Thirty-four years after Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to protect the United States and its allies against missile attack, the US still does not have reliable countermeasures to the kind of threat that North Korea might pose some time in the next few years.
Defending the US or Japan against a small number of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) is a task that lies well within the technological frontier, so the lapse is all the harder to excuse. The United States should not have to bandy threats with the likes of Kim Jong-un. It should simply make Pyongyang’s investment in nuclear-weapons technology irrelevant and obsolete.
The survival strategy of the North Korean regime is to position itself as the craziest player in the game. Whatever threat the United States might make, Pyongyang will make a yet crazier one, knowing perfectly well that US military options are constrained by Korean geography.
North Korea has at least 700 heavy guns that could strike Seoul, 55 kilometers from the border, and an artillery barrage would cause massive civilian casualties, if not quite flatten the South Korean capital. Nothing short of a tactical nuclear strike could silence those guns, and it would be hard to protect Seoul from the fallout.
Starting with the Bill Clinton administration in 1994, Washington sought to appease North Korea, providing light-water nuclear reactors and fuel oil in return for a suspension of plutonium production. Pyongyang dumped the deal in 2002 and went back to making plutonium.
The Donald Trump administration, spokesman Stephen Miller said this week, rejects “years of failed policy”. Miller added: “You see the engagement of the world community on North Korea. You see passage of the UN Security Council resolution with the votes of China and Russia on North Korea – we are making the world a safer place.”
Obtaining Russia’s and China’s signatures on a Security Council resolution is a solid diplomatic accomplishment. But the exchange of public threats with Pyongyang, punctuated by Trump’s “fire and fury” remark on Tuesday, has the unintended consequence of raising the stature of the North Korean regime. Elevating a rogue regime to the status of a serious threat simply gives Kim more negotiating leverage and a great claim to importance.
Military malpractice on the part of the Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations left the United States without reliable missile defense, allowing a spoiler with a minor inventory the opportunity to blackmail the world’s most powerful country.
Trump should recall the advice of Obama adviser Rahm Emanuel: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” The Korean kerfuffle gives the president the opportunity to bulldoze opposition to a revived strategic defense program.
There are a number of options in missile defense, and the United States should select “all of the above”. Which technologies best suit US or Japanese requirements remains unclear. There are several promising options that could be deployed with a crash program well before the North Koreans can build a reliable nuclear-tipped ICBM.
Writing in Asia Times on August 5, former Pentagon official Stephen Bryen argued that Israel’s “Arrow” anti-missile system could defend Japan against an eventual North Korean missile attack far better than its existing THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) or Patriot systems.
“Arrow 3,” Bryen observed, “is the only ballistic missile defense system that has shot down an enemy rocket hundreds of miles from where it was launched.” Unlike the THAAD system, which requires a direct hit by an anti-missile projectile, Arrow employs explosives with a proximity fuse.
Angelo Codevilla argued in an April interview with Asia Times that the United States should build a missile defense system that can protect allies such as Japan and South Korea as well as the United States itself. Codevilla, one of the strategists who helped formulate Reagan’s SDI, argues that space-based anti-missile technology mothballed during the Clinton era can be made practical.
This would have multiple strategic benefits, he added: “China’s main operational goal in Northeast Asia is to wean South Korea away from the US. It’s doing this by saying, ‘Look, the Americans can’t protect you.’ If the South Koreans ask why, the Chinese respond, ‘It’s because the Americans can’t even protect themselves.’ But if the Americans had a new missile defense — it would be a game changer.”
The United States deliberately focused on theater anti-missile defense (THAAD and Patriot) rather than strategic defense, with the tacit understanding that it would not offer a defense against Russian or Chinese ICBMs. If the United States determined to put strategic defense in place, Moscow and Beijing would object furiously.
But the Trump administration can now say to China, “We gave you the chance to talk sense into your North Korean ally, and you have failed to do so. Now we have to take measures to protect ourselves and our allies.” And it can point out to Russia that its opportunistic support for the Pyongyang regime has left Washington no choice but to adopt a policy that Moscow likes the least.
A crash program to build missile defense would have two side benefits, each of which ultimately is far more important than the Korean matter as such.
