How afraid should India be of North Korea as things stand today
With threats of a pre-emptive strike by the United States, the confrontation is intensifying in the Korean peninsula. North Korea’s multiple missile launches beginning March 6 into the Sea of Japan, along with failed nuclear capable ballistic missile firings a month later, reflect the hardening of postures. To add to all this is the troop movement along borders of North and South Korea.
Deterrence
Threat postulations by North Korea are complex and extreme. Founded on doctrine of “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, its programmes of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons create the mainstay of a credible strategic deterrence. Advanced levels of cyber warfare capabilities, alongside this deterrence, give greater strength to its coercive diplomacy and reflect the underpinnings of a comprehensive security strategy.
The threat is four dimensional. The overarching and lead dimension of the threat is nuclear. Inside reports foresee a race for 50 nuclear weapons by 2020, with one nuke being added to the North Korean arsenal every six or seven weeks. Beijing’s support to Pyongyang in the long-range intercontinental ballistic missile programme makes this threat even greater and graver.
The massive stockpile of over 500 metric tonne of chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas, nerve gas and biological weapons makes the next potent dimension. To add to this is the fact that North Korea has a cyber warfare force of 6,000 warriors which, the South Korean defence ministry says, has been working to cause “physical and psychological paralysis” in the South.
Finally, North Korea’s one million strong; fourth largest military in the world is equipped with ballistic missiles. The forward deployment of 70 per cent of ground forces and 50 per cent of its air and naval forces within 100 km of the demilitarised zone gives a credible potential to its threats.
In a major transformative change, a new political structure evolved after the Seventh Party Congress in 2016, which consolidated control of the Workers’ Party under a “unified leadership system”, and took the military out of the decision-making process. Peter Navarro’s book Crouching Tiger, on how North Korea got its “made-in-China” nukes, traces Chinese hands behind Pyongyang’s missile technology, ICBMs and mobile launchers.
For China, North Korea provides enormous strategic depth. More significantly, such a frontline state with nuclear and chemical weapons puts the US at risk of ‘extraordinary’ destruction. So, is the dragon in disguise beneath the North Korean mask? In North Korea, has China attempted to replicate a grand strategy/vision of superpowers keeping war away from their frontiers or just limited to buffer states? Is this a state policy to discredit the US at hands of a small nation? These issues are of enormous salience.
Posture
Redlines are becoming discernible. Jeffrey Lewis, director, East Asia Non-proliferation Programme, postures his theory of an all-out nuclear strike by Pyongyang on Day 1, hitting targets in the US, South Korea and Japan, to deter any aggression or invasion from them. He cites the readiness of North Korea’s missile launchers to prove this point. According to him, proximity and posturing by USS Carl Vinson and its carrier group, escorted by Izumo, Japan’s largest helicopter carrier ship, will only make the North act.
North Korea and China will be wary after in deployment of Terminal High Altitude Air Defence (THAAD), capable of shooting down missiles from Pyongyang, as also undermine Beijing’s nuclear deterrent seriously.
Three contingencies are foreseeable. One, Will China pressurise North Korea to prevent an all-out nuclear and chemical attack? The answer is yes but limited to oil and coal supplies, and any direct intervention seems least likely. Two, can North Korea withdraw from its threatening postulations? With its very survival built on irrationality of its doctrine of weapons of mass destruction, any step back will impel an offensive led by the US military to disarm and neutralise North Korea for posterity.
Offensive
Three, can North Korea respond to a comprehensive strategic offensive by the US and its allies? The chances are slim, and China may get involved adding greater complexity to the situation.
North Korea is on the brink. While US Secretary of State Tillerson insists that America’s objective remains a denuclearised North Korea and not regime change, the fact is both objectives are mutually inextricable. Equally critical are the roles of China and North Korea to break this deadlock.
Should the situation not de-escalate, the US leadership is unlikely to miss this opportunity of neutralising an irrational state. North Korea is on the brink of a catastrophe that can spiral out of control with global and regional ramifications impacting China as much as others.
China must act to pre-empt this crisis. For, it is responsible significantly, if not solely, for the creation of a rogue state called North Korea. India, too, can’t remain a bystander in the entire episode. Any proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in the region will have its ramifications on India and its neighbourhood.
(Courtesy: Mail Today)
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