Analyst: Regime Ignored Pressures In 2006, Tested Missile, Nuke; It’s Still Obstinate

The West shouldn’t assume that North Korea can be persuaded to abandon its moves toward launching a long-range missile, a military analyst said.

"I would have no confidence" that sanctions or other pressures can push North Korean leader Kim Jong Il into abandoning plans for the test, said L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Mansfield Foundation, a liberal think tank focused on Asian affairs. While last year he was a member of the Obama team, he isn’t a member of President Obama’s administration.

He spoke as a panelist at an American Enterprise Institute forum on North Korea and the Obama administration, which was held as the North continued preparations for a long- range missile launch, or space launch, and as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was touring Asian nations including South Korea, Japan and China. During her trip, Clinton viewed the impending North Korean missile launch with "great concern." She also is wary of a possible regime change in the North that might place militant ultra-nationalists in power. (Please see separate story in this issue.)

"I think they’re going to go ahead on their own accord and their own plan, one way or the other," with any long-range missile launch they choose to initiate, Flake said.

As a basis for that conclusion, he pointed to the brazen unconcern by Kim and other North Korean leaders in 2006, when Pyongyang was confronted with demands from China and around the world that it cease its bellicose actions. The North stiff-armed those demands, and went ahead with a long-range missile launch (it failed), following that up with a successful underground test of an atomic bomb.

"I don’t think the world community has a very strong track record that North Korea is going to find credible this time to stop them from doing something," he said.

He responded to this question from Space & Missile Defense Report: given that North Korea repeatedly has violated prior agreements signed after long negotiations, and given that launching U.S. military strikes to destroy North Korean nuclear and missile installations would upset South Korean leaders, does that leave only one remaining course of action — for the United States to finish developing a multi-layered, effective ballistic missile shield?

Unfortunately, there is no major new course of action, no promising, radically different direction for Obama to take in confronting North Korea, Flake said. "There is very little room for a dramatically different approach to North Korea," he said.

Given that North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon, successfully, and has tested long-range missiles, "there is not a lot of wiggle room" for advancing a markedly different approach to dealing with Pyongyang, Flake said.

It is possible that the North is poised to launch a Taepo Dong-2 long-range missile that could reach the U.S. mainland, said Nicholas Eberstadt, an AEI scholar who moderated the panel forum.

He also noted that there is concern the North may have conducted a secret program to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) to make undisclosed nuclear weapons, in addition to the publicly admitted program to produce plutonium at the Yongbyon reactor that has yielded several atomic bombs.

Eberstadt noted that while nations have attempted to engage Pyongyang in Six Party Talks, to dissuade North Korea from developing nuclear weapons that might be fitted atop missiles, the North has used that time to move forward with its nuclear program.

Others agreed with Eberstadt.

"There is a real possibility that North Korea in the next few weeks will wind up testing a long-range missile," Flake said. While the North has agreed not to develop such missiles, and has agreed to halt its nuclear program and surrender atomic weapons, it has refused to abide by those promises.

For eight years, during President Bush’s administration, "North Korea has systematically crossed every red line," Flake said.

But as for the new occupant in the White House, "I’m not sure the Obama administration" will be able to ignore North Korea, Flake said.

Similarly, David Asher, an international affairs consultant, said there has been a failure to recognize that the North Korean position and actions are "increasingly cancerous in nature."

While other nations worked toward a goal of coaxing North Korea to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for rapprochement and better relations with the world, "we did not recognize the development of nuclear weapons," and the danger that North Korea might proliferate those weapons to dangerous states or actors, Asher said.

"There is a serious threat" that North Korea may proliferate nuclear weapons to Middle Eastern nations, he said.

The prospect of proliferation of nuclear weapons mounted on medium-range weapons "cannot be accepted," he cautioned.

To guard against North Korean long-range missiles, the United States developed the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, now installed in Alaska and California, a product of The Boeing Co. [BA].

As well, when North Korea launched a long-range Taepo Dong-2 missile in 2006, the United States had Navy ships nearby equipped with Aegis weapon control systems (Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT]) and Standard Missile interceptors (Raytheon Co. [RTN]) poised to shoot down the missile. However, the Taepo Dong-2 destructed shortly after launch.

To guard against missiles that Middle Eastern nations such as Iran might launch toward Europe or the United States, the Missile Defense Agency proposes installing a European Missile Defense system (Boeing), which would have two-stage variants of the three-stage GMD interceptors, mounted in ground silos in Poland, plus a radar in the Czech Republic.

The possibility that the North has been "cooking up a massive amount" of HEU is a very provocative move, Asher said.

Traces of HEU were found on pages of documents that Pyongyang gave to international inspectors detailing the plutonium program.

Panelists noted that the United States, or corporations headquartered there, have invested billions of dollars in South Korea, which is within range of artillery and missiles deployed by North Korea.