It seems barely a day
passes without another North Korean threat, and coming after the
December launch of a long-range rocket and a third nuclear test in
February, the florid declarations from Pyongyang have gotten the
attention of the United States and its allies.
So why now, and how nervous should you be? Here are five things to consider.
It's an inside game ...
Numerous analysts on both
sides of the Pacific attribute the aggressive posture is part of an
attempt by North Korea's young leader Kim Jong Un to consolidate his power in the reclusive communist state founded by his grandfather.
"First and foremost, it's
for his domestic audience,
" said Jasper Kim, founder of the Asia-Pacific Global Research Group in Seoul, South Korea. "Because without the support of the military, he won't be around for much longer. And so he has to bolster his support with the brass."
" said Jasper Kim, founder of the Asia-Pacific Global Research Group in Seoul, South Korea. "Because without the support of the military, he won't be around for much longer. And so he has to bolster his support with the brass."
That's a tough sell for North Korea, "where age matters," he added. Kim is believed to be 29.
Peter Hayes, director of
the San Francisco-based Nautilus Institute, says there's also a debate
going on inside the North Korean leadership about the country's future
as a nuclear state.
One side wants "to be a
nuclear-armed state that is able to behave like the recognized, legal
nuclear weapons states and play their game and turn the tables on them,"
Hayes said.
"That is, in my view,
what is going on in the test and the rocket firing," he said. "The other
policy current is associated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
the international faction of the Korean Worker's Party, which is to
negotiate our way out of this mess."
A recent statement from
the foreign ministry declared that North Korea would not give up its
nuclear "sacred sword" as long as the United States remains hostile -- a
conditional statement that signals Pyongyang may be willing to give up
the bomb under the right circumstances, Hayes said.
... But the talk is bigger this time
"They say a lot of these
kind of things, so there's a tendency to treat it as the kind of stream
of crazy you get from North Korea," said Jeffrey Lewis, East Asia
director at the California-based James Martin Center for
Nonproliferation Studies. "But this is not normal. It is more
vitriolic."
A recent statement by a
top North Korean general specifically talked of hitting Washington with a
nuclear weapon in the event of war. "That's a pretty direct threat,"
Lewis said.
The North Korean
rhetoric ramped up after the February 12 nuclear test and the U.N.
sanctions that followed. Meanwhile, Victor Cha, director of Asian
Studies at Georgetown University and former director for Asian affairs
at the National Security Council said
that North Korea has carried out some sort of military provocation
within 14 weeks of every South Korean presidential inauguration since
1992. South Korean President Park Geun-hye took office on February 25,
"so start the clock," he said.
"What is not normal is
that the backdrop for this is about a year of very unpredictable
behavior by a new leadership, and a sequence of provocations that is
more concentrated over a period of time than we have seen in the last 20
years," he said. "So in that context, although to the average listener
these threats may seem like it's just the North Koreans firing their
mouths off again, for those of us that look at this more closely this is
a little bit different -- and more concerning."
Their nukes aren't useful ... yet
Most observers say
Pyongyang is still years away from having the technology to deliver a
nuclear warhead on a missile. While its scientists managed to lob a
small satellite into space in December, putting a working device atop a
missile, launching it and hitting a target with it is vastly more
complicated, Hayes said.
But Lewis, who also runs
the Arms Control Wonk blog, said the North Koreans may have tried to
"skip a step" with its early bomb tests and build one small enough to
fit on a missile. That might explain why its first two were relatively
unsuccessful.
"I think it's plausible
to think that they have a warhead design in which they are confident
that's under 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) -- still not as small as you
need to put on a missile and launch it to the U.S., but closer than
they were a couple of years ago," he said.
And while Washington
hasn't come out and said it, Lewis said the March 15 announcement that
the Pentagon will deploy additional ground-based missile interceptors on
the West Coast may signal that the North Koreans have deployed a
long-range missile they put on display at a parade in 2012. Lewis said
the announcement was "mostly for show," but could reflect real U.S.
concerns about those missiles.
"If you're going to spend $1 billion to deploy interceptors, they ought to come right out and say it," he said.
But nukes aren't everything
U.S. to boost missile defense
North Korea also has
plenty of conventional military firepower, including medium-range
ballistic missiles that can carry high explosives for hundreds of miles,
as well as thousands of cannons, rocket launchers and tanks massed
across the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South. Seoul is
within range of many of those weapons, and the North has threatened
before to turn the southern capital into a "sea of fire."
A North Korean
bombardment could kill tens of thousands of people in Seoul before South
Korean and U.S. retaliation could smash those guns, Hayes said. But
that would essentially launch a new Korean War -- one he said would end
badly for the long-impoverished North.
"They have less than 30
days of fuel and no ability to refuel," he said. "They've got to fight a
very short war before they're just walking to where they're going to
fight."
Pyongyang keeps its forces massed on the DMZ "precisely because they're weak," he said.
There are other avenues. When computers at South Korean banks and broadcasters began to crash on Wednesday,
suspicion initially fell on the North. South Korea has accused the
North of similar hacking attacks before, including incidents in 2010 and
2012 that also targeted banks and media organizations. Adam Segal, a
cybersecurity expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, said the
hacking is consistent with previous North Korean actions.
So now what?
For years, Pyongyang has
made deals to curtail its nuclear and missile work in exchange for
economic aid. Those deals have fallen apart when the North went on to
conduct other tests. The six-party talks among the North, its Asian
neighbors and the United States fizzled in 2007, and the North's first
attempt at a satellite launch scotched a previous U.S. plan to trade
hundreds of thousands of tons of food for a halt to weapons work.
"I think the problem
right now is that you cannot engage them directly after they have done a
series of ballistic missile and nuclear tests, and we are going into a
period of sanctions now through the U.N. Security Council resolution,"
Cha said.
"They don't want to give
up their nuclear weapons. They want to be able to have their cake and
eat it, too. And U.S. policy for the past quarter-century has been these
things are all on the table if you are willing to give up your nuclear
weapons," he said. "And so this is the problem. This is the dilemma
right now."
Meanwhile, the United
States is going ahead with joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises
amid the North Korean threats, adding a special little twist -- overflights by massive B-52 bombers. It's a move reminiscent of the worst days of the Cold War, and one Hayes called "tactically smart but strategically stupid."
"The North Koreans will
have noted it for what it is -- an affirmation of the fact that we're
playing the nuclear game with North Korea, and that's the last thing we
want to do," he said. "I think our posture is either to persuade
ourselves that we're hanging tough, which is a domestic game in
Washington, or to reassure our allies and dissuade South Korea from
going it alone with nuclear weapons."
But both Hayes and Lewis said there's little to lose by continuing to engage the North.
"We do what we can on defense, and if the North Koreans want to bargain or haggle, I'm prepared to do that," Lewis said.
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