By Patrick Cronin, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Patrick M. Cronin is Senior Advisor and Senior Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C. The views expressed are his own.
North Korea’s successful missile launch now presents Pyongyang as on the cusp of joining the elite club of nations with nuclear-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). That is quite a turn around for the young Kim Jong Un, suddenly thrust into power a year ago, whose first attempt at launching a three-stage missile, during the April centennial of founder Kim Il Sung’s birth, was a show that flopped before a global audience.
Shorn of North Korea’s legendary propaganda, the country has been steadily increasing its missile ranges to the point where it can reach not just U.S. bases in Japan, but also those in Guam, Hawaii and Alaska. The estimated range of 3,400 miles for the Unha-3 puts the capability at the gateway of an ICBM. While touted as a peaceful satellite space launch, all that North Korea needs to do is to now marry up its long-range missile with a nuclear warhead. It appears determined to achieve that mark.
Fewer than 10 countries are believed to have nuclear weapons and perhaps only seven have ICBMs. While North Korea has a penchant for marketing failure as achievement, it truly has something about which to boast when it comes to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The North is believed to have enough fissile material for a dozen or more nuclear weapons, and it could reveal a new ability to fashion a miniaturized warhead anytime in the next year or so.
More from CNN: 'We have to worry'
Skeptics who dismiss North Korea’s missile and nuclear capabilities should remember that these military programs siphon off a huge percentage of the country’s meager gross domestic product, with perhaps a quarter of its GDP spent on defense. Moreover, it receives technical assistance from Iran and has previously been helped by black marketeers such as Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan network.
Of course, North Korea’s capabilities have come at enormous cost to the people of that country. The United Nations estimates that one-fourth of North Korea’s 24 million people are malnourished, and two-thirds rely on government rations to survive. In the latest Transparency International index on corruption, North Korea ranks dead last.
Yet while neighboring South Korea is one of the world’s most successful economies (a member of the Group of 20 and 15th in GDP), it is North Korea that has long-range missiles and a nuclear-weapons program. When North Korea chooses to reveal its ability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead, it will have what it believes is the ultimate insurance policy and bargaining chip: a nuclear ICBM capable of hitting U.S. territory.
Adhering to the ancient military maxim that all war is deception, North Korea preceded its launch with well-timed misinformation. Reports that the launch window needed to be extended in order to repair technical problems were quickly followed with a launch on the first day of favorable weather.
Kim Jong Un appears bent on achieving permanent nuclear-weapon-state status for North Korea. Kim 3.0’s about-face on a missile and nuclear moratorium, missile diplomacy, and recent revelations about proliferation off the Korean Peninsula undercut hopes that the younger leader with an outgoing style is pursuing reform. The peninsula remains the most militarized zone in the region, and a single provocation along the lines of either the sinking of the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan or the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010 could escalate and bring not just the two Koreas to blows, but also risk war between their major-power allies, the United States and China.
South Korea’s Park Geun-hye, who remains ahead in presidential polling ahead of elections on December 19, has called for North Korea to follow the example of Burmese reform. She is likely to seek an inter-Korean summit meeting; but the risks to the Kim family regime may be too great to allow significant political and economic opening. In this sense, North Korea may be more akin to the Soviet Union than China, and any relaxation of the means of central government authority may trigger a sudden loss of power of the Pyongyang elite.
Paradoxically, the successful trajectory of North Korea’s missile makes the future trajectory of North Korea and the Kim regime even less certain than ever before. Its economy is unsustainable, the potential for escalation over future provocations is considerable, and there are real questions about whether Kim can successfully suppress opposition from consolidating the power that his father and grandfather held. Scholar Robert Collins has analyzed the seven phases of state collapse, and North Korea’s recent rapid replacement of defense chiefs could signal that the country is on the verge of moving from active suppression of emerging factions to open resistance of those factions against the central government. A rising Asia will have to navigate potential conflict and sudden change involving North Korea.
In the long run, North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs are very likely to represent Pyrrhic victories for the Kim regime unless it can institute serious reforms. Rather than being welcomed by investment, it will now face yet another round of sanctions. It may be saved from biting financial measures by the political transitions in surrounding countries, starting in South Korea, where the next president is determined to seek a summit meeting with Kim. But a penalty must be exacted on the North’s defiance, and that will come through military upgrades to South Korea’s military, the U.S. defense posture on and near the peninsula, and in Japan. Boosted by the recent success of Israel’s Iron Dome defenses, the three countries may well move in the direction of a regional missile shield.
