North Korea, Iran, and the Challenge to International Order

North Korea and Iran occupy a special place in U.S. strategic thinking. American presidents and U.S. strategic national security documents have overwhelmingly referred to North Korea and Iran in tandem in the past fifteen years as presenting a similar type of challenge to international security. The two states are explicitly hostile to the United States and have maintained long-standing efforts to develop nuclear weapons and their means of delivery despite occasional negotiated breaks. North Korea and Iran have cooperated on sensitive military projects, most notably with respect to ballistic missiles that can carry weapons of mass destruction. Both have poor human rights records, contribute to regional instability and have occupied one of the few spaces on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. North Korea and Iran are the only major states in the world without some form of diplomatic relations with the United States or some U.S. diplomatic presence on their soil. The lack of a diplomatic presence shows the thinness of the relationship and paucity of government-to-government interaction with the United States, among other nations, and underlines a similarly thin economic and people-to-people relationship. Diplomatic engagement for all parties is fraught with domestic political challenges. International actors, including the United Nations Security Council and national governments, have employed a similar set of tools, including sanctions, military deterrence, and bilateral and multilateral dialogue, to attempt to address these problems.¹ Intuitive to many but not to all, there is something that connects these two countries as similar.

It is not common for medium-sized states in different regions to be considered in tandem, and the nature of this Iran–North Korea grouping has never been clearly defined. Instead, scholars and government officials alike have resorted to labels, calling states that generally might be grouped together as “rogue,” “outlaw,” “pariah,” and “outlier” states. Slightly varied groupings have taken the names “Axis of Evil,” “outposts of tyranny” or the analytically nondescriptive “states of concern.”² All names suffer from imprecision and, in some cases, duplicate usage that poses further challenges to identifying a group of states.³

Political and policy considerations help shape the labels applied to these states to achieve the desired connotation, but a robust effort to clearly define what makes this grouping relevant helps create a productive and structured comparison. The comparative social sciences tend to focus on structure: Do a group of states maintain a similar set of political, economic, or social institutions? Foreign policy analyses tend to be less methodologically formal and focus more on research questions related to political agency: Do these states make particular foreign or domestic policy choices that merit grouping them together? Defining the common attributes of these states allows one to analyze with greater objectivity the success or failure of specific policy options directed at one or the other country.

The core argument of this book is that North Korea and Iran are Illicit Nuclear Aspirants – a unique set of states that have signed onto the landmark Non-Proliferation Treaty, which serves as the bedrock of the international norm on nonproliferation, and then violated those commitments. We demonstrate that competing ideas that the two states should be grouped together on different metrics – such as support for international terrorism, fomenting regional instability, and egregious human rights records – do not hold up to empirical scrutiny. We take an integrated comparative perspective throughout the book, including a comparative assessment of the two countries’ historical trajectories; domestic, economic, and ideological orientation; foreign and security policies; human rights records; and illicit nuclear activity.

We leverage that in-depth comparison to show where lessons learned from diplomacy with Iran can be applied to North Korea and vice versa – as well as to identify where conditions do not support applying similar approaches. Contemporary questions like whether financial sanctions imposed on Iran would be successful if imposed on North Korea, or whether the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran has wider lessons for North Korea, are examples of the policy relevance of this study that are considered in greater detail in the concluding chapter. This book provides both an empirically tested theory of what justifies grouping together Iran and North Korea, as well as specific foreign policy lessons derived from that comparison.

North Korea and Iran in U.S. strategic thinking

American presidents, their administrations’ Defense and State Departments, and even nonpartisan national intelligence assessments have consistently recognized North Korea and Iran as presenting a common type of threat to the United States, its allies, and the broader international security environment. Although administrations may define the Iranian and North Korean threat with terminology that has different connotations and pursue distinct policy approaches, there has been general agreement within U.S. administrations that these emerging nuclear threats are a major and somehow similar national security concern. This section demonstrates that the superpower categorizes North Korea and Iran as vaguely similar threats, but this literature lacks a theoretically cohesive and empirically grounded explanation for grouping these two states together, which this book seeks to correct.

American presidents have prioritized North Korea and Iran as similar national security concerns. A government can always issue more statements or lengthen published reports. However, there is no greater scarcity in an administration than the president’s time, and issues that find their way into important and effectively time-limited major addresses are likely administration priorities. The annual State of the Union address is the U.S. president’s opportunity to showcase domestic and foreign policy priorities. North Korea and Iran are fairly small states that normally would not come to mind as topping the agenda of the leader of the most powerful country in the world. They are separated by ideology, culture, and geography, yet they have come to represent a singular type of challenge to U.S. national interests as articulated by conservative and progressive American leaders alike.

Since the end of the Cold War, an American president first referenced North Korea in the annual address in 1994, when President Bill Clinton noted the pending U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework. Clinton raised the same issue in the State of the Union in the following two years and again in 1999. In all instances, he noted concerns about North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, but he never referred to Iran in the same context as North Korea in his first seven State of the Union addresses. The first combination of these two challenges in this context came in Clinton’s final State of the Union address. Whereas senior administration officials considered this comparison in various forms much earlier in the administration, including National Security Advisor Tony Lake’s more general article in Foreign Affairs in 1994,⁴ it took more than a decade after the end of the Cold War for this idea that North Korea and Iran pose a similar type of threat to international order to start to take substantial form in this high-level pronouncement. We will see later that this generally tracks with the threat perception articulated in other strategic U.S. government documents and that the comparison transcended party affiliation and branch of government in the United States.

President George W. Bush mentioned North Korea and Iran together in the same context in all of his State of the Union addresses except his last one and the 2005 address that more substantially focused on both cases independently. Near the end of his administration, Bush focused more on Iran independently in this speech, augmenting the combined concerns about nuclear development in the two states. Importantly, the Iranian issue diversified beyond the nuclear issue in presidential rhetoric as Iran’s relation to stability in Iraq and regional security, terrorism, and democracy and human rights promotion received increased focus.

Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump followed the precedent of their predecessors and did not mention either foreign policy challenge in their first Joint Address to Congress that had a more domestic focus, but Obama continued his predecessors’ reference to the two states in half of his addresses. He also gave a separate nod to Iran four times as nuclear diplomacy with Iran progressed but the North Korean nuclear issue languished. We do not wish to overemphasize this admittedly crude proxy for quantifying a president’s focus, but the broad point remains that U.S. administrations of all political stripes in the 21st century have tended to view and articulate North Korea and Iran as a common type of problem for U.S. interests.

Beyond the top political level, the United States’ defense, diplomatic, and intelligence agencies, regardless of the occupant of the White House, has consistently and publicly identified North Korea and Iran as presenting a similar challenge to both U.S. national security and international peace and stability. The Defense Department’s 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review noted North Korea and Iran pose destabilizing risks to their respective regions and pursue nuclear weapons in contravention of their international commitments.⁵ The previous version of the same strategic planning document four years earlier similarly noted, “North Korea and Iran, as part of their defiance of international norms, are actively testing and fielding new ballistic missile systems … I [U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates] remain concerned about the nuclear ambitions and confrontational postures of Iran and North Korea.” It adds that the Defense Department is pursuing a common policy response with nonproliferation and counterproliferation efforts, including enhancing nuclear forensics to improve the country’s confidence in identifying the source of nuclear materials to enhance deterrence.⁶ The 2015 National Military Strategy likewise paralleled the two threats,⁷ and, although the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff announced the 2017 National Military Strategy would be classified, they also publicly acknowledged that both North Korea and Iran would still be included in the prioritized threats.⁸

*Table 1.1* References to North Korea and Iran in the State of the Union Address
Year	Single Reference to North Korea	Single Reference to Iran	Combined Reference to North Korea and Iran
1989	No	No	No
1990	No	No	No
1991	No	No	No
1992	No	No	No
1993	No	No	No
1994	Yes	No	No
1995	Yes	No	No
1996	Yes	No	No
1997	Yes	No	No
1998	No	No	No
1999	Yes	No	No
2000	No	No	Yes
2001	No	No	No
2002	No	No	Yes
2003	No	No	Yes
2004	No	No	Yes
2005	Yes	Yes	No
2006	No	Yes	Yes
2007	No	Yes	Yes
2008	No	Yes	No
2009	No	No	No
2010	No	Yes	Yes
2011	No	No	Yes
2012	No	Yes	No
2013	No	No	Yes
2014	No	Yes	No
2015	No	Yes	No
2016	No	Yes	No
2017	No	Yes	No
Total References	6	10	9

Source: Compiled by authors. Bolded years indicate the first Joint Address to Congress by the newly inaugurated president. Nonbolded years reflect the State of the Union Address.

