The story: While top generals of the US military inform the Congress that "North Korea continues to enhance its ballistic missile capability and posse
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North Korea uses the bomb to protect itself from USA
- The story: While top generals of the US military inform the Congress that "North Korea continues to enhance its ballistic missile capability and possesses the technical capacity to present a real danger to the U.S. homeland as well as our allies and partners across the Indo-Pacific", the real story may be a bit different.
- What's going on: It is surely true that the North is continuing to enhance its military capabilities. Before agreeing to meet with then-U.S. President Donald Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un brought his nation within striking distance being able to target the continental United States. Although more testing is needed to perfect a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles, Pyongyang could hit American dependencies, such as Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, as well as Okinawa, Japan, which contains a Marine Expeditionary Force and many U.S. bases. (Other obvious targets of the North’s nuclear weapons are major U.S. allies, especially Seoul and Tokyo.)
- North Korea’s quest for nukes has helped make it an economic disaster, turning it into a global pariah and diverting resources from economic investment. That’s one reason the country, as Kim admitted in public recently, is facing another critical food crisis. However, it now is an unofficial member of the world’s exclusive nuclear club.
- Nevertheless, the mere possession of nuclear weapons does not mean it threatens America with them. North Korea makes no pretense of having global concerns, other than using diplomatic relations for profit when possible. In the abstract, the Kim dynasty has no interest in the United States or even the Western Hemisphere. Pyongyang’s priority is regional, especially avoiding domination by another power.
- Historical story of Korea: China exerted substantial influence (Russia less so) over the ancient Korean kingdom, long known as a shrimp among whales. Japan was a colonial oppressor during the first half of the 20th century. Most important today is North Korea’s relations with South Korea, as the two states remain engaged in a de facto civil war, short-circuited by outside intervention in 1953. One reason China’s importunities against North Korea’s nuclear program fall flat is because such weapons help Pyongyang preserve its independence from Beijing. But the United States intruded in Northeast Asia. America intervened in the Korean War, maintains forces in and around the Korean Peninsula, is prepared to intervene in a future conflict, and regularly threatens to wage preventive war. Washington’s willingness to routinely oust governments on Uncle Sam’s list makes the US dangerous. Washington can’t even be trusted to live up to a denuclearization accord, as Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi discovered a decade ago. The Iranians learned that one president’s word does not bind their successor.
- Deterrence: The North desires a deterrent. At the party congress earlier in 2021, Kim explained that “Korea was divided by the U.S., the world’s first user of nukes and war chieftain, and the DPRK has been in direct confrontation with its aggressor forces for decades, and the peculiarities of the Korean revolution and the geopolitical features of our state required pressing ahead uninterruptedly with the already-started building of nuclear force for the welfare of the people, the destiny of the revolution and the existence and independent development of the state.”
- South: Before the North developed nuclear weapons its primary deterrent against the United States was conventional and deployed against the South. Although the allies would win any war, the cost still would be high, especially to Seoul, just 30 or so miles from the Demilitarized Zone and vulnerable to artillery and missile attack.
- Estimates of weaponry: A recent Rand Corp./Asan Institute report projected a much larger arsenal within the decade: “To simplify doing so, we estimate … that, by 2027, North Korea could have 200 nuclear weapons and several dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and hundreds of theater missiles for delivering the nuclear weapons. [South Korea] and the United States are not prepared, and do not plan to be prepared, to deal with the coercive and warfighting leverage that these weapons would give North Korea.” Such a capability would move the North into the midrange of nuclear powers. Even then, there would be no direct threat to the United States. Pyongyang would still lack capability to initiate a first strike, and the North’s leader, whether Kim or someone else, wouldn’t plan national suicide by starting a war with Washington. However, the U.S. alliance with South Korea would be unsustainable.
- Future: So long as Kim (or his successor) believed that a war were winnable or a satisfactory settlement were possible, he likely would retain his nukes. However, if his forces were broken and in retreat, his calculations would change. With no saving deus ex machina, like China’s 1950 intervention, in prospect, there would be little reason to leave the nukes unused.
- Summary: North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal highlights the downside of America’s security guarantee for the South. Absent unlikely denuclearization via diplomacy, continuing to protect South Korea will increasingly expose the U.S. homeland to possible nuclear attack. Nothing at stake in the peninsula warrants taking that risk.
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