But we should treat North Korea's own statements about miniaturization seriously.
Not taking the North Koreans seriously compromises our ability to formulate a realistic approach to managing the problem. We have a tendency to see North Korea's nuclear program as a vaguely ridiculous enterprise that exists largely to extort the United States. This view underestimates North Korea's ambition with regard to its nuclear weapons program and the importance that the leadership in Pyongyang places on it. Kim Jong Un is not going to take the route Muammar Qaddafi did and give up his nuclear and missile programs -- they are much too central to his regime's ideology. (This is to say nothing of the terrible precedent that Qaddafi's overthrow set. After learning about the last few minutes of his life, I sat gingerly for a week.)
If you want to know how the North Koreans think about their nuclear weapons, watch these subtitled clips from the North Korean propaganda film, The Country I Saw. The complete, verifiable, and irreversible disarmament of North Korea, as it were, will require a comprehensive settlement of the questions arising from the Korean War. Let's not hold our breath.
Being realistic about the dim prospects for disarmament should include an appreciation that things can get worse. A lot of pundits and politicos treat nuclear weapons as an either/or proposition. You have ‘em, or you don't. A classic example of this sort thinking was a comment by Colin Powell, who argued in 2002 that the collapse of the 1994 Agreed Framework, which had frozen North Korea's nuclear program, was harmless because the North already had nuclear weapons. "What are they going to do with another two or three nuclear weapons?" he asked on one of the Sunday talk shows. (He seems to have done five that day, giving variations on theme of "so what?") A small stockpile of reliable warheads small enough to ride a missile is clearly worse than a single one-ton device that doesn't work. And, if we do nothing, whatever stockpile North Korea has in 10 years' time could easily be worse than its current arsenal.
We ought to be careful about encouraging the North Koreans to prove it to us. I understand, and support, the Obama administration's insistence on the talking point that we do not accept North Korea as having the formal status of a nuclear state. But making it clear that Pyongyang's isolation cannot end with a nuclear-armed North Korea does not require insisting that it demonstrate each measure of capability. In the mid-1960s, the Chinese made some interesting choices about how to ensure the neighbors took them seriously. One was to mount a miniaturized nuclear weapon on a DF-2 missile and fire it 1,200 km across China. That was the fourth Chinese nuclear test. (The design from that test, which used highly enriched uranium, was the one that later showed up in Pakistan and Libya. One presumes more copies are floating around.) The North Koreans seem unwilling to test in the atmosphere for a variety of reasons, so I suspect this is an unlikely precedent. But it is worth keeping in mind that things could be much, much worse. There is value to simply managing a problem, especially when there are no better options.
We can all recite a list of options to manage this particular headache. Prominent among them: partial agreements to freeze fissile-material production, nuclear testing, and rocket launches. These steps will not eliminate North Korea's capabilities, but now it's my turn: So what? What better plan can you imagine? I think back to former diplomat Bob Gallucci's frustration with critics of the much-maligned 1994 freeze, admittedly an unsatisfying approach:
"When I came back with the Agreed Framework deal and tried to sell it," he said, "[Many people] hated the idea of trying to solve this problem with a negotiation.
"And I said, ‘What's your -- pardon me -- your fucking plan, then, if you don't like this?'
‘We don't like --'
"I said, ‘Don't tell me what you don't like! Tell me how you're going to stop the North Korean nuclear program.'
‘But we wouldn't do it this way --'
‘Stop! What are you going to do?'
"I could never get a goddamn answer."
That's because there isn't a goddamn answer. There is no better plan that stops the North Korean nuclear program. The North Koreans will probably cheat and we will be rewarding bad behavior. So f'ing what? Unless, of course, you have a better idea. Then, by all means, be my guest.
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