Analyst: War talk is 'baloney', West will have to learn to live with a nuclear North Korea

"No Korea analyst of any stature has argued for war," states Associate Professor of International Relations Robert Kelly in a commentary this morning on the crisis in the Lowy Institute's The Interpreter.

"I don't know one person in the Korea analyst community who thinks war is likely," the South Korea Pusan National University academic writes.

"Nor do I know anyone serious who has advocated air strikes or other kinetic options."

Kelly argues the West will have to learn to live with a nuclear North Korea.

"Yes, that sucks," he adds on his personal blog. "But all this irresponsible talk that we can't adapt, that nuclear North Korea is an undeterrable, existential threat is just threat-inflating baloney.

"We've learned to live with nuclear missiles in the hands of a Muslim state with a serious jihadi problem. Would America prefer this not to be the case? Yes.

"But is living with a nuclear Pakistan a better choice than bombing it or sending in US special forces to destroy their nukes? Absolutely. Or we would have done it already."

But Dr Genevieve Hohnen, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Edith Cowan University, says North Korea's latest missile and bomb tests demonstrate advances that are both serious and significant to the international community.

"With these developments in mind the situation is notably more serious than it has been previously," she says. "As we move forward with North Korea it is imperative that every leader and spokesperson realises the potential magnitude of getting things wrong."

Ritual rhetoric

Kelly says the whole cycle of North Korea's missile and nuclear test war scares has become ritualised.

"The interesting parts are not the rehearsed statements and events themselves, but how people react to them," he says.

In particular, that means the tendency for Western analysts to "freak out".

"North Korea has this effect. People kinda lose their minds and say gonzo stuff they wouldn't say about other foreign policy problems."

But the phenomenon, he says, appears limited to the West.

"The contrast with South Korean (but also Japanese) news is striking ... (the) South Koreans are barely paying attention."

Kim Jong-un. Photo / AP

At the height of the war of words between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump last month, Kelly points out both South Korea's president and foreign minister went on holidays.

"There have been no runs on the supermarket; no one is building bomb shelters; civil defence is, unfortunately, still treated as an afterthought," he says.

Dr Hohnen agrees that there is a tendency for Western political leaders to overplay their hand and engage in aggressive rhetoric.

"The biggest thing to avoid here is backing Kim Jong-un into a corner," she says.

"What we know of his personality and psychological profile is that it is imperative to give an option to exit. Continually escalating the rhetoric is quite simply too much of a risk given the potential consequences both regionally and now worldwide."

It's a balance inherently understood by South Korea, Kelly says.

But, back in the West, he says he is constantly being asked by media if war was about to break out.

"I often have the impression the hosts or producers are slightly disappointed I am not more alarmist," he says.

"I am regularly asked if the Kims are crazy, insane, warmongers, and so on. They are not. They are just gangsters, not suicidal ideologues."

Caricature containment

Kelly argues 70 years of successful deterrence along the 48th parallel demilitarised zone simply cannot be dismissed. And the game of provocative brinkmanship between the two states has been played "relentlessly" since the 1960s.

It's not that South Korea is dismissive of the North's constant threat. It maintains a policy of compulsory conscription for its army, after all.

"The upshot is that whenever North Korean bad behaviour spikes enough to make it international news, Americans suddenly pay attention," he says.

"But in the interim, the South Koreans have also been paying attention. So they appear sanguine when Western journalists suddenly show up at those peaks."

Kelly also argues the United States demonstrates an unusual degree of anxiety over its safety.

"Ensconced between two oceans and two weak neighbours and far from the tightly-packed Eurasian cauldron of competition, the US is one of the most secure great powers in history," he writes. "Yet we Americans are prone to extraordinary outbursts of national security panic."

Dr Hohnen says a similar lack composure is being displayed by Australia, with
both Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull having publicly reprimanded China and called on it to exercise its influence to solve this crisis.

"While there is every reason to make these representations privately and in diplomatic circles doing so publicly risks giving China a reason to hold back precisely when we want them to act," she says.

"Calling for China and stating that it is their job to solve this crisis it potentially makes China appear to be doing the bidding of the US and its allies rather than acting in the Chinese national interest. And a rising China will be very hesitant to take action on this basis."
Mr Kelly argues much of the United States' reaction to North Korea is more about internal politics than any real external threat.

"Neo-conservatism as a foreign policy posture is based on the notion that American security is constantly threatened, even in weak, faraway places like Yemen or Venezuela," he says.

"My own sense is that ... we are prone to threat-inflation, and North Korea is so easy to caricature."