The State Department does not have the same history of producing an equivalent strategic planning document, but it published its inaugural Quadrennial Diplomatic and Development Review in 2010. The document references North Korea and Iran twice – both in conjunction with the other – and notes the diplomatic body’s focus on sanctions enforcement and nonproliferation.⁹ The second version of the document, released in 2015, did not discuss Iran and North Korea together in favor of focusing on the near-term challenge of in-progress diplomatic negotiations with Iran.¹⁰

Not only do the U.S. national security agencies identify Iran and North Korea together, but they explicitly prioritize these threats. The 105-page Quadrennial Defense Review in 2010 concluded with the top defense priorities of the United States:

Not to be outdone, U.S. intelligence agencies have focused on these two countries even if the bulk of the analysis itself may remain sui generis.¹² The National Intelligence Strategy identifies Iran and North Korea as similarly utilizing asymmetric capabilities and nuclear and missile programs that threaten U.S. national security interests. Previous and subsequent statements by the director of national intelligence amplified the same conclusion, although occasionally referring in tandem to Syria’s chemical weapons program.¹³ The National Intelligence Strategy adds that Iran supports terrorism, but does not apply this concern to North Korea, mirroring the National Intelligence Estimate on the Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland’s presentation.¹⁴ The intelligence assessments have more caveats on the differences between the two states than the strategic policy documents, but they still recognize the two states as posing some type of similar challenge without defining its specifics.

Strategic documents focused on nuclear issues provide an opportunity to clarify what makes Iran and North Korea similar, but the commonality again is largely asserted and left unexplained. The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review groups Iran and North Korea together with little explanation. The document describes first among U.S. policy objectives “preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism” as two separate but interrelated problems that apply to Iran and North Korea.¹⁵ The presence of large quantities of fissile material as well as the nuclear ambitions of states like Iran and North Korea make a terrorist organization acquiring a nuclear weapon more likely, concluding “The most immediate and extreme threat today is nuclear terrorism.”¹⁶ The report suggests the North Korea–Iran commonality resides in their potential supply – witting or not – of critical precursors for terrorists to acquire a nuclear bomb or radiological weapon.

American presidents since the end of the Cold War and more specifically in the last fifteen years have voiced concern about the nexus of the world’s most powerful weapons falling into the hands of determined terrorists that are difficult or impossible to deter. The basic premise that preserved the nuclear peace since near the dawn of the nuclear age does not apply well to terrorists. The gravity of any potential nuclear-related terrorist incident is great and applies to all countries, making many national actors more committed to nonproliferation of these weapons in the post–Cold War era. Whether Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs both raise the risks of nuclear terrorism will be evaluated in depth in Chapter 4, but the concern is articulated in at least some U.S. national security documents as a prioritized concern linking the two countries into the same analytical basket.

The high-level constant across U.S. administrations is that Iran and North Korea pose some type of similar and related threat. However, different administrations suggest varied explanations of that common thread linking Iran and North Korea. The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, for example, focuses more on the nuclear terrorism risk and links state-sponsors of terrorism and this risk, especially in regard to Iran. The 2006 document references Iran’s nuclear program four times – each with a corresponding comment about terrorism. It references North Korea’s nuclear program once, also raising the risk of nuclear terrorism.¹⁷

Although North Korea and Iran both have been included on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism,¹⁸ the Iranian government link to international terrorism is closer in the American imagination and reality.¹⁹ North Korea’s most recent terrorist incidents were not only state sponsored but state conducted. However, the last mass-based incident officially determined to warrant North Korea’s inclusion on the terrorism list was in 1987; there is no statute of limitations on these crimes either legally or morally, but this activity becomes more a part of a tragic history rather than a contemporary and future-oriented problem as more decades pass without DPRK support for international terrorist activities. Further, although terrorist activities are not limited to one region or ideology, international terrorism directed at the United States and Western targets has come to be associated with radical Islam, and North Korea’s highly statist and atheist government does not correspond with this public image. North Korea’s terrorist activities are unacceptable; they are also different from the terrorism challenge posed by Iran in terms of nature, scope, and contemporary threat.

The closer link between Tehran and organizations determined by the United States government officially to be terrorist organizations may help explain at least in part the larger emphasis on the Iranian threat over the North Korean one in Washington despite North Korea’s more advanced nuclear program.²⁰ Reasonable analysts will disagree on the amount of emphasis to place on the terrorism linkage in U.S. strategic thinking in defining Iran and North Korea as a class of states, but the overriding point remains that these two countries occupy some still poorly defined space in U.S. policymaking.

North Korea and Iran create global nonproliferation challenges and a threat to the international community and not just the security of the United States. The Defense Department summed up this sentiment most clearly:

This singular explanation in the U.S. strategic documents comes closest to our own argument of what makes North Korea and Iran sufficiently similar to pair them together in a robust typology, but it still offers room for scholarly improvement. The North Korea–Iran comparison retains an important place in the national security thinking of the United States among other countries, but there is a need to sharpen the analytical category and test it against the empirical record to more accurately understand what makes these two countries similar, why it should matter, and what policy lessons can be drawn from the comparison.

Previous scholarship on the comparison

Despite repeated mention in strategic government documents and speeches, the comparison between Iran and North Korea has not been studied much in a scholarly way. Foreign and defense policy bureaucracies as well as think tanks are often organized along regional or functional lines. North Korea experts may also focus on South Korea, Japan, or even China, and Iran experts may spend much of their time on Iraq or even Israel. These experts may study the political structure, policy goals, and regions of the countries they follow, but one would be hard-pressed to find a “North Korea/Iran” expert who possesses a comprehensive knowledge of both countries and their respective regions. Someone focused on nuclear or missile development and proliferation or on illicit finance may regularly follow both of these countries, but their work is likely to be limited by the boundaries of that single issue. And although governments and research institutes can establish positions for special advisors on North Korea and Iran to help bridge this gap, these positions are exceptions rather than the norm and exist outside of the normal production of analysis and scholarship. Perhaps as a result, the literature on the relationship between Iran and North Korea and the comparison between the two countries is sparse, and formal attempts to analyze North Korea and Iran together tend to take the form of edited volumes with separate discussions of the two countries and little active effort to leverage one country’s experience against the other.

Academic researchers are often better placed than think-tank scholars to carry out comparative studies of two or more countries in different regions with a focus on meaningful themes, but the professional study of contemporary foreign policy challenges has disappeared from the agendas of most political scientists.²² Despite the fact that Iran and North Korea are regularly compared in high-level policy pronouncements, little has been published in the academic literature on the comparison.²³ The review of literature on this important topic is therefore brief and offers opportunities for scholarly improvement, especially on the question of how to categorize this class of states, its specific attributes, and building a structured comparison that can support more objective policy calculations, as this study attempts.

Patrick Cronin compares the “double trouble” that Iran and North Korea represent for the international order. Arguing primarily from a security perspective, Cronin contends that these two states pose a major threat of interstate conflict at a time when this type of war is being replaced as a major security concern by intrastate (civil) wars and transnational terrorism. The pursuit of nuclear weapons by Iran and North Korea creates specific problems, especially in their respective regions, and presents general challenges to the nonproliferation regime. But with the exception of Shahram Chubin’s chapter on Iran’s efforts to obtain nuclear weapons in order to enhance its prestige and as a function of its domestic politics, the analysis does not delve deeply into the motivations and domestic pressures that help provide more insight into these countries’ behavior. The reader is left with a sophisticated understanding of how the actions of Iran and North Korea threaten regional order and of past efforts to suppress this particular behavior, but the focus is on these states as holistic actors, and little attention is given to how these regimes could be influenced from the inside out.²⁴

Bruce Cumings, Ervand Abrahamian, and Moshe Ma’oz focus on American foreign policy toward North Korea, Iran, and Syria, respectively, and present a liberal argument for greater diplomatic rapprochement with these states.²⁵ The analysis is political and prescriptive but has less focus on dispassionate analysis or pulling together the common threads of these three cases.

