North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: Entering the New Era of Deterrence 1626164525, 9781626164529

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
A Note on Romanization
Abbreviations
Introduction: A New Challenge, a New Debate
1 North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: Nonproliferation or Deterrence? Or Both?
2 North Korea’s Nuclear Doctrine and Revisionist Strategy
3 North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, and No Good Options? A Controlled Path to Peace
4 The Unraveling of North Korea’s Proliferation Blackmail Strategy
5 Does Nuclearization Impact Threat Credibility? Insights from the Korean Peninsula
6 The North Korean Nuclear Threat and South Korea’s Deterrence Strategy
7 Stability or Instability? The US Response to North Korean Nuclear Weapons
8 Between the Bomb and the United States: China Faces the Nuclear North Korea
9 Spear versus Shield? North Korea’s Nuclear Path and Challenges to the NPT System
Conclusion: Deterrence and Beyond
Contributors
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Citation preview

NORTH KOREA AND NUCLE AR WE APONS

18966-Kim_NorthKorea.indd iii

10/20/16 12:25 PM

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NORTH KOREA AND NUCLE AR WE APONS ENTERING THE NEW ERA OF DETERRENCE

SUNG CHULL KIM and

MICHAEL D. COHEN Editors

GE OR GE T O W N UNI V E R SI T Y P R E S S WA SHING T ON , DC

© 2017 Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for third-party websites or their content. URL links were active at time of publication. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kim, Sung Chull, 1956- editor. | Cohen, Michael D., PhD, editor. Title: North Korea and Nuclear Weapons : Entering the New Era of Deterrence / Sung Chull Kim and Michael D. Cohen, editors. Description: Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016035419 (print) | LCCN 2016040154 (ebook) | ISBN 9781626164529 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781626164536 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781626164543 (eb) Subjects: LCSH: Nuclear weapons—Korea (North) | Nuclear arms control—Korea (North) | United States—Foreign relations—Korea (North) | Korea (North)—Foreign relations—United States. Classification: LCC U264.5.K7 N825 2017 (print) | LCC U264.5.K7 (ebook) | DDC355.02/17095193—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035419 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. 18 17

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing

Printed in the United States of America Cover design by Connie Gabbert Design + Illustration. Cover images: North Korea’s ballistic missile launch (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File) TV screen showing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watching a solid-fueled rocket engine text (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

C ON T EN T S

Acknowledgments A Note on Romanization Abbreviations

vii ix xi

Introduction: A New Challenge, a New Debate Michael D. Cohen and Sung Chull Kim

1

North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: Nonproliferation or Deterrence? Or Both? Patrick Morgan

1

15

2

North Korea’s Nuclear Doctrine and Revisionist Strategy Sung Chull Kim

3

North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, and No Good Options? A Controlled Path to Peace Michael D. Cohen

55

The Unraveling of North Korea’s Proliferation Blackmail Strategy Tristan Volpe

73

Does Nuclearization Impact Threat Credibility? Insights from the Korean Peninsula Van Jackson

89

4

5

6

7

31

The North Korean Nuclear Threat and South Korea’s Deterrence Strategy Chaesung Chun

113

Stability or Instability? The US Response to North Korean Nuclear Weapons Terence Roehrig

129

— v —

vi

8

9

Contents Between the Bomb and the United States: China Faces the Nuclear North Korea Fei-Ling Wang

157

Spear versus Shield? North Korea’s Nuclear Path and Challenges to the NPT System Yangmo Ku

179

Conclusion: Deterrence and Beyond Sung Chull Kim and Michael D. Cohen

195

Contributors Index

213 217

A CK NO W L EDGMEN T S

This book project has benefited from the participation, advice, assistance, and support of many people over the past three years. Its origins lie in a discussion between the coeditors at the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Meeting in Toronto in March 2014 about the new nuclear challenges posed by North Korea. This discussion led to a panel held at the subsequent ISA annual meeting held in New Orleans in February 2015 and developed into a workshop with the sponsorship of the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies (IPUS) at Seoul National University on June 12 and 13 of that year. Conscientious efforts and the willing cooperation of all contributors led to the successful completion of this edited volume. Patrick Morgan’s and T. V. Paul’s mentorship made the discussions at the Seoul workshop rich and fruitful, and the contributors kept the two sharp deadlines for revisions and assisted timely completion. Also, Derrick Frazier, Jacques Fuqua, Suh Bohyuk, Park Hyeong-jung, Hong Suk-hoon, Kim Hong-cheol, Edward Reed, Kim Cheon-sik, Chang Yong-seok, Kwon Hee-seok, and Lee Deok-haeng made invaluable contributions to this project in one way or the other. Park Myoung-kyu, the former director of IPUS, and his successor Jung Keun-sik have not hesitated to provide institutional and moral support for the success of the project. The Seoul workshop was fi nancially supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the South Korean government (NRF-2010–361-A00017). We would like to express thanks to the foundation. We coeditors, on behalf of all contributors, also express deep gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. Their thorough, point-by-point remarks on individual chapters contributed to clarifying and strengthening the analyses and arguments. Finally, our thanks go to Donald Jacobs and Glenn Saltzman at Georgetown University Press for their superb editorial guidance and to Choi Ahlyun, Kim Suin, Kim Jieun, and An Soyeon for assisting the Seoul workshop and formatting the fi nal manuscript. We hope that this book may help general readers, students, scholars, and policymakers to critically understand the dangerous new strategic dynamics into which North Korea is dragging the Korean Peninsula and East Asia and the crucial deterrence and nonproliferation challenges.

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A NO T E ON R OM A NIZ AT ION

Romanization of the names of the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese people follow their traditions: The family name appears first, with the given name following. However, the spellings of personal names that appear in works written in English are used as in the originals. Romanization of the other Korean and Chinese languages, e.g., those of news agencies and article titles, follow South Korea’s Ministry of Culture system and the Pinyin system, respectively.

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A BBR E V I AT IONS

BDA BMD CCP CCP CSA CTBT DMZ DPRK DRP EDPC GPO GSOMIA IAEA ICBM IISS KAMD KCNA KPA KPAF KPN KWP LWR MCM MRL MTCR NATO NLL NPR NPT NSS OPCON

Banco Delta Asia ballistic missile defense Chinese Communist Party Combined Counter-Provocation Plan comprehensive safeguards agreement Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Demilitarized Zone Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Defense Reform Plan Extended Deterrence Policy Committee US Government Printing Office General Security of Military Information Agreement International Atomic Energy Agency intercontinental ballistic missile International Institute of Strategic Studies Korean Air and Missile Defense Korean Central News Agency Korean People’s Army Korean People’s Air Force Korean People’s Navy Korean Workers’ Party light-water (nuclear) reactor Military Committee Meeting multiple rocket launcher Missile Technology Control Regime North Atlantic Treaty Organization Northern Limit Line Nuclear Posture Review Non-Proliferation Treaty (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) US National Security Strategy operational control

— xi —

xii P5 PLA PRC QDR ROK SAR SCM SLBM THAAD TISA UN WMD

Abbreviations five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council People’s Liberation Army People’s Republic of China Quadrennial Defense Review Republic of Korea search and rescue Security Consultative Meeting submarine-launched ballistic missile Terminal High Altitude Area Defense trilateral intelligence-sharing arrangement United Nations weapons of mass destruction

INTRODUCTION A New Challenge, a New Debate Michael D. Cohen and Sung Chull Kim

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 “fiveyear 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 fi fth 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 fi ring, 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

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MICHAEL D. COHEN AND SUNG CHULL KIM

New Year’s Day address, stated that “we were just in our efforts to fi rmly 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 reaffi rmed the byeongjin strategy of simultaneous development of nuclear weapons and the economy. Also, after the fi fth 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 fi rst 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

Introduction

3

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 fl ight; 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-fi rst 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

4

MICHAEL D. COHEN AND SUNG CHULL KIM

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 fi rst 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 powerprojecting 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 fi rst 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 fi nd that these questions are explored in these pages.

Introduction

5

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 fi rst 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 fi red? 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,

6

MICHAEL D. COHEN AND SUNG CHULL KIM

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-fi rst century. But the North Korean nuclear challenge raises a perhaps greater likelihood of confl ict 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

Introduction

7

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 fi fth 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 confl ict 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-fi rst 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

8

MICHAEL D. COHEN AND SUNG CHULL KIM

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 fi fth 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?

Introduction

9 Organization of the Book

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, fi rst, 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 AsiaPacific; 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.

10

MICHAEL D. COHEN AND SUNG CHULL KIM

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

Introduction

11

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 fi nd 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 fi rm 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,

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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-

Introduction

13

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 confl ict 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-fi rst century. This book is a fi rst step in that direction.

Notes 1. Robert M. Gates, “Media Roundtable with Secretary Gates from Beijing, China,” January 11, 2011, http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcript id=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-presenceagainst-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 Nonproliferation (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,

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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-normal ization-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.

▼ 1

▲ NORTH KOREA AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS Nonproliferation or Deterrence? Or Both? Patrick Morgan

This chapter offers reflections on three questions: How will a nuclear armed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) likely behave in the future? How will the United States, China, and the Republic of Korea (ROK) respond? What will all this mean for peace and stability in Northeast Asia? The approach to these questions involves merging aspects of deterrence, nonproliferation, and unification to grapple with three subjects: a summary of the present components of the North Korean problem, which continues to unfold; an exploration of how complicated really understanding that problem is; and a comparative assessment of the possible options today. This chapter is therefore not a plan for how to proceed but rather a probe to help facilitate the better development of a plan. Along the way, it reflects a continuing frustration about the potentially unstable, dangerous, highly costly situation. As an enduring and almost continually dangerous confl ict—involving a government regularly at odds with a good deal of the world—the North Korean conflict/problem has had no equal in its staying power in international politics since the end of World War II. Since its inception, the standard approach to the problem has been to particularly emphasize the DPRK military threat, a threat initially conventional and now becoming nuclear. The emphasis is increasingly on the nuclear threat, which naturally has highlighted the use of nonproliferation efforts and deterrence to deal with it.

— 15 —

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The crux of the North’s threat is its leaders’ desire to rule the entire Korean Peninsula, linked to leadership that initially grew within a potent Stalinist perspective, which soon decayed and was reshaped into a blend of totalitarian communism with classic Korean elements. The result was a largely isolated state, political system, and culture preoccupied with eventually ruling Korea as a single nation, within a militaristic posture and with absolutist control. Unfortunately for its rulers, such an entity could not simply go its own way. It was impossible for them to fully isolate it from the disruptive geographic, political, economic, ideological, and strategic environments surrounding it from the start. Ignoring the world and being ignored by it was impossible; it was located in the wrong place for that. Thus, from the start its leaders felt required to be threatening and bellicose to survive. They still do because the basic elements of the status quo that developed on the peninsula then continue to be the ultimate threat it confronts today. After seventy years it remains, in many respects, the world’s least altered state and nation since its inception—a holdover, remnant, antique, and continuing failure in not fully certain ways operating at a not fully certain rate. It is necessarily isolated, self-centered, paranoid, and totalitarian as the only way it can sustain its survival, and then only in a perilous fashion. The peril and uncertainty underscore its inability to decently compare with the continuing popularity of the ROK and its spectacular achievements. North Korea continues to blame its situation primarily on having to confront a United States bent on destroying it, when its fundamental problem long ago became that it has not been able to compete with the ROK and therefore is constantly at risk of disappearing. It needs to eliminate the ROK—and consistently dreads the alternative of being eliminated itself— by unification, a problem more serious than ever because it now lacks strong, durable, ideologically and culturally comfortable associates and allies. It cannot with certainty defend itself from, much less eliminate, its opponents, leaving it dependent on threats of deterrence by denial with inadequate military capabilities. Hence, its continued pursuit, for several decades, of nuclear weapons to replace the extended deterrence once provided by allied governments whose patience it has fi nally largely exhausted. Today’s North Korea is so problematic and troublesome because its behavior continuously makes unification both vital and impossible and the division of the peninsula increasingly more unstable, dangerous, and unsettling.1 This is particularly the case because the North’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and other provocative actions, seems clearly meant not only to deter but to compel on the peninsula and, with respect to the United States, on a partly global scale. This has begun expanding the already inadequate military stability on the peninsula and surrounding area, where too many great powers’ interests have long been involved, and also threatens the viability of the global nonproliferation regime.

Nonproliferation or Deterrence?

17

As a result, the underlying traditional deterrence structure, which for decades has effectively contained the Korean confl ict and related great power frictions over what to do with and on the peninsula, is facing possibly serious erosion. This situation is therefore also displaying just how damaging deterrence can be, an aspect of it often underappreciated. Deterrence has long limited (though not halted) North Korean provocations and contained the long-standing wishes of several great powers to forcefully rearrange the peninsula to suit their interests, but it has begun to fail. North Korean deterrence remains rooted in a seemingly eternal preoccupation with fear that the ROK and the United States are poised to attack. And the allies’ deterrence efforts have in turn deeply frustrated North Korea. But North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear deterrence, as various governments have anticipated, has now heightened prospects of 









provoking standing military forces into more reciprocal alerts and military improvements, and reciprocal responses to those improvements; promoting preemptive strike plans and deployments, increasing the potential instability within long-standing reciprocal deterrence postures in and around the peninsula; heightening existing political conflicts—one way that deterrence employed to dampen conflicts can actually further provoke them; demonstrating how, in wrecking nonproliferation efforts via almost intrinsic conflict, deterrence can at times reinforce, as well as contain, the interactive military efforts it readily provokes, readily enhancing retreats from nonproliferation; and culminating in fears the opponent will soon achieve the capacity to bully via nuclear weapons, as North Korea has been seeking.

Nuclear weapons and the pursuit of nuclear deterrence also increase possibilities that the nuclear buildups will make it almost impossible to mount effective efforts later on to abolish them because of related fears of cheating, resulting inspections that could undermine one’s deterrence capabilities, and the retention of advanced capabilities for potential breakouts or rapid remilitarization on both sides. This is what Pyongyang’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons is exacerbating, partly in response to continued US extended deterrence for South Korea and Japan.

A Related and Often Underappreciated Failure Often ignored in analyses of security situations is the role of the overarching global political structure and its overall level of conflict, which often heavily

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influences lower-level systems’ stability and security. In effect, the security situation in many lower-level systems is significantly linked to and affected by the level and effectiveness of international system management. This has been a glaring factor in Northeast Asia’s security situation for years. Often much has depended on how the great powers involved are getting along politically and in their own security relations, not just there but globally. For years the regional situation was hugely shaped by Cold War great power conflicts, which drove military buildups by the two Koreas via Chinese, Soviet, and American arms and other military support. It has been molded by Chinese fears of American forces ending up along the Korean border if unification occurs, by Chinese fears about any American ballistic missile defenses of Japan and the ROK, and by the deteriorating US-Russia relationship now.2 Achieving and maintaining stability in East Asia can be more or less managed to a degree by international management arrangements, such as   



competitive management (e.g., balance-of-power arrangements); unipolar management; international norms and institutions—when (a) the regional system is not of vital concern to the major global powers, and (b) the norms and institutions are respected and often upheld by states in general; and collective actor management (such as by the United Nations [UN])— particularly on security matters such as deterrence, weapon proliferation, local and internal wars, and so forth.

