Crib Sheet: North Korea's Missile Tests
Kim Jong Il’s missiles are not a threat to the US… for now.
By Andrew Grotto, American Progress
Thursday July 6, 2006
On July 4 North Korea began a series of missile flight tests that included the launch of a Taepo Dong II missile, an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that some experts believe may be capable of delivering a light payload to Alaska or the West Coast. The good news is that the test ended in an embarrassing failure for North Korea when the rocket fizzled out just 42 seconds after launch. North Korea’s previous and only other attempt to test a multi-stage missile, in 1998, also ended in failure when the shorter-range Taepo Dong I—the predecessor to the Taepo Dong II—couldn’t lift its payload into orbit.
The bad news is that by carrying out such a test—and breaking a 1999 pledge not to test any missiles— North Korea has once again demonstrated that it is a reckless, temperamental regime. To make matters worse, North Korea has enough plutonium to make more than a half dozen nuclear weapons and boasts of having a “nuclear deterrent”—a threat that has grown on President Bush’s watch. The Six Party talks aimed at convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal have been stalled since September 2005, with no signs of a breakthrough.
North Korea’s missile tests were provocative, but not a direct threat to the United States. Nevertheless, the tests are a stark reminder that North Korea has grown more assertive and more dangerous since George W. Bush became president. Pumping more money into missile defense isn’t the answer, because the United States’ anti-missile technology doesn’t work. Instead, the Bush administration needs to rethink its approach to North Korea.
1. Is North Korea’s Taepo Dong II missile program an imminent threat?
No, but it is a mounting threat. North Korea will need to undertake many more flight tests of the Taepo Dong II before it could be considered even minimally reliable. In addition, many experts doubt North Korea’s boast that the missile has an intercontinental range. The United States and other countries watched North Korea’s recent test preparations from satellites and tracked the test missiles in flight. Thus, the United States would have significant advance notice if the Taepo Dong II became more reliable.
Some have argued that the July 4 tests will enable North Korea to gain valuable diagnostic data about the missile’s performance, which it could use to fine-tune its capabilities. Two analysts—former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter—recently argued that this is reason enough to launch a preemptive strike against North Korea’s missile launch facilities.
To a certain extent, it is probably true that every time North Korea tests its rudimentary Taepo Dong II, it makes incremental progress towards perfecting an intercontinental strike capability. But it is important to recognize that it takes many flight tests under varied conditions to develop a reliable weapon system. North Korea has only tested multi-stage missiles twice, and both tests ended in failure; the July 4 test was also the first time North Korea had ever tested the Taepo Dong II, its only missile with the potential to reach the United States. A preemptive strike at this juncture would be grossly dispropotionate to the minor threat that the tests posed-to say nothing of the risk that it would trigger a North Korean nuclear test or even an attack on South Korea or Japan that could kill hundreds of thousands.
2. What is North Korea’s objective behind the tests?
It isn’t known for sure what their objective is, but one prominent theory is that Kim Jong Il feels that Iran has taken center stage and that the world is ignoring North Korea. The North Koreans may also hope that provocative actions will strengthen their bargaining position in the Six Party talks and perhaps lead to bilateral negotiations between the United States and North Korea, which they have sought for some time.
In 1999 North Korea unilaterally pledged to end missile flight tests. North Korea agreed to the moratorium in significant part because the United States agreed to bilateral talks with North Korea on ending its missile program. The Bush administration, however, has refused to hold bilateral talks with North Korea since late 2002.
About a month ago, the Bush administration offered Iran the possibility of having direct talks. Like North Korea, Iran is suspected of pursuing nuclear weapons. In addition, the Bush administration had previously refused to negotiate with North Korea bilaterally, instead insisting on the Six Party talks, which include Japan, China, South Korea, and Russia. One day after the Iran offer was announced, North Korea requested bilateral talks with the United States. The Bush administration refused. North Korea began preparations for a missile launch shortly thereafter.
