We have to be completely honest with ourselves on the subjects of missile defense, North Korea, China and Russia.
When North Korea elected to launch several medium- and long-range ballistic missiles on America’s Independence Day, that Communist nation defied the international community and sent a shock wave through other nations, especially South Korea and Japan.
The situation posed by North Korea, our limited missile defense capabilities, and the recalcitrance of China and Russia, makes diplomacy and delay the only measured response for the United States at this critical juncture for several reasons.
First, the U.S. missile defense system is tenuous at best. Largely untested, there are only 11 silo-housed strategic interceptors spread in California and Alaska. The U.S. Navy compliments this basic, initial capability with handfuls of missiles at sea — but those interceptors were built to handle shorter range threats than the Taepodong-2 that North Korea is trying to bring from puberty to adult fruition.
Completing the U.S. layered, multiservice, multisensor and multi-interceptor-type system will still be a monumental task both in terms of time and money.
A total reliance on missile defense isn’t practical because we don’t know how good our defense system is and “a miss really is as good as a mile.” A miss in missile defense could mean a nuclear weapon lands somewhere near its target.
So the stakes are high. Not just for the United States but also for Japan and South Korea, with their populations living under the shadow of potentially thousands of shorter-range ballistic missiles (and for South Korea, thousands of artillery pieces zeroed in on Seoul, if war ensues) that would come with almost no warning time; and these nations have very limited missile defenses on land.
Secondly, North Korea poses unique challenges to our understanding, our intelligence capabilities and our ability to predict behavior. Nothing can logically be said about the conduct of Kim Jong-il, the head of state (the post of president has been assigned “eternally” to his late father). His July 4 missile shots were discounted as an irrational act by some; but we see it as an intentional, calculated attempt to divide the allies arrayed against him. To some extent, certainly, he has already succeeded in the short term.
The discord and division among the allies has likely delighted the reclusive communist leader and his henchmen, a group who delight in the prospect of driving a wedge between the nations seeking to control Pyongyang.
Fortunately, the Taepodong-2 failed. This time.
North Korea is still developing technology and likely is developing or has nuclear weapons; weapons that could easily disappear into terrorist hands. So, we have to watch North Korea, continue to engage them diplomatically, monitor Kim’s relationships and trade and continue to develop our own missile defenses.
Thirdly, China and Russia make policy decisions based upon their own self-interests. To China and Russia, troubling (to the U.S.) “rogue nations” like North Korea, and before that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, can prove to be a delightfully nettlesome thorn in the side of the only super power: the United States.
There is also this: we spoke to Professor Nayan Chanda, a noted Asia expert at Yale University, this week. He says, “Given China’s huge stake in security along its eastern border and the unpredictability of a nuclear-armed North Korea, the Beijing-Pyongyang relationship appears to be one in which the tail is wagging the dog.”
China is mesmerized by the terrifying notion of a North Korea in collapse, with millions of refugees streaming into China and Korea becoming a unified democratic nation. So China will not support military action and perhaps not even sanctions against North Korea.
The difficult diplomatic situation created by North Korea’s July 4 missile launches is another challenge to the Bush White House, already grappling with Iraq, Iran and the greater war on terrorism. Any misstep now is just what North Korea hoped to achieve. And some leaders in China and Russia, we expect, in the deepest recesses of their government enclaves, may be secretly smirking at the pickle created for the United States by this bold challenge to America’s super power status.
Now is the time for leadership and diplomatic greatness; not military might.
John E. Carey is former president of International Defense Consultants Inc.