When these conditions are not available or effective in a lower-level system, and nothing else suitable is either, a regional system could well have its security and stability, temporarily or longer, provided by a dominant regional actor that has sufficient military power.3 While some actors applaud such an overseer, it is common for others to avoid that situation if possible. What is taking place currently in Northeast Asia is (1) clashes between great powers active in the regional system are resurging, which threatens to reduce the regional-level cooperation on containing/repressing North Korea, and (2) North Korea is about to assemble enough nuclear weapons to significantly alter Northeast Asia’s security and international political systems. The possible consequences:    

further nuclear proliferation efforts within the region; reductions in the effectiveness or credibility of US extended deterrence; military action to repress North Korea’s nuclear weapon program; and re-creation of the prior regional pattern of largely repressive regimes versus democracies on regional security matters, North Korea, and so forth.

Nonproliferation or Deterrence?

19

The North Korean nuclear weapon problem began to emerge several decades ago as the icing on this particular regional cake. It has been a remarkably durable problem, despite serious efforts to slow or erase it. Possible solutions proposed and pursued have included the following: 







Unification: It involves efforts that have never come close to success— whether by both Koreas, each separately, or outsiders. Approaches employed have included military victory, negotiations, military threats and political pressure, rewards and benefits, sanctions, subversion, endless propaganda, assassination, and vilification. Arms control / arms reduction: The same is true of efforts to negotiate agreements to limit armaments, retract dangerous military postures, or lower tensions along land and sea borders. This is particularly true of the pursuit of a major settlement directly on the nuclear weapon problem—those efforts have also been fruitless. The two Koreas remain among the most heavily armed and postured states for major fighting in the world, continuously upgrading their military capabilities.4 Economic interaction: Trade, joint economic enterprises, joint economic development efforts, interactions on developing peaceful nuclear energy capabilities, and the like have been minimal in scale and effect, despite high expectations. They are at an especially low point now. Cultural, intellectual, and familial interchanges: As we know, these are limited, often interrupted, and have had no real effect in promoting anything like unification or large-scale celebrations of common elements of the two societies.

Why have these efforts failed? The most compelling explanation is that, for the parties involved, especially the North, it has always seemed likely that mounting a decisive effort to end the problem would turn out to be too costly, too destabilizing, or both. A supposedly decisive military effort would, it has been assumed, likely be of devastating proportions and quite possibly fail anyway, or be successful but terribly destructive. Avoiding a decisive effort to end the problem has persisted despite consistent North Korean threats to seriously disrupt existing stability (of sorts), and the North has secured little outside support politically, economically, or ethically for its behavior. Thus, the problem persists despite North Korea remaining a seriously threatening, dangerous, harmful, and costly flaw in the international system for the ROK, its neighbors, and the United States. This limited level of effort and lack of success is a situation that might be considered very surprising because in the past two decades the North has become steadily more threatening and dangerous by developing nuclear weapons and systems for their use at ever-greater distances and because of its extensive participation in proliferation efforts, its dangerous military

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PATRICK MORGAN

provocations over the years (particularly recently), its continuing human rights violations, and its flow of refugees. Of course, the most consequential problem has been its nuclear weapons effort. North Korea is closing in on operationalizing a small nuclear weapon force. Estimates of its nuclear weapons now range as high as ten to twenty. 5 Some analysts fear that its dependence on nuclear weapons is so great that it would readily resort to fi rst use in a serious confl ict. Others believe that the North is close to miniaturizing those weapons so its latest missiles, with a potential range of up to nine thousand kilometers, would be able to strike parts of the United States. This is bringing Pyongyang closer to achieving a long-standing military objective and a resulting compromise by and with the United States.

Deterrence and Nonproliferation The most significant responses to this have been deterrence and the pursuit of nonproliferation via arms control. Deterrence has been extensively employed for decades by both sides and key associates. By all appearances, it has worked, often under very difficult conditions, to sustain the basic stability of the political and military situation or, rather, to sustain reasonable stability in spite of that situation. Even with periodically intense confrontations, the large military forces poised for action, the North’s periodic belligerence, and other threatening behavior from both sides, Korea has experienced no outright extended warfare for over sixty years. Deterrence has been consistently practiced by the ROK and United States, and by North Korea through constant efforts to deter the United States and South Korea originally with support from the Soviet Union during the Cold War and with deterrence from China since 1950, which may now be of somewhat dubious reliability. However, all this has not been particularly satisfactory. Deterrence is about successfully discouraging very harmful, particularly violent behavior by an opponent and, ideally, keeping it from being even seriously contemplated. But North Korea has nevertheless clearly felt that it faces the constant threat of attack by US and ROK forces, which remain on fairly high alert—poised to rapidly multiply if necessary. This is even more the case for the ROK and United States. They still face the constant threat of a serious attack by the North, a threat displayed by very large DPRK forces on high alert along the border and by repeated small military attacks over the years. Much more disturbing for the allies is the failure of deterrence with regard to nuclear weapon proliferation by North Korea in and through its dealings with countries such as Iran, Pakistan, China, and Russia. Deter-

Nonproliferation or Deterrence?

21

rence of nuclear proliferation by North Korea as proliferator or recipient has also regularly failed. It is now close to achieving the status of a nuclear power without any official international designation as one. It is increasingly dependent on asserting that the stature and status is needed to sustain regime legitimacy in the face of failures for years to construct durable and satisfying alternatives for upholding regime survival. Its links to states such as Iran and Pakistan continue facilitating those participants’ development of nuclear weapons, despite increased efforts over the years by other states to prevent this from happening.6 On the North Korean problem, therefore, deterrence has continued to fail at every level except preventing outright war. When suitably employed with appropriate forces, ROK-US deterrence only limits actual fighting even under threatening circumstances. For the ROK, the United States, and the international community, deterrence has not prevented the North from developing nuclear weapons and related delivery systems, maintaining huge forces close to the border to threaten Seoul and other valuable areas, promoting nuclear proliferation in arrangements with other states, and periodically mounting brief attacks on South Korea. In turn, North Korean deterrence has not prevented serious sanctions against it and retaliatory measures in response to its own, the allies’ intense training regularly for major war against it, the crippling of its fi nancial and other commercial activities abroad, and the allies exploiting the North’s behavior to further limit its interactions with the outside world. The rising fear now is that as a full-fledged nuclear power the North will have enhanced deterrence and compellence capacities, making it more difficult to contain. In fact, the fear is that such capacities could enhance its overall political and military status internationally, resulting in greater chances for survival (the regime’s ultimate goal), more normal treatment by outsiders, greater license for very abnormal conduct internationally and domestically, and more regime legitimacy at home and abroad. Meanwhile, its military provocations have led to a US-ROK agreement to jointly respond to future ones in a rapid military fashion. China has become more serious about the North’s behavior and has limited its support both economically and politically. The UN has undertaken major efforts to condemn the human rights situation in the North. The US relationship with the North is minimal, and North-South relations are at a very low ebb. The fear is that its nuclear weapons will lead the North to do things that generate allied military responses through serious fighting. The North’s nuclear weapon program is also escalating concern because of the rising disarray that has developed there, leading to the greatest speculation about a possible regime collapse in decades. This can readily provoke greater concern in the area and the United States about prospects for continued regional stability and more concern about what to do when and

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how under these circumstances. It has already led to discussions (privately) about who will do what under various possible circumstances and to some actual planning along those lines. But little is actually being done. Aside from Japan and Russia strengthening relations with the North because their international or domestic situations are not good at the moment, there is no evidence of plans for dealing with such a situation that could assuredly be implemented. Naturally, there is considerable concern about, in an initial North Korean collapse, what happens to its nuclear weapons. If it is rapid, into whose hands would they fall? If it happens slowly, generating civil war, the fighting could possibly lead to their eventual use. In short, there is concern about reenacting the situation during the collapse of the Soviet Union, when numerous nuclear weapons fell into the hands of republics breaking away from the USSR. This is a sensible worry. There is similar concern about a possible parallel case arising in Pakistan because of the heightened confl ict between the government and various terrorist movements. A related example is how other types of weapons of mass destruction have been used in Syria, inciting concerns about just who controls them. A quite different aspect of North Korea’s nuclear weapon program is persistent South Korean inclinations to assume that a United States that could be directly attacked by North Korean nuclear weapons would not be willing to risk that by defending the ROK in another Korean War. In other words, US extended deterrence could lose credibility in both Koreas (and even Japan). More thinking along these lines could readily put greater strain on the alliance and maybe embolden the North. That sort of worry is the opposite of concern about a North Korean collapse; it envisions a serious deterioration in the alliance for quite different reasons. Thus, this is the essence of the problem. First, the deterrence involved is not necessarily stable enough for comfort. The status quo may be too potentially destabilizing for Pyongyang—domestically and internationally—while its emerging nuclear-deterrence posture could soon be too threatening for continued allied confidence that existing stability in the region or on the peninsula will hold. On the other hand, North Korea must continue rejecting the nonproliferation regime and proceed further in building nuclear weapons, utilizing a network of associates for trading information, equipment, and technology on the various facets of nuclear weapon development, because it is dangerously short of viable alternatives. Therefore, today’s stability—constructed and maintained at great cost over many decades by deterrence—is at risk of dissolving. The onset of this has been evident for some time, but it has been impossible to come up with satisfactory ways to shore up the available deterrence soon. And there is no consensus as to exactly what should replace it and how.

Nonproliferation or Deterrence?

23

Things to Keep in Mind With no clear route to better improving the situation, a number of relevant pieces of information should be kept in mind in coping with it. First, a number of states have obtained nuclear weapons despite strong objections from many others, particularly the original nuclear armed states that remain the most powerful. Yet no use of nuclear weapons has resulted. Proliferation is not an open door to the ready use of nuclear weapons, despite assertions it is or will be. North Korea may turn out to be containable and thus tolerable as a nuclear power, particularly if the great powers active in Northeast Asia decide how to improve their cooperative containment of Pyongyang. Second, over the years a number of states have been interested in possibly obtaining nuclear weapons and, in some cases, have mounted significant efforts to build, buy, or otherwise acquire them. Yet there are only a small number of nuclear-armed states. Efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation have clearly had a considerable impact, and they have expanded recently with respect to Iran and North Korea. And a few states with nuclear weapons are now at least considering shedding them. So, North Korea’s nuclear weapons may not set off a rush to imitate it in neighboring states or others. Pressure to move in that direction will be significant but may be possible to keep contained. A helpful factor is that nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence were significantly recessed for some time after the Cold War—with shrinking arsenals and few delivery vehicles, limited modernization efforts, and less planning for using such weapons. Thus, we know that can be done and how to do it. However, that depended primarily on the substantial progress in sharply containing international conflicts, and that aspect of international politics has been decaying recently. Pakistan has been the most intent on rapidly expanding and upgrading its nuclear arsenal, with India doing the same at a slower pace. Russia’s arsenal is being modernized and probably enlarged, while China’s is clearly modernizing and defi nitely enlarging as well. China was helpful on containing the North before but is of less assistance now. Israel’s recent nuclear weapon modernization has also hindered efforts to contain Pyongyang’s nuclear efforts. Thus, North Korea is pursuing nuclear power status in a climate more accommodative in several ways than earlier. Containment of proliferation is under disturbingly wider pressure, which is certainly worth worrying about. Third, it is therefore more conceivable now that deployed nuclear forces of some other states will also be receiving more resources to grow, taking us backward. Nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence have clearly failed to fully halt nuclear proliferation and to promote continued reductions in nuclear arsenals. So has arms control, leading some adherents scrambling

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for ways to revive it. And campaigns to eliminate nuclear weapons have fallen on hard times. Fourth, what happens when nuclear weapons arrive in a regional system? Obviously, nuclear weapons have so far been more useful for keeping the world safe from harm than infl icting it. Nuclear weapons have turned out better for gaining confidence in being safe than confidence in extracting benefits by making others feel unsafe, better at fending off the most severe military threats than far less dangerous ones posed by terrorists or other irritating but relatively modest opponents. Nuclear weapons are (much) better for a kind of defensive deterrence to protect ultimate valuables than for vigorous offensive uses under which they are more likely to draw a nuclear or other severe response (from the target or its extended-deterrence associate). A nuclear-armed North Korea may turn out to be deterred from attacks much more easily than expected.7 The fi fth point that should be kept in mind raises interesting questions. North Korea is probably riding a weak horse if it wants to be able to behave like an expansive, compellence-oriented actor with nuclear weapons in hand. Probably only a very unusual actor, perhaps with a terribly impulsive or disturbed leader, would carry such behavior very far. Thus, we need to know, as best we can, why North Korea wants nuclear weapons. Do we know why North Korea pursues nuclear weapons so doggedly? There are certainly many reasons for seeking them, such as        

to deter a seemingly very dangerous, powerful opponent; to gain a capacity to respond in kind after a nuclear attack; to practice compellence, dominating others elsewhere; to display one’s power, even megalomaniacally; to appease domestic citizens’ fears or desires; to gain prestige at home or abroad; to gain status abroad; or to match others out of jealousy or a need for equal respect or to be treated equally.

Many of these are cited in explaining North Korea’s nuclear appetite, but no one claims to know, fully and for sure, which ones apply. Has the motivation been the same over time; is it the same now as before? Not knowing is an important gap because knowing could be the key to understanding and anticipating the North’s behavior and how best to pursue altering its actions. Has the North’s motivation been the same over time? There have been various explanations offered over the years, including the following:  

fear of attack by the United States a desire to offset the ROK’s fundamental military superiority

Nonproliferation or Deterrence?   



25

a need to sustain the national image—among Koreans, and elsewhere a tendency to see nuclear weapons as essential to regime legitimacy a belief that the United States would not fight for the ROK if faced with a DPRK nuclear threat; notice of the cuts in US military spending now or pending.

With such an array of possibilities, can we effectively tackle the North Korean nuclear weapon problem without knowing what the real answer(s) is (are)?