North Korea’s missile tests were not illegal under international law. It only violated its own pledge to halt tests. But its actions were certainly provocative, and probably intentionally so. Consider the timing of the launch: July 4, American Independence Day and the day of a space shuttle launch. As Richard Lloyd Parry of the Times of London quipped, "timing of the [North Korean] tests…make it look very much like a two-fingered salute to the US."
3. Will missile defense protect us if and when North Korea perfects the Taepo Dong II?
Probably not. The $92 billion missile defense system doesn’t work. It "hasn’t successfully intercepted a missile since October of 2002... And the last two times it tried to hit an oncoming missile, the interceptor didn’t even leave the ground." More than half of scheduled tests have either ended in failure or been cancelled. (On many occasions, the administration deferred future testing because they worried that more failures would further undermine support for the program and clearly demonstrate the enormous technical hurdles that still have to be overcome). The intercept tests are tightly controlled trial runs that are far less demanding than real-life missile threats, so even the occasional test success must be put in proper perspective.
4. Is President Bush’s North Korea strategy a failure?
Absolutely. The results speak for themselves. Since President Bush came into office, North Korea has more than quadrupled its suspected stockpile of plutonium, withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty—the global compact that undergirds the international nonproliferation regime—and resumed flight testing of its missiles.
The Bush administration has mishandled the matter from the start. It spurned the outgoing Clinton administration and South Korean leadership’s fledgling effort to “lur[e] North Korea out of its shell with economic incentives. Yet the isolation strategy ultimately failed: North Korea kept producing plutonium,” increasing its nuclear arsenal as U.S. officials stood by, content to launch rhetorical broadsides against North Korea. Bush then reluctantly agreed to engage North Korea at a distance through the Six Party talks.
These talks, however, have been stalled since last September. That month, North Korea agreed in principle to give up its nuclear weapons program and re-join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It soon began to backtrack on its pledge, so the United States retaliated by cracking down on alleged North Korean counterfeiting and other financial crimes. Rather than rejoin the talks, North Korea shunned them.
5. Where do we go from here?
There are no sure-fire options at this point: North Korea may decide to press ahead regardless of what the United States and its partners say or do. The United States’ best bet for restaining North Korea, however, continues to be active, smart diplomacy. The United States shouldn’t reward bad behavior by initiating direct talks immediately. It should use this event to press South Korea and China to put greater pressure on North Korea to rejoin the Six Party talks.
Once the six party talks are back on track and the United States receives greater assurances that the North Koreans are getting serious, it should consider direct talks with North Korea. Direct talks before resulted in an eight-year freeze on North Korea’s plutonium stockpile. Direct talks also produced the Bush administration’s only success in convincing a country to give up its nuclear program— Libya. And the Bush administration has finally realized in the case of Iran that direct talks are the best way to advance U.S. interests. The Bush administration should apply these lessons to North Korea.
Andrew Grotto is a Senior National Security Analyst at the Center for American Progress, where he specializes in U.S. strategic policy and the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Baltimore Sun, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a variety of scholarly journals. He received his J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall), his master’s degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Kentucky, where he was a Gaines Fellow.
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Comments
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I think you are mistaken about the missle defense system.
Do you not remember during the gulf war, where the US military shot down several scud missles with the patriot anti missle missle….
James
— James Jolly - Jul 6, 11:25 PM - #Umm, James:
On April 7, 1992 Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Reuven Pedatzur of Tel Aviv University testified before a House Committee stating that, according to their independent analyses, the Patriot system had a success rate of below 10%, and perhaps even a zero success rate. In response to this testimony and other evidence, the staff of the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Legislation and National Security reported, “The Patriot missile system was not the spectacular success in the Persian Gulf War that the American public was led to believe. There is little evidence to prove that the Patriot hit more than a few Scud missiles launched by Iraq during the Gulf War, and there are some doubts about even these engagements. The public and the Congress were misled by definitive statements of success issued by administration and Raytheon representatives during and after the war.”
