hankyoreh

May 24. (Xinhua/Yonhap News)

The US Pacific Command in Hawaii couldn’t have cared less.

Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, director of operations at Pacific Command, offered a nonchalant response. “Every six months, we update our operational plans following an analysis of situational changes. North Korea’s ejection test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile is just one factor of many,” he said.

This was unexpected. In South Korea, the SLBM test launch had raised a ruckus, but in the US, the presumed target of North Korea’s weapons, all was calm.

When I met senior generals of the US Pacific Command and experts in the area last week in Hawaii, I was most curious about how they viewed the issue of North Korean nuclear weapons.

Simply put, North Korean nuclear weapons are not a big deal for them. The biggest concern for the US Pacific Command is how to check China, which is rapidly expanding its military power.

That could be because of the influence of the US government, which has been effectively neglecting North Korea’s nuclear program. It could also be because the US military does not think very highly of North Korea’s nuclear weapon capacity. It appeared to me that these factors are interacting.

While the US government makes loud demands for North Korea to denuclearize, it has not taken any practical measures to make denuclearization happen. The US had stood by and watched North Korea gradually increase its nuclear capacity. Basically, the US has let this happen.

What is the US’s aim? Does it choose to leave North Korean nuclear weapons as a latent threat instead of addressing them in an attempt to exploit this for military and diplomatic ends? That certainly is a possibility.

If the US has been effectively neglecting the North Korean nuclear program, it is probably because of American confidence about being able to control North Korea’s nuclear strike capacity.

After taking reporters on a detailed tour of the 7,800-ton USS Mississippi, a cutting-edge Virginia-class nuclear submarine, a naval officer boasted that two nuclear-powered submarines like this would be enough to handle North Korea’s submarine force. The USS Mississippi is armed with 24 torpedoes and 12 Tomahawk missiles.

Another reason is because, no matter how North Korea may bluster about launching a nuclear strike on the US, the US is convinced that such a strike will never actually occur.

Carl Baker, Director of Programs for the CSIS Pacific Forum, bluntly said that if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon it would mean the end of North Korea.

This opinion is shared by Denny Roy, senior fellow at the East-West Center. Roy said that for the North Korean regime to attack the US under any scenario would be tantamount to suicide, and North Korea doesn’t have a death wish.

In the end, the US thinks there is no chance that North Korea will actually use its nuclear weapons.

But this is where the problem lies. I’m talking about a situation in which the US continues to basically ignore the North Korean nuclear program, while North Korea‘s nuclear weapons development ability gradually strengthens and the level of its nuclear threat slowly increases. What would be the outcome of such a situation?

While continuing to draw attention to the nuclear threat posed by North Korea, the US will put pressure on the South Korean government to further strengthen its high-tech weapons systems to defend against this threat.

This can be seen as the context of comments by US Secretary of State John Kerry on a recent trip to South Korea, which made the issue of deploying THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) public.

South Korea cannot ignore North Korea’s gradually increasing nuclear threat. Even if it is unlikely that those weapons will actually be used, South Koreans cannot tolerate the idea of living under nuclear threat.

South Korea will have no choice but to use this as a pretext for introducing weapons systems that are more sophisticated and more technologically advanced in order to respond to the North Korean threat. And indeed, it is already moving down that road.

North Korea will continue to expand its nuclear weapons capacity until the US perceives that capacity to be a genuine threat. North Korea is placed in a situation where it cannot stop developing nuclear weapons until its survival is absolutely guaranteed.

In the end, the developments around North Korea’s nuclear weapon program represent the worst possible scenario both for North and South Korea. North Korea must continue to pour a vast amount of resources into developing nuclear weapons, while South Korea is forced to respond by joining a never-ending competition for high-tech weaponry.

And the US? It gains time to sell cutting-edge weapon systems to South Korea on the pretext of protecting it from the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons, and by guaranteeing South Korea’s security, it gains leverage to demand the country to increase its participation in an alliance intended to check China.

In short, the US has everything to gain and little to lose. How long will we have to helplessly watch as North Korea‘s nuclear program ironically serves the interests of the US?

By Jung Suk-koo, chief editorial writer

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