Ahn Young-joon/AP
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un never explicitly said he would not fire missiles at the US territory of Guam, and starting on Monday the US and South Korea’s massive military drill will test his resolve and measure just how bold he’s willing to be.
Ulchi Freedom Guardian, one of two major military exercises carried out by the US and South Korea, involves tens of thousands of troops from both nations drilling to achieve peak readiness in the case of conflict. Each year, the exercises expand bit by bit, and each year, North Korea issues threats in response.
When North Korea announced it had presented plans to Kim Jong Un on a possible strike at Guam, it included deescalatory language that seemed to invite the US to tone down its military exercises.
But as State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said on Tuesday, the US has no plans of stepping them down.
Nauert repeated the US talking point on military exercises on the Korean Peninsula. “There’s no equivalency,” between North Korea’s illegal nuclear and missile testing and the US’s regularly scheduled, internationally monitored, and completely legal bilateral drills, according to Nauert.
Even in light of the recent high tensions and brinkmanship between the US and North Korea, the “double-freeze,” or the idea often floated by China and North Korea whereby the US stops military exercises and limits or eliminates its presence in North Korea in exchange for denuclearization, won’t budge.
US Air Force
While North Korean media said US military exercises test the “self restraint” of Kim, the odds of missile tests towards Guam remain slim. North Korea simply lacks the capability to execute such a test in a way that doesn’t open them up to international embarrassments like having the missiles fail or be shot down by the US.
But the lack of concessions from the US side indicates that it’s up to North Korea to back down at some point and offer more favorable terms for a compromise.
For North Korea, which has just a few short years to go before perfecting absolute, indisputable thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic technology, it’s hard to imagine it caving to US pressure now with its goal so close at hand.
