Mad North Koreans can destroy Australia

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

North Korea — mad, bad, dangerous North Korea — will soon have the power to destroy Australia. This is part of, and symbolises, our seriously deteriorating security circumstances. At the same time, the single greatest, independent national security policy we have, our immigration program, is under renewed political threat as a toxic outcome of the rise of paranoid populism on left and right.

It is an abiding strategic insight of Kim Beazley that Australia is one of those nations that looks peaceful and secure but which does not have a guaranteed, independent national existence ­assured to it. We live in a volatile and historically conflict-prone part of the world where armed forces are growing rapidly and the balance of economic and strategic power is shifting against us. And we are all but asleep.

Estimates of North Korea’s ­nuclear arsenal vary but the lowest credible estimates are that it probably has 15 nukes right now. The real number could be substantially higher. It has been making steady progress on miniaturising them so that they can be carried easily on long-range missiles.

And as the world has watched in horrified fascination, Pyongyang has engaged in missile test after missile test. It has effective ballistic missiles right now. If it keeps testing, it must soon produce reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Producing an ICBM is a much smaller technical challenge than producing a nuclear weapon. Short of regime collapse, and there is no sign of that, the Stalinist regime of Kim Jong-un will soon be able to marry ICBMs and nukes.

Naturally, the main concern in the American media has been that this will give the North Koreans the ability to rain nuclear weapons on US cities. They will also have the power to destroy Australian cities. Just for a moment, amid the myriad trivial distractions of our public cacophony, we should pause and reflect on this. The world’s most reckless dictatorship will soon have the power to physically destroy the Australian nation should it choose to do so.

The deterrence to North Korea doing this is provided entirely by the extended nuclear deterrence we enjoy under the umbrella of the US alliance. As our ally, the US ­issues a clear threat to any nuclear power that might wish us harm. American nuclear deterrence ­extends to us.

Although it remains extremely unlikely that the North Koreans would ever choose to use nuclear weapons, they are without doubt the most reckless and dangerous regime in the world. Their recent assassination of the dictator’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, in Kuala Lumpur illustrates this. There are very few countries in which North Korean diplomats and officials are allowed to travel freely. Malaysia was one. Pyongyang sacrificed this in order to murder the dictator’s non-political brother.

It is indeed marginally easier to construct a scenario in which North Korea makes some terrible strategic endgame calculation that sees it take out a city of a Western power other than the US but hold dozens of nukes in reserve. This would require either the US to then incinerate the whole of North Korea or give in to its demands. At the same time North Korea could make it clear that if it was attacked by US nuclear weapons, it would then unleash the rest of its nuclear arsenal on the US.

This is an extreme, and ­extremely unlikely, scenario. But when such a scenario moves from impossible to extremely unlikely, a nation has suffered a huge change in its strategic circumstances.

I have followed Western policy on North Korea in close detail for 25 years. There have been a couple of moments when the US was on the brink of taking military action to end the North Korean nuclear program. Each time it decided, for perfectly prudent reasons, not to do so.

This is in contrast to when ­Israel decided to destroy nuclear weapons programs in its neighbourhood, once with Iraq and once with Syria. Imagine them with nukes today. North Korea is a perfect illustration that not taking military action is also a decision, and also has costs.

This was one of the reasons I was so concerned with Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. He spoke dismissively of US ­extended nuclear deterrence and urged Japan and South Korea to acquire their own nukes. Sensibly, since the election he has ditched such nonsense.

But it may be we are coming to the end of the era of nuclear non-proliferation. Iran is hurtling ­towards nuclear weapons capacity and when, in a few years, its deal with Barack Obama expires, even if it doesn’t cheat before then, it will be in a position to build ­hundreds of nukes. There is a terrible, iron, zero-sum logic to ­nuclear ­deterrence. Unless you enjoy ­extended deterrence from the US, the only way to deterrence is through your own nuclear weapons. If US global leadership fails, many nations will go down this path.

What can Australia do?

First, we should work to make sure US global leadership does not fail, which is why a constructive, discerning, pro-alliance attitude to the Trump administration is so much better than the hysteria of both left and right in Australia (hysterical support on the right, hysterical denunciation on the left) demonstrated by so many of our blatherskites.

Second, we need to underline our importance to the Americans so that we become part of their ­irreducible minimum, an interest that even a partly withdrawing Washington would never sacrifice.

Third, we need to do much more to be able to defend ourselves. Yet Nick Xenophon, a populist of the left, wants to cut our meagre defence spending. Instead we should re-examine our foolish hesitations about missile defence.

And finally, we must grow bigger, which is where immigration is our single greatest national security policy. In 2050 we will live next door to an Indonesia of far more than 300 million people, near a Pakistan of 350 million. There will be perhaps 15 million in the Melanesian world. Middle East populations will have exploded.

Will we be better able to secure our borders and provide for our own security with 28 million elderly people and a declining economy, or 40 million people, with a younger age profile and a strongly growing economy? The answer is obvious.