IN JANUARY 2011, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned that North Korea’s “continuing development of nuclear weapons and their development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) is becoming a direct threat to the United States.” He elaborated that the North Korean ICBM threat to the United States is not an “immediate threat” but a “five-year threat.”1 His successors have echoed it, with Leon Panetta describing North Korea as a “serious threat,”2 Chuck Hagel saying it was a “real and clear danger,”3 and Ashton Carter emphasizing “how dangerous things are on the Korean peninsula.”4 The year 2016 marks five years since Gates issued his warning. Indeed, North Korea conducted its fourth and fifth nuclear tests in January and September 2016, and missile tests—now also from submarines—have continued unabated. The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, after the success of an intermediate-range ballistic missile test firing, declared on June 23 that “we have the sure capability to attack in an overall and practical way the Americans in the Pacific operation theatre.”5 The US base in Guam is, according to Pyongyang’s rhetoric, within the range of a North Korean missile attack. Any nuclear-tipped missiles—whether intermediate-range or intercontinental—would be a grave threat to the United States and its allies in East Asia and raise profound challenges to international security. Yet targeting the United States with a nuclear payload is precisely where North Korea’s nuclear ambitions ultimately lie.
Pyongyang’s five nuclear tests, numerous missile tests, and stated ambition to miniaturize a warhead to fit on a missile and survive the ballistic trajectory, as well as its persistence with developing the synthetic materials required for the warhead to survive reentry, have caused a growing number of analysts to concur with former defense secretary Gates’s dire prediction that North Korea can or soon will be able to target the United States with nuclear weapons.6 Indeed, Kim Jong-un revised North Korea’s constitution to formally enshrine his country’s nuclear status within it and, in his 2015 New Year’s Day address, stated that “we were just in our efforts to firmly consolidate our self-reliant defense capability with the nuclear deterrent as its backbone and safeguard (of) our national sovereignty.”7 At the Seventh Congress of the Korean Workers’ Party, held in May 2016, Kim reaffirmed the byeongjin strategy of simultaneous development of nuclear weapons and the economy. Also, after the fifth nuclear test in September 2016, North Korean authorities reiterated their determination to continue the development of their nuclear deterrent.
A nuclear-capable North Korea would change if not transform strategic dynamics on the Korean Peninsula and in doing so threaten the evolving and fragile East Asian order. Able to destroy not only Seoul (for which Pyongyang never needed nuclear weapons) but also Washington and Tokyo, the relatively inexperienced Kim Jong-un could make coercive demands and authorize limited challenges and aggressive behavior in the belief that fears of inadvertent nuclear escalation would sufficiently restrain Washington and its regional allies. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this could result in one or several nuclear crises, nuclear escalation, the possible collapse of the North Korean regime, and the sudden end of the world’s most isolated state. Such an outcome would fundamentally transform East Asia, presenting problems for Seoul ranging from having on its doorstep the world’s fourth largest army likely in possession of nuclear weapons (and without a commander), the possibility of nuclear escalation, massive reunification costs, and similar exacerbated security if not refugee problems for Beijing with US troops almost on its borders. The challenges associated with reunification and the role of the United States in a unified Korea would present further challenges for an already strained US-China relationship. This outcome would be as important to the evolution of post–World War II Asian security as the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 1950–53 Korean War and the 1972 visit to China by Richard Nixon. Of course, the specter of nuclear escalation, especially for a regime as fragile as North Korea’s, could lead Kim and his associates to exercise extreme caution, using nuclear weapons only for deterrence against American and South Korean aggression, with the dangerous but maybe otherwise stable status quo persisting. After all, most nuclear powers behave with caution most of the time. That we know so little about which of these two very different outcomes would transpire if North Korea develops such a nuclear capability is telling. It reveals the crucial gap between what we think we know about the North Korean nuclear challenge and how it has recently changed.
