The price of America’s reflexive defense of populous and prosperous allies is getting much higher.
SEOUL, REPUBLIC OF KOREA—Just 30 or so miles from the Demilitarized Zone, which separates South and North Korea, sits Seoul, the political, industrial, and population heart of the Republic of Korea. It remains vulnerable to North Korean attack, but is as chaotic as usual. Lately it has been convulsed by a domestic political crisis, leading to the election of a new left-wing president, Moon Jae-in, and foreign-policy challenges, including China’s economic assault in retaliation for deployment of the THAAD missile defense system.
Even more threatening, however, may be the Trump administration’s confrontational stance toward the North. So far most South Koreans assume President Donald Trump is bluffing with his threats of war. Even so, tensions between the South and U. S. are likely to rise, since President Moon advocates a much more conciliatory policy toward Pyongyang. Moreover, President Trump admits that he doesn’ t know much about foreign policy—as Chinese President Xi Jinping learned when the latter patiently explained to his American counterpart Beijing’s limited influence over North Korea. Anything could happen.
Despite his ignorance, President Trump apparently is certain that Pyongyang’s weapons programs are Washington’s problem. Why? No one outside the borders of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea wants Kim Jong-un to have nukes at his command. Washington officials are particularly insistent that the North should not possess nuclear weapons atop ICBMs capable of reaching the U. S. That prospect has pushed the Trump administration into frenetic if not necessarily productive activity.
Yet it’s worth considering why the Kim regime is working so hard to refine its nuclear technologies and expand its missile capabilities. Such weapons are expensive and result in widespread international opprobrium. But they offer important benefits as well.
Nukes would be useful in an offensive campaign against South Korea, though not so long as the latter is defended by America. Nuclear weapons offer prestige; otherwise no one else on earth would much care about the status of the poor, isolated state. Nukes also provide an opportunity for extortion. Although the message, “Send money or else, ” hasn’ t been working well of late.
Finally, nuclear-tipped missiles provide a powerful deterrent. Which North Korea has good reason to believe it needs.
A quick glance at a map illustrates that the North does not threaten America. In fact, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has never threatened America. The two nations do not share a land border, so Pyongyang could not easily send its vast legions to conquer the U. S., as in the last iteration of the movie Red Dawn. The DPRK does not have a Blue Water navy, so no armada could invest and invade Guam, let alone Hawaii. Since North Korea possesses no long-range bombers, Kim’s air force could not reduce U. S. cities to rubble. And even now the North does not have ICBMs capable of reaching, let alone accurately targeting, America.
In the normal course of events, the Kim dynasty wouldn’ t give the U. S. much thought. North Koreans certainly wouldn’ t be feverishly working on weapons designed to threaten the global superpower, which has the capability to incinerate Pyongyang many times over.
However, Washington has been threatening the North for 67 years.
Of course, U. S. officials believe they had good reason to do so. The inter-Korean struggle initially mattered to America because it was an important front in the Cold War. Without U. S. intervention the Republic of Korea would have been swallowed by Kim Il-sung’s army, disappearing into a modern form of the Dark Ages. Even after formal hostilities ended, the U. S. presence was initially necessary to protect the ROK, a war-ravaged, impoverished, and unstable dictatorship.
