Korean Peninsula

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I too am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Alton for securing this debate, although I have to say that it is a very short period in which to discuss one of the major security challenges that our nation will face in the years ahead. I say “security”, for that is the aspect on which I shall focus my remarks, but I echo the concerns raised by my noble friend and other noble Lords regarding the serious violations of human rights by the North Korean regime.

The Korean peninsula remains frozen in a divided state between two very different societies—frozen, let us recall, by an armistice and not by any enduring political settlement. The north is governed through a paranoid dictatorship which defies most efforts at analysis. Its leader is by any measure a loose cannon. As an old friend and colleague of mine in the United States said recently, Kim Jong-un has not even been unpredictable for long enough to be predictable in his unpredictability.

This regime, which dispenses bellicose threats like confetti, has nuclear weapons and is working on a ballistic missile and miniaturised warhead programme that will allow it to deliver such weapons to the territory of the United States. South Korea and Japan are already well within its compass. In the recent assassination of Kim Jong-nam with VX nerve agent, the regime seemed to be going out of its way to signal its possession of chemical weapons

This all presents us with a deeply worrying prospect, and it is not one that we in the UK can ignore, thinking that the region is far removed from us and our interests. Conflict on the Korean peninsula, drawing in the United States and possibly Japan and risking the involvement of China, would destabilise the world more widely and have a severe economic impact on us, to say the very least. The use of nuclear weapons would, needless to say, be a global game-changer.

How should we respond to the current challenge, and particularly to the North Korean programme to develop a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile? It seems to me that there are three broad possibilities. The first is that China exerts sufficient pressure on Kim Jong-un to convince him to give up his ambitions in this regard. The second is that the United States, perhaps in concert with others, takes military action to try to destroy the programme. The third is that North Korea is successful and establishes such a capability. Let me examine these scenarios in turn.

China is the only country with any real influence over North Korea, but how willing is it to use it? In response to Pyongyang’s missile tests, China has issued some deprecatory remarks in various international fora, but does Kim Jong-un pay any attention to them? All the evidence suggests that he does not. The only thing that seems likely to sway him is diplomatic and economic action that constitutes a realistic threat to him and his regime. Is China prepared to take such action?

Despite Beijing’s announcement of a ban on North Korean coal imports following the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the value of Chinese exports to North Korea, as we have already heard, has remained strong through the first half of this year. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that China is serious about bringing real economic pressure to bear on Kim Jong-un. And why would it be? China does not wish to see any progress towards a unified Korea. On the other hand, anything that causes difficulties for the United States is very welcome to Beijing. Nor does China wish to risk a flood of North Korean refugees across its border. Perhaps the only thing that would seriously concentrate China’s mind would be the development of nuclear weapons programmes in South Korea or Japan, neither of which seems likely. My conclusion is that China is not prepared to take the kind of draconian measures that would have a realistic chance of changing North Korea’s course.

What, then, of military options? Although General Brooks, the commander of American forces in Korea, has said recently that his troops are prepared for war—as one would expect him to—how likely is it that the United States would be the one to initiate such a conflict? Most analyses suggest that America would eventually be victorious, but at a terrible cost, not least to Seoul, and of course the position of China remains a great imponderable, as does the use of nuclear and chemical weapons. Remarks by Defense Secretary Mattis suggest that he views the costs as unacceptable. How likely is it that a more limited strike, if the consequences could indeed be limited, would destroy or at least severely derail North Korea’s missile programme? Given the inadequacy of intelligence inside the North, and the regime’s extensive use of tunnels and underground sites, it seems unlikely that we could have a high degree of confidence in the outcome. All of this suggests to me that military action, unless initiated by the North, is unlikely.

That leaves the third scenario, the one where North Korea develops a nuclear weapon capable of striking the United States. This, it seems to me, is far and away the likeliest outcome, in which case we must consider how we deal with such a situation. This does not mean that we should cease our efforts to persuade China to exert realistic diplomatic and economic pressure on Pyongyang, just that we should not count on them succeeding. We should work for the best but plan for the worst. The good news is that the one thing we probably can reliably expect from Kim Jong-un is a serious interest in his own survival and the continuance of his regime. That means that he will be susceptible to nuclear deterrence, but to be effective, deterrence has to be credible. We should therefore be working with our allies now to determine the best way of ensuring that credibility. The continued need for strong nuclear deterrent capabilities seems to me to be the key lesson from what is happening in North Korea today.

The situation that I have set out in this debate is a gloomy one, but that is no excuse for hiding our heads in the sand. We must be prepared for a much more dangerous world in the years ahead. We must recognise that the stakes are far too high for us simply to leave the problem to others. We must recognise that the clock is already ticking and that the time to act is now.