Be ready to strike and destroy North Korea's missile test

[BanglaBhoot]

In today's Washington Post, Selig Harrison writes that, according to his named high-ranking North Korean contacts, North Korea's plutonium has now all been weaponized. For what kind of weapons, you may wonder? There are only two viable weapons options for North Korea: missiles or devices for unconventional delivery (covert terror weapons). It is also worth keeping in mind that North Korea was deeply involved in the nuclear reactor being covertly constructed in Syria, which Israel destroyed militarily.

Harrison argues that the world should accept the existence of North Korea's nuclear weapons stockpile as a fait accompli and develop a strategy of deterrence. But whatever the merits of Harrison's suggestion when it comes to North Korea's nuclear weapons, the United States should not accept Pyongyang's development of long-range missile systems, which can be paired with an admitted nuclear weapons arsenal, as still another fait accompli. To accept the combination of nuclear weapons and IRBMs or ICBMs in the hands of North Korea is a gamble, betting on deterrence of one of the least well understood governments on earth, in a country now undergoing high levels of internal stress.

Secretary Clinton has described apparent North Korean plans to test a long-range ballistic missile as "unhelpful." Well ... what do we do about it?

Rewind back two and a half years ago, to June 2006, when North Korea was preparing an earlier series of missile tests. Two of President Clinton's top defense officials, Ash Carter and Bill Perry, published an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, entitled: "If Necessary, Strike and Destroy: North Korea Cannot Be Allowed to Test this Missile." Carter and Perry analyzed that, if hit with a conventional weapon,

the multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive -- the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate vicinity of the missile gantry.

At the time this essay was published, I was serving in the State Department. Secretary Rice had asked me to help advise on North Korea policy. My view in June 2006 was that this analysis was basically right but that their recommendation of military action was premature, for two reasons: (1) attainment of a long-range or intercontinental missile capability would require more tests, so this one did not place North Korea at the threshold of an operational capability; and (2) given point #1, it was better to use the test to draw a "red line" with support from the international community. Thus, the next time, the United States would be in a much stronger position to act with international support.

And indeed, North Korea's missile and nuclear tests in 2006 produced just such an international foundation for further action. First came UN Security Council Resolution 1695, adopted in July 2006. There, the Council stated, it "demands that the DPRK suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile programme." Then came UN Security Council Resolution 1718, adopted in October 2006. That resolution was more ominous. The Council now said it was acting under the UN Charter's Chapter VII, its provisions for dealing with threats to international peace and security. These can include collective military action and self-defense. Resolution 1718 limited itself to non-military measures, but in it, the Council said it "decides that the DPRK shall suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile programme and in this context re-establish its pre-existing commitments to a moratorium on missile launching." This was imperative language, the strongest international action against North Korea since the 1953 Korean War armistice.

In 2006, the United Nations drew a clear line, acting under Chapter VII of its Charter. Today, in 2009, the United States need not stand by and watch North Korea cross that line. Non-military measures were given a fair try. Now the political predicate for the Carter-Perry recommendations has been well laid.

The logical next step, after high-level discussions in the U.S. government and consultation with our allies, is to issue North Korea a warning to stand down (conveyed either directly, indirectly, or through a leak of planning to strike and destroy the missile). Pyongyang would either then stand down silently or they would not. We lose little from the warning if I'm right in estimating that the North Koreans cannot protect the test missile from a U.S. strike once they stand it up on the gantry. Our warning would be that, if you stand up the missile (itself a plain violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1718), the United States will take it down. The North Korean perfection of a long-range nuclear missile capability against the United States, Japan, or the Republic of Korea would pose an imminent threat to the vital interests of our country.

If the United States strikes North Korea's missiles on their launch site, other would-be proliferators will take notice -- thus lending much greater weight to the fresh diplomatic initiatives the Obama administration has in mind. The downside, as in 2006, is the possibility of North Korean escalation against South Korea. The United States must consider its own security, the security of its Japanese ally, and the security of its South Korean ally. Ideally, all should arrive at a common understanding of what must be done to protect their long-term security.

Secretary Clinton has said a North Korean missile test would be "unhelpful." I hope her deliberate reticence masks preparations for concerted action.

Be ready to strike and destroy North Korea's missile test By Philip Zelikow | Shadow Government

 

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Hillary Clinton's North Korea naivete

The secretary of State doesn't seem to grasp the scope of the threat posed by Pyongyang's nuclear program. Perhaps her trip to Asia will change that.

By John R. Bolton
February 18, 2009

Hillary Rodham Clinton prefaced her first trip abroad as secretary of State with a speech Friday sketching out various Obama administration views regarding her Asia itinerary. Her approach on the crucial issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons program embodies an overwhelming -- and unfortunate -- continuity with the Bush administration. This is not at all surprising, given the president's campaign rhetoric.

What is surprising is the sheer innocence in which the substance has been packaged, a naivete extending well beyond North Korea. The secretary's attitude is potentially more troubling than the dull repetitiveness of the policy, which invokes the importance of the six-party talks and the need to "get the negotiations back on track."

Take, for example, her repeated references to "smart power," presumably meant to distinguish the brainy Obama team from its predecessor. Like Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography, we are apparently meant to know smart power when we see it. Every incoming administration is entitled to a few weeks of touting its superiority, but the bumper stickers need to disappear when overseas travel begins, replaced by real policy, not slogans. Otherwise, observers would conclude that the president, and perhaps his secretary of State, are still running for office, rather than realizing they are already there.

Clinton accurately called North Korea's nuclear program "the most acute challenge to stability in northeast Asia," and she established the objective that the North "completely and verifiably eliminate" its nuclear weapons activities. This familiar formulation implicitly -- and very unfortunately -- accepts that North Korea can keep a nuclear program as long as it is "peaceful." Whatever else it may be, this deal is not "smart." Leaving Pyongyang with any nuclear capability simply invites future abuse and a recurrence of the very problem we need to "eliminate."

Equally unfortunately, Clinton made no reference to the global scope of North Korea's threat, notably in the tumultuous Middle East, where the North's contribution to nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation has long stoked regional tensions. The omission is all the more striking because Clinton also said that "we can no longer approach our foreign policy solely country by country, or simply carving the world into separate regions." She then proceeded to do just that, ignoring, among other things, North Korea's missile cooperation with Iran and its attempt to replicate its Yongbyon reactor in Syria (until the site was destroyed by Israel in September 2007).

The secretary's comments at a subsequent news teleconference only compounded the speech's lack of strategic breadth. Asked her assessment of the Agreed Framework, the Pyongyang-Washington agreement concluded during her husband's presidency, Clinton regretted that "the Bush administration completely walked away" from the agreement. She said that "information" about North Korea's uranium enrichment efforts "should have been dealt with very seriously" but "in addition to the Agreed Framework," not in place of it.

This is a breathtakingly confused position. First, North Korea's repeated violations of the Agreed Framework breached the agreement, not the Bush White House. Pyongyang cheated on the agreement's central premise -- the North's denuclearization -- and lied about it.

And adhering to U.S. commitments under the framework while the North was violating its obligations would have been a classic case of rewarding bad behavior -- exactly what the Clinton administration did wrong. Given North Korea's flagrant, ongoing violations, what possible reason could be advanced to believe that the North would honor a new agreement to forgo uranium enrichment? Moreover, by continually casting doubt on the very existence of Pyongyang's uranium enrichment program, Clinton is only reinforcing the North's determination not to allow meaningful verification of its nuclear program.

Stressing that "we have not forgotten the families of Japanese citizens abducted to North Korea," Clinton promised to meet the families "on a very personal ... human basis." Although empathy is commendable, it would have been more encouraging had the secretary emphasized the important conclusion that North Korea's state terrorism, as exemplified by these families' stories, vividly reveals the character of that criminal regime.

This is an important matter of statecraft and politics in Japan, and on which the abductees' families themselves are clear and persuasive, just as it would be here if our citizens were being kidnapped. The families appreciate empathy, but what they really want is accountability from Pyongyang.

Clinton emphasized that she was prepared for "active listening" on her trip. One hopes that she will be particularly active in listening to South Korea and Japan, where the North's repeated acts of duplicity have sunk in far more profoundly than at the State Department. Although there seems to be little reason to hope that the Obama administration will actually offer "change" on North Korea policy, perhaps Clinton will at least return from Asia sobered by the depth of the North's regional and global threat.

