‘It is not yet time to give up on a new deal with North Korea...’
NORTH Korea’s boasts about its latest bomb test have sent people scurrying to find out the difference between an atomic and a hydrogen weapon. It’s rather terrifying. Atomic bombs are based on the splitting of atoms through nuclear fission. The world saw the devastation this can trigger when one was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
A fully-fledged hydrogen bomb which uses solid thermonuclear fuel could prove 1,000 times more destructive. Such a weapon triggers nuclear fusion, in which energy is unleashed through the merging of atoms.
It is possible that North Korea is engaging in exaggeration. It may have only engineered a “boosted” atomic bomb with thermonuclear gas in its core.
But any suggestion that Kim Jongun’s regime is truly within touching distance of the day when it can put a nuclear warhead on an inter-continental ballistic missile capable of hitting mainland North America will transform this crisis. That warhead might “only” be the equivalent of three Hiroshima bombs but the faintest possibility that Pyongyang could vaporise San Francisco will intensify calls for President Trump to knock out this threat.
South Koreans have lived for decades with the threat of catastrophic attack from the north. Normal life in Seoul means living in the knowledge that the pseudo-Communist state next door could send hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds your way in an hour.
But Trump will be under colossal pressure to stop a dictator essentially putting a gun to the head of Americans on the western seaboard. The US, like Europe, lived under the threat of thermonuclear destruction during the years of the Cold War; a Trump presidency would be judged a colossal failure if images of a city being wiped out in a single missile strike return to haunt the nightmares of Californians.
The New York Times this week reported that many figures in the Trump administration now suspect that 33-year-old Kim Jong-un’s strategy involves much more than developing a nuclear missile in order to stop the US ever considering regime change.
Until now, the leading theory has been that this dictator had looked at the fates of the likes of Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. Would the US and the UK have invaded Iraq or supported rebels in Syria if either of these men had access to a nuclear weapon?
But perhaps North Korea wants to use a use a Pacific-crossing nuclear weapon not just as an insurance policy against attack but as a tool for blackmail?
Would the US really step in to protect South Korea or Japan if a war broke out if it knew that doing so could result in a fully-functioning nuclear-armed missile being launched towards Seattle?
Even if Pyongyang doesn’t entertain ambitions about attacking its neighbours, the presence of nukes would transform future negotiations with superpowers. What price would it demand for not assembling a nuclear-armed missile capable of reaching the US?
The days are probably gone when it would consider scrapping its nuclear programme. But it is not at all impossible that the state would demand the sweeping away of sanctions in return for stopping short of developing a weapon capable of unleashing mass destruction in Trump’s America.
North Korea may be holding out for a game-changing agreement that would rescue the country from poverty and end its status as a pariah state.
As the academic Maria Ryan noted in July, in 1994 Bill Clinton’s administration agreed an extraordinary “framework” with North Korea. The idea was that the regime would freeze its nuclear programme in return for a US-led consortium building “two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea to compensate for the loss of nuclear power”; until then the US would supply “500,000 tons per year of heavy fuel”.
It would also remove sanctions and normalise political relations which are still subject to the 1953 ceasefire which stopped – but did not officially end – the Korean War.
It seems incredible to think that the United States was on the verge of building nuclear reactors in North Korea, and it’s perhaps not surprising that the deal eventually fell apart. But while the politics of the situation have only grown more torrid in the years since, Pyongyang’s need for fuel and cash remains urgent.
South Korea would welcome a radical de-escalation in tensions, and China is keen for opportunities for it to present itself as a diplomatic giant; helping strike such a deal would certainly burnish its credentials – and a breakthrough could lead to a reduction in US forces in its backyard.
In public at least, Trump shows no interest in going down the same road as Clinton, and he rapped South Korea’s government across the knuckles, saying that “South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!”
It would be humiliating for Trump to be forced to the negotiating table. But he must know that any attempt to bomb North Korea’s nuclear infrastructure out of existence is not only likely to fail but risks triggering a calamitous war with massive civilian casualties and the deaths of many US servicemen and women stationed in the South.
Trump will not want to be cast as a 21st century appeaser – especially not when dealing with a regime that it is notorious for its cruelty. But if he stumbles into an avoidable catastrophic conflict his place in the history books will be toxic.
There are people in North Korea who remember the days when a long-term peace deal seemed within reach and a US President was happy to shake the hand of a senior Pyongyang figure at the White House.
Is it possible that North Korea’s bellicose rhetoric and weapons tests are actually tactics intended to get the country to where it can negotiate from a position of strength?
Intelligence specialists around the world are trying to get into the mind of Kim Jong-un.
The goal has to be to avoid the deaths of millions and it is nowhere near the time to give up hope.
The US President set out his key beliefs about business success in The Art of the Deal.
If he can now deliver security and peace he will prove himself a diplomatic maestro.