Alexander Lennon and Camille Eiss’s edited volume, Reshaping Rogue Regimes, provides insightful articles on the countries designated by the George W. Bush administration as the “Axis of Evil,” which are “generally recognized as underdeveloped countries pursing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and supporting terrorism.”²⁶ The authors ground their analysis in United States policy and questions of high politics, but they do not empirically test this hypothesis, and the data presented in this book’s subsequent chapters suggest reason to doubt this categorization of states pursuing WMD while supporting terrorism as the most appropriate description. North Korea and Iran are linked together in Lennon and Eiss’s volume because the states pose a security challenge to the United States and its allies and because stronger countries have largely failed to rein in these relatively weak countries using methods short of war. The theoretical essays discuss preemption, regime change, counterproliferation, and cooperative security as strategic options, as well as the drawbacks of these options. Ultimately, however, the editors leave it to the reader to make the comparison:

Robert Litwak contends that North Korea and Iran are examples of “outlier states” and that the dominant understanding of these states’ common attributes shifted across U.S. administrations. Contrasting relevant portions of the National Security Strategy of 2002 (Bush administration) and 2010 (Obama administration), Litwak argues that the Bush and Obama administrations’ different conceptions of these two states help explain different policy approaches. The Bush administration focused more on the nexus of terrorism and, profoundly affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, saw Iran and North Korea through the prism of the terrorism threat.²⁸ The Bush administration, in Litwak’s view, therefore concluded that changing these countries’ behavior required changing the regimes themselves. The subsequent Obama administration did not view the terrorism linkage as central or focus as much on the fundamental character of regimes and their leadership. This contributed to a stark difference in policy approach, Litwak contends, with the Bush administration seeking to change regimes themselves and the Obama administration seeking to change regimes’ behavior.²⁹

Ultimately, Litwak concludes that nuclear outliers are “adversarial proliferators” combining nuclear capabilities and hostile intent toward the United States. It removes from the same basket of states nuclear-armed states outside the NPT, including Israel, India, and Pakistan.³⁰ However, although this categorization may speak to the U.S. national security audience, it misses the broader and unique threat North Korea and Iran pose to the global nonproliferation regime and supports the North Korean and Iranian narrative that the superpower is attempting to single out their countries due to poor bilateral relations rather than genuine concerns about nonproliferation and implications for international peace and security.

We argue that although Iran and North Korea both are adversarial toward the United States, this is not why the international community widely should consider their nuclear activity a threat to international peace and security. Iran and North Korea are the only two states who have signed on to the landmark 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear weapons states and to have pursued contemporary nuclear activities in violation of those commitments to the other 190 state parties. North Korea and Iran maintain either nuclear weapons or the capacity to develop nuclear weapons quickly with long-standing nuclear aspirations that violate the letter and spirit of its NPT commitments.

Both the academic and scholarly policy literature on this topic is largely American-centric, articulating the commonality of these regimes in relation to United States security policy and interests. Comparative politics scholars classify states without reference to any individual country’s national interests regularly, but this scholarship generally focuses on political structure such as regime type. As will be demonstrated in subsequent chapters, grouping together North Korea and Iran based on their domestic political structures does not hold up to empirical scrutiny. Comparative politics scholars generally seek to explain as many states as possible under new theoretical constructs rather than provide more targeted scholarship that is closer to the cases under consideration. Although this has certain advantages to explain how the world’s states function, it makes theory more abstract with fewer foreign policy applications. Consequently, those seeking to explain the commonality between these two states are left without the benefit of a substantial and deep prior scholarly discourse on the matter.

The edited volume At the Nuclear Threshold is a notable exception to the American-centric security literature. With primarily Russian contributors and published in Moscow, the volume identifies North Korea and Iran as threats to international order without reference to U.S. national security objectives and interests.³¹ Russian scholars and officials in public comments regularly point to the importance of the NPT as the guiding document on global nonproliferation and acknowledge Russia’s national interest in upholding this nonproliferation baseline against politicization. Though Moscow has not always agreed with other great powers on the approach to bringing states violating NPT principles back into the fold, there has been a long-standing recognition in Russian strategic thinking that the NPT must be applied universally.

Likewise, the Chinese have articulated their strategic commitment to the denuclearization of Iran and North Korea even if China’s distinct approach frustrates negotiating partners. Most significantly, then U.S. President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed that the two powers would cooperate to denuclearize North Korea.³² Public messaging has been more mixed under the Trump administration, but both countries’ desire to see a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula appears intact.³³ However, we have not identified in-depth public scholarship on the North Korea–Iran comparison from Chinese sources. South Korean scholars, including the country’s former National Security Advisor, have studied the Iran–North Korea comparison with a more limited focus on the question of different types of sanctions available, but our project is more comprehensive and produces distinct policy recommendations based on our research.³⁴

The argument: the illicit nuclear aspirants

Illicit nuclear aspirants are states that satisfy two simple conditions: a state has materially pursued nuclear weapons, and this state’s nuclear effort is in direct violation of international law. The state must take overt acts to advance a nuclear weapons program to be categorized as a “nuclear aspirant.” A leader’s assumed motives in wanting a nuclear weapons program is insufficient to meet the definition of material pursuit of nuclear weapons. As a practical matter, this requires a sustained commitment over many years that requires a close examination of a state’s behavior to determine whether it is a nuclear aspirant. Our project is also contemporary in focus with an explicit effort to help inform foreign policy choices, so we focus on those states that are current illicit nuclear aspirants.

Our definition of “nuclear aspirant” includes all states that have a demonstrated nuclear weapons capacity (achieved its nuclear weapons aspirations), as well as those that have embarked on the long effort to craft a nuclear weapons option but have not yet conducted a nuclear test. Although states that successfully test a nuclear weapon are more easily identifiable, as these tests are observable,³⁵ we conclude that including only states with a demonstrated and fully functional nuclear device would be too narrow to be most useful analytically and for policy considerations. Demonstrating a nuclear capacity through a nuclear test is a later-stage step in a regime’s overt acts in realizing its nuclear weapons aspirations.

A state’s nuclear weapons program must be in direct violation of international law to be determined “illicit.” States that sign and ratify the 1968 NPT as non-nuclear weapons states pledge to all other signatories that they will not pursue a nuclear weapons program.³⁶ With near-universal adherence, with 191 state parties to the landmark treaty, the NPT enjoys legitimacy as the treaty with the most state parties of any international agreement outside the UN Charter. Signatories make specific, legally binding commitments to one another. Signature and ratification is a promise to 190 other states that the non-nuclear weapons state will forego a nuclear weapons program in exchange for certain benefits, including nuclear energy assistance.³⁷ States that decide to sign and ratify the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states and disregard that commitment to the international community by pursuing a nuclear weapons program violate international law with respect to the world’s most powerful weapons. These nuclear weapons programs are “illicit.”

Pursuing a nuclear weapons program in violation of one’s NPT commitments is enough for inclusion in this grouping, and a state does not need to master fully the technology before being included. Given the consequences of inclusion in the illicit nuclear aspirant category, debate should be robust on whether a state qualifies. In political science parlance, this means that researchers must be careful in coding decisions, given the substantial and real-world consequences of inclusion in this typology. This very debate has been particularly acute surrounding Iran’s nuclear program in trying to distinguish legitimate nuclear energy pursuits versus military applications of nuclear technology. North Korea likewise leveraged the dual-use energy and weapons applications of nuclear technology in the earlier years of its nuclear project to justify its nuclear efforts.

*Table 1.2* States by Nuclear Weapons Classifications
	NPT Signatories	Non-NPT Signatories
Nuclear Weapons States Recognized in the NPT	Licit Nuclear Aspirants: The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China	N/A
Nuclear Aspirants	Illicit Nuclear Aspirants: Iran and North Korea³⁸	Nuclear NPT Outliers: Israel, India, and Pakistan
Non-Nuclear Aspirants	Non-Nuclear Weapons States: 184 state parties³⁹	Non-Nuclear NPT Outlier: South Sudan⁴⁰

The latest nuclear accord that hopes to freeze Iran as a nuclear threshold state further begs the question whether Iran should be included as an illicit nuclear aspirant. Chapter 5 argues in depth that it is appropriate to include Iran in this typology, as Iran has taken substantial overt acts toward a nuclear weapons program, and we conclude that its aspiration has not been erased. Attaining the world’s most dangerous weapons is of great concern but ultimately immaterial to conclusions that a state should be included in the target group. Likewise, partial moves toward a nuclear freeze should not completely remove the country in concern from inclusion. Iran reducing certain portions of its nuclear infrastructure and accepting intrusive International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) inspectors, for example, is progress toward reintegrating itself with the global nuclear nonproliferation norm but does not offer a clean bill of health. High-level technocratic agreements like the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran are important but do not address the primary motivation for Iran’s nuclear aspirations that requires substantial follow-on work to hope to achieve.⁴¹

North Korea likewise embarked on a decades-long nuclear project under the guise of a peaceful atomic energy program as an NPT non-nuclear weapons state. North Korea removed any ambiguity about its nuclear weapons aspirations when it conducted its first nuclear weapons test in 2006. However, we argue that the regime’s overt acts well in advance of its first nuclear test correctly showed Pyongyang’s nuclear aspirations warranting inclusion in the typology. North Korea unilaterally declared its withdrawal from the NPT in 2003.⁴² It did not follow the procedures outlined in the treaty,⁴³ and the UN still lists North Korea as a signatory.⁴⁴ Regardless of the strict legal debate, North Korea bears continued inclusion in this grouping, as it continues to meet our basic definition of a state that pledged to the world not to pursue nuclear weapons by ratifying the NPT and violated that basic pledge as detailed in Chapter 5. North Korea’s subsequent efforts to withdraw from the pact do not make legal its past actions or change the basic character or status of the North Korean nuclear weapons program.

