Threat of H-bomb use escalates tensions
WASHINGTON — Would exploding a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific, as North Korea has threatened, push the current war of words between the U.S. and North Korea closer to actual war?
As with much that has transpired lately in the U.S.North Korea nuclear crisis,
no one can be sure where that would lead or whether the North will even carry out its threat. It does, however, raise many questions, including: How would the North undertake such a nuclear test, what risks might it pose to Japan and how would the U.S. respond?
After the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, said President Donald Trump would “pay dearly” for threatening to “totally destroy” North Korea if the U.S. were forced to defend itself or its allies against a North Korean attack, Kim’s foreign minister told reporters his country’s response to Trump “could be the most powerful detonation of an H-bomb in the Pacific.”
All six of North Korea’s nuclear tests thus far, dating to 2006, have been conducted in underground tunnels.
Experts say the most likely way the North would conduct an atmospheric test over the Pacific is to launch a longrange missile — probably overflying Japan — and have its nuclear warhead detonate in the skies over a remote part of the Pacific.
“I strongly suspect they have the capability to do this,” said James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He said in a telephone interview that the North likely would do a couple of trial runs with unarmed missiles in coming months before performing the test with an actual H-bomb aboard.
Such a test with a live warhead would tell North Korea’s engineers whether their bomb design can survive the rigors of flight and re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, said Michael Elleman, a missile-defense expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
North Korea has said it intends to build a missile capable of striking all parts of the United States with a nuclear bomb. Trump has said he won’t allow it, although the U.S. so far has not used military force to impede the North’s progress.
Susan Thornton, the acting secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said Friday that a North Korean H-bomb test in the Pacific would be “outrageous.” She said it would draw a “concerted and determined international response” but declined to be specific.
North Korea said it needs nuclear weapons to deter a U.S. invasion, but Thornton contended that the North ultimately seeks to take over U.S.-allied South Korea.
She said Kim’s aim in developing nuclear weapons is “to fulfill a long-term desire on the part of the North Korean regime to reunify the Korean
Peninsula under the Kim family regime and proliferate these weapons and blackmail other countries. This is an intolerable prospect that no other country in the international community can abide.”
Elleman said the missile of choice in a North Korean atmospheric H-bomb test likely would be its longestrange ballistic missile, known as the Hwasong-14, which apparently has the capability of reaching the U.S. mainland, or the intermediate-range Hwasong-12. The Hwasong-14 was flight tested for the first time only two months ago.
“Kim Jong Un would have to accept considerable risk of failure — or worse, a missile carrying a nuclear warhead could crash into Japan — if he elects to use the Hwasong-12 or -14,” Elleman said. “The Hwasong-12 has been flight tested just six times, three of which ended in failure.”
How might the U.S. respond, given its treaty commitment to defend Japan?
Acton argues for negotiating a deal that would preclude such an escalation. He suggests a deal in which the North would agree to halt missile flights over Japan or South Korea and the U.S. would agree to stop its strategic bomber training flights within a certain distance of the North Korean border.
Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists, said he thinks the North Korean threat is likely bluster, but if it happened “there’s a real possibility” the U.S. would take
military action in response, given the potential for an accidental detonation over a populated area and the potential threat to sea or air traffic.
Trump on Friday renewed his rhetorical offensive against Kim.
“Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!” the president tweeted.
In a statement written in the first person and published on the front pages of state newspapers and read on national television, Kim had called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” who had “denied the existence of and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world.”
Kim vowed to take the “highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.”
Trump was buoyed early Saturday when China announced that it will limit oil exports to North Korea. Exports of refined petroleum to the North will be limited to 2 million barrels per year and sales of liquefied natural gas banned outright, effective Jan. 1, the Commerce Ministry said.
China also will ban textile imports from the North, the ministry said. Textiles are one of the North’s last major sources of foreign revenue.
China accounts for some 90 percent of the North’s trade.