From Prevention to Containment With North Korea

On October 19, 2016, U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off during the last presidential debate before the U.S. general election. Hours before they stepped on stage to face off, it turned out that North Korea had fired what United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) "presumed" was a Hwasong-10, or Musudan, intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). The test failed shortly after launch, marking the eighth overall Musudan launch attempt this year (if it indeed was a Musudan), and the seventh failure this year.

For North Korea, the launch was effectively meant to serve as a large sign surrounded by red blinking lights, saying, "Please take notice of our steady progress." Unfortunately, the issue of North Korea's steady nuclear weapons and delivery vehicle progress didn't come up at the third presidential debate. The two earlier debates saw both candidates address the issue, but neither candidate offered a serious path forward for U.S. policy that would appreciably put a freeze on North Korea's steady march toward a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile capable of striking, if not the United States mainland, certainly U.S. bases in the Asia-Pacific and, of course, U.S. allies South Korea and Japan.

This is deeply unfortunate given the exceptionally volatile pace of testing that North Korea has pursued during Obama's final year in office. North Korea staged its fourth and fifth nuclear tests in January and September 2016 respectively. It launched its fourth satellite, the Kwangmyongsong-4, in February 2016. Additionally, it tested its new submarine-launched ballistic missile, the Bukkeuksong-1, its Hwasong-10 IRBM, its Nodong-1(A) medium-range ballistic missile, and an extended range Scud (the Scud-ER). (The Scud-ER and Musudan were both tested for the first time this year, with the former tested during the Hangzhou G20 meeting as world leaders met in China.)

Overall, North Korea has conducted some 18 test launches of various ballistic missile platforms this year. While not all have succeeded, each of the 18 has offered Pyongyang useful experimental data points to improve its platforms, all but ensuring that it will get to its end goal of fielding a deliverable nuclear weapon. North Korea’s September nuclear test notably purported to test a compact nuclear warhead. Pyongyang has additionally shown off new solid fuel rocket boosters, including a heavy 80-ton force booster in September, possibly intended for its as-yet-untested Hwasong-13 (KN-08) and Hwasong-14 (KN-14) intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).

If there's one underlying message for U.S. policymakers and certainly the next U.S. president to take from all this, it is that everything that North Korea is doing seems to be working, even if individual tests fail.

Pyongyang is showing steady progress, getting smarter, and will almost certainly acquire a capability threatening U.S. allies and U.S. assets in the Asia-Pacific. The unusually frequent spate of Hwasong-10 testing, with eight tests between April and October 2016, is particularly notable; the platform is thought to be capable of nuclear delivery to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, home to Andersen Air Force Base, a launch pad for the U.S. nuclear bombers that patrol South Korean skies after major North Korean provocations like the nuclear tests.

The current U.S. diplomatic approach to North Korea involves talking to everybody but North Korea in Northeast Asia. There are three prongs to this approach. First, after consulting with China, Washington has pursued intensified sanctions, with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2270, passed in early 2016 after North Korea's fourth nuclear test, representing the most robust sanctions regime against any state in more than two decades. Second, Washington has assuaged allied concerns by increasing trilateral missile defense coordination between Japan and South Korea and by deploying the advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea. Third, instead of attempting direct negotiations or loosening preconditions for a return to something like the long-defunct Six Party Talks, Washington has stuck to a rigid set of requirements, waiting for a bona fide step toward denuclearization from Pyongyang before pursuing serious talks.

The third point was described by none other than Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Obama's secretary of state as "strategic patience." In context, Clinton had said that the administration would pursue "strategic patience in close consultations with our six party allies." This policy became the diplomatic standard line for U.S. policy toward North Korea, barring a direct diplomatic attempt spanning late-2011 and early-2012, when Kim Jong-il died and Kim Jong-un ascended. That round of engagement culminated in the February 2012 Leap Day deal, which fast crumbled.

Independent observers and certainly nuclear nonproliferation experts, keenly aware of the pace of North Korean missile and nuclear development, have grown increasingly critical of the persistence of "strategic patience," which has seemingly locked all thinking on North Korea into a box placing complete, verifiable, and irreversible disarmament (CVID) as the goal of U.S. diplomacy. Unfortunately, realities (and even U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper) suggest that North Korea's progress has gone too far for this objective to be realistic any longer. One nonproliferation expert, Siegfried Hecker, proposed instead a "Three Nos" framework for diplomacy with North Korea. The idea would be to premise diplomacy with North Korea around a containment framework, specifying that Pyongyang could build no new nuclear devices or delivery vehicles, no better ones (i.e., freezing improvement and testing), and could not transfer its technology.

That framework isn't a panacea and understandably hasn't been picked up by policymakers in Washington. Concerns loom about the possibility that talking to North Korea would confer on it de facto nuclear weapons state status, legitimizing its existing weapons. Moreover, there's little agreement on the conventional and nuclear quid pro quos that the United States and South Korea can or should offer in exchange for North Korean agreement. Finally, that agreement in itself is nowhere near easy to attain given the massive rift in trust between Pyongyang and Washington. Even if it was attained, Washington could have no guarantee that it wouldn't crumble eventually like the Clinton administration-era Agreed Framework.

October 9 this year marked a decade since North Korea's first nuclear test in 2006, which possibly fizzled, with an estimated yield of under 2 kilotons. Back then, prevention and CVID were still realistic; North Korea wasn't close to reliably being able to miniaturize a device capable of manufacturing a payload resembling the bomb dropped at Hiroshima in 1945 and was further still from a delivery vehicle. Today, that accomplishment may sit just months away. Approaching the North Korean problem will require acknowledgement of this sober fact. As the next U.S. president prepares to take office, it may be time to pivot policy thinking about North Korea from prevention to containment.