North Korea launched a ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean, once again giving rise to global fears. Traveling 2,800 miles, this missile test proves Kim Jong Un‘s restored willingness to escalate against the United States and South Korea.
Kim is evidently frustrated by the Biden administration’s decision to ignore North Korea and instead focus on the Russian war against Ukraine. Gutting the central objective of U.S. diplomacy toward his regime, Kim has already committed North Korea to retaining its nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, he hopes his variable ability to dangle or defer missile tests and nuclear escalation will earn him financial concessions. Kim is likely gambling that rising tensions over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats will make Washington desperate to avoid a new crisis and thus more amenable to placating him.
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The U.S. should, of course, reject any such hypothesis. While the U.S. obsession with North Korea’s full denuclearization is borderline delusional (why would Kim give up that which affords him regime security?), Washington cannot reward North Korean blackmail. That choice wouldn’t simply undermine the U.S. security umbrella in the western Pacific — it would signal U.S. weakness to other adversaries further afield. The correct response to this test is to bolster joint South Korean-U.S. military drills and engage Japan more fully in regional military activities. The U.S. could also redeploy the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group (which left South Korea last week) to the North Korea-proximate Sea of Japan. At the same time, the U.S. should also encourage European partners to seize North Korean foreign capital assets held in their banks.
But the one thing the U.S. absolutely must not do is beg Beijing for help. The Biden administration must not allow Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government to leverage Kim’s chaos in order to obtain new U.S. concessions to its own interests.
The Chinese Communist Party views international politics through a wholly transactional lens. As encapsulated by its climate change policies, Beijing never does something simply because it is in the interest of both China and the world. Instead, Beijing always uses nominal acts of good or global interest to extract concessions in other areas. Beijing is now likely to do the same with North Korea, suggesting to Washington that it can help put Kim back in his box. Just as long as, that is, Washington agrees to avoid any new restrictions on U.S. chip exports to China, etc.
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Again, the U.S. must reject any such gambit. Instead, Washington should draw sharper international attention to the fact that China remains the overwhelming economic source of Kim’s ability to retain power and maintain his associated patronage circles. This would bear particular relevance to European powers, which are already frustrated by Beijing’s support for Russia in Ukraine, and China’s arrogant dismissal of Western human rights concerns. Moreover, many European economies have strong trade links with South Korea and do not want to see Kim threatening that stability.
Top line: Kim must be made to understand that any perceived benefits from his escalation will be outweighed by the costs. And Xi must understand that far from successfully using Kim for his own ends, he will instead share in the ignominy of that foolish association.
