Axis of Evil

North Korea Just Launched a Chinese Missile
By Gordon G. Chang

On Sunday morning, North Korea launched an intermediate-range missile high into the atmosphere. It fell into the Sea of Japan about five hundred kilometers downrange.
Pyongyang identified the missile as a Pukguksong-2, and claimed it was developed by North Korean technicians, but it may have been Chinese in origin.
President Trump on Monday said the U.S. has “a big, big problem” with North Korea. 

In fact, America may have a big, big problem with China. 

So before his administration crafts a policy, he needs to know where the Pukguksong-2 came from.
The consensus view is that the missile tested Sunday is the land-based version of the KN-11. 

A KN-11 was launched August 24 from below the surface of the Sea of Japan. 

Video released by Pyongyang shows Sunday’s missile igniting in midair after leaving its mobile launcher, mimicking a submarine-launched missile.
Last August, two leading analysts—Tal Inbar, of Israel’s Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, and Bruce Bechtol, of Angelo State University in Texas—noted the missile tested then looked like it was modeled on China’s JL-1 submarine-launched ballistic missile.
Richard Fisher of the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center, in comments to the National Interest, also points out the similarities between China’s and North Korea’s SLBMs, as sub-launched missiles are known. 

“North Korea’s KN-11 SLBM is roughly the same size as the Chinese JL-1 SLBM, and both use a similar two-stage structure,” Fisher wrote me. 

“In addition, as the new Pukguksong-2 is a longer 2,500-kilometer-range version of the KN-11, so is China’s land-based DF-21 a larger, longer-range version of the JL-1.”
Both Fisher and Bechtol are suspicious of the origins of the Pukguksong-2. 

“The genesis of the missile is unknown,” Bechtol noted in comments sent to the National Interest. 

“There is no evidence—at least not yet—telling us where the missile design and capabilities came from, but let there be no doubt, the North Koreans did not just go out and develop a solid-fuel, medium-range ballistic missile on their own.”
Bechtol thinks it unlikely Pyongyang obtained Western technology, so the leading candidates for the source of this missile are Russia and China.
The transfer could have been direct, on orders from Moscow or Beijing, but there are other possibilities, Bechtol suggests. 

For instance, Pyongyang could have somehow obtained tech from a country Russia or China proliferated to. 

He mentions two possible third-country sources: Iran and Pakistan.
Fisher’s top candidate is Islamabad. 

“That there would be a big Chinese hand in this certainly has precedent,” he notes. 

“Just look at how China transferred to Pakistan, lock, stock, and barrel, the ability to make mobile, solid-fuel medium-range ballistic missiles.”
As Bechtol points out, the North Koreans are adept at stealing weapons tech, buying it, and getting it with the help of rogue scientists and engineers. 

“All that is certain today is that the North Koreans did not develop this missile system completely on their own,” he told me, “and the missile fired Sunday as a land-based missile and several months ago as an SLBM has exactly the same appearance and capabilities as the Chinese JL-1.”
However the North Koreans got the technology, they are on the way to making their unstable regime an existential threat. 

The important advance is that they now have a solid-fuel engine for their land-based missiles. 

Solid-fuel engines permit quick launches, which means the North’s targets will not have much warning time.
“This is truly dangerous,” Fisher tells me. 

North Korea has “crossed the line from failure-prone, liquid-engine, long-range missiles to long-range, solid-fuel ones.” 

And now, having made it to the other side of the threshold, it can make rapid improvements: “We can now expect the North will soon produce solid-fuel, intermediate- and intercontinental-range ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles.”
Moreover, to make matters worse, the Pukguksong-2 is carried on a transporter-erector-launcher, essentially a truck. 

That means the North Koreans can hide missiles before shooting them.
The United States is not particularly worried about North Korea’s longest-range launcher, the Taepodong-2, as a weapon. 

Yes, it has the range to put a dent in the Lower 48 states, but it takes weeks to transport, assemble, fuel and test. 

The U.S. Navy or Air Force can destroy this missile on the pad.
The United States worries about the North’s mobile missiles, however, especially the KN-08, carried on a Chinese-supplied transporter-erector-launcher, and the KN-08’s longer-range variant, the KN-14.
“We call on all members of the Security Council to use every available resource to make it clear to the North Korean regime, and its enablers, that these launches are unacceptable,” urged a statement, issued Monday, of the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley.
Although she did not mention any specific countries, observers were taken aback by her talk of “enablers.” 

It was, wrote CNN’s veteran correspondent Richard Roth, “not the diplomatic norm at the United Nations” to be so direct in public.

Sina Delenda Est

To Disarm North Korea, Wage Trade War On China
By Gordon G. Chang ,

Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the White House told the Trump transition team that North Korea was, in the words of the paper, the “top national security priority” for the incoming administration.
Virtually every American analyst agrees on what Trump should do to meet the No. 1 threat: drop his plans of confronting China on trade to obtain its assistance on “denuclearizing” the Kim regime.
This line of thinking is not new and ignores 13 years of American foreign policy failure. 

