BASIC Comment
Getting Serious About Missile Proliferation:
North Korea and Prompt Global Strike
23 June 2006
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North Korean preparations for the launch of
a long-range missile need to be kept in perspective (If
Necessary, Strike and Destroy: North Korea Cannot Be Allowed
to Test This Missile, The Washington Post, 22 June 2006).
The Taepodong-2 is an untested two-, or three-, stage “integrated”
missile. The three-stage version consists of a solid-fuel
booster rocket strapped onto a Scud missile, which is in turn
attached to a short-range Nodong missile. Arms control experts
have expressed doubts whether the missile has the range to
hit the United States and whether it can carry a significant
payload.
The preferred option, of course, would be for
Pyongyang to cancel the test and return to the six-party talks
which have been stalled since last September. And for the
United States to review the financial sanctions that are crippling
the North Korean economy.
But equally significant is the level of hypocrisy
surrounding this issue. Yet again, the focus is on the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems
within 'rogue states' like North Korea and Iran, or by extremists.
While concerns should be raised about potential North Korean
weapons, as the independent WMD Commission chaired by Hans
Blix has pointed out in its recent Weapons of Terror report,
insufficient attention is being devoted to the fact that there
are still some 27,000 nuclear weapons in the United States,
Russia and other nuclear states. And in terms of missile proliferation,
one of the most worrying developments is in the United States,
where the military authorities want to deploy non-nuclear
warheads on two of the Trident missiles in each of its ballistic-missile
submarines, as part of a Prompt Global Strike (PGS) project.
The PGS concept, introduced in the US Defense
Department's 2001 Nuclear Posture Review and further refined
in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, is a USD 500 million
project that would see up to 100 of the US Navy's 300 Sea-Launched
Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) re-armed with conventional warheads.
These weapons would give the US administration the ability
to attack targets virtually anywhere on the face of the earth
with precision-guided, conventional high explosives within
60 minutes of a Presidential order to strike.
In the short term, an interim project would
see 24 of the US Navy's Trident II missiles modified to carry
non-nuclear, conventional warheads. Each missile would be
able to carry four conventional warheads and initially two
would be deployed per submarine. PGS has serious global security
implications, including high risk of mistaken nuclear first
strike and a new arms race in ballistic missiles. Congress
is currently reviewing the financing of this project in the
2007 budget and there is still a chance that it will decide
to eliminate the USD 127 million earmarked. In addition, NATO
allies ought to be voicing opposition to it, both in public
and in private discussions with US officials. For further
information on PGS, please refer to a new BASIC study: http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Papers/BP51.htm.
Efforts to prevent ballistic missile proliferation
have been modestly successful. Few countries are building
ballistic missiles, more than 30 countries have joined against
transferring missiles and missile technology, and more than
100 countries have signed the Hague Code of Conduct against
Ballistic Missile Proliferation, which further strengthens
norms against missiles. But this progress is threatened as
much by Washington's PGS proposal as by the fledgling efforts
to master long-range ballistic missile technology in Pyongyang.
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If Necessary, Strike and Destroy
North Korea Cannot Be Allowed to Test This Missile
By Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry
The Washington
Post, 22 June 2006
North Korean technicians are reportedly in the final
stages of fueling a long-range ballistic missile that some experts
estimate can deliver a deadly payload to the United States. The
last time North Korea tested such a missile, in 1998, it sent a
shock wave around the world, but especially to the United States
and Japan, both of which North Korea regards as archenemies. They
recognized immediately that a missile of this type makes no sense
as a weapon unless it is intended for delivery of a nuclear warhead.
A year later North Korea agreed to a moratorium on
further launches, which it upheld -- until now. But there is a critical
difference between now and 1998.
Today North Korea openly boasts of its nuclear deterrent,
has obtained six to eight bombs' worth of plutonium since 2003 and
is plunging ahead to make more in its Yongbyon reactor. The six-party
talks aimed at containing North Korea's weapons of mass destruction
have collapsed.
Should the United States allow a country openly hostile
to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental
ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S.
soil? We believe not. The Bush administration has unwisely ballyhooed
the doctrine of "preemption," which all previous presidents have
sustained as an option rather than a dogma. It has applied the doctrine
to Iraq, where the intelligence pointed to a threat from weapons
of mass destruction that was much smaller than the risk North Korea
poses. (The actual threat from Saddam Hussein was, we now know,
even smaller than believed at the time of the invasion.) But intervening
before mortal threats to U.S. security can develop is surely a prudent
policy.
