'N. Korea should be priority for US'

By Tong Kim

WASHINGTON ― Facing the increasing threat of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, many experts in Washington share the view that this issue should be an urgent priority for the next president of the United States.

“The next president should take bold action to ease North Korea’s security concerns,” J. Stapleton Roy, a former U.S. ambassador to China, told The Korea Times on September 23.

Roy, now a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, suggested that an intransigent U.S. policy, backed by sanctions and a show of force by mighty war assets and intensive exercises increases the security concerns of the scared North Koreans, and it is not helpful to the U.S. goal of denuclearization.

He said, if Hillary Clinton is elected, she is expected to make some decisions, reasonable to the foreign policy establishment, but if Donald Trump is elected, “all bets are on.”

Roy thinks the Obama administration’s foreign policy has failed on North Korea, the Middle East and the Russian border in Europe, but Obama’s handling of China and his rebalances to Asia steered in the right direction, establishing a foundation for his successor to build on.

There is a consensus that the DPRK is expected, if unchecked, to reach “strategic breakout” within a few years, meaning the North will have perfected their nuclear and missile technology capable of striking the continental United States.

North Korea claims it has an operational strategic nuclear force that can carry out that threat, a claim that U.S. analysts reject, as they believe it would take two or three more years before they would be able to complete miniaturization of a nuclear warhead and a tested ICBM.

The North already has a host of offensive missiles including Scud, Rodong, and Musudan capable of striking all parts of South Korea, Japan, and Guam. The DPRK also tested a Submarine-launched Ballistic Missile. According to an estimate, Pyongyang may have about 20 nuclear bombs and the number could increase to 100 by 2020.

Few experts believe North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons program, if the current U.S. policy of sanction and deterrence continues. However, there are varying views on how to curb the advancing North Korea nuclear and missile programs.

The prevailing view is that the next president should toughen more sanctions, while enhancing the missile defense network with the deployment of a THAAD battery to the South, regardless of opposition from China or some people in South Korea. The mood in Washington is not in favor of dialogue with Pyongyang.

For lack of a better approach, some security experts are cautiously touting a possible military action - to take out the North’s nuclear weapons and missiles. Last week, Former JCS chairman Mike Mullen mentioned “a possible preemptive strike” for the protection of the United States from North Korean threats.

In June, former commander of the U.S. forces in Korea, Walter Sharp, while advocating for a comprehensive approach ― including sanctions, deterrence, diplomacy and an active information program for the North Korean people, told a Washington audience that he agreed “it was time to start discussing military action.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is going to hold another hearing on “a persistent North Korean threat” on Wednesday, Sept. 28 to hear from Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel and the State Department’s sanctions coordinator Daniel Fried.