US diplomacy boffins call for Korea-style partition of Ukraine as North Korea perfects plans for America’s destruction

(Originally published April 14 in “What in the World“) North Korea said it had successfully developed an intercontinental ballistic missile that uses solid fuel instead of liquid fuel.

As noted when Pyongyang was still testing solid-fuel engines last December, solid-fueled missiles could enable Pyongyang to hide its nuclear weapons better and fire them more quickly—no need to fill ‘em up before launching Armageddon. South

Korean authorities said the new rocket, dubbed Hwasong-18, may have been the one it launched Thursday into the Sea of Japan, this time so close to the Japanese island of Hokkaido that Japanese authorities briefly issued an order for residents there to take shelter.

Japanese officials didn’t say just how close to shore the missile was when it finally plopped into the sea, but South Korean authorities said the missile flew roughly 1,000km from its launch site near Pyongyang, which would put it roughly 200km off the coast of the island of Okushiri.

The Pentagon thinks it has a bureaucracy problem that hinders innovation, part of a wider push to give it greater budgetary freedom to pursue longer-term deals with defense contractors. But the U.S. Army has just successfully tested a new laser weapon to down drones. The new Directed Energy Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense system, or DE M-SHORAD, was developed by Raytheon on mounted on a General Dynamics Stryker combat vehicle. While the new weapon proved useful against drones, it can’t yet reliably knock down missiles, mortars, or artillery. The M-SHORAD now deployed by the Army uses Raytheon’s Stinger missiles to down incoming threats.

In a new op-ed for Foreign Affairs, former U.S. diplomat and now President of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haass, and Georgetown International Affairs Professor Charles Kupchan, lay out a hard-nosed and cynical argument for a Korea-style partition of Ukraine to end the fighting, with a DMZ dividing Donbas and Crimea from the rest of Ukraine. Their plan calls for escalating arms to Ukraine, giving it the long-range missiles and fighter jets it wants, so it can fight to yet another stalemate, then realize it has no remaining option but to submit to a ceasefire agreement. The Donbas and Crimea would, barring a complete Ukrainian victory this spring, likely remain under Russian control until their future could be settled politically. And Russian sanctions would only end once this issue had been resolved to Kyiv’s satisfaction.

There are a few obvious flaws in their plan, foremost of which is the failure of any such demarcation to work. Case in point: Vietnam. Also, Korea’s demarcation hasn’t produced a satisfactory resolution 70 years since the DMZ was established. On the contrary, it yielded an intractable foe now bent on developing weapons capable of raining nuclear holocaust on the United States. Why they believe it would work in Ukraine is a mystery.

The two authors also argue that Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons is a bluff. They hypothesize that Putin wouldn’t dare use them because they would draw the North Atlantic Treaty Organization directly into the conflict. But if Putin felt desperate enough to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, NATO would also have to assume he was desperate enough to use strategic nuclear weapons Western targets if they attacked him. So, the bluff holds. Haass and Kupchan are also naïve if they think Kyiv won’t immediately use new long-range missiles and fighters to launch strikes inside Russia. Ukraine is fighting for its survival; it shouldn’t and won’t hesitate to attack its enemy at home. Indeed, it has already done so with drones and saboteurs.

We’ll have to wait and see how Kyiv deploys the five old East German MiG-29s that Poland has just won German approval to send it. But it’s unlikely the older fighters are sophisticated enough for use penetrating Russian air defenses.

Haass and Kupchan also believe Putin doesn’t want to alienate China and India by using nukes in Ukraine and that China is on the cusp of supporting Russia with lethal weapons. These two assumptions seem far-fetched: China doesn’t seem pushed so far yet that it wants to go to battle alongside Moscow in a war its strategists already know it would lose. Its bluster over Taiwan still seems largely designed to placate domestic nationalists fired up by Xi’s reunification rhetoric—and to spook would-be independence advocates in Taiwan. Beijing surely isn’t willing to risk World War III over Taiwan, at least not until it has a fighting chance. Hence its recent diplomatic overtures. China still recognizes where its real interests lie. It’s hawks in Washington (and in New York at the CFR, apparently) who have lost perspective on what’s at stake.