This is not the first book about North Korea and nuclear weapons. A long line of authors have told the story of how the country slipped through concerted nonproliferation and disarmament efforts to reach the cusp of an operational nuclear deterrent.8 Many have addressed the place of North Korea within East Asia.9 The problem with these literatures is that nonproliferation and disarmament are increasingly looking like relics of a distant past on the Korean Peninsula. As Patrick Morgan notes in his chapter, multilateral negotiations, economic interaction, and cultural, intellectual, and familial interchanges have all been attempted to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem and have been almost consistently fruitless. The world is going to have to live with a nuclear North Korea, but few analysts and scholars have come to grips with this. The future nuclear challenges associated with North Korea will not only be nonproliferation and denuclearization but also nuclear deterrence, extended (nuclear) deterrence, and arms control.
This is not to say that we can specify when Pyongyang would develop the capability to target Washington with nuclear weapons. Nobody—not even the North Koreans—can be sure when this would happen, and the essays in this book make no effort to answer this question. Rather, we start from the assumption that Pyongyang is moving perilously close to achieving an operational strategic nuclear deterrent.10 This is an assumption that more and more analysts are prepared to make. In February 2015, for example, Jeffrey Lewis assessed recent speculation and stated that the three main hurdles facing the development of strategic North Korean nuclear missiles are making the warhead sufficiently small; able to survive the shock, vibration, and temperature change associated with ballistic missile flight; and able to survive the extreme heat of reentry that gets worse with range. He concluded that “the North Koreans are developing military capabilities that we will, sooner or later, have to deal with.”11
The individual chapters in this book explore what the historical record suggests about the posture that the regime will deploy and the policies that it will likely authorize. They address the trade-offs facing the United States, South Korea, and China as they respond to a nuclear North Korea and each other’s responses to this new strategic reality.12 They address what we argue are the five core questions of the North Korean nuclear challenge in the early twenty-first century. First, if North Korea develops nuclear weapons, how, if at all, should we expect its policies toward Seoul, Beijing, and Washington to change? What nuclear posture will it likely develop, and what policies will this enable? Second, how could and how should Seoul respond to a nuclear North Korea? Short of developing an indigenous nuclear force that might force a reassessment of the US alliance, an aggressive stance toward Pyongyang might deter North Korean aggression but would risk inadvertent nuclear escalation, while a more relaxed one would reduce that nuclear risk but open the door to nuclear danger through North Korean aggression. Seoul also has to manage the trade-offs associated with its core alliance with Washington that both deters North Korean provocations through extended deterrence but that in doing so seriously threatens Pyongyang and risks the escalation that it is designed to prevent. Third, how should Washington deal with a nuclear North Korea? If Kim Jong-un developed the capability to target Washington with nuclear missiles, North Korea would become the first state outside the P5 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council) that is hostile to the United States and able to target it with nuclear weapons, effectively succeeding where Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi failed. But North Korea and the United States are like David and Goliath. How should Washington deter North Korea from conventional aggression and other destabilizing activity, such as sensitive nuclear assistance, while assuring Kim that he and his regime will survive given their much weaker military and economic power? Fourth, how will China address the trade-off of perpetuating the existence of North Korea and the drain on US attention and power-projecting capability that the regime naturally exhibits, while at the same time preventing its increasingly reckless behavior, which pushes Tokyo and Seoul further into Washington’s orbit and may even push them toward developing independent nuclear forces, an outcome that Beijing ultimately seeks to avoid? Fifth, to what degree would a nuclear North Korea undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and other efforts to curtail the spread of nuclear weapons and ring in other potential proliferators? We address each in turn.
It is first worth pointing out that answers to these questions not only address debates about future North Korean foreign policy under the influence of nuclear weapons but also shed light on other debates in international relations. Despite the seven-decades-long existence of nuclear weapons, the conditions under which nuclear proliferation would embolden leaders to authorize assertive policies remain unclear. When do nuclear powers throw their weight around, and what causes them to refrain from such dangerous policies? Do states that are further away from achieving internationally unacceptable outcomes such as nuclear weapons actually generate greater benefits in terms of concessions from others because they are seen as more likely to change course? What is the role of word and deed in influencing observers’ estimations of reputation for resolve, and does the nuclear context in East Asia change what we have learned from earlier debates about reputation that focused on the great powers in the world wars? What are the limits to the great powers’ ability and tolerance of pesky but persistent menaces such as North Korea, and how do these limitations serve to seriously threaten those same great powers (such as, say, causing Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons)? Can regimes such as the NPT withstand repeated violations by states such as North Korea? Readers will find that these questions are explored in these pages.
