How to handle North Korean provocations after latest missile fire

Photo : Screenshot from video footage of the missile test on July 4, 2017/CNN-KCTV

The successful test of a two-stage Intercontinental Ballistic Missile has launched North Korea back into the headlines, and to the attention of nations bordering the Pacific Ocean.  Pyongyang’s latest missile test on July 4^th coincided with Independence Day in the United States, and there was little doubt that the regime of North Korean Leader Kim Jung Un intended that its shock waves would have an impact in Washington.

Observers fear that North Korea’s next step may be another nuclear weapons test – the sixth, following two tests last year.  No one knows what Pyongyang will do if it is fully capable of launching a nuclear missile in an attack against a foreign target.

US officials, tracking the flight of the latest test missile, say North Korea is now within striking range of Alaska and much of western Canada.  Pyongyang’s news agency said the missile launch was the “final step” in developing a capability to “strike anywhere on Earth.”

What are the reactions in Washington, and in Beijing?  And what are the motives of the regime in Pyongyang?  What happens next?

U.S. Response

The Trump administration, in its public statements and private diplomatic messages, has the stated policy that North Korea will not be permitted to pose a nuclear threat to peace in Asia and the Pacific region.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the missile test “a new escalation of the threat to the United States,” saying the administration will “enact stronger measures.”

Messages of alarm and concern in Washington have been relayed to the regime in Pyongyang, to the leaders of China and Russia and Japan, to the peoples of Asia, and to all those concerned about the potential of use of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world.  These messages and warnings are unequivocal – as clear, in their own way, as the messages that have been conveyed for more than 30 years.  The problem now, as in past decades, is that those messages don’t seem to make a difference.  This grim reality emerges despite exhaustive attempts by previous US administrations to dampen North Korea’s hostility and channel its energy to more peaceful pursuits.

These efforts focused, from the mid-1980s through 2002, on public endorsement of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT); on quiet diplomatic initiatives by a half-dozen American presidents; and, intermittently since 2003, on the Six Party Talks involving the US, North and South Korea, Russia, Japan, and China.

On numerous occasions agreements were reached with Pyongyang – to allow international inspections, to collaborate within United Nations frameworks, to abide by terms of treaties limiting development of nuclear weapons.  Periods of calm would follow – then fragile agreements would collapse, with North Korea insisting that its rights had been trampled and that it had no alternative but to defend its national interests.

The US and its UN allies would try again.  Following missile tests by Pyongyang earlier this year Defense Secretary James Mattis reflected widespread frustration, saying, “the era of strategic patience is over.”

North Korea’s belligerence

The long “era of strategic patience” was preceded by an era of warfare and open hostility.  At the end of World War Two the defeat of Japan meant its loss of control over the Korean Peninsula.  Terms of Japanese surrender gave control of the North to Soviet forces, and the South to the US and its allies.  In the aftermath of war, efforts at peaceful Korean unification failed, and in 1950 Northern troops with Chinese and Soviet backing invaded the South.  Three years of war left several million dead and wounded, the Peninsula devastated – portions of the North were totally destroyed – and a ceasefire without a peace treaty that has kept opposing armies apart for the past 64 years.

Since its founding North Korea’s one-family dictatorship has ruled harshly at home, while periodically shutting out most of the rest of the world – a consistent hallmark of the reigns of Kim Il Sung from the late 1940s until his death in 1994; Kim Jung Il from 1994 until his death in 2011; and the current leader since then, Kim Jung Un.  Nuclear weapons development has been a continuous goal during much of North Korea’s history, especially since the mid-1980s.

In 1985 Kim Il Sung agreed to most of the terms of the 1968 NPT, but in 2002 his son, Kim Jung Il, ordered international inspectors out of the country and began the process of re-starting his government’s nuclear reactors.  Despite protests, North Korea pulled away from the NPT the following year – and then began its gradual and secret efforts at creating a stockpile of weapons-grade nuclear fuel.  This was detected by the US and other countries, prompting overtures to negotiate a moratorium on weapons development.  As in previous periods of mutual distrust talks would start, then stall; agreements would be reached, then be set aside.  After Kim Jung Un took power in 2011, despite international protests, North Korea conducted a failed missile launch – followed a few months later by the successful launch into orbit of a satellite, using a missile capable of carrying a nuclear payload.  This marked the beginning of the current era of alarm, distrust, and uncertainty.

