Victor Cha: Giving North Korea a ‘Bloody Nose’ Carries a Huge Risk to Americans

North Korea, if not stopped, will build an arsenal with multiple nuclear missiles meant to threaten the U.S. homeland and blackmail us into abandoning our allies in Asia. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will sell these weapons to state and nonstate actors, and he will inspire other rogue actors who want to undermine the U.S.-backed postwar order. These are real and unprecedented threats. But the answer is not, as some Trump administration officials have suggested, a preventive military strike. Instead, there is a forceful military option available that can address the threat without escalating into a war that would likely kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans. When I was under consideration for a position in this administration, I shared some of these views.

For the past five years, 38 North has been researching North Korea’s development and production of solid-propellant rocket engines to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the North’s ballistic missile program. While a number of potential production facilities have been identified throughout the country, the No. 17 Explosives Factory and its branch factories near Hamhung have been identified as being the most probable site for the manufacture of the latest large solid-propellant rocket engines, based on the location of several critical supporting facilities in the general area.

An American interceptor missile missed its target in a test off the Hawaiian coast on Wednesday, Defense Department officials said, renewing concerns of how the United States will defend itself in the event of a missile attack by North Korea or another adversary. A Pentagon official said that the interceptor, an SM-3 Block IIA missile that is being developed by the Raytheon Company, was launched from a test site in Hawaii. Officials likened the test launch to an attempt to hit a bullet with another bullet.

North Korea’s nuclear program has made strides in recent months but the country has not yet demonstrated all the components of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), including a survivable re-entry vehicle, the vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Tuesday.Air Force General Paul Selva’s remarks confirmed an assessment by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in December that North Korea’s ICBM did not pose an imminent threat to the United States.

Beijing has given the green light to the merger between two nuclear giants as it continues to pursue further consolidation of state-owned industrial juggernauts to enhance operating efficiency. China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC), the mainland’s second-largest nuclear power plant developer, and China Nuclear Engineering & Construction Corp (CNEC), the country’s only nuclear power engineering and construction firm, received the go-ahead to integrate their businesses 10 months after the merger proposal was made public, according to the China State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).

The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) repeats one of the most pervasive misconceptions about the current state of the US nuclear arsenal: that it does not compare well with the nuclear arsenals of Russia and China, which are supposedly engaged in nuclear modernization efforts the United States is neglecting. China is making steady incremental improvements to its nuclear arsenal. But the gap between China and the United States is too wide to argue the United States is lagging behind in any meaningful way. We’ve laid out the details in a new white paper.