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Threat Report 2018: North Korea’s Nuclear Doctrine
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Photo:
iStock.com/alexkuehni
Months of fruitful
engagement between North Korea, South Korea and the United States could
soon turn sour. Yesterday, Pyongyang warned that ongoing
joint military exercises and aggressive statements made by the Trump
administration were damaging the diplomatic atmosphere. The regime
canceled upcoming talks scheduled with South Korea, and threatened to
pull out of the Trump-Kim summit, slated for June 12.
Today’s brief
looks at the history of U.S.-North Korea negotiations, and the latter’s
nuclear program, with insight into the regime’s end goals
and what it may—and may not—be willing to put on the table.
- Talks
between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong
Un are tentatively scheduled for June 2018, which may open the door
to resolve a tense nuclear standoff between Washington and
Pyongyang. However,
past efforts to strike a deal have failed to deliver lasting results
and the two sides could face another missed opportunity for
nonviolent reconciliation.
- North
Korea’s leadership has pursued nuclear weapons as a sign of domestic
and international legitimacy as well as to deter other countries, namely
the U.S., from contemplating military operations aimed at
facilitating regime change.
- To
date, the U.S. has engaged in four major sets of formal negotiations
with
North Korea to address the ongoing nuclear and ballistic missile
crises. However,
while the two sides have managed to find common ground in previous
talks and reach tentative agreements, the end result has remained
the same with North Korea continuing to develop its nuclear arsenal
and the U.S. left searching for answers short of direct military
confrontation.
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Terrorism and the Future Lone Wolf Threat in America
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Terrorist tactics are constantly evolving, and
counterterrorism must evolve along with it. Just last month,
the Washington Post reported that
TSA is adjusting its methods as terrorists turn increasingly toward lone
wolf terror attacks.
On the heels of
last weekend’s deadly lone wolf attacks in France and Indonesia,
The Cipher Brief talked with Carol
Rollie Flynn, former Associate Director of the CIA’s National
Counterterrorism Center, about how the terrorism landscape continues to evolve
and how to think about the future threat posed by lone wolf attackers
here in the U.S..
- "In
contrast to Europe, the U.S. has fortunately not had to deal
with the large number of ISIS returnees. ISIS has found France, in
particular, to be a fruitful recruiting ground because of the large
Muslim French-speaking diaspora, many of whom are French citizens
but still not fully integrated into the French society and
economy."
- "Preventing
these types of attacks is very, very hard because the tools of law
enforcement and the IC to detect and pre-empt attacks don’t work if
the terrorist is not connected in any detectible way to a known
terrorist or terrorist group."
- "Open
information networks, such as the Internet and the Dark Web, also
enable lone individuals or small groups to gain greater access to
weapons and know-how to perpetrate attacks, including WMD or cyber
attacks. This could become a greater threat as these lone
individuals are able to develop increasingly more sophisticated
capabilities and approaches….and to do so without detection by
intelligence or law enforcement."
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