North Korea's objective? To get Uncle Sam off the peninsula

Throughout the unfolding 'non-crisis' on the Korean peninsula, the North Korean government has stayed a step ahead of the rest of the world and appears to be dictating the pace of events. Avoiding a real crisis requires figuring out what North Korea wants and then devising a solution that meets those needs, as well as those of other concerned parties.

There are growing indications that the North Korean leadership is playing for the big prize - the rupture of the US-South Korea relationship - and clumsy US diplomacy may be helping them.

Getting inside the North Korean mind is always a hazardous exercise. About the only thing that everyone agrees on is that the North's first priority is regime survival. After that, the terrain quickly gets slippery.

North Korea appears convinced that only the possession of nuclear weapons will secure its objectives. Security is one goal, but it is hard to see how nuclear weapons help a government that already holds its chief opponent hostage. South Korea, not the US, is the real threat to regime survival in the North, and conventional forces already threaten enough damage to the South to deter aggression. The North must know the use of such weapons would be an act of desperation resulting in the end of the regime.

It is more likely the North Korean government has determined that nuclear arms are critical to its political needs. The nation cannot feed itself and needs assistance to survive. The real threat to the regime is implosion or collapse.

North Korea has to be a priority item on the international agenda to secure that aid; the leadership may well have determined that without nuclear weapons, the country is just another failed state that the world can and will ignore. Proliferation is supposed to incur penalties, but the leadership in Pyongyang could be forgiven for looking at the experiences of India, Pakistan and Iraq and deciding that it is better to have those weapons than to give them up.

To my mind, North Korea's demand for a non-aggression pact with the US is a red herring. Either the North knows that the US is not going to attack without cause, in which case the pact is pointless (or the demand has another purpose) or it genuinely fears US aggression. If the latter is true, the series of provocative actions taken in recent weeks makes no sense.

So if North Korea is determined to build a bomb - and that appears to be the reluctant view emerging among Korea specialists - then what is the diplomacy for?

One possibility is that negotiations will determine the pace of proliferation. North Korea might be willing to be bought off with a minimal arsenal in exchange for hefty financial support.

The more alarming possibility is that the North long ago decided to build nuclear weapons and is now playing for an even bigger prize - the US-South Korea alliance. The North is trying to make Washington look like the threat to peace and stability. The steady escalation in tension appears to be an attempt to provoke the US into taking military action and confirming that claim, possibly rupturing the US-South Korean alliance for good.

To prevent that, the US and South Korea must jointly declare a 'red line' - the point at which North Korean action is unacceptable. That will send an unmistakable signal to the North that its strategy will not work, and that it will be responsible for the consequences of its actions. The problem, of course, is that the South Korean and US governments might be unable to reach agreement. If so, the alliance is in trouble, but South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has declared that he will not tolerate North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons, so there is common ground between the two countries.

The US government must also call the North's bluff and talk. Failing to do so allows North Korea to look reasonable and the US obstinate.

There is a deep irony in all this. For more than a year, US non-governmental specialists have urged North Koreans to take up the US offer of talks 'anywhere, anytime and without precondition'. While the Bush administration may not have truly wanted to negotiate, the North Koreans could have called America's bluff and forced it to the table. But the North did not.

Now the roles are reversed. Pyongyang signals it is willing to talk and the US looks obstinate. The US should take this last chance to identify North Korea's real intentions; only by talking to the North can the US show the world the real threat to peace.

Brad Glosserman is director of research at Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu-based think-tank