On Thursday, North Korea launched a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile. It was the North’s first ICBM test since November 2017, a time when Kim Jong Un and then-President Donald Trump were shooting petty insults at each other.
South Korea estimates that the missile traveled 671 miles, reaching an altitude of more than 3,800 miles before crashing into Japan’s exclusive economic zone. Like clockwork, the White House immediately released a statement condemning the launch as a “brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions,” while outgoing South Korean President Moon Jae-in called an emergency security council meeting to discuss the test.
Missile analysts will pour over the technical data to determine what model was tested, whether the missile can carry multiple warheads, and the extent to which it can evade U.S. missile defenses. Washington has already imposed additional economic sanctions on North Korea. The Biden administration has also called a public U.N. Security Council meeting to consult about the launch (don’t expect tighter U.N. sanctions: China and Russia aren’t in the mood to cooperate).
None of it, however, will make a difference in the long run. In conjunction with other nations, the United States has imposed more and more sanctions on North Korea since 2006. The consistent hope: that a hard squeeze on the regime’s finances will persuade the Kim dynasty to enter into serious negotiations over denuclearization.
Yet the U.S. and its allies have consistently underestimated the North’s resolve in developing a deliverable nuclear weapons program. The problem isn’t that the sanctions are weak and feeble, but that the North elevates self-preservation above all other considerations. There is no weapon on the face of the Earth that can guarantee self-preservation like a long-range deliverable nuclear warhead. If the cost of keeping these weapons is poverty, a decrepit economy, and no allies to speak of (can China really be considered an ally?), then so be it.
North Korea’s full, unequivocal, and verifiable denuclearization remains the top U.S. security objective with respect to the Kim dynasty. The Biden administration’s North Korea policy is nearly identical to that of the Trump, Bush, and Clinton administrations. While the tactics may change depending on who is managing the North Korea file, the goal itself is the same. The results have been the same, too: failure, failure, and more failure.
For the Biden administration, North Korea isn’t much of a priority. One can have a healthy debate as to whether it should rise in importance on the list of foreign policy challenges, but the debate about whether North Korea can be pressured, coerced, or incentivized into ditching its nuclear warheads is more or less settled. It can’t be.
All isn’t lost, however. Washington can break the long record of failure, but it will require a far more realistic expectation of what the U.S. can accomplish. The U.S. needs to start seeing North Korea for what it is: a small, weak, paranoid country surrounded on all sides by more powerful neighbors in all respects. Pyongyang is defined by a regime that will do everything possible to ensure contingencies like regime change are nipped in the bud (or at least made to be so painful that regime change is rendered obsolete).
In other words, if the U.S. doesn’t want to see additional North Korea ICBM launches in the future, it should go above and beyond the typical sanctions and whiny complaints about violations of the rules-based order. It’s past time to explore the possibility of negotiating caps, roll-backs, and limitations on the North’s nuclear and missile programs in exchange for sanctions relief and the prospect of a more normal bilateral relationship. Some seasoned North Korea analysts would call this proposal unserious or defeatist. I call it realistic and doable.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
