North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test. The underground test, which was recorded as a 5.3-magnitude earthquake recorded near a military installation. Pyongyang confirmed it had conducted a “nuclear warhead explosion” in response to “US hostility”. Yukiya Amano, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, called the test “deeply troubling and regrettable” and in “complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community”. Japan called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council and its prime minister, Shinzo Abe, described North Korea’s nuclear weapons program as a “grave threat” to Japan. World Affairs editor, Julian Borger, says the test indicates a greater level of ambition in Pyongyang than might not have been assumed before.
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— North Korea’s latest test of an atomic weapon leaves the United States with an uncomfortable choice: Stick with a policy of incremental sanctions that has clearly failed to stop the country’s nuclear advances, or pick among alternatives that range from the highly risky to the repugnant.
A hard embargo, in which Washington and its allies block all shipping into and out of North Korea and seek to paralyze its finances, risks confrontations that allies in Asia fear could quickly escalate into war. But restarting talks on the North’s terms would reward the defiance of its young leader, Kim Jong-un, with no guarantee that he will dismantle the nuclear program irrevocably.
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| Thousands of North Koreans at a rally last month to remember the start of the Korean War, holding banners that called for the defense of Kim Jong-un, the nation’s leader.Wong Maye-E/Associated Press |
NY TIMES : [Condensed
North Korea, Far From Crazy, Is All Too Rational.
States are rarely irrational for the simple reason that irrational states can’t survive for long. The international system is too competitive and the drive for self-preservation too powerful. While the North Korean state really is unlike any other on earth, the behaviors that make it appear irrational are perhaps its most rational.
North Korea’s seemingly unhinged behavior begins with the country’s attempt to solve two problems that it took on with the end of the Cold War and that it should have been unable to survive.
One was military. The Korean Peninsula, still in a formal state of war, had gone from a Soviet-American deadlock to an overwhelming tilt in the South’s favor. The North was exposed, protected only by a China that was more focused on improving ties with the West.
The other problem was political. Both Koreas claimed to represent all Koreans, and for decades had enjoyed similar development levels. By the 1990s, the South was exponentially freer and more prosperous. The Pyongyang government had little reason to exist.
The leadership solved both problems with something called the Songun, or “military-first,” policy. It put the country on a permanent war footing, justifying the state’s poverty as necessary to maintain its massive military, justifying its oppression as rooting out internal traitors and propping up its legitimacy with the rally-around-the-flag nationalism that often comes during wartime.
So North Korea created the appearance of permanently imminent war, issuing flamboyant threats, staging provocations and, sometimes, deadly attacks. Its nuclear and missile tests, though erratic and often failed, stirred up one crisis after another.
This militarization kept the North Korean leadership internally stable. It also kept the country’s enemies at bay. North Korea may be weaker, but it is willing to tolerate far more risk. By keeping the peninsula on the edge of conflict, Pyongyang put the onus on South Korea and the United States to pull things back.
From afar, North Korea’s actions look crazy. Its domestic propaganda describes a reality that does not exist, and it appears bent on almost provoking a war it would certainly lose.
But from within North Korea, these actions make perfect sense. And over time, the government’s reputation for irrationality has become an asset as well.
Scholars ascribe this behavior to the “madman theory” — a strategy, coined by no less a proponent than Richard M. Nixon, in which leaders cultivate an image of belligerence and unpredictability to force adversaries to tread more carefully.
But this strategy works only because, even if the belligerence is for show, the danger it creates is very real.
In this way, it is North Korea’s rationality that makes it so dangerous. Because it believes it can survive only by keeping the Korean Peninsula near war, it creates a risk of sparking just that, perhaps through some accident or miscalculation.
North Korea is aware of this risk but seems to believe it has no choice. For this reason, and perhaps because of the United States-led invasion of Iraq and the NATO intervention in Libya against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, it appears to earnestly fear an American invasion. And this is rational: Weak states that face more powerful enemies must either make peace — which North Korea cannot do without sacrificing its political legitimacy — or find a way to make any conflict survivable.
North Korea’s nuclear program, some analysts believe, is designed to halt an American invasion by first striking nearby United States military bases and South Korean ports, then by threatening a missile launch against the American mainland. While North Korea does not yet have this ability, analysts believe it will within the next decade.
