US and South Korean officials have said for the past year that North Korea would be able, within a short time, to miniaturize a nuclear device, mount it on an intercontinental ballistic missile and hit the continental US.
North Korea’s test launch on Tuesday last week did not conclusively demonstrate that Pyongyang has reached this point, but Alaska and Hawaii might already be within range — and US forces in South Korea and Japan certainly are.
This is not the first time the North has marked US Independence Day with fireworks. In 2006 a North Korean short-range missile barrage broke a seven-year moratorium, stemming from a 1998 Taepodong missile launch that landed in the Pacific Ocean. Tokyo responded angrily, leading Pyongyang to declare a moratorium — although it continued static-rocket testing — gaining a propaganda victory.
The North substantially increased ballistic-missile cooperation with Iran, begun earlier in the decade — a logical choice as both countries were relying on the same Soviet-era Scud missile technology and because their missile objectives were the same: Acquiring delivery capabilities for nuclear warheads.
This longstanding cooperation is one reason North Korea threatens not only the US and East Asia, but the entire world.
Strategically, this threat is already here. Unfortunately, it should have been realized decades ago to prevent it from maturing.
It is clear that nearly 25 years of diplomatic efforts, even when accompanied by economic sanctions, have failed.
US President Donald Trump has continued the “carrot and stick” approach, first with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), and more recently with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on his Washington visit.
The US must shift to a more productive approach, Trump has said.
China has been playing the US while doing next to nothing to reverse the North’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs.
There is every reason to believe Beijing has turned a blind eye to willful violations of international sanctions and its own commitments, allowing Chinese enterprises and business people to enable Pyongyang.
Many contend the US should impose economic sanctions against China, pressuring it to pressure North Korea.
While superficially attractive, this policy would inevitably fail.
However, because the failure would take time to become evident, sanctioning China would only buy more time for Pyongyang to advance its programs.
China’s economy is so large that targeted sanctions against named individuals and institutions can have only minimal consequences. They would also suffer the common fate of such sanctions, being very easily evaded by establishing “cut-outs” carrying on the same activities under new names.
China’s decades of mixed signals about Pyongyang reflect its uncertainty about what to do with the North.
Sanctioning China might only bolster Beijing’s pro-Pyongyang faction, obviously the opposite of the result sought by the US.
Instead, Washington should focus on the real problem: North Korea. China must be made to understand that, unless the threat is eliminated by unifying the Peninsula, the US will do whatever is necessary to protect US civilians from nuclear blackmail.
This implies the use of military force, despite the risks of broader conflict on the Korean Peninsula, enormous dangers to civilians there and the threat of massive refugee flows from the North into China and South Korea. They can work with the US or face the inevitable consequences, which would be far more damaging to China.
John Bolton is a former US ambassador to the UN. This article was first published in print in the New York Post.
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