WASHINGTON – Just off the Korean Peninsula, the United States this week deployed a missile-tracking system that looks like a giant golf ball resting atop an oil platform. Towed from the navy yards in Hawaii, the Sea-Based-X Radar communicates missile trajectories to interceptors.
North Korea's recent volley of nuclear threats has stunned American officials. Not even the Soviet Union ever verbally threatened the U.S. like this. It has officials scrambling to reposition defence shields just in case the North Koreans are actually serious, which few people believe is the case, but you never know. The threats have been that shrill.
Last week the hermit state led by its boy dictator Kim Jong Un — otherwise known as the "Dear Leader" — moved a Musudan rocket, with an estimated range of about 4,000 kilometres, to the east coast. The U.S. believes it is now fuelled and ready for a test run expected on Monday, the 101 birthday celebrations of North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung, grandfather to Un. The state also is expected to test the Taepondong-2 with a range of 6,000 kilometres, enough to hit Alaska.
What can be done about this hermit state's nuclear aspirations and its threats of war?
Not much. North Korea's regime has made its nuclear program its life blood since it began in the late 1950s with help from the former Soviet Union. Since then this impoverished nation with its own uranium resources has successfully launched long range missiles. It also has tested three nuclear devices. The most recent was in February and caused an earthquake that registered 5.1 in magnitude. The estimated yield was six to seven kilotons, according to South Korean officials. The results are featured on stamps and billboards. Crowds in public squares cry out that they will never surrender their nukes.
A key uncertainty for the West is whether the north has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear warhead.
"They have nuclear devices that they can detonate for a test, but they haven't been able to master the very sophisticated technological process of miniaturizing a device to sit on a warhead," Terence Roehrig, professor of national security affairs and the director of the Asia-Pacific studies group at U.S. Navy War College in Newport, R.I., said in an interview.
Others aren't too sure about that. Even the U.S. Defence Department appears divided on this vital issue. In 2005, it's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) told Congress that North Korea could arm a missile, but then backtracked. This week a congressman read into the congressional record the following statement from a DIA report that has yet to be made public: "DIA assesses with moderate confidence the north currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles, however, the reliability will be low."
A surprised Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, refused to comment on the DIA assessment because, he told Congress, he hadn't seen it.
Experts, however, agree that whatever the status of North Korea's nuclear program, it fully intends to continue to develop a nuclear capability that will allow it to strike the "imperialist" United States.
"North Korea is trying to make the statement that it is a nuclear power, that it wants to be dealt with as a nuclear power, that that's part of its domestic prestige and also part of international prestige and leverage," Roehrig said. "It is very unlikely to me that North Korea will ever be willing to give up its nuclear weapons."
The U.S. and its Asia-Pacific allies are equally determined that North Korea does not develop a nuclear arsenal. Sanctions have failed and the U.S. Congress would never agree to a deal that would allow the north to retain nuclear weapons, Marcus Noland, a fellow at the Peterson Institute and author of several books on North Korea, said in an interview.
He said the possibility of a nuclear attack on the U.S. is "a fantasy" because North Korea does not have that capability.
"The real danger is a conventional military provocation, because the South Koreans have already publicly announced that they will respond in kind. They will escalate. And if the South Koreans fire back and if they go after higher level military units in North Korea, no one knows where that will end."
North Korea has about 1.1 million soldiers under arms of which 200,000 are "special operations troops that are highly trained and very good at what they do," Roehrig said. It also has a large tank and artillery force plus a multiple-rocket launching system that could quickly destroy Seoul. But their equipment is old and spare parts are few.
"Estimates are that North Korea would be able to rain down a lot of damage say in the first 30 days of an attack, but conventionally they would get hammered by the S.K. and U.S. response," he said. "I think North Korea knows that and that's why the nuclear capability is so important as it compensates for an aging conventional capability.
There's a semi-decadal rhythm to North Korea's threats. They come every five years coinciding with the arrival of a new South Korean president. This year also coincided with South Korea's joint military exercises with the United States, which included B-52 bombers, which the north found particularly provocative.
"So what we have now is a confluence of these two events," Noland said. "We have a new South Korean president and we have military exercises. So North Korean vitriol is expected, but this time around it really seems to have reached new heights."
In addition, it is believed that the ruling family of Kim Jong Un, who is the youngest of three brothers and only got the job after his eldest brother was arrested and interrogated in Tokyo in 2001, is still trying to consolidate its position within the communist regime, Roehrig said.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is off to China to persuade Chinese leaders to calm down its client state. But China finds itself with a tricky balancing act.
Chinese trade and aid keeps North Korea afloat. In exchange, North Korea is a useful pawn. "It gives China plausible deniability in North Korea's cooperation in the nuclear sphere and missile area with Pakistan and Iran, two countries that give the U.S. and India, China's chief strategic rivals, heartburn," Noland said.
But, he said, China also has to be concerned that North Korea's threats are pushing Asia-Pacific countries towards the U.S. and could result in South Korea and Japan developing their own nuclear deterrent. A February poll of 1,000 South Koreans showed 66.5 per cent support for obtaining nuclear weapons.
He went on to say that China fears that if it pressures North Korea too much the regime would collapse. "So paradoxically it is North Korea's weakness that gives it the licence to engage in these provocations because while China may disapprove and China may take mild actions to try to discipline North Korea, in the end China fears instability in North Korea more than it fears other outcomes associated with North Korean behaviour," he said.
wmarsden@postmedia.com
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