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.
North Korea knows we’re ready. What could firing eight missiles into the sea add here?
And Kim isn’t the only one who realizes North Korea is already deterred. The North Korean launch didn’t pose an “immediate threat to U.S. personnel or territory, or to our allies,” said U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, nor was it really an escalation from a decade of theatrics and provocations by Pyongyang. U.S.-South Korea joint exercises are a routine practice, and weapons tests are North Korea’s routine rebuttal. The U.S. response, however, is an escalation—mirroring North Korea’s belligerence is not our norm—and, though it’s a small risk, it’s a needless one.
If not readiness, then, what was the intended strategic value in the U.S. response to North Korea’s tests? The likeliest explanation is that it was a novel effort to push the Kim regime toward accepting the Biden administration’s goal of complete denuclearization of North Korea. State Department representative Ned Price reiterated that aim in a press briefing, insisting it could be achieved “through dialogue and diplomacy” and vehemently rejecting U.S. responsibility “for the lack of dialogue, the lack of engagement” between the two countries now.
The commitment to diplomacy is prudent, but here’s the incoherence: Responding to North Korea’s militarism in kind makes diplomatic success less likely, not more.
North Korea keeps a nuclear arsenal to ward off foreign military intervention and regime change like what it observed in Libya and Iraq. Its weapons tests are intended to demonstrate not only strength but reach, to show Kim’s government would at least go down swinging. So long as that fear of invasion remains, complete denuclearization is an unacceptable diplomatic goal for Pyongyang. And as it’s Washington’s stated goal, talks are at a standstill—a standstill the Biden administration seems to have tried to break by reminding North Korea how easily the United States could invade. It should be obvious how counterproductive that tactic would be.
A more effective strategy would have Washington set aside denuclearization as a goal for the foreseeable future to aim instead for achievable diplomatic options. With an intolerable outcome off the table, the Kim regime might well be amenable to worthwhile intermediate agreements in exchange for sanctions relief, like a nuclear freeze, independent monitoring of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal, and economic normalization and the better life for ordinary North Koreans it could bring.
But failing that, doing nothing would be better than matching North Korea’s tinpot antagonism with our own. The United States can coexist—indeed, already is coexisting, as we have for years—with a nuclear North Korea. If diplomatic progress isn’t in the offing, we’ll still be safe. We can leave the jingoism to Kim and trust U.S. deterrence will hold.
Bonnie Kristian is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
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