Envisioning Options The first, and best, option is Korean unification. By far the most desirable solution to the North Korean nuclear weapon problem would be the onset of unification, which can only work under the aegis of the ROK as having by far the stronger, more advanced society, economy, and political system. It also has a far more cosmopolitan society, is far more accustomed to the world, and is more internationally acceptable. It can far more readily carry the load of unification. Yet unification remains anything but imminent or even possible. At present it is the only plausible way the North’s nuclear weapons might be eliminated without considerable violence, even catastrophe. The Park Geun-hye government has indicated a unified Korea would not keep those or any other nuclear weapons. It has also been hard at work improving relations with China, and no doubt would do the same with Russia during a unification effort. On the other hand, a unified Korea would remain a formidable state militarily, with masses of equipment, highly trained military personnel, and an impressive navy. Hopefully, it would remain a formidable military power facing no serious military threats or military opponents to confront. Under those circumstances, the US military presence would likely be reduced—as it is, some analysts have long wondered why significant US forces are necessary there. The alliance would remain, with close contacts between the two military forces and governments. The hub of the American regional military presence would be even more clearly located in Japan than now. Virtually everyone would fi nd that security situation much more tolerable, unless China became steadily more troublesome. The North Korean nuclear weapon problem would be resolved, and the problem of the Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea would dissolve, as would the burden of sustaining or confronting the North. China would probably remain a concern but would itself be more relaxed about the security situation with a reduced US military presence, unless serious China-Japan friction increased the US presence instead. The more contested area between

26

PATRICK MORGAN

the United States and China would be the South China Sea and related places instead of Korea.8 The problem with this as the best option on the North Korean nuclear weapon problem is that while unification could be fine, we have no serious grasp of when, where, and how it would begin to emerge. It could take years to even begin and then might drag on for some time. For instance, analysts have suggested that under various circumstances a serious unification effort could engender various clashes in Northeast Asia—along the China-Korea border, among military factions in North Korea—making for a very dangerous situation.9 The US and East Asian governments have been speculating about this for years, individually and in quiet interactions, indicating to each other what they would like to see happen under various circumstances and what they would disapprove of if it started. This is a huge improvement because it is vital that the participants have a good understanding, hopefully an agreement, about who expects to take what steps under what circumstances with what intentions. But it is still speculative. A second option is to fi nd creative ways to exploit the more relaxed situation now in the North Korean economy. The regime has allowed more private commerce in hopes of improving productivity and raising living standards, and people turned rapidly toward exploiting the emerging markets. The regime has not extended this very far in international economic interactions, but this policy would be difficult to continue over time. When it fi rst relaxed its management of the domestic economy (under Kim Jong-il), people rapidly carried things much further and faster than the regime expected, and this is likely to happen again. Alongside this, the ROK would do best to emphasize, in both public and private ways, how a unification effort would include establishing or retaining conditions in which North Korean elites continue to have good living conditions, access to their foreign funds, significant roles in government institutions, freedom from incarceration, and so forth. Seoul would also stress how careful consideration would be given to conducting the merger with limited disruptions throughout Korea in the face of plans to generate an economic surge for the reorganization and alteration of the North’s society. This is a version of the well-known, often championed option of North and South growing together gradually and peacefully (and therefore fairly cheaply—a serious ROK consideration). A major pursuit of recent ROK leaders and governments, it has not gained much traction even with the relevant great powers. The trouble with this path is obvious. Introducing major changes across the board, even if slowly and thoughtfully, for unification essentially from the ground up would involve transforming the most centralized, rigidly structured, and tightly controlled society in the world. Even in East Germany after the Cold War that was very difficult to

Nonproliferation or Deterrence?

27

do, and it did not involve dismantling nuclear weapons and related institutions there. A third option already being pursued is tracking the North Korean nuclear weapon program so minutely that early warning of a DPRK nuclear attack would allow attacking the weapons fi rst or destroying them after launched. This means accepting the existence of the North’s nuclear weapons, if unavoidable, but nullifying their capacity to do serious harm. Both preemptive strikes and defensive systems are to be employed against what remains a primitive nuclear weapon system, making the North Korean threat easier to tolerate for the ROK, Japan, and the United States. There are several difficulties here. One is that various North Korea attacks in the past were not detected in advance. Major steps in its nuclear weapons occurred without being initially detected by the ROK or the United States. Occasional intrusions by North Korean forces have occurred at fi rst without detection. Some missiles have been test-fi red without advance detection. Thus, the threat of a North Korean nuclear attack not being detected in time will likely remain for some years to come. Another difficulty—somewhat overrated—is that Seoul is so close to North Korea that the North’s conventional forces have an ideal target for infl icting devastating harm—really a giant hostage for curbing South Korean military activities. While such damage is possible, it would require almost inconceivable US and ROK military incompetence. Long ago they should have detected every North Korean position within reach of Seoul: Every military storage area, every road and path that could be taken, and every communications resource have long since been targeted by the South and the Americans. When the North poised large military forces along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), it was the North that most laid itself open to a crushing blow. In an age of pinpoint electronic surveillance, multitasking satellites, aerial reconnaissance down to millimeters, extensively precise military equipment, and an opponent facing a massive, widespread, very heavily constructed capital city of considerable depth, North Korea, positioned just above the DMZ, is a truly static and vulnerable target far more than it is a potential hostage holder. The allied forces not having taken advantage of this in their plans, training, and preparations is inconceivable. The fi nal option is to again hold negotiations, presumably with the usual cast of participants.10 The North has been suggesting that it is open to this, and various analysts support it. The pluses and minuses are well known because of the lengthy record of negotiations held and abandoned, agreements reached and breached, as well as charges that just holding negotiations strengthens the North’s position and invites imitation of it by others who want nuclear weapons. However, if the Iranian nuclear negotiations continue to be viewed as successful, the pressure to try this with North Korea will escalate.

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If none of the above options turn out to apply to and basically resolve the problems, there is one other possibility that certainly seems plausible and would solve the challenges discussed in this chapter. But it would not be very attractive and would only occasionally and partially be considered by analysts and others. What about creating a unified Korea established in part around a nuclear arsenal that is the product of both parties? It could use Korean nationalism to pull the divided nation together, a way to settle the overall unification problem and the nuclear weapon problem together. And doing so would be a long step toward relaxing the age-old shrimp-andwhale problem for the Korean nation in its neighborhood. But this would be awful in terms of the nuclear proliferation problem and the arms control efforts that continue seeking to keep it from flourishing. It would deeply provoke Japan, possibly into developing indigenous nuclear weapons, and perhaps incite nuclear proliferation elsewhere as well. The development would not sit at all well with the United States and would surely not be welcomed by China and Russia.

Conclusion This is only an outline of the North Korean nuclear weapon problem. However, clearly it is deeply entangled with the other great Korean problem—unification. Both can seem impossible to resolve, partly because they are usually discussed, analyzed, and pursued as separate and very complicated problems. In fact, each is a central component of what is needed to resolve the other, not only with respect to the two Koreas but also in terms of the interests and objectives of the great powers involved, plus other international actors such as the UN and those associated with the many variants of arms control. This is a useful way of thinking about the North Korean nuclear weapon problem. Numerous countries have been interested in nuclear weapons, but very few have developed them as far as Pyongyang has. The failure of Korean unification to make much progress, coupled with the nuclear weapon problem, has become an ever more important barrier to maintaining a suitable and stable regional security structure in Northeast Asia. Correcting this is one of the most important necessities in international politics now. Rethinking the options for doing it needs both further study and serious interstate evaluation.

Notes 1. Given its achievements, unification is, for the ROK, far less vital. There unification is often perceived as far as too costly to be worth pursuing, even though it is the preferred outcome.

Nonproliferation or Deterrence?

29

2. This is not an automatic phenomenon. For example, the major powers’ frictions did not apparently deeply affect their ability to cooperate in negotiating the problem of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. 3. An example would be Australia in Southeast Asia. Another was Egypt among several Arab states for a good many years. China is often seen now as pursuing this role in several regional systems. 4. The Military Balance: 2016 indicates that the North Korean armed forces number well over one million, while the ROK’s are over six hundred thousand but are much better armed. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), The Military Balance: 2016 (London: Routledge, 2016), 264–70. A parallel assessment is Bruce Bechtol Jr., North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era: A New International Security Dilemma (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 28–29. 5. The U.S.-Korea Institute has predicted that North Korea will soon have twenty nuclear weapons, and some Chinese experts have put the number as already at twenty or more. See IISS, Strategic Survey 2015 (Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 367–68. 6. The link between Iran and North Korea on development of nuclear weapons may subside now that Iran is under close watch about suppressing its nuclear weapon program. 7. For a discussion of how Kim Jong-un would likely behave in a serious confrontation with the ROK and the United States and how the allies could promote careful behavior on his part, see Michael D. Cohen’s chapter in this volume. 8. The exception in US-China relations would be Taiwan. 9. An example of a pessimistic view on soon pursuing unification efforts, lest it be too destabilizing, is Bernard J. Brister, “Be Careful What You Wish For,” International Journal of Korean Studies 18 (Fall/Winter 2014): 26–52. 10. This option is always being promoted, is often considered very unlikely to work, and may soon be back on the table. See, for example, Leon V. Sigal, “Getting What We Need with North Korea,” Arms Control Today (April 2016): 8–13.

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▼ 2

▲ NORTH KOREA’S NUCLEAR DOCTRINE AND REVISIONIST STRATEGY Sung Chull Kim

More than t wo decades have passed since North Korea’s nuclear program became the focus of the international nonproliferation regime. Meanwhile, North Korea has made technological progress in its nuclear weapon program by means of five nuclear tests, numerous test-fi rings of ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missile tests. The United States and South Korea believe that North Korea’s efforts for miniaturizing warheads and reducing their weight have achieved a significant degree of progress. After conducting its fi fth nuclear test on September 9, 2016, North Korea also insisted that it is able to produce “a variety of smaller, lighter, and diversified nuclear warheads.”1 Now North Korea’s nuclear weapon issue has entered a new phase. Sustained efforts have been made to analyze important topics related to the North Korean nuclear issue: the motives behind North Korea’s bid to become a nuclear state, the international community’s engagement strategies and use of sanctions to dissuade North Korea from this course of action, and the impact of Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons on the global proliferation of nuclear and conventional weapons in general. In contrast, little effort has been made to examine the evolution of North Korea’s nuclear doctrine and the exact nature of its nuclear deterrence strategy. It may be assumed that in line with its nuclear capability, a small nuclear state will also develop its own nuclear doctrine and deterrence

— 31 —

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strategy, either clandestinely or in plain sight. Indeed, this is precisely what North Korea has done. North Korea’s nuclear doctrine was articulated in the Law on Consolidating the Status of a Self-Defensive Nuclear Weapons State (hereafter the Nuclear Weapons State Law) in 2013, although it had evolved for a decade before that law was adopted. International efforts aimed at halting this dangerous move and resolving the problem, or at least alleviating the tension surrounding it, should be paired with a close examination of North Korea’s evolving nuclear doctrine and its nuclear deterrence strategy. This chapter addresses the following questions. First, what message is North Korea’s nuclear doctrine trying to deliver to the United States and South Korea? Second, what is North Korea’s nuclear deterrence strategy corresponding to the doctrine? Third, how has the United States’ security strategy affected North Korea’s nuclear doctrine and deterrence strategy? Finally, what challenges lie ahead? As suggested in those questions, North Korea’s nuclear doctrine and its deterrence strategy are situated in a standard extended deterrence setup. This setup on the Korean Peninsula is a trilateral relationship between a challenger (North Korea), a defender (the United States), and a protégé (South Korea). North Korea insists that the goal of nuclear armament is to deter an attack from the United States; however, because South Korea shelters under the US nuclear umbrella, that state is the fi rst target upon which North Korea wants to demonstrate the credibility of its immediate nuclear threat. North Korea’s nuclear doctrine and its related deterrence strategy are aimed at penetrating a particularly weak and vulnerable point in the extended deterrence: the different interests and perceptions of the defender and the protégé. This is a typical form of dilemma embedded in extended deterrence and alliance politics. 2 As a small nuclear state, North Korea may well see its nuclear deterrent as a “great equalizer” that helps it to cope with the US extended deterrence.3 This nuclear capability leads to further problems. The challenger tries to expand its deterrent while limiting the options available to the defender and the protégé, and it provokes the protégé while demanding arms control talks with the defender.

Evolution of North Korea’s Nuclear Doctrine North Korea used the term “nuclear deterrent” for the first time on June 6, 2003, when a foreign ministry spokesperson stated that “as far as the issue of nuclear deterrent force is concerned, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has the same legal status as the United States and other states possessing nuclear deterrent forces.”4 Three days later, the Korean Central News Agency carried a commentary explaining that because of the hostile

Doctrine and Revisionist Strategy

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policy of the United States, “the DPRK will have no option but to build up a nuclear deterrent force.”5 Prior to these statements, North Korea had always maintained that its nuclear program was peaceful, that the late Kim Il-sung had advocated the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and that this was something that his successors should follow. For example, when North Korea announced its withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) on January 10, 2003, the government statement noted that “North Korea has no intention of developing nuclear weapons. . . . The nuclear activities will be limited to the production of electricity only.”6 Five months later, however, North Korea made a radical shift from its previous position when it announced that it had developed nuclear weapons. In view of the fact that the United States was deliberating a preemptive strike strategy at that time, this provocative statement is deemed to have originated from North Korea’s fear of such a strike. North Korea had continued to develop its nuclear program throughout the 1990s, and a crisis point was reached in 2002 when it admitted that it had a uranium-enrichment program. Therefore, it is fair to say that North Korea’s declaration concerning nuclear deterrence was in line with its nuclear development program, but its explicit admission was nonetheless a new development in its nuclear policy. What should be noted is that North Korea’s declaration on nuclear deterrence took place three years before it demonstrated its nuclear weapon capability by conducting its first nuclear test in 2006. In the history of nuclear proliferation, it is unusual for the leader of a new nuclear state to make such a declaration before actually proving that the country possesses a nuclear deterrent. For example, India and Pakistan did not publicize their nuclear status or the related doctrine until they had successfully tested nuclear weapons in 1998, although they had already established clandestine doctrines and employed them. Israel has nuclear weapons, but it has neither announced this publicly nor published its nuclear deterrence doctrine. North Korea conducted five nuclear tests, on October 9, 2006, May 25, 2009, February 12, 2013, January 6, 2016, and September 9, 2016, demonstrating significant progress in its development of nuclear technology. Along with these tests, North Korea has expedited the development of ballistic missiles, although it insisted that some of its missile tests were actually satellite launches.7 In line with these provocations, North Korea conducted low-intensity provocations against South Korea in 2010—the sinking of a naval vessel and the shelling of an island in the Yellow Sea. Under Kim Jong-un, North Korea declared itself to be a nuclear weapon state in the preamble of its constitution, which was amended in April 2012. More important, on April 1, 2013, just months after the third nuclear test, the Supreme People’s Assembly adopted the Nuclear Weapons State Law, which includes the following ten points:

34

SUNG CHULL KIM Nuclear weapons are a self-defensive means of coping with the hostile policy of and nuclear threat from the United States. Nuclear weapons serve the purpose of deterring and repelling aggression and retaliating against enemies. The DPRK is strengthening its nuclear deterrence and retaliatory strike power both in quantity and quality. Nuclear weapons will only be used on the final order of the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army. Nuclear weapons will not be used against non-nuclear weapons states unless they join a hostile nuclear weapons state in its invasion of the DPRK. The DPRK maintains safe management of nuclear weapons and ensures stable nuclear tests. The DPRK has established a mechanism to prevent the illegal export of nuclear technology and nuclear materials. The DPRK will cooperate with international efforts toward nuclear nonproliferation and the safe management of nuclear materials. The DPRK strives to avoid the danger of a nuclear war and fully supports international nuclear disarmament efforts. The relevant institutions will take steps to implement this ordinance.8

