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By Root 1766 0

defueling of the Yongbyon reactor in early May was now spreading to an increasingly aroused American public. In June, 46 percent of a nationwide sample of public opinion sponsored by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal said North Korea's nuclear development was the "most serious foreign policy issue facing the United States today," outdistancing the next most serious issue, instability in Russia, by more than three to one. At the same time, a nationwide poll for Time and CBS News reported that a majority (51 percent) favored military action to destroy North Korea's nuclear facilities if the DPRK continued to refuse international inspection, and a slimmer majority (48 percent yes, 42 percent no) said it was "worth risking war" to prevent North Korea from manufacturing nuclear weapons.

The predominant opinion of national columnists and commentators was that the United States should take a tough line with Pyongyang. Among the most prestigious voices were those of two former Bush administration officials, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former undersecretary of state Arnold Kanter, the official who had met the North Koreans in New York in early 1992. In The Washington Post on June 15, the day Jimmy Carter crossed into North Korea, they advocated a U.S. military strike to destroy the reprocessing plant at Yongbyon unless the DPRK was prepared to permit "continuous, unfettered" international monitoring. "The stakes could hardly be higher. The time for temporizing is over," Scowcroft and Kanter wrote.

At the Pentagon, Secretary Perry had requested and received a detailed contingency plan for bombing the Yongbyon facilities and was told that the U.S. Air Force had the technical ability to take them out quickly and effectively, without spreading radiation far and wide. Perry's fear, as before, was that such an air strike "was highly likely to start a general war" on the peninsula. "We were looking for ways of avoiding a general war, not ways of starting a general war," he explained later.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon argued that if North Korea really meant that sanctions would be an act of war, it was incumbent on the United States to be ready. Consequently, in mid-June Perry and the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up three options for increasing U.S. forces in and around Korea to heighten readiness further. General Luck estimated, on the basis of the experience in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, that due to the colossal lethality of modern weapons in the urban environments of Korea, as many as 1 million people would be killed in the resumption of full-scale war on the peninsula, including 80,000 to 100,000 Americans, that the out-of-pocket costs to the United States would exceed $100 billion, and that the destruction of property and interruption of business activity would cost more than $1,000 billion (one trillion) dollars to the countries involved and their immediate neighbors. The extent of the death and destruction, in the American calculus, would depend to a great degree on the speed with which a counterattack could be mounted by the U.S. reinforcements called for in the war plan.

Option number one as drawn up at the Pentagon was the immediate dispatch to Korea of around 2,000 additional troops of the kind needed for rapid deployment of larger forces later-additional logistics, administrative, and supply elements-and additional counterbattery radars and reconnaissance systems, which had been most urgently requested by General Luck.

Option number two, which Perry and the Joint Chiefs of Staff favored, added squadrons of front-line tactical aircraft, including F117 Stealth fighter-bombers and long-range bombers, to be based near Korea, available for immediate action; the deployment of several battalions of combat-ready U.S. ground troops, principally to augment artillery forces; and the stationing of a second U.S. aircraft-carrier battle group in the area, to reinforce the powerfully armed carrier group that had already been moved close to Korea. This would involve deployment of more than 10,000 U.S. troops,