Stopping North Korea Nuclear Attack: US Intensifies Support to South Korea

By Peter Huessy, President, Geostrategic Analysis, Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute

(Washington DC) The ROK President just completed a summit with the United States, primarily over the role of the US in providing an extended nuclear deterrent for his country. As a member in good standing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Republic of Korea cannot build and deploy nuclear weapons and thus has to rely, in part, on a joint defense with the United States.

The North Korean communist regime does not like that the US is strengthening its defense of the Republic of Korea, and claims that the recent joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea prove the ongoing hostility toward the North and thus is sufficient justification for Pyongyang to build and deploy nuclear weapons. China also disapproved of the US initiative and put out phony world poll data that supposedly showed that 90% of the world opposed the US and ROK defense measures.

A number of analysts and commentators also chimed in, claiming that nuclear deterrence by the United States won’t help matters, and probably make the North more aggressive, that dialogue and discussion are the right way forward. Or that the US should simply withdraw from the region and if necessary, Seoul could develop its own nuclear weapons to fully deter the North Koreans.

At the heart of much of these analysis is a complete misunderstanding of why North Korea has nuclear weapons. There is no hostile US policy toward Pyongyang. In fact, since the end of the Korean War in 1953, now extending 70 years, the US has never used military force to strike any North Korean forces. So, the common complaint by North Korea that they have no choice but to build nuclear weapons to deter the United States is utter fantasy.

That is not to say military force has not been used by Pyongyang. North Korea has repeatedly attacked ROK forces across the DMZ, committed terrorist attacks against both Japan and South Korea, while aligning itself with terrorist groups around the world, including establishing a military technology cooperative agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, including missile matters. In 1983, the North Korean government terror bombed a Rangoon meeting of the South Korean cabinet with the leaders of Burma, killing 21 people, including one of my professors at Yonsei University who had risen to be the national security adviser to the President of the country.

But most important is the “man behind the curtain” that no one wants to see and that is China and the CCP. It was the Chinese leaders who in secret in 1981 decided to help transfer nuclear weapons technology to Norh Korea, while North Korea helped countries such as Pakistan with ballistic missile technology all the while also helping Pakistan, Libya and Iran with developing nuclear weapons technology. The creation of the A.Q. Khan network in Pakistan, what might be described as a “Nukes ‘R Us” department store, became the focal point for one stop nuclear shopping for rogue states.

What was China’s strategy? The deployment of nuclear weapons in North Korea was designed to unsettle and then split the US-ROK alliance and call into question the value of the US partnership. China and its friends in the West were perfectly happy to blame the North’s nuclear proliferation on the “hostile” policy of the United States, much as the same foreign policy crowd serially blamed the United States for a too-strong support for Israel rather than the Palestinian Authority.