Washington’s long-standing disputes with most of its major adversaries of the post–Cold War era have been significantly transformed through regime change (Iraq and Libya) or diplomatic breakthroughs (Cuba and Iran). Its dispute with North Korea, however, remains eerily similar to what it looked like six decades ago. North Korean nuclear weapons have presumably done a lot to prevent both carrots and sticks from transforming decades of mutual hostility and mistrust. Pyongyang has long demanded diplomatic recognition that would provide desperately needed legitimacy to the regime and, more recently, acceptance of its nuclear power status. Washington has long refused to formally end the Korean War and recognize the Kim dynasty and has stipulated verifiable denuclearization as the price for bilateral diplomacy.13 Indeed, a North Korean strategic nuclear capability would upset what has otherwise been a fairly stable rivalry. Pyongyang would be the first strategic nuclear power that is not a member of the P5 and hostile to Washington, and even a small nonsurvivable nuclear force may convince Kim Jong-un and/or his associates in the military that they can now up their demands and associated coercive threats to Seoul and Washington. The resulting policies may kill more people and risk greater escalation than the 2010 sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan and shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. Victor Cha found that every North Korean provocation for the past thirty years has been followed within about six months by a period of dialogue and negotiations whereby Pyongyang has gained some concession from Washington and/or Seoul.14
But as Cohen argues in his chapter, despite seventy years of living with nuclear weapons and North Korea testing a nuclear warhead once every two years on average since 2006, what North Korea would do with a nuclear weapon is far from clear. The allure of a nuclear deterrent might convince Kim that he can increase his coercive demands of Seoul and Washington and that the threat to do something that could cause nuclear escalation would prevent any South Korean and American retaliation. But if North Korea can get away with such brinkmanship short of nuclear escalation, why couldn’t Kim also learn that Washington and Seoul could forcefully prevent such emboldenment without a nuclear weapon or Pyongyang’s extensive artillery being fired? Moreover, if the risk and danger of nuclear escalation would moderate responses to North Korean aggression, should we not also expect it to moderate that very North Korean aggression? How North Korea would assess these trade-offs, and the resulting nuclear posture that the regime would opt for, is unclear.
South Korea may face the most complex strategic environment in Asia. A very weak but heavily armed North Korea, despite being no match for the South Korean military, threatens Seoul with imminent destruction. Former US commander in Korea Gary Luck famously told President Bill Clinton in 1994 that a second Korean War would “kill one million people, cost the United States one hundred billion dollars, and cause one trillion dollars’ worth of industrial damage.”15 The alliance with the United States has been the basis for South Korean security for most of the state’s existence. But Seoul and Washington have often not seen eye to eye on the threat posed by Pyongyang, and South Korea has much more to lose in any conflict with the North than Washington. The challenge for Seoul has always been to get Washington to do enough to deter challenges and provocations from the North but not to be so menacing to the Kim dynasty that Washington causes the escalation that Seoul wants it to prevent. South Korea has recently taken slightly more initiative in achieving its security against the North—as Terence Roehrig argues in his chapter, after the 2010 challenges many analysts believed that Washington had to restrain Seoul—but Seoul still has a long way to go.
Complicating this further is South Korea’s largest trading partner, China. While South Korea must placate China, it must also apply pressure on Beijing because it is economically and perhaps politically propping up the Kim regime. As North Korea moves closer to a nuclear capability, it has and will continue to challenge South Korea in ways that have been increasingly frustrating to Beijing but that Kim has presumably correctly calculated Beijing has little inclination but to put up with. When North Korea develops a strategic nuclear deterrent, the trade-offs facing South Korea will be exacerbated, forcing Seoul into quadrilateral strategic dynamics that will involve the right combination of threats and assurances to North Korea, the United States, and China. How Seoul navigates this complex web will significantly determine the amount of instability that a North Korean bomb wreaks on East Asia.