Our study focuses on the illicit nuclear aspirants, but Table 1.2 shows that this category is a subset of nuclear aspirants. The five states that exploded a nuclear weapon prior to 1967 (the United States, Russia,⁴⁵ the United Kingdom, France, and China) are the “nuclear weapons states” under the NPT and make fundamentally distinct pledges under the 1968 treaty. Although the nuclear weapons states promise to make good-faith efforts to pursue nuclear disarmament and share the benefits of atomic energy with other states, their nuclear weapons programs are not illicit. Though scholars have challenged the treaty’s discriminatory nature as enshrining “nuclear haves” and “nuclear have nots,”⁴⁶ the analytical and legal distinction remains and places these nuclear powers in a separate basket for analysis and policy recommendations.

Non-nuclear weapons states that uphold their commitment not to pursue nuclear weapons are the dominant group, comprising 184 state parties. South Sudan is similar to these 184 state parties in that it does not have a nuclear weapons program, although the new country has not signed the NPT yet. South Sudan is the world’s youngest UN member state, having joined the world body in 2011, and faces a myriad of other challenges, and its government has limited capacity. South Sudan’s signing and ratifying the NPT would be a welcome development toward the universality of the NPT, but South Sudan is not a major nonproliferation concern.

Because India, Pakistan, and Israel are not party to the NPT, they have not pledged formally and legally to the other signatories that they will not pursue nuclear weapons. Put differently, they have not pledged to almost the entire international community their intent to remain non-nuclear. They also do not enjoy the tangible and intangible benefits of the NPT as a result. The IAEA has no authority to inspect nuclear facilities in these countries, which are not in noncompliance with IAEA obligations and do not fall within the jurisdiction of the nonproliferation regime. But this legal fact does not change the security reality, and nonjoiners preclude the universality of the nonproliferation norm. India, Pakistan, and Israel’s status outside the treaty is a major challenge to the nonproliferation regime, but it is a different one than that posed by states that sign up to the treaty, seek to enjoy its benefits, and then violate commitments made to all the other signatories to refrain from pursuing nuclear weapons.⁴⁷ India, Pakistan, and Israel are NPT nuclear outliers, not illicit nuclear aspirants.

Our definition of the typology of illicit nuclear aspirants is simple, and efforts to stretch the concept to make it more sophisticated or complicated fail as explanatory tools. A theory best explains complex reality when it is parsimonious and includes only the necessary features to robustly identify a typology, or group, of states.⁴⁸ Despite human rights challenges, nondemocratic governance, past or current linkages to terrorism, ballistic missile cooperation with one another, difficult consular issues regarding foreign nationals, and even common public health problems, these two states are not categorized together for any of these reasons. They are illicit nuclear aspirants for this simple reason that they pursued the world’s most powerful weapons despite legally pledging not to do so. Attempting to add more elements only muddies the waters and injects inaccurate and misleading comparative metrics.

The full corpus of illicit nuclear aspirants is revolutionary authoritarian regimes, for example, but adding another adjective to the typology to describe “authoritarian illicit nuclear aspirants” or “revolutionary illicit nuclear aspirants” would unnecessarily limit the grouping. Nonauthoritarian or nonrevolutionary regimes that have likewise pledged to remain non-nuclear and violate that commitment in the future should have little solace that they would be excluded from the grouping. Likewise, the North Korean and Iranian revolutionary leaders and core institutions like the Korean Workers Party predated the state, prompting early regime leaders to try to institutionalize the revolutionary effort in state institutions and practices that would have lasting effects. These internal political structures are important, and we evaluate them in greater depth in the next chapter. We do not include them as a minimum requirement for inclusion in the typology to avoid stretching the concept of illicit nuclear aspirants. We return to the policy relevance of these revolutionary and formative attributes in the concluding chapter when we discuss the importance of the analytical category of illicit nuclear aspirants and associated consequences in deterring states with distinct histories from Iran and North Korea, like South Korea and Saudi Arabia, from considering an illicit nuclear weapons program.

Other groupings of nuclear aspirants are possible, and it would be incumbent upon the researcher to argue that alternative groupings are more meaningful. For example, one could focus on states outside of the recognized nuclear weapons states that violate human rights or show nondemocratic tendencies to capture Iran and North Korea. However, some Middle Eastern countries may argue for the inclusion of Israel in such a typology, citing its undeclared nuclear program and relationship with the Palestinians. If the definition includes weak regimes susceptible to military coups that retain nuclear weapons and have proliferated nuclear technology, one could argue that Pakistan fits the mold best, especially given the role of Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan in international nuclear proliferation rings.⁴⁹ Pakistanis may associate states with a demonstrated nuclear weapons capability and a willingness to go to war with its neighbors as an apt description of India.

In a similar vein, one can disregard the NPT’s distinction between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states and propose instead focusing on nuclear powers that violate the sovereignty of others to attempt to capture North Korea and Iran. But critics may point to Russia and even the United States following actions in Ukraine and Iraq, respectively, as members of this grouping. Detractors may note further that, although states seek nuclear weapons to deter foreign intervention, only the country with the first and largest nuclear arsenal in the world has actually ever used them. The inclusion of other metrics to categorize nuclear states or nuclear aspirants is possible, but it stretches the analytical category in a way that distorts a clear assessment. We argue that the concept of illicit nuclear aspirants captures an analytically robust and meaningful set of states that distinguishes them from the rest.

We also recognize that past nuclear aspirants that no longer exist or no longer have active nuclear programs provide additional insight to the typology historically, but they no longer pose the same contemporary challenge to the international order. Evaluating the applicability of seeming nuclear aspirants like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya, Bashir al-Assad’s Syria, and Park Chung-hee’s South Korea expands the universe of potentially relevant cases.⁵⁰ Our book chooses to focus on the contemporary illicit nuclear aspirants in order to provide greater depth to our analysis that seeks to make sense of and leverage the contemporary and long-standing cases that continue to afflict the international community.

The consequences: illicit nuclear aspirants and multilateral sanctions

The category of illicit nuclear aspirants is particularly important, as they can face specific multilateral sanctions for violating these principles as a threat to international peace and security. Inclusion in the grouping can have enormous consequences for a country. UN Security Council Resolutions are important to distinguish North Korea and Iran from the rest of the international community in terms of accepted behavior related to nuclear and ballistic missile technology. The Security Council has determined that these countries’ programs represent a threat to international peace and security and has authorized a series of multilateral sanctions.⁵¹ These UN Security Council Resolutions have the force and effect of international law, and UN member states are obliged to enforce the provisions outlined in them. It is a powerful tool to demonstrate that a collection of powerful states in the form of the permanent five Security Council members and the majority, if not all, of the other ten nonpermanent, rotating, and elected member states on the Security Council agreed with this assessment.

However, UN Security Council action comes rather late in a country’s nuclear development, and it provides an insufficient barometer to define these states under consideration. North Korea and Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons preceded their designation by the Security Council by decades. The Security Council takes on a significant role when the problem reaches an acute stage, but we must understand these nations’ threat to international peace comes well before its actions become so blatant as to allow UN Security Council action.

