Last week the United States government changed North Korea’s status from potential threat to practical threat. CNN reports:
Washington (CNN)The US government is increasingly concerned that advances in North Korea’s weapons program have dramatically decreased the warning time for a nuclear attack on America or its allies, according to US officials.
The regime’s aggressive testing of medium- and long-range missiles — as well as its nuclear testing — makes North Korea now a “practical” threat and no longer a “theoretical” threat, in the words of one US official familiar with the latest US intelligence thinking.
Significantly, North Korea no longer cares if the world sees its test failures, according to the latest analyses, allowing Pyongyang to more openly, aggressively and repeatedly test all of the key components needed for an attack.
As a result, the regime has the ability to hold the US and allies “at risk” with nuclear weapons, the US official said.
On Wednesday North Korea conducted another missile test, this time launching a ballistic missile from a submarine into the waters between North Korea and Japan. From Reuters:
North Korea fired a submarine-launched missile on Wednesday that flew about 500 km (311 miles) towards Japan, a show of improving technological capability for the isolated country that has conducted a series of launches in defiance of UN sanctions.
Having the ability to fire a missile from a submarine could help North Korea evade a new anti-missile system planned for South Korea and pose a threat even if nuclear-armed North Korea’s land-based arsenal was destroyed, experts said.
The ballistic missile was fired at around 5:30 a.m. (2030 GMT) from near the coastal city of Sinpo, where a submarine base is located, officials at South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defence Ministry told Reuters.
The projectile reached Japan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) for the first time, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a briefing, referring to an area of control designated by countries to help maintain air security.
The missile was fired at a high angle, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported, an indication that its full range would be 1,000 km (620 miles) at an ordinary trajectory. The distance indicated the North’s push to develop a submarine-launched missile system was paying off, officials and experts said.
There was, apparently, no report of the class of the particular missile that was tested. It was presumably a KN-11 (also known as a Polaris-1, Bukgeukseong-1, or Nodong-D), the first completely successful test of the technology. Since North Korea is not known to possess nuclear submarines or diesel-electric submarines capable of reaching Hawaii or the Western U. S. seaboard, the capability does not pose a direct threat to the U. S. but it does pose a threat to the South Koreans and the Japanese.
I’m actually a bit surprised that the U. S. still hasn’t done what I suggested some time ago: use these missile tests as handy opportunities for testing missile defenses. My best guess is that we don’t want to aggravate the Chinese.
How do you deal with an enemy like North Korea that manifestly cannot be trusted, that cannot be deterred, and that is not a “rational actor”, at least not as we view reasonableness? North Korea’s only real patron is China and China appears to be willing to put up with any provocation from North Korea as long as the country doesn’t collapse entirely. China itself has been acting in a more provocative manner in the region.
If you ignore the Trotskyite “solution,” the post provides a key
piece of information. Must the American Empire continue to attempt full spectrum dominance in every corner of the world, and thus not deserve to possess it in any corner?
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/08/25/kore-a25.html
“As Washington has more aggressively pursued the “pivot,†Beijing has more publicly hit back. A commentary yesterday in the state-owned Xinhua news agency was sharply critical of the US role in stoking up tensions on the Korean Peninsula. While noting that the North Korean missile launch was “a new violation of UN resolutions,†the article stated that it was in response to this week’s joint US-South Korean military drills.
The comment warned that “Washington and Seoul are playing a dangerous game†by seeking to deter North Korea through sabre rattling. Their plan, it declared, was doomed to be wishful thinking, “as muscle-flexing leads to nowhere but a more anxious, more agitated and thus more unpredictable Pyongyang.†It made an appeal for South Korea to pursue its security though “good neighbourly and friendly relations with its neighbours, rather than a bunch of US made [THAAD] missiles.â€
The ultimate deterrence is Kim’s knowledge that, if he tries something nuclear, no more Kim.
China really has all the leverage with the regime, not us.
Wonder if anyone in the puzzle palace understands action begets reaction and the old saw about cornering rats.
BTW, shooting down another country’s test launch of an unarmed missile in international air space is a bad idea, the DPRK could have an oops moment of their own, etc.
That WSWS article was pretty funny, probably unintentionally so.
Anyway, I think North Korea can certainly be deterred, but in a lot of ways the shoe is on the other foot. Until probably the mid-1990’s or so, North Korea was the one that had to be deterred as they maintained a high level of military readiness and were poised to reinvade the south on short notice. After the Cold War ended and as time went on, the balance of power shifted considerably. The US did not feel it was necessary to have troops directly on the DMZ anymore, nor did we think we needed tactical nukes on Korean soil.
Desert Storm, OIF and other displays of modern military tactics and power put to rest the notion that North Korea could ever win in a war with the South – their threat of invasion became a hollow one as everyone realized that if they tried to unify the peninsula again by force, then North Korea would be conquered. That comparative weakness continues and which is why they’ve thrown all their eggs into the nuclear basket.
So, it is no longer American power deterring North Korea from a conventional invasion, it is North Korean nukes deterring the South and the US from getting any ideas about regime change – not that anyone is really interested in that, even the neocons. The cost is too great and South Korea doesn’t really want to pay to bring the North out of the stoneage.
So to me the danger is the potential for a miscalculation that would back the North into a corner where they believe (rightly or wrongly) that they have no choice and are doomed. In that case, they are likely to go down fighting, to no one’s benefit. That’s why our responses to their actions are comparatively muted – the cost of a crisis is too great, but we can’t simply ignore the North either, so we try to surf the line.
One other thing, our alliance in Korea is as much about deterring South Korea as it is the North. If we threw Seoul under the bus tomorrow and withdrew all our forces and, by extension, our nuclear umbrella, the South would go nuclear in a heartbeat. They certainly have the capability. Instead we keep a conventional tripwire force, extend our nuclear umbrella and build anti-missile defenses on South Korea territory.
Any war with North Korea is, of necessity, a war with China. China will not allow the Korean peninsula to be unified under anyone other than an open Chinese ally. They would even accept a South Korean conquest of the North if South Korean joined them.
What’s your evidence for that? Quite to the contrary I think the Chinese would accept a unified neutral Korea. What they won’t accept is a unified Korea that’s an American ally.
China’s main objective WRT North Korea is that it not collapse and send a stream of refugees into China. They already have a Korean refugee problem. Its second objective is to avoid a unified Korea that’s an American ally.
Quite to the contrary I think the Chinese would accept a unified neutral Korea. What they won’t accept is a unified Korea that’s an American ally.
Well thank God then that our foreign policy establishment hasn’t done anything that would make a country like China think we would step on their national prerogatives close to their homeland. You know, something stupid like, say, toppling a pro-Russian regime in a country that Russian sees as traditionally *Russian* in order to put a bunch of (Non-Illinois) Nazis in charge. ‘Cause if, like, we did that, the Chinese would, like, never trust us. Plus, it would be stupid on its own terms. Right? RIGHT?!
“How do you deal with an enemy like North Korea that manifestly cannot be trusted, that cannot be deterred, and that is not a “rational actorâ€, at least not as we view reasonableness? ”
Secretly send them $400MM in cash by plane??