North Korea's Kicking Off The Covers

NKorea prepares launch: Satellite or missile?
AP

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea declared Tuesday it is making "brisk headway" in plans to send a satellite into orbit as part of its space program, a launch regional powers fear is a cover up for testing a long-range ballistic missile capable of striking Alaska and the western United States.

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WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- North Korea says its planned satellite launch is for civilian purposes only. That claim is an obvious one. As Mandy Rice-Davies replied when told that Lord Astor, a member of the British House of Lords, denied sleeping with her, "He would, wouldn't he?"

North Korea's National Space Committee announced Tuesday in Pyongyang that its "Unha-2 will put communications satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 into orbit."

... The simple fact is that if a country can build a multistage missile powerful enough to carry a satellite into orbit around the Earth, it also can use that same missile, with a few minor adaptations, to fire a nuclear warhead many thousands of miles.

That truth has been self-evident since the beginning of the Space Age more than 52 years ago. Once the Soviet Union had finally developed its breakthrough R-7 booster to put Sputnik 1, the first ever Earth-orbiting satellite, into orbit in October 1957, the success of its intercontinental ballistic missile program to target the United States and its Western European allies was assured.

... That same interoperability and transfer of capability between ostensibly civilian space programs and clearly military ones has been followed by many countries since. India's success in launching satellites into space on its own domestically produced boosters was the flipside of its long, arduous struggle to develop Agni-V, an ICBM that can target most of China.

Iran's success this month in putting its own first satellite into orbit confounded the complacent assumptions of last year's U.S. National Intelligence Estimate and instead confirmed that Iran right now has the capability -- or is on the verge of getting it -- to successfully fire ICBMs that could reach the Eastern Seaboard of the United States with nuclear or thermonuclear warheads.

The close proximity in timing between the Iranian satellite launch and the confident North Korean announcement that it is about to launch a satellite too may be no coincidence.

North Korea and Iran have quietly done their utmost to mutually support and supply each other's nuclear and space programs for many years, probably well over a decade. And they also could trade through the middleman proliferation network set up by A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear program. North Korea and Iran both also enjoy close relations with China, whose government has been happy to support both of them as buffers and proxies to combat and erode U.S. influence in the Middle East and Northeast Asia.

The North Korean claim at this time came as no surprise to U.S. and South Korean intelligence analysts who monitor the so-called Hermit Kingdom. For several weeks South Korea and the United States have said North Korea was planning to launch something, and the test-firing of a new long-range missile was always the most likely outcome.

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From Shadow Government

In the spirit of bipartisanship, then, let's give the Obama team some premature credit for a better approach in Southeast Asia. What about Northeast Asia? Can anyone connect all the following dots into a meaningful strategy?

1. The Obama administration has ditched Ambassador Hill, who was Bush's de facto North Korean nuclear file desk officer and redeployed him, oddly, to Iraq.

2. Secretary Clinton started her trip with some feel-good language on North Korea. Then she went even further (much further) by appearing to criticize the Bush Administration for adopting a worst-case interpretation of North Korea's clandestine and illegal efforts to develop weapons-grade uranium.

3. But Clinton also promised to meet with the families of victims of North Korea's bizarre policy of abducting Japanese citizens. This emotional issue has always been a sore point with the North Koreans but a high priority for the Japanese, and Chris Hill angered our allies when he relaxed our demands on the abductees issue in a desperate attempt to keep the nuclear negotiations afloat.

4. And now Clinton has had to veer back to semi-tough language, telling Pyongyang that if North Korea goes ahead with the missile launch during her Asian trip it "would be very unhelpful."

If the strategy is to confuse North Korea and the world community on Obama's intentions, this approach seems destined to succeed. If there is a deeper, more constructive set of objectives in mind, it is hard to discern what they might be.