North Korea Overplays Its Hand
Despite its increasingly brazen antics, the threat that North Korea poses to both U.S. interests and regional security has long remained outside the scope of the daily concerns of most citizens in the United States. Though most people find the totalitarian state’s behavior abhorrent and often bizarre, the perceived threat from North Korea simply could not match seemingly more urgent issues in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran.
The tide of public opinion, it seems, could be changing. For the first time since the near-outbreak of war between the United States and North Korea in 1994, a variety of media outlets are reporting widespread outrage at North Korea’s behavior. Whether intentionally or not, North Korea has officially garnered the ire of the American public, contributing to what is quickly becoming an international crisis. The Obama administration must act quickly but avoid attempts to appease public opinion. If a military option is to be prevented, the Obama administration must recognize the common threads linking North Korea’s various provocations but refuse to acknowledge them publicly. Instead, the Obama administration must attempt to segregate U.S.-North Korea issues from each other to the extent possible so that small victories might be possible.
Ever since the Iraq War was launched in March 2003, North Korea has given brinksmanship an entirely new meaning. Though North Korea has always been willing to ratchet up tensions on the peninsula, America’s post-9/11 fixation on the Middle East gave North Korea the security to act as recklessly as it wanted, knowing full well that the United States could not afford to simultaneously take on another military obligation. In this context, North Korea brought its nuclear program into full maturity, culminating in the October 2006 nuclear test that heralded its arrival as a genuine threat to both the established nuclear order and regional security.
After a period of temporarily eased tensions, North Korea conducted a test launch of one of its Taepodong-2 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles in contravention of a 2006 UN Security Council resolution requiring a moratorium on such launches. North Korea followed this illegal missile test with the arrest of two American journalists for unspecified crimes against the state, a second nuclear test that was several times larger than the first, and most recently, a sham trial for the arrested American journalists at which a guilty verdict was handed down calling for 12 years in a North Korean labor camp. Each of these acts is more provocative than the previous one, the latest being the first to directly threaten the physical security of Americans.
By taking American civilians, North Korea may have crossed a line with the American public. The United States is an individualistic country and little, if anything, impassions Americans more effectively than the personalization of an issue. Strategic threats can be de-prioritized and detached notions of malevolence can be ignored. The thing that resonates with virtually everyone, however, is the individualization of an issue. It may have been inadvertent but North Korea has now attached a human face to its game of brinksmanship; the American public now has a discernable vested interest in the outcome of this developing crisis.
The Middle East may continue to be the focus of U.S. foreign policy for the time being but the American public’s attention is now firmly fixed on North Korea; this could prove to escalate tensions further. The morning after North Korea convicted the journalists, for example, American political talk shows like C-Span’s Washington Journal fielded phone calls from enraged citizens throughout the United States. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike are urging the Obama administration to take stern action against North Korea, many explicitly referencing the need to consider a military option. Public opinion often succumbs to the passion of the moment. The United States is in no position militarily or economically to undertake a conventional style war, particularly a war with a de facto nuclear state that borders on China and rests in the center of the fastest growing economic region in the world. The Obama administration does not have the luxury of pandering to the passions of public opinion in this case; it must take deliberate, coolheaded action.
To date, the Obama administration’s response has been appropriately measured. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s response to the North Korean trial verdict was a declaration that U.S. policy is to treat the issue of the journalists as a humanitarian issue distinct from the security issue involving nonproliferation. This distinction rightly reflects limited U.S. ambitions, which is America’s best chance to avoid adopting an aggressive policy that encourages conflict. Officially connecting all of North Korea’s various provocations makes a case for conflict too hard to ignore and the United States simply cannot afford a conflict. The alternative, then, is for the United States to disaggregate the outstanding issues in U.S.-North Korea relations, addressing them on a case by case basis.
A policy that delinks some issues from others should provide the United States and North Korea with enough breathing room to avoid falling into a perilous conflict spiral. Strategically, North Korea has clearly overplayed its hand by taking actions that have awakened the U.S. public. It is now up to the Obama administration to bring prudence and rationality to a pending crisis that it did not create. Lives now hang in the balance.
