Our Views

An African solution

Instead, the duty falls to fellow West Africans operating under U.N. auspices, a contingent largely composed of Nigerians with additional troops from Ghana, Senegal and Mali. The first peacekeepers arrived in Monrovia on Monday and a total of 5,000 are due by the end of the month.

The troops' first duty is to secure the airport, ensure that food supplies are distributed and then expedite the departure of Charles Taylor, the latest in a line of warlords who have misruled the country. Waiting outside the capital are the grandi-osely named rebels, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, who don't look like a much better bet to govern than Taylor.

Restoring order might be the least of the peacekeepers' chores; the toughest task will be making way for a strong, stable successor government, a luxury denied Liberia since a military coup in 1980.

Although 2,300 U.S. Marines are on ships offshore, the Bush administration has been reluctant to commit them, understandably wary of overstretching an already strained military. The United States should offer what support and logistical help it can to the U.N. peacekeepers, but it is important that this be a West African mission.

The Nigerian troops are U.N.-trained and fresh from a peacekeeping operation in Sierra Leone. Other African troops have received training from U.S. Special Forces under a program begun during the Clinton administration with the worthwhile goal of creating African solutions for African problems.

The major African nations need to develop a capability and tradition of peacekeeping forces, because sad experience has shown there's no lack of need for them on that troubled continent.

The key is China

North Korea has dropped its insistence on dealing exclusively with Washington and agreed to six-nation talks that will include China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. It's a small foreign policy victory. All it does is get North Korea to the table. The larger question of what might or may not be an expansive nuclear weapons program remains unresolved.

Clearly, the North Koreans had hoped to use at least the threat of that weapons program to blackmail the United States into giving food, fuel and funds to that impoverished nation and a display of respect to its crazy-dangerous Stalinist leader, Kim Jong Il.

North Korea is still insisting that the United States sign a nonaggression pact, which Washington would be foolish to do until Pyongyang dismantles its nuclear arms program in "a verifiable and irreversible manner," to use the State Department's phrasing.

The key to solving the problem of North Korea, and of one way or another ending Kim's repressive rule, is and always has been China.

Beijing is now North Korea's only friend and very likely could bring down Kim's regime by cutting off its aid and throwing open its border to refugees. But Beijing has been extremely reluctant to use its leverage.

Under its new president, Hun Jintao, the Chinese are showing a promising willingness to face up to the reality that North Korea is their problem as well as ours. The goal of both nations is a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, and to realize that objective China must be part of any negotiations and indeed may have to take the lead in laying down the law to its bellicose little neighbor.

The art of the leak

The story, halfheartedly denied, effectively makes Powell and Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage lame ducks. It will be hard for Powell to carry the day on policy issues when foreign leaders, Congress and his rivals at the Pentagon believe he will be gone the morning after the inauguration, Jan. 21, 2005. Even if Powell forcefully said he was staying, few would believe him.

Re-elected presidents customarily reshuffle their Cabinets for a second term, but rarely disclose their plans in advance. Given Powell's other interests, it would not have been a great surprise if he left State after one term as secretary, but announcing Cabinet changes is the president's prerogative. This White House prizes its secrecy and close hold on information, so it is probably not a happy scene at the ranch right now.

Washington being Washington, any talk of a vacancy also fuels endless speculation about a replacement.

The timing of the leak suggests a certain cleverness. With the president, Congress and the Supreme Court all out of town for the month of August, Washington doesn't have much else to talk about.

Look Back

From Birmingham Post-Herald files: