The North Korean existential nuclear threat

OPINION:

A version of this story appeared in the Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each Wednesday.

On Dec. 18, North Korea successfully launched a solid fuel, road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile — Hwasong-18 — that was assessed to travel over 15,000 kilometers (9,320 miles), capable of targeting the entire U.S. This was North Korea’s third successful launch of an ICBM last year, with a record number of ballistic missile launches in 2023, all in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Concurrently, the U.S. has been working closely with South Korea and Japan on enhanced extended nuclear deterrence, with meetings of the nuclear consultative group to share real-time information on North Korea. And senior Biden administration officials have stated publicly and clearly that any North Korean nuclear attack would be the end of the North Korean regime.

At the Dec. 27 Korean Workers’ Congress, Chairman Kim Jong Un stressed the need to accomplish the country’s five-year development plan, stressing the importance of agriculture — given reports of food shortages throughout the country. Mr. Kim also called on the military to accelerate war preparations due to the unprecedented anti-North Korea confrontation with the U.S.

Mr. Kim declared that North Korea will no longer seek reconciliation and reunification with South Korea, claiming that inter-Korean relations had become “a relationship between two hostile countries and two belligerents at war,” according to the North Korean news agency KCNA. He also vowed to put three new military reconnaissance satellites into orbit in 2024.

On Sept. 13, Mr. Kim met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia’s Far East, touring the Vostochny Cosmodrome, with officials from Roscosmos space agency briefing Mr. Kim on the latest Russian space technology. Previously, Mr. Putin disclosed to the media that Russia would help with North Korea’s efforts to launch a satellite. This past August, North Korea failed in its second attempt to put a satellite in orbit.

But on Nov. 21, possibly with the help of Russia, North Korea successfully placed its first reconnaissance satellite in orbit in defiance of international condemnation from the U.S. and others. In return, North Korea reportedly recently delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia for its war in Ukraine while continuing to provide artillery shells and rockets to Russia in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Recent media reports of North Korea providing Hamas with the F-7 rocket-propelled grenade weapons for use against armored vehicles are of concern. Indeed, given North Korea’s long-term strategic relationship with Iran, Hamas, a proxy of Iran, may be benefiting from that relationship.

And on Jan. 1, Mr. Kim and Chinese leader Xi Jinping exchanged New Year’s messages, with both pledging to deepen ties in a “year of China-DPRK friendship.”

So, the axis of authoritarian states — Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — is alive and active, displaying to the world that they are aligned against all liberal democracies that are sickened by and opposed to Russia’s invasion of a sovereign Ukraine and Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

But what I want to focus on now is North Korea, with its successful launches of ICBMs — Hwasong-15, Hwasong-17, Hwasong-18 — since 2017, and the likelihood that North Korea is confident that it has a tested ICBM that can target the whole of the U.S., with the ability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead to be mated to any of these ICBMs. In short, North Korea believes it is a nuclear threat to the U.S., as it has been for the past decade to our allies South Korea and Japan.

In a June 22, 2006, op-ed in The Washington Post, William J. Perry and Ashton B. Carter, the former defense secretary and assistant defense secretary, respectively, wrote that “if North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.

“This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. … The effect on the Taepodong would be devastating … and cause it to explode … and the carefully engineered test bed for North Korea’s nascent 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.”

On July 4, 2006, North Korea’s apparent attempt to launch a Taepodong missile failed, but Mr. Perry and Mr. Carter, in a Time magazine article on July 6, 2006, said that “even a failed test provides critical data. More important is the test’s symbolic significance and once again North Korea has crossed a line in the sand clearly drawn by the U.S. and its partners. … We continue to advise the U.S. government to strike any further Taepodong test missiles before they can be launched.”

Clearly, the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations did not heed their advice. We are now dealing with a North Korea that is building more nuclear weapons, with a new light-water reactor at their Yongbyon nuclear site soon to be activated and ballistic missiles capable of targeting the U.S. It’s a North Korea that refuses to talk to the U.S. and views the U.S. and South Korea as enemies, while aligned with Russia, China and Iran — the axis of authoritarian states.

The U.S. strategy since the failed Hanoi Summit in February 2019 between then-President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un has been to “contain and deter” North Korea while trying to get China to persuade North Korea to return to negotiations and refrain from a seventh nuclear test.

So far, China hasn’t helped with North Korea, given the tension with the U.S. And given Russia’s and China’s unwillingness to support any U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning North Korea for its ballistic missile — and satellite — launches and its blatant willingness to trade with and support North Korea, it’s proving difficult to contain a belligerent North Korea that is building more nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them.

Although the likelihood of North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons is nil, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t persist with efforts to get North Korea back to negotiations. In my 13 years of direct negotiations and talks with senior North Korean officials (2003-2016), these refrains from North Korean interlocutors stay with me: “We want normal relations with the U.S.; we’ll be a good friend of the U.S.; our nuclear weapons are for deterrence purposes; we distrust China.”

A proactive strategy for attempting to reengage with North Korea is advisable.

• Joseph R. DeTrani served as special envoy for the Six-Party Talks with North Korea from 2003 to 2006 and as director of the National Counterproliferation Center. The views expressed here are the author’s and not those of any government agency or department.