Commentary : PERSPECTIVE ON FOREIGN POLICY : U.S. Must Stand Up to North Korea : Open a dialogue, but don’t cave in each time Pyongyang makes a threat, real or otherwise.

“Acquiescence in serial bribery” is how the Economist described America’s decision to lift certain economic sanctions against North Korea in exchange for a temporary freeze on testing of its advanced missile. Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III called the agreement for inspection of a suspected North Korean nuclear site “appeasement”--not a term often used by former secretaries of State about their own nation.

Although these rhetorical salvos were provoked by specific instances of U.S. capitulation to long-standing North Korean demands, they correctly characterize the course of American policy toward the North over the last six years. Since before the 1996 Geneva Agreed Framework, U.S. policy has rested on the belief that deference is better than firmness in protecting our interests and those of our close allies most likely to be adversely affected by hostile action from the North.

With 16 months left in office, the administration is unlikely to move away from its long-standing, if egregiously wrong, policy. Now that the “legacy” mode has kicked in, we are at a period of maximum danger that the administration will accelerate its efforts to reach full normalization with the North. Since this is a matter far too important to leave to a lame-duck president, in the short term, we must strive to prevent any further deterioration in the U.S. position. We also must hope that our presidential candidates seriously debate U.S. interests in Korea, because without such a debate, the momentum established by President Clinton may well carry forward into the next administration, no matter who wins in 2000.

Among many remarkable aspects of Clinton’s Korea policy is how directly and unambiguously it rejects the 20th century’s two central lessons for dealing with militaristic dictatorships. In the 1930s and the Cold War, the stakes for the United States were far higher, because national survival was at issue. Failure to demonstrate resolve in the first case led to war, while in the second, resolute policies against the Soviet threat ultimately prevailed.

Hitler wrote that Munich taught him “how to deal with the English--one had to move aggressively.” Pyongyang well understands the contemporary version. Last year, for example, it said that “the United States will be reduced to ashes and will no longer exist, if they ignite the train of war.” Given the communist, totalitarian and intensely insular and indeed ignorant nature of the North Korean regime and its desperate economic and strategic position, no one should underestimate such threats.

While everyone can agree that we must seek to avoid a disastrous, and possibly nuclear, war on the Korean peninsula and beyond, it is unconscionable that the White House is unable to muster even a modicum of resoluteness to contain, let alone roll back, the North Korean threat. The administration’s counter argument that any toughness will inevitably lead to a North Korean first strike is exactly backward. At present, the North can conclude realistically that if the U.S. responds so limply when faced merely with threats, it will be even weaker when confronted with actual force. It can hardly be surprising that the North Koreans have drawn the conclusion that President Clinton will accept almost anything they demand if he can be sufficiently intimidated.

A sounder U.S. policy would start by making it clear to the North that we are indifferent to whether we ever have “normal” diplomatic relations with it, and that achieving that goal is entirely in their interests, not ours. We should also make clear that diplomatic normalization with the U.S. is only going to come when North Korea becomes a normal country. If that’s impossible, the U.S. suffers no harm. In the meantime, we should insist that the North honor the commitments it has made, starting with the agreed framework, but failed to follow. We should reimpose sanctions and otherwise retaliate economically and politically each time it backslides. Otherwise, we surely will see the continuing and unjustifiable propping up of the North Korean rogue regime. We are being watched closely, not only in North Korea, but in Beijing and elsewhere around the world.