Illicit nuclear aspirants face consequences from a range of national governments imposing diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, increased surveillance, and military responses, including more robust missile defense assets placed in the affected region or shows of force. The United States has utilized these unilateral tools most extensively, given its power in the international system, but has sought to avoid bilateral diplomatic constructs that obscure the international dimension of the problem and the responsibilities of the wider international community. China has spent high-level diplomatic capital to urge North Korea to end its illicit nuclear program,⁵² and South Korea and Japan have both imposed their own national sanctions on the DPRK.⁵³ The EU has imposed sanctions on North Korea and Iran.⁵⁴ Russia has emphasized the importance of the NPT and applied diplomatic pressure on both states.⁵⁵ In short, illicit nuclear aspirants face a range of diplomatic, economic, and military costs by a variety of powerful international actors.

The similar illicit nuclear behavior has prompted national governments and the UN Security Council to employ a partially common set of tools and responses to Iran and North Korea. The structured comparison helps us evaluate whether additional tools used for Iran might be applicable to North Korea and vice versa. The common tool set includes sanctions, implied and explicit military threats, energy and other economic incentives, offers of diplomatic normalization, security assurances, and confidence-building measures toward both Iran and North Korea. However, there remain some diplomatic strategies applied or offered to one state that have not been applied to the other, such as nuclear fuel swaps, crippling financial sanctions, and accepting limited enrichment. The similar policy efforts toward these two states provide room for analysis on each tool’s comparative successes and failures. The unique policy approaches pursued with respect to only one of the two nuclear aspirants provide potential new options to apply toward the other state that we take up in the concluding chapter.

A meaningful distinction: U.S. asymmetric adversaries or threats to international peace

Previous labels for these various sets of states have never been subjected to robust scholarly inquiry, and the Iranians and North Koreans use the resulting analytical imprecision to their foreign policy advantage. Both argue that they should not be categorized together, and the vague and contradictory labels used to group them together are not justified. They claim that they do not occupy a special and negative space in international politics. Their only commonality is conflict with the hegemon, they argue. The United States and its partners impose double standards to deny them access to nuclear technology or peaceful space launches. They reject UN Security Council Resolutions, highlighting their unique threats to international peace and security as politically engineered by the United States to advance its bilateral agenda. The Iranians occasionally expand their argument that their former British colonial masters are to blame, and the North Koreans make similar complaints about Korea’s former colonist, Japan. The divided nature of the Korean nation injects unique concerns about the inter-Korean competition, and Israel’s place in the Middle East further diversifies Iranian talking points. But Iran and North Korea coalesce in a conclusion that they are most concerned about the United States.

North Korea and Iran argue that they are locked in a long-standing and existential bilateral dispute with the United States, and the superpower uses the nuclear issue to inappropriately multilateralize the dispute and enhance pressure on the smaller states in support of the United States’ national objectives. They claim the U.S.-directed pressure tools are precursors to regime change, and Pyongyang and Tehran must employ asymmetric means to deter foreign intervention.⁵⁶ Whether Iran and North Korea are violating a larger obligation to the international community (violating NPT commitments) or taking action to defend themselves against U.S.-directed regime change (building a limited nuclear deterrent) is a consequential finding for other countries determining whether to actively support international denuclearization efforts or stay on the sidelines.

Iran and North Korea regularly cite U.S. regime change efforts in Iraq and the inclusion of Iran and North Korea as the second and third states on the American “Axis of Evil” list to highlight the legitimacy of the two states’ security concerns.⁵⁷ As more time passes since the second Iraq War without explicit American military measures to induce regime change in either Iran or North Korea, that particular example loses some currency and is used less frequently. More recently, North Korea has pointed to the U.S.-led intervention in Libya as evidence of the perils of lacking nuclear weapons.⁵⁸ Time will only tell if they add Ukraine to the mix, given its decision to give up Soviet nuclear forces in 1994 in exchange for territorial guarantees that Russia later violated.⁵⁹ North Korean and Iranian officials question whether large powers would have dared to topple these regimes if they had nuclear weapons.

The United States is not committed to regime change, but public suggestions to the contrary by some influential American leaders can create pause for Iranian and North Korean leaders.⁶⁰ Both the Iranian and North Korean governments can and do cite these public comments as evidence of their legitimate security concerns in the face of Washington’s supposed efforts to overturn their government.⁶¹

A similar logic reasons that North Korea and Iran may not genuinely fear regime change but utilize this talking point to undercut international resolve against them. They may not gain friends or allies by noting these concerns, but they may convince states at the UN General Assembly, Human Rights Council, or even the Security Council to vote against or abstain on measures that seek to pressure either state. Other states with difficult relations with the United States or Western powers generally may be more easily persuaded that removing the Iranian or North Korean regimes threatens their own interests, as they may be the next target for diplomatic pressure – or at least receive increased scrutiny in the absence of the Islamic Republic or the Kim regime. Likewise, states may decide to place fewer scarce resources into sanctions enforcement or turn a blind eye to these obligations imposed on all UN member states. Great power patrons like Russia and China with veto power on the Security Council and considerable diplomatic, military, and, in certain cases, economic sway can do even more if they find these security concerns legitimate and otherwise seek to insulate the uneasy partners from international pressure and isolation. Clearly articulating how and why the behavior of Iran and North Korea is a threat to international peace and security and not merely a bilateral U.S.–Iran or U.S.–DPRK dispute is meaningful.

Iran’s Supreme Leader frequently notes the United States constructed the nuclear dispute in order to advance its adversarial bilateral agenda with Iran, and he has voiced publicly even in late stages of negotiating the most recent nuclear accord his doubt that the United States can negotiate in good faith. He notes that U.S. sanctions on Iran predate concerns about the nuclear program and are mainly sourced to the 1979 Iranian revolution, which marked the birth of the new regime in Tehran. The United States is not genuinely concerned about Iran’s civil nuclear program, which the United States and other Western powers helped initiate under the previous Iranian regime, but the United States only wants to use the issue as an excuse to impose sanctions to replace the Islamic Republic with a new Iranian puppet state like the Shah’s regime, he says. For Iran, the nuclear dispute is motivated by and a function of a wider and deeper set of political disagreements.

The Supreme Leader often returns to a theme that the United States is a hegemonic bully trying to assert its interests in the Middle East and trample on the rights and dignity of the people in the region in the process. Iran will take the morally correct path of standing up to the bully and not sign away its rights just because the hegemon demands it, he insists.⁶² Supreme Leader Khamenei said that Iran will not be cowed by “a few arrogant and bullying governments … We are against arrogance, we are against hegemonic systems, we are strongly against a few countries’ controlling the fate of the world and we shall fight it.”⁶³ The United States attempts to “dominat[e] the world” and “find fault with other countries, saying that they have not acted upon a certain part or article” of the NPT while the United States does not adhere to its own NPT Article 6 commitments requiring it to pursue nuclear disarmament.⁶⁴ These themes may not resonate loudly in Washington, but risk some persuasive appeal in other parts of the world.

Furthermore, Khamenei, like the North Korean leader, notes that his country must focus on scientific advancements to develop economically. Iran’s civil nuclear program is part of this more general effort to develop the country’s scientific and engineering capacities that will rejuvenate the economy, and Western powers do not have the right to question Tehran’s sovereign decisions on how best to develop its economy.⁶⁵ The superpower is bullying the small state, and the small states are simply trying to protect their sovereignty, which is a fundamental precept of the Westphalian international system.

Do Iran and North Korea pose a similar type of threat to the broader international community, or is the hegemon only trying to internationalize deep and long-standing bilateral disputes with these two nations? For those already convinced that Iran and North Korea occupy some intuitively similar space and that both pose global security challenges, this book’s contribution is limited to sharpening and clarifying that thinking. But others, especially outside Western capitals, appear to remain more skeptical and naturally want to be convinced of the analysis before making derivative policy choices. This book shows that North Korea and Iran are not merely “adversarial proliferators” that seek nuclear arms or a nuclear threshold capacity to address their long-standing disputes with the sole remaining superpower, but instead pose genuine threats to international peace that should raise the concern of states outside of their respective regions and with states that do not necessarily share a common set of security objectives with Washington.

Articulating a threat to the international community requires crafting a persuasive narrative to other countries that Iran and North Korea’s nuclear pursuit constitutes a real and present danger to their own national interests. References to international law and common values will win over some allies and partners, but a more comprehensive explanation for prioritizing efforts against these states globally requires more fleshing out. This need is easiest seen in sanctions enforcement. Why should Singapore deny entry to a foreign flagged vessel with North Korean cargo not controlled by international agreements to advance U.S. security, Thailand deny landing rights or overflight to a suspected proliferation-related plane, Spanish authorities board a suspect ship, or Chinese or European banks deny banking or insurance services to Iranian or North Korean clients? “Like-minded states,” by definition, agree with the strategic assessment and generally follow a similar policy course, but nonproliferation obligations go well beyond these states and require more work to persuade the “different minded.”

