North Korea’s successful launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile this week has brought its nuclear armaments programme to a new and more dangerous level, throwing out a challenge on how it can be contained or reversed. President Donald Trump says US strategic patience with North Korea is at an end but now has the problem of how to deliver on that threat. China, Russia, South Korea and Japan are equally concerned but favour diplomatic and political rather than military action in fear of a catastrophic escalation.
North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un is clearly committed to maintain this programme. It has become his defining policy, bolstering his regime’s legitimacy. Existing sanctions from the United Nations and neighbouring states have failed to deter it. This latest missile test is a genuine innovation in elevation and distance, which would allow it reach the Alaskan coast of the US. That is the intended target, as the North Koreans continually assert. It is a calculated provocation to Trump and a strategic worry for its neighbours. The key question now is whether Trump decides to take unilateral action or is willing to work with others in response.
The options available to him are few and the prospects of rapid success small. A unilateral military strike against North Korea could provoke it to attack South Korea with artillery. It would risk an uncontrolled escalation, including even a nuclear one. This is a reckless scenario, but cannot be excluded given Trump’s temperament. His willingness to work with China up to now is put in question by Beijing’s reluctance to cut off oil supplies for North Korea and its overall lack of real leverage on the regime. The greater Chinese fear is of a collapsing state which would bring a united Korea to its own borders along with US troops and a regionally emboldened Japan.
China faces a real geopolitical dilemma in managing this crisis, since it could become the road along which a serious deterioration of relations with the US would proceed. The need to avoid that outcome should drive its politics and diplomacy. Its demand with Russia for a double suspension – of North Korean tests and joint US-South Korean military exercises – is an opening shot. A lot more effort along with South Korea’s new president Moon Jae-in will be needed, linked to co-operation with Japan.
Together these states should be able to find a way to work with the US. That will mean tighter sanctions, offers of direct negotiations with North Korea and installing anti-missile defence systems in South Korea and Japan. Since sanctions have a limited effect all concerned may conclude they have to live with a North Korea with nuclear weapons while making it clear that their collective power is an overwhelming deterrent against their use.