The Nuclear Weapons State Law was the means by which North Korea announced its nuclear doctrine; however, within the country, its adoption as a law had a special meaning concerning the direction of its related policies. In general, important national policies are embodied in laws before they are implemented; some examples are the Rason Economic and Trade Zone Law (2002), the Gaesong Industrial Complex Law (2002), and the Space Development Law (2013), which were all related to either economic or military policies. The Nuclear Weapons State Law demonstrates the strategic direction of North Korea’s use of nuclear weapons in both its diplomatic and military dimensions. It also hints at some elements of the nuclear strategy that is probably under deliberation by a core inner circle of the leadership. Some provisos of the doctrine guide the nuclear strategy, and other provisos give the appearance that Pyongyang is committed to international nonproliferation efforts. The adoption of the law, and the development of the situation afterward, suggests the following points. First, in view of its broad scope, the doctrine does not seem to be a product of deliberation by the military; instead, it appears to be a result of civilian deliberation, specifically that of Kim Jong-un and his associates in the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP). Kim Jongun’s official rise in 2010 and his assumption of power in 2011 coincided with the restoration of the status of the KWP, which had been downgraded since the famine of the 1990s.9 Particularly with the Sixth Congress of the KWP in May 2016, it became clear that North Korea is ruled by a supreme leader, the suryeong (now Kim Jong-un), and the KWP. The declared

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nuclear doctrine has both military and diplomatic implications—objectives of possessing nuclear deterrent; command, control, operations, and safety management of the nuclear weapons; and international collaboration with regard to nonproliferation. It is obvious that the military alone could not have come up with such a comprehensive doctrine; only diplomats or party leaders in charge of external affairs would have known how to employ the official doctrine and messages and signals embedded in it internationally. It is highly probable that the doctrine was closely examined by the Central Military Commission and the Politburo of the KWP in consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before it was passed into law by the Supreme People’s Assembly. Second, and in connection with my fi rst point, the development of the nuclear weapons and the command and control of them seem to be in centralized civilian hands. The law states that nuclear weapons are controlled by the supreme commander, a position held by Kim Jong-un. If this is true, the North Korean case is less risky than the South Asian cases where command-and- control procedures are decentralized, diversified, and complex, something that, as Scott Sagan, Vipin Narang, Michael Krepon, and Julia Thompson point out, is likely to jeopardize the safety and security of the weapons.10 In the Indian case, despite the fact that the military is under civilian control, the prime minister lacks control over the nuclear weapons and the corresponding operational posture, which is a highly risky situation. Pakistan also has adopted a risky “asymmetrical escalation” posture. Not only does the civilian leader in Pakistan not have control over the military commanders, but also command-and- control procedures are complicated by the delegation of authority over the use of nuclear weapons to field commanders, which is also a high-risk practice.11 It is said that in March 2012, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un established the Strategic Forces as the control and command structure over the nuclear weapons and the strategic missiles.12 It is impossible to know the reality of the commandership of the Strategic Forces; however, in view of North Korea’s limited nuclear arsenal and its emphasis on political loyalty in the commandership in the military, the command and control of nuclear weapons is likely to remain centralized in the hands of the supreme leader, Kim. Third, the Nuclear Weapons State Law delivers a dual message about North Korea’s nuclear strategy, and it tries to reveal a typical vulnerability in the extended deterrence. North Korea has apparently adopted assured retaliation instead of fi rst use; however, this is actually conditional no-fi rstuse on non-nuclear-weapon states. In principle, assured retaliation requires, and thus concentrates on, second-strike capability, and its basic premise is to counter a nuclear attack. Any state that adopted assured retaliation would maintain a posture of no-fi rst-use and, automatically, no use on nonnuclear-weapon states. However, the doctrine’s adoption of both retaliation

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SUNG CHULL KIM

and conditional no-fi rst-use on non-nuclear-weapon states, principles that are in conflict with one another, is intended to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies and to weaken US extended deterrence. The doctrine is trying to show that in the event of an immediate deterrence situation—for example, an imminent military confl ict between the United States and North Korea (or between the US-Korea or US-Japan alliance on the one hand and North Korea on the other)—the United States’ allies, particularly South Korea, would become the fi rst target of North Korea’s nuclear attack. According to the logic of the Nuclear Weapons State Law, it would be up to Pyongyang to decide what kind of cooperation between the United States and its allies constitutes a combined attack on North Korea.13 Finally, but most important of all, North Korea’s nuclear doctrine evolves. North Korea has elaborated its nuclear doctrine still further since the Nuclear Weapons State Law was adopted. North Korea insists that its nuclear weapons will not be used as bargaining chips for economic gain and that it will continue to be a nuclear weapon state “until the day when the United States lifts its nuclear threat and blackmail.”14 It also maintains that its ultimate aim is denuclearization through US-DPRK nuclear arms control negotiations.15 North Korea’s arguments have certainly impeded international efforts to achieve denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, during the US-ROK joint military exercises that took place two months after the fourth nuclear test in January 2016, North Korea, in a statement issued by the National Defense Commission, openly expressed its will to use the nuclear weapons preemptively.16 This statement dashed its official position of no-fi rst-use that appeared in the 2013 Nuclear Weapons State Law. In view of above-mentioned points about the evolving nuclear doctrine, North Korea’s nuclear doctrine is associated with a revisionist strategy. It aims at breaking the status quo on the Korean Peninsula and in the Asia-Pacific more broadly.

Modes of North Korea’s Nuclear Deterrence Strategy Alongside its underground nuclear tests, North Korea has made efforts to expand its nuclear capability. According to the 2014 Defense White Paper published by the ROK Ministry of National Defense, North Korea holds about forty kilograms of plutonium extracted through reprocessing and continues to operate a uranium-enrichment program. In particular, North Korea has made continued efforts to miniaturize its warheads in order to allow them to be carried by missiles of various ranges.17 Apparently North Korea’s fifth nuclear test in September 2016 aimed to verify technological feasibility of smaller and lighter warheads. North Korea has made parallel

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efforts to improve its delivery systems as well. Since 2014, it has focused on not only extending the maximum range of the ballistic missiles but also increasing their accuracy.18 It has also made additional efforts to diversify its delivery systems. In 2015 and 2016, it tested its submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) several times and made significant progress. The testfiring conducted in August 2016 is considered a success, and the SLBM is likely to become operational within a year.19 With the success of a test of the Musudan missile in June 2016, North Korea indicated that this intermediaterange missile is capable of reaching US bases in Guam.20 As its nuclear capability improves, North Korea is also upgrading its deterrence strategy. Normally, nuclear deterrence strategy details how to use the threat involving nuclear weapons (and development of them) on both military and diplomatic fronts—including what are the objects of deterrence, what kinds of attacks should be deterred, how to deploy the weapons, and what are the targets of attack.21 In this section, I project the four modes of North Korea’s nuclear deterrence strategy, as shown in table 2.1. In general, nuclear deterrence seeks to maintain the status quo. Its aim is to persuade the enemy to restrain its military provocation for fear of the disastrous consequences. In this regard, despite the absence of open dialogue, nuclear deterrence is a kind of negotiation between adversaries. The message is that destruction on an unacceptable scale will occur to you if you fail to understand me. 22 From 2003 to 2008, North Korea participated in the Six-Party Talks, on the one hand, and it concentrated on strengthening its nuclear weapon program, for which it conducted an underground test in October 2006, on the other. It is noteworthy that North Korea’s stance has moved from maintaining the status quo to breaking it and that Table 2.1. Four Modes of Nuclear Deterrence Strategy Objectives Status quo

Aspects

Revisionist

Military

I. Prevention of preemptive attack (demonstration of assured retaliation)

III. Breaking military balance between Koreas (low-intensity attacks)

Symbolic, diplomatic

II. Prevention of war (threat of nuclear war)

IV. Nuclear weapon state and peace treaty, arms control (coercing South Korea, change in regional balance)

Note: This table sets out North Korea’s nuclear deterrence strategy but does not include domestic factors of the nuclear advancement, such as regime legitimization and national pride. Also, it does not include the case of actual use of weapons as warfighting instruments, whether for defensive or offensive purposes.

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the turning point was the breakdown of the Six-Party Talks in 2008 and Pyongyang’s second nuclear test in 2009. Now North Korea regards nuclear deterrence not merely as a means of ensuring national security and the survival of the regime but also as a means of changing the military balance on the Korean Peninsula and of coercing South Korea. North Korea’s posture has become more revisionist over time. Among the four modes presented in table 2.1, both I and II are aimed at maintaining the status quo, or balancing deterrence. North Korea’s posture is gradually moving from status quo modes I and II to revisionist modes III and IV. Evidence of this change can be seen in a series of actions: the sinking of the ROK naval vessel Cheonan by a North Korean torpedo and the artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island in 2010, the declaration of nuclear weapon state status in the preamble of the constitution in 2012, the adoption of the Nuclear Weapons State Law in 2013, the continued cyberattacks on South Korean information technology infrastructure, the repeated threats of nuclear war, the argument for nuclear arms control, and the warning of preemptive nuclear attack on South Korea. Unlike in the status quo modes, North Korea with the revisionist modes III and IV tries to escalate threats on South Korea, seeks recognition of its nuclear weapon state status, and openly demands nuclear arms control negotiations, apparently with the United States. This is a serious challenge to stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the Asia-Pacific more broadly. This is so because neither recognition of the North’s status by neighboring states (particularly by South Korea and Japan) nor their entrance into nuclear disarmament negotiations is likely to occur before their own nuclear armament. Let us analyze North Korea’s deterrence strategy embedded in the four different modes. Mode I: Prevention of Preemptive Attack (Assured Retaliation)

One of the many objectives of North Korea’s nuclear strategy is to deter a preemptive strike by the United States and to retaliate in the event of such an attack. The North Koreans frequently refer to the “Iraq War phenomenon”—that the United States invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons, so nuclear arms are the only effective means of defense. But there are limitations on the ability of small nuclear weapon states such as North Korea to compete with nuclear superpowers such as the United States. North Korea has openly demonstrated its resolve to launch a nuclear war in the event of a US preemptive attack, whereas it is uncertain what kind of retaliation North Korea would take.23 For the United States, it would be difficult to make a decision on a preemptive attack, as any retaliation by Pyongyang—whether conventional or nuclear or both—might inflict unacceptable damage on South Korea in particular.

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Mode II: Prevention of War (Threat of Nuclear War)

Since 2008, North Korea has escalated the threat level, emphasizing that any military conflict could develop into a “nuclear war” or an “all-out nuclear war.”24 In general, threats involve the question of credibility. In the North Korean case, credibility is often questionable. North Korea’s nuclear tests are a typical means of both improving its technological capability and demonstrating the credibility of its threats. Apart from this, North Korea’s threats are often considered to be no more than bluffing.25 But North Korea believes that bluffing does at least attract attention.26 North Korean bluffing leads to speculation of various kinds: For instance, North Korean media’s use of the word “nuclear disaster” set observers wondering whether this was a reference to an attack on nuclear power plants or the threat of a nuclear war.27 (One empirical analysis demonstrates that the power succession in North Korea and the US war with other states were important factors behind Pyongyang’s raising of the threat level.28) Regardless of its credibility, North Korea’s threat is intended not only to prevent a war against itself but also, in the long run, to change the agenda of negotiations—from the denuclearization of North Korea to nuclear arms control as shown in mode IV. Mode III: Breaking Military Balance between the Two Koreas

As for the impact of nuclear weapons on international relations, there are several competing explanations. For example, Kenneth N. Waltz argues that nuclear weapon states, owing to the destructive power of the weapons themselves, act carefully and moderately, and thus a balance of power emerges between them. In contrast, Scott D. Sagan, who does not view the state as an integrated unit, warns that “imperfect individuals and normal, self-interested organizations” may cause failures in nuclear nonproliferation and increase the chances of a nuclear holocaust. Each of these arguments has its merits in logic, but empirically they are disputable.29 Theoretical discussions and empirical analyses of the stability-instability paradox, particularly in the South Asian case, have some implications for North Korea. The key point of this paradox is that the risk of a nuclear war between nuclear states is low, but low-intensity armed conflicts are highly likely.30 In this case, North Korea’s main target is not the United States with its superior nuclear capability but South Korea, a state that relies on US extended deterrence.31 The stability-instability paradox on the Korean Peninsula arises from the vulnerability of the extended deterrence. North Korea’s low-intensity provocations tend to expose the different interests and perceptions of the defender (the United States) and its protégé (South Korea). For many reasons, it is not easy for the defender and its protégé to

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take swift and concerted action against low-intensity provocations. For example, there was no retaliation for the infiltration of the South in 1968 by North Korean commandos, who got as far as the environs of the presidential residence, or for the Rangoon bombing of 1983. More recently, South Korea’s responses to the sinking of the Cheonan in March 2010 and the artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island in November of that year were minimal, although both of the attacks were no less serious than the North’s provocations during the Cold War. North Korea’s cyberattacks also have not been properly retaliated. Unlike in the case of military provocations, the North Korean authorities behind the cyberattacks can choose provocation tactics that are easily hidden and free of direct responsibility. This is why North Korea is likely to continue to use cyberattacks as a means of low-intensity provocation.32 What South Korea really fears is that if North Korea’s low-intensity provocations are not followed by South Korea’s and the United States’ concerted punishment, North Korea will see South Korea as a nuclear hostage. With a strategy that may be described as hostage deterrence, North Korea would use its military provocations, backed by its nuclear threat, to extort its gains in the inter-Korean relations—for example, the North’s excessive, repeated demands since 2009 for increasing wages at the Gaesong Industrial Complex. After the North’s fourth nuclear test in January 2016, South Korea decided to close the complex the following month. In the event of resumption of any inter-Korea economic exchanges, North Korea is likely to exert a more coercive approach than before. Mode IV: Pursuing Recognition of Nuclear Weapon State Status

North Korea has maintained, even before it carried out its nuclear tests, that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula means the withdrawal of the US nuclear umbrella. North Korea reiterated this argument during preparations for the September 19 Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks in 2005. After its third nuclear test, North Korea formalized this argument by using the term “nuclear arms control negotiations.” The vice foreign minister, Park Gil-yon, presented this term in his speech delivered at the United Nations (UN) in October 2013. In this vein, North Korea reiterated in 2016 that it is not interested in the Six-Party Talks, which had aimed to denuclearize North Korea and the Korean Peninsula. Right after the fifth nuclear test in September, Kim Yong-nam, North Korea’s chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly, stated that North Korea “will . . . continue to expand and develop international relations in a way that fits its status as a nuclear powerhouse.”33 For North Korea, nuclear arms control negotiations mean recognition of North Korea’s nuclear weapon state status. Thus, both the recognition of