How the United States responds to China’s rise will surely be the main geopolitical event of the twenty-first century. But the North Korean nuclear challenge raises a perhaps greater likelihood of conflict and nuclear escalation, relatedly challenging trade-offs, and is closely related to China’s rise. Many observers of international politics have echoed Thucydides’s famous dictum that the strong do what they will while the weak suffer as they must.16 But adding nuclear weapons into the mix, especially to the arsenal of the weaker side, takes us into new and strange strategic territory. The greater the imbalance in relative military and economic power, the higher the incentives for the weaker state to develop nuclear weapons, authorize dangerous nuclear postures that use nuclear weapons to deter conventional and nuclear attacks, and possibly use nuclear weapons in crises as demonstrations of resolve.17 After all, in the weeks after North Korea’s third nuclear test in February 2013, US Air Force B-52 and B-2 bombers flew round trips over the Korean Peninsula, where the latter dropped inert munitions on a South Korean bombing range.18 Pentagon officials called this mission a clear demonstration of “the United States’ ability to conduct long range, precision strikes quickly and at will.” Likewise, two months after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January 2016, the United States, at its joint military exercises with South Korea, used those strategic assets again to demonstrate its superior capability and resolve against Pyongyang. The same occurred after Pyongyang’s fifth nuclear test in September 2016.19 Iraq’s, Iran’s, and Libya’s nuclear programs can be partly explained through this US unipolarity logic, but North Korea is its exemplar. Pyongyang’s long-standing inferiority to Washington, its deep hostility and mistrust in the face of an armed conflict that has never been formally ended, its international if not regional isolation, and its inclusion in an axis-of-evil speech with a regime that was subsequently toppled have all arguably vindicated North Korea’s reliance on nuclear weapons.
The challenges facing Washington are not limited to striking the balance between deterring and not provoking North Korea. Barack Obama’s successor must not only deter North Korean aggression but also convince Seoul that it will do this, risking San Francisco for Seoul, and rein in any unnecessarily provocative South Korean moves that might result from a perceived commitment deficit from Washington. The head of operations for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff recently warned that “if North Korea pushes ahead with provocations that would threaten the lives and safety of our citizens, our military will strongly and sternly punish the provocations’ starting point.”20 At the same time, fiscal pressures will force Washington to encourage Seoul to take on more of the burden while restraining any provocative policies. Further complicating this is that Washington has to ensure that any policies designed to deter Pyongyang and/or reassure Seoul do not provoke Beijing. China has more leverage over Pyongyang than anybody else, and Washington needs to convince Beijing that the increasingly dangerous North Korean provocations are not in American or Chinese interests. Washington needs to take advantage of the regional insecurity caused by a nuclear North Korea to shore up its allies in a way that supports wider cooperative and competitive agendas with Beijing.
The core challenge facing China in the twenty-first century is to grow and consolidate its economic and military power in a manner that reassures rather than threatens the region. Beijing’s policies in recent years have reminded others that its regional interests have to be taken seriously but have also pushed many in East and Southeast Asia into Washington’s arms. This is an outcome that Beijing has explicitly sought to avoid.21 The tradeoffs facing Chinese policy toward Pyongyang reflect this logic and highlight the great stakes that a nuclear North Korea poses for Beijing. For a long time North Korea has been a weak but persistent and reckless annoyance to US policy in East Asia, sapping much diplomatic energy and absorbing a significant portion of its power-projection capability in the region. This has been a welcome dynamic for Beijing, as ever since US troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel Chinese leaders have been very wary of US troops on their border.
But as ever, North Korean nuclear weapons move strategic dynamics on the Korean Peninsula into a new era. The problem for Beijing is that, as Fei-Ling Wang points out in his chapter, North Korea, in being a nuisance for Washington, also sufficiently threatens Seoul, Tokyo, and elsewhere. This pushes them closer to Washington, raising incentives for South Korea and Japan to overcome their own troubled historical animosities and possibly develop their own nuclear weapons. The latter is an outcome that Beijing wants to avoid at all costs, but its support of North Korea could bring it about. While a North Korea pursuing nuclear weapons short of a strategic nuclear deterrent may have been a net positive for China, a North Korean strategic nuclear deterrent and a regime willing to act at odds with Beijing risks the worst outcomes that Chinese leaders are working hard to avoid. Even if China’s rise does not bring about a counterbalancing coalition, a nuclear North Korea might. Tails often wag dogs. Beijing needs to assess how it can exert greater leverage over Pyongyang such that it makes US influence in East Asia costly but not too dangerous.
