North Korea tested another inter-continental ballistic missile this week. The Hwasong-14. It only flew in a trajectory that took it 2,300 miles into space and 620 miles down-range to splash in the ocean well off the coast of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost major island. Based on expert assessments, however, this latest creation of the three-generation Kim dynasty is capable of reaching not just Alaska or Hawaii, but Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C.
So, as has been predicted as far back as 2001, working ICBMs are now being built in this relic of the Cold War. And yet satellite photos still show almost no city lights brightening the North Korean night, a stark contrast with all the nations around it, including the glittering South from which the so-called Hermit Kingdom has been divided for seven decades. Another nation in which bloated military spending takes precedence over real human needs.
The latest launch—North Korea’s 14th test this year—rated an “Uh-oh” headline from the editors at Vox. There, Alex Ward was first to report the apparent capabilities of the missile, which seems to be the same model as the one launched 25 days ago to considerable murmuring in Washington:
The missile was fired late Friday night North Korea time, and was in the air for around 45 minutes, according to analysts. Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on North Korea’s missile program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, estimates that the missile is capable of traveling around 10,000 km, or around 6,200 miles.
A few hours later, The New York Times reported:
“Depending on how heavy a warhead it carries, this latest North Korean missile would easily reach the West Coast of the United States with a range of 9,000 to 10,000 kilometers,” or 5,600 to 6,200 miles, said Kim Dong-yub, a defense analyst at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul. “With this missile, North Korea leaves no doubt that its missile has a range that covers most of the United States.”
What’s not known—or if known, the information remains classified—is how good the North Koreans’ missile navigation system is and whether they have as yet miniaturized a nuclear weapon to fit atop the Hwasong-14. As far as the latter goes, if they haven’t yet done so, it surely won’t be long.
How to deal with this situation has baffled three presidencies, all of them determined to keep North Korea from getting nukes or missiles capable of delivering them. Diplomacy has failed. U.N. resolutions have failed. Economic sanctions have failed. Trying to get the Chinese to do more than make condemnatory statements about Kim Jong-un’s actions have failed.
And bluster-bluffing, as Donald Trump has done, has obviously failed. Just as Sen. Lindsay Graham’s boast in April has failed:
Graham said that he advised the president to "tell China that if you don't take care of it, we will."
"It means that if China can't stop the regime from building a missile that can one day hit the American homeland that we would do everything, including diplomatic sanctions and military strike, to stop the missile program," he said.
That one day has now come and gone.
Before him, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also posited the idea of a military strike, saying in March that the U.S. would not go back to the bargaining table unless the North denuclearizes, noting that:
“all options are on the table,” and that if the North Koreans “elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action,” the option of a preventive military strike would be considered.
But, Graham and Tillerson to the contrary, there is no military option. …. Let me take it back. Of course there are always military options. Stupid ones. Even James “Mad Dog” Mattis doesn’t sugarcoat it:
“A conflict in North Korea … would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes,” Secretary of Defense James Mattis told CBS News. “The bottom line is it would be a catastrophic war if this turns into a combat if we’re not able to resolve this situation through diplomatic means.”
War hawks usually like to make it sound clean and surgical. Like those drone attacks that never kill any wedding guests. But even the narrowest attack on North Korea with any hope of being effective would be messy and the response would be uncontainable without massive escalation. Fatalities could make those of the 1950-53 Korean War pale by comparison.
Look at the options.
A preemptive conventional attack solely directed at North Korea’s nuclear facilities would be unlikely to totally wipe out the nation’s nuclear capability.
In an interview two months ago with Elisabeth Eaves at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Siegfried Hecker—emeritus director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and a senior fellow at Stanford University who is one of the few outsiders to have visited North Korean nuclear facilities—said:
“there is no conceivable way the United States could destroy all North Korean nuclear weapons. It is not possible to know where they all are. Even if a few could be located, it would be difficult to destroy them without causing them to detonate and create a mushroom cloud over the Korean peninsula.”
No doubt the heavily militarized dictatorship would respond massively. If the regime has a dozen or so nukes, which it certainly could have by now, it wouldn’t take ICBMs to deliver them to the South. The North already has intermediate- range missiles capable of carrying miniaturized nukes to anywhere in the South or Japan.
Even without nukes, the 25 million Koreans in the capital of Seoul and its immediate surrounds are well within the range of the North’s prodigious long-range artillery. As are 28,000 U.S. troops. The North also has more than a million active-duty troops and nearly 8 million reservists. It has vast amounts of mobile armor, helicopters, and other equipment. Not that the North’s military is a match for U.S. might. But this would not be, as someone infamously said of the Iraq invasion, a “cakewalk.”
Obviously, using just a fraction of its own nukes, the United States could quickly turn parts of the North into pavement if it so desired, which would bring an end to that nation’s nuclear development and kill a few million people in the process. Fallout would injure and kill untold numbers in the South as well as in China, for which Beijing would not likely respond with: “It’s okay. We understand. Just collateral damage. Not your fault.”
So pick any stupid option: A narrow, conventional attack on nuclear facilities and maybe some other military installations. Or a broad conventional attack on those facilities, strikes on troop concentrations, maybe even ground incursions across the 62-year-old Demilitarized Zone. Or a nuclear attack.
“Bad” and “worse” don’t do justice to how terrible the toll would be from 1,2 or, obviously, 3.
There is, of course, sabotage and cyberwarfare. But the U.S. has engaged in those for some time already and still the Hwasongs fly and the nukes are tested.
Some observers have labeled Kim Jong-un nuts and worry that his saber-rattling means he really will launch some of those missiles one day. But will he? Is he really unschooled on what a literal firestorm would rain down on his nation if he sent nukes toward Seoul, Tokyo, or Chicago?
That seems doubtful. His stance all along seems to have been to use the nukes he’s building as a deterrent, an ego-booster, and a matter of patriotic pride he can use to further manipulate the population he so ruthlessly oppresses. Nuclear-tipped ICBMs as defensive, not offensive weapons.
But that’s an optimistic assessment with disastrous consequences if it’s wrong.
Time after time, diplomacy has failed. Yet it still provides the best hope for avoiding the horrors our hawks allege North Korea is preparing visit it on us. The path forward on that score is not clear. Especially so given that the guy in the White House believes foreign policy negotiations are no different than those included in The Art of the Deal, a book with his name on it that he didn’t write.