The Last Chance to Stop North Korea?

U.S. Aid Could Help Revive Nuclear Diplomacy

By Victor Cha

September 22, 2021

Last week’s weapons tests broke what had been an unusually quiet period on the North

Korea front, reminding the Biden administration that the country’s zeal for nuclear

weapons will eventually demand the White House’s attention.

Usually by this time in a new U.S. administration, the president would have already seen

North Korea carry out a handful of ballistic missile or nuclear tests. That’s because the

Kim regime in Pyongyang loves to test newly elected American leaders. Indeed, North

Korean provocations cluster close to U.S. presidential and congressional midterm

elections, a trend that has been especially true during the last few election cycles.

Remember when President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sat

huddled over reports of North Korean missile tests during dinner at Mar-a-Lago only

three weeks after Trump’s inauguration? And when President Barack Obama was greeted

with a rocket launch in April 2009, followed by a nuclear test during his first Memorial

Day weekend as president? Until last week, President Joe Biden has had to deal with none

of that, even though the United States has taken part in events that usually upset North

Korea, such as holding a summit and carrying out joint military exercises with South

Korea in recent months.

But North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has not acted according to script for reasons that

may have to do with COVID-19, whose impact on the country remains largely unknown

to the outside world. Still, the Biden administration should not take comfort in the relative
lack of provocations thus far. Although North Korea’s saber rattling remains subdued, a

crisis is brewing as Pyongyang continues to quietly develop weapons systems that could

threaten the United States. The weapons tested last week do not appear to have the

capability to reach the United States, but they should still be taken seriously. North

Korean state news described a low-altitude cruise missile it launched as a “strategic

weapon,” suggesting Kim’s ambition to field a nuclear cruise missile, which only a handful

of countries now possess. It also fired a short-range ballistic missile from a railcar

platform on September 15. This suggests a road-mobile launch capability, which along

with solid-fuel propellant (which the North Koreans have already produced) would make

it more difficult for the United States to preemptively strike a missile before its launch.

These are all capabilities that make North Korea’s nuclear deterrent more survivable and

impervious to a U.S. first strike.

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But these tests aren’t the only troubling signs. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is

going “full steam ahead,” Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy

Agency, confirmed this week. Early evidence of this included thermal satellite imagery

captured in March and analyzed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Those images indicated heat signatures at the Yongbyon nuclear facility, suggesting the

regime had resumed the reprocessing of plutonium and enriched uranium for an arsenal

of bombs now estimated to number between 20 and 40. Experts are now waiting for two

more shoes to drop: the demonstration of a missile armed with multiple warheads and an

operational ballistic missile launched from a submarine. The direction is clear: North
Korea wants to have a modern force that can engage in nuclear warfighting, that can

threaten the United States with missiles that can carry multiple warheads and are

impervious to ballistic missile defenses, and that can survive and retaliate credibly against

a U.S. preemptive attack. If it achieves those goals, then North Korea’s nuclearization will

never be reversed, even by force.

This is why the Biden administration will eventually have to decide how to stop North

Korea before it crosses this threshold. There are two paths out of this predicament. It can

wait for a crisis and risk another near-war situation like the one Trump faced in 2017. Or

it can act now, getting diplomacy back on track through humanitarian assistance that

includes American COVID-19 vaccines and food aid, both of which the country needs.

THE BACK BURNER SUITS EVERYONE . . . FOR NOW

How the Biden administration will approach this predicament is unclear. Its policy has

been deliberately low key, displaying neither urgency nor enthusiasm for picking up the

pieces from previous agreements and finding a diplomatic path forward. In large part this

is because Biden’s national security team, all of whom cut their teeth on the issue during

Obama’s presidency, is deeply skeptical of North Korea’s intentions to denuclearize and

have plenty else to deal with at the moment.

There has yet to be a speech by any administration official offering a full elucidation of

the policy beyond White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s promise that Biden would not

pursue Trump’s made-for-TV summitry or Obama’s strategic patience. Sung Kim, the

U.S. special envoy for North Korea, has declared a willingness to meet with the North

Koreans “anywhere, anytime,” but most observers in Washington sense caution rather
than enthusiasm from the administration when it comes to relations with Pyongyang.

Moreover, now that U.S. military operations in Afghanistan have ended, the State

Department’s leadership has been focused entirely on the diplomatic mission in that

country, meaning there is little time for high-level attention on North Korea. Unless

they’re discussing Afghanistan, visiting foreign officials cannot get much time with top

officials at the State Department or the National Security Council.

