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War and conflict
OpinionComment
Glyn Ford
Glyn Ford

Opinion | With Pyongyang on war footing, US must quickly defuse nuclear flashpoints

  • As a paranoid Pyongyang embraces its nuclear programme, disowns South Korea and redraws its boundaries, flashpoints are growing
  • The US must move to defuse the situation – more dangerous than in Ukraine or Gaza – or risk a pyrrhic victory in a nuclear war

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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Glyn Ford

North Korea’s nuclear programme is a symptom of weakness, not strength. The reality is that it is comprehensively outspent, outgunned and out-resourced by the South.

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Seoul’s military budget dwarfs Pyongyang’s by at least a factor of 11. Bundle together Washington, Tokyo and Seoul and it’s more than 250 times. South Korea’s 10.33 per cent increase in its 2021 military budget exceeded the North’s annual military expenditure. And President Yoon Suk-yeol has plans for South Korea to be the world’s fourth largest arms exporter by around 2030.

While there is a premium for Pyongyang in being a nuclear weapon state, it has little option. The regime faces external and internal threats. The external military threat is clearly being countered with nuclear deterrence. The internal threat is less a “magnolia revolution”, more a court quarrel. Kim Jong-un needs to keep the people who matter happy by providing bread and circuses! The circuses are there, but the bread requires economic growth.

The key growth restraints are energy and manpower. The nuclear programme answers both questions.

Firstly, civil nuclear power is in prospect. North Korea has a self-sufficient nuclear fuel cycle with light-water reactors. This was likely why, at the 2019 Hanoi talks with the US, Kim was determined to retain its uranium enrichment complex. It was also likely why he was happy with the Singapore Declaration’s talk of a denuclearised peninsula, which allowed, as far as Pyongyang was concerned, for a civil nuclear programme.
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Secondly, nuclear deterrence could free North Korea from maintaining such a large army. A standing army of close to 1.4 million could free more than 100,000 men just by cutting conscription by a year. The North has an unfashionable notion of drivers of growth, essentially massive factories and mines. Yet it just might work, drawing on its enormous pool of cheap skilled labour.

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