North Korea's Weapons Quest

This is a synopsis of an article in the Summer 2005 edition of The National Interest, pp. 49-52, entitled “North Korea’s Weapon Quest”, by Nicholas Eberstadt who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. I thank fellow poster fromtheright for pointing me toward this article. Comments are welcomed.

Mr. Eberstadt begins by stating that we should not be surprised by North Korea’s assertion that it has nuclear weapons as that has been its aim for decades; and not nuclear weapons only but it has also worked on chemical and biological weapons as well as ballistic missiles. He also states that these efforts aim to do much more than achieve blackmail.

Mr. Eberstadt states that North Korea has three aims:

1. The reunification of the Korean Peninsula under its rule.
2. To make up for the failed attack on South Korea in June 1950.
3. To conduct a war using its military which is the fourth largest in the world - a war which it considers a continuation of the 1950s conflagration which ended with a cease-fire agreement, not a peace agreement.

Mr. Eberstadt then goes into a discussion of why nuclear weapons matter. North Korea is maintaining its conventional military force using a Soviet-style economy that is failing. And North Korea could never reasonably expect to defeat the United States military in a conventional war. Therefore, in order to wield any leverage against the United States, North Korea needs nuclear weapons as well as ballistic missiles to deliver them to the shores of America. And its long-range Taepo Dong missiles either now or in the near future will be able to reach the United States mainland. North Korea already possesses SCUD-type missiles that could obliterate Seoul and intermediate range No Dong-type missiles that can hit Japan. And, apparently, the North Korean government does not consider nuclear weapons to be a weapon of last resort but an integral part of its planning.

Mr. Eberstadt then give five implications of this North Korean nuclear weapons policy:

1. Escalating international tensions are an actual aim to extract political and economic prizes from the rest of the world.
2. Nuclear weapon threats have already been used successfully by North Korea. The United States gave North Korea more than $1 billion in foreign aid from 1995 to 2004.
3. Nuclear weapons can give North Korea a deterrent to United States conventional military power. Former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry has warned that long-range nuclear missiles could cause the United States to hesitate during a crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
4. North Korea “does not now engage in win-win bargaining”. “The historical record is completely clear”, Mr. Eberstadt states, “Pyongyang believes in zero-sum solutions, preferring outcomes that entail not only DPRK[North Korean] victories, but also face-losing setbacks for its opponents.
5. Those expecting a peaceful denuclearization of North Korea through international diplomacy must consider how such an outcome would be looked at from a North Korean perspective today, not from the perspective of a North Korea that we wish existed today.

Mr. Eberstadt points out that if North Korea denuclearizes then its role in the world would be basically no larger than the size of the gross national product generated by its failing economy.

Since its founding the North Korean government has exacted hardships on its citizens to fulfill its vision of a reunited Korean Peninsula. Without this vision what would be the purpose for the North Korean government’s harsh domestic policies?

Mr. Eberstadt concludes by stating that “Kim Jong-il is doing his best to make the world safe for for the DPRK. Our task is to make the world safe from the DPRK. This will be a difficult, expensive and dangerous undertaking. For America and its allies, however, the costs and dangers of failure will be incalculably higher.”

 

It will be very difficult to use force against North Korea. We are probably going to have to use the Cold War strategy of containment to keep a lid on things on the Korean Peninsula.

Fromtheright, doesn't China have as much interest as we do in keeping a lid on North Korea? If the North Korean regime collapsed due to a miscalculation on Kim Jong-il's part, isn't China afraid of a massive flood of North Korean refugees coming across the border?

 

www.cfr.org/publication/8079/north_korea.html

 

Here is an excerpt from an article at:

http://cns.miis.edu/research/korea/dprkmil.htm


"From the foregoing analysis, it is easy to see why available military options look unattractive to U.S. planners. U.S. military strikes could probably destroy North Korea's future ability to produce and reprocess plutonium for use in nuclear weapons, preventing North Korea from moving from the one or two nuclear weapons that might be available now to the six to eight weapons that would be available if the spent fuel rods stored in Yongbyon were reprocessed to produce plutonium. These strikes could potentially remove North Korea's ability to produce large quantities of plutonium for the next several years. However an attack is highly unlikely to destroy any existing North Korean nuclear weapons capability. Because the facilities involved in North Korea's uranium enrichment program have not been located (and are likely in hardened or underground sites that are difficult to destroy), military strikes would be unable to prevent North Korea from producing fissile material via uranium enrichment. The available information is insufficient to determine how quickly North Korea might be able to produce additional nuclear weapons using uranium enrichment. However one source estimates that North Korea might be able to produce up to 100 kg of highly-enriched uranium per year (enough for about six nuclear weapons) within one to three years.[10]

The biggest problem with military options is the difficulty of preventing North Korean military retaliation. Defenses could not protect the South Korean population from North Korean artillery and missile strikes, while U.S. efforts to attack these weapons would escalate the conflict without removing North Korea's retaliatory capability. The United States would be forced to rely upon deterrence--possibly reinforced with explicit nuclear threats--to prevent or limit North Korean counter-attacks. North Korea would have the initiative and the ability to calibrate its response to maximize U.S. political and military problems. This might include threats or the actual use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. The most likely result would be North Korean conventional counter-attacks combined with threats to escalate toward a full-scale ground war and the possible use of weapons of mass destruction. If deterrence failed to prevent North Korean counter-attacks, the United States would be faced with a very unappealing military situation, especially at a time when many U.S. forces are deployed in the Persian Gulf.

The political consequences might be even more significant. South Korea and Japan strongly oppose military attacks against North Korean nuclear facilities, largely due to their vulnerability to North Korean retaliatory strikes. Their alliances with the United States are predicated on the belief that the presence of U.S. forces on their territory enhances their security. U.S. military actions that resulted in North Korean counter-attacks against their territory could destroy support for an alliance with the United States and end U.S. access to bases in South Korea and Japan. Military attacks might also fundamentally change the nature of U.S. relations with China and Russia, who strongly oppose resolving the nuclear crisis through military means. There is even some possibility of direct military conflict with China (which still has a security treaty with North Korea). More broadly, a U.S. pre-emptive strike against North Korean nuclear facilities would arguably violate international law and would convey the message that the United States can use nuclear threats to attack sovereign states with impunity. This would reinforce concerns many countries have about a growing trend towards unilateralism in American foreign policy. The result might only undermine the nuclear nonproliferation regime, but also damage the foundations of the current international order.

Given the high risks and limited ability of military strikes to destroy North Korean nuclear capabilities, it is easy to see why Bush administration officials, like the Clinton administration officials before them, have decided that military means are an unattractive way to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis."

 

The North Korean army would not be as easy to defeat as the Iraqi army.

Also, I don't think we can attack North Korea without Seoul being badly damaged. Sure, we could defeat North Korea but it would come at a high price for the South Koreans.

And if even one of North Korea's nukes survived our attack, well, I don't think we want to contemplate what would happen.

 

With the spread of technology, I don't think we can stop country after country from obtaining the ability to make the components for nuclear weapons. We have to make sure that everyone understands that their hostile use in a first strike would carry devastating consequences for any country that did so, or that assisted terrorists in doing so.