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the North as a nuclear weapon state and the ensuing US- DPRK arms control negotiations, if they were to take place, would be a radical shift in the strategic balance in the Asia- Pacific and a catastrophic result for the nonproliferation regime. Inasmuch as the magnitude of the consequences would be great, the two issues are associated with other important questions, such as what should be contained and what should be tolerated as to the North Korean nuclear issue, whether arms control is possible without a US- China agreed framework about the future of the Asia- Pacific, and whether the United States would be willing to give up its strategic advantage in the region in exchange for the elimination of the nuclear threat from North Korea. The more important question is what impact the recognition of North Korea’s nuclear weapon state status would have on South Korea and Japan—that is, whether the two US allies would accept it without nuclear armament of themselves. It is noteworthy that North Korea, while advancing its nuclear capability and intensifying low-intensity provocations, has called for establishing a peace treaty with the United States. North Korea presented the idea right after its artillery attack on Yeonpyeong in 2010, reiterated its call for a treaty in 2015, and repeated it after the fourth nuclear test in 2016. The objective that North Korea wants to obtain here is its status as a nuclear weapon state; North Korea reconfi rmed its status of the self-proclaimed nuclear weapon state at the Seventh Congress of the KWP held in May 2016.34 North Korea’s call for a peace treaty seems to have two motives. One is a minimalist motive: North Korea perceives the US extended deterrence as the primary source of its insecurity, and thus it wants to eliminate the source of insecurity with the establishment of a US-DPRK peace treaty.35 This motive makes sense, particularly when the international community strengthens the sanctions regime and increasingly puts pressure on Pyongyang. The other is a maximalist motive: North Korea wants to gain more time for the solidification of de facto status of a nuclear weapon state. Once North Korea develops a credible nuclear deterrent, it would not have to worry about the “Iraq War phenomenon,” and indeed it would then have the upper hand on the security front and in inter-Korean relations. In this case, North Korea’s call for a peace treaty is certainly aimed at achieving a significant change in the status quo in the region. In addition to the above-mentioned four modes, North Korea may take into account the use of nuclear weapons as warfighting instruments. This consideration would also involve a nuclear war. Because of the asymmetry in nuclear capability between the United States and North Korea, there are two possible ways in which North Korea might become engaged in a nuclear war. One is through the defensive use of nuclear weapons on the inter-Korean border, and the other is through offensive, suicidal use to destroy enemies outside its territory. Regarding the former, North Korea

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might use tactical weapons or dirty bombs to defend its territory. 36 It might do this if it feared that the enemy’s forces were about to enter its territory or when such an incursion was actually in progress. This mode of defensive use assumes that the North Korean authorities remain rational and defensive and that they perceive the situation to be controllable.37 Regarding the latter possibility, this would involve all-out nuclear war, although the chances of this happening are small.38 In this situation, North Korean nuclear and conventional weapons could inflict unacceptable damage on South Korean cities, US bases in South Korea and the Asia-Pacific, and US cities. That is, North Korea as a small nuclear state would go for civilian as well as military targets.

Background of North Korea’s Revisionist Strategy: Deciphering the US Security Strategy Why did North Korea publicly announce that it had a nuclear deterrent in 2003 and adopt the Nuclear Weapons State Law in 2013? North Korea placed the blame for this on the United States, saying that it was a response to the George W. Bush administration’s policy of preemptive attack. By calling the Cold War rivals “fearful warriors,” Ralph K. White underscored the fallacies that led to the arms race; one of these is the belief that decisive action, rather than inaction, will prevent the worst outcome. He points out that this belief is the product of fear.39 North Korea’s announcement must have been based on such a belief: that the pursuit of nuclear deterrence (action) would be its best strategy for preventing a perceived threat of a US attack. The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) submitted to the US Congress on December 31, 2001, noted that North Korea had posed threats to the United States and its allies and that the US government needed contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons.40 In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush said that North Korea was part of an “axis of evil,” and in his address at West Point on June 1, 2002, he strongly suggested the possibility of launching preemptive attacks and preventive wars against terrorists and dictators. These speeches coincided with the preparation by the White House of a US National Security Strategy (NSS) that also included such possibilities. Indeed, the NSS, published on September 20 that year, declared that the United States would seek out terrorist threats in advance and adopt all possible means to destroy them.41 On September 22, the report was denounced by the official North Korean newspaper, Nodong Sinmun, which pointed out that the Bush administration’s plans for a preemptive attack in the war on terrorism had been formulated at the Texas Republican Party Convention held on June 14 and that the United States

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had adopted a new strategy for dealing with terrorists and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) among rogue states, which differed from its previous strategy of deterrence. This analysis was quite accurate, and the report must have struck fear in the hearts of the North Korean regime. It is hardly surprising, then, that following the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, North Korea declared its policy of “nuclear deterrence.” It is obvious that this declaration was a result of fear inspired by the “Iraq War phenomenon” and belief that, in response to the newly evolving US security strategy, action would be better than inaction. In this vein on June 18, 2003, Nodong Sinmun argued that North Korea could not accept the United States’ denuclearization demands as Iraq had been invaded precisely because it did not possess deterrent power. A foreign ministry spokesperson, through the Korean Central News Agency, repeated this position on October 2, that nuclear deterrence was the only way to resist the confrontational policy of the United States. The extent of the fear that Washington’s preemptive-strike policy inspired in the North Koreans can be seen in the way its leader went into hiding at particular times. During the time shortly after March 2003, when the United States launched its attack on Iraq, the North Korean leader at the time, Kim Jong-il, disappeared for forty-nine days. He disappeared again for nine days during the US-ROK joint military exercises from November 28 to December 1, 2010. It is said that Kim was particularly scared of US F-22 stealth aircraft.42 Kim’s disappearance can be interpreted as due to fear of a similar US attack on North Korea and the need to prepare military measures in the event of such an attack. North Korea’s actual provocation—its fi rst nuclear test—took place as the perceived US threat escalated in 2006 with the publication of two documents: the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and the NSS that specifically noted the danger posed by North Korea. On February 6, the QDR raised the idea of “tailored deterrence,” which was supposed to respond to new challenges that would go beyond the capabilities of the previous onesize-fits-all deterrence strategy. Tailored deterrence would be able to deal with diverse threats from advanced military powers, regional WMD states, and nonstate terrorists. The QDR also stated that the issue of Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear capabilities still posed a serious challenge to global security. In March of that year, the NSS noted that the United States’ most important strategic objective lay in the restoration of human dignity through the realization of democracy in dictatorships such as those in North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe. The Bush administration’s second-term security strategy, laid out in these two documents, was focused on terrorists and rogue states, and North Korea apparently remained on Washington’s list of targets of a US preemptive attack.

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At the end of the Bush administration in January 2008, North Korea started to use the term “nuclear war deterrence.”43 It was a critical year for US-DPRK relations in particular and the Six-Party Talks in general. Concerning the disabling of North Korea’s nuclear reactor in Yongbyon and Pyongyang’s willingness to undergo inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), differences between the two sides expanded, but none of the states involved in the Six-Party Talks could mediate between them. The multilateral talks showed signs of stumbling. After more twists and turns, North Korea handed over documents detailing its nuclear program to the IAEA on June 26 and destroyed the nuclear reactor’s cooling tower on June 27. In response, the United States removed North Korea from its list of sponsors of terrorism on October 11. Nevertheless, the two sides continued to clash from August through December, particularly over the method of inspection. The United States also raised the issue of the North Korea–Syria nuclear connection, as well as Pyongyang’s uraniumenrichment program. In the end, the dispute between the two sides paralyzed the entire Six-Party Talks at the end of the year. North Korea’s use of the provocative term “nuclear war deterrence” was an ominous sign of the disruption of the multilateral nuclear negotiations. Shortly before President Obama’s inauguration, North Korea employed coercive diplomacy by expressing its views on the relationship between USDPRK normalization and its nuclear weapon program. On January 13, 2009, a foreign ministry spokesperson made it clear that the key point would not be “normalization through denuclearization, but denuclearization through normalization.” On the other hand, Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, reflected the US position when she said that if North Korea was ready to close its nuclear program, the United States was willing to normalize its relations with its longtime adversary, to sign a peace treaty, and to provide economic assistance.44 There was obviously a sharp difference between the two states on the question of the sequence of events: Which one should come first, denuclearization or normalization? This was how things stood when North Korea fi red a long-range missile on April 2, calling it a launch for delivering the Gwangmyeongseong satellite, and conducted its second nuclear test on May 25. It is important to note that although the Obama administration’s security strategy and nuclear policy were basically the same as those of the Bush administration, there were some subtle differences between them. First, Bush emphasized the war on terrorism and the spread of democracy, whereas Obama focused on relations with major powers such as China and Russia, like his Cold War–era predecessors.45 Second, Obama prioritized the Asia-Pacific on the diplomatic, economic, and military fronts. China was the main variable. The Obama administration’s emphasis on China was made clear in April 2009 when Washington and Beijing held their fi rst

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two-plus-two strategic economic talks, in which the US secretaries of state and the treasury met with their Chinese counterparts. The talks covered a number of international issues including the economy, energy, and WMDs.46 The Obama administration’s emphasis on the Asia-Pacific and China meant that North Korea was put on the back burner. As Obama’s expectations that China would become a responsible world power increased, the more reliant his administration became on China with regard to the issue of North Korea. The United States gave up direct engagement with Pyongyang, as Secretary Clinton implied that the United States was stopping talks with the North and Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell emphasized the importance of US- China cooperation in order to solve the North Korean nuclear issue.47 The United States’ expectation that China would play an active role with regard to the North Korean nuclear issue has not yielded any tangible outcome. China treads a narrow line between commitment to nonproliferation and propping up the North Korean regime. As Fei-Ling Wang notes in his chapter, China’s halfhearted commitment to the denuclearization of North Korea is attributable to its “three-Rs” strategy for coping with the United States, which consists of resisting, reducing, and replacing US influence. North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and its related provocations have challenged China’s international role but have not seriously damaged Beijing’s core interests. Moreover, the toughening of international sanctions has boosted China’s trade with North Korea over the past decade, as it has taken the place of South Korea and Japan. North Korea has apparently exploited the Chinese position and thus, as Scott Snyder notes, made “China a hostage to and enabler of North Korean provocations.”48 Narang describes this as a “catalytic nuclear strategy” whereby Pyongyang uses the threat of nuclear advancement to catalyze Chinese diplomatic and economic support.49 The Obama administration was open to the possibility of using nuclear weapons to protect US national security and particularly stressed the necessity of its extended deterrence against North Korea. Details of Washington’s nuclear policy were contained in the NPR that was published on April 6, 2010, which emphasized regional deterrence and extended deterrence based on alliances. Notably, it stated that “the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.”50 According to this “negative security assurance,” North Korea became an exception on the grounds that it had withdrawn from the NPT and declared itself a nuclear weapon state. After carefully analyzing the US security strategy, particularly the 2010 NPR, North Korea formulated an embryonic form of nuclear doctrine, which was later developed into the 2013 Nuclear Weapons State Law. This

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doctrine was laid out in a foreign ministry memorandum of April 21, 2010, titled “The Korean Peninsula and Nuclear Weapons.”51 Its four main points were that (a) the drawing up of a peace treaty is a confidence-building precondition for denuclearization, (b) North Korea would keep its nuclear deterrent until the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the entire world, (c) North Korea would not use nuclear weapons against a nonnuclear-weapon state unless that state allied with a nuclear weapon state to attack North Korea, and (d) North Korea would participate on an equal basis in the international nonproliferation and denuclearization efforts. The memorandum apparently tried to make North Korea’s status as a nuclear weapon state a fait accompli. It was the fi rst time that North Korea had publicly mentioned its conditional policy of no-fi rst-use on nonnuclear states, which was intended to drive a wedge between the United States and South Korea. The development of North Korea’s nuclear program prompted the United States and South Korea to enhance their military collaboration. At the USROK summit held in June 2009, President Obama stressed the need to strengthen the extended deterrence.52 From a South Korean perspective, the sinking of the Cheonan in March 2010 was an important reason for increasing military cooperation between the two allies. At the Forty-Second Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) held in October 2010, Washington and Seoul agreed to establish the Extended Deterrence Policy Committee, which since March 2011 has been analyzing the threat posed by North Korean WMDs and acting as a channel for sharing information about them. North Korea’s third nuclear test on February 12, 2013, once again shocked the international community and seriously damaged the prospect of resolving the nuclear issue by diplomatic means.53 In April, North Korea laid out its nuclear doctrine in the Nuclear Weapons State Law. One notable point is that North Korea started insisting on nuclear arms control. The new law stated that North Korea “supports international arms control.” Also, in his keynote speech to the UN General Assembly on October 1, North Korea’s vice foreign minister, Park Gil-yon, proposed “the drafting of a document banning the use of nuclear weapons after nuclear arms control negotiations” with the United States.54 It is clear, therefore, that also in terms of arms control, North Korea is trying to break the status quo on the Korean Peninsula and in the Asia-Pacific. As noted earlier, the nuclear arms control negotiations with North Korea would mean recognition of it as a nuclear weapon state, so it is hardly likely that South Korea and Japan would accept the situation. South Korea and the United States also geared up their military cooperation. They carried out exercises to prepare decision-making procedures for an actual nuclear crisis, and at the Forty-Fifth SCM held in October 2013, the US secretary for defense and the defense minister of the Park

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Geun-hye administration (which had come to power in February that year) signed on to the Tailored Deterrence Strategy and accelerated the establishment of a defense system designed to cope with North Korean WMDs: the Kill Chain and the Korean Air and Missile Defense System.55 In April 2015, the United States and South Korea established the Deterrence Strategic Committee to counter both North Korean nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. In response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January 2016, the allies have enhanced the level of military cooperation, particularly in their joint exercises. The US-ROK joint military exercise in March, the largest in alliance history, tested Operations Plan 5015, a new strategy that adopted a preemptive strike targeting the top decision maker in Pyongyang. But North Korea conducted its fi fth nuclear test in September that year, which produced the yield similar to that of the bombing on Hiroshima. More important, in a much-trumpeted mood, North Korea reiterated its determination to continue the nuclear advancement. All of this is evidence of a vicious circle of military confrontation and the security dilemma on the Korean Peninsula: North Korea’s continued fear of insecurity, its strengthening of nuclear deterrence, and its increased low-intensity provocations have in turn led the United States and the ROK to enhance their military cooperation as part of US extended deterrence. In sum, the origin of North Korea’s nuclear doctrine may be found in the Bush administration’s war on terrorism and preemptive attack policy. Whereas the end of the Cold War and North Korea’s international isolation were behind Pyongyang’s clandestine nuclear program, Bush’s new security policy made North Korea a “fearful warrior,” determined to confront Washington’s new security strategy, including preemptive strike, with nuclear deterrence. That is, Washington’s new security strategy has produced unintended consequences.56 Pyongyang’s reading of Washington’s security strategy has led it not only to continue to reinforce its nuclear advancement but also to gradually materialize its nuclear doctrine and its revisionist strategy. As much as the North’s nuclear capability has increased, its deterrence strategy has become bolder in mode and broader in scope, both on military and diplomatic fronts. North Korea’s strategy is certainly evolving and statusquo-breaking but not stabilizing.