Citing adherence to obligatory UN Security Council actions is helpful; many countries find it more palatable to enforce a UN sanction than a unilaterally promulgated rule by any individual country. But convincing individual states that a nuclear Iran and North Korea are equally troubling for their own national interests goes much further in crafting proactive partners in stemming this threat to international peace and security. UN member states decide how to enforce sanctions in practice and can robustly enforce sanctions or drag their feet by, for example, finding necessarily fragmented evidence as insufficient to justify taking action. States must make individual, sovereign decisions on whether evidence is sufficient to interdict a particular shipment, for example, creating substantial space to claim adherence to UN sanctions while taking a lax approach to enforcement. The challenge is important, as the UN Security Council has noted explicitly that the biggest barrier to achieving its sanctions’ clearly stated ends with respect to North Korea and Iran is international implementation.⁶⁶ Understanding and articulating the unique threat these two states pose to international order do not comprise an academic exercise in categorization, but an essential element of analysis that informs policy choices for a variety of states.

The comparison also highlights why Northeast Asian regional powers should be concerned about Iran’s nuclear program and Middle Eastern regional powers should be concerned about North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Iran’s Arab neighbors fear a hegemonic Iran in the region and the Islamic Republic’s perceived continued threat to the Sunni monarchies, recalling a history of explicit Iranian efforts to export its revolution and opposition to the U.S.-backed regional order on which many of the Sunni monarchies in the Middle East rely for their security.⁶⁷ Israel has attempted to engage moderate elements of the Iranian regime for decades, and its leaders in recent years have noted their concern that Iran’s nuclear program poses an existential threat to Israel. U.S.-Iranian rapprochement would further raise Israeli concerns about U.S. abandonment.⁶⁸ Regardless of the motivation, Israeli politicians and citizens on both sides of the political spectrum clearly see a nuclear Iran as contrary to its national interests. However, security concerns about Iran, explored in great detail by Middle Eastern regional powers, have not substantially crossed over into similar focus and actions against North Korea’s nuclear program as well. With minor exception, the regional debates remain within each respective region.

Likewise, Northeast Asian regional powers are increasingly recognizing the threat to their national interest posed by Iran’s nuclear program. South Korea’s top diplomat on Middle Eastern affairs wrote that “the North Korean and Iranian nuclear issues are increasingly becoming one single international issue,” and Iran’s nuclear program threatens South Korean national interests, given the financial and nuclear knowledge transfers between Iran and North Korea to augment the well-documented ballistic missile trade.⁶⁹ However, the threat perception surrounding Iran’s nuclear program does not reverberate as directly or loudly in Northeast Asian capitals at elite levels. It resonates even less among these societies. Japanese politicians support its only ally’s approach to Iran, but also herald the “traditional and friendly” relations between Japan and Iran. One purpose of this study is to help clarify the situation for regional powers to consider their own security interests, including the out-of-area nuclear program that has indirect but important links to their own security.

Gulf monarchies worried about Iranian adventurism should closely follow developments in North Korea’s nuclear program and robustly counter that threat as much as South Korea and Japan must acknowledge the threat posed to their sovereign national interests – and not just their alliance with the United States – from Iran’s nuclear pursuits. Regional powers generally focus on security threats closer to home, so this is not a natural conclusion. Larger states with historical or budding ambitions beyond their region, like Russia and China, should be able to recognize this broader threat stream more readily even if they have different perspectives on the best approach to countering those threats. Because Iran and North Korea pose specific threats to the global nonproliferation regime and international order, a global response is required to comprehensively address these challenges.

Roadmap

This book has two distinct but interrelated objectives. First, it tests our typology of illicit nuclear aspirants laid out in this chapter against the empirical record. We demonstrate that North Korea and Iran are not uniquely paired together along other dimensions, but they are the only two states in the world today that have signed and ratified the landmark Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty pledging to remain non-nuclear weapons states and that violated those legally binding commitments to the international community. Second, we leverage the comparative assessment of these two countries’ histories and ideologies, domestic politics and economies, human rights practices, foreign relations, and nuclear policies to draw policy conclusions. We assess how the two countries responded to similar policy tools, including a variety of sanctions, military moves, and diplomatic offerings, and argue on the basis of our research how the experience from interactions with one country provide insight into policy toward the other.

This book proceeds in several parts. This chapter evaluates past efforts to theorize – implicitly and explicitly, and within government and academia – the appropriate characterization of these states. It posits that Iran and North Korea are the only two states that have accepted a non-nuclear weapons state status as a matter of international law by acceding to the NPT and have taken significant contemporary steps in violation of the letter and spirit of their commitment to the international community. They are illicit nuclear aspirants.

The middle chapters represent the bulk of the book and test whether the commonalities laid out in this chapter are found in reality. Chapter 2 places these challenges in context and provides a brief comparative contemporary history of Iran and North Korea. Chapter 3 compares the domestic political systems of Iran and North Korea to expose similarities and differences between the two countries and sets the stage to assess how these two domestic political and economic systems operate and react to similar international efforts toward them – both push (pressure) and pull (incentive) strategies by foreign powers. Chapter 4 turns to the policy choices of Iran and North Korea to see the scope of similarities and differences on an array of categories from human rights and civil liberties to security issues, including support for terrorism and proliferation activity. We discuss the critical military cooperation between the two states. With the comparison between the two states coming into clearer focus and structure of domestic and foreign interests evaluated, Chapter 5 compares the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues and efforts to resolve these issues diplomatically. The final chapter summarizes the key findings of the comparable elements of Iran and North Korea and explores policy lessons that stem from this analysis.

Notes

1For one take on the similarities and differences between the two states and nuclear agreements, see George Perkovich, “Why the Iran Nuclear Deal Is Not the North Korea Deal,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Article, April 28, 2015.

2“Rogue” has perhaps the most negative and emotionally charged connotation, whereas “outlier” has the most neutral and scientific implication. President Ronald Reagan referred to Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, and Nicaragua as “outlaw governments” sponsoring terrorism and pursuing weapons of mass destruction. The name of these regimes shifted to “rogue states” by the time of the Clinton administration, and the definition expanded to include states that suppress human rights, espouse radical ideologies, maintain a siege mentality and isolation from the outside world, and pursue ambitious military programs. However, the label was applied selectively and against states with a history of estrangement with the United States. See Robert Litwak, Outlier States: American Strategies to Change, Contain, or Engage Regimes (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2012), pp. 29–31, 155.

3For example, “outlier states” has also been used to describe the four states with a demonstrated nuclear weapons capability outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, as well as the separate grouping of Iran and North Korea.

4See, for example, then National Security Advisor Tony Lake, “Confronting Backlash States,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 1994.

5U.S. Department of Defense, “Quadrennial Defense Review 2014,” www.defense.gov/pubs/2014_Quadrennial_Defense_Review.pdf, pp. 4–5.

6U.S. Department of Defense, “Quadrennial Defense Review 2010,” www.defense.gov/qdr/qdr%20as%20of%2029jan10%201600.pdf, p. 124.

7U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “The National Military Strategy of the United States: 2015,” June 2015, www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Publications/2015_National_Military_Strategy.pdf.

8Barbara Starr, “Joint Chiefs Prep Military Strategy Plans for Trump and Tom Commanders,” CNN.com, December 3, 2016. The other three prioritized threats beyond Iran and North Korea were Russia, China, and terrorism.

9U.S. Department of State, “Leading Through Civilian Power: The First Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review 2010, Enduring Leadership in a Dynamic World, Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review 2015,” www.state.gov/documents/organization/153142.pdf

10U.S. Department of State, “Enduring Leadership in a Dynamic World, Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review 2015,” http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/267396.pdf.

11U.S. Department of Defense, “Quadrennial Defense Review 2010,” www.defense.gov/qdr/qdr%20as%20of%2026jan10%200700.pdf, pp. 31, 101, 105. We cannot use older reports to determine the origination of this concern about a threat to international peace. The 71-page 2001 QDR does not mention either country, the 2006 Nuclear Posture Review is not publicly available, and the 2002 document is available only in abbreviated form. The 2002 summary only notes, “Terrorists or rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction will likely test America’s security commitments to its allies and friends.: U.S. Department of Defense, “Quadrennial Defense Review 2001,” www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/qdr2001.pdf. NPR 2002, www.defense.gov/news/jan2002/d20020109npr.pdf, p. 2.

