Asia goes ballistic: North Korea's Unha-3 fizzle and India's Agni-5 launch

A particularly fascinating feature that the Unha-3 fizzle brings to relief is the manifold problems that North Korea's scientists are meeting in constructing viable multi-stage space launch vehicles and long-range missiles. When one examines the history of North Korea's long-range missile tests and satellite launch attempts one can see that multiple failure modes have bedevilled the North's programme.

This means that there has been little progress, indeed the North appears to be going backwards, for North Korea cannot discretely isolate and overcome the engineering hurdles that are preventing further progress.

This last point is important for it goes right to the heart of the rationale for Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) which has, for the most part, been based on the North Korean threat to the continental United States.

The 1998 Rumsfeld Commission Report, which was of crucial importance in mobilising political support for BMD, stated that North Korea has the capability to field long-range, multi-stage, missiles within five years of deciding to deploy such a capability. In 2011 then Defense Secretary Robert Gates repeated this charge. A lot of the reasoning behind this conclusion relied upon the belief that North Korea could successfully reverse engineer Scud missile technology to develop longer range missiles.

North Korea, in actual fact, needs to go beyond Scud technology to field such weapons, witness the link between the SS-N-6 and the Unha-3, and it would appear that they are struggling to push the envelope. Russia has always argued that North Korea and Iran are, in principle, limited to how far they can build upon, and advance beyond, Scud technology on their own. With outside assistance drying up the Unha-3 suggests to us that, for the moment, the North Koreans are rather clueless.

That rips apart the raison d'etre for BMD. The situation is ironic for the BMD system itself has never been successfully tested in realistic combat conditions. Surely this double-whammy is one of the more surreal features of contemporary international relations. Indeed, the Unha-3 fizzle provides some support for the notion that arms control measures, in this case the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), has done a fairly reasonable job of limiting the proliferation of long-range ballistic missile technologies.

Arms control regimes like the MTCR do not get the credit that they richly deserve. They certainly have more runs on the board than BMD.

I myself believe that North Korea's long-range missile programme is similar to some of the more notorious developmental programmes of the cold war era. These existed as bargaining chips, or trade bait as we call it during sporting draft weeks, to be used in arms control talks to limit the cuts made to more functional weapons systems. I suspect that the North views its long-range missile programme as a bargaining chip, given they are well aware of their technical limitations, to be traded away in a grand bargain with the US which would hopefully result in Pyongyang retaining its shorter range Nodong missiles.

Does the Unha-3 represent a violation of the leap-day deal, thereby further demonstrating the North's perfidy, between Pyongyang and Washington, which saw the North suspend uranium enrichment and further missile and nuclear testing in return for food aid and the prospect of improved bilateral relations?

Here most reports are quite emphatic; yes it was. But, again, things are not so simple.

It seems that the North never agreed to the notion that a space launch would represent a violation of the deal and there could well have been a measure of diplomatic confusion on this point between the two parties. Furthermore, the noted arms control analyst, Jeffrey Lewis, has an interesting hypothesis. He argues that in fact the whole purpose of the leap-day deal, for the North Koreans, was to legitimise the Unha-3 launch. This is certainly a plausible hypothesis, with what appears to be documentary support, and should by no means be dismissed lightly.

Over hasty generalisations and lurid analyses should not be used to continue the spiral of escalation on the Korean peninsula. There still exists scope, with sufficient good will and reasoned analysis of North Korea's capabilities and intentions, to reach a binding diplomatic resolution that eases tensions on the Korean peninsula.