First, it would awaken America’s long-dormant engine of scientific innovation, threatening to leapfrog the advances that Russia and China have made in defense technology. America’s competitors remember that communism collapsed during the late 1980s when the Soviet economy could not keep up with US advances in computation and avionics. Restoring US technological supremacy will make Moscow and Beijing more likely to act sensibly on other matters of contention, for example Ukraine and the Middle East.
Second, it would generate a productivity impulse that would help reverse the long secular decline in US productivity growth. Virtually all the technologies that make up the modern economy, from cheap and powerful integrated circuits to sensors, LED (light-emitting diode) screens, flat panels, optical networks and the Internet arose from the technological exigencies of the Cold War.
Defense technology defined the cutting edge of research, because it demanded solutions to frontier physical problems that private researchers otherwise would not have addressed. I reviewed the case in favor of a defense driver for US manufacturing productivity in a February 2017 essay in the Journal of American Affairs.
The Korean crisis offers the White House a golden opportunity to seize the strategic and economic initiative simultaneously. If the US creates the next generation of technologies in missile defense, it also will have an edge in their civilian spinoffs.
Nuke China is the quickest way to achieve peace in the Korea peninsula
Can one ever be 100% sure that those anti-missile defenses will destroy the incoming missiles?… The best solution is stopping worrying about NK, leaving it alone and letting the North Koreans themselves solve the regime problem once they feel strongly enough about it. Unfortunately Americans have never learned to leave things alone. This idea that they have some God given right to interfere anywhere in the world will end up by causing the death of millions of Americans…
Is David Goldman saying that Donald Trump, political novice, has accidentally given Kim Jung-un more power and leverage with Talk Loudly and Carry No Stick approach? Obviously any truly effective missile defense system is preferable to no missile defense. And the more options the better. One that would protect America but leave a hole so Washington could be targeted might be best. It would be excellent to have the city that did all it could to block missile defense experience the thrill of the nuclear targeting. Maybe if DC were sacrificed to NK, we could then get Obamacare repealed.
" A crash program to build missile defense….".
Yes, crash program like the F35 or the Osprey… David Goldman, you are a smart guy, don’t try to hide that the US now doesn’t know how to make a fridge… Between the lines of your article we can read many other things, smart guy…
The Americans invaded Korea in 1950, massacred millions of Koreans and are still occupying the south part of Korea. The Americans are the aggressors, the invaders and the murderers. The solution to the problem is for the Americans to remove all their soldiers and their military equipment out of Korea. The South part of Korea is not the property of the Americans. It belongs to Korea. The Americans are using the pretext of protecting the south part of Korean to maintain its occupation. It is the right and the duty of the Koreans to protect its territory, not the Americans. The Americans are not protecting the south of Korea, they are invading Korea.
Very good points. Great reporting.
All the Traitors like Wong, Chan, Ken will be put into internment camp
If what they report about American barbarism is even remotely true, camps are unnecessary. We Americans will simply shoot them on sight.
Important article. Things like this routinely gets obfuscated. It’s Western propaganda…
Allen Miller , you americans are shooting at your feet since a long time, without sight of whom is taking advantage of you…
Unless this audience here is a Fox News watcher, the usual Jibberish by Natanyahu boys here (Goldman, Spengler, Etc.) is the same broken record. Its mind boggling that this guy misinforms the readers and justifies the Trumps beligerent talk with buidling a better Missile defense system rather than telling the readers that the root cause of this issue is the 40,000 US forces behind the 38th Parallel line, twice a year drill that practices land invasion of the coast of N. Korea, daily rants on nuking N. Korea by orange head maniac. The same guy who is supporting the other maglomaniac in Tel Aviv who is relentlessly killing poor defenseless Palestinian. Now him and his buddyon Atimes are trying to peddle "Israeli Arrow" Missile which was originally built by stealing American technology and funded by poor American tax payers. As you and your buddies in Tel Aviv know, the Arrow missile is completely useless against Hezbollah’s missiles, against anyone who wants to pay back for your crimes whether by blowing themselves up or flying a drone with bombs. At the end of the day, you need to sit down and talk and stop your superiority nonenses. This was proven to Israel in the 36 day Lebonon war and it was proven to US in Afghanistan and Iraq. With the decline of America with Donald at the Helms hopefully this will expedite a solution to root cause of terrorism which is the occupied Palestine.
US is trying to start a war right on China’s doorstep, create chaos and refugees swarming into China, disrupt trade routes, etc. to indirectly attack China.
