North Korea is a Nuclear Weapons Nightmare: How Did We Get Here and What Can We Do About It?By John McLaughlin - July 29, 2022
There
are times when I feel I might be responsible for starting a chain
reaction that cascaded into a nightmare on the Korean peninsula. More
specifically, I wonder whether a briefing I gave the president of the
United States led in strange ways to the heavily armed and isolated
nuclear North Korea we confront today.
The story begins with a
phone call I received one afternoon in September 2002 from then-White
House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. She asked whether, in
my capacity as deputy director of Central Intelligence, I could come to
the White House the next morning and brief President George W. Bush and
the national security team on the latest intelligence on North Korea’s
nuclear posture. The Bush administration was considering whether to keep
President Bill Clinton’s commitment to give Pyongyang much-needed fuel
supplies and help in the building of peaceful nuclear reactors — in
return for Pyongyang’s pledge to abandon its weapons-related work on
plutonium. This was all part of the “Agreed Framework” negotiated by the
Clinton administration in 1994. Bush wanted to make sure North Korea
was honoring the deal before continuing.
Many details of what I
said the following morning remain classified. What I can say is that my
briefing kept strictly within the bounds of what we knew with reasonable
confidence and did not speculate beyond that. My key point was that we
had learned that North Korea had begun seeking centrifuge-related
materials in large quantities. Centrifuges are used in the enrichment of
uranium for peaceful and weapons purposes; if true, the finding would
mark a significant development — as clear a sign as the world had to
that point that the North had secretly resumed its march toward a
nuclear capability.
It was also enough to start that chain of events.
First,
the administration decided to send then-Assistant Secretary of State
for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Jim Kelly to Pyongyang to confront
the North Koreans. Kelly was armed with talking points summarizing what I
had said — without revealing how we knew. Kelly met the North Koreans
on Oct. 3, and by all accounts they were shocked — and scrambled
overnight to respond. After some arguments among translators, it was
apparent they had acknowledged their plan to enrich uranium.
Now, the U.S. had proof.
Kelly’s
mission — and the North Korean response — shut down any consideration
of concessions to the North and triggered a series of North Korean moves
that still reverberate today: the December 2002 ejection of inspectors
from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); the January 2003
withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); and the
North’s announcement, in February 2003, that it had reactivated its
nuclear facilities. By April 2003, the North Koreans were reprocessing
spent fuel rods to make weapons-grade plutonium.
That spring —
roughly nine months after my White House briefing — the North was openly
back in the business of producing nuclear explosive material usable for
weapons.
They have never looked back.
North Korea today — what you need to know
Watching
the news in recent years from North Korea can seem like a slow and
hard-to-follow drip of developments. Here are three takeaways that
matter.
The yield of North Korea’s nuclear tests has risen exponentially.
Clearly
we were right to worry about those centrifuge materials and the North’s
plans for its nuclear program. In 2010, North Korea invited Stanford
University physics professor Siegfried Hecker and a colleague to view
its now-completed uranium enrichment facility. “Our jaws just dropped,”
Hecker said. They “couldn’t quite believe” what they saw — 2,000
centrifuges in a modern enrichment facility. And the North Koreans were
showing off the accomplishment to a Western visitor.
North Korea
has carried out six nuclear tests since 2006. Its first test that year
had a yield of only 0.7 to 2 kilotons. But the yield has kept growing;
in the North’s last test, in late 2017, the yield had jumped to 250
kilotons — 16 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb — enough to level all
the residential buildings in downtown Washington, D.C. The blast caused
a 6.3 magnitude earthquake near the test site.
Another test may
be in the offing. Analysis of satellite imagery from last month shows
tunnel construction that looks to me — and other observers — like
preparation for a nuclear test. And this week, North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un said he stood ready “to deploy the country’s nuclear deterrent.”
A paradigm shift in what the North’s missiles can do.
Kim
was 27 when he took power. On the one hand, he carried out what struck
me as a textbook case of how extreme authoritarian leaders tighten their
grip: create an inner circle of loyal followers who control the means
of coercion, reward them handsomely, and imprison or kill any would-be
competitors who begin to build power bases or stray from absolute
loyalty. In following this playbook, Kim has kept up a pace of
executions that experts generally agree exceeds that of his predecessors
(over 300 in his first five years alone).
On the other hand, Kim
lacked the experience or charisma of his father and grandfather, who
led the nation before him. Kim needed something more to lock in his
authority and prove his ability to lead and protect the country. That
“something more” turned out to be an unrelenting push for advances in
the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.
Kim has
increased the range of North Korea’s missile force — enough so that it
poses a threat to the continental United States. He has pushed testing
relentlessly, racking up well over 100 missile tests, compared with only
31 conducted during the reigns of his father and grandfather. The
turning point came in 2017, when the North succeeded for the first time
in launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). This was the
Hwasong 14, followed four months later by the Hwasong 15 — a missile
that is considered capable of flying 8,000 miles. That would put it in
range of the entire continental United States.
