If you like Cold War-style thrillers and don't mind getting the bejeebers scared out of you, we recommend an article by arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis titled "North Korea is Practicing for Nuclear War."
North Korea is America's strangest adversary: isolated, paranoid, belligerent and--here's the worst part--armed to the teeth. Earlier this month the regime of Kim Jong Un simultaneously test-fired four missiles in the direction of Japan on an arc leading directly toward the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station at Iwakuni, Japan. Removing any doubt, North Korea announced that it was testing its capacity "to strike the bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces in Japan."
Lewis said that calling this provocation a "missile test" underplays the threat. North Korea has a proven ability to fire missiles that could reach Japan and South Korea. It also has nuclear weapons and is developing the ability to put them on warheads. "These aren't missile tests, they are military exercises," Lewis wrote. "North Korea knows the missiles work. What the military units are doing now is practicing--practicing for a nuclear war."
His thesis is that North Korea, the U.S. and its South Korean ally are embarked on a dangerous course of gaming out first-strike capacities. Currently the U.S. and South Korea are conducting annual joint military exercises that appear to be dress rehearsals for a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, which would come in response to a threat. The practice efforts include taking out Kim and assaulting his nuclear and missile facilities, according to Lewis.
North Korea hates these exercises and responded with its multiple-missile test. The significance of firing four rockets is that firing a quartet would increase the chances of eluding a sophisticated U.S. anti-missile defense system known as THAAD.
What disturbs Lewis is the idea that in the event of a crisis, Kim might decide to use his nukes before the U.S. and South Korea can find and destroy his missile units. "He has to go first, if he is to go at all," Lewis wrote. Gulp.
Instead of counting on THAAD (or Trump's tweets) to save humanity, we have another idea for the president: Game out scenarios in which the U.S, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia acknowledge the North Korean threat and cooperate to exert pressure on Kim to come to the table to discuss security guarantees in exchange for economic benefits.
China has no more interest than anyone else in waiting for North Korea to set off World War III in Asia. So amid the scary stories of North Korean brinkmanship, there is an opportunity for the Trump administration to work with whoever is willing to find a better ending to this chilling prospect.
Editorial on 03/18/2017