“We do not seek a regime change,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on August 1, speaking of North Korea. “We do not seek the collapse of the regime . . . We’re trying to convey to the North Koreans: We are not your enemy. We are not your threat. But you are presenting an unacceptable threat to us, and we have to respond.” This differs sharply from comments made by CIA director Mike Pompeo at the Aspen Security Forum a few days before. Pompeo remarked on the administration’s aim to “separate” those who control the regime from its nuclear capacity. Excuse us for thinking this sounds a lot like regime change.
Whether these contrasting messages have arisen from strategy or from perplexity—a little of both?—we don’t know. But perplexity would be entirely defensible. There is no obvious course in dealing with North Korea. Decades of intermittent negotiations have not stopped Pyongyang from developing a nuclear capacity, exporting ballistic missile technology to other anti-Western governments, and threatening its neighbors. Nor have U.S. economic sanctions. These last are necessary and ought to be intensified, but they haven’t arrested the Kim regime’s progress towards its goal: the capacity to land a nuclear warhead wherever it chooses.
North Korea has performed at least five nuclear weapons tests over the last decade—all of which violated past agreements. Already this year it’s tested 14 ballistic missiles. The latest tests grabbed international attention. The first, fired for symbolic reasons on July 4, flew nearly 600 miles before dropping into the Sea of Japan. Many analysts think that missile, the Hwasong-14, could fly more than 4,000 miles—enough to reach Alaska. The second, a more advanced, unnamed ICBM fired on July 28, likely has a range of 6,200 miles. This is enough to reach the American mainland.
At this point the United States has no options that don’t involve the risk of war. There’s an argument to be made for preemptively striking North Korean missile launch sites, but preemptive strikes, barring a coup and the implosion of the Kim regime, would provoke a war. Worse than that, however, is doing nothing and dealing with a North Korea capable—and probably willing—to put a nuclear warhead in Anchorage or Los Angeles.
One option suggests itself as a way of militarily confronting the regime without touching its territory and necessarily provoking war. The U.S. military could shoot down a North Korean test missile. There are risks, but the potential advantages are considerable.
The first risk, of course, is technical: There’s no guarantee we would intercept the target. A lot would depend on the trajectory of the North Korean weapon. An Aegis warship stationed in the Sea of Japan and equipped with the SM-3 anti-missile system might be able to intercept a North Korean test missile in its ascendency. That capability is untested, but surely the U.S. produces and maintains these muti-billion-dollar anti-missile systems precisely for a circumstance like this one.
Alternatively, ground-based interceptors (the THAAD defense systems) located in South Korea could intercept a North Korean test missile mid-course. These interceptors (they’re also located in Alaska and California, among other places) have an impressive track record. In late July, the THAAD interceptors in Kodiak, Alaska, destroyed a missile launched from an Air Force jet over the Pacific, marking the 15th successful hit in 15 tests.
There is every chance that Pyongyang would interpret our shooting down one of its missiles as an act of war, and the United States and South Korea would need to be prepared for that outcome. But what are the North’s “tests” intended to do, if not threaten? We can state plausibly—and announce our policy ahead of time—that intercepting North Korean test missiles is not an act of aggression but one of defense. Our South Korean and Japanese allies would surely applaud such a policy shift.
An interception would give North Korean scientists valuable information about our anti-missile capabilities, but this is outweighed by the psychological damage a successful hit would do to the regime. The United States and South Korea are already running joint exercises that are partly designed to force the North to spend its scarce resources just to keep up. Rendering its missile system obsolete could persuade some North Korean generals that Kim Jong-Un has led them into humiliation and disaster.
The risks are real, to be sure. Knocking down a North Korean test missile would be “going kinetic,” in military jargon. But after 30 years of failed diplomacy, and with Pyongyang actively assisting Iran and other dangerous states in developing nuclear technology and delivery systems, military confrontation in some form looks more and more likely. Better a confrontation over a test missile today than full-on war over a real one tomorrow.
