South Korea agreed earlier this month to the deployment of an anti-missile system, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), to provide defensive capabilities against its neighbor to the north. The United States had been suggesting the move for years, but Seoul only came on board in the face of increasingly frequent missile and nuclear tests by North Korea. Yet there are some who see the move as bearing far greater significance than a simple shield between two halves of a divided nation.
China, in particular, has decried the move, saying it will destabilize an already fragile region and negatively affect “world peace.” The question, then, is whether the defensive capabilities THAAD provides will outweigh the diplomatic ripples – and other reactions – it may provoke. “I certainly don’t believe THAAD or any missile defense is a panacea,” says Jonathan Pollack, Interim SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies, Center for East Asia Policy Studies, at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. “But if it inhibits North Korea, under some extreme circumstances, from using its capabilities, and instills some confidence in the government of South Korea to defend key assets and population areas in a more integrated fashion, then it’ll be money well spent.”
US Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency
One of the fundamental questions: How much of a threat does North Korea actually pose to South Korea? The simple answer to that question is that nobody seems to know, bar the regime in Pyongyang, but the rhetoric – and continued missile and nuclear tests – seems intended to instill fear. The latest round of ballistic missile tests by North Korea on Tuesday, seen as a reaction to South Korea's decision to deploy THAAD, came with the explicit explanation, according to the North’s official KCNA news agency, that they were simulating “preemptive strikes at ports and airfields in the operational theater in South Korea.” This was just the latest in a series of missile tests by Pyongyang, accompanied by a nuclear test earlier this year. In the face of such activities, as Mr. Pollack says, while it is difficult to fathom how real the threat truly is, “to assume benign intentions would be imprudent.”
In seeking to counteract that threat, however real it may be, THAAD is a decent option, says Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, citing a perfect intercept record in trials to date. Yet, as Dr. Karako is keen to emphasize, missile defense systems are not intended to “sit and play catch.” That is to say, they may not be able to prevent every missile from finding its target in the event of an attack, but integrated into the overall military structure, they can provide valuable support. “In the event of an attack, the aim [of a missile defense system] is to defend critical infrastructure,” says Karako. “North Korea wouldn’t be able to decapitate the military in the south, and so THAAD would buy time to bring the full military forces to bear.”
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