The World

By Daniel Dombey, US Diplomatic Correspondent

You can understand why the latest flare-up of tension in the Korean peninsula has left Barack Obama none too happy.

Obama has had a pretty poor November so far, what with historic reverses in the midterm elections and a wretched G20 in Seoul where, rather than rallying the rest of the world against China’s currency policy, he found himself at the receiving end of several countries’ strictures about the Fed’s attempts to reflate the stumbling US economy.

The president finally had a decent couple of days in Lisbon last weekend, where a Nato summit rallied round US plans for Afghanistan and missile defence and  supported his attempts to get reluctant Republican Senators to ratify his showpiece Start treaty with Russia.

But the respite didn’t last long.

North Korea, a problem the administration sometimes seems it would prefer not to think about, has hijacked the agenda, first with disclosure of a big new modern nuclear facility, and then, with a mortar assault on a South Korean island.

This isn’t just another headache for the US – the dilemma North Korea represents goes deeper than that. Just listen to what the Obama administration itself says.

Consultations are beginning at the UN over sanctioning North Korea over its new enrichment plant, or its artillery barrage, or both. But as Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman, acknowledged: “It’s hard to pile more sanctions upon the North than are already there, and yet it seems as though they are not foolproof . . . This is a regime that is determined to bypass the sanctions, to not abide by its international obligations.”

Then, there’s the problem of knowing what this most unpredictable of regimes is up to. As Sung Kim, the US envoy to the six party talks on North Korea’s programme, said of the enrichment plant: “We didn’t know what was actually inside the building.”

Adm Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, also acknowledges the big problems the US faces in finding out what is happening in the hermit kingdom. “Penetration of the North Koreans, in terms of intelligence capabilities, is very, very difficult,” he said at the weekend.

In fact, the unsuspected size and modernity of the enrichment facility is testimony to more than just the limitations of US spies and satellites. By setting up such a plant – which can enrich uranium to serve either as fuel or fissile material – North Korea has established an alternative route to the bomb.  (The country already has a small stockpile of plutonium.)

Since Pyongyang is already well known as a serial proliferator, the lesson is clear – ignoring it is not an option.

But what to do? The US wants more pressure on the country. But China, the country with most sway over North Korea, is pushing instead for the swift resumption of the six party talks – a move the US is loath to take unless Pyongyang makes concessions beforehand.

The administration says it doesn’t want to reward North Korea merely avoiding bad behaviour if its existing nuclear weapons capability remains untouched. The US has gone that path in the past and as Robert Gates, defence secretary, says, it is “tired of buying the same horse twice.” The problem is that that might be the only deal on offer.

So it’s not so surprising Obama seems to have gone the extra mile to avoid any fun this week, by staying home at the White House, rather than heading off for the holiday to his rural retreat at Camp David. It’s the sort of conundrum that would overshadow any President’s Thanksgiving. At stake is merely one of the world’s worst, most unpredictable regimes and its most terrifying weapons.