Option 3: Build Missile Defenses

Proponents Say: Develop and Deploy Ballistic Missile Defenses (BMD).

• Regardless if the United States negotiates with or attempts to isolate North Korea, it will never be certain if North Korea has eliminated all of its WMD and long-range missiles.
• Until there has been a total change in North Korea's political system, the United States must remain ready to defend South Korea and Japan in the event of conflict with North Korea.
• If the United States is under threat of a North Korean nuclear missile attack, South Korea and Japan may fear that the United States will not defend them against North Korea in a crisis. They may judge that the United States will not risk the destruction of a major U.S. city in order to save them from North Korea.
• This strategic situation could lead South Korea and Japan to develop WMD of their own to assure their defense.
• Deploying missile defenses would make the United States much less vulnerable to ballistic missile threats from North Korea.
• Ballistic missile defense (BMD) would reassure U.S. allies and allow the United States to respond forcefully to any North Korean aggression.

Opponents Say: Missile Defenses Cannot Provide Reliable and Comprehensive Security.

• At best, reliable missile defenses will not be available for five to 10 years. Until then, improved relations, negotiated agreements, and deterrence are the only means to protect the United States and its allies from the North Korean WMD threat.
• Missile defenses have many technical problems and may never work reliably.
• Even if missile defenses appear to work well in tests, no American president would be prepared to rely on them and disregard the possibility that they might fail. Thus, even with missile defenses, the United States would consider itself to be at risk. The United States would hesitate to go to war against a country with the potential to attack with WMD-tipped missiles. Japan and South Korea know this. U.S. missile defenses will not, therefore, increase their confidence in the reliability of the United States as an ally.
• If North Korea wished to threaten the United States with WMD during a crisis, it would not need to use missiles. It could smuggle WMD into the United States or simply declare that it had done so. This threat could deter the United States from protecting its allies just as effectively as the threat to launch WMD missiles. U.S. allies are aware of this possibility, so that deploying missile defenses will not increase their confidence in the reliability of the United States as an ally.
• To prevent North Korea from intimidating the United States and its allies, these allies must be protected from North Korean WMD missiles just as effectively as the United States. If the United States is protected but South Korea and Japan are not, they will not want to confront North Korea in a crisis, even if they can rely on U.S. support, because their cities will be at risk. Although North Korea has only a few missiles that can reach the United States, it has a hundred that can reach Japan and many hundreds that can reach South Korea. Missile defenses will never be able to protect against this combined challenge.
• For these reasons, it is a mistake for the United States to place priority on developing missile defenses. Improved relations, negotiated agreements, and deterrence should be the focus of U.S. foreign policy to limit the use of WMD in this region.

Further Reading:

	NBR, Michael J. Green and Toby F. Dalton, "Asian Reactions to U.S. Missile Defense"
	CNS, North Korea Special Collection
	CNS, Toshiro Ozawa, "East Asian Regional Implications of Ballistic Missile Proliferation and Ballistic Missile Defense"
	WMD 411, Policy Options: Ballistic Missile Defense

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