NORTH KOREA MUST BE STOPPED, BUT HOW?
North Korea’s first successful test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile crossed a long-standing line in the sand drawn by the international community, and leaves the United States with few long-term military or diplomatic options, experts say.
“Nobody wants a Korean War II against a nucleararmed North Korea,” said Joshua Pollack, a senior research scientist at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California. “We could certainly do demonstrations like flying bombers over North Korea. But you can’t stop them from developing missiles.”
The missile launched early yesterday morning, a Hwasong-14, is capable of reaching Alaska, analysts say, and represented a major step forward for the virulently anti-American rogue state.
The launch, experts said, is intended to send a clear message to the United States: no amount of sanctions can or will topple North Korea’s regime.
“North Korea is crossing a really important milestone,” said Ankit Panda, senior editor for The Diplomat, an online magazine based in Japan. “In their mind, this is an iron-clad guarantee of regime survival.”
And yesterday’s success is just the beginning, Panda said.
“They’re going to be looking to go further,” he said. “We’re just entering a new era where these kind of tests will be more common.”
The missile, which was launched as Americans were preparing to celebrate the Fourth of July, traveled 580 miles and reached an altitude of 1,741 miles over a span of 39 minutes, officials said.
Although experts say North Korea is still years away from having an ICBM capable of carrying a nuclear
payload, they admit stopping the regime, which has been under draconian sanctions for years, is proving maddeningly complex.
Targeting Chinese banks and companies that do business with North Korea would “certainly irritate the Chinese,” Pollack said, though he cautioned “I don’t know how far that will go.” Joint military exercises with South Korea, like the one conducted yesterday in response to the launch, don’t seem to be a deterrent.
The only option left, Pollack said, is to negotiate — which puts the U.S. at risk of offering concessions without reciprocation.
“There’s a lot of aversion to that,” Pollack said. “The general view is they never keep their word ... I think that’s overstated.”
The last time the U.S. tried negotiation — the so-called “Leap Day Deal” announced in February 2012 — it generated shortlived progress. Under the agreement, North Korea promised to halt nuclear tests and long-range missile launches in exchange for increased humanitarian aid.
But the deal ended a little more than two weeks later, when North Korea announced it would be launching another satellite.
“They are known to be impossible people,” Pollack said. “The Leap Day deal still represents an interesting model. But to nail it down, we’ll need to give more than we did before.”