By Bonnie Kristian
North Korea’s test-fire of eight short-range ballistic missiles into the ocean this month was in many ways utterly ordinary. The Kim Jong Un regime has launched missiles 18 times in 2022, an average of one round every nine days, and short-range missiles have been a favorite of the isolated totalitarian state in recent years. Also standard was the test’s timing one day after joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises in the Philippine Sea. Pyongyang has long objected to these drills, which it dubs “rehearsals” for war, and this month’s exercise was the first since 2017 to include one of the United States’ 11 aircraft carriers. That distinction makes North Korea’s decision to fire a record number of missiles unsurprising.
Not so ordinary was Washington’s response to the test. The day after, the U.S. and South Korea fired eight missiles of their own into the sea. While it was supposed to demonstrate “readiness,” per a statement from Seoul, this move encapsulates the incoherence of U.S. policy toward North Korea and its nuclear arms.
Consider the “readiness” rationale. This is language of deterrence—but it’s impossible to think U.S. deterrence, already established and stable, was meaningfully changed by this response.
For all we tend to speak of Kim as a madman, he undoubtedly understands the gross imbalance of military power, both conventional and nuclear, between his country and ours. He knows how open war with the United States would end: with his defeat, the end of his cruel regime, and very possibly his death. Kim realizes South Korea and Japan—themselves stronger and wealthier powers than his own country—are treaty allies of the United States and that attacking them would mean retribution from America. And he is hyperaware of the proximity of the U.S. military to his borders; indeed, that proximity is exactly why he complains every time American and South Korean forces train together.
This piece was originally published in The Orange County Register on June 16, 2022. Read more HERE.