USA TODAY International Edition
N. Korea often has been a provocateur, but current climate could trigger war
Within months of taking office President Richard Nixon was confronted with a major foreign policy challenge from North Korea. The rogue nation had shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane flying in international airspace, killing all 31 crewmen.
Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, asked the Pentagon for options to respond to the North’s deadly provocation. None of the responses, which included a nuclear strike, was good and all risked a war.
“Unless you want all-out war you’re going to have to depend on diplomacy,” Nixon and his team concluded, said Robert Wampler, an analyst at the National Security Archive.
North Korea has massive artillery aimed at Seoul, South Korea’s densely populated capital less than 40 miles from the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and has a million-man army, much of it positioned near the border.
The April 15, 1969, incident is drawing renewed scrutiny amid threats from North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho that the North has the right to shoot down American warplanes even if they didn’t enter the nation’s airspace.
The Pentagon said it would not alter any operations in response to the threats, and it is unclear if North Korea could down a stealth jet, which is capable of evading and jamming enemy radar.
The earlier incident does highlight the challenges the United States faces in responding to North Korea’s provocations.
As bad as the rhetoric seems, some of North Korea’s past attacks have brought the USA even closer to war than today’s heated climate, said Sheila Miyoshi Jager, author of Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea.
For decades North Korea has challenged the U.S., betting that Washington will not react militarily.
In 1994 North Korea shot down an American helicopter when it mistakenly crossed the DMZ during a training mission. One of the two pilots was killed.
In the 1960s North Korea captured the USS Pueblo, a spy ship, and sent assassins to Seoul in an attempt to kill the South Korean leader.
Today, the stakes are even higher since North Korea has stockpiled nuclear weapons and soon will have the capability to place warheads on missiles that can reach the United States, the Pentagon has concluded.
“Whether it’s three months or six months or 18 months, it is soon, and we ought to conduct ourselves as though it is just ... a matter of very short time, before North Korea has that capability,” Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday.
The relationship between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump is more personal than that of previous leaders. Trump said Tuesday if the U.S. takes a military option in dealing with the threat from North Korea, “it will be devastating.”