South Korean activist wearing a mask of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un

Politics

Dix leçons à tirer face au programme nucléaire nord-coréen

Jul 24, 2017 Richard Haass

SÉOUL – La Corée du Nord a conçu à ce jour plusieurs têtes nucléaires, et développe actuellement des missiles capables de les propulser vers toutes les régions du monde. C’est pourquoi de nombreux gouvernements s’interrogent sur la manière d’empêcher ou de ralentir la montée en puissance de la capacité nord-coréenne, et sur les mesures à prendre en cas d’échec sur cette voie.

Bien que ces interrogations soient évidemment importantes, d’autres questions doivent également être soulevées. Il nous faut en effet comprendre comment la Corée du Nord est parvenue à faire progresser dans une telle mesure son programme nucléaire et son système de missiles, malgré plusieurs décennies d’efforts internationaux visant à stopper cette avancée. Sans doute est-il trop tard pour faire dévier significativement la trajectoire nord-coréenne ; mais il n’est pas trop tard pour tirer les leçons de notre expérience. Voici dix enseignements qu’à nos risques et périls nous n’avons pas su tirer jusqu’à présent.

Premièrement, lorsqu’un État possède un savoir-faire scientifique fondamental, une capacité de fabrication moderne, et lorsqu’il est déterminé à concevoir des armements nucléaires rudimentaires, cet État est nécessairement voué à y parvenir tôt ou tard. Les informations disponibles le confirment très largement.

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Richard Haass

Writing for PS since 2000
150 Commentaries

Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W. Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He is the author, most recently, of The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens (Penguin Press, 2023).

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 8 Comments on this article

Barry Rosenfeld Jul 31, 2017

If a "problem" can't be solved , redefine it. Haass wants to manage it, whatever that means. It isn't a strategy, but an admission of defeat.
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Mauricio Duran-Loriga Jul 25, 2017

Kim is totally defenseless against US/Chinese striking capabilities. BARE NUDE. It would take 30 minutes to overthrow him. Or less.

In the West, MSM tries to induce a nuclear panic about mad Kim.

However, the first country to ever again detonate a nuclear device will be crushed in full by the international community. With unprecedented unanimity.

Already a third Kim at the top, these guys must be very useful to their masters. That is why the MSM never talks about the dozens of millions of N. Koreans slaughtered or confined to live cattle class lives, for decades and counting. QUI BONO ?
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Yoshimichi Moriyama Jul 24, 2017

I spent as a boy almost everyday frightened with the radio news of the Russo-American belligerent altercation, each threatening the other with nuclear weapons. I learned as a youth a little bit about the theory of nuclear deterrence and game theories and a little bit about Russian history, and I felt a little bit relieved. At that time I little expected such a tiny country as North Korea taking on such a big country as the US on equal terms of temerity.
To think the unthinkable, which it seems Mr. Haass has not thought yet, one solution would be to use tactical nuclear weapons.
- Yoshimichi Moriyama Jul 25, 2017
  
  North Korea can inflict damages on us, so we are deterred. Suppose or imagine that five or ten years later from now North Korea should sell or give its nuclear know-how or biological/chemical weapons to a country in Africa, the Middle East, East Asia or Latin America; what could we do then to prevent it? We would still be deterred then. The theory of deterrence would perfectly apply to us. But what would we have to deter them? What would deter them? Which part of the deterrrenc theory or what kind of game theory would be applicablet to them? If no part of the deterrence theory or game theories should apply to North Korea, what is wrong with these pedantic thinking or its premises?
  
  ...the US that got S Korean to abandon its attempt to gain nuclear weapons and US nuclear weapons left S Korea in 1991...the past attacks by North Korea including the 1983 assassination attempt on the S Korean president in Rangoon that killed 21 people...the bombing of KAL flight 858 in 1987 that killed all 115 people on the flight...the 31 man attack on the S Korean presidential compound in 1968 that killed nearly 100 people (Dennis's comment on EastAsiaForum/Nicol Brodie/June 7/Escalation is not deterrence on the Korean Peninsula, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2017/06/07/escalation-is-not-deterrence-on-the-korean-penisula/).
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