I took some sour
satisfaction from this. My analysts had taken heavy criticism from
Congress’s missile defense advocates in 1995 for estimating then that
the North could not get this far for at least 15 years. It took them 22
years to hit this milestone.
The North’s latest test, last March, appears to have built on and exceeded these successes, achieving the longest duration yet.
These
missiles can probably carry nuclear warheads — though there is debate
about whether the missiles’ reentry vehicles (the parts that deliver a
nuclear warhead to a land-based target) can survive the heat of
reentering Earth’s atmosphere. And little is known publicly about the
sophistication of guidance systems for these weapons.
Meanwhile,
the amount of nuclear material the North can produce is increasing, and
by extension so is its nuclear warheads inventory. The U.S. Army’s 2020
estimate of 20 to 60 North Korean nuclear weapons is generally in line
with expert public estimates.
Tech upgrades: Kim is making his weaponry more sophisticated
Kim
is also focusing on advances likely to render his weaponry more
dangerous, harder to locate and more difficult to deter. The U.N. says
the North successfully tested a hypersonic glide missile earlier this
year; these travel at least five times the speed of sound, typically fly
lower than other missiles, and their greater maneuverability makes them
nearly impossible to defend against. The North is also working to
develop submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), which would
complicate detection.
The takeaway: North Korea has become a
fully functioning nuclear weapons state, with work underway to increase
the quantity, sophistication, stealth and survivability of its arsenal —
all while developing a formidable program of missiles capable of
reaching halfway across the globe.
Nightmares — short and long term
Clearly,
Kim sees these weapons as the best way to ensure regime survival in a
world he regards as hostile. As my successors in the intelligence
community noted during the time of then-President Donald Trump’s
meetings with Kim in 2018 and 2019, there is almost no chance of Kim
voluntarily surrendering these weapons. He has doubtless noted the
vulnerability of states that either did give them up (see Libya — or
Ukraine) or failed to acquire them (Iraq and Syria).
In terms of
what to worry about, I have a short-term set of concerns — and then a
range of issues that may last a decade or more.
In the short
term, my major worry is the country’s record of proliferation. North
Korea is perennially cash-strapped because of its backward economy and
sanctions; sales of weapons technology have proved to be one of the
country’s very few reliable revenue sources. And it’s a highly
profitable one.
Versions of the North’s Nodong medium-range
missile remain the workhorses of the Iranian and Pakistani missile
forces. North Korea has also sold missiles to Libya, Yemen, the United
Arab Emirates and Syria. The North helped Syria build the nuclear
reactor that Israel destroyed in 2007; it is providing Iran with the
two-stage missile technology it used for its longer-range Hwasong
missiles, and the two countries have collaborated on missile engine
development. Kim plows the profits back into his missile and nuclear
programs and into the system of rewards and privileges for the elite
that sustains his regime.
Longer term, I think the key challenge
is to accurately assess Kim’s intentions. For intelligence
agencies/analysts, what’s in the adversary’s head is always more elusive
than capabilities — the things we can locate and see. In Kim’s case,
I’m convinced he is not a madman; he is rational within the strategic
construct he has created. Although there can no longer be much doubt
that he has acquired the capability to strike the U.S. homeland, he also
knows that such an attack would be suicidal. As a CIA official said in
2017: “He wants to rule for a long time and die peacefully in his own
bed.” I believe that’s still an accurate assessment — and it’s important
in crafting policy and responses going forward.
But this hardly
means Kim’s purposes are benign. Among other things, the arsenal he has
built buys him some assurance that other countries will not attack his
country. He also now has impressive muscle to bolster North Korea’s
traditional pressure tactics in the region — tactics aimed at
intimidating neighbors and gaining economic concessions and assistance.
And if negotiations ever resume between North Korea and the U.S.
(President Joe Biden has signaled a willingness to talk), or with a
larger U.S.-led group, Kim has gained far more leverage to bargain for
sanctions relief. Our negotiators and intelligence professionals will
just have to be aware of the history: Along with demanding the maximum
and delivering the minimum, the North has a record of cheating on
agreements.
Finally, though North Korea’s stated goal of
reunifying the peninsula on its terms seems far-fetched at the moment,
there is no evidence that Kim has given up on it. In the North Korean
mind, superior military power is certainly a prerequisite — as is a U.S.
withdrawal from the peninsula. While the latter is unlikely in an era
of U.S. emphasis on Asia, Kim now has more tools to make life
increasingly difficult and dangerous for U.S. forces there, and he can
reasonably hope that U.S. politics will shift toward a more isolationist
stance. Kim probably has not forgotten that his grandfather went to war
to unify the peninsula — and almost succeeded.
