By Andreas Kluth
Forget the $25 billion. This is the estimate that the Pentagon has tentatively chosen for the immediate costs of the conflict with Iran, an estimate that analysts consider extremely low. The real cost of this U.S.-Israeli war of choice is much higher. It must include not only the global economic and humanitarian impact, but also the strategic costs arising from other, more urgent problems that have not been addressed and which may now be impossible to address. An example: North Korea.
For decades, during which American presidents put this dictatorship in the same "sack" as other Middle East problems, as part of some vague "Axes of Evil" and Co., North Korea has been arguably the greatest threat to the United States and its allies, South Korea and Japan.
And every time the U.S. used its military power against these other targets — Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran — Pyongyang, under the Kim dynasty, became increasingly certain that the only way to prevent a U.S. attack would be to acquire its own nuclear weapons — and not a few, but enough to crush U.S. missile defenses.
I still remember watching television in December 2002, when the bulletin I was watching showed, with the screen split: in the main context the American preparations for the invasion of Iraq, while in a smaller context live images of the expulsion of the nuclear inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency from North Korea were broadcast. Pyongyang withdrew from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons the following month and carried out the test of its first nuclear weapon five years later.
Today, after another twenty years of failed American efforts to "denuclearize" the Korean peninsula, Kim Jong Un has an arsenal that is impressive in the most diabolical way. It has about 50 nuclear warheads and enough enriched uranium to build another 50. North Korea also produces enough hardware to continue adding about 20 warheads a year indefinitely. It seems to be aiming to reach at least the number of the nuclear forces of France or Britain, which have more than 200 warheads each.
Kim's weapons range from relatively "small" tactical nuclear bombs (equivalent, say, to the Hiroshima explosion) that he could use in combat against South Korea to massive thermonuclear bombs capable of destroying entire American cities. North Korea has also developed, or is testing, about 20 launch systems, which include intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the U.S. and submarines that can float undetected and launch their destructive power even after a pre-emptive U.S. attack on North Korea's ground-based launch structures.
Knowing that North Korea is militarily too weak to confront the U.S. and South Korea by conventional means, Kim has concluded that this nuclear arsenal is what he needs to deter his enemies, allowing him to impose his power on the region in other ways. He has also changed North Korea's military doctrine to allow the first (i.e. aggressive) use of nuclear weapons if things do not turn out as he wants.
By contrast, Iran did not possess nuclear weapons when it was attacked by the United States, neither last June nor February this year, nor was it actively seeking to build such weapons, according to US intelligence estimates.
This once again confirms Kim's assessments. North Korea, as it had long decided, would not become Ukraine (which in the 1990s gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the US, UK and Russia). Nor will it become Iraq or Libya, countries that once had dictators who abandoned their nuclear programs and later paid for it with their lives. Nor will his regime become an Iran. What the Strait of Hormuz is to Tehran, it is nuclear to Pyongyang.
Kim is "probably pleased" as he follows the development of events in the Middle East, Joel Whitt told me. He is a State Department veteran who helped negotiate one of the nuclear deals between the U.S. and North Korea that later collapsed, a story he refers to in a recent book.
First, the Pentagon had to transport troops and ammunition from South Korea and other parts of Asia to the Middle East. This ammunition included valuable interceptor missiles, such as the THAAD systems, the stockpiles of which are now half exhausted. Even if the war with Iran ends this year and America regroups, it is unlikely that the U.S. will devote as many resources to defending its East Asian allies as it formally promised just a few months ago.
Washington's attention is now being diverted to a more general level as the war with Iran sidelines other diplomatic and political goals, which may be evident when President Donald Trump meets with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing this week.
Like Kim, both Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin see Iran's stalemate as confirmation that the U.S. superpower is now in decline, leaving a power vacuum in which Russia, China, and even North Korea can expand. Kim, Xi and Putin of course have their own problems and look at each other with suspicion. For now, however, they have decided that they can become stronger if they remain united against the US.
After failed summits with Trump in 2018 and 2019, Kim ended his country's isolation and cultivated an emerging Triple Entente with Russia and China. It signed a mutual defense pact with Russia in 2024 and has sent North Korean soldiers to fight against the Ukrainians (while gaining experience in modern drone warfare). Moscow reciprocated with trade and know-how for all the equipment it received, including ICBMs.
China has also boosted its trade with North Korea. And both China and Russia, as veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council, have begun to protect North Korea from the imposition of U.N. sanctions. In the past, they had worked with the US in the effort to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. Now they recognize Pyongyang as a member of the "nuclear club".
Xi made no secret of this alliance, hosting both Putin and Kim in a major military parade in Beijing last September. Jung Pak, who worked in the East Asia Directorate at the State Department during the Biden administration, believes Kim has "transformed from a global pariah to a global player."
All three leaders cannot fail to notice the deadly effective and almost comfortable way in which the U.S. "decapitates" foreign regimes, first by kidnapping the Venezuelan dictator and then by assassinating Iran's Supreme Leader and several commanders.
Kim has been obsessed with such scenarios for years, Witt told me. The Russians have long had "dead-hand" systems that could launch retaliatory strikes against the U.S. even after Moscow's leadership has been neutralized. Kim has done something similar, delegating the power to launch nuclear weapons to various places, depending on the scenario.
The reckless U.S. war against Iran seems, then, to have exacerbated North Korea's problem. A dictator who already felt more powerful than he did during Trump's first term now has greater diplomatic influence and military power, while also having reason to be even more paranoid about the potentially deadly unpredictability of his counterpart in the White House. Kim Jong Un is more dangerous than ever. And the United States seems incapable of doing anything to deal with it.
BloombergOpinion
