After North Korea Test, South Korea Pushes to Build Up Its Own Missiles
“North Korea didn’t test an ICBM to launch a bolt from the blue against Washington; they’re hoping to split the United States from its allies.”
Barry Pavel, director of the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council, said North Korea could use a nuclear-tipped ICBM capability to “target the United States
and deter U. S. security cooperation with its close Asian allies.”
“Once it is assured that it has a ‘nuclear shield,’ North Korea is likely to act much more
aggressively in every other area of its foreign and military policies,” said Mr. Pavel.
By CHOE SANG-HUN and DAVID E. SANGERJULY 29, 2017
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea announced Saturday
that it will soon start talks with the Trump administration about allowing Seoul to build more powerful ballistic missiles to counter the North, but current and former American officials said the move would have little effect on the most urgent problem facing Washington: North Korea’s apparent ability to strike California and beyond.
But China has adamantly opposed installing the Thaad missile defense system in South Korea, arguing
that it would only make tensions with North Korea more volatile and could undermine China’s own nuclear deterrent by giving the United States another means to monitor its missiles.
In “Rolling Back the Growing North Korean Threat,” the Atlantic Council’s memo to Mr. Trump published last month, Mr. Pavel and the co-author Robert A. Manning said
that such North Korean aggressions could include “increasingly dangerous provocations and the sale of weapons of mass destruction to other nations and terrorist groups for much-needed cash.”
On Sunday, in what the U. S. military called a demonstration of America’s “ironclad commitment” to its allies, two American B-1B bombers flew from an air base on Guam to Japan
and then South Korea, conducting joint exercises with each of the two countries’ air forces.