Carrying Coals to Newcastle

A previous attempted (and failed) launch of a North Korean long-range missile in 2006 during the tenure of the Bush administration did not elicit similar press interest, not to speak of threat-mongering. Yet listen to President Obama's reaction before a foreign audience: "In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. [North Korea was testing] a rocket that could be used for long-range missiles. [The launch illustrated] the need for action, not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons. Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something." [1]

The news media were on the case immediately. They characterized it as the first big foreign test for the Obama administration, letting suitable political axe-grinders do the talking: "Mike Green, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, called North Korea's rocket launch 'a brazen challenge... This is going to be a real litmus test for a lot of countries about how Obama and his team handle threats,' said Green, who served as an Asian-affairs specialist on the White House National Security Council under former President George W. Bush." [2] One wonders whether Mr. Green shared his sentiments about North Korean missile tests with the press in 2006, during the administration of his former boss. One also wonders why the editors who framed the story thought that Obama's meeting with the G-20 on the occasion of the greatest global economic meltdown in 80 years did not rise to the level of being a foreign test.

A reader looking for a more dispassionate analysis could with some effort find what he was seeking, however: "The key thing is to make sure that we do not confine ourselves to an emotional, knee-jerk reaction," said Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the U.N., "because what we do need is a common strategy." [3]

Calm, sober analysis was precisely what was not being sought in certain quarters; according to some people, those who counseled against knee-jerk reactions were part of the problem. In his obsessive need never to let a putative "national security" issue, however inflated, go unaddressed, John Sidney McCain III was not content merely to condemn North Korea, he had to drag China and Russia into the dock as contributors to the crisis. [4]

But for a totally objective analysis of the North Korean launch and its implications who better to turn to than America's military industrial complex? Nothing less than "'A new security era has begun,' said Riki Ellison, who heads the grass-roots- and industry-funded Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, which lobbies for a layered shield against missiles that could carry chemical, biological and nuclear warheads." [5]

All this prefatory quoting of reactions leads us to the central question of this affair: why is the Obama administration playing up the launch of a glorified bottle rocket into a crisis when it has more than enough genuine crises to deal with? Qui bono?

The Taepodong-2 variant that was launched is a shaky kluging-together of Scud missile stages (a 50 year-old technology which itself is derived from the even older German V-2) with an (alleged) 300 lb. payload, meaning the alleged satellite. But at North Korea's present stage of technological development a nuclear warhead would have to be much larger than that: on the order of 2,000 lbs, quite apart from the need to have re-entry shielding which the North Koreans almost certainly have not mastered.

The range of the test shot, even with the small payload, was only about 1,800-2,000 miles. It is 3,750 miles from North Korea to Ted Stevens Airport in Anchorage, AK. It is 4,600 miles to Honolulu, assuming the North Koreans have the guidance technology to hit a dot in the Pacific Ocean, but then they'd have to magically more than double the range. To Seattle, the nearest big city in the contiguous United States, it is 5,150 miles. Is the reader terrified yet?

Shortly after the first North Korean attempt at launching a long-range missile, in 1998, the CIA's national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, Robert D. Walpole, gave a series of well-publicized speeches about the North's putative ICBM program. It was he who first posited by implication that the missiles might reach the west coast of the United States. The threat-mongering then took off like a classic meme, whereupon some think-tank commandos even speculated that a reduced-payload configuration on the North Korean Missile could deliver a 200 kg warhead into the center of the U.S. landmass and a 100 kg warhead to Washington D.C. [6] It was a classic case of threat inflation in the tradition of the bomber gap of 1956, the missile gap of 1960, and the "Team B" hysteria of the mid-1970s.

The Obama administration behaves as if this is a major crisis on which it must "act." Yet what can they do? Increase sanctions? North Korea is already under a very strict sanctions regime; would the de minimus amount of residual trade that would be affected make Kim Jong Il see the error of his ways after decades of already draconian commercial blockades? We doubt it. How could the United States dragoon China into agreeing with that action, when we are simultaneously begging them on bended knee to keep borrowing Treasuries? No leverage there. The only other option is war on the Korean Peninsula and that is off the table save in the imaginings of narcissistically disturbed has-beens like Newt Gingrich, who hypothesized that were he president, he would destroy the missile on its launch pad by means of a commando team or "a laser." [7]

We can well understand why people who have read too much Tom Clancy see this launch as manna from heaven in their efforts to hype a bogus threat. But why does the Obama administration insist on inflating a failed rocket launch into a crisis that will stimulate the world's expectations that the United States government must "act," even when there is no real option other than to keep our powder dry, trust in the deterrent effect of thousands of U.S. nuclear weapons, and wait until Kim Jong Il reaches the devoutly to be hoped for expiration date of his mortal allotment?

Is this just one more example of the Democrats' pathological and debilitating fear of appearing weak on defense?


* Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based defense analyst.

[1] "North Korea Seeks Political Gain From Rocket Launch," Choe Sang-Hun, Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger, New York Times, April 6, 2009.

[2] "N. Korea launch is Obama's first big foreign test," Edwin Chen and Hans Nichols, Bloomberg News, April 6, 2009.

[3] "North Korea's Neighbors Consider New Penalties," Evan Ramstad, Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2009.

[4] "McCain knocks Russia, China response," UPI, April 6, 2009.

[5] "North Korea launch could arm Pentagon suppliers," Jim Wolf, Reuters, April 6, 2009.

[6] Joseph S. Bermudez, "A History of Ballistic Missile Development in the DPRK, Occasional Paper No. 2," Monterey Institute of International Studies Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 1999, p. 30.

[7] "Gingrich: Obama Has Pulled a 'Bait and Switch'," Fox News, April 2, 2009.