So we’re getting down to the wire for the North Korean missile launch. Sorry, satellite launch…as if North Korea has a serious need of a communications network.
North Korea has a few things to gain from this:
- They enjoy tweaking the US, Japan, and South Korea about our impotence. The Western nations jump up and down and threaten sanctions and resolutions, and North Korea has shown over decades that nothing the West can say is going to hurt it. So long as China sticks with them, they are safe.
- A military confrontation with the West puts China in a difficult bind. North Korea remains useful to it, so in a bind China needs to give North Korea some support.
- It’s a great way to test Obama when he clearly has other fish to fry.
- It allows Kim Jong Il to show other members of the ruling clique that he is in control.
However, I happen to think this is a pretty good opportunity for the US. We have announced that it isn’t our problem, that we are not going to intervene. Japan has said it will take a shot if it looks like debris is coming its way. North Korea has added that any attempt to fire on the missile will be seen as an act of war.
Why not take a free shot at the missile?
Ordinarily, we wouldn’t want to do it because the likelihood is we would miss, especially if our interceptors got wet, and it would be a huge embarrassment to demonstrate that we have poured insane amounts of money into a weapons program that doesn’t work.
In this case, however, we can fire and plausibly deny doing it. What evidence would there be – an interceptor leaving somewhere in the ocean and landing somewhere else in the ocean? No reporter would ever see it. Japan would deny firing, we would deny firing, it would be a mystery.
If by some miracle we hit, it would put enormous pressure on North Korea; their firing sites are under satellite surveillance, so they would need to expect that we would not be scared of their missile program. They don’t really want to escalate a war with South Korea; if the North shelled Seoul, China would abandon them to their fate rather than lose their economic relationship with South Korea.
North Korea has an avowed strategy of being a rogue state. It is not self-destructive in the fashion of, say, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan (Al Qaeda’s permanent jihad strategy is not terribly compatible with fixed borders; they benefit from ignoring state boundaries); rather, it recognizes that Western leaders only have three foreign policy levers:
- Nasty words;
- Economic sanctions;
- Painless military intervention.
Nasty words won’t work because North Korea doesn’t care. Economic sanctions won’t work because we don’t dare follow through – even as we talk about cutting off North Korea, our own NGOs feed the place – and besides, they are already obscenely poor and have little to trade. Painless military intervention is impossible; North Korea has millions of men under arms, at least some of whom will fight, and artillery that can reach Seoul.
So North Korea feels free to jerk the West around.
The way to respond to this is to broaden our range of alternatives. Take a crack at the missile. If we are feeling particularly rambunctious, take a crack at the missile launching facility. Right now, Kim believes that his WMD program is all that keeps him from going the way of Saddam Hussein. Our goal is to convince him of the reverse: we are happy for him to remain in power as long as he likes, on the condition that he not menace going east. He will be reluctant to give up the goose that lays the golden eggs, so get inside his decision circle. Launch a major crackdown on NGOs that send food there. Announce that we are working with opposition groups, and leak the names of generals that we say are cooperating with us to complicate his internal security efforts. Sink his ships inside his coastal waters. In short, deploy his tactics against him.
And, to add some carrots to the sticks, eliminate the sanctions/embargo against Cuba. It is completely counterproductive to maintain pressure on an old regime in Havana that has long since disclaimed any attempt to threaten us while we indulge the folks in Pyongyang who consistently play games with nuclear weapons. Show that we are prepared to reward friendly behavior from our adversaries and perhaps nations will not feel the need to take and hold the maximum position against us.