North Korea has displayed its capabilities, and now the international community is faced again with whether it can muster effective responses. That’s a challenge, not least because goals differ. China, for instance, favors preserving stability and averting conflict, while the United States wishes to contain and dismantle the North’s burgeoning WMD systems. China’s new leadership under Xi Jinping is eager to demonstrate the Beijing’s ally is not out of control, but it is unlikely to come down hard on North Korea, given that doing so could risk upheaval or provocations that might trigger war.
A new Japanese government will now have even greater cause to expand its missile and other defenses, while seeking closer cooperation with South Korea and the United States. And the Obama administration, even in the midst of transitioning its national security team, will have to demonstrate strength while crafting a shared approach to the North Korean challenge with a new South Korean government seeking inter-Korean rapprochement.
North Korea has chosen its timing well. But whether it can withstand its own internal contradictions, coupled with future international steps aimed at graduating pressure on the regime when it conducts provocative acts, is another matter.
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Looks like Lil Donged One cut his own hair with a pocket knife while drunk!!!!! I think the US should send NK a shipment of "Flowbees". Hahahahahahahaha
To Haha: Laugh at Kim Jong Un and his haircut if you will, but he will soon preside over a paranoid and oppressive regime armed with nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them to Honolulu, Seattle, and San Francisco. That's not funny.
Interestingly, no one mentioned Beijing, Hon Kong, or Shanghai. The Chinese reaction to this new reality will be interesting to watch and is probably more significant to NK's geopolitical situation than say Tokyo.
Perhaps you missed the United Press International article yesterday: Boeing has now successfully developed an EMP missile. Now, if Boeing is just now admitting to having such a weapon, you can bet dollars to donuts U.S. military R & D's had them for years. We developed the first atom bomb over fifty years ago, do you really think we haven't come up with something much nastier since then? So let NorKor have their little moment....it's really all they have!
FYI, China is on the North Korea's side....Hello....why would NK do that to China?
It's time for Kim Jong Un to end his ICBM ambitions . Although it's highly unlikely that North Korea developes an ICBM, due to its very limited capability and its technology would hardly make a great weapon, the internatinal community doesn't want an nuclear proliferation.
Well said, Alan S. This is a secretive, paranoid regime that the world would be better off without. The North Koreans are the Klingons of Asia.
He's a funny looking midget
Ever see Hitler in a candid photo? He was short and funny-looking as well.
Making fun of North Korean hair is pretty much low-hanging fruit on the comedy scale...especially when we and our allies are hardly the only ones on the block with nuclear weapons anymore.
It is scary to tink about i hope they will use it for good and not just because
I think,that Western World is waitng to long.Nuk them now.
Even if North Korea could hit our territory with nukes they wouldn't dare. They know that would be suicide. South Korea would become an island once we retaliate.
Do you realize that since the armistice was signed North Korea has kidnapped hundreds, if not thousands of South Koreans, and been responsible for the deaths of dozens of US troops (including hacking two US officers to death with axes, and thousands of South Korean troops and civilians?
The have made constant violent and repeated attacks against the South, including at least three attempts to assassinate the President of South Korea.
Do these sound like the acts of a rational country to you?
who cares, with the new president in office everything will go unchallenged. u can't win, you either get someone in office that sits and stares at the fire as long as it's on the otherside of the room or you get someone that starts the fires...
You forgot the USS Pueblo and the US recon plane they shot down. I never feared Saddam. He may have been a dictator, but he wasn't crazy enough to pull a 9-11. I can't say the same about NK and the madmen in charge there.
When your country is so poor that your people flee as economic refugees to China then perhaps this not the way to become a big boy. Most of the other countries in the big boy club don't have the bark stripped off trees in public parks due to people starving to death and doing anything to survive.
The DPRK and the people under their boot are desperate. As far as their concerned, they are still at war with the US and South Korea.
Looks like I might get some action.....
Satellite launch??? What satellite launch? They screwed up again. They evidently don't know which way is up (outer space). The fact that their rocket may have landed 3400 miles away just proves to everyone that they were just testing a missle prototype.
How about a 20% tariff on all Chinese imports until they rein in their client state? All the proceeds to be spent on accelerated deployment of anti-missile defense systems.
Wishfull thinking Stevie, China and USA are belong the WTO. And of course they can slap 20% tariffs on the USA goods as well. On the other hand, USA is NOT the only one that has the purchasing power. There's should be a better way than just tariffs.
Let's see 20% of 0 is still 0. I think we'd win that tariff battle.
