(Washington) After the record series of North Korean fire this week, the United States sticks to its strategy of combining pressure and offers of dialogue, resigned to the idea that it will have a hard time convincing Pyongyang to change course. cap.
Posted at 1:27 p.m.
Anxious to avoid another global crisis in addition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the administration of Joe Biden seeks above all to reassure its allies that the United States will defend them.
North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong-un met three times with former US President Donald Trump without reaching an agreement, fired around 30 missiles on Wednesday and Thursday, and four more on Saturday, and could proceed soon, according to Westerners, to a seventh nuclear test.
“I don’t think anything can be done to stop North Korea,” said Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA Korean Peninsula analyst and now director of Asia studies at Woodrow Wilson International. Center for Scholars.
“They couldn’t get any deal with Trump, so what are they going to get from the Biden administration? They know that. The only thing they can do is take their (weapons) program to the next level”.
The United States reacted to the latest developments by extending its military exercises with South Korea and by deploying a supersonic bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
Joe Biden is also expected to lend strong support to South Korean and Japanese leaders at summits in Southeast Asia this month.
He is also due to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, who joined Russia in vetoing a UN Security Council resolution in May aimed at tightening sanctions against North Korea.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield criticized in an emergency meeting Friday the role of Beijing and Moscow in the North Korean attitude, but she also reaffirmed the administration’s will Biden to engage with the totalitarian state.
According to US officials on condition of anonymity, North Korea has shown no willingness to negotiate.
“Weary”
As for Biden, who is focused on Ukraine and who could lose control of Congress in the midterm elections, the talk with North Korea presents high risks and little chance of success.
The American administration “does not really want to get involved vis-à-vis North Korea”, assures Frank Aum, former adviser to the Pentagon on the matter, evoking “a lot of weariness” on this file.
Joe Biden could, according to Mr. Aum, make a gesture in order to ease tensions, such as an easing of sanctions or a moratorium on the deployment of new military means, but this would be seen “as a reward for bad behavior” from Pyongyang.
“However, the facts clearly show that North Korea does not react favorably to pressure and that it tends, on the contrary, to behave better when we engage in dialogue,” he analyzes.
Joe Biden’s strategy of relying on China is unlikely to succeed, according to the analyst, with Beijing “totally disagreeing with this approach” to the pressures.
Limit the risks
The heightened tensions have sparked a debate, at least among experts, about North Korea’s nuclear power status.
Researcher Jeffrey Lewis, of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said last month in a forum in the New York Times that the United States had essentially already accepted that Pyongyang would never give up its nuclear arsenal, and that efforts should now focus on how best to limit the risks.
“It is time to limit casualties, face reality and take steps to limit the risk of war on the Korean Peninsula,” he wrote.
The State Department has reaffirmed that the American goal remains “complete denuclearization” and some experts have indicated that a change in American attitude would send a worrying signal at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
“It would bring nothing and panic the allies,” said Victor Cha, vice president in charge of Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and former adviser to President George W. Bush.