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US President Donald Trump

The US government under President Donald Trump has changed its assessment of the missile that North Korea test launched on July 4 from an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) to an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Faced with the test launch of a North Korean ICBM, which is being called a “game changer,” the Trump administration will have to ask some big questions about its North Korean policy moving forward, the US media reported.

“The United States strongly condemns North Korea’s launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Testing an ICBM represents a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region, and the world,” said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a statement released on July 4. The US government thus officially acknowledged that the missile fired by North Korea on July 4 was an ICBM.

The Trump administration has never officially declared the launch of an ICBM as a “red line,” which would imply military retaliation. But when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said that the North was preparing to test launch an ICBM in January, Trump wrote on Twitter that “It won’t happen,” suggesting that stopping an ICBM launch was a kind of policy goal. For these reasons, the Trump administration is reportedly furious about the missile launch, which could be regarded as a policy failure.

The problem is that, for the moment, effective policy prescriptions that would fundamentally prevent North Korea from improving its nuclear weapons and missile capability are thin on the ground. “You can‘t try to stop North Korea crossing a threshold - it’s already crossed (it),” Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Center of American Progress, told CNN. After reviewing a variety of policy options toward North Korea, the New York Times also concluded that none of them looked promising.

The method that’s closest at hand is a show of force against North Korea, but that won’t solve the problem. Trump already flaunted American military force in April, when rumors were swirling about a North Korean nuclear test, by saying that the US was sending an “armada” and “submarines.” But this ICBM launch has proven that that American threat was a temporary solution that accomplished little other than ratcheting up tensions.

The second option is tightening sanctions against North Korea. Since the US has already exhausted all the effective sanctions it can adopt on its own, its only alternatives are to cut off links with North Korea in China or Russia, which maintain close economic and diplomatic ties with the North. Just like previous administrations, the Trump administration has strongly urged China to put pressure on North Korea, but the US’s high expectations for China have sometimes been disappointed.

Third, the Trump administration could take military action, such as launching a preemptive strike on North Korea, but that’s not very feasible. It would be challenging to ascertain all the places where the North has hidden its nuclear facilities and fissile materials, and there are also concerns that the North would retaliate against South Korea. For such reasons, even Tillerson made clear in his statement that “the United States seeks only the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

The fourth option is negotiation with North Korea, but in the short term, at least, that does not appear to be easy. North Korea is likely to regard its successful test launch of an ICBM as a bargaining chip that merits additional concessions. Melissa Hanham, a senior analyst for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told CNN that the US was in a difficult position for negotiations. “I think there’s room for negotiation, but it’s not the kind of negotiations we [the US] want,” Hanham said.

Given these policy limitations, the Trump administration is expected to focus on carrying out shows of force and putting pressure on China, at least in the short term. Since Tillerson brought up the issue of North Korean guest workers, there is expected to be a sharp dispute over this issue with China, the country that brings in the most North Korean workers.

There’s also likely to be friction between the two sides over the issue of limiting China’s crude oil shipments to North Korea. If the Trump administration concludes that China is not actively cooperating with American demands, it could even abruptly institute “secondary boycotts” targeting Chinese companies and banks. “The Trump administration is weighing the timing of carrying out a secondary boycott,” said a diplomatic source.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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