In the past five years the regime has conducted more missile launches and five nuclear weapons tests – followed, in each instance, by sharp criticism from the United Nations, China, the US, and South Korea. Test missiles have been launched from stationary sites, harder-to-detect mobile platforms, and submarines, revealing gradual improvements in missile technology.  At the same time, nuclear weapons development has moved ahead, as North Korean scientists have built up supplies of nuclear fuel.

A year ago, Kim Jung Un put his country’s nuclear weapons program in a defensive context; it would not, he said, use nuclear weapons “unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces.”  A year later, following the recent ICBM missile launch, Pyongyang’s official news agency emphasized this point – saying North Korea’s aim is to “fundamentally terminate the US nuclear war threats, and credibly protect the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and the region.”

Former CIA Director James Clapper says Pyongyang perceives its nuclear weapons and missile programs as the regime’s “ticket to survival.”  The contrasting perception of the US and other countries is that North Korea, not likely to be satisfied simply with survival, may decide to use a nuclear arsenal in acts of aggression, or as a means of blackmailing other nations to obtain resources or strategic advantages.

China’s Role in the Standoff

For decades, North Korea has relied on China for both resources and strategic advantages – including food, medicine, industrial plants, and military supplies.  Just as China has fostered this relationship for its own strategic advantages, so has Beijing been made uncomfortable in its role as a braking influence on the runaway tactics and desires for legitimacy by Pyongyang’s erratic leaders.

This pattern began in the tumultuous period after Mao Tse Tung’s communist revolution in the late 1940s, and the standoff in the 1950s following the Korean War.  China and the Soviet Union initially partnered in helping North Korea develop an industrialized central economy, an alliance that survived for decades.  The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was followed by the collapse of the North Korean economy, and its dependency for support shifted entirely to Beijing.  By then, China was a decade into its experimentation with market economics – and just as it was making headway in developing trust among new trading partners around the world, it found itself the principal benefactor of a neighboring regime that had shut out the rest of the world and had moved far along in its development of nuclear weapons.

Despite periods of tension and turmoil, China has since then remained North Korea’s economic lifeline, helping it to survive sanctions imposed by the international community while trying to influence its threatening policies and weapons development programs.  Citing sanctions limits, China shut off purchases of coal from the North after recent missile tests, sparking an acrimonious response from Pyongyang, but it has also occasionally expanded trade, raising eyebrows – and criticisms – at the State Department and the White House.

China’s basic strategy, experts generally agree, is to prop up North Korea while working to contain its ability to mount a nuclear threat.  This assessment holds that Beijing has two broad, long-term strategic goals:

• first, to prevent an economic and political collapse of the Pyongyang regime that could result in unification with South Korea’s robust economy, military capabilities, and reliance on American ground, air, and naval forces;
• second, to develop military and economic hegemony throughout the western Pacific region by expanding its trade and naval presence in areas long dominated by the United States.

China’s pursuit of these strategic goals will by stymied, the reasoning goes, if North Korea’s bellicose attitudes – or, far worse, its use of nuclear weapons – prompts further sanctions or military intervention by the United States and other countries.  How far will Beijing permit North Korea to go?  We don’t know.

What to expect next?

Diplomats, East Asian regional experts, experienced observers, and intelligence agencies have differing opinions on the range of North Korean issues.  There is consensus, however, on a central point – that there is no clear path to meet the current and growing threat posed by Kim Jung Un’s warlike regime in Pyongyang.

More than consensus, there is universal agreement on the point that a simple police action against North Korea could not likely be contained, that a wider war could follow, and that an outbreak of war in the close quarters of the Korean Peninsula would be disastrous.  Such a war would be a catastrophe of historic proportions:  millions in both North and South Korea could be killed, wounded, or displaced; major cities and national economies could be destroyed; China and the United States – and perhaps Russia and other nations – could be drawn into the conflict.  The possibilities are frightening.

These same warnings and alarms and concerns have been voiced for decades; yet, the isolated regime in Pyongyang continues its determined pursuit of nuclear weapons and an ICBM delivery system, with a logic that defies reason and an ultimate purpose that is unknown.  It’s not at all clear as to what’s coming next.