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North Korea or: Why Seven Nukes Are Worse Than One

There has been some disturbing news from North Korea:

A massive explosion on North Korea’s northern border with China generated an expansive mushroom cloud on an important commemorative anniversary of the Pyongyang government on Sept. 9. The blast came as concerns have been recently mounting in U.S. intelligence circles that North Korea was about to conduct a nuclear test.

Details of the blast remained sketchy, but the date of the blast — taking place on a day commemorating the 1948 founding of North Korea — had U.S., South Korea and Japanese officials scrambling to study satellite images of a clear picture of what might have caused the massive blast. North Korea is known to put great importance on historic dates, using such days to conduct high-profile military exercises and parades. On Sunday, U.S. officials would not rule out a potential nuclear test, but officials at Seoul’s Unification Ministry — its government agency that deals directly with the North Koreans — said the blast appeared to be “non-nuclear” in nature.

Colin Powell has since stated that the blast was not likely to be nuclear, but I don’t know how he could know either way, and it sounds to me like he’s merely trying to downplay the matter. Certainly, it’s way too early to jump to conclusions either way1, so go don’t go running to the store to buy duct tape or anything (Update 9/15/04: North Korea has now said that it wasn’t nuclear, and since it’s not like them to downplay this sorta thing, I see no reason not to believe them). But in the meantime, I’d like to reiterate a few points I made last year on the old Motley Fool Current Events board2.

Recall that many doves noted the striking contrast between Dubya’s policy towards North Korea and Iraq, trying to show that the invasion of Iraq was obviously about the oil. Indeed, I often heard Paul Wolfowitz’s “sea of oil” comment used to “prove” this. Now I disagree with Wolfowitz on many things, but he appears to be a highly intelligent man, so I figured it was highly unlikely he’d be stupid enough to actually say that the war in Iraq was all about oil, even if it were the truth (which I don’t believe, although I do think oil did play a factor). Of course, it turned out his quote was taken out of context:

Look, the primarily difference — to put it a little too simply — between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances which are very different.

This is a far cry from what he was made out to be saying. You can certainly argue the above point, but that’s a discussion for another time. And the oil issue is dwarfed by the other obvious difference between Iraq and North Korea, which is that North Korea was widely believed to already have one or two nuclear weapons, whereas Iraq did not yet have the nuke but was trying to get it. The hawkish argument being that we ought to use military action to prevent Iraq from obtaining a weapon before military action is no longer an option, like in North Korea.

Well, perhaps I’m crazy, but I looked at it differently. Most countries want nuclear weapons for defensive purposes. If you have one or two nukes, then other countries will be extremely hesitant to even think about invading you. North Korea is a very different beast. To the best of our knowledge, they already had one or two nukes, and yet for some reason, they seem intent on building at least a half a dozen more (firing up their plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon early last year).

Why would a country want that many nuclear weapons? I can only think of three likely possibilities:

1. They want them for offensive purposes. Having one or two nukes is useless in this regard, because you need to keep them in reserve to ward off an invasion. It’s a very different story if you have seven or eight.
2. They want to sell their extra nukes to other rogue nations or terrorists.
3. They don’t actually have any nukes yet, but are trying their darnedest to pretend that they do while they keep working on it.

Note that North Korea is also widely believed to have ballistic missile technology capable of hitting the west coast of the United States, although not with any reliable accuracy. With just one or two nukes, you’re not likely to hit anything valuable. But fire off five or six of them and you’re pretty likely to hit at least one heavily populated area. This would seem to give credence to the “want them for offensive purposes” possibility.

In addition, while North Korea is not floating in a sea of oil, they make their money by selling ballistic missile technology to other countries, including “rogue nations” like Iran (also widely believed to be developing nuclear weapons). No doubt, they could make much more money by selling nuclear weapons. Not that Kim Jong-Il seems to care all that much about the economic welfare of his country, being perfectly content to let his people starve and for refugees to stream into China. But his willingness to sell ballistic missile technology should be enough reason to give you pause.

Of course, maybe Kim Jong-Il is just plain crazy, which might be why he acts so defiantly towards the United States. And there’s always the possibility that this whole thing is just one big bluff to try and scare us away, like Saddam seems to have unsuccessfully tried (after all, someone in a position of actual strength would probably behave a lot more like Iran than North Korea). Or maybe it could also be a combination of more than one of these possibilities.

In any case, even though the risks and costs of invading North Korea are extremely high, the global threat posed by a North Korea flush with nukes just might be dire enough to justify that risk. The stakes here are so high that we absolutely cannot completely rule out military action. At the very least, we should use the threat of military invasion as leverage over them.

Of course, having most of our military bogged down occupying Iraq kinda makes that a bit difficult right now.

¹ Indeed, the same is true for the validity of those Killian memos that CBS released regarding Dubya’s National Guard service (or lack thereof). There isn’t conclusive evidence either way as to whether they are forgeries or not, so anybody that jumped to conclusions clearly has a partisan angle or bias. It seems to me at this point that they’re probably forgeries, but certainly we’ll have a better idea within the next several days, so just wait to see how it all shakes out before jumping to conclusions that can only be based on your own cognitive bias. Personally, I think the whole thing is about as relevant as the Swift Boat allegations anyway. Return.

² While the Motley Fool’s discussion boards have some pretty good features, their search function doesn’t work very well, so I unfortunately don’t have a link to the original discussion (and you’d have to register to see it anyway). If I find it, I’ll update this post to include the link. On a side note, a few of my ol’ pals from Current Events now have their own blogs, HedonistiX and Moonage (who also has a political blog). They’re both very interesting fellows, so check ‘em out sometime. Return.