— August J. Pollak - Jul 7, 10:29 AM - #umm..August….that was 14 years ago. i imagine that there have been some improvements in technology since then. the patriot system was brand new and was rushed into service during the gulf war, it wasn’t ready for combat. i don’t think that anyone knows definitively if a missile defense system will work or not, but its not fair to be condenscending to james. grotto’s blame of bush’s policy is incorrect, its kind of like blaming churchill for germany’s aggression. the north korean situation is not bush’s fault or clinton’s fault or anyone outside of korea’s fault. the north korean regime operates under its own imperatives; all the talks for the past 53 years have done nothing more than maintain a tenuous armistice. armistice is not synonymous with peace. clinton pusued a policy he thought best to moderate north korean behavior, but the north koreans arrogantly interpreted u.s. concessions to be weakness and broke the agreement (while still reaping the benefits) soon after the deal was struck. as a sidenote, one of clinton’s defense secretaries just recently advocated a pre-emptive strike on north korea’s missiles before they were launched, which is an unequivocable act of war. what does that say about the threat that the clinton official perceives in north korea? i haven’t got all the answers, but what will more talks do given the track record?
— 53egradstudent - Jul 7, 01:50 PM - #August….that was 14 years ago.
Yes. The Gulf War, the one he mentioned when he said “the gulf war, where the US military shot down several scud missles with the patriot anti missle missle,” was in fact 14 years ago, which has nothing to do with any claim about the effectivness of the Patriot Missile during that time.
If the reference was to a period in which the missile system was proven to be an utter failure, then it shouldn’t have been mentioned in a defense of an anti-missile system.
— August J. Pollak - Jul 7, 03:04 PM - #Our anti-missile system, whether it works or not, risks sparking off a new arms race-this time with China. Therefore, not only is it a huge waste of $92 billion, it ultimately jeopardizes our national security.
— P. Bolton - Jul 8, 01:24 AM - #Our anti-missile system, whether it works or not, risks sparking off a new arms race-this time with China. Therefore, not only is it a huge waste of $92 billion, it ultimately jeopardizes our national security.
— J Skaggs - Jul 9, 12:49 AM - #— P. Bolton – Jul 8, 12:24 AM – Once again it’s the blame America first crowd to make such a yellow belly statement! The United States of America has EVERY right to defend itself specifically when a sawed off wanna-be dictator such as Kim-Jong-Il the “dear leader” threatens to destroy our way of life by firing Nuclear weapons at us. At what point in time did it happen where this country (the United States) have to examine it’s own views of self defense? Was it Pearl Harbor? Was it in NYC or DC on 9/11? Stop being an apologist P. Bolton! Stop apologizing for the United States being the only Super Power / Humanitarian country ever to breath air since the beginning of time! This country has liberated over 50 million people since 2002 and I am tired of the P. Boltons of this country apologizing for us being the big bad unilateral oppressors! Do you honestly think that China actually cares if the “dear leader” were to land a missile hear? How about going with the good guys on this one!
Missile defense was, and still is, a very dicey technology. No one is even sure how well the most most established systems (flares, laser jammers) used to protect military aircraft work. Even Patriot missiles which (after 15 years of operational development barely work, if at all) have it easy compared to NMD. They can “just” explode near their target; NMD has to actually hit a missile moving thousands of miles an hour. It will be a LONG time before NMD is useful.
In the mean time, P. Bolton is right – China, which maintains 20-odd ICBMs, will probably expand its nuclear arsenal to counter the threat NMD poses to its nuclear forces. And it won’t help things with North Korea, whose nuclear dabbling is largely the result of a regime deeply worried the U.S. will overthrow it by any means necessary (on a side note, overthrowing the North Korean regime is exactly what we SHOULD want).
Point being, our belligerence towards North Korea in the past hasn’t helped things, but that is in the past. The way forward is to get China (the only state North Korea really listens to) to help diplomatically pressure them to end their weapons program.
— B Goldsmith - Jul 9, 01:39 PM - #goldsmith, just delivered the best, most rational course of of action. We have to moderate our stance toward North Korea while hoping our partners in the region can help changes it behavior. And above all, North Korea will always do what’s best for Korea period.
On a different note, has anyone ever thought about the Orientalism aspects of the argument? That Washington will talk directly to Iran but not to Korea?
— Michael R - Jul 12, 01:30 AM - #