Russia should sell S400 to the USA, the US Empire seems devastated of the NK missiles. NK missiles with no war head, and no guiding system, make the US scared. The overpriced US THAAD missile defense system is obviously not enough to protect Guam. THAAD is only junk the US want to sell to South Korea and the NATO countries. Turkey is not happy with the THAAD, so they buy Russian S400.
No, the US admits the THAAD missiles is far from perfect. They say a 100$ toy drone could trigger THAAD and launch THAAD missiles worth millions of dollars.
Let us hope Mr. Kim do not buy toy drones for his kids, it could trigger some drama used close to the border. Ukraine soldiers sell US military drones with a price tag of $ 400.000, given to the Ukraine from the US, for one bottle of Vodka to the Ukrainian separatists!
There ise a little possibility to emerge a nuclear disaster between North Korea and US but tensions between two states pave the way to show their deterrence power and strenghten realist approach in international relations. Mainly, we have to observe China and Russia position throughout that dispute..
This is not rocket science here. Simply park a couple of Arleigh Burke destroyers and use the SM-6 to shoot down anything launched when it crosses 2,000 feet of altitude. The SM-6 has a range of ~250 miles and will reach mach 3.5 in much less that two seconds. An ICBM takes a minute to reach that velocity. After all boost phase to reach 4 km/s takes a full four minutes. For NK’s liquid fueled rockets boost phase may last close to six minutes.
Sending destroyers is not a good idea. Philippines will send a few container ships to ram and sink the destroyers. The transgender will be running for their lives.
This is precisely why THAAD should be removed from South Korea? USA should stop pretending and comply with China and Russia requests.
Ken Kwan You are obviously incapable of reading the news objectively. Donald Trump is a man who sees being policeman for the world as no longer a role for the United States. And you can paint the United States any way you want but you can’t change historical facts. The United States was isolationist before WWll. We entered WWll reluctantly. When WWll was over and we recognized we were a major contributor to winning the war, two things happened. We realized Russia wanted to conquer the world just like Germany and we recognized Europe was devastated by the war and we needed to provide Japan’s defense in order to suppress their rebuilding their war machine. Our country instituted a two day per week fast to provide excess food to feed a starving Europe and we instituted the Marshall Plan. We did many other nurturing things over time including helping China become integrated into the world as a growing economic power. We ended up providing foreign aid to the entire world, trying to help countries develop, but truthfully a lot of the money went into politicians pockets. We tried to export Democracy because we believed a free people would make a better world. We took sides in conflicts and dont try to present the conflicts as being started by the United States. There were a lot of forces at work, but we were one of them for sure and a lot of the conflicts were proxy wars between power mongers trying to gain influence, including us.
But that is not where Trump is coming from. His beef with North Korea is they keep making hostile threats and they keep advancing their ability to deliver on those threats. We know the lesson of Hitler. The world waited until it was too late to do something about Hitler and it was very costly as a result.
Trump thinks like China. He wants to wage economic competition, not war, but he is also a fierce fighter so people should take that into consideration and not threaten him.
If it were up to Trump, he wouldn’t have troops in Korea or japan. He is in favor of making them strong enough to defend themselves.
Missile defense? is the cause of the problem.
This is happening because the US has installed THAAD batteries in South Korea.
Do people really think NK just decided to go crazy one morning?
THAAD are first strike nuclear ballistic missiles, which the US pretends are defensive.
Neither NK or China will allow US nukes that close to China, anymore than the US allowed Russian nukes in Cuba.
The US has deliberately inflamed the situation, and seems to be preparing for simultaneous nuclear strikes against China and Russia.
Art Laramee
Art, you should read some American histrory. The US has been trying to subjugate Korea for a long time. The first time the US attacked Korea was in 1866. The US Navy shelled Korea, until the Koreans agreed to trade with the US. Korea was isolationist, but US artillery changed their minds.
Even better for Asian economies and the U.S. is we’ve already stopped paying their extortion in return for pseudo respect for non-proliferation. So we could lie to our people and deny that everyone, and I mean everyone had some form of WMD An understanding hat is spreading so fast they will fall as quickly as the iron curtain when their people take matters into their own hands. Won’t be enogh light poles as we turn into a "make money not war" world where the old defense industrial complex crumbles under its old corrupt weight. waste amd costs. If you’re not doing something helpful get out of the way.