12Contemporary intelligence assessments are largely unavailable for unclassified research, but the necessity of strategic oversight in democratic societies means there are publicly available reports to the Congress on the U.S. intelligence communities’ analytical and intelligence collection priorities.

13Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Unclassified Report to Congress on the Acquisition of Technology Related to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Advanced Conventional Munitions Covering 1 January to 31 December 2011,” pp. 2–7. The same ODNI report covering 2004 also includes Libya, although primarily to recognize it giving up its nuclear facilities and acceding to the IAEA Additional Protocol. James Clapper, “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community,” Statement for the Record, Senate Committee on Armed Services, April 18, 2013, pp. 7–8. James Clapper, “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community,” Statement for the Record, Senate Committee on Armed Services, February 11, 2014, pp. 5–7.

14Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “The National Intelligence Strategy of the United States of America,” August 2009, www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/2009_NIS.pdf. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “National Intelligence Estimate: The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland,” July 2007, www.dni.gov/files/documents/NIE_terrorist%20threat%202007.pdf.

15U.S. Department of Defense, “Nuclear Posture Review 2010,” www.defense.gov/npr/docs/2010%20Nuclear%20Posture%20Review%20Report.pdf, p. iii.

16U.S. Department of Defense, “Nuclear Posture Review 2010,” www.defense.gov/npr/docs/2010%20Nuclear%20Posture%20Review%20Report.pdf, p. 3.

17U.S. Department of Defense, “Quadrennial Defense Review 2006,” www.defense.gov/home/features/2014/0314_sdr/qdr/docs/Report20060203.pdf.

18The United States removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2008, whereas Iran remains on the list. See Glenn Kessler, “U.S. Drops North Korea from Terrorism List,” The Washington Post, October 12, 2008.

19Julian Hattem, “Why Do So Many People Laugh at North Korea But Fear Iran?” The Atlantic, April 4, 2013.

20J. Dana Stuster, “Iran Still Leading State Sponsor of Terrorism, U.S. State Department Reports,” Foreign Policy, June 3, 2016. UN Watch, “Iran Is ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism,’ 11 Arab Countries Tell UN,” UN Watch, November 14, 2016, www.unwatch.org/iran-state-sponsor-terrorism-11-arab-countries-tell-un/. U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, 2016). The most recent U.S. Department of State report available concludes, “Iran remained the foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2015.”

21U.S. Department of Defense, “Nuclear Posture Review 2010,” www.defense.gov/npr/docs/2010%20Nuclear%20Posture%20Review%20Report.pdf, p. iv.

22Alexander George, Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2003). Stephen Walt, “The Relationship Between Theory and Policy in International Relations,” Annual Review of Political Science 8 (June 2005), pp. 23–48.

23Robert Kaplan, “Iran, Iraq, and North Korea: What Now?” The Atlantic, June 2009. Paul Wolfowitz, “What About Iran and North Korea?” The Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2010. David Sanger, “What ‘Engagement’ with Iran and North Korea Means,” The New York Times, June 16, 2010. For an argument from a former U.S. National Security Council Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control that the two threats should not be seen in the same light, see Steve Andreasen, “Nuclear Threats in North Korea, Iran: Why We Can’t Mix and Match Our Strategies,” Star Tribune, February 8, 2016.

24Patrick Cronin, Double Trouble: Iran and North Korea as Challenges to International Security (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008).

25Bruce Cumings, Ervand Abrahmanian, and Moshe Ma’oz, Inventing the Axis: The Truth about North Korea, Iran, and Syria (New York: New Press, 2006).

26Alexander Lennon and Camille Eiss, Reshaping Rogue States: Preemption, Regime Change, and U.S. Policy Towards Iran, Iraq, and North Korea (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), p. vii.

27Lennon and Eiss, p. xii.

28Litwak, pp. 189–96.

29Litwak, pp. xiii–xiv, 92. A related but distinct question, as Litwak perceptively identifies, is whether a state pursues nuclear weapons due to unique characteristics of leadership within a particular regime or the structural security situation facing the country in its region. Answering the question accurately is critical to assess whether a change of the particular regime (or, alternatively, its behavior) is likely to resolve the nuclear ambition or if virtually any leadership of that country would eventually come to a similar conclusion that it needs to pursue nuclear technology for self-preservation. One must determine whether Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs are motivated by internal or external factors in order to craft sustainable solutions to these enduring problems. In other words, are these nuclear programs fundamental to these countries’ existence and cannot be altered, or is there room for behavior adjustments on the objectionable nuclear activity? The answer should guide a nonideological response to the question whether some combination of carrots and sticks can coerce and entice – push and pull – the two states to giving up this activity or whether a more fundamental regime change or transformation is required.

30Litwak, p. 129.

31Alexei Arbatov (ed.), At the Nuclear Threshold: The Lessons of North Korea and Iran for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime (Moscow: Carnegie Moscow Center, 2007).

32Jackie Calmes and Steven Lee Myers, “U.S. and China Move Closer on North Korea, But Bot on Cyberespionage,” The New York Times, June 8, 2013. Richard Bush, “Obama and Xi at Sunnylands: A Good Start,” Brookings Up Front, June 10, 2013, www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2013/06/10/obama-and-xi-at-sunnylands-a-good-start/. Bonnie Glaser and Jacqueline Vitello, “US-China Relations: Sizing Each Other Up at Sunnylands,” Comparative Connections 15:2 (October 2013), pp. 1–15.

33Anthony Kuhn, “Rex Tillerson, Xi Jinping Meet in China as Secretary of State Wraps Up Asia Tour,” NPR, March 19, 2017. U.S. Department of State Office of the Spokesperson, “Secretary Tillerson’s Meeting with State Councilor of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Yang Jiechi,” February 28, 2017, www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/02/268078.htm. Lionel Barber, Demetri Sevastopulo, and Gillian Tett, “Donald Trump Warns China the US Is Ready to Tackle North Korea,” The Financial Times, April 3, 2017. Rex Tillerson, “Briefing by Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mnuchin, and Secretary Ross on President Trump’s Meetings with President Xi of China,” April 7, 2017, www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/04/07/briefing-secretary-tillerson-secretary-mnuchin-and-secretary-ross.

34Chung Yungwoo, “The Iran Nuclear Deal and Its Implications for North Korea,” Asan Institute National Commentaries, February 7, 2014, www.theasanforum.org/the-iran-nuclear-deal-and-its-implications-for-north-korea/.

35The UN’s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization as well as national governments monitor for “artificial earthquakes” that follow underground nuclear tests.

36The 1968 NPT text notes that states that exploded a nuclear weapon prior to January 1, 1967, are nuclear weapons states, which make their own commitments on nuclear energy and good-faith efforts toward nuclear disarmament. For a full text of the NPT, see United Nations, “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” June 12, 1968, www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/text.

37Daryl Kimball, “The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at a Glance,” Arms Control Association Fact Sheet, August 2012, www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nptfact. See also Nuclear Threat Initiative, “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT),” April 23, 2015, www.nti.org/learn/treaties-and-regimes/treaty-on-the-non-proliferation-of-nuclear-weapons/.

38North Korea claims to have withdrawn from the NPT based upon its public declaration and unilateral pledge not to abide by the treaty’s terms. The UN Treaties database still lists North Korea as an NPT signatory given the disparity between the North Korean method of trying to withdraw from the treaty and the method laid out in the treaty’s text. Illicit nuclear aspirants are states that have signed and ratified the NPT and taken overt acts to violate the non-nuclear commitments—this applies to North Korea under either legal interpretation. The United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs, “UN Treaties Database, Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/npt.

39The 184 state parties include all other UN member states not listed elsewhere on this table, as well as the “State of Palestine” and The Holy See, which are parties to the NPT but not UN member states.

40South Sudan became the latest UN member state in 2011. The country has not yet signed or ratified the NPT.

41The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed between the “P5+1” (the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) and Iran on July 14, 2015 is available online here: www.eeas.europa.eu/statements-eeas/docs/iran_agreement/iran_joint-comprehensive-plan-of-action_en.pdf.

42KCNA, January 10, 2003. Available in English at www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Deterrence/DPRKNPTstatement.shtml.

43George Bunn and Roland Timerbaev, “The Right to Withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): The View of Two NPT Negotiators,” Yaderny Kontrol (Nuclear Control) Digest 10:1–2 (Winter/Spring 2005), pp. 20–29.