These are significant strategic challenges that deserve serious and systematic study but remain oddly unaddressed. Indeed, the North Korean nuclear challenge looms as a central factor in China-US competition. As we have argued above, too many North Korea and East Asia watchers remain wedded to disarmament and nonproliferation on the Korean Peninsula rather than extended deterrence and reassurance. The fifth core question raised by a nuclear North Korea is its impact on the NPT and global nuclear disarmament regime. North Korea would be the only state to effectively play the system to the extreme, having originally joined the NPT to then walk out and develop nuclear weapons. Will North Korea’s successes lower the bar at which others would be willing to incur the costs of similarly walking away from the treaty? To what extent has North Korea undermined global norms that stigmatize the spread of nuclear weapons as illegitimate and inappropriate? North Korean nuclear weapon development has occurred amid Pakistan expanding and upgrading its nuclear arsenal, India slowly going in the same direction, and China and Russia modernizing and enlarging their nuclear arsenals. If the international system has in some ways become more accommodative of the vertical if not horizontal spread of nuclear weapons, to what extent has North Korea damaged a nonproliferation regime already under heavy pressure?
The following chapters deal with the five points raised above. In chapter 1, Patrick Morgan wades through the challenges, failures, and ongoing initiatives that North Korea and especially North Korean nuclear weapons have represented. He notes that while the regime’s isolation, strategic culture, and political weakness were always going to make its smooth integration into the region troublesome, the regime’s nuclear weapons have greatly exacerbated the problems, dangers, and limits of initiatives to redirect Pyongyang’s path. Indeed, North Korea’s nuclear program has now gotten to a point where, Morgan argues, deterrence can and possibly has caused the dangers that it has been designed to prevent. He points out that part of the problem must be attributed to the region’s weak and eroding structures of what he calls “international system management.” He notes the various initiatives that have been attempted and why they have produced such meager results, outlining the logic—or failed logic—of unification, arms control, and economic interaction. He points out that despite this poor outlook, the sky has not yet fallen: nuclear use and regional nuclear proliferation cascades have yet to occur, although campaigns to eliminate nuclear weapons have fallen on hard times. He concludes that the best solution would be unification, outlines the challenges involved, and also addresses other possibilities, including economic engagement, military strikes, and engagement.
In chapter 2, Sung Chull Kim discusses North Korea’s evolving nuclear doctrine and its revisionist strategy. North Korea’s announcement that it had adopted a policy of nuclear deterrence in June 2003 marked a sharp about-turn from its previous rhetoric of peaceful use of nuclear power. This development may be attributed to a recognition that it had to cope with the US policy of preemptive attack in the post-9/11 era. North Korea presented its formal nuclear doctrine in the Nuclear Weapons State Law, which was adopted by the Supreme People’s Assembly in April 2013. Kim shows that, first, North Korea’s nuclear deterrence strategy, which may be inferred from both its doctrine and Pyongyang’s behavior, demonstrates an intention to penetrate a vulnerable point of Washington’s extended deterrence: low-intensity, local offensive actions against Seoul and eventually direct nuclear threats on Seoul and Washington. Second, North Korea’s aim is to compel its neighbors to accept it as a nuclear weapon state and thus change the status quo on the Korean Peninsula and more broadly in the Asia-Pacific; North Korea demands nuclear arms control negotiations in this context. Third, while North Korea sees nuclear deterrence as an equalizer, the United States and South Korea must explore an innovative peace process, as well as employ deterrence, to stop Pyongyang from continuing to expand its nuclear arsenal and make technological progress.
