North Korea has made some progress towards its goal of having a nuclear-armed missile capable of striking at the United States. The fear is that its ICBM re-entry capability may be just years away. The timing of the ICBM’s launch, that travelled 2,500 km and showed a potential capacity to reach Alaska, was typical Kim Jong-un, cocking a snook at opponents, that too on the US Independence Day. The increasingly emboldened Kim is becoming a major worry, with the US and South Korea launching deep strike precision missiles into the sea as a show of force. Nuclear brinkmanship is a game North Korea believes it can play permanently, but it will be militarily suicidal for it to cross the line. But should the major powers too adopt a similar line?
It’s time the US and China persuaded the belligerent Kim to sit at the negotiating table. Talks are always the best way to find a solution, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping were not wrong to suggest such a dialogue, though their proposal for the suspension of joint military drills by Washington and Seoul may be a bridge too far. North Korea already faces considerable sanctions; any more may mean little. Any hard military option like taking out North Korea’s nukes would be like US interventions in West Asia. The US would then risk destabilisation of the entire region, in which it has key allies like South Korea and Japan, with over 100,000 troops based there. The situation may bristle with great difficulties, but peace is still the only real option.
