America is adamant: North Korea must not be allowed to have intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with nuclear warheads capable of hitting the continental United States.
For decades, Washington fumed as Pyongyang developed projectiles, first, short-range rockets threatening South Korea, then intermediate-range missiles worrying East Asia, especially Japan.
The world imposed sanctions over the decades, but somehow, despite a decrepit economy and widespread destitution and chronic starvation, the succession of Kims on the North Korean throne got ever bigger missiles with deadlier warheads.
That gave Seoul and Tokyo nightmares, but Washington slept well enough never to threaten war even if Pyongyang kept climbing the ballistic ladder.
Until now.
What’s changed, of course, is that North Korean nukes might now threaten not just allies from Bangkok to Tokyo, but Americans in Los Angeles or even New York, and all parts coast to coast.
For this, America is willing to wage war in Asia—its eighth since the 1899 invasion of the Philippines, and including the two Gulf Wars in West Asia—and risk thermonuclear conflict not just with North Korea, but even China and Russia.
A US attack on Kim’s nuclear and missile facilities would likely trigger retaliation against South Korea, pulverizing Seoul with sustained artillery barrages. Asia’s fourth-largest economy and third-leading industrial center would be devastated, with crushing impact on world growth, trade and finance.
And if China and Russia join the fray to prevent a hostile unified Korea emerging at their doorstep, then the North Korean nuke threat America sought to eliminate could well turn into an actual nuclear exchange with one or two superpowers. Is all that worth risking just to spare Americans the fear of North Korean missile attack, which South Koreans and Japanese have lived with for decades?
So what if Kim can rocket LA?
Actually, even Americans face the prospect of nuclear Armageddon, as do Chinese, Russians, British, French, Indians and Pakistanis, to name other nations facing rival powers with atomic weapons.
And they all sleep soundly with the thought that their adversaries would never press the nuclear button for fear of retaliation in kind.
Indeed, since Washington and Moscow both got nukes in the 1950s, what has kept the peace between them is mutually assured destruction. Under this mutual assured destruction (MAD) doctrine, if one superpower actually launched atomic warheads, the other would have enough nukes left to inflict unacceptable death and destruction.
MAD doesn’t apply to China, Britain, France, India and Pakistan, since their arsenals do not have the retaliatory potency of the American or Russian strategic forces. But even a few nukes are fearsome enough to make even a superpower with immense atomic superiority think 20 times before going nuclear against any adversary with nukes.
Applying that thinking to North Korea, even when it develops ICBMs, it would know that firing even one rocket would lead to utter annihilation from instant US retaliation. That would be SAD—singularly assured destruction.
However, while most nuclear states are believed to be rational enough to fear going nuclear, North Korea, especially its mercurial monarch, is deemed crazy enough to actually provoke a suicidal nuclear exchange with America.
After all, Pyongyang’s Kim-pins have repeatedly undertaken deadly and destructive insanities, from Kim Il Sung’s 1950 invasion of the South and kidnappings of Japanese and South Koreans, to the 1983 bomb attack on South Korea’s Cabinet members visiting Myanmar, reputedly supervised by the patriarch’s son and eventual successor Kim Jong Il.
The madness continued under Kim Jong Un, in power since his father’s death in December 2011. At Malaysia’s airport this past February, suspected North Korean agents assassinated his older brother Kim Jong Nam, who was once groomed to inherit the throne, but lost favor after trying to enter Japan on a fake passport for a visit to Tokyo Disneyland.
If that’s not warped enough, Kim Jong Un proved certifiable by threatening last week to fire several missiles at the waters around Guam, a major American base in the Western Pacific. Such an attack would gain North Korea nothing but incinerating US retaliation and possibly full-scale war.
Why Pyongyang won’t nuke
So, is President Donald J. Trump right to threaten or even wage war to keep Kim Jong Un from having nuclear-tipped ICBMs, because the third-generation despot is mad enough to risk SAD by firing at Hollywood or Broadway?
In this life-and-devastation question, one must recall how North Korea has used its weapons programs all these decades. It was never to promote some global ideology.
Rather, Pyongyang has just two purposes in developing nukes: deterring invasion and regime change, and extorting aid and concessions.
Now, will a regime that values power and money provoke a war it cannot survive by firing ICBMs at the most powerful nation on earth?
Of all people, the dealmaker in the White House should know the answer.