What can the U.S. — and the rest of the world — do?
I
think often about what the U.S. should do about North Korea — or what I
might advise, were I summoned back to the Oval Office.
Although
the North’s military capabilities have changed dramatically, one
reality remains for any American leader dealing with North Korea: No one
option is sufficient, and Washington will be forced to use all of them
simultaneously to at least keep the North Korea problem from getting
worse. This amounts to a strategic mix of sanctions, deterrence,
containment and negotiations. Each option has drawbacks, risks and
limitations, but when orchestrated skillfully, they can keep the North
off balance and preserve the possibility of progress when the time is
ripe.
Negotiations
Biden has stated his willingness
to negotiate — and there is nothing wrong in principle with another
U.S.-North Korea summit. But I would not contemplate it unless it was so
well prepared as to know in advance the outcome, and to know clearly
what we are willing to accept — full denuclearization or something less,
such as a freeze on nuclear and missile development and testing? There
would also have to be clear agreement on an international mechanism for
ensuring compliance by the North with any agreement, along with a
declaration by the North of its existing inventory — a particularly
onerous requirement for highly secretive Pyongyang.
Sanctions
The
U.S. and international organizations have levied economic sanctions on
North Korea since the 1950s, adjusting them as conditions have changed.
The impact, though, has been felt mainly by the populace rather than the
governing elite. It has also encouraged a thriving gray market and
spurred smuggling networks. No doubt sanctions have hurt, but the North
has become deeply expert at evading them, as a recent study of illicit
oil deliveries showed. As Grid has reported, the country has also reaped
riches from cryptocurrency crime; according to the 2022 Crypto Crime
Report from Chainalysis, the regime obtained nearly $400 million in
stolen cryptocurrency last year alone. China also comes to the rescue
regularly, sending in vital commodities such as fuel and food.
There
are additional sanctions that might plug gaps — but given that 90
percent of North Korea’s trade is with China, adding sanctions without
Chinese cooperation is fruitless. And one of the unfortunate side
effects of recent Chinese-Russian cooperation is the added difficulty of
sanctioning a country like North Korea, which counts China and Russia
among its very few allies.
Deterrence
Deterrence is
always complicated, but when it comes to North Korea, the classic
“three Cs” of deterrence are in place, and each can be strengthened:
First,
capability: Kim knows the U.S. has superior force, but he must see it
orchestrated effectively with our South Korean partners through close
and visible military and political coordination. A major Pyongyang goal
is to divide Washington and Seoul, so keeping that connection tight is
key to frustrating the North’s policies. The U.S. and South Korea do not
always agree, but in my experience, nothing is more counterproductive
than a sense in Seoul that the U.S. is circumventing the South.
Second,
communication: the international community must convey clearly and
convincingly to the North that there will be no sanctions relief without
certifiable progress on denuclearization.
Third, credibility:
This should be strengthened by the Biden administration’s efforts to
more closely align policies among Asian allies and by the somewhat
tougher stance South Korea’s new president, Yoon Suk Yeol, is taking
toward the North, such as his pledge to develop more advanced missiles
for South Korea.
There’s a fourth “C” in play here — one that
hangs over it all: “containment.” This was diplomat George Kennan’s term
during the Cold War, the word that informed U.S. policy toward the
Soviet Union for decades, and in a different way it’s relevant now, when
it comes to North Korea. Containment should inform all that we do when
it comes to North Korea — be it those other “three Cs” or in-person
diplomacy, and in particular our efforts to establish some understanding
with China about the boundaries of acceptable behavior by North Korea.
China
— North Korea’s longtime ally — is generally content with the status
quo of a divided Korean peninsula that absorbs U.S. resources. But China
has also participated in talks to limit North Korea’s nuclear program
and would not want Kim doing anything that would be destabilizing in
Asia or provoke war on the peninsula. For all the troubles in today’s
U.S.-China relationship, this offers a critical opportunity for common
ground; I doubt that China wants to see another North Korean nuclear
test, for example. Bringing China into some harmony with the U.S. on
such issues would markedly strengthen containment strategy.
Nearly
20 years after that 2002 White House briefing, I often reflect on how
much the world around North Korea has changed. South Korea is a strong
democracy and economic powerhouse; China is moving into peer competitor
status with the United States; the U.S.-China relationship writ large
has sharply deteriorated; and the U.S. has tried a “pivot to Asia,” only
to be followed by Trump’s open disdain for our Asian allies. And now of
course we face a major conflict in the heart of Europe.
Yet
North Korea remains a seemingly unending, intractable and increasingly
dangerous problem for the international community. Which makes it all
the more challenging, both for intelligence officers seeking to
understand it and policymakers seeking to manage or eliminate the
danger. We must use every lever we have to meet that challenge, as
difficult as it is.