Future Challenges The challenge presented by North Korea’s emergence as a nuclear state is not limited to its technological advancement but extends also to its evolving nuclear doctrine and nuclear deterrence strategy—that is, the use of nuclear threat both militarily and diplomatically. First of all, one intended consequence of North Korea’s nuclear doctrine is the tension among the three

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elements: assured retaliation, conditional no-first-use, and the most recently presented preemptive nuclear attack. Pyongyang insists that the primary source of its insecurity is the US policy of hostility toward North Korea, whereas it tries to drive a wedge between the United States and South Korea and attempts to use the nuclear threat and extort gains from South Korea. This form of deterrence, which I call hostage deterrence, will be continued with low-intensity provocations (both conventional attacks and nonconventional offenses such as cyber operations) against South Korea and coercion in nonmilitary inter-Korean negotiations. As long as nuclear weapons are the core element of North Korea’s security strategy, its policy toward South Korea will continue to be a combination of deterrence and coercion. Second, North Korea’s nuclear weapons create a dilemma for the US-ROK alliance. Whereas an alliance relationship presents the protégé, in particular, with a dilemma between entrapment and abandonment, extended deterrence presents the defender with a dilemma concerning its degree of commitment. Overcommitment on the part of the defender may give the protégé a free ride or may conversely provide a risk-taking situation, but weak commitment to the defense of the protégé creates assurance problems. There has been and will continue to be in the future a certain degree of tension, or a dilemma, between the allies concerning how each of them should deal with North Korea’s provocations. Continued US resolve and joint US-ROK military exercises are all forms of assurance for South Korea, but they do not imply the enhancement of South Korea’s deterrence capability. In order to turn assurance into successful deterrence, the United States is likely to increasingly press South Korea to enhance its own capability within a US-framed missile defense system. Third, North Korea—perceiving enhanced US-ROK military cooperation (e.g., extended deterrence with nuclear umbrella, joint military exercises, and missile defense cooperation) as an intolerable threat—is likely to deploy its nuclear weapons as warfighting instruments at the field level. This would be an asymmetrical escalation strategy, as Narang has observed in Pakistan today.57 Should North Korea adopt this asymmetrical escalation strategy, the resulting decentralization of command and control would put both safety of the weapons and security of the Korean Peninsula at risk. On the other hand, decentralization of command and control would undermine Kim Jong-un’s power while at the same time increasing the power of the military. Fourth, US extended deterrence, if it is limited to the military dimension only, is unable to stop the continued expansion of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and enhancement of its technological progress. Enhanced US-ROK military cooperation alone will hardly be able to counter North Korea’s hostage deterrence against South Korea. In these circumstances, US extended deterrence and South Korea’s capability to counter North Korea

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must regularly reevaluate all things about Pyongyang’s nuclear-related moves, such as technological advancement, words and deeds, doctrine and posture, control and command, and diplomatic use.

Conclusion North Korea’s nuclear capability, despite continued advancement, can hardly be compared to that of a nuclear superpower such as the United States. Pyongyang is well aware of this and thus tries to use its nuclear asset to penetrate into the vulnerability of the US extended deterrence. North Korea believes that its nuclear deterrence serves as an equalizer on the grounds that it has apparently reduced the likelihood of a preemptive attack by the United States. But there are dangerous elements in its nuclear deterrence strategy. North Korea is trying to compel its neighbors to recognize it as a nuclear weapon state and thus change the status quo on the Korean Peninsula and in the Asia-Pacific more broadly. At the same time, North Korea is demanding nuclear arms control negotiations. In this regard, North Korea is exercising a “tyranny of the weak,” to use Charles Armstrong’s term, in which a small power maneuvers to shape the structure of its relations with its neighbors.58 It is noteworthy that the recognition of North Korea’s status and the nuclear arms control negotiations are closely linked to each other; South Korea and Japan would hardly accept the situation. North Korea’s above-mentioned demands are related to such pressing questions as what needs to be contained and what can be tolerated with regard to North Korea’s nuclear weapons and how to build an international consensus (specifically, cooperation between the United States and China), what would be an alternative to US extended deterrence over South Korea and Japan, and whether the United States is ready to relinquish its strategic advantage in the region. What is most important for the international community is preventive diplomacy and engagement, as well as deterrence, to create an environment in which North Korea will feel able to talk with its neighbors about reducing threats and tension. Deterrence is essential in the nearer term, but deterrence per se is not going to stop North Korea’s nuclear advancement and nuclear threat. The international community should explore an innovative sequential peace process, including an eventual peace treaty that North Korea has long demanded. For North Korea also, nuclear deterrence provides no guarantee of security but simply exacerbates the existing security dilemma. North Korea’s nuclear advancement and nuclear threat would not contribute to the survival of the Kim Jong-un regime. Given the increasing pressure under the international sanctions regime, the draining of scare resources not only delays its nuclear ambition but also is likely to arouse public discontent on the existing regime centered on Kim.

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This chapter is an extensively revised and updated version of the author’s article published in Korean: “Bukhaneu haek eokjeron: gyori, jeollyak, unyongeul jungsimeuro” [North Korea’s Nuclear Deterrence: Its Doctrine, Strategy and Operations], Pyounghwahak yongu [Journal of Peace Studies] 15 (2014): 121–44. 1. “North Korea Able to Miniaturize Nukes: DOD Intel Arm,” NTI, April 12, 2013; Ministry of National Defense, ROK, 2014 Defense White Paper (Seoul: Ministry of National Defense, 2014), 12; Anna Fifield, “North Korea Says It Has Technology to Make Mini-nuclear Weapons,” Washington Post, May 20, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost .com/world/pyongyang- says-it-has-technology- to-make-small-submarined- mounted -nuclear-warheads/2015/05/20/0e96d0bc-fec0–11e4–833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html; “N. Korea Conducts 5th Nuclear Test,” Yonhap News, September , 2016, http://english .yonhapnews.co.kr/northkorea/2016/09/09/0401000000AEN20160909002556315.html. 2. See Timothy W. Crawford, “The Endurance of Extended Deterrence: Continuity, Change, and Complexity in Theory and Policy,” in Complex Deterrence: Strategy in the Global Age, ed. T. V. Paul, Patrick M. Morgan, and James J. Wirtz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 279. 3. For the notion of great equalizer, see T. V. Paul, “Great Equalizers or Agents of Chaos? Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Emerging International Order,” in International Order and the Future of World Politics, ed. T. V. Paul and John A. Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 373–92. 4. Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), “Choseon oemuseong 8gaeguk sunoejahoweui seoneone choseonmunjega pohamdeonde dehayeo” [Spokesperson for DPRK Foreign Ministry on Declaration Adopted at G8 Summit], June 6, 2003. 5. KCNA, “Urieui haek eokjeryeokeun gyeolko wihyeopsudani anida” [Our nuclear deterrent is not a means of threat], June 9, 2003. 6. KCNA, “Choseon jeongbu seongmyeong: Haekmugi jeonpa bangji joyakeso taltoe” [The DPRK Government Statement: Withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty], January 10, 2003. 7. This assertion was ostensibly intended to avoid international condemnations. For instance, after the United Nations Security Council’s presidential statement of strong denouncement of North Korea’s rocket launch on April 13, 2012, North Korea’s foreign ministry spokesperson countered it by saying on May 6 at the KCNA that the statement infringed “the DPRK’s sovereignty and its rights of peaceful use of space and nuclear.” 8. KCNA, “Jawijeok haek boyugukeui jiwireul deouk gonggohi halte daehan beop chaetaek” [The adoption of the law on consolidating the status of a self-defensive nuclear weapons], April 1, 2013. 9. For example, at the KWP delegates’ meeting in September 2010, all posts in important organizations such as the Politburo, the Central Military Commission, and the Central Committee were filled. This meeting was the largest meeting after the Sixth KWP Congress in 1980; the restructuring of the KWP was intended to position Kim Jong-un as the power successor of Kim Jong-il, whose health was failing. See Ruediger Frank, “Power Restructuring in North Korea: Anointing Kim Jong Il’s Successor,” Asia-Pacific Journal, 42-2-10, October 18, 2010. 10. Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Vipin Narang, “Posturing for

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Peace? Pakistan’s Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability,” International Security 34, no. 3 (Winter 2009–10): 38–78; Michael Krepon and Julia Thompson, “Introduction,” in Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, ed. Michael Krepon and Julia Thompson (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2013), 9–19. 11. Christopher Clary and Vipin Narang, “Doctrine, Capabilities, and (In)Stability in South Asia,” in Krepon and Thompson, Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control, 93–106. 12. Ha-young Choi and John Grisafi, “North Korea’s Nuclear Force Reshuffles Its Politics, Economy,” NK News, February 11, 2016, https://www.nknews.org/2016/02/north -koreas-nuclear-force-reshuffles-its-politics-economy/. 13. In addition, a nuclear weapon state cannot guarantee no-first-use, in reality. For example, the Indian posture of assured retaliation and no-first-use is a myth; any conflict of conventional weapons may escalate to a use-it-or-lose-it situation that might dictate first use. Vipin Narang, “Five Myths about India’s Nuclear Doctrine,” Washington Quarterly 36 (Summer 2013): 143–57. 14. Nodong Sinmun, “Urineun geu eoteon yangbona tahyeopto morunda” [We do not know any concession or compromise], June 16, 2014; KCNA, “Choseon minjujueui inmin gonghwaguk gukbangwiwonhoe daebyeonin seongmyeong” [The statement issued by the spokesperson of the National Defense Commission of the DPRK], April 28, 2014. 15. Nodong Sinmun, “Kim Jong-un dongjikeso choseonnodongdang chunagangwiwonhoe 2013nyon 3wol jonwonhoeuieso hasin bogo,” [Comrade Kim Jong-un’s report delivered at the Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee held in March 2013], April 2, 2013. 16. KCNA, “Choseon minjujueui inmin gonghwaguk gukbangwiwonhoe seongmyeong” [The statement of the National Defense Commission of the DPRK], March 7, 2016. 17. There are various types of missiles: Scud-C (range of five hundred kilometers, covering most of the Korean Peninsula), Nodong (range of thirteen hundred kilometers, reaching Japanese territory except for Hokkaido), Musudan (range of over three thousand kilometers, reaching most parts of China, the Russian Far East, and Guam), and intercontinental ballistic missiles such as Taepodong-2 (up to ten thousand kilometers, reaching Alaska and Los Angeles). Ministry of National Defense, ROK, 2014 Defense White Paper (Seoul: Ministry of National Defense, 2014), 28–29. 18. KCNA, “Urieui jeongjeongdangdanghan jawiryeok ganghwa jochie hamburo dojeonhaji malayahanda” [Do not challenge our legitimate measure of strengthening the self-defense], National Defense Commission Spokesperson’s Statement, May 20, 2015; Lee Choongeun, “Bukhaneui haektandu sohyeonghwa, hyeondaehwa gisulgaebal gyeongrowa sujun” [North Korean path and level of technological progress on miniaturizing and modernizing nuclear warheads], paper presented at North Korean Studies Association meeting in spring 2015. 19. “N. Korea May Deploy SLBM within a Year,” Korea Times, August 25, 2016, http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2016/08/113_212733.html. 20. “North Korea Carries Out Two Banned Mid-range ‘Musudan Ballistic’ Missile Tests,” Telegraph, June 22, 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/21/north -korea-test-fires-musudan-ballistic-missile/. 21. For the diplomatic aspect of the nuclear weapons, particularly their impact on bargaining, see Erik Gartzke and Dong-Joon Jo, “Bargaining, Nuclear Proliferation, and Interstate Disputes,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (April 2009): 209–33.

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22. For the definition of deterrence in general, see Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 11; Patrick M. Morgan, Deterrence Now (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1–3; Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), 110; and Derek D. Smith, Deterring America: Rogue States and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 17. 23. Patrick M. Morgan, “Deterrence and System Management: The Case of North Korea,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 23 (2006): 121–38; Carmel Davis, “An Introduction to Nuclear Strategy and Small Nuclear Powers: Using North Korea as a Case,” Defence Studies 9 (March 2009): 104. 24. KCNA, “Urieui joneomgwa cheje, byeongjinroseone gamhi dojonhaneun jadreul jeoldaero yongnapchi aneul geosida” [We do not tolerate those who dare to challenge our esteemed leadership, regime, and parallel development policy], April 27, 2014. 25. One empirical study shows that when it provokes, North Korea does not escalate the threat of a nuclear war. This is so because under the asymmetry of the nuclear capability, North Korea seems to believe that continued nuclear threat even after the provocation might invite strong resistance from adversaries both diplomatically or militarily. Timothy S. Rich, “Deciphering North Korea’s Nuclear Rhetoric: An Automated Content Analysis of KCNA News,” Asian Affairs: An American Review 39 (2012): 73–89. 26. Davis, “Nuclear Strategy and Small Nuclear Powers,” 112–13. 27. KCNA, “Choseon minjujuui inmin gonghwaguk gukbangwiwonhoe daebyeonin seongmyong” [DPRK National Defense Commission spokesperson’s statement], April 28, 2014. 28. Hong-Cheol Kim, “How to Deter North Korea’s Military Provocations,” Korean Journal of International Studies 10 (June 2012): 63–93. 29. Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 2013), 200–201; Kenneth N. Waltz, “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb: Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability,” Foreign Affairs 91 (2012): 2–5. 30. Glenn Snyder, Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961); Glenn Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in The Balance of Power, ed. Paul Seabury (San Francisco: Chandler, 1965); Robert Rauchhaus, “Evaluating the Nuclear Peace Hypothesis: A Quantitative Approach,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (2009): 258–77; Davis, “Nuclear Strategy and Small Nuclear Powers,” 115. 31. Indeed, the inter-Korean relationship has become asymmetrical; the South is not fully prepared for the threats posed by nuclear weapons, biochemical weapons, and ballistic missiles. Park Hwee-Rhak, “Bukhanui bidaechingwihyope daehan hangukui gunsajok daeungjollyak” [South Korea’s military strategy to cope with North Korea’s asymmetrical strategy] Jollyak Yongu 57 (2013): 273–307; Ham Young-pil, “Bukhaneui haekgaebalgwa hanbando jeonjaengyangsangeui byonhwa” [North Korea’s nuclear weapons development and changes in the mode of war on the Korean Peninsula], Haebyongdae Sosik (June 2013): 100–19. 32. Brandon Valeriano and Ryan C. Maness, Cyber War versus Cyber Realities: Cyber Conflict in the International System (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 73. 33. “Stronger Sanctions Necessary against N. Korea: Foreign Minister,” Yonhap News, September 10, 2016, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2016/09/10/02000000 00AEN20160910001755315.html.

