North Korea and the Threat of ICBMs
George Friedman
Founder and Chairman at Geopolitical Futures, Senior Advisor at Gallup
Rumors have been swirling that North Korea is about to test an intercontinental ballistic missile. The source for this latest rumor is U.S. intelligence, though North Korea has been warning it will perform such a test. North Korea tested three ICBM boosters in 2017. Those tests didn’t prove mastery of missile reentry capabilities or an effective guidance system, but if North Korea does successfully demonstrate such capabilities for an ICBM, it will change the dynamic between the North and the United States. Pyongyang has demonstrated its ability to field a nuclear weapon and to successfully test-fire non-intercontinental weapons. That means that the continental United States is not at risk of a nuclear attack from the North. But if an ICBM is successfully tested, that means that, regardless of intentions, North Korea has the ability to strike the United States. That would force the U.S. to rethink its strategy.
U.S. Strategy
The U.S. has accepted the idea that North Korea has the ability to strike neighboring countries allied with the United States, including Japan and South Korea. The United States had no strategy for neutralizing the North’s nuclear capability. An attack on nuclear facilities with non-nuclear weapons would have probably eliminated the weapons, but its success would have depended on two things. First, that the intelligence the U.S. had on the location of these facilities was completely accurate. Second, that all facilities that needed to be struck were vulnerable to air attack or possibly attack by special operations forces. Some, particularly those housing key facilities and storage, might have been buried deep underground or hardened in some way to render them minimally vulnerable to non-nuclear military action.
The United States was not prepared to initiate a nuclear attack on North Korea, since it could set a precedent that might turn against American interests. As important, North Korea had developed an alternative strategy that was hard to counter. Over the decades, it created a heavy concentration of artillery and rockets well in range of Seoul, which is close to the North Korean border. A U.S. attack on North Korea would have been countered by a massive artillery attack by the North on Seoul. And with artillery well dispersed in hardened locations, suppression by air before massive damage and casualties would have been difficult.