If North Korea achieves its nuclear goals, its nuclearization will never be

reversed, even by force.

Kim has his own preoccupations. A desperate economic situation—precipitated by floods

and a pandemic-induced, 21-month shutdown of the border between North Korea and

China—has caused Pyongyang to focus inward. The regime also has no interest in

answering calls for engagement from what it perceives to be a lame-duck government in

South Korea. Moreover, China has done nothing to promote diplomacy. If anything,

China’s tying of cooperation on North Korea to U.S. concessions in bilateral relations with

Beijing means China won’t do anything on its own to break the stalemate. In the near

term, these have all afforded Biden the room to put North Korea on the back burner.

But this period of relative quiet is likely to further dissipate before the end of this year, if

not sooner, as Kim will likely return to his old ways. Coercion, after all, is North Korea’s

natural way of interacting with the outside world. In the past, the United States has relied

on diplomacy to ratchet down tensions. This time, however, may not be same. That’s

because as North Korea inches toward the completion of its nuclear capabilities, the

provocations could become more significant and dangerous. For example, North Korea

might acquire and test a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle, which could
evade U.S. defense systems; an intercontinental ballistic missile; or a submarine-

launched ballistic missile. The Biden team is also loath to de-escalate without meaningful

progress. It certainly won’t respond to provocative gestures with a head-of-state summit

or personal overtures to Kim. To avoid the path of watered-down diplomacy, the Biden

administration may feel the need to respond forcefully: for example, by enforcing

nonproliferation with a blockade. But North Korea will not back down. That would mean

more testing, more provocative military exercises, and a crisis similar to the one that

broke out in Trump’s first year.

COVID-19 OPENS A DOOR

The usual answer to this problem is to apply more sanctions to North Korea in order to

compel it to stop its weapons programs, even if temporarily. That option might make for

good politics in Washington, but it is ineffective, largely because North Korea has

essentially put itself under the most stringent sanctions in its history by keeping its border

with China closed since January 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19. With sanctions

rendered meaningless, the only answer to stemming the nuclear threat is diplomacy. And

the best way to get there is through humanitarian assistance that would help North Korea

stop the spread of COVID-19 and also ease the pain of the chronic food shortages that

plague the country. With the appropriate verification protocols, humanitarian aid would

not violate any of the current sanctions against North Korea under current UN Security

Council resolutions and U.S. law.

It remains unknown how many COVID-19 cases or deaths North Korea has suffered. To

date, the country has reported zero, a number about which U.S. and South Korean officials

are skeptical. But the mitigation measures the country has taken to keep the virus out
have hit its population extremely hard. Trade with China is down by as much as 90

percent, and food prices are rising. But Kim has already rejected an offer of roughly three

million Chinese-made vaccines from COVAX, the UN-backed effort to distribute vaccines

to countries in need, claiming North Korea does not need them as much as harder-hit

nations. North Korea is reportedly not interested in the Chinese vaccines because of

questions about their effectiveness. When Kim rejected an offer this summer, also

organized by COVAX, of around two million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot, it was

due to concerns about possible side effects. This could create an opportunity for the

United States, whose vaccines—made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson &

Johnson—are believed to be the safest and most effective.

Humanitarian assistance would make it less likely that Kim would carry out

major weapons provocations.

North Korea’s food insecurity also provides an opening for diplomacy. A combination of

the border lockdown to trade and serious seasonal flooding has impacted North Korean

food stocks. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates an 850,000-ton

shortage this year, and there are media reports that the public food distribution system

has broken down. The provision of food and fertilizer could come from South Korea,

which wants desperately to improve inter-Korean relations as a legacy of the current

government in its last seven months in office.

Vaccines and food might seem like small ball and a detour from denuclearization. But

humanitarian assistance would address the urgent needs of the North Korean people,

promote solidarity with South Korea, and make it less likely that Kim would carry out

major weapons provocations. What is more, an agreement to provide U.S. aid would
reduce Chinese influence in Pyongyang. And, finally, it just might create some momentum

for further diplomacy.

If the United States is unwilling to pursue such assistance, then it can roll the dice, wait

for the next nuclear test by North Korea, and hope that traditional diplomacy can save the

day. But with everything else that Biden needs to deal with, he hardly needs another crisis