North Korea Will Not Commit Suicide

North Korea’s continuation of its missile testing program has been raising tensions in East Asia for some time, but in recent weeks, these tensions have risen to dangerously-high levels.  This is due to the combination of North Korea’s ongoing nuclear weapons program and its effort to develop long-range missiles that can deliver such weapons to far away places such as the West Coast of the United States.  In fact, the world largely shrugged when North Korea carried out earlier nuclear and missile tests, but now that Pyongyang is moving closer to having the ability to deliver nuclear weapons to far-away targets, the world has suddenly taken notice of the threat posed by this rogue country. 

Of course, given the history of provocations carried out by North Korea, it is easy to see why so many believe that it would be more likely than other nuclear powers to carry out such as long-range nuclear attack.  However, it is important to remember that the primary purpose of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs is to preserve the Kim regime that dominates the country, not to start wars in which it has no hope of winning.

North Korea’s recent long-range missile tests were bad enough for global stability, but the fact that they have been accompanied by such strong threats from Pyongyang and Washington has raised fears that the talking war will end and an actual war between the United States and North Korea will break out.  The escalation of these threats started when North Korea, at the time, prematurely declared that it had the capability of striking continental US cities with nuclear weapons.  Eventually, this led to a response from US President Donald Trump, who threatened to that any attack from North Korea would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen”. 

In response to this counter-threat, Pyongyang announced plans to fire four intermediate-range missiles into the Pacific Ocean near the US-controlled island of Guam later this month.  As the US and North Korea have traded threats, other countries have waded into this dispute.  For example, US allies such as Japan and Australia have already offered their full support to the US should a conflict with North Korea erupt.  China, North Korea’s lone ally, has stated that it would remain neutral if North Korea provoked a war with the United States, but that it would oppose any efforts to force regime change in North Korea.  Finally, tensions are very high in South Korea, the country that would likely suffer much the brunt of a war between the US and North Korea. 

Truly understanding the motives of the regime in Pyongyang is a difficult endeavor, given the lack of information on the regime that is available to the outside world.  In fact, the bits and pieces of information that occasionally emanate from the highest levels of power in North Korea are often hard to decipher, making it a risky proposition to claim to understand what motivates Kim Jong-un and his government.  However, it is fairly safe to say that the number one goal of Kim Jong-un and his government is to preserve their grip on power in North Korea. 

In fact, like many dictatorships that have been in power for a prolonged period of time, self-preservation becomes their overriding goal, supplanting any previous goals that the regime may have had in the past.  For North Korea, it is clear that the regime believes that a robust nuclear deterrent is the clearest path to ensure that foreign powers such as the United States are unable, or unwilling, to try to enforce regime change on that country.  A good example of this thinking comes from Libya, where not long after Muammar Qaddafi eliminated his nuclear weapons program, he found himself overthrown and killed by insurgents backed by the United States and other foreign powers.

As unpredictable as the North Korean regime may be, it is still very hard to imagine North Korea starting a war with the country that possesses, by a very wide margin, the world’s most powerful armed forces.  In 1950, Kim Il-Sung believed that he could invade South Korea without outside powers intervening in time to prevent his forced annexation of the Korean Peninsula from becoming a fait accompli.  Today, North Korea can undoubtedly inflict massive damage on South Korea and possibly Japan, and may not be far from being able to carry out long-range attacks on distant targets in the United States.  However, a war with the United States is one in which North Korea has no hope of winning, as the US and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region have the capability to utterly destroy North Korea and its government. 

North Korea may believe, that by going to war with the US, it will force China to enter the conflict on its side (as it did in 1950).  However, China’s overriding goal is stability on the Korean Peninsula and it will not look kindly on any conflict with the US that is started by Pyongyang.  Given these factors, and the idea that self-preservation is the ultimate goal of Kim Jong-un’s government, it is likely that North Korea will eventually back down in this dispute.  Of course, this does not mean that North Korea will halt its nuclear and missile programs, but it does suggest that the threat of war will gradually recede over the near-term, before resurfacing again at some point in the future.