When an 'act of war' doesn't end in war

A hostile foreign power sinks a warship, killing scores of crew members. What will be the result?

This is not a backgrounder on the USS Maine, which sunk in Havana Harbor in 1898. In that case, the result, despite a lack of evidence that Spain had anything to do with the U.S. battleship's sinking, was "a splendid little war," which the United States won handily. No, this case involves two nations with the same last name — Korea — and two very different economic and political systems. On March 26, the South Korean Navy ship Cheonan was struck by an underwater explosion, killing 46 sailors and sending the ship to the bottom of the ocean. Two months later, investigators have announced that the ship was sunk by a torpedo that had originated in North Korea. Despite the carefully reconstructed evidence, North Korea denies having any responsibility for the sinking, which occurred in waters near the two countries' international boundary.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has officially blamed North Korea and has announced a series of economic measures and restrictions that fall far short of a declaration of war, which would seem to be warranted after this classic "act of war." For its part, North Korea warns that any sanctions against the secretive, closed Stalinist regime would mean "all-out war."

The Korean peninsula, divided since the end of World War II into a repressive, communist North and a Western-leaning and economically vibrant South, personifies the Cold War maxim of "mutually assured destruction." That doctrine held that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could risk war because each held sufficient numbers of nuclear weapons to obliterate the other, even in a retaliatory strike after an initial attack. In Korea, nuclear weapons are not the key to the MADness, although North Korea possesses a few nuclear weapons, and U.S. troops stationed in and near South Korea have nuclear capabilities. Even a conventional war between the Koreas would be madness, as the world learned in 1950-53. All-out war would devastate both countries, and although South Korea might ultimately prevail, its economic advancements of the past half-century would be wiped away. U.S. war game exercises conclude that North Korea's defeat might unleash chaos that would envelope the whole reunion and be felt around the globe.

Maybe that's why South Korea, recognizing that it has been attacked by a foreign power whose sinking of a sovereign warship was, indeed, an "act of war," is willing to settle for something less than a retaliatory military strike. President Lee wants an apology and punishment for those responsible. What remains mysterious is why Kim Jong Il's North Korean regime would so foolhardily commit an act of war and thereby risk the obliteration of two nations.