Kim Jong Un’s moves have succeeded in putting the rest of the world in a tough spot. Possible responses include further isolating North Korea, military moves or greater engagement. None are ideal.
On the 4th of July, North Korea marked a milestone by firing an intercontinental ballistic missile that soared high into space before turning around and landing in the sea near Japan. The North’s state media said the missile, Hwasong-14, flew 933 km (580 miles) , reaching an altitude of 2,802 km (1,741 miles) and flew for nearly 40 minutes.
The successful test of a missile of this kind, which could theoretically put Alaska within it range, is something President Donald Trump earlier this year said “would never happen.” Now that analysts — including those in the U. S. military — confirm it did, the world is grappling with what to do next.
“Testing an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] represents a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region and the world, ” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement Tuesday night. “Global action is required to stop a global threat.”
In the short term, the 15-member states of the U. N. Security Council will meet on Wednesday. This is the body that has imposed numerous sanctions packages on North Korea, which have proven ineffective in getting North Korea to change its behavior so far.
The threat, dubbed ” the worst problem on earth, ” has persisted across U. S. administrations and only grown more alarming over time. Former President Barack Obama warned President Trump during the transition that North Korea was the most urgent and vexing problem to confront.
As president, Trump has met with leaders in the region — Japan, China and South Korea — but so far has stayed on the same policy course as the Obama administration. The Trump administration has pursued a goal of de-nuclearization and increasing pressure via sanctions and working with regional neighbors.
Now, given the symbolic importance of North Korea’s technological milestone, as well as the political leverage it earned by reaching it, the rest of the world is in a tighter box in dealing with Pyongyang.
Generally, the options fall into a few baskets:
Sanctions and China
“Sanctions regimes are miserable failures until they’re not, ” said Mark Lippert, the most recent U. S. ambassador to South Korea, in his exit interview with NPR.
But despite “tough-on-paper” sanctions designed to stop the flow of nuclear weapons material into North Korea as well as deliver economic punishment on the regime, the latest research shows the numerous countries expected to enforce the sanctions aren’t doing so — because they’re too complicated to implement, private businesses independently aid North Korea (knowingly or not) and Pyongyang has grown increasingly deft in evading sanctions as it’s become more isolated.
“Not a single component of the U. N. sanctions regime against North Korea currently enjoys robust international implementation, ” Andrea Berger of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies wrote last month .
For his part, President Trump still seems fixated on having neighboring China, North Korea’s largest trading partner, handle the problem.
“Hard to believe that South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!” he tweeted Monday night.
That both overestimates China’s influence on Pyongyang and its willingness to put on “heavy moves, ” though it’s unclear what Trump means by heavy moves.
But tensions between the U. S. and China have grown in recent weeks, following the U. S. Treasury Department’s sanctions on a Chinese bank accused of helping North Korea and an arms sale to Taiwan, which mainland China views as a renegade republic.
Trump admitted last month in a tweet that his hope of getting China to rein in North Korea ” has not worked out, ” but after the ICBM test on Tuesday, he again wondered aloud about Chinese help.
“Catastrophic” military options
Each of the strategic options for the North Korea issue present drawbacks, though military moves — an attempt at regime change, a decapitation strike on Kim Jong Un or a limited strike to try and destroy weapons — are far more potentially deadly than others.
Defense Secretary James Mattis has said outright war with North Korea would be “catastrophic” and “probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”
If threatened, North Korea wouldn’t have to use nuclear weapons at all — just its artillery — to attack Seoul, a mega-city with a metro population of nearly 24 million. South Korea also hosts some 28,000 American troops.
Other ideas being floated: downing North Korea’s electrical grid and possibly shooting d own North Korean missiles in their boost or ascent phase. But it’s not clear the U. S. has that capability right now.
Acceptance and engagement
A week ago, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former U. S. ambassador to the U, N. Bill Richardson and former Defense Secretary William Perry joined others in a letter urging the administration to go beyond the current pressure tactics of escalating sanctions and isolation, and instead engage in talks with North Korea.
“Tightening sanctions can be useful in increasing pressure on North Korea, but sanctions alone will not solve the problem, ” the letter cautioned. “Pyongyang has shown it can make progress on missile and nuclear technology despite its isolation.”
During a trip to Seoul in March, Tillerson ruled out engaging North Korea in talks unless Pyongyang showed a commitment to de-nuclearize. This follows the Obama administration line. But North Korea has shown no willingness to abandon its nuclear program, especially since its advancing technology has only served to strengthen its position globally.
South Korea’s new President Moon Jae-in has indicated he’s willing to talk with North Korea with the aim of just getting to a freeze of its nuclear program. So far, North Korea has balked at that, too. But a growing chorus of North Korea observers say that given the advancements to date, it’s past time to just talk in the hopes of getting somewhere with this intractable problem.
“We need to have serious conversations amongst ourselves and with allies about what we’re willing to trade.