This is the culmination of North Korea’s rationality, in something known as desperation theory....In North Korea’s case, that means creating the conditions for a war it would most likely lose. And it could mean preparing a last-ditch effort to survive that war by launching multiple nuclear strikes, chancing a nuclear retaliation for the slim chance to survive.
North Korea’s leaders tolerate this danger because, in their calculus, they have no other choice. The rest of us share in that risk — vanishingly small, but nonzero — whether we want to or not.
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| President Xi Jinping of China |
NY TIMES [Condensed]
Few Expect China to Punish North Korea for Latest Nuclear Test
North Korea’s biggest nuclear test, conducted last week less than 50 miles from the Chinese border, sent tremors through homes and schools in China’s northeast. But hours later, there was no mention of the test on China’s state-run evening television news, watched by hundreds of millions of viewers.
Although North Korea remains nearly 100 percent dependent on China for oil and food, Chinese analysts say Beijing will not modify its allegiance to North Korea or pressure the country to curtail its drive for a full-fledged nuclear arsenal, as the United States keeps requesting.
China sees living with a Communist-ruled nuclear-armed state on its border as preferable to the chaos of its collapse. A collapsed North Korean regime is a strategic nightmare for Beijing: millions of refugees piling into China and a unified Korean Peninsula under an American defense treaty.
The Obama administration’s decision to deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea also gives President Xi Jinping of China less incentive to cooperate with Washington on a North Korea strategy that could aim, for example, to freeze the North’s nuclear capacity, analysts said.
The American-supplied missile defenses in South Korea, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad, have effectively killed any chance of China’s cooperating with the United States, they said.
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| Yoo Jeh-seung, center, the deputy minister for policy for the South Korean Defense Ministry, with Lt. Gen. Thomas Vandal, the commander of United States Eighth Army in South Korea, in Seoul, the capital, announcing agreement to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System, or Thaad. Lee Jin-Man/Associated Press |
“The United States cannot rely on China for North Korea,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “China is closer to North Korea than the United States.”
“China is strongly opposed to North Korea’s nuclear weapons but at the same time opposes the defense system in South Korea,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an assistant professor of international relations at Renmin University. It is not clear which situation the Chinese leadership is more agitated about, he said.
Beijing interprets the Thaad deployment as another American effort to contain China. The system reinforces China’s view that its alliance with North Korea is an integral part of China’s strategic interests in Asia, with America’s treaty allies Japan and South Korea and tens of thousands of American troops close by, Mr. Shi said.
Washington insists that the Thaad system, due to be installed in 2017, is intended to defend South Korea against North Korean missiles, and is not aimed at China. The system “does not change the strategic balance between the United States and China,” President Obama said after meeting with Mr. Xi in Hangzhou, China, a week ago.
But China is not persuaded. Chinese officials argue that the Thaad radar can detect Chinese missiles on the mainland, undermining its nuclear deterrent....Mr. Xi is expected to continue to ensure that North Korea remains stable. The Chinese leader, 63, has shown disdain for the much younger Mr. Kim, 32. He has not invited him to China, and has authorized only sporadic visits by Chinese officials to Pyongyang.
But the personal and professional antagonisms do not alter Beijing’s goal of preventing a unification of North and South Korea under an American defense arrangement....The longstanding fear that punitive economic action would destabilize North Korea makes it very unlikely that Beijing will cooperate with the United States on more stringent sanctions at the United Nations, according to Chinese analysts.
In March, after considerable hesitation, China agreed to Washington’s appeals and signed on to tough United Nations sanctions that included a ban on the export of North Korean coal.
Now, as the West moves toward another round of United Nations sanctions, China’s mood is very different, said a former senior Chinese official who worked on North Korea. He said some officials were wondering why China would work with the United States at the United Nations after Washington went ahead with the antimissile system against Chinese wishes.
Meanwhile, the sanctions imposed in March have been enforced in only a desultory fashion, trade experts said. A loophole in the sanctions allows North Korean coal to be sold if the proceeds are used for humanitarian purposes, and that opening seems to have been exploited, said Stephan Haggard, a Korea expert at the University of California, San Diego.
There is discussion in China about whether an oil embargo — an unlikely punishment — would result in Mr. Kim’s giving up his weapons....Mr. Shi questioned why China would want to risk making North Korea into an enemy by cutting off the oil supply. “If you cut off the oil, there is a 50 percent possibility North Korea will not surrender their weapons, and they will hate China even more,” he said.