Real World: Pyongyang

While a State Department official coolly deemed North Korea’s effort to spoil our 4th of July plans “not helpful,” there is one thing it may have helped us with: realistic testing conditions for our missile defense technology.  As Richard Halloran argued in the opinion section of the Washington Times today, the silver lining of recent North Korean missile tests lies in gained intelligence:

U.S. intelligence gathered information about the missiles that otherwise could not have been had. Said an official in Washington: “We learned an incredible amount about where exactly North Korea is in their long-range missile development program.” Because North Korea has only aging radar, he doubted that it “learned anything close to what we learned about their tests.”

As Halloran points out the U.S. obviously didn’t get to take the final crucial step of seeing if U.S. missiles would actually be able to successfully intercept a North Korean missile but nonetheless testing the missile tracking systems under realistic conditions (an oft-cited criticism of missile defense success stories) is a backhanded benefit of North Korea’s recent provocations.  The cool demeanor of the U.S. response throughout the recent belligerence may lend credence to the North Korean weakness hypothesis, further bolstered by reports the “Dear Leader” is dying of pancreatic cancer.  As the U.S. patiently waits for the tantrum to end, there are two primary questions to take into account.  At what point does the United States try to re-engage the North and when it does so what should be the goal heading into negotiations?  There are many who argue that the times have changed on the Korean Peninsula and that the North’s nuclear program is no longer a diplomatic bargaining asset but there are a number of events that have yet to unfold on the Peninsula as it braces for leadership transition that will hopefully shed some light on the best approach for the U.S. moving forward.