Great idea especially since its the US companies who's in charge of selling, marketing, and designing those products, which basically means that our companies in the US makes all the money from those products. Here's a better idea, why don't we just bomb all of our major cities and tech centers since you're so interested in killing the US?
See? What good are U. N. sanctions? They don't abide by them and the world will pay the cost soon.
I am not one to mince words. The common denominator to all the bad things happening in the region is my own country PAKISTAN! Yes, folks...PAKISTAN ! Look at all the countries surrounding that are reeling in TERROR because of this country when it itself is reeling under extremism and poverty and intolerance...... Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Nepal, and now Myanmar. The mother of all trouble makers ... yes folks, hold on to your chairs !!! is PAKISTAN !!! IT IS NOT COINCIDENCE !! IT IS BY DESIGN and ITS CULT RELIGION BELEIVER CITIZENS !!! Pakistan cannot stop meddling in the affairs of these fledgling nations...financing terrorists...inciting communal violence, fanning religious intolerance. This already has started backfiring at this filthy nation so let this country explode by itself. It is already an inferno that will be uncontrollable. The conditions are ripe for this to happen as Pakistanis all about terrorism that is threatening its survival in its current geo-political form.
Split Pakistan into three parts, give Balochistan to the Baloch’s the tribal and ungoverned part to Afghanistan and give other half to India. This will make it governable and manageable and this will generate tremendous economic demand for western nations, be democratically more efficient and easy to manage,
North Korea hits its mark? You mean to say they put a BIG "X" in the water 3400 miles away and hit it. That's amazing!! But I bet they can't do it twice in a million tries.
Fareed once again you look at the World based on who pays your bills and impotent to exhibit your objectivity. Day after NK launched its long range missile to put a crude satellite into orbit and made its adversaries nervous, US launched a very classified space vechile with little noise. Such coverage and commentary then does lead us into the argument by many that we have double standards.......
So, are you comparing a country that has had ICBM's for half a century to a the most paranoid nation on earth approaching the same sort of technology? We've been launching secret payloads forever so it is hardly news. So far the worse thing we've done with a nukes since WWII is bankrupt our cold-war adversary. NK is willing to starve millions of its own citizens in the quest for power which rather begs the question of how far they are willing to go before they fail completely.
Rumor mill has it that Kim Jun Un's wife was a stow-a-way on board North Korea's last rocket launch.
LOL @ wife. Riiiiight...you mean cover story? Look at that guy. If that isn't the biggest closet case I've yet to see one.
I say we give this North Korean leader Jim Dung Chow (whatever) what he wants, Let launch a couple of ICBMs right to this fat little pigs doorstep as a welcoming gift into the big boys club of nuclear armament.
How long before he arms one and sends up some country's wazzu?
Does anyone posting even know what a Pyrrhic victory is? How about a "plethora?"
Why, El Guapo, why?
Yeah actually I do. You win the battle, lose the war. Based on Pyrrhus, the King that invaded Italia before the time of Alexander. You could say that Hannibal Barca won a Pyrrhic victory in the 2nd Punic War as well. Not all CNN posters are mouth breathing red state educated Fox clones guy.
"North Korea’s successful missile launch now presents Pyongyang as on the cusp of joining the elite club of nations with nuclear-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). "
That is completely and totally factually inaccurate. For CNN to put up such a statement shows either no one cares what they put up, or it has gone completely right-wing. Is anyone checking this stuff?
First of all, North Korea would have to make a nuclear warhead very very small. That takes years to do.
Second, to call this an ICBM is a tremendous stretch, if not a factual mistake. A ICBM goes 5500+ miles or more and comes down on its target with a warhead. This was a launch of a satellitte. And only one succesful launch at that. It will take many more years and many more tests to get even anywhere close to that. There also must be accuracy to hit a target. There is zero indications of that with this test.
Sorry CNN, this is shoddy work at its best.
Nobody is saying North Korea is there, yet. But they just made their own Great Leap Forward. Now it IS just a matter of time, and that's the difference.
I'm sort of shocked how the news media has put this story on the back burner. Last time North Korea was threatening a launch, there was major international pressure to prevent it and the media were all over it. Now that North Korea has not only launched but made a complete success of it, and into the bargain fooled everyone into thinking they wouldn't go ahead, the media is just going "Ho hum."
