North Korea’s missile madness: Not as insane as it seems

Why is this happening now? Encouraged by the high octane political fervor of the leadership cult of Kim Jong-il, Pyongyang’s communists are playing a very dangerous game but at the same time pursuing a strategy which they feel they will get away with.

The regime analyses the global chessboard and perhaps sees a unique opportunity to make a calculated, if risky move. The U.S. is focused on the Middle East—still facing the Iraqi insurgency and more dangerously trying to diplomatically defuse Iran’s embryonic nuclear potential. North Korea encouraged by its characteristic hubris, feels that the Americans are “too tied down elsewhere,” Japan is still too constrained by its past, and South Korea’s left wing government is too preoccupied with domestic crises and the balm of appeasement to the North as to offer more than a verbal rebuke.

With a missile test looming, the Bush Administration sternly warned North Korea of dire consequences should they go ahead with a launch. Significantly President George W Bush has gained key European political support for his tough line. Speaking at a Vienna European Union Summit meeting, the Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel agreed with President Bush that North Korea faces further isolation from the international community if it test fires a long-range missile believed capable of reaching U.S. soil. Schuessel said Europe would support the U.S. against North Korea if it test fires the missile.

Equally Japan has stood firm, the Koizumi government knowing that keeping the regional peace through non-proliferation remains paramount, especially for Japanese interests.

Still the North Koreans know that when the chips are down the world community may go ballistic over a missile test, but at the end of the day is likely to do little about it. North Korea calculates that even a likely move to the UN Security Council, would have initial thrust, some diplomatic momentum, and would then flounder over substantive issues.

Pyongyang senses that both Beijing and Moscow while uncomfortable and nervous about a nuclear North Korea with intercontinental delivery capabilities, are content that this threat primarily preoccupies Tokyo and Washington.

After the North Korean dictatorship gained a nuclear bomb capability in the early 1990’s the ironic payoff was the Clinton Administration’s 1994 Geneva agreement, a dangerous diplomatic deal which allowed the status quo. When North Korea tested a Taepodong missile over Japan in 1998, there was the predictable political outcry, but Pyongyang also got away with it. That is the poignant lesson for the Pyongyang leadership.

But what is the ultimate point of an intercontinental ballistic missile? This remains unquestionably an offensive weapon which in the hands of neo-Stalinist North Korea poses a chilling recalibration in the East Asian balance of power as much as a clear and present danger to the west coast of the USA.

Pyongyang’s rationalization that it has the right to test a ballistic missile brings a new element of unpredictability to the volatile Korean peninsula. North Korea pines for regime recognition and respect not just from its traditional foes such as Japan and the U.S. Demands by North Korea to for direct negotiations with Washington under such conditions are absurd. American UN Ambassador John Bolton stated wryly, “You don’t normally engage in conversation by threatening to launch a intercontinental ballistic missile.”

Though the North Korean dictator has been lampooned as a latter day Stalin wanabee, Kim Jong Il can still pose a lethal threat to the region. He also wishes to subtly remind Beijing, Pyongyang’s grand patron, that North Korea remains an independent player.

But is the missile ultimately a bargaining chip which can be traded away for an economic aid and developmental horn of plenty, paid for by Tokyo, Seoul and Washington? Or does the missile program represent a costly but focused military development policy aiming to make the DPRK a regional power? Quite simply given the decrepit state of the DPRK economy and infrastructure the nuclear missile program offers Pyongyang little more than a nervous acknowledgement of power but hardly any serious status.

Calls by Clinton era former Secretary of Defense William Perry for an ultimatum to North Korea before launching a pre-emptive American military strike on the missile base are particularly troublesome especially given the symbolic timing of 25 June, the start of the Korean War in 1950. Such threats play into Pyongyang’s paranoid mindset and don’t serve U.S. interests.

Politically speaking should Pyongyang carry out this rash and provocative action and test the missile, North Korea may score its own goal.

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

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