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34. “N. Korea Expected to Conduct Another Nuke Test ‘Sooner or Later’: Think Tank,” Korea Herald, May 26, 2016. 35. “Siron: Byeonhwareul geojeolhan jeonggwoneui mallo” [Comment on the current event: The final fate of the regime that refused changes], Choseon Sinbo, May 12, 2014. 36. Eom Sang-yoon, Bukhaneui haekmujanggwa hangukeui anbo.jeongchi.gyeongjejeok wihyeop [North Korea’s nuclear armament and its threat to South Korea’s security, economy, and politics], (Seoul: Sejong Institute, 2014), 16–18. 37. For details on the notion of controllable crisis, refer to Michael D. Cohen’s chapter. 38. Ham Hyoung-pil, “Bukhaneui haekgaebalgwa hanbando jeonjaengyangsangeui byonhwa” [North Korea’s nuclear weapons development and changes in the mode of war on the Korean Peninsula], 110–14; Ham Hyoung-pil, “Bukhaneui gunsawihyeop byeonhwa: Haekneungnyeok baljeongwa haekunyong jeollyak” [Changes in North Korean military threats: Development of nuclear capability and its operation strategy], in Hangukeui anbowa gukbang [Security and defense of Korea], ed. Park Chang-kwoun et al. (Seoul: KIDA, 2014), 194; Park Chang-kwoun, “Bukhaneui haekunyong jeollyakgwa hangukeui daebuk haekeokje jeollyak” [North Korea’s nuclear operation strategy and South Korea’s deterrence strategy], Korean Association of International Studies 2014 Conference Proceedings, 97–98. 39. See Ralph K. White, Fearful Warriors: A Psychological Profile of U.S.-Soviet Relations (New York: Free Press, 1984). 40. “Nuclear Posture Review” (excerpts), January 8, 2002, http://www.imi-online. de/download/Nuclear_Posture_Review.pdf. 41. White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: White House, September 2002), 6. 42. For Kim’s hiding, see “Kim Jong-il, F-22 stealth gongpo, 9ilgan bunkere kokkok sumeota” [Kim Kong-il had F-22 stealth phobia], JoongAng Daily, January 2, 2011, http://nk.joins.com/news/view.asp?aid=4539814. 43. Yonhap News, “North Korea to Bolster War Deterrence,” cited from BBC Morning Asia Pacific, January 4, 2008. 44. Cho Min and Kim Jin-ha, Bukhaek ilchi: 1955–2009 [Chronology of the North Korean nuclear issue, 1955–2009] (Seoul: KINU, 2009), 78. 45. Daniel W. Drezner, “Does Obama Have a Grand Strategy? Why We Need Doctrines in Uncertain Times,” Foreign Affairs 90 (2011): 57–68. 46. Also, the Obama administration’s rebalance was evidenced by a significant shift of US military power: In early 2012, the ratio of naval forces in Europe and Asia was shifted from 5:5 to 4:6. See Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Obama to the Australian Parliament,” Parliament House, Canberra, Australia, November 17, 2011; Leon E. Panetta, “Submitted Statement, Senate Budget Committee (Budget Request),” Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, February 28, 2012. 47. Hillary R. Clinton, “Remarks with Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara and South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan,” Washington, DC, December 6, 2010; Kurt Campbell, “U.S. Policy toward North Korea, Remarks at Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, March 1, 2011, http://seoul.usembassy.gov /p_rok_1206sk.html; http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2011/03/157472.htm. 48. Scott Snyder, China’s Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009), 132.

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49. Vipin Narang, “Nuclear Strategies of Emerging Nuclear Powers: North Korea and Iran,” Washington Quarterly 38 (Spring 2015): 73–91. 50. US Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review Report, April 2010, 15, 18. 51. KCNA, April 21, 2010. 52. In a similar vein, Kim Tae-hyo uses the term “proactive deterrence.” “Game Changer: North Korea under the Obama-Lee Partnership and Beyond,” Korea Observer 44 (Summer 2013): 289–314. 53. Particularly for the South Korean attitude, see Myoung-kyu Park, Philo Kim, Young-hoon Song, Yong-seok Chang, and Eun-mee Chung, 2013 Tongil euisikjosa [2013 public opinion survey on the unification issues] (Seoul: Seoul National University Institute for Peace and Unification, 2013), 67–68. 54. “Buk Park Gil-yon, Miguke haekgunchuk hyeopsang jeeui” [North Korea’s Park Gil-yon proposed nuclear arms talks], JoongAng Daily, October 3, 2013, http://article .joins.com/news/article/article.asp?total_id=12754306&cloc=olink|article| default. 55. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Korea, “Migukeui daehan bangwigongyak, hwakjangeokje” [The US extended deterrence for South Korea], http://www.mofa .go.kr/trade/areaissue/noramerica/nuclear/index.jsp?menu=m_30_30_30&tabmenu=t_4. 56. Terence Roehrig, From Deterrence to Engagement: The U.S. Defense Commitment to South Korea (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006), 26. 57. Narang, “Nuclear Strategies of Emerging Nuclear Powers,” 84–85. Narang maintains that North Korea would adopt the asymmetrical escalation strategy in the event of China’s abandonment of Pyongyang. However, in view of North Korea’s swing diplomacy between China and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Pyongyang may choose to approach Russia as an alternative patron in the event of China’s abandonment. 58. Charles K. Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950–1992 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013).

▼ 3

▲ NORTH KOREA, NUCLEAR WEAPONS, AND NO GOOD OPTIONS? A Controlled Path to Peace Michael D. Cohen

How would the capability to target the United States with nuclear missiles influence North Korean foreign policy? Pyongyang’s fi fth nuclear test in September 2016 and series of long-range and intermediate-range missile tests leave little doubt that the regime’s ultimate goal is the capability to reliably target the United States with nuclear weapons. If—a better word is probably when—Kim realizes this capability, what might the United States, South Korea, and the regional community do to prevent the most dangerous outcomes and encourage safe or at least less dangerous ones? I address these questions here. I argue that Kim Jong-un and his associates’ personal experience of fear of imminent nuclear war in a nuclear crisis and beliefs about how much control they have over nuclear escalation—if Pyongyang develops the aforementioned capability—will determine whether nuclear war ultimately erupts on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang’s persistence with its nuclear program in defiance of international sanctions—those infl icted after the fourth nuclear test were particularly strong, effectively banning the export of goods to North Korea and isolating anybody who dares to do business with large sectors of the North Korean economy—seems designed to achieve a nuclear arsenal capable of targeting the US mainland. It is not clear when it will be realized, and I do not address that question here.1

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However, it is also unclear how such a capability would influence Pyongyang’s behavior, especially since the regime has long had the conventional capacity to inflict significant damage on Seoul. The question of how nuclear proliferation influences a state’s foreign policy and conflict propensity has received extensive theoretical and empirical attention.2 However, exactly how nuclear weapons influence the behavior of new nuclear powers and what foreign policies we should expect new nuclear powers and a new nuclear North Korea to authorize remain unclear.3 The potential destruction that nuclear war would involve could encourage moderation, but it could also cause revisionism precisely because the unbearably costly destruction of nuclear war makes escalation unlikely.4 It is also possible that because North Korean policy is already undesirable, nuclear weapons capable of targeting the United States will change little of Pyongyang’s already coercive if not reckless behavior.5 I do not extensively detail the history of the North Korean nuclear program, efforts by the United States, South Korea, and their allies to curtail it, or Pyongyang’s recent provocations.6 Rather, I provide a theoretical prediction of how North Korea would behave after developing nuclear weapons capable of targeting the United States that is grounded in realist theory and social psychology.7 I make four arguments. First, North Korea has long engaged in coercive behavior that scholars refer to as nuclear compellence. Second, developing the capability to target the United States with nuclear missiles would likely cause more similarly assertive behavior, much of which would likely be more dangerous. Third, nuclear compellence tends not to realize revisions to the status quo and actually tends to cause nuclear crises, at least when authorized by new nuclear powers. Finally, the danger posed by a North Korean nuclear missile capability would depend on whether Kim Jong-un and/or the other generals or military officials responsible for the use of nuclear weapons experience fear of imminent nuclear war or regime change and believe that they have some control over whether nuclear war actually occurs. By “fear,” I do not refer to the healthy respect for the dangers associated with nuclear weapons. Rather, I refer to genuinely believing that nuclear war is likely to occur within days or hours. By “control,” I do not refer to that which Kim might have over the bureaucracy, military, or even diplomacy but rather the simple belief that he can or cannot control whether nuclear escalation occurs amid a nuclear crisis. By “nuclear crisis,” I refer in this context to a crisis more dangerous than those that have already occurred on the Korean Peninsula. I shall argue that if Kim experiences fear of imminent nuclear war or regime change and believes that he has some control over whether these events occur, he will refrain from nuclear compellence and behave like other experienced nuclear powers. Kim would be unlikely to give up his nuclear weapons and may continue to provide sensitive nuclear assistance to other parties.8 On the

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other hand, if Kim experiences fear of imminent nuclear or conventional war and believes that he has no control over whether it occurs, he may use nuclear weapons in a last bid either to save the regime or to infl ict destruction on Seoul and the United States. I conclude with the implications of this for policy prescriptions and proscriptions for the United States, South Korea, and the regional community to realize a peaceful Korean Peninsula. Because I am predicting the behavior of North Korea after Kim achieves a qualitatively distinct technological breakthrough that he has likely not yet realized, past North Korean behavior tells us little about future behavior when Pyongyang can target the United States with nuclear missiles. The ability to target one’s primary adversary with nuclear weapons is revolutionary, especially if one has a survivable second-strike arsenal. North Korean behavior before achieving this milestone should therefore be different from its behavior after having done so.9 Because North Korea has yet to achieve this breakthrough and evidence on the beliefs of North Korean leaders is elusive, I support my claims through a combination of case studies and evidence from other nuclear power cases and, in the case of fear, from experimental studies with randomly selected Americans. A nuclear deterrent capable of targeting the United States would be an unchartered strategic game- changer for Pyongyang, so our best analytical strategy is to leverage historical comparisons with similarly revisionist new nuclear powers in the Cold War and South Asia. I submit that while North Korea is obviously unique in many important ways, we can learn a lot about how Pyongyang will behave when it can target the United States with nuclear weapons from a careful reading of the historical record.

Nuclear Compellence Rarely Works Thomas Schelling long ago differentiated between deterrence and compellence.10 Deterrence involves threats to respond, usually with retaliation, to challenges to the status quo. Compellence involves threats to respond with retaliation to the continuation of the status quo: The threat is directed to an actor to stop some action that she has already begun or initiate an action that she has thus far refrained from doing.11 When both states have nuclear weapons, compellence tends to be harder than deterrence.12 Nuclear weapons make conflict costly; insofar as challenges tend to increase the probability of war, nuclear weapons reinforce the status quo. While deterrence is aimed at maintaining the status quo, compellence aims to revise it. Deterrent threats force the challenger to make the first move amid uncertainty that the defender will retaliate and that this retaliation could cause undesired escalation. Compellent threats require the compeller to move first and risk nuclear escalation because the adversary defies the threat by inaction and can respond

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in ways that increase the probability of nuclear escalation. Because moving first and challenging the status quo is dangerous, nuclear deterrence is usually easier than nuclear compellence. Finally, because both sides have lived with the status quo for a while, compellence threats to do something that might cause nuclear war if it is maintained are less credible than deterrent threats to raise the probability of nuclear escalation if it is revised. Pyongyang has lived with an unfavorable status quo for sixty years. One might argue that the end of the Cold War presents new challenges because Soviet/ Russian and now Chinese support is drying up, but the Cold War ended over twenty-five years ago. North Korean threats to revise an intolerable status quo under the threat of potential nuclear escalation lack credibility because of the simple fact that Pyongyang has lived with the post–Cold War status quo for many years. US superiority in number, sophistication, survivability, and command and control would also undermine the credibility of any North Korean coercive threats. Quantitative and qualitative evidence supports the claim that nuclear compellence tends not to cause revisions to the status quo. Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann analyzed a series of compellence threats from 1918 to 2001 and found that nuclear compellence threats cause desired revisions in about 20 percent of cases, a figure that is less than the success rate of conventional compellence threats.13 McGeorge Bundy offered a more detailed qualitative assessment of nuclear compellence in the Cold War and found little evidence that it allows revisions to the status quo.14 Nuclear weapons did not allow Mao Zedong to revise territorial boundaries with the Soviet Union in the disputed Ussuri River region in the late 1960s. Pakistani nuclear weapons have not allowed a revision of the Kashmir division on Pakistani terms. Indian nuclear weapons have not stopped terrorists based in Pakistan from occasionally attacking India. For over a decade, North Korea has used nuclear and missile tests to unsuccessfully compel the United States to formally end the 1950–53 Korean War, grant it diplomatic recognition, and end its political and economic isolation. Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons have reinforced deterrence against threats to North Korea and the subversion of Kim’s regime. But Pyongyang has been practicing nuclear compellence rather than, or at least as well as, nuclear deterrence, in two senses. While deterring threats to the regime appears at fi rst to be deterrence, it can also be viewed as compellence because the status quo is moving against North Korea. Over time Pyongyang’s economy will grow even weaker relative to South Korea’s, leaving Seoul with the potential to consolidate its already vastly stronger conventional military platforms. North Korea’s military, while numerically larger, will operate systems that will become further outdated against Seoul’s vastly technologically superior and better trained forces. As global information flows become faster and more interconnected, Pyongyang has

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to ensure that North Koreans prefer the little they have over the riches that they will inevitably see elsewhere. These trends will only increase over time. Economic migrants working in China, legally or illegally, return to the North with news from the outside. Radio broadcasts by Voice of America and Radio Free Asia can be picked up in North Korea near the Chinese border and perhaps throughout the country. South Korean movies, videos, and music, for which the possessor can be severely punished, are constantly smuggled into North Korea. South Korean nongovernmental organizations often float balloons into North Korea with packages of Chinese food, currency, and newspapers. Threats to respond to undesirable behavior with a “sea of fi re” are about not only deterring aggression against Pyongyang but also restraining the global forces that promise to eventually undermine North Korea. Pyongyang’s strategy of seeking negotiated resolutions with the United States on its own terms through calculated brinksmanship—a strategy very similar to that of Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Union—is fundamentally about revising the status quo and a clear case of nuclear compellence. North Korea has been practicing nuclear compellence for over a decade, but it has not realized its revisionist goals.15 North Korea may have amassed enough enriched uranium for between four and seven nuclear weapons and enough plutonium for about twelve weapons.16 Its recent challenges have been especially dangerous. The March 2010 sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan killed forty-six seamen, and the December 2010 fi ring of 180 artillery shells on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong killed two South Korean marines and two local construction workers, injured nineteen people, and destroyed dozens of properties. These two strikes have constituted the most serious conventional military attack by North Korea on South Korea since an attempted commando raid on the South Korean presidential palace in 1968. Perhaps more tellingly, 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 in which Pyongyang has gained something that could be claimed to be a concession.17 The October 2006 fi rst nuclear test led to international condemnation and United Nations Security Council sanctions but also prolonged negotiations with the United States. When Pyongyang launched its three-stage Taepodong-1 intercontinental ballistic missile in 1998 over Japan, the Bill Clinton administration hosted missile talks with the North in New York within two months. Nuclear weapons have destabilized the Korean Peninsula because Kim and his associates have likely learned that North Korean nuclear missiles able to target the United States might allow further threats and uses of force to generate sustained revisions to the status quo. The historical record suggests that Kim will persist with nuclear compellence until he experiences fear of imminent nuclear war. I have argued at