In fact, the opposite is true, that waging a trade war on China is the only way to obtain Beijing’s cooperation on North Korea.
It’s not hard to see why the outgoing administration thinks the North is such a danger. 

At this time, Kim Jong Un, the regime’s unstable ruler, can press a button and send three types of missiles to the lower 48 states, the Taepodong-2; the road-mobile KN-08; and the KN-08 variant, the KN-14. 

Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center thinks the KN-14 might be able to reach Washington, D.C.
The consensus is that North Korea cannot mate a nuclear warhead to these launchers, but in, say, four years, it will have that capability as well. 

The North already possesses a nuke that fits atop its Nodong intermediate-range missile, which can travel a little under a thousand miles.
How did North Korea, one of the world’s most destitute states, develop its nukes and missiles in the face of opposition of virtually all the international community? 

The simple answer is that Obama and Bush relentlessly pursued ineffective policies.
With the regrettable exception of about a month in early 2012, when his negotiators crafted the misguided Leap Day deal, Obama practiced a policy of “strategic patience,” not talking to the North Koreans until they showed good faith. 

At the same time, Washington worked with Beijing to impose sanctions as the North detonated four nuclear devices during the president’s eight years.
That Obama policy was an understandable reaction to Bush’s failed efforts. 

The 43rd president, placing a higher priority on integrating China into the international system than disarming the North, gave Beijing a lead role in multilateral negotiations, the so-called Six-Party talks.
Instead of helping to craft a solution, Beijing used its central position to give the North Koreans the one thing they needed most to make themselves a real menace, time. 

Kim Jong Il, the father of the current ruler in Pyongyang, stalled the talks so that he could conduct his regime’s first test of an atomic device. 

That occurred in October 2006, in the middle of then-ongoing negotiations.
With a new administration taking office in January, there will undoubtedly be a new North Korea policy, but China is still seen as the key to a solution. 

Said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, to the Wall Street Journal, “I see little reason to think a combination of sanctions and diplomacy will deter North Korea” unless Trump gains Beijing’s assistance.
To gain that assistance, Jane Perlez of the New York Times wrote on Friday that Trump may have “to prioritize security over trade in his dealings with China.” 

She paraphrased Yang Xiyu, a former mid-level Chinese official, this way: “With the right approach, he could find a willing partner in Beijing.”
There has been no “willing partner” or “right approach” this century. 

Despite—or because of—American attempts to seek cooperation, China has played a duplicitous game. 

This spring, for instance, David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security charged that Beijing had not interrupted the flow of items from China for the North’s bomb programs, such as cylinders of uranium hexafluoride, vacuum pumps, and valves.
That’s not all. 

After the imposition of the U.N.’s March 2 sanctions, Beijing both allowed blacklisted North Korean vessels to visit Chinese ports and busted the new rules with its trade in coal and jet fuel. 

Now, China’s commerce with North Korea appears to have returned to pre-March levels.
And the China-North Korea cooperation may be even more sinister. 

The submarine-launched ballistic missile North Korea tested on August 24 resembles China’s JL-1.
Until recently, Washington imposed no cost on China for its blatant support of North Korea’s weaponization. 

On September 26, however, the Treasury Department added Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development Co. Ltd., its owner, and three employees to its list of Specially Designated Nationals. By doing so, the U.S. imposed sanctions on the listed parties.
Treasury did not explain its designations, the first secondary sanctions on China, but Joshua Stanton of the One Free Korea site told me the parties were listed for laundering Pyongyang’s money.
On the same day, the Justice Department announced the unsealing of indictments of the same four individuals and Hongxiang for various crimes including the laundering of funds through the U.S. financial system for North Korea.
Moreover, Justice initiated civil forfeiture actions to recover money in 25 Chinese bank accounts but did not impose any sanctions on the financial institutions themselves. 

The decision to not go after the banks looks like a mistake as they have been deeply involved in the North’s illicit dealings.
North Korea looks impossible to solve, and it is if we see China as on our side. 

It is not. 

But if we treat China as part of the problem, which it is, then we can begin to craft solutions, like secondary sanctions. 

Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, will stop supporting North Korea only when the costs of doing so are too high. 

So far, his country has suffered almost no penalty.
To impose costs, Trump’s administration could, among other things, cut offending Chinese banks off from the global financial system, sanction every Chinese proliferator, and impose his threatened 45% across-the-board tariff on China’s goods. 

He could end negotiations on the Bilateral Investment Treaty and treat Chinese businesses like Beijing treats American ones.
And Mr. Trump, starting January 20, will have the tools to raise the costs on Beijing. 

The Chinese will surely retaliate, but they have few effective options for a long-term struggle. 

After all, last year they ran a $334.1 billion trade surplus in goods and services against the United States. 

Trade-surplus countries are vulnerable in trade wars, and that is especially true of a China with an already fragile economy that is dependent on the American market.
A more coercive American approach may not work, but the current set of policies, in place for two decades, are guaranteed to fail. 

They have resulted in an even more irresponsible Beijing and a nuked-up Kim regime.
So it’s time for fresh approaches, perhaps even to wage that trade war with China, not just to protect the jobs of American workers and the profits of American businesses but the lives of American citizens.