Political Rocketry
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Recommended Citation"Political Rocketry", NAPSNet Policy Forum, November 29, 2012,https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-policy-forum/political-rocketry/

Go to the Weekly Report for 29 November 2012
North Korea’s rocketeers reportedly are busy bees at the Sohae launch site. Why now?
When the DPRK starts to talk with the U.S., it does a political mid-air, spiral head-kick to lookfierce. But no US-DPRK engagements are in the offing. The Obama Administration is waiting until
the ROK and Japanese elections are over before re-engaging the DPRK.
There are no new sanctions in the air. There are no big military exercises in the ROK. The DPRK istoning down its critical rhetoric of Park Geun-hye, anticipating that if elected, she will be a toughbut useful negotiating partner in 2013.
It isn’t because another rocket launch will make their long-range missiles reliable and accurate. As
RAND’s Markus Schiller wrote recently, “The North Korean missile threat is largely a bluff.”
Continues Schiller:●●●●North Korea has likely launched Soviet/Russian-made missiles (that are old but proven designs) tomaximize the appearance of performance.
North Korea may never have tested missiles from its own production and any such indigenous
missiles cannot have noteworthy reliability or accuracy.
It cannot be ruled out that North Korea has nuclear warhead designs for its missiles, but without
actual testing, the reliability of these warheads has to be assumed to be low.
The main purpose of the program seems to be political--to create the impression of a serious
missile threat and thereby gain strategic leverage, fortify the North Korean regime's domestic
power, and deter other countries, particularly theRepublic of Korea and the United States,from military action.
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I can attest to the domestic imperative. I was working at Unhari Village when the DPRK launched its
first long-range rocket over Japan (August 1998). After Japan’s foreign Minister stated that Japanmight attack the launch site, the DPRK went onto full alert. The MIGs flew, the tension waspalpable, and then wound down. I was told that launch was motivated 85 percent by the scientificsector demonstrating its fealty to Kim Jong-il; 10 percent to poke Japan in the eye; and 5 percent asa neck kick before US-DPRK missile talks in Berlin.
I doubt these relative priorities have shifted over 14 years—except that the DPRK wants to match
South Korea’s rocketry—the latter preparing to fire a Russian-made rocket from its Naro site onNovember 29, 2012.
Inaccurate, unreliable missiles are a primitive form of hard power. They have little military
significance. The two Koreas political rocketry remind me of Edward Luttwak’s 1976 proposal toposition cardboard missiles in Europe. These would have been cheap, recyclable, and potent symbols
of lethal intention; but irrelevant to the real balance of forces. Likewise long-range missiles for thetwo Koreas.
As Schiller concludes:
Concerns about North Korea's missile launches are overblown: Every launch further depletes thelimited North Korean arsenals, and North Korea gains no real experience from these events. Since
the purpose of the launches seems to be political, the United States and other nations should
downplay or even ignore them.
-Peter Hayes, NAPSNet contributor

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