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greater length elsewhere that when nuclear powers desire revisions to the status quo and issue a series of nuclear compellence threats to achieve them, the experience of fear of imminent nuclear war is necessary to moderate their revisionism.18 Khrushchev, who was largely responsible for Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War crisis years of 1958 to 1962, issued three separate threats to remove the US and allied presence in West Berlin and revise the German status quo.19 He persisted with the strategy after its failure to achieve US concessions in 1959 and 1961. He refrained from issuing further challenges after deploying nuclear missiles to Cuba. One might argue that the Cuban Missile Crisis was caused by defensive goals in Cuba while the Berlin crises were about revisionist goals in Berlin, but much evidence shows that Khrushchev also had revisionist Berlin objectives in mind when he authorized such a large offshore missile base in Cuba. However, Khrushchev refrained from challenging the status quo after experiencing fear of imminent nuclear war. A systematic search of Soviet archival material and the primary and secondary literature on Khrushchev and the Cold War crises revealed no evidence that he experienced fear of imminent nuclear war earlier than October 24, 1962.20 Mao challenged Soviet troops on Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River in the years after China had developed nuclear weapons in 1964. The last skirmish occurred in 1969, just before the war scare, when he was so worried about a Soviet strike that he ordered his entire government and army to retreat from Beijing to the countryside.21 Pakistan has long aimed to revise the status quo in Kashmir: The 1948, 1965, and 1999 wars were all fought in large part over this region. Although the role of the Pakistani government in the October 2001 attacks on the Indian parliament and the May 2002 attacks on Indian civilians at the Jammu military base remains unclear, President Pervez Musharraf likely experienced fear of imminent nuclear war on May 30 and 31, 2002. Pakistani coercive diplomacy in Kashmir, at least on the scale of that seen from 1999 to 2002, has largely ceased since then, and violence in Kashmir has substantially declined although not disappeared. Mao and Musharraf do not appear to have experienced fear of imminent nuclear war before 1969 and 2002, respectively. Pyongyang has persisted with nuclear compellence policies that have caused several crises that do not seem to have caused Kim Jong-il or Kim Jong-un to experience fear of imminent nuclear war. There are strong reasons to suspect that Kim Jong-un will continue to pursue his nuclear compellence policy of calculated brinksmanship until he experiences fear of imminent nuclear war. If six to ten nuclear warheads—that may not be able to be mated with medium- and long-range missiles—have caused the North Korean brinksmanship of the last decade, the ability to target the United States with nuclear weapons would likely cause at least more of the same, and perhaps even more dangerous, behavior. Kim Jong-un and his senior army generals

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likely believe that their existing small arsenal has increased their chances of revising their undesirable status quo. The current capability was sufficient for Kim, having tested a long-range missile and conducted North Korea’s third nuclear test, to threaten to attack South Korea and US military bases in Japan and Guam, withdraw from all nonaggression pacts with South Korea, place two Musudan missiles on high alert, and shut down the Kaesong Industrial Complex, one of the last remaining vestiges of cooperation with Seoul. Kim Jong-il periodically engaged in similar behavior. If North Korea’s current force was sufficient to embolden Kim to engage in this behavior, the development of the capability to reliably target the United States with nuclear weapons should cause either more of the same or probably even more dangerous behavior. The United States and South Korea have thus far not conceded to Pyongyang’s demands, and it is unlikely that greater North Korean nuclear capabilities will compel them to do so. Enhanced North Korean nuclear missile capabilities will not translate into a greater likelihood of compellence threats sustaining revisions to the status quo. If Pyongyang issues demands for bilateral negotiations with the United States after, say, testing an unarmed nuclear-capable missile that lands off the coast of Hawaii, Washington would likely make no conciliatory moves. Washington would rather be much more likely to structure a response that signals not only that concessions will not be forthcoming but that further provocative behavior would not be tolerated. US forces in South Korea might be put on high alert, B-2 bombers might make flights over Pyongyang, and Kim would likely be told that any nuclear missile that hits or even comes near US territory would be met with a devastating attack on Pyongyang. Washington may threaten to destroy further nuclear missiles on their launchpads. The likely outcome of all of this is that Kim would cause a nuclear crisis more serious than previous ones, one in which he would experience fear of imminent nuclear war. He might worry that a US attack is imminent even though the nuclear missile did not reach the United States, or might fear that Washington is no longer willing to put up with his brinksmanship and is willing to risk a high level of damage inflicted on Seoul and even nuclear escalation to destroy his regime.

Fear, Risk, and Control Fear is central to much of international politics.22 The standard theoretical setup in much of the literature involves no international authority with the capability to enforce bargains between states and thus reveal the true balance of power and resolve. This leaves states that desire survival at a minimum and increased power at a maximum unable to credibly commit to

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agreements.23 Uncertainty regarding whether states will be content with security or desire more power and abide by an agreement—such as, say, not to develop nuclear weapons or use force—leaves a large role for fear in world politics. The presence of nuclear weapons may increase the costs of conflict and levels of fear.24 Leaders may fear that others will cheat on agreements not to develop nuclear weapons or not to provide them or related infrastructure to third parties. They could entertain a healthy fear that any crisis could escalate to nuclear war or believe that nuclear war is imminent even if it is not.25 While few would argue with the claim that fear is central to international politics, especially in the nuclear age, no scholarship has addressed whether variation in levels of fear causes variation in policies. Nor has anybody applied such a psychological framework to the consequences of nuclear proliferation. Recent experimental research, however, offers clear predictions for the effect of fear on leaders’ acceptance of risk and their policies regarding nuclear coercion. The human brain evolved a specific binary information-processing mechanism to deal with threats. 26 It scans the environment for potential threats, and if none are detected, the system responsible for more complex calculations drives behavior. But after a threat is detected, the brain automatically shuts down the prior system and gives precedence to a more simple system that makes very quick fight-or-flight decisions. Once the brain perceives that the threat has evaporated, the more complex system is again given precedence, but stimuli that are perceived as similar to any earlier ones that caused fear will very quickly give precedence to the more simple system that may make decisions similar to those made when that fear was earlier experienced. 27 Jennifer Lerner and Dacher Keltner have shown that fear has systematic effects on people’s orientation to risk that is conditional on beliefs about control.28 If people believe that they have a moderate level of control over the source of their fear—greater than zero but less than full control—the experience of fear causes them to avoid risk. However, beliefs about either total or no control reduce the effect of fear on risk.29 The treatment to manipulate fear used in their experiments was images of snakes and of the destruction of the 9/11 attacks, which are known to induce fear. But the ethics requirements to conduct these experiments stipulate that these effects of fear should wear off within hours or probably minutes. Fear of imminent nuclear war, especially by leaders who believe that they have some control over it, raises much greater costs and destruction and should have a more profound impact on long-term decision making. Moreover, the experience of fear of imminent nuclear war when one believes that one has genuine control over whether nuclear escalation occurs—the condition when the effect on risk acceptance should be greatest—cannot be replicated in the laboratory. The effect of emotions on fi nancial decision making, when

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actors have similarly strong incentives to behave rationally, is also strong. 30 Other research has shown that sufficiently strong experiences of fear can cause psychological conditions that last a lifetime. 31 There are, therefore, strong reasons to expect the experience of fear of imminent nuclear war, conditional on beliefs about control, to have significant effects on a leader’s attitude toward the risks associated with nuclear compellence. The experience of fear of imminent nuclear war need not cause risk aversion strictly defi ned because nuclear war is always extremely undesirable. Moreover, it is not clear that fear of imminent nuclear war would cause leaders to revise their estimates of its probability. Rather, because nuclear compellence raises the risk of inadvertent nuclear escalation, the experience of fear of imminent nuclear war, conditional on beliefs about control, should cause them to refrain from authorizing it. While little in international politics is free of risk, refraining from nuclear compellence will tend to reduce the risk of nuclear war and should be desired by those who fear that nuclear escalation is imminent. Moreover, in authoritarian states, where the pool of leaders is centralized and small, potential successors to leaders who cause a nuclear crisis may also have experienced fear of imminent nuclear war. There are thus strong reasons to believe that the leaders’ experience of fear of imminent nuclear war would cause revisionist states to refrain from nuclear compellence and accept the status quo. If these leaders or their successors begin to make progress by addressing their objectives through confidence-building measures, diplomacy, and institutionalized cooperation, later generations may face incentives to refrain from the dangerous nuclear compellence that their predecessors authorized. The authorization to use nuclear weapons in authoritarian states usually resides solely with one leader. This leader should therefore believe that he or she has control over whether a crisis occurs or whether it escalates to nuclear war. The Soviet troops operating the tactical and intermediate nuclear weapons in Cuba, for example, had to receive permission from Moscow to use them. While permission to use tactical nuclear weapons may have been delegated to commanders in the field during the ten-month South Asia crisis in 2001 and 2002, Musharraf likely believed that he had a substantial amount of control over whether nuclear war occurred. The experience of fear of imminent nuclear war should reduce the acceptance of risk under these conditions. Khrushchev experienced fear of imminent nuclear war on October 24 or 25, 1962. The Soviet leader admitted to his colleagues on October 25 that we “started out and then got afraid.”32 A Soviet deputy foreign minister told his colleagues that Khrushchev “shit his pants” when he heard that the US Strategic Air Command was moving to DEFCON 2.33 Khrushchev admitted weeks later that “I was frightened about what could happen to my

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country or your country or all the other countries that would be devastated by a nuclear war.”34 The Cold War did not end after the Cuban Missile Crisis, but from 1963 it exhibited much less danger. Mao engaged in several skirmishes in the five years following China’s development of nuclear weapons but, after experiencing fear of imminent war, Sino-Soviet skirmishes in the Zhenbao area, permanently refrained from militarily challenging any Soviet positions. There is no doubt that a war scare occurred in 1969.35 There is less evidence available in the Pakistani case, but on May 30 and 31, 2002, Musharraf experienced fear of imminent nuclear war. He apparently “hardly slept” because he “feared nuclear war.”36 Violence in Kashmir did not disappear after this, but it did substantially decline.37 It is possible that the US conflict in Afghanistan and pressure on Pakistan to support it caused Pakistani revisionism in Kashmir to decline to it, but Musharraf’s experience of fear of imminent nuclear war may have been sufficient to cause the decline to it. It is not clear that the 2008 Mumbai attacks were sponsored by the Pakistani government. The terrorist group Laskhar-e-Taiba may have taken over operational control of what may have been designed to be a much smaller operation by the Pakistani army.38 North Korea is different in many ways from the Soviet Union, China, and Pakistan, but these cases suggest that when revisionist leaders challenge the status quo and cause a nuclear crisis while believing that they have some control over whether or not nuclear war occurs, they refrain from nuclear compellence, moderate their foreign policies, and accept earlier untenable status quos. Khrushchev, Mao, and Musharraf held immense power in autocratic regimes. If Kim Jong-un experiences fear of imminent nuclear war and believes that he has some control over whether it occurs, he will probably behave similarly. But leaders of nuclear powers may experience either fear of imminent nuclear escalation or conventional destruction and believe that they have no control over whether it occurs. If their conventional military power is significantly weaker than their adversary’s, fear of imminent regime change or of conventional war may have similar effects as fear of imminent nuclear war. Fidel Castro did not have control over the nuclear weapons in Cuba. Therefore, he would probably have believed that he had little control over whether nuclear war or regime change occurred; he would have believed that only Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy had this authority. On October 27, 1962, Castro anticipated an “almost inevitable” US invasion in the next “24–72 hours.”39 He wrote to Khrushchev that if US forces invaded Cuba, the Soviet Union should “eliminate such danger forever through an act of clear legitimate defense, however harsh and terrible the solution would be.” In 1992, Castro said that during the crisis, if the United States had invaded, “I would have been ready to use nuclear weapons. . . .

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[B]efore having the country occupied—totally occupied—we were ready to die in defense of our country.”40 Castro’s high level of risk acceptance in this episode has often been attributed to ideology, personality, or alliance politics but is also explained by the simple fact that he experienced fear of imminent destruction and believed that he had no control over it. This variation in response to fear of imminent nuclear war and/or destruction offers important predictions of North Korean behavior. If Kim Jong-un experiences fear of imminent nuclear or conventional war and believes that he has some control over whether it occurs, subsequent North Korean behavior will be less dangerous. Kim will likely issue fewer nuclear compellence threats and behave like other experienced nuclear powers. His successor—if he also experiences such fear during the crisis—may behave with similar restraint. If he experiences such fear and believes that he has no control over nuclear escalation, he may use nuclear weapons in a fi nal bid to save his regime or ensure that South Korea and/or the United States also sustain serious damage. It is also worth pointing out that in addition to crises in which Kim believes that he has no control over nuclear escalation, nuclear weapons may also present him with one of the few means to assert control in such contexts. It is worth noting that provoking a crisis to cause Kim to experience fear of imminent nuclear war would be a bad idea because he would correctly believe that he had no control over the initial provocation. He could not know that the intent was only to cause a crisis rather than a war or regime change and would, given his conventionally weak military position, likely, and probably correctly, believe that he had little or no control. A large part of why North Korean nuclear brinkmanship is so dangerous is North Korea’s relative weakness. If Kim experiences fear of imminent nuclear war or conventional destruction, he may be highly likely to believe that he has no control over whether it occurs. Kim may believe that Washington desires an end to his regime and may have learned from the 2003 Iraq War and 2011 Libya intervention that the United States is willing to invade North Korea if Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons could be neutralized. Like Castro, his weak conventional power would leave him with little control over any conflict with the much more powerful United States and South Korea. If Kim genuinely believed that Washington or Seoul had initiated a crisis or were about to engage in an imminent preventive or preemptive attack, he would (rightly) believe that he had little control over escalation and the destruction of his regime. Ironically, if North Korea were a stronger military power, Kim might believe that he had more control over a potential military confrontation. The very weakness that has driven Pyongyang’s quest for the bomb also leaves Kim prone to the preferences that caused the most dangerous part of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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The desired effects of the experience of fear of imminent nuclear war are surely most likely to be brought about by unprovoked North Korean challenges. This is precisely the sort of behavior that the capability to target the United States with nuclear weapons would embolden Kim to pursue. He would likely believe that he has more control over whether nuclear war occurs in such a scenario than one in which Washington or Seoul made the fi rst move. If he believed that his actions caused escalation, he would likely believe that his actions might also deescalate the crisis. The United States, South Korea, and the international community need to ensure that when a more serious nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula causes Kim Jong-un to experience fear of imminent nuclear war—and it is almost guaranteed if Kim develops the capability to target the United States with nuclear weapons—he believes that he has control over whether war occurs and that he does not come to believe that a US strike is imminent. This trade- off raises complex policy challenges.

Policy Challenges One trade-off can be dismissed fairly quickly: If North Korea develops the capability to target the United States with nuclear missiles, Seoul and Washington would have to live with it. They should not develop plans to destroy Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal because identifying the location of every weapon would be very difficult. In a regime that people know so little about that it took almost nine hours for Seoul to learn of Kim Jong-il’s death, it is not realistic to assume that Washington, Seoul, and their allies could identify the location of each weapon. A preventive strike on North Korea that did not destroy all the regime’s nuclear weapons risks Kim believing that US and/or South Korean aims are unlimited. Kim would believe that he had little control and possibly retaliate on Seoul and/or US bases in the region with his remaining nuclear weapons. If Kim develops the capability to target the United States with nuclear weapons and engages in a series of more provocative crises, leaders in Seoul and Washington would have to decide whether they would prefer that he experience fear in the short term—with the associated risk that he may believe