim that there would be tremendous civil disorder if he fell from power. Kim therefore becomes the pillar of regional stability. South Korean officials claim the burden of restoring the North Korean economy is too huge even to think about. Instead of being seen as the chief obstacle who needs to be removed in order to make progress, Kim is elevated to becoming the vital conduit for change.

From there it is but a short step to argue, as some do, that it is wise to keep him in power and achieve a "soft landing for North Korea'' and that anyone trying to escape from North Korea should indeed be arrested and sent back for fear of encouraging a destabilizing refugee exodus. Equally, they argue, it would be wrong to encourage an alternative government in exile. How damaging it would be for everyone if his victims were allowed to air criticisms of his regime; this would only encourage his paranoia and deter him from embarking on reforms.

There is also a line of complacent thinking that draws heavily on a version of the "historical inevitability'' theory of Hegel and Marx, only in this case it is not communism that is inevitable but democracy, or at least market eco-nomics. As North Korea has proved to be such a resounding economic failure - and South Korea such a success - it is inevitable that sooner or later North Korea and its problems will be taken care of. All one has to do is sit back and wait for the tide of history to sweep North Korea into making all the right changes.

Perhaps this last is true, but so far it is not turning out that way. After 1989, North Korea found itself destitute, friendless and destined to disappear from the map along with the Soviet Union, East Germany, Yugoslavia and other unloved creations held together by fear. Fifteen years later, Kim now finds himself supported, and indeed praised, by new friends, all seemingly anxious to advise him on how best to prolong his rule.

This is presented as an honorable path in a stream of articles being published urging Western leaders to overlook his faults. Those who decided to collaborate with Kim have been rewarded. Kim Dae Jung won the Nobel Peace Prize. The UN too won that prize in 2001, and the World Food Program and the UN High Commission for Refugees escaped censure, let alone any critical scrutiny, in their dealings with North Korea. China too has escaped condemnation for forcibly returning escapees and punishing Good Sam-aritans who try to help them. In fact it has been repeatedly praised for its constructive help in solving the crisis.

The Agreed Framework [between the US and North Korea, drawn in 1994 to resolve the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula], held up as a model of modern peacemaking and the high point of engagement with Kim Jong Il, failed in many ways. It did not freeze Kim's nuclear weapons program and did nothing to remove the threat of WMD from the world. It not only failed to prevent the North from enlarging its stock of WMD, it gave it more time to devote to research and development of missiles and nuclear technology. It may have averted war but it did not save lives. Millions died in North Korea and one wonders whether without the aid that flowed in from 1998 on, the regime would have collapsed because it could no longer have fed even its core members.

Kim Dae Jung helped stabilize Kim Jong Il's rule when it was at its weakest, but there has been no reward. No political or economic reforms of any importance followed. Those who tried to engage Kim Jong Il over the past decade, including the UN, the South Korean government, the chaebols and others, have little to show for it. There have been some small and very incremental changes in Kim's rule, a corrosive corruption that is weakening the Juche faith but this is not enough to justify consigning the North Koreans to his tender care for further decades.

Children are still dying of malnutrition. The UN and many other parties who tried to help the North Koreans have had to pay the price for repeating his lies and excusing his personal responsibility for the famine.

In order to stay in the country, they too claimed that he was a victim of outside forces, and the collapse of the economy was blamed on the weather or the loss of foreign aid. His dominant role in running the country from the 1970s onward was not recognized, and his record of blocking economic reforms and of squandering the country's small resources on his palaces was covered up or not investigated. In the three years from 1998, Kim used the extra aid merely to indulge himself. The number of US$1,000 [HK$7,800] Omega watches he imported from Switzerland tripled to total US$10 million in 2001. It is also profoundly wrong that no one can recall the name of even one of his victims. There are no prisoners of conscience in North Korea. No pictures of graves or executions. No equivalent of Nelson Mandela, no Aung San Suu Kyi. No voice other than the ruling party's escapes from behind its impenetrable walls. The mere idea of internal opposition to Kim's rule is ridiculed as preposterous. No one would dare finance an underground opposition party. The few who have tried to help the refugees have been fined, threatened, imprisoned and sometimes killed.

Kim has terrified his subjects into submission and now, with his arsenal of WMD, he is terrifying his neighbors with what he might do to them. The powers of the world are like the mice in an Aesop tale: They agree that the best way to deal with the cat is to hang a bell around his neck to give them warning of his approach - only none of the mice [is] brave enough to be the one that bells that cat.

The past 15 years show that real change will come only when Kim and his family are recognized as evil tyrants, removed from power and put on trial. Otherwise Kim will hand power to one of his sons and perpetuate his dynasty. Is there nothing that can be done to stop him, or other rogue states?