Therefore, if North Korea persists in its launch preparations,
the United States should immediately make clear its intention to
strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it
can be launched. This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise
missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead.
The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. But the effect on the Taepodong would
be devastating. The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with
high-energy fuel is itself explosive -- the U.S. airstrike would
puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully
engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force
would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats
thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate
vicinity of the missile gantry.
The U.S. military has announced that it has placed
some of the new missile defense interceptors deployed in Alaska
and California on alert. In theory, the antiballistic missile system
might succeed in smashing into the Taepodong payload as it hurtled
through space after the missile booster burned out. But waiting
until North Korea's ICBM is launched to interdict it is risky. First,
by the time the payload was intercepted, North Korean engineers
would already have obtained much of the precious flight test data
they are seeking, which they could use to make a whole arsenal of
missiles, hiding and protecting them from more U.S. strikes in the
maze of tunnels they have dug throughout their mountainous country.
Second, the U.S. defensive interceptor could reach the target only
if it was flying on a test trajectory that took it into the range
of the U.S. defense. Third, the U.S. system is unproven against
North Korean missiles and has had an uneven record in its flight
tests. A failed attempt at interception could undermine whatever
deterrent value our missile defense may have.
We should not conceal our determination to strike
the Taepodong if North Korea refuses to drain the fuel out and take
it back to the warehouse. When they learn of it, our South Korean
allies will surely not support this ultimatum -- indeed they will
vigorously oppose it. The United States should accordingly make
clear to the North that the South will play no role in the attack,
which can be carried out entirely with U.S. forces and without use
of South Korean territory.
South Korea has worked hard to counter North Korea's
50-year menacing of its own country, through both military defense
and negotiations, and the United States has stood with the South
throughout. South Koreans should understand that U.S. territory
is now also being threatened, and we must respond. Japan is likely
to welcome the action but will also not lend open support or assistance.
China and Russia will be shocked that North Korea's recklessness
and the failure of the six-party talks have brought things to such
a pass, but they will not defend North Korea.
In addition to warning our allies and partners of
our determination to take out the Taepodong before it can be launched,
we should warn the North Koreans. There is nothing they could do
with such warning to defend the bulky, vulnerable missile on its
launch pad, but they could evacuate personnel who might otherwise
be harmed. The United States should emphasize that the strike, if
mounted, would not be an attack on the entire country, or even its
military, but only on the missile that North Korea pledged not to
launch -- one designed to carry nuclear weapons. We should sharply
warn North Korea against further escalation.
North Korea could respond to U.S. resolve by taking
the drastic step of threatening all-out war on the Korean Peninsula.
But it is unlikely to act on that threat. Why attack South Korea,
which has been working to improve North-South relations (sometimes
at odds with the United States) and which was openly opposing the
U.S. action? An invasion of South Korea would bring about the certain
end of Kim Jong Il's regime within a few bloody weeks of war, as
surely he knows.
Though war is unlikely, it would be prudent for the
United States to enhance deterrence by introducing U.S. air and
naval forces into the region at the same time it made its threat
to strike the Taepodong. If North Korea opted for such a suicidal
course, these extra forces would make its defeat swifter and less
costly in lives -- American, South Korean and North Korean.
This is a hard measure for President Bush to take.
It undoubtedly carries risk. But the risk of continuing inaction
in the face of North Korea's race to threaten this country would
be greater. Creative diplomacy might have avoided the need to choose
between these two unattractive alternatives. Indeed, in earlier
years the two of us were directly involved in negotiations with
North Korea, coupled with military planning, to prevent just such
an outcome. We believe diplomacy might have precluded the current
situation.
But diplomacy has failed, and we cannot sit by and
let this deadly threat mature. A successful Taepodong launch, unopposed
by the United States, its intended victim, would only embolden North
Korea even further. The result would be more nuclear warheads atop
more and more missiles.
Ashton B. Carter was assistant secretary of defense
under President Bill Clinton and William J. Perry was secretary
of defense. The writers, who conducted the North Korea policy review
while in government, are now professors at Harvard and Stanford,
respectively.
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