United States and North Korea - drifting toward war?

Former defense secretary William Perry warned that the United States and North Korea are drifting toward war, perhaps as early as this year, in an increasingly dangerous standoff that also could result in terrorists being able to purchase a North Korean nuclear device and plant it in a U.S. city.

"I think we are losing control" of the situation, said Perry, who believes North Korea soon will have enough nuclear warheads to begin exploding them in tests and exporting them to terrorists and other U.S. adversaries. "The nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities," he said in an interview.

Only last winter Perry publicly argued that the North Korea problem was controllable. Now, he said, he has grown to doubt that. "It was manageable six months ago if we did the right things," he said. "But we haven't done the right things."

In a two-hour interview in his office at Stanford University, Perry said that after conversations with several senior administration officials from different areas of the government, he is persuaded that the Korea policy is in disarray. Showing some emotion, the usually reserved Perry said at one point, "I'm damned if I can figure out what the policy is."

Nor, having had extensive contacts with Asian leaders, does Perry believe that the multilateral diplomatic approach is working. "I see no evidence of that," he said. "The diplomatic track, as nearly as I can discern, is inconsequential."

Perry's comments, while unusually blunt from a former senior policymaker, reflect an increasing consensus among other specialists that the administration, distracted by Iraq, has allowed the North Korean crisis to spiral out of control.

Eberstadt described the current situation as "sitzkrieg," saying neither side has made its most obvious move. In North Korea's case, that would be detonating an underground nuclear device, he said, while for the United States it would be to organize an international program of maritime interdiction -- a kind of loose embargo -- to shut down dangerous North Korean exports, including missile sales.

Perry argued that an interdiction strategy "would be provocative, but it would not be effective" in preventing the sale of nuclear material. "You don't need a ship to transport a core of plutonium that is smaller than a basketball," he said.

Rather than escalate in this way, Perry said, the administration should engage in "coercive diplomacy," which he explained as, "You have to offer something, but you have to have an iron fist behind your offer." He didn't specify what should be offered, but others have suggested that North Korea would like economic aid, trade deals, diplomatic recognition or a nonaggression pact.