May 26, 2009 :: Analysis
On Monday, May 26, North Korea conducted an underground test of a nuclear bomb.
Russia estimates the blast to be in the 10 to 20 kiloton range—a significant advance over North Korea's 2006 nuclear test. The test took place approximately 50 miles west of Kilju, in northeast North Korea.
The South Korean defense ministry is reporting that North Korea also fired two short-range missiles the same day, and three more on Tuesday.
Despite North Korea's state news agency's references to a "nuclear deterrent for self-defence," the test—along with the missile launches on Monday and Tuesday—confirms the compelling case for a multi-layered missile defense system in the United States, whose west coast is within range of North Korean ballistic missiles.
The miniaturization technology required to affix a nuclear weapon to a ballistic missile is significantly more sophisticated than the technology required merely to detonate a nuclear bomb. North Korea may thus still be some time away from the marriage of its nuclear weapons program to its ballistic missile program.
But this most recent nuclear test, coupled with North Korea's attempted satellite launch in early April, indicate Pyongyang's determination to proceed with both the elements required for the successful production and deployment of nuclear ICBMs.
The lesson of the last 15 years is that diplomacy has failed. North Korea is happy to sign agreements to dismantle their nuclear weapons programs or refrain from testing missiles and then violate those agreements at will.
The United States is left with two options. The first option is the execution of an overwhelming and preemptive military attack to neutralize North Korea's nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs. This solution is drastic, and it is one the United States will not undertake. The second option is the deployment of a multi-layered missile defense system at home, so as to render a nuclear-tipped North Korean ICBM impotent.
In light of the alternative and the persistent failure of the carrots and sticks of diplomacy, this second option appears self-evidently compelling. And yet President Obama's newest defense budget, although it contains modest increases in the development and deployment of theater-based missile defense to shield American troops and allies, also contains drastic cuts to our ground-based missile defenses in Alaska and California, and eliminates several more capable systems designed to engage missiles in their boost phase-precisely the defenses that we will need to confront future belligerency by North Korea.
» North Korea Conducts First Nuclear Test
» North Korea Claims Nuclear Weapons
