Expert: Pyongyang can already hit US with nukes. Now what?
In discussing the world’s top nuclear threats, Jeffrey Lewis is as disarming as he is knowledgeable. Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, is regularly quoted by the top international media outlets and viewed by many experts as their expert for more-detailed nuclear questions.
In Lewis’s interview with The Jerusalem Post he shot down a range of views of North Korea that governments and the media usually present as standard.
And when he pops and debunks assumptions, he does not mince words.
Take the question of when will North Korea finally be able to fire a nuclear-tipped Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) that can hit the mainland US? Most experts and US government officials say this is a year or a few years away.
Asked the same question, Lewis responded with typical flare, “Assume that it has already happened. Once North Korea had already successfully flight-tested a missile [which it has], all further testing will do will tell us about reliability.
“But even an unreliable missile has deterrence value,” he said, meaning that Pyongyang can already hit the mainland US and the only question is what would its chances be of hitting it successfully.
Some observers say that the US will only be more concerned once North Korea has an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
But explaining the way nuclear missile testing works in a way that only the most knowledgeable of experts can, Lewis said that the way the US tests missiles is from a batch of missiles. The ability to perform a number of tests implies a sizable batch of missiles already exists.
He said the fact that there appear to have been some issues with North Korea’s tests only means their missiles “may not be super reliable,” but he notes that it only takes one hit to cause disaster, and that any level of nuclear risk changes the whole game.
Then he burst another key conventional notion about North Korea.
Lewis said that the common premise that the US is not at risk because North Korea has not perfected “miniaturization,” the process of fitting a nuclear warhead on an ICBM, and/or “reentry,” the process of a nuclear missile reentering Earth’s atmosphere to strike a target after returning from space, is just plain denial.
At a conference two weeks ago, CIA Director Mike Pompeo implied that North Korea had not yet mastered reentry and that, along with that, Pyongyang had not yet reached the point where it could threaten the US mainland.
Lewis opined that CIA director is a political appointment and that Pompeo was not an intelligence analyst by training. He said that Pompeo and others in the administration would likely take a stance underplaying the risk from North Korea because it would be politically inconvenient to do anything else.
Despite President Donald Trump’s fiery statements against North Korea, Lewis said he thought there have been many leaks from the US intelligence community regarding North Korea because its analysts are concerned that the president is not taking the threat seriously enough.
Elaborating on the substance of the miniaturization and reentry issues, Lewis said the questions were: “Can North Korea make a bomb small enough to fit on a missile? Is the missile rugged enough to survive the journey? Can they make a reentry vehicle which can handle the heat of reentry and protect the bomb inside?”
Answering these questions, he said: “There is no doubt that their bomb is small enough to fit on an ICBM. If you just look at how far every other country was after five-six tests,” which the North has done, then it is obvious they have achieved miniaturization.
“It is harder to know if it is rugged enough. There is some shock when an ICBM is launched. There is a lot of vibration during the flight and when it goes up in space, it is very cold. They have a reentry vehicle which would protect the missile from burning up, but maybe it would malfunction.”
But he said the US and every other nuclear power has these same questions and are treated as nuclear powers. “We do not really know the answers to this in the US. The US only did it [tested a live nuclear missile] once. The Chinese did it once. Russia only did it a few times. Most issues are viewed as solved by simulations. Do you hold North Korea to the same standards to prove their capabilities, or to higher standards?”
Regarding reentry, Lewis again broke with conventional understandings. Conventionally, it would make sense that it would be easier for North Korea to test a missile staying close to home in terms of reentry rather than firing across the world at the US.
He explained that the opposite was true and that firing at the US is easier than North Korea’s nearby testing. “North Korea is firing straight up. In some ways that means its tests are a different reentry environment than if fired at the US. Reportedly the last two warheads it fired eventually broke up during reentry.”
He said North Korea is doing something abnormal by “shooting straight up... reaching the height of the international space station... to avoid hitting Japan, but that US intelligence reportedly has concluded that if fired at the US, which is a normal trajectory,” Pyongyang could succeed.
Importantly, Lewis said that “no country which has built an ICBM has been unable to do the other things like figure out a reentry vehicle and a warhead small enough for a missile – I do not expect North Korea to fail.”
Moreover, he said, “I do not want them to prove it. This creates a natural incentive” for them to keep testing their missiles, to get better at it and to eventually test an ICBM with an actual nuclear warhead.
He noted that “the US did it in 1962, the Chinese did it in 1966 – they each put a live nuclear warhead on an ICBM and fired it. Let’s take their word for it on the basis of the experience of other nuclear powers,” so they will lose the incentive to actually testfire a nuclear armed ICBM.
The CIA spokesman’s office said it had nothing to add to Pompeo’s comments at the conference.
may well emerge as the dominant force in Iraq after the elections.
All this has the slight flavor of déjà vu about it. On a smaller scale in Lebanon, similar Iranian clients who knew how to combine military and political activity are now in a position of unchallenged dominance of the country.
So put all this together – the achievement of the Iranian land corridor through Syria to Lebanon and the Israeli border, the burgeoning political and military strength of Iran’s proxies in Iraq, the Iranian efforts to push their presence and infrastructure to the border with the Golan Heights – and the potential scope and look of a future conflict between Israel and the Iranled regional bloc becomes clear.
All this is taking place, by the way, at a time when the West is busy practicing politics in Iraq and Lebanon, backing supposedly moderate and certainly toothless figures such as prime ministers Saad Hariri and Haider al-Abadi.
Seen against this background, Khazali’s tour of the area north of Metulla is the latest item of evidence confirming the growing boldness, broadening dimensions and advancing agenda of the Iranians in Iraq and the Levant. •