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North Korea’s provocations

July 6, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward

America should not give in to Kim Jong-Il's bullying or reward his bad behavior.

America should not give in to Kim Jong-Il's bullying or reward his bad behavior.

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On Tuesday, North Korea launched six missiles, including its long-range Taepodong 2 intercontinental missile, into the Sea of Japan. It followed up these tests with a seventh firing on Wednesday, and Kim Jong-Il’s Communist government has threatened to launch further missiles.

“The United States should use this opportunity to encourage the international community to take a stronger approach towards Pyongyang,” Heritage’s Michael Needham writes. Needham, director of Heritage’s Asian Study Center, added that these provocations should serve “to underscore the importance of a ballistic missile defense system as part of a comprehensive American national security strategy.”

Perhaps most importantly, Needham insisted that America not give in to North Korea’s bullying: “America must remain committed to the Six-Party talks no matter how Kim Jong-Il lashes out.” Appeasement, rewarding this bad behavior, is the worst thing America could do. Fortunately, the Bush administration is holding firm.

How to defend against North Korea

In a new paper, Heritage’s Baker Spring outlines a four-point program to deter North Korean aggression and defend against any future attacks:

  1. Conventional defense of South Korea—The military should build on programs like the F-22 Raptor and the Future Combat System to ensure superiority both on the ground and in the air. “The U.S. and South Korea should obtain capabilities that will allow them to prevail in a conventional conflict with North Korea in ways in which destruction to South Korea is kept to a tolerable level.”
  2. Global, layered missile defense—America needs to build a complete missile defense program to defend against future North Korean missile launches. “The U.S. should move quickly to revive all elements of [the 1991 Global Protection Against Limited Strikes] and facilitate direct Japanese and South Koream participation in the effort.”
  3. New nuclear deterrent—The Bush administration should build on its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review to adapt the Cold War nuclear deterrent to current threats. “The U.S. nuclear deterrent needs to be capable of holding targets at risk that are valued by the North Korea leadership as means for personal and regime survival.”
  4. Preemption—While keeping in mind the dangers of resuming a conventional war, America should remain capable of striking North Korean military assets in the event that an attack is imminent.

Bad news for North Korea?

Heritage’s Peter Brookes points out that the missile launches may not do North Korea any good:

[T]he launch, coming after weeks of threats and demands, will lead to broad international condemnation and further political/economic isolation for North Korea. That will include more economic sanctions—something that its crippled economy and suffering people can ill afford.

And the Taepodong-2 failure (after a seven-year, self-imposed moratorium on ballistic-missile launches) makes Pyongyang look quite impotent as a long-range nuclear threat to the United States, significantly undermining its periodic bouts of brinksmanship.

The other bad news for Pyongyang is that the missile malfunction will make other potential buyers (most importantly Iran) think twice about adding the North Korean ICBM to their arsenals. (Obviously, this is great news for us.)

North Korea’s hapless missile salvo also alienated its biggest benefactors, most notably China and South Korea.

Keep up with the latest on the Korean crisis

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‘Nothing changes on the ground at Guantánamo’

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in a split decision that the military tribunals used to try terrorists captured on the field of battle are unconstitutional. But though critics of the war on terrorism call this a rebuke of Bush administration policy, the decision will have little real effect, Heritage’s experts have concluded.

“The decision will have little practical impact on fighting the long war,” write Heritage’s James Carafano, Nile Gardiner and Todd Gaziano. “Nothing has changed the fact that the government must fashion a means to adjudicate the status of detainees that satisfies both the rule of law and U.S. national security interests.”

Liberals were ecstatic about the decision, seeing it as a rebuke to the policy of detaining captured terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But as Heritage’s experts explain, “no detainee was ordered to be released” and the prison will remain open for the foreseeable future. “Nothing changes on the ground at Guantánamo.”

In other news

  • New York’s Court of Appeals and Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled today in separate opinions that the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman is legal and constitutional. The New York court further held that any changes to such a definition, if they are to be made at all, should be undertaken by lawmakers, not unelected judges. The New York court’s ruling is worth a read (link in PDF format).
  • The Navy will be forbidden to use sonar during its upcoming war games, The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports. A judge ruled that environmentalists’ concerns about whales outweighed the need for America’s military to train for combat against the quiet submarines used by such nations as China, Iran and North Korea.
  • After several hours of trailing in the recount, Mexico’s conservative presidential candidate, Felipe Calderón, now maintains a slim lead. With 99.2 percent of the vote tallied so far, Calderón leads Andres Manuel López Obrador by a margin of 35.77 percent to 35.42 percent. Apparently following the lead of American liberals, López Obrador has declared that “we cannot accept these results” and has pledged to fight the results in court.
  • President Bush turns 60 today. Many happy returns, Mr. President.
  • Not only does the government pay farmers to plant certain crops instead of others or not to plant at all, but it even spends enormous sums to subsidize landowners who aren’t farmers at all. The Washington Post reports that “the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all.”
  • Conservative portal Townhall.com, which went independent of The Heritage Foundation a year ago, has undergone a dramatic overhaul. The website features new interactive blog tools and live online conservative radio programs.

Coming up at Heritage

To attend these or any other Heritage Foundation events, RSVP at Heritage’s events website. Or you can watch these events live online at Heritage.org. All times are Eastern.

  • On Monday, July 10 at 9:00am, Heritage hosts a series of panel discussions about US-India relations. Speakers include government officials, international relations specialists and representatives of Indian and American business organizations
  • On Tuesday, July 11 at noon, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) joins Heritage’s Peter Brookes, former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Michael Tanji and terrorism researcher Thomas Joscelyn for “The Captured Iraqi Intelligence Documents: What Do They Reveal and How Should They Be Handled?” a discussion of documents captured from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, many of which have yet to be translated.

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.