Will North Korea mark dictatorship anniversary with nuclear test?

Perhaps no communist nation is more adept at staging elaborate, massive displays of state power than North Korea. The country is feverishly preparing for next month’s 70th anniversary celebration of the founding of its ruling Workers’ Party, and many North Korea watchers are concerned those celebrations could be marked by either a ballistic missile launch or a nuclear weapons test—both key components of the rogue nation’s military strategy.

While students, workers, and soldiers are being mobilized by the thousands to rehearse for parts in the celebrations, build stages, paint bridges, or otherwise beautify Pyongyang, several recent announcements by the North Korean government hint the real show may not happen in the capital at all.

Last week, the head of North Korea’s space agency announced it is ready to conduct rocket launches any time it sees fit. The following day, the country declared it had upgraded and restarted all its atomic fuel plants, suggesting it could make more—and more sophisticated—nuclear weapons.

Either a missile launch or a nuclear weapons test would capture world attention and be exploited by Kim Jong Un and his ruling regime as an indication of the country’s technical and military prowess. But would such provocative actions represent an actual threat, or might they be part of a previous pattern in which the country uses military achievements to push the U.S. and its allies for concessions and eased sanctions?

The North has conducted three nuclear tests, the most recent in 2013, and is believed to possess between 12 and 20 atomic bombs. It also has an impressive array of short- and medium-range missiles. But North Korea’s long-term military strategy has been to miniaturize its nuclear weapons so they can be mounted as warheads on reliable, long-range missiles that could hit targets in the United States. Every long-range rocket launch and nuclear test gets Pyongyang closer to that goal.

Although the North Koreans have not yet demonstrated this capability, some U.S. military leaders believe they already possess it.

“I believe they have the capability to miniaturize the device at this point,” U.S. Army Gen. Curtis Scaparotti, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, said in a statement last October reported by The Washington Post. “They have the technology to potentially actually deliver what they say they have.”

Senior U.S. military leaders also believe North Korea’s new mobile ballistic missile, the KN-08, may be capable of long-range warhead delivery.

“Our assessment is that they have the ability to put a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 and shoot it at the [U.S.] homeland,” said Navy Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, in a briefing with reporters in April 2014.

While not yet operationally deployed, the KN-08 would be harder to target than a fixed-missile site because it could be moved around secretly.

The North Koreans may also be developing a capability to deliver missiles fired from submarines. According to a report by the Gatestone Institute, an international policy council and think tank, North Korea launched a ballistic missile from a submerged platform in April, a feat considered a significant technological achievement.

“Rogue states such as North Korea can achieve military capabilities which pose a notable threat to the United States and its allies,” Israeli missile defense expert Uzi Rubin warned in the Gatestone Institute report. He added the underwater launch test was closely related to the development of a missile-firing submarine and represented “a first step in achieving a very serious and dangerous new military capability.”

Despite the saber-rattling leading up to the 70th anniversary celebrations on Oct. 10, analysts scrutinizing satellite imagery have reported no signs of an imminent rocket launch from the North’s Sohae facility. Even so, speculation about what the country might do helps ensure Pyongyang will get the international media attention it wants for its military spectacle.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.