John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option."

Hillary Clinton's North Korea naivete - Los Angeles Times

 

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U.S. Sees Power Rifts in North Korea

SEOUL -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. and Asian nations are increasingly concerned that a power struggle inside North Korea's leadership is undermining international efforts to disarm the reclusive Stalinist state.

Washington's chief diplomat and other senior U.S. officials said there are growing signs that a succession process inside Pyongyang may already have begun, contributing to North Korea's hardening position.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il isn't believed to have completely recovered from a suspected August stroke, and his power is seen gradually shifting to Pyongyang's military, the Korean People's Army, according to North Korea analysts and U.S. officials.

Mrs. Clinton said she plans to raise Mr. Kim's status with senior South Korean and Chinese officials during the final two stops of her four-nation Asian tour, which ends Sunday. Pyongyang has been making increasingly bellicose threats against Seoul in recent weeks.

On Thursday, North Korea threatened an "all-out confrontation" with Seoul for what the North claims have been provocative actions by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

"We're still facing the reality of North Korea possessing not only, we believe, some numbers of nuclear weapons, but showing very little willingness to get back on track" with negotiations to end its nuclear program, Mrs. Clinton told reporters traveling with her to South Korea from Jakarta, Indonesia, on Thursday. "Our goal is to come up with something realistic at a time when the North Korean leadership is uncertain."

Kim Jong Il is widely believed by U.S. and South Korean officials to have suffered a stroke in August that kept him incapacitated for months.

In recent weeks, the North Korean dictator publicly met senior Chinese leaders in Pyongyang in a sign that he has made at least a partial recovery. But U.S. officials and academics who have visited North Korea recently said they believe Mr. Kim remains weak and is delegating many national-security decisions to his generals.

North Korea has made moves over the past month to sideline senior officers inside the Korean People's Army, according to U.S. and South Korean officials. And North Korea analysts said there have been signs that Pyongyang is taking steps to prepare Kim Jong Il's youngest son, Kim Jong Un, about 25, to take power. Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law, Chang Sung Taek, 63, is seen as a major player in deciding North Korea's new leader.

A tentative U.S. agreement with North Korea to end its nuclear program has been stalled over Pyongyang's refusal to agree to a program to allow international inspectors to verify and dismantle its nuclear assets. A number of U.S. officials tie this hardening of the North's position to Mr. Kim's stroke and believe Pyongyang has been taking a consistently aggressive line with the international community ever since.

The U.S. and its Asian allies have detected in recent weeks what they have said are signs that Pyongyang is preparing to test-launch its long-range Taepodong-2 missile.

The move is seen as an attempt by the North to exact more concessions from the Obama administration in negotiations that are expected to resume with the U.S. and its diplomatic partners: China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly warned Pyongyang against the launch during her Asian trip, describing it as destabilizing to the region.

Mrs. Clinton said Thursday the threat posed by North Korea's long-range missile program made it imperative that a diplomatic framework be established to end it. She said the missile issue could be addressed through the so-called six-party diplomatic framework or through some other international mechanism.

"I think the ballistic-missile discussion has to be pursued," Mrs. Clinton said. "Obviously, with the attention being paid to the potential launching by the North Koreans, this is ... a matter of great concern."

North Korea has been a major supplier of ballistic-missile technology to Iran, Syria, Pakistan and a variety of other Middle East and North African states. The U.S. has moved as recently as March to block the movement of North Korean aircraft over fears they were shipping missile components to Iran.

The U.S. administration of Bill Clinton entered into negotiations with Pyongyang to trade financial aid for North Korea taking steps to end its missile program. But the talks stalled in 2000 and were never picked up by former U.S. President George W. Bush's administration.

Mrs. Clinton also said she plans to raise with China's leaders contingency planning should North Korea enter into a succession process. Beijing is Pyongyang's closest strategic ally and is believed to have the best intelligence on Pyongyang's political and military leadership.

"We do want this to be shared responsibility," Mrs. Clinton said. "We take a great deal of responsibility because of our alliance relationships with Japan, South Korea ... but North Korea is on China's border. I want to understand better what the Chinese believe is doable."

U.S. Sees Power Rifts in North Korea - WSJ.com