ALEXANDER VIDRA — If you’ve been paying attention to international events, you’re probably focused on the war in Ukraine. If not Ukraine, perhaps you’re following the events in China as Xi Jinping just secured another five-year term in power or Iran as the demonstrations against the regime continue. But don’t ignore North Korea. Its threat is growing–and Americans should be concerned.
North Korea is arguably the world’s strangest country: the only Communist-hereditary monarchy in the world. Its current leader, Kim Jong-un, is the third generation of his family to rule, and he presides over a bizarre cult of personality with few parallels anywhere. The Kim family dynasty consistently maintains power and suppresses dissent. What the rulers failed to do is grow the economy. They can barely feed their own people, and the country has plunged into a decades-long famine.
Yet, while North Korea can’t provide what its population needs to prosper, it takes special care of its armed forces, which are one of the bulwarks of the regime. North Korea has long had one of the world’s largest armies. Now, it has a growing WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal that includes dozens of nuclear warheads and a growing number of delivery systems. In 2022 alone, North Korea has tested at least 55 missiles, ranging from short-range, tactical missiles designed to hit targets in South Korea to long-range missiles that can hit anywhere in the continental United States. In fact, North Korea is one of only three countries in the world (the others are Russia and China) that can hit the US with nuclear ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles).
Why does Kim need all these weapons? Part of the reason is for defense; Kim has seen what happens to dictators like Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi who give up WMD programs. They get overthrown and killed. He doesn’t want to suffer that fate, and nuclear weapons are his insurance policy to stay in power and stay alive. He figures no one will dare attack a nuclear-armed state, and he is probably right. Look at what’s happening in Ukraine: NATO countries are supplying Ukraine but are shying away from a direct confrontation with Russia (for example, they won’t impose a no-fly zone), because they don’t want to risk World War III. This is a lesson that Kim has taken to heart.
However, some Korea experts suggest there also may be an offensive dimension to Kim’s WMD program. They argue that Kim may be hoping to coerce South Korea into concessions–perhaps even ultimately to reunification in some kind of confederation that Pyongyang would dominate–and that nuclear weapons are Kim’s trump card. South Korea is a non-nuclear nation, so it can’t deter a North Korean nuclear attack. South Korea has always counted on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, but Kim may calculate that the United States won’t come to South Korea’s aid if it risks a nuclear strike on Washington or New York.
Adding to these concerns is the fact that Kim, in recent months, has been asserting a right to launch preemptive nuclear strikes if his country’s interests are threatened. Indeed, North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament recently passed a law that allows the “first use” of nuclear weapons, even if the North does not face a nuclear attack. Kim has also stated that he will never negotiate away his nuclear arsenal, so hopes to revive a dialogue, as Donald Trump did in 2018, are now clearly a non-starter. Little wonder why many South Koreans are now saying their nation needs its own nuclear weapons.
So what is President Biden supposed to do? He doesn’t have any good options. He is not going to launch a preemptive strike against North Korea and risk a nuclear war. But he also can’t lift sanctions on North Korea and pursue a policy of outreach given that Kim has shown his unwillingness to make any concessions. Some Korean policy experts have suggested in recent years that the US should downsize its diplomatic goal from “denuclearization” to a “nuclear freeze,” but even that more modest objective seems too ambitious for the present moment, given the speed of the North’s nuclear buildup.
Biden really has no option: He needs to stick with the current policies of sanctions, deterrence, and containment. Those are pretty much the same approaches the US used during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and they are relevant again in dealing with the Stalinist dictatorship in North Korea. Washington needs to signal that we are not going to forcibly overthrow Kim, but we are also not going to let him coerce his neighbors. Biden is sending the right signal by restarting the large-scale US-South Korea military exercises that Trump suspended during his summits with Kim.
The US could do even more to strengthen deterrence if it can somehow bridge the long-standing divide between Tokyo and Seoul. Just having South Korea and Japan share intelligence and better integrate their missile defense systems would pay major dividends. However, that’s hard to do as so many South Koreans are still upset about the lingering legacy of Japan’s brutal colonial occupation, and Japan has never fully disowned its imperial regime.
This is a tough nut to crack–but it’s easier to imagine progress in shuttle diplomacy between Tokyo and Seoul than it is to imagine progress in dealing with, say, Iran’s nuclear program or Russia’s war in Ukraine. So, this should be a higher priority for the Biden administration. There is a lot going on in the world, but we can’t ignore the growing threat from North Korea–a threat not only to South Korea or Japan but one directly to the United States.
The Dutch Report 