By Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, April 20, 2017
The crisis with North Korea may appear trumped up. It’s
not.
Given that Pyongyang has had nuclear weapons and
ballistic missiles for more than a decade, why the panic now? Because North
Korea is headed for a nuclear breakout. The regime has openly declared that it
is racing to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the
United States — and thus destroy an American city at a Kim Jong-un push of a
button.
The North Koreans are not bluffing. They’ve made
significant progress with solid-fuel rockets, which are more quickly deployable
and thus more easily hidden and less subject to detection and preemption.
At the same time, Pyongyang has been steadily adding to
its supply of nuclear weapons. Today it has an estimated ten to 16. By 2020, it
could very well have a hundred. (For context: The British are thought to have
about 200.)
Hence the crisis. We simply cannot concede to Kim Jong-un
the capacity to annihilate American cities.
Some will argue for deterrence. If it held off the
Russians and the Chinese for all these years, why not the North Koreans? First,
because deterrence, even with a rational adversary like the old Soviet Union,
is never a sure thing. We came pretty close to nuclear war in October 1962.
And second, because North Korea’s regime is bizarre in
the extreme, a hermit kingdom run by a weird, utterly ruthless, and highly
erratic god-king. You can’t count on Caligula. The regime is savage and
cult-like; its people, robotic. Karen Elliott House once noted that while
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a prison, North Korea was an ant colony.
Ant colonies do not have good checks and balances.
If not deterrence, then prevention. But how? The best
hope is for China to exercise its influence and induce North Korea to give up
its programs.
For years, the Chinese made gestures, but never did
anything remotely decisive. They have their reasons. It’s not just that they
fear a massive influx of refugees if the Kim regime disintegrates. It’s also
that Pyongyang is a perpetual thorn in the side of the Americans, whereas
regime collapse would bring South Korea (and thus America) right up to the Yalu
River.
So why would the Chinese do our bidding now?
For a variety of reasons.
— They don’t mind tension but they don’t want war. And
the risk of war is rising. They know that the ICBM threat is totally
unacceptable to the Americans. And that the current administration appears
particularly committed to enforcing this undeclared red line.
— Chinese interests are being significantly damaged by
the erection of regional missile defenses to counteract North Korea’s nukes.
South Korea is racing to install a THAAD anti-missile system. Japan may follow.
THAAD’s mission is to track and shoot down incoming rockets from North Korea
but, like any missile shield, it necessarily reduces the power and penetration
of the Chinese nuclear arsenal.
— For China to do nothing risks the return of the
American tactical nukes in South Korea, which were withdrawn in 1991.
— If the crisis deepens, the possibility arises of South
Korea and, most important, Japan going nuclear themselves. The latter is the
ultimate Chinese nightmare.
These are major cards America can play. Our objective
should be clear: At a minimum, a testing freeze. At the maximum, regime change.
Because Beijing has such a strong interest in the current
regime, we could sweeten the latter offer by abjuring Korean reunification.
This would not be Germany, where the Communist state was absorbed into the
West. We would accept an independent, but Finlandized, North.
During the Cold War, Finland was, by agreement,
independent but always pro-Russian in foreign policy. Here we would guarantee
that a new North Korea would be independent but always oriented toward China.
For example, the new regime would forswear ever joining any hostile alliance.
There are deals to be made. They may have to be
underpinned by demonstrations of American resolve. A preemptive attack on North
Korea’s nuclear facilities and missile sites would be too dangerous, as it
would almost surely precipitate an invasion of South Korea with untold millions
of casualties. We might, however, try to shoot down a North Korean missile in
mid-flight to demonstrate both our capacity to defend ourselves and the
futility of a North Korean missile force that can be neutralized
technologically.
The Korea crisis is real and growing. But we are not
helpless. We have choices. We have assets. It’s time to deploy them.
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