Maidan Blowback: North Korea's ICBMs

UPDATE: In a post today, "Hyping North Korea To Relaunch Reagan's Star Wars?," Moon of Alabama denies the veracity of the entire NYT story:

One missile defense marketing pundit claimed today that the North Korean missile engines used in the recent tests were bought from factories in Ukraine or Russia. The usual propagandist at the New York Times picked up on that to further their anti-Russian theme:

"Mr. Elleman was unable to rule out the possibility that a large Russian missile enterprise, Energomash, which has strong ties to the Ukrainian complex, had a role in the transfer of the RD-250 engine technology to North Korea. He said leftover RD-250 engines might also be stored in Russian warehouses."

But the engines in question are of different size and thrust than the alleged R-250 engines and the claimed time-frame does not fit at all. The Ukrainian government denied any transfer of missiles or designs. The story was debunked with in hours by two prominent experts. But implicating Russia, however farfetched, is always good if one wants to sell more weapons.

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The New York Times is one of the chief purveyors of Russophobia. Usually the newspaper's anti-Russia propaganda, at first glance at least, appears plausible. But that's not the case with this morning's offering by William Broad and David Sanger, "North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say."

The story, based on a new study by an International Institute for Strategic Studies missile expert, is that North Korea's recent ICBM success is due to the acquisition of Russian-designed engines, RD-250s, from a plant, Yuzhmash, in Dnipro, Ukraine. As Broad and Sanger explain:

Analysts who studied photographs of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, inspecting the new rocket motors concluded that they derive from designs that once powered the Soviet Union’s missile fleet. The engines were so powerful that a single missile could hurl 10 thermonuclear warheads between continents.

Those engines were linked to only a few former Soviet sites. Government investigators and experts have focused their inquiries on a missile factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, on the edge of the territory where Russia is fighting a low-level war to break off part of Ukraine. During the Cold War, the factory made the deadliest missiles in the Soviet arsenal, including the giant SS-18. It remained one of Russia’s primary producers of missiles even after Ukraine gained independence.

But since Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was removed from power in 2014, the state-owned factory, known as Yuzhmash, has fallen on hard times. The Russians canceled upgrades of their nuclear fleet. The factory is underused, awash in unpaid bills and low morale. Experts believe it is the most likely source of the engines that in July powered the two ICBM tests, which were the first to suggest that North Korea has the range, if not necessarily the accuracy or warhead technology, to threaten American cities.

“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine — probably illicitly,” Mr. Elleman said in an interview. “The big question is how many they have and whether the Ukrainians are helping them now. I’m very worried.”

Throughout the story, Broad and Sanger repeatedly try to link the engine transfer, at least rhetorically, to Russia. There is no stronger tell than the highlighted passage above where Dnipro is painted a city on the front lines of the civil war. It is unclear from the sentence which side of the Novorossiya border Dnipro is located.

This is nothing more than crass propaganda. Dnipro has always remained loyal to the coup government in Kiev. It removed its Lenin statues and even changed the name of the city, Dnipropetrovsk, to comply with the 2015 decommunization law. (The city had been named after the Communist leader of Ukraine Grigory Petrovsky.)

If anything this story is your standard tale of CIA blowback. The United States instigated a coup in 2014 and, subsequently, one of its designated rogue nations has a powerful ICBM arsenal to go with its small stockpile of nuclear bombs.

The U.S. Scraps "Strategic Patience" with North Korea in Favor of a "Provocation Cycle"

As good a place to start as any this morning is The New York Times unsigned editorial "The Way Forward on North Korea," which calls for direct talks with North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile program: 

Mr. Trump may also be learning another lesson, that he can’t rely on China alone to force North Korea to rein in its nuclear program. What he hasn’t grasped is that a solution will eventually require direct dialogue with the North.

While it refreshing to read that "the newspaper of record" has embraced the obvious, the editorial, in its recapitulation of recent events, tiptoes around something else that is obvious. Trump precipitated North Korea's successful launch of an ICBM Tuesday:

After Mr. Trump acknowledged in a recent tweet that depending on China “has not worked out,” his administration took steps that reflected his annoyance. It approved a $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province; it imposed sanctions on a Chinese bank accused of acting as a conduit of illegal North Korean financial activity; and an American naval destroyer passed near disputed territory claimed by China in the South China Sea. There is now talk of Washington moving on steel tariffs, which would be aimed partly at China.

Nudging China to ratchet up the pressure on North Korea is not a bad thing. But an outright break between the United States and China would very likely embolden North Korea. In a sign that neither leader wants to escalate tensions, Mr. Trump called Mr. Xi on Sunday to discuss North Korea, and Mr. Xi accepted the call. Mr. Trump warned Mr. Xi that America was prepared to act on its own in pressuring Pyongyang.

The Times should call a spade a spade. Trump has scrapped Obama's "strategic patience" in favor of what is known as a "provocation cycle" where the U.S. makes a move, such as sanctioning a Chinese bank used by North Korea, hoping to elicit a response; and when the North responds, the U.S. is ready with a follow-up.

That's where we are today. The U.S. and South Korea launched their own missile exercise on South Korea's eastern coastline.

A good long story, "How to Deal With North Korea," by Mark Bowden, in the July-August issue of The Atlantic, replete with quotes from military brass and think-tank intellectuals, comes to a slightly different conclusion than The Times' editorial board.

Writing clearly from a bellicose deep-state perspective -- for instance, there is not one word about the cataclysmic saturation bombing North Korea sustained from the U.S. during the Korean War -- Bowden thinks the U.S. should tacitly acknowledge the North's nuclear power status, not give up too much in talks, and hope that time runs out on the Kim dynasty.

Bowden breaks down deep-state thinking in regards to North Korea into four courses of action: 1) Total preventative war; 2) "Turning the screws," in other words, a "provocation cycle," where we appear to be today; 3) Decapitation: a surgical strike to take out Kim and his leadership; and 4) Acceptance.

Bowden dismisses a "provocation cycle" as too risky because it can rapidly spin out of control.

Trump will meet with Putin and Xi at the G-20. Russia and China are seeking to freeze the North's nuclear and ballistic program on the basis of U.S. and South Korea suspending their war games. Seems reasonable to me. Hopefully Trump will see it the same way.

One thing I think is obvious to everyone: after Yugoslavia, after Iraq, after Libya, and with Iran's continued harassment despite coming to terms with the West over its nuclear program, no rational actor would believe that renouncing one's nuclear program guarantees acceptance, peace and prosperity.