In the Koreas,five possible ways to war

The White House betting is that the latest crisis will also abate without much escalation. The big risk,as always,is what happens if the North Koreans make a major miscalculation. Sixty years ago, Kims father,Kim Il-sung,thought the West wouldnt fight when he invaded the South. The result was the Korean War.

Whats more,the dynamic does feel different from recent crises. The South has a hardline government whose first instinct was to cut off aid to the North. At the same time,the North is going through a murky,ill-understood succession crisis.

President Obama has made it clear he intends to break the old cycle. For 15 years at least,the North Koreans have been in the extortion business,and the US has largely played along. Thats over, said a US official.

The encouraging thought is the history of cooler heads prevailing in every crisis since the Korean War. There was no retaliation after a 1968 raid on South Koreas presidential palace; or when the North seized the American spy ship Pueblo days later; or in 1983 when much of the South Korean cabinet was killed in an explosion in Burma; or in 1987 when a South Korean airliner was blown up by North Korean agents,killing all 115 people on board.

So what if this time is different? Here are five situations in which good sense might not prevail.

An incident at sea

Ever since an armistice ended the Korean War,the two sides have argued and skirmished over the precise location of the Northern Limit Line,which divides their territorial waters. That was where naval patrol ship Cheonan was sunk in March. Another incident could draw in the United States,South Koreas chief ally,which is responsible for taking command if a major conflict breaks out.

What worries some officials is the chance of an intelligence failure in which the West misreads North Koreas willingness and ability to escalate.Until a five-nation investigation concluded that the Cheonan had been torpedoed,South Korea did not think the Norths mini-submarine fleet was powerful enough to sink a fully armed South Korean warship.

Shelling the DMZ

American and South Korean war planners still work each day to refine how they would react if North Koreas 1.2 million-man army poured over the Demilitarised Zone DMZ. In one retaliatory measure last week,South Korea threatened to resume propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers at the DMZ. The threat was enough to drive the Norths leadership to threaten to shell the loudspeakers.

A power struggle or coup

Ask American intelligence analysts what could escalate this or a future crisis,and they name a 27-year-old Kim Jong-un,the youngest of Kim Jong-ils three sons,and the fathers choice to succeed him. Little is known about him,but his main qualifications for the job may be that he is considered less corrupt or despised than his two older brothers.

We cant think of a bigger nightmare than a third generation of the Kim family running the country with an iron hand,throwing opponents into the countrys gulags,and mismanaging an economy that leaves millions starving said an American official. One line of analysis is that the younger Kim has to put a few notches in his belt by ordering some attacks on the South. Another possibility is that internal fighting over succession could bring violence inside North Korea,tempting outside powers to intervene.

An internal collapse

Americas most enduring North Korea strategy isnt a strategy at all; its a prayer for the countrys collapse. Harry Truman,Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy hoped for it. Dick Cheney tried to speed it. The regime has survived them all. But could the North collapse in the midst of the power struggle? Sure.

And that is the one scenario that most terrifies the Chinese. It also explains why they keep pumping money into a neighbour they can barely stand. For China,a collapse would mean millions of hungry refugees; it would also mean the possibility of having South Koreas military,and its American allies,nervously contending with the Chinese over who would occupy the territory of a fallen regime. China is interested in North Koreas minerals; the South Koreans may be as interested in North Koreas small nuclear arsenal.

A nuclear provocation

With tensions high,American spy satellites are looking for evidence that the North Koreans are getting ready to test another nuclear weaponas they did in 2006 and 2009. It is a sure way to rattle the neighbourhood. In the past,such tests have ratcheted up tension. Far more worrisome would be a decision by Pyongyang to export its nuclear technology and a failure by Americans to notice.

For years,American intelligence agencies missed evidence that the North was building a reactor in the Syrian desert,near the Iraq border. The Israelis found it,and wiped it out in an air attack in 2007. Now,the search is on to find out if other countries are buying up North Korean technology or,worse yet,bomb fuel. There are worries about Myanmar.

In short,the biggest worry is that North Korea could decide that teaching others how to build nuclear weapons would be the fastest,stealthiest way to defy a new American president who has declared that stopping proliferation is Job No. 1.