In a report citing sources inside the U.S. intelligence community, The Washington Post is reporting that analysts have concluded that North Korea has passed a key technological point in its effort to obtain the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon as far as the Continental United States:
North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.
The new analysis completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The U.S. calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts believe the number of bombs is much smaller.
The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials last month concluded that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking cities on the American mainland.
While more than a decade has passed since North Korea’s first nuclear detonation, many analysts believed it would be years before the country’s weapons scientists could design a compact warhead that could be delivered by missile to distant targets. But the new assessment, a summary document dated July 28, concludes that this critical milestone has already been reached.
“The IC [intelligence community] assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles,” the assessment states, in an excerpt read to The Washington Post. The assessment’s broad conclusions were verified by two U.S. officials familiar with the document. It is not yet known whether the reclusive regime has successfully tested the smaller design, although North Korea officially last year claimed to have done so.
The DIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
An assessment this week by the Japanese Ministry of Defense also concludes there is evidence to suggest that North Korea has achieved miniaturization.
Kim Jong Un is becoming increasingly confident in the reliability of his nuclear arsenal, analysts have concluded, explaining perhaps the dictator’s willingness to engage in defiant behavior, including missile tests that have drawn criticism even from North Korea’s closest ally, China. On Saturday, both China and Russia joined other members of the U.N. Security Council in approving punishing new economic sanctions, including a ban on exports that supply up to a third of North Korea’s annual $3 billion earnings.
The nuclear progress further raises the stakes for President Trump, who has vowed that North Korea will never be allowed to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons. In an interview broadcast Saturday on MSNBC’s Hugh Hewitt Show, national security adviser H.R. McMaster said the prospect of a North Korea armed with nuclear-tipped ICBMs would be “intolerable, from the president’s perspective.”
“We have to provide all options . . . and that includes a military option,” he said. But McMaster said the administration would do everything short of war to “pressure Kim Jong Un and those around him, such that they conclude it is in their interest to denuclearize.” The options said to be under discussion ranged from new multilateral negotiations to reintroducing U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, officials familiar with internal discussions said.
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The nuclear progress further raises the stakes for President Trump, who has vowed that North Korea will never be allowed to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons. In an interview broadcast Saturday on MSNBC’s Hugh Hewitt Show, national security adviser H.R. McMaster said the prospect of a North Korea armed with nuclear-tipped ICBMs would be “intolerable, from the president’s perspective.”
“We have to provide all options . . . and that includes a military option,” he said. But McMaster said the administration would do everything short of war to “pressure Kim Jong Un and those around him, such that they conclude it is in their interest to denuclearize.” The options said to be under discussion ranged from new multilateral negotiations to reintroducing U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, officials familiar with internal discussions said.
This news comes on the same day that it is being reported that U.S. spy satellites have detected North Korea moving anti-ship missiles onto patrol boats, potentially posing a danger to the American naval presence that has gathered nearby in response to recent North Korean missile tests:
Despite the United States’ insistence that North Korea halt its missile tests, U.S. spy agencies detected the rogue communist regime loading two anti-ship cruise missiles on a patrol boat on the country’s east coast just days ago.
It’s the first time these missiles have been deployed on this type of platform since 2014, U.S. officials with knowledge of the latest intelligence in the region told Fox News on Monday.
It also points to more evidence that North Korea isn’t listening to the diplomatic threats from the West.
“The best signal that North Korea could give us that they’re prepared to talk would be to stop these missile launches,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in the Philippines Monday.
North Korea loaded two Stormpetrel anti-ship cruise missiles on a Wonsan guided-missile patrol boat at Toejo Dong on North Korea’s east coast.
“North Korea is not showing any evidence it plans to halt its missile tests,” said one official who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information. “It’s a trend that does not bode well for hopes of de-escalating tensions on the [Korean] peninsula.”
The latest moves by Pyongyang point to a likely missile test in the days ahead or it could be a defense measure should the U.S. Navy dispatch more warships to the Korean peninsula, officials said.
It also happens to coincide with the release of a new poll by CBS News that finds the American public is increasingly uneasy about the situation on the Korean peninsula and doubtful of the President’s ability to handle the matter successfully. The poll finds that 72% of respondents are “uneasy about possible conflict” resulting from the situation in the region, while just 26% are confident that things will be resolved. At the same time, 60% of respondents say that they think North Korea is a threat that can be contained, while 29% say that the regime in Pyongyang is a threat requiring immediate military action and 7% says that they don’t believe that the Kim regime poses any threat at all to the United States or its interests. Of the most concern, perhaps, is the fact that 61% of respondents say they are “uneasy” about President Trump’s ability to handle the North Korean nuclear situation while 35% are confident in his ability to handle the matter. Among Republicans and Democrats, the numbers in response to this poll are predictable but, most strikingly, 64% of self-identified Independents saying they are uneasy about Trump’s ability to handle the situation and 31% expressing confidence in the President.
