Earlier this week, the appearance of an Iranian-style nosecone on a North Korean missile raised eyebrows all over the wonk-o-sphere. That the two countries cooperate in missile development is not exactly new news, but the images from Kim Il Sung Square gave eloquent testimony to this relationship.
But just how far does the technical collaboration extend? Is it confined to ballistic missiles? Or is there a nuclear angle as well?
Several chroniclers of The Bomb have concluded that the term “nuclear strategy” is an oxymoron. The dilemmas of crafting a nuclear strategy and planning to execute are best dealt with on paper. But even on paper, dilemmas are hard to finesse or work around — including the most basic question of what the user hopes to accomplish.
In all the hubbub over the Musudan IRBM (to say nothing of the artful illusion of hair) it was all too easy to miss that this weekend’s big parade in Pyongyang also featured the first appearance of at least one other missile. It’s a variant of the Nodong medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) with an Iranian-style triconic nosecone — to all appearances, a separating reentry vehicle.
Holy cow. Kim Jong Il’s famous pompadour is a comb-over! Well, now we are sure it is not a wig.
My guess is that the photographer from Iran’s Mehr News Agency doesn’t get another visa to North Korea.
The much bigger news, by the way, is Pollack’s other observation that the parade contains the first images of the Musudan missile. A must read.
After a long wait, North Korea’s “Musudan” intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), a weapon with a reported range of 2,500 to 3,000 km, has made its first public appearance. Described as a copy of the Soviet R-27 submarine-launched ballistic missile (a.k.a. RSM-25, a.k.a. SS-N-6, a.k.a. Serb), it has never been flight-tested in North Korea, as far as anyone knows.
So, I got a little note the other day from the Bombspotters:
After we noticed our January filmed visit of Kleine Brogel airbase caused some interesting discussions, we have put some effort in a more extensive investigation. To our surprise we even were able to make a picture inside an aircraft shelter with WS3-installation. You find a new movie on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1fnDhwWm-U and a technical analysis on http://www.vredesactie.be/article.php?id=676.
Oh my.
Paul Carroll sends along a very thoughtful note (also published on the Ploughshares website) about the perils of waiting for North Korea’s apparent leadership process to play out. Don’t get to clever, Paul suggests, because you just might miss your best chance and not even know it:
Transition or Transfer in North Korea?
Asia watchers are pouring over recent announcements from North Korea and speculating about their meaning. While there is little doubt that things are afoot in Pyongyang, it is not exactly clear what.
The outside world in general and American observers in particular are extremely limited in their access to goings-on in the DPRK. So, reports of new ranks and titles for Kim Jong Il’s young son, Kim Jong Un, and other members of his family have stirred up a blizzard of predictions about succession. One word keeps coming up that it is important to challenge – transition.
Most articles refer to a “leadership transition” unfolding in the North. But we can’t know if we are witnessing a true transition – meaning a change in something – or if it is more accurate to assess this as a transfer of power. The distinction is subtle but significant. If the next few years see a relatively smooth and stable transfer of authority from Kim Jong Il to new leadership, with his son as the public face of it, and it is accepted internally, then we will have seen a transfer of power.
If, however, we are at the beginnings of a transition, that could be fraught with peril or hold great promise. Is the “son” potentially a reformer and will he consolidate enough authority to go the distance? Or will he seek to tighten an initially shaky grip by tried-and-true methods of authoritarianism and heavy-handedness? We just don’t know.
The upshot with either case, though, is this: our best strategy is to figure out entry points to engage with the North, especially during a potentially unstable period. Our current approach seems to be “well, let’s wait and see how the transition goes” and then figure out what to do. This passive approach risks too much; the chips that fall may be radioactive. Instead, the United States should be seeking some type of seat at the table, or even at the back of the room, to help ensure that any transfer is as stable as possible. Such engagement would also provide a better window on developments in Pyongyang. Any increase in knowledge about goings on there would be a marked enhancement to what we know now.
Entry points could take the form of clear signals from the United States and its allies that it will not take advantage of a period of vulnerability to weaken or destabilize the North. Or it could be more concrete gestures such as offers of humanitarian food and agricultural aid – always welcome by the North. When it comes to the North’s nuclear programs, the chief U.S. concern, there is a benefit in engaging now, while Kim Jong Il still retains authority. He, after all, still sets DPRK policy and can have it “stick.” We can’t be sure that new leadership will have the same credibility or authority in the near term, so why risk having even less of a toe hold?
Dealing with regimes as repugnant as North Korea is not easy from a moral standpoint, but in the long run if we want help the 23 million North Korean people improve their lives, and also improve the security situation in the region, we have to try. Why play the day-to-day parlor game of who gets what rank, when we can join the longer-term endgame of persistent, patient engagement with North Korea to slowly but surely bring it into the community of nations. That is the route to gain ground toward lasting security in the region, and ultimately the only way to eliminate its nuclear weapons.
Paul Carroll
Program Director
Ploughshares Fund
Last week, David Albright and Paul Brannan of ISIS published a DigitalGlobe image showing new construction in the area of the demolished cooling tower of the 5 MW(e) reactor at Yongbyon. They were circumspect in their analysis, concluding only that “the actual purpose of this excavation activity cannot be determined from the image and bears watching.”
John Pomfret has rounded up a couple of equally cautious expert judgments for today’s Washington Post. It could be preparation for a new cooling tower and a restart of the reactor, or — according to Joel Wit — it could be merely “for show, to pull our chains.” Jonathan Pollack — the man we call Pollack the Elder — commented that it’s not clear what’s being done, “but any new construction at Yongbyon cannot be a good thing.”
All of these observations are (so I believe) basically true. But with due respect to those named above, I think we can make a pretty good guess about what’s happening.
Not all, Cold War secrets have been revealed. The time has come at last to reveal one more.
During a particularly nasty chapter of the Cold War in the 1980s, an amazing couple from New Hampshire, Jim and Carol O’Rourke, took it upon themselves to set up a Track II channel for up-and-comers in the United States and the Soviet Union to discuss our differences. Their creation was called The Forum for U.S.-Soviet Dialogue. The concept was to take turns meeting in the USSR and the USA. Every dialogue would have about three venues, so that the participants could get a glimpse of each others’ country beyond Moscow and Washington. I was fortunate enough to attend a few of these dialogues, where I learned things about the Soviet Union that I couldn’t find in text books.
Deep in the last IAEA safeguards report on Iran (GOV/2010/46, para. 7) is a mention of a curious finding at the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), the larger of Iran’s two centrifuge enrichment facilities at Natanz. FEP isn’t supposed to enrich uranium past 5% U-235 content, but inspectors’ routine environmental samples have for the first time turned up “a small number of particles” that ran as high as 7.1%. U-235.
Questioned about this anomaly, the Iranians provided a “possible explanation” that was “not inconsistent with the Agency’s findings.” What was this explanation? The report doesn’t say, but we can make an educated guess: reflux.
(Warning: more nerdy technical than usual.)
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