Missile defence worth the effort

It becomes clearer by the day that the world has badly underestimated North Korea and its enigmatic leader, Kim Jong Un. On Sunday it carried out its sixth nuclear test, detonating what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb. And it’s expected to conduct its third test of an intercontinental ballistic missile any day now.

Far from being intimidated by the “fire and fury” rhetoric of Donald Trump, North Korea is stepping up its nuclear program. It’s going faster than almost any outsiders predicted, making a coordinated international response even more urgent.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was right over the weekend to urge action through the United Nations to try and deter the Kim regime. Military options are effectively off the table — even Trump’s former top adviser Steve Bannon conceded that “there’s no military solution” in Korea, given the devastation that would result from even a conventional war, let alone a nuclear exchange.

Talk is always the best option, and the United States and other countries should do everything they can to encourage a diplomatic settlement. But it’s hard to talk to someone who doesn’t want to talk to you, and at this point the North shows no interest in working out a solution to the growing crisis.

The most optimistic interpretation of its actions is that it’s trying to increase its leverage for future talks, but even that is just speculation.

That still leaves a range of options, if the international community (especially North Korea’s very few remaining friends, such as China and Russia) are willing to consider them.

They include increasing the North’s isolation by putting pressure on countries that retain ties with Pyongyang. Even an obsessively self-reliant regime needs outlets to the rest of the world.

Stricter economic sanctions, and in particular squeezing off North Korea’s trading links with China, would be the most effective tool. And financial measures to cut off the North’s access to hard currency would make it more difficult for it to acquire the resources it needs for its nuclear program. That would mean applying sanctions on financial institutions that facilitate trade with the North.

Canada should support such measures at the UN and elsewhere, while remaining open to any slim possibility of a negotiated solution. And, to the extent that it can, it should discourage the kind of unhelpful bluster coming from the White House. Aside from everything else, there’s no evidence it has any impact on North Korea’s behaviour; if anything, it just makes Washington look foolish.

At the same time, Canada should rethink its position on one military measure that has a chance of actually deterring the North: missile defence.

When the subject came up in late August, Trudeau quickly ended the discussion by saying his government doesn’t want to revisit Canada’s long-standing refusal to participate in the U.S. program to develop a continental defence against ballistic missiles. Canada’s position, reaffirmed by the Martin government back in 2005, “is not going to be changed any time soon,” he said.

That made a lot of sense a decade and more ago when it was about a largely theoretical threat from Russian or Chinese missiles. It makes a lot less sense now that North Korea is actively and openly threatening the U.S.

Canada, which closely collaborates with the U.S. on continental defence through NORAD, should be involved in decisions about a missile shield. Roméo Dallaire, the retired general and senator, says conditions have changed, technology has improved, and Canada would benefit from a guarantee that any missile defence would be used to protect our cities as well as American ones.

The defence committees of both the House of Commons and Senate have also supported participation in missile defence. Allies like Australia, Japan and South Korea have signed on, and Canada even helps to pay for development of a missile defence system in Europe through NATO. That puts us in the odd position of funding a missile shield for Europeans — but not one for ourselves.

Everything that’s been tried so far to stop North Korea’s nukes-and-missiles program hasn’t worked. Building a system aimed at neutralizing this threat is at least worth trying.

Canada should rethink its position on one military measure that has a chance of actually deterring North Korea: missile defence