By Park Chan-Kyong — The US missile strike on Syria contained a clear message for North Korea and its main ally China, analysts said, but not one strong enough to push Pyongyang off its nuclear weapons path. While the timing was largely coincidental, the fact that US President Donald Trump ordered the strike while hosting a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping carried particular resonance given that the North’s nuclear ambitions — and how best to thwart them — was among the top agenda items of their meeting.
And exercising the military option added some extra weight to Trump’s recent threat of unilateral action against Pyongyang if Beijing fails to help curb its neighbour’s nuclear weapons programme.
Kim Yong-Hyun, a professor at Dongguk University, said the strike against Syria was a statement of intent that was meant for a wide readership.
“It signals to Pyongyang that the US has a new sheriff in town who isn’t hesitant about pulling his gun from the holster,” Kim said.
But while the move might have given the North pause, Pyongyang on Saturday said the strikes only confirmed its view that nuclear weapons were key to guaranteeing its future survival.
“The reality of today shows that we must stand against power with power and it proves a million times over that our decision to strengthen our nuclear deterrence has been the right choice,” state media reported an unnamed foreign ministry spokesman as saying.
The Syria strikes were an “intolerable act of aggression,” he added.
The North has carried out five nuclear tests — two of them last year — and expert satellite imagery analysis suggests it could well be preparing for a sixth.
US intelligence officials say Pyongyang could be less than two years away from developing a nuclear warhead that could reach the continental United States.
If last Thursday’s strike was a warning to other countries, it was one with which Pyongyang, which regularly cites US hostility as the driving force behind its nuclear weapons development, is quite familiar.
“Trump’s attack on Syria is unlikely to have any significant effect on a North Korea that is already well versed in the threat posed by the United States,” said Joel Wit, a senior fellow at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
At the time of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, then North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il disappeared from public view for around six weeks — and was widely believed to have gone into hiding for fear of a US attack.
Chang Yong-Seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification at Seoul National University, said Kim’s son, current leader Kim Jong-Un, had no reason to take such precautions. — AFP
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