Despite all the signs to the contrary, the Korean peninsula is aching for peace.

TO the casual observer, news about the Korean peninsula from Washington and Tokyo suggests that war is about to break out anytime.

Political rhetoric oozes from every corner, warnings and threats fly back and forth, and missile movements in North Korea coincide with enhanced military drills between South Korean and United States forces.

To seasoned observers however, these are symptoms of an absence of war rather than of its preparation. These realists include veteran Korea watchers as well as ordinary North and South Koreans.

The bellicose noises lately emanating from Pyongyang in particular are familiar sounds indeed. What may require a reset is that some of the toughest statements in three generations of Kim family rule are coming from a fresh young Kim Jong-un.

And so Pyongyang talks of dumping the decades-old ceasefire agreement with the South, cutting the military hotline, preparing the nation for all-out war and even hitting the US mainland with nuclear missiles.

Against much international opinion, it conducted its third underground nuclear test in February and several missile tests besides. It continues to funnel considerable national resources into its military forces that include a million-strong army.

The joint industrial zone with South Korea in Kaesong has been vacated – up to a point. The North Korean military announced plans for strikes with smaller but more numerous nuclear devices.

All of that sounds dramatic, even alarming, especially in headline format. But the question remains: can North Korea really do all that?

The short answer is a definite no. Whether it actually wants to do so or not, it can neither launch a nuclear missile it does not have, nor strike a target with it even if it did have it.

North Korea has never achieved a single success with its ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) tests. Those rockets that have actually taken off from their launch pads soon crashed embarrassingly.

Pyongyang is said to have accumulated enough fissile material for about half a dozen nuclear bombs, but not a single working bomb is known to have been assembled.

To constitute a real nuclear threat, any government must have both a working and tested payload (explosive warhead) and a competent and reliable delivery system (missile). North Korea has neither.

A country will in fact need to have at least several missiles all armed with warheads, to overcome launch failure and other problems likely to involve a single launch. That day has not arrived for North Korea, now or in the foreseeable future.

Russian Korea expert Prof Andrei Lankov observed that while North Korean missile technology may be a joke, its nuclear development programme is another matter. But without a competent delivery system, fissile material in a bomb may have to be inserted into hand grenades or catapults.

Until early this year, international speculation dwelt on Pyongyang’s coming third nuclear test that was supposed to provide the technology required for a successful missile strike capability. That test came and went on Feb 12, and now talk is on the fourth nuclear test – evidently, the technology is still not within reach.

Narushige Michishita of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo argues that North Korean missiles cannot even hit Guam or Hawaii, let alone the US mainland.

Unreliable strikes

US military bases in South Korea and Japan may be within range, but only technically. Hitting them requires some semblance of accuracy, which is not what North Korean missiles do.

Three days ago, a confidential US military intelligence report highlighted on Capitol Hill said that Pyongyang could launch a nuclear missile, but only unreliably. That means a North Korean attempt to do so, regardless of the target country, is likely to crash prematurely (again), deleting a part of the country itself along with its own population.

Still, the US Defense Intelligence Agency report may only be notional, since it assumes two main things: a North Korean missile can go the distance intended, regardless of accuracy, and that it can carry a working nuclear bomb. These remain contested assumptions.

The 1,000km medium-range Rodong missiles are the standard equipment for such an exercise. But that is a Scud-type system notorious for inaccuracy and whose technology is nearly 30 years old.

Besides, any North Korean attempt to attack any part of the US or any of its allies will only invite massive retaliation that can annihilate the regime. Since Pyongyang’s top priority is regime preservation, that is the last thing on its mind.

The head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, Gerhard Schindler, recently said that Pyongyang does not want war. He also found nothing new in the rhetoric, although it never fails to excite jaded editors on slow news days and the military establishments of countries keen to pad their defence budget claims.

So why is North Korea talking and acting as if war will come when it wants just the opposite? The reason is simply that it wants the direct opposite of what it says it wants.

Illogical as it may seem, that is how the situation on the Korean peninsula “works”. And it is all deliberate on Pyongyang’s part – as Lankov said, North Korea is not irrational, although it works hard to appear so because it then stands a better chance of getting what it wants from its detractors, particularly the US.

What Pyongyang wants, and what it has always wanted, are diplomatic recognition by the US as an equal, political acknowledgment of that status, a guarantee of non-aggression through a formal peace treaty, and more international aid for a beleaguered economy.

But how likely is it to get those things from the way it is behaving? Since it has been getting some of what it wanted by behaving the same way before, there is no reason it should not get more of it now.

Until that happens again, there is the usual cycle of controversial missile test launches, followed by international sanctions, then by nuclear tests. The cycle is then repeated as in a chorus.

Inserted along the sidelines of this ritualistic cycle are the familiar “three Rs” of mutual recriminations, remonstrations and rhetoric. A recent “bonus” has been the added feature of uranium in addition to plutonium as a source of fissile material.

Balanced against such grievances by the US, Japan and South Korea are such complaints by North Korea as the 80,000 US troops stationed in the latter two countries. Pyongyang feels it is their main or only target.

Its nuclear option will never go away because the implied threat of a prospective nuclear capability has been Pyongyang’s best bargaining chip for securing international aid. That means sanctions will remain as well, which also serve North Korean interests as a pretext to continue with its aggressive posture that includes the nuclear deterrent.

It has learnt from US attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere that a nuclear capability – whether real or prospective – works to deter unfriendly advances. Meanwhile, the to-and-fro of nuclear talks helps to keep the aid channels open.

All of this also helps to maintain the ruling Kim’s credibility and grip on the military, and his hold on a patriotic if captive population. The status quo works, even though the sounds it has had to make have lately become louder.

> Bunn Nagara is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS).

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