Now we're drawing near to Cold War II. North Korea is a master at psyching out opponents because nobody can really figure out what they want, what they're going to do next or are capable of trying. If they develop a nuclear warhead, they can shake down the neighborhood with impunity, even China and the U.S. They could also extort money from Western powers by threatening to sell their technology to Al Qaeda in Africa or other meanies. North Korea isn't seeking a warhead just to show off or to have a defensive bargaining chip. They are determined to get something for it, big time, and who knows where that will lead?
The short answer is no. Once again North Korea has shown that the world will not stand up to them or the ones telling them what they will and will not do from Beijing. My only hope is that the PRC has as much control over the PRK as they believe they do, since the sanity of China's leadership hasn't been in question.
No it's a clear victory for the DPRK. No one is going to do anything. When Un was first given the job the first thing he did was attack a South Korean naval vessel and start shelling South Korean islands. The "World" did nothing.
North Korea doesn't need to attack the US to win. North Korea is playing a game of survival, and as long as the regime survives, they are winning. They know that the moment a rocket takes flight towards any US owned soil we will level that country into a parking lot. Their "million man army" is malnourished, under trained and under equipped. The vast majority of the NKPA is busy on cheap labor details instead of shooting their rifles, maintaining their tanks, and doing military drills. The NKPA is largely a detail party for road building, trench digging, and other manual labor public works around the DPRK. Pyongyang will last two weeks at most under warfare without Chinese intervention. Not enough fuel, rice and bullets to keep them going over that. Beijing makes way too much money off of the USA and South Korea to really support NK as they did in the 50s. It's a different world today. But as long as the Kim dynasty survives, they're winning.
I still say China is backing this technology and testing and letting North Korea conduct the tests and take blame. This test was successful according to article. That is a big turn-a-round from April.
Just because some one step above a third world country cobbled together a missile and shot into space, the rest of civilization has to shake in its boots? I think the tech high school down the road could launch a better device given what the North Koreans spent on this project. There is enough space junk in orbit already. NK frightens no one. It is all petty posturing and criminal misuse of that country's resources.
Without China the NK elites wouldn't be eating any better than their enslaved population. If the PRC wants to maintain a buffer state, fine, but the rest of the world should hold it accountable for the hell on earth they're propping up. There is no objective strategic need for the nightmare being inflicted on the people of North Korea. Tolerating these conditions is moral laziness that should have consequences.
Gangnam style
Just think. If North Korea nuked every trailer park south of the Mason-Dixon Line we'd be rid of the teabaggers once and for all !
Anyone play Homefront?? It begins...
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WHAT is the point of nuclear armaments in the hands of small nations (NK, Iran, Pakistan, etc) ? ? - They surely would have but ONE opportunity to use them before their capabilities to do so were vaporized.
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We MAY have to absorb ONE strike in order to avoid the pittfalls of a pre-emptive strike.
As long as we were on station and tracked the launch. NK is now and always has been ugly and certainly is a puppet of (our friend) China. We need to be alert and ready.
No more grain shipments from us, fatboy.
Syria and Iran! North Korea and China same song, same dance!
I am really curious who is in charge over there – Un or the military? Un may be playing along to insure his life of luxury (or his life, period).
Somehow, though, I am not worried about an ICBM coming from N. Korea. It becomes easy to track and easy to trace back to the launching country. I'd be far more worried about N. Korea trying to sneak a nuke in a cargo container on a ship somewhere.
More propaganda from the Truth Ministry. A pot is calling a cattle black. "North Korea's legendary propaganda "-what do you think this article is ? Truth ? It is a part of stupid propaganda that we have been fed from the beginning of North Korea's existence. Korean people should have been united long time ago. Roosevelt and Truman created and kept North Korea as a bogeyman to justify obcene military spending. Joe McCarthy was villified for telling the truth about Communist influence in the US government. Harry Hopkins was Stalin's agent. Joe McCarthy was absolutely right that our government was helping the Communists and many in our government were Communist agents. That explains the waste of the Korean War as well as VietNam War where some of our men were left behind and efforts were blocked to get them back.Ross Perot pointed that out.
"these military programs siphon off a huge percentage of GDP ( of North Korea)" -what do you think got us into the bankrupcy that we are in ?
The propaganda only makes things worse. A better approach would be to write articles abour Korean people's unification.The Cold War (another phoney war) is over. Time to get our troops home from Korea before they are left to fend for themselves -a bankrupt government can not pay their mercenaries.
.."Maybe they will follow the example of the Burmese reform"...You are delusional...all the aid the North needs is just a stone throw across the DMZ...their goal is not negotiation..its to checkmate us into not assisting South Korea in the event they decide fore-full re-unification is an options.