Kim's Nuclear Reaction

By Greg Sheridan

A CIGAR, as even Sigmund Freud acknowledged, is sometimes just a cigar. But a missile launch by an ageing dictator is always a symbol of virility. However, North Korea's April 5 missile launch may be much more than a symbol of Kim Jong-il's continuing power in North Korea. I believe Pyongyang will engage in another nuclear test before the end of this year.

London's The Times reports that US and other Western government agencies have increasingly acknowledged, without fanfare, that North Korea has useable nuclear weapons that it can miniaturise and load on missiles. Kevin Rudd, as recently as yesterday in an important address to the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce, nominated North Korea and Iran's nuclear programs as two of the gravest security challenges in Australia's strategic environment.

North Korea has been able to use nuclear weapons at some level at least since the nuclear test it carried out in October 2006. Optimistic analysts pointed out that one test didn't prove Pyongyang could build and deliver nukes. But given the extremely short distances involved on the Korean peninsula, and even between Korea and Japan, North Korea did not need to be able to load nukes on missiles. It could sail one to Japan or drive one to the border with South Korea, detonate it there and kill hundreds of thousands.

But now it seems Pyongyang, after all, can miniaturise and deploy nukes on shorter-range missiles, which it has in abundance. It could use these to attack South Korean or Japanese cities, or US forces in the Pacific.

North Korea's launch earlier this month of a long-range Taepodong-2 ballistic missile was described as not completely successful. But it was much more successful than previous efforts. The missile flew over Japan. We don't know how far the North Koreans wanted it to go.

As usual, China and Russia vetoed any significant response from the UN Security Council. Eventually a fairly tepid statement was issued by the Security Council president pointing out that North Korea was forbidden by an earlier resolution from conducting any ballistic missile activity. North Korea's response has been to abandon all nuclear restraint. It says it will restart its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and produce more nuclear weapons, though this takes time.

During the past week I've read over a good bit of the literature on North Korea's nuclear program from the past decade or so. It is depressing how often analysts hope that North Korea won't or can't go to the next stage and how often they're wrong. We don't know that the North Koreans can produce a nuclear explosion, then they do. We don't know that they have substantial missile reach, then they do. We don't know they can miniaturise nuclear warheads, then they do.

Similarly, analysts have said at times that North Korea would not have much interest in spreading its nuclear technology around, then we see it in intimate co-operation with Iran and to some extent Pakistan. And in September 2007 Israel bombed into obliteration a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria, for which North Korea had provided the technology and some of the workforce.

North Korea also has said lately that it will never again attend the six-party talks featuring North and South Korea, the US, Japan, Russia and China. This is also very perplexing. Soon after it was elected, the Rudd Government declared it wanted to be part of the six-party talks when, as then seemed inevitable, they were eventually institutionalised into a regional security dialogue body. Most six-party members came to the view that institutionalisation could happen only after North Korea's nuclear program was definitively abolished. Now Pyongyang has said the six-party talks era is over for good.

Several months ago this column predicted that US President Barack Obama would appoint a special envoy on North Korea and that Pyongyang would engage in some deliberate and large-scale provocation to test the Obama administration. These were easy predictions to make and both were fulfilled in due course.

But several outcomes from those moves convince me it's now likely North Korea will engage in one more nuclear test. First, there is Obama's coolness to Kim's provocation. Obama is right to be cool. It's not only his natural pose, but you don't want to dance to Pyongyang's tune all the time. However, this means that Kim, in his own eyes, to some extent has failed to get Obama's serious attention. The character of Kim, and his ultra-paranoid regime, means that he is not likely to accept that failure. Rather, he will redouble his efforts.

Further, the debate over whether North Korea really wants to produce nuclear weapons it could use is surely over. Many analysts had argued that perhaps North Korea merely wanted the possibility of nukes, the strategic ambiguity that would enhance its deterrent posture. Surely now it is clear that Pyongyang really does want to possess as wide a range as it can of useable, real, nuclear weapons.

It is impossible to know how successful the 2006 nuclear test really was, but most Western analysts believe it was something less than a total success. That suggests the operational needs of the North Koreans are aligning with their political judgment about wanting to get Obama's attention and wanting new bribes from the West. The most logical outcome of that conjunction is surely a new nuclear test.

Further, there is the question of Pyongyang's assessment of Obama's character. France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a leaked private conversation, said Obama lacked backbone. In the midst of the financial crisis, Pyongyang may judge this a very profitable time to test Obama much more.

Obama held out his hand to former enemies in his inauguration speech. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded with a speech that contemptuously said the Jews control US foreign policy. North Korea responded with a ballistic missile launch and the announcement of the reactivation of the Yongbyon reactor. Obama's charm, and the resultant surge in US soft power, seems to have had no beneficial effect on the men who hold the nuclear triggers. Prepare for more nuclear tests.