The question is not new. The ancient world's Pax Romana was often disrupted by the challenges of wicked kings or rebellious tribes which hindered Roman efforts to establish common standards and rules to peacefully regulate the affairs of the world. Dictators such as Kim thrive on wars and deliberately seek to whip up fears and keep tensions on the boil.

What can we do to prevent such dictators from continually stirring the pot? We have abolished other age-old evils such as slavery and piracy and we could do the same to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and curtail rogue regimes. It took a century of international cooperation to wipe out these practices [slavery and piracy] which for millennia had seemed part of the natural order of things. Without these achievements, the modern world would not exist. Further steps could be taken this century to ensure basic human rights.

The story of North Korea shows that the world needs new mechanisms to deal with rogue states. These processes must include two elements: A new framework in international law, as Blair is proposing, and a method to enforce these laws through the legitimate use of military force.

The current system clearly does not work and the UN has became dis-credited by its repeated failures in Iraq, Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Sudan and in North Korea. The flaws in the UN machinery include the fact that major states often block effective responses to unfolding genocide or delay imposing sanctions. In the case of North Korea, it is folly for the UN to continue treating it as a normal and legitimate member state at the expense of helping the millions of citizens who are dying of hunger. Any country that requires nine years of emergency food aid is clearly not normal and needs special consideration.

It is also patently absurd that one arm of the UN should be acting as North Korea's quartermaster and feeding a third of the population, while North Korea refuses to cooperate with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. It is all too similar to what happened in Iraq where the UN had a dual role of delivering food and medicine through the oil-for-food program while investigating the hidden WMD programs.

It is clearly in the interests of the international community to do something to improve the system to prevent a repetition of the events in Iraq. There must be new mechanisms to ensure that the US, the world's most powerful country, retains trust in the effectiveness of the UN system to regulate relations between states.

After the 9/11 attacks, the US doubted the effectiveness of the UN to police countries deemed to pose a threat to its security and acted unilaterally in Afghanistan and Iraq. This has created a crisis in international relations but also an opportunity to think about changing the UN to make it work better. Dealing with rogue states should be easier than dealing with international terrorism.

Many people will raise questions about who has the right to judge what is a rogue state, or to say when it should be outlawed, and who should be permitted to use force against its rulers. For much of the 19th century the powerful Royal Navy patrolled the high seas stopping and inspecting ships of any nationality which it suspected of transporting slaves. It did so even though in some countries such as Brazil (and Korea) the trade was not declared illegal until the 1890s.

Those countries which took a leading role in eradicating slavery, piracy and opium trading (despite earlier being prime beneficiaries in these lucrative but immoral activities) have retained a tradition of undertaking such crusades and willingness to deploy their armies in such causes.

It is also obvious that many nations are loathe to authorize the US and its Anglo-Saxon allies to act as world sheriff. When the UN allowed Saddam Hussein to abuse the oil-for-food program and to siphon off money for bribes and palaces while simultaneously refusing to cooperate with the weapons inspectors, the UN became so discredited that Washington invaded Iraq in a pre-emptive move. No one would wish a repetition of these events on the Korean Peninsula. As events in Iraq have unfolded, this aversion has only become stronger and the need for new international rules has increased.

It is imperative to establish accepted benchmarks for identifying a rogue state's behavior just as there is a definition of the crime of genocide. Once rogue behavior is identified as such, the world could agree on a set of tough measures, such as targeting the assets of the leadership, penalties for countries deemed to help rogue states with weapons or nuclear technology and tightly enforced conditions on aid.

No such parameters would be perfect but defining offenders and meting out prescribed punishments would be an improvement on the tools currently available. For instance, it should be made difficult for China to continue supporting North Korea, feting Kim, and repatriating escaping North Koreans. The latter especially is tantamount to supporting a modern version of slavery. Kim's behavior in contravention of basic standards needs to be officially recognized as such in China and elsewhere, and he should be held accountable for his deeds at an international tribunal or the Court of International Justice.

Finally, there needs to be strictly defined limits on the length of time a state can breach or abuse the Non-Proliferation Treaty without provoking war or military reprisals.

Some may suspect that it is wishful thinking that one could eradicate the threat of nuclear weapons. Once a technology has been invented it is hard to uninvent it or to stop this knowledge from spreading. It certainly may require a long-term policing effort. But this is not the same problem as dealing resolutely with North Korea or similar states. With the right political will, the world could quickly agree on remedies to disarm a criminal state clearly unable to feed its population and which tries to holds its people as hostages and to take its neighbors hostage with nuclear weapons. North Korea and Kim Jong Il, a rogue state and its rogue leader, could and should be held to account.

Reproduced by kind permission.