For his part, President Trump responded to these reports with a statement from his “working vacation” at his golf club in New Jersey promising “fire and fury” if the DRPK continues to threaten the United States:
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — President Trump threatened on Tuesday to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea if it endangers the United States as tensions with the isolated nuclear-armed state grow into perhaps the most serious foreign policy challenge yet in his young administration.
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Mr. Trump told reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal state and as I said they will be met with fire and fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
The president’s comments came as North Korea earlier in the day escalated its criticism of the United States, as well as its neighboring allies, by warning that it will mobilize all its resources to take “physical action” in retaliation against the latest round of United Nations sanctions.
The statement, carried by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, was the strongest indication yet that the country could conduct another nuclear or missile test, as it had often done in response to past United Nations sanctions. Until now, the North’s response to the latest sanctions had been limited to strident yet vague warnings, such as threatening retaliation “thousands of times over.”
“Packs of wolves are coming in attack to strangle a nation,” the North Korean statement said. “They should be mindful that the D.P.R.K.’s strategic steps accompanied by physical action will be taken mercilessly with the mobilization of all its national strength.”
If true, this latest report about North Korea passing the miniaturization threshold is quite obviously disconcerting, to say the least. In addition to the development of a reliable Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, an area where recent testing has apparently shown that the Kim regime is making advances with each test launch, the development of nuclear weapons that are small enough to be placed in the warhead of such missiles has been cited as a key threshold for the North Koreans to develop a nuclear weapons program that would pose a threat to the United States, Russia, China, Australia, as well as areas as far away as the Middle East and parts of Europe as well, of course, as its immediate neighbors in Japan and South Korea. Once the ability to both miniaturize a working warhead and build and launch an ICBM that can be relied upon to reach its target and deliver its payload, the Kim regime will have significantly changed the playing field on the Korean peninsula and made the situation for the United States and its allies in the region, the Chinese, the Russians, and anyone else who is a potential target of its weapons. This is why it the development of such an ability has long been said to be a “red line” by American Presidents going back to Bill Clinton. Time after time, though, the North Koreans have resisted efforts to rein in the program and largely ignored diplomatic and other entreaties on the matter.
As I’ve said in virtually every post I’ve written here at OTB when it comes to North Korea, it’s difficult to see what can be done diplomatically to prevent the Kim regime from achieving its goal of developing what would amount to an effective nuclear deterrent. Over the past twenty years, the United States has imposed numerous economic and other sanctions on the regime for both its missile and nuclear weapons development programs. To a large degree, these efforts have been supported by the regime’s closest ally China, albeit on some occasions that support has come grudgingly and China continues to engage in commerce with the regime that provides Kim Jong Un with access to both hard currency and necessary supplies such as food and medicines which he then uses to both ensure the support of the military and those closest to him in the power structure and to provide to a populace that has seemingly been deluded into believing the quasi-religious propaganda that has been fed to it by the regime for the past seven decades.
If diplomacy doesn’t work, though, the other options are far from palatable. At this point, a limited military strike aimed at setting back either the DPRK’s nuclear program or its missile research efforts seems as though it would only be a temporary solution. There have been multiple indications that many of the essential research sites for both programs have been relocated to locations deep underground or in the mountainous region of the country, where it would be difficult for military forces to effectively destroy without a sustained campaign. Second, any military strike on the north risks the prospect of either retaliation directed against South Korea and/or Japan, or a wider war which would involve significant danger to the civilian population of South Korea and Japan. In the end, the North Koreans would not survive such a conflict, of course, but they have the ability to do a lot of damage on the way out the door. Additionally, there would be no telling how the Chinese would react to a conflict on the peninsula, meaning that any military action would be unwise without much consultation with Beijing in advance.
Finally, it’s clear that allowing the North Koreans to develop what they want would pose problems of its own. If Kim Jong Un is successful in his efforts, then he will have fundamentally altered the state of play on the Korean peninsula and made the odds that his regime will be brought down in the manner of rulers such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi far, far less likely. In much the same way that the existence of nuclear weapons has made the prospect of a hot war between the United States and either Russia or China, a nuclear armed North Korea would be one that has a significant bargaining chip in its favor, one that could potentially be used to fundamentally alter the politics of the entire region in ways that would not be in anyone’s interests. For years now, the standard answer in the West has been that the key to solving the North Korean problem is getting the Chinese on board. Well, we’ve basically reached that point and it’s apparent that China does not have the influence over Pyongyang that we’ve long thought it does. With an operational nuclear deterrent, Kim Jong Un would be largely immune to even pressure from the DPRK’s patron in Beijing. How we solve the North Korean problem at that point is a question I don’t have an answer to, and I’m not sure that even the people who are supposed to be the experts regarding this matter have an answer either. At some point, though, we’re going to have to figure something out.
