Everything You Want to Know About North Korean Nukes (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Everything You Want to Know About North Korean Nukes (But Were Afraid to Ask)

The regime in North Korea keeps launching missiles – or trying to – and threatening its neighbors with nuclear holocaust. On Tuesday it launched yet another missile test, though the rogue nation still has many steps to go to field a real ICBM that could threaten the U.S.

The Trump administration has declared an end to the "strategic patience" that marked earlier days. But amid these terse diplomatic exchanges and military posturing, there is a technical discussion that is often overlooked.

For some clarity, we turned to John Schilling, an aerospace engineer specializing in rocket propulsion. As a key contributor to the North Korea-monitoring website 38 North, Schilling is among the best versed in missile technologies outside of the Pentagon.

How would fielding an ICBM change the geopolitical calculus when nations deal with North Korea?

The short answer is, North Korea wants nuclear-tipped ICBMs to directly deter the United States from attacking North Korea, or otherwise imposing a Gaddafi-esque regime change. Most every credible war plan against North Korea, offensive or defensive, hinges on the alliance of the United States, South Korea, and Japan (even if the Japanese don't contribute combat forces, their ports and airbases are critical for logistical support). Right now, North Korea can directly threaten South Korea and Japan with nuclear attack, but the United States can stand back at a safe distance and promise massive retaliation against the North at essentially no cost or risk. With ICBMs as well as shorter-ranged missiles, North Korea can separately deter each member of the alliance, and cause each member of the alliance to doubt the commitment of the others. Would the United States really risk San Francisco to avenge Tokyo?

Coupled with a bit of diplomacy, this could enable North Korea to break one or two partners loose from the alliance on the grounds that their cities are at risk in a fight that maybe isn't their top priority, and so stop a war that would otherwise topple the North Korean regime.

How has a nation like North Korea, isolated as it is, advanced these technologies? Where does Kim Jong-un's regime get the money for it?

We know that North Korea has collaborated with Iran and Pakistan in developing nuclear and/or missile technology in the past, and to some extent this may be ongoing. They also received assistance from Russian technical and probably military personnel during the Yeltsin era—not as a matter of Russian government policy, but because the Yeltsin administration wasn't paying everyone's salary regularly and wasn't keeping track of what they did on the side to make up for that. That collaboration probably stopped with Putin's ascension. And there have been black-market deals elsewhere: secondhand missiles from Egypt and Syria that could be reverse-engineered, missile transporters from China, maybe some technology from Ukraine.