Having conducted six nuclear tests and hundreds of missile tests over the last decade, North Korea has developed sophisticated nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities. It is also aggressively pursuing a range of conventional military capabilities that endanger regional allies. The despotic Kim Jong Un regime has used money laundering, overseas labor, cyberattacks, and illegal arms sales to finance its illegal and destabilizing activities, all while committing gross human rights violations at home. According to UN estimates, 41% of the population is food insecure and in need of some form of humanitarian assistance.
Past diplomatic efforts have slowed and at times even halted North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, but clashing domestic politics and geopolitical developments have made it difficult to sustain that progress. Inconsistent negotiations and a lack of prioritization have failed to prevent North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapon capabilities. While the United States has worked closely with South Korea and other regional allies to demonstrate resolve in the face of North Korea’s coercive activities by shoring up extended deterrence commitments and building up trilateral security cooperation between South Korea and Japan, there is no alternative military solution to this challenge that does not include the high risk of mass casualties, use of nuclear weapons, or escalation into regional conflict.
The United States and the international community have increasingly relied on unilateral and multilateral sanctions to pressure North Korea and to cut off resources that aid its WMD programs, but North Korea continues to demonstrate a willingness to let the North Korean people suffer and an ability to evade sanctions and use its limited revenue on security priorities. Every day that there are no negotiations to contain North Korea’s program and its capabilities, the nuclear risk to the region and the world increases, and the North Korean people bear the brunt of its international isolation.
In the wake of a breakdown in negotiations between Trump and Kim in 2019 and the onset of the COVID pandemic, North Korea has rejected engagement and dialogue and doubled down on building up its nuclear capabilities, revising its nuclear doctrine to clarify command and control of its nuclear weapons to allow for use of weapons in the event a “decapitation strike” and enumerating scenarios for preemptive nuclear strikes. It has drawn even closer to Russia through its provision of munitions and ballistic missiles for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and the revival of a mutual defense treaty with Moscow, solidifying a new “axis of upheaval” alongside Iran and China.