In chapter 3, Michael D. Cohen addresses how Pyongyang’s development of the capability to target the United States with nuclear weapons would influence its foreign policy. Cohen argues that it would cause more dangerous crises than those of the last decade and predicts that these will eventually cause Kim Jong-un and his senior military associates to experience fear of imminent nuclear war or conventional regime change. Cohen shows that the effect of such fear will depend on whether Kim believes that he has control over such escalation. Cohen argues that if he experiences fear of imminent nuclear escalation and believes that he has some control over it, he will moderate his nuclear threats and behave like other experienced nuclear powers. But if he reaches the nuclear brink and believes that he has no control over the crisis, worrying that the end is nigh, he will likely authorize policies that could cause nuclear war. Cohen uses this insight to prescribe and proscribe policies for Washington, Seoul, and the regional community.
In chapter 4, Tristan Volpe addresses the questions of how Pyongyang used its nuclear program to pursue coercive diplomacy and why this diplomacy now fails to achieve its intended outcome. Volpe shows that at the emerging stage of technical development in the 1990s, North Korea could issue a credible threat of proliferation backed by a relatively low-cost assurance to suspend nuclear activities in exchange for concessions from the United States. Once North Korea’s nuclear program left this fissile material “sweet spot” during the Six-Party Talks, it became prohibitively costly and unattractive for the regime to reverse course or even freeze these activities. The North Koreans may have liked to pretend that they were still in the sweet spot during subsequent discussions, but the mature nuclear enterprise no longer provided an easy means to practice coercive diplomacy. Volpe’s identification of the fissile material sweet spot explains in part why North Korea’s buildup of nuclear capabilities over the last decade did not translate into an enhanced edge to extract concessions from the United States. Given the centrality of coercive diplomacy to North Korean foreign policy in general, however, proliferation blackmail is unlikely to go away as the country continues to develop its nuclear arsenal. Future attempts to bargain with the nuclear enterprise itself are likely to fail and will increase the risk of conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
In chapter 5, Van Jackson shows that there is a pattern in North Korean interactions with the United States and South Korea that suggests the importance—even the primacy—of North Korea’s past word and deed in determinations about whether its commitments are likely to be believed. Specifically, when North Korea warned about nonviolent actions relating to its nuclear and missile testing, US officials believed them. But when North Korea made threats about initiating war or nuclear attacks, neither US nor South Korean officials tended to take them very seriously. In both instances, evidence suggests US and South Korean credibility judgments had as much to do with North Korea’s track record of rhetoric and behavior as its assessed capability. The basic observation that North Korea’s behavioral history affects the degree to which others find its threats credible is at odds with arguments that assume or imply that nuclear threats are always—or ought to be—taken seriously.
Chapter 6, by Chaesung Chun, examines South Korea’s deterrence strategy. According to Chun, South Korea has tried to combine deterrence and sanctions to forge a balance of power between the two Koreas upon which they can negotiate future reconciliation and engagement. But deterring North Korea is harder than most theorists and strategists presume. North Korea’s nuclear and missile advances might nullify the South Korea–US alliance’s development-deterrence mechanisms. Furthermore, although Kim Jong-un is functionally rational, many psychological biases and regime characteristics increase the likelihood of nonrational or subrational behavior. Chun argues that deterrence should be context-specific: What is unacceptable damage and what is the desired benefit are decided by particular contexts in which the deterrence game is being played. To produce a mutually stable concept of deterrence, there should be a gradual process of forging a socially constructed regime of deterrence between the two Koreas and among the major powers in the region. The more important point is that on the Korean Peninsula, deterrence itself is not a purpose but only a basis from which the two Koreas can start negotiation for reconciliation and ultimately unification. Chun concludes that the combination of deterrence and engagement is indispensable.