44United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs, UN Treaties Database, “Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/npt.

45Formally, the Soviet Union was one of the five NPT nuclear weapons states. Russia, as the Soviet Union’s successor state, now enjoys that position.

46For an historically based discussion of the advent of the “discriminatory” nature of the NPT, see Roland Popp, Liviu Horovitz, and Andreas Wenger (eds.), Negotiating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Origins of the Nuclear Order (London and New York: Routledge, 2017).

47Olav Njølstad (ed.), Nuclear Proliferation and International Order (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), see in particular chapters 2–6, 9–10, and 12–15. Lawrence Scheinman, “Scheinman: Iran, North Korea, and the NPT’s Loopholes,” CFR Interview, January 27, 2005.

48Giovanni Sartori, “Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review 64 (1970), pp. 1033–53. David Collier and James Mahon, “Conceptual ‘Stretching’ Revisited: Adjusting Categories in Comparative Analysis,” American Political Science Review 87:4 (December 1993), pp. 845–55.

49Chaim Braun and Christopher Chyba, “Proliferation Rings: New Challenges to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,” International Security 29:2 (Fall 2004), pp. 5–49. Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Stole the World’s Most Dangerous Secrets and How We Could Have Stopped Him (New York: Twelve Publishers, 2007).

50Jacques Hymans, Achieving Nuclear Ambitions: Scientists, Politicians and Proliferation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington, DC: Wilson Center, 1995).

51“Threats to International Peace and Security” under the UN Charter Chapter VII, Article 41, which allows the UN Security Council to impose sanctions binding on all UN member states. More specifically, the important UN article states in full: “The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.” See the Charter of the United Nations, www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter7.shtml.

52Scott Snyder, China’s Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, and Security (New York: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009). Anthony Kuhn, “Why China Wants to Squeeze North Korea a Little But Not Too Much,” NPR.org, September 9, 2016. Michael Martina, “China Puts Temporary Ban on North Korean Coal Imports,” Reuters, December 11, 2016.

53Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Measures Taken by the Government of Japan Against North Korea,” February 10, 2016, www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/na/kp/page4e_000377.html. Republic of Korea Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “North Korean Nuclear Issue Documents,” www.mofa.go.kr/ENG/policy/kpen/nknuclear/documents/index.jsp?menu=m_20_20_10&tabmenu=t_3.

54For a comprehensive summary of EU sanctions, including those on Iran and North Korea, see European Union, Restrictive Measures (Sanctions) in Force (Brussels: European Commission, July 7, 2016). For a contemporary and official assessment of EU-Iran relations, see European Union External Action Service, “Iran and the EU,” October 22, 2016, https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/2281/iran-and-eu_en. For a contemporary and official assessment of EU-DPRK relations, see European Union External Action Service, “DPRK and the EU,” June 26, 2016, https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/4186/dprk-and-eu_en.

55Georgy Toloraya, “Russia’s North Korea Conundrum,” The Diplomat, March 17, 2016. Mohsen Milani, “Iran and Russia’s Uncomfortable Alliance,” Foreign Affairs, August 31, 2016. James Clay Moltz and Alexandre Mansourov, The North Korean Nuclear Program: Security, Strategy, and New Perspectives from Russia (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).

56Leon Sigal and Joel Wit, “North Korea’s Perspectives on the Global Elimination of Nuclear Weapons,” in Barry Blechman (ed.), North Korea and Iran (Washington, DC: Stimson Center), pp. 1–6. Anoush Ehteshami, “Iranian Perspectives on the Global Elimination of Nuclear Weapons,” in Barry Blechman (ed.), North Korea and Iran (Washington, DC: Stimson Center), pp. 24–28. David Ochmanek and Lowell Schwartz, The Challenge of Nuclear-Armed Regional Adversaries (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008), pp. 15–17.

57DPRK Foreign Ministry, “Statement of Foreign Ministry Spokesman,” KCNA, April 6, 2003. KCNA, “KCNA Detailed Report,” May 12, 2003. Brandon K. Gauthier, “How Kim Jong Il Reacted to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq,” NKNews.org, March 10, 2013. James Steinberg, “America May Wield ‘Fear Factor’ Against North Korea, Syria, Iran,” Brookings Op-Ed, April 13, 2003.

58DPRK Foreign Ministry, “Foreign Ministry Spokesman Denounces US Military Attack on Libya,” KCNA, March 22, 2011. Andrei Lankov, “Libya and North Korea,” The Korea Times, March 27, 2011.

59Ukraine received explicit security assurances in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing its territorial integrity in exchange for giving up the Soviet nuclear forces deployed on Ukrainian territory. Russia’s 2014 annexation of parts of Ukraine violate this agreement. Although the politics may dissuade Iran and North Korea from vocalizing publicly Russia’s actions as evidence of the dangers of paper assurances in exchange for perceived substantial means to deter foreign intervention by retaining nuclear arms or a capacity to develop them quickly, the example will not be lost on security-conscious decision makers in Pyongyang and Tehran.

60John Bolton, “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran,” The New York Times, March 26, 2015. Matthew Kroenig, A Time to Attack: The Looming Iranian Nuclear Threat (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014). Seymour Hersh, “The Iran Plans,” The New Yorker, April 17, 2006. Brian Knowlton, “Senators and Administration Spar Over North Korea Policy,” The New York Times, June 14, 2005. Maryam Rajavi, “The Iranian People Want Regime Change, Not Appeasement,” The Washington Times, June 17, 2015. Richard Haass, “Time to End the North Korean Threat,” The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2014. Richard Haass, “Regime Change and Its Limits,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2005.

61“Detailed Report,” KCNA, May 12, 2003. DPRK National Defense Commission Statement, KCNA, December 30, 2011. “Khamenei: US Wants Regime Change in Iran,” AlJazeera, February 9, 2014. Raphael Ahren, “Khamenei Aims to Ensure Iran Deal Won’t Lead to Regime Change,” The Times of Israel, July 22, 2015. Ali Farhadi, “Pursuing Regime Change in Iran: US Backed 2009 Riots,” Khamenei.ir, November 4, 2015. Chad O’Carroll, “Ahead of Trump, N. Korean Foreign Ministry Issues Nine Page Rebuke of Obama,” NKNews.org, November 23, 2016. DPRK Foreign Ministry, “Memorandum of the DPRK Foreign Ministry,” KCNA, November 21, 2016. Ryan Pickrell, “North Korea Freaks Out After the Wall Street Journal Calls for ‘Regime Change,’ ” The Daily Caller, April 4, 2017. Bret Stephens, “A ‘New Approach’ to North Korea: It’s Time to Make Regime Change the Explicit Aim of U.S. Policy,” The Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2017.

62See, for example, Khamenei, January 9, 2014; Khamenei, March 28, 2011. Khamenei, August 18, 2010. Khamenei, May 29, 2011. Supreme Leader Khamenei’s speeches are available at http://english.khamenei.ir/.

63Khamenei, February 17, 2010.

64Khamenei, April 21, 2010. Khamenei, August 18, 2011.

65Khamenei, March 28, 2011. Khamenei, August 18, 2011.

66The UN Panel of Experts (POE) on both Iran and North Korea highlight member states’ actions to implement UN Security Council sanctions as the key element to achieveing the sought effect. This has been a core theme for POE reports on North Korea and an important one with respect to Iran, though gaining less focus in the latest POE Iran report as the P5+1 and Iran have engaged in negotiations that include discussions of easing sanctions and restricting Iran’s nuclear program. The Iran-related committee’s (the “1737 committee”) documents are available at www.un.org/sc/committees/1737/panelexperts.shtml, and the North Korea–related committee’s (the “1718 committee”) documents are available at www.un.org/sc/committees/1718/panelofexperts.shtml.

67Trita Parsi, A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 15–18.

68Parsi, pp. 24–28; 70–71.

69Moon Duk-ho, Director General for African and Middle Eastern Affairs at the Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “United Nations Security Council Sanctions on Iran and North Korea,” in Jang Ji-hyang and Peter Lee’s (eds.), Do Sanctions Work? The Iran Sanctions Regime and Its Implications for Korea (Seoul: The Asan Institute for Policy Studies, 2013), pp. 14–17. For a concise review of the DPRK-Iran missile cooperation relationship, see Jeffrey Lewis, “The Axis of Orbit: Iran-DPRK Space Cooperation,” 38North, January 13, 2014.

1 Illicit nuclear aspirants