One Way to Disarm North Korea

TOKYO - If there were any world issue that cries out urgently for fresh ideas, it is how to disarm North Korea of its growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

It can be assumed that Pyongyang will only accelerate its nuclear program in 2017, leading up to a possible test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) before the end of the year.

After the September explosion, the North Korea Central News Agency wrote: “the standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable the DPRK [North Korea] to produce at will . . . a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads.”

This claim cannot be easily dismissed. Certainly, most of the regional leaders believe that North Korea is now or soon will be capable of firing nuclear-tipped missiles at South Korea, Japan, and American bases as far away as Guam. 

Japan’ new defense minister Tomomi Inada told reporters that it is now “appropriate” to assume that Pyongyang has solved the problem of miniaturizing nuclear bombs so that they can be attached to the warhead of a ballistic missile.

“We cannot rule out the possibility that with this nuclear test North Korea’s nuclear technology has reached a stage where it can aim for operational use,” a senior Japanese defense official told the Japan Times.

Meanwhile, North Korea’ stocks of fissionable material, the stuff of bombs, is steadily growing and is now considered sufficient to maintain virtually unlimited tests. The North’s expanding nuclear infrastructure produces both plutonium and highly enriched uranium. Siegfried Hecker, a fellow at Stanford University, estimates the North has material sufficient for about 20 bombs with an additional seven added every year. Hecker is one of the few Americans ever permitted to visit the main nuclear center at Yongbyon.

There was a time when it was fair to judge North Korea’s nuclear program as being a chip to be bargained away with promises of recognition, a peace treaty, and aid. Possibly that was the view from Pyongyang too, as the Koreans had not yet tested a bomb and weren’t sure they could make one work.

By now it should have become clear that Pyongyang considers itself a nuclear weapons state and is indifferent to inducements to change its course, unappreciative of aid and impervious (with some help from China) to sanctions. It is increasingly clear that the country does not see its nuclear program as a bargaining chip and has no intention of giving it away just for an embassy in Washington.

Thae Yong-ho, the former deputy North Korean ambassador to Britain, told interviewers that North Korea would never give up its nuclear weapons even if bribed with $1 trillion or $10 trillion in rewards. 

However, Thae also hinted at a bargaining tool that might provide an opening with Kim. His goal, Thae said, is to obtain formal recognition as a nuclear weapons state. 

The world needs some new bargaining chips. They could be provided by re-introducing tactical nuclear weapons into South Korea. Such a move could be a game changer, turning talks into what are in effect nuclear disarmament negotiations.

During the Cold War, the United States based tactical nuclear weapons at American air force bases, such as Osan and Kunsan, in Korea. In 1991 former President George H.W. Bush ordered the nuclear weapons removed from Korea (as well as from US naval ships save for the Trident submarines).

Re-introducing these weapons could be seen as a deterrent to any North Korean attack. However, their real purpose would be to provide chips for negotiating an arms agreement. For every atomic bomb they dismantle, we would withdraw one of ours. Let Kim play Gorbachev to our Ronald Reagan.

It could be fairly argued that there be sufficient power to deter a North Korean attack represented by ballistic missile submarines. They provide the protection of the “nuclear umbrella” for South Korea as well as Japan. But for most of Korean and Japanese, the nuclear umbrella is an abstraction.

Presumably, an American ballistic missile submarine is prowling somewhere submerged in the North Pacific with a full complement of Trident missiles. But it is literally out of sight and thus out of mind for most of the region.

They are not as in-your-face as tactical nuclear weapons based just south of the DMZ would be. 

There are, of course, many objections to this tactic. It runs counter to America’s non-proliferation nuclear policy, the South Koreans probably would not wear it and the Chinese, forgive the pun, would go ballistic.

The only argument for it is that a President Donald Trump might just do it. He prides himself on being unpredictable and, after all, nothing else has worked.

Todd Crowell is the author of The Coming War Between China and Japan, published as an Amazon Single Kindle.