In chapter 7, Terence Roehrig details North Korean conventional and nuclear capabilities and the US response in various dimensions; he also shows how the US extended deterrence has worked and examines whether it will be able to deter the North Korean nuclear threat. Above all, Roehrig views the possibility of North Korea relinquishing its nuclear capability as a fading memory. Pyongyang will continue to grow its arsenal into a small nuclear deterrent. As North Korean nuclear capabilities grow, many are likening this to the potential dynamics of a stability-instability paradox whereby strategic deterrence remains stable but Pyongyang may become more tolerant of risk at lower levels, believing it is safe from regime-ending retaliation. The United States has responded in three general directions. First, it continues to seek a diplomatic solution to the problem of denuclearizing North Korea. However, talks have shown little sign of restarting, and the Obama administration has remained firm in its policy of strategic patience. Second, the US military has undertaken several measures to strengthen deterrence at the strategic level and, more importantly, to deter lower-level North Korean provocations. Finally, the United States has also sought to encourage greater trilateral cooperation among Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul to deal with North Korea. In the end, deterrence remains the most viable option for ensuring security in Korea, but efforts must continue to resume dialogue.
Chapter 8, by Fei-Ling Wang, outlines China’s position on the North Korean nuclear issue. He assesses how the Sino-US rivalry affects North Korea’s nuclear path. According to Wang, for its regime survival the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has pursued a foreign policy objective of resisting and reducing the United States in its neighborhood. A manifestation of this has been China’s policy toward North Korea. Beijing’s failure to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear ambition has epitomized an irony that, with its ever-rising power, China’s national security environment and freedom of action in East Asia are stagnant, if not deteriorating. Left alone, the North Korean bomb undercuts China’s power and prestige every day as it poisons China–South Korea relations and undermines the Chinese leadership in the region and beyond. More and graver uncertainties and chain reactions caused by the North Korean bomb are likely down the road to further compromise China’s national interest. To apply its significant but likely one-shot leverage to force a denuclearization of North Korea, China risks losing its only treaty ally and ideological comrade and strengthening the hand of the United States. The catch-22 Beijing faces in dealing with nuclear North Korea, therefore, illustrates the suboptimal nature of the PRC foreign policy but may still suggest peculiar opportunities for peace and stability in Northeast Asia.
In chapter 9, Yangmo Ku assesses the dynamics between North Korea’s nuclear challenges as a threat or a spear and the NPT system as a defensive shield. Ku argues that concern for regime survival has consistently been the most important motive for North Korea’s nuclear development. North Korea became a de facto nuclear power by utilizing four weak elements in the NPT system: International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, the NPT withdrawal clause, few constraints on transfers of nuclear technology, and the freedom to conduct underground nuclear tests. Ku also contends that the NPT system itself will continually have little actual power to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem. In addition, North Korea’s status of a de facto nuclear state could gradually increase neighboring countries’ desire to acquire nuclear weapons, posing a threat to peace and stability in East Asia. Finally, Ku suggests that to break through the impasse in the North Korean nuclear issue, the South Korean government should make every effort to persuade both the United States and North Korea to mitigate their hostilities toward each other and to sponsor diplomatic talks regularly, despite their many policy differences.
In the conclusion, Sung Chull Kim and Michael D. Cohen address the difficulty in establishing a stabilizing deterrence on the Korean Peninsula, the ways in which the North Korean nuclear issue has complicated US-China rivalry and regional dynamics, the fallout for the nonproliferation regime, and other policy implications. The North Korean nuclear challenge is second only to China’s assertive policy in the South China Sea as the most important driver of interstate tensions and conflict in Asia today. But as the contributions that follow show, it is much less well understood. Pyongyang’s nuclear successes and trajectory require a new mind-set for thinking about how we can deal with North Korea in the twenty-first century. This book is a first step in that direction.
1. Robert M. Gates, “Media Roundtable with Secretary Gates from Beijing, China,” January 11, 2011, http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/
transcript.aspxPtranscriptid=4751.
2. Robert Burns, “Panetta: U.S. Will Boost Presence against North Korea,” Associated Press, October 26, 2011, https://sg.news.yahoo.com/panetta-us-boost-presence-against-n-korea-100108096.html.
3. “Hagel Calls N. Korea Real and Clear Danger, as US Plans Defense System in Guam,” Fox News, April 3, 2013, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/03/hagel-calls-n-korea-real-and-clear-danger-as-us-plans-defense-system-in-guam/.
4. Aditya Tejas, “Ashton Carter Condemns North Korean Missile Launch Just before Meeting in Seoul,” International Business Times, September 25, 2015.
5. “North Korea Leader Kim Jong-un Says Successful Musudan Missile Launch Gives Ability to Attack US,” ABC News, June 23, 2016, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016–06–23/north-korea-leader-says-missile-gives-ability-to-attack-us/7535646.
6. Jeffrey Lewis, “North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: The Great Miniaturization Debate,” 38 North, February 5, 2015, http://38north.org/2015/02/jlewis020515/.
7. Kim Jong-un, “New Year Address,” Korean Central News Agency, January 1, 2015, http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm.
8. See, for example, Ted Carpenter and Doug Bandow, The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Victor Cha, The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (New York: HarperCollins, 2012); Jonathan D. Pollack, No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security (London: Routledge, 2011); Gordon Chang, Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World (New York: Random House, 2009); Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country (New York: New Press, 2004); Leszek Buzynski, Negotiating with North Korea: The Six-Party Talks and the Nuclear Issue (London: Routledge, 2013); Gilbert Rozman, Strategic Thinking about the Korean Nuclear Crisis: Four Parties Caught between North Korea and the United States (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); and Sung Chull Kim and David Kang, eds., Engagement with North Korea: A Viable Alternative (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009). For a partial exception, see Gregory J. Moore, North Korean Nuclear Operationality: Regional Security and Non-proliferation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).
9. See, for example, David Shambaugh and Michael Yahuda, eds., International Relations of East Asia (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014); Ashley Tellis, Abraham M. Denmark, and Greg Chaffin, eds., Strategic Asia 2014–2015: U.S. Alliances and Partnerships at the Center of Global Power (Washington, DC: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2014); Scott Snyder, China’s Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2014); and Scott Snyder, ed., The U.S.-South Korea Alliance: Meeting New Security Challenges (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2012).
10. We refer to “North Korean strategic nuclear capability,” “North Korean bomb,” “North Korean nuclear deterrent,” and “North Korean strategic deterrent” interchangeably throughout this chapter and mean by them the capability to reliably target the United States with nuclear weapons, although the beliefs of Kim Jong-un and his associates about what constitutes a survivable arsenal may differ from those of his adversaries.
11. Lewis, “North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons.”
12. Japan and Russia are also relevant actors on the Korean Peninsula. But given the already complex relationships between Pyongyang, Seoul, Washington, and Beijing and that these four capitals have a far greater influence on the North Korean nuclear challenge today than Tokyo and Moscow, we do not extensively address Japan and Russia here.
13. See, for example, Chad O’Carroll, “What Will It Take for a Normalization of Relations between the U.S. and North Korea? Five American Experts Talk about the Prospects of a Landmark Deal between Washington and Pyongyang,” NK.News.Org, September 28, 2015, http://www.nknews.org/2015/09/what-will-it-take-for-a-normalization-of-relations-between-the-u-s-and-north-korea/.
14. Cha, Impossible State, 237.
15. Ibid., 213.
16. See, for example, Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill 1979), and John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2003).
17. Todd S. Sechser, “Goliath’s Curse: Coercive Threats and Asymmetric Power,” International Organization 64 (October 2010): 627–60; Nuno Monteiro, “Unrest Assured: Why Unipolarity Is Not Peaceful,” International Security 36 (2011): 9–40; Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).
18. “US Reinforcing Pacific Defenses to Counter North Korean Threats,” Defense-Update.com, April 6, 2013, http://defense-update.com/20130406_us-reinforcing-pacific-defenses-to-counter-north-korean-threats.html.
19. “US Flies Bombers over South Korea in Show of Force,” BBC News, September 13, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37346600?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=
New%20Campaign&utm_term=%2AMorning%20 Brief.
20. “Seoul Vows ‘Stern’ Response to North Korean Provocation,” Chosun Ilbo Online, March 7, 2013.
21. Robert Ross, “China’s Naval Nationalism: Sources, Prospects, and the U.S. Response,” International Security 34 (2009): 46–81; Alastair Iain Johnston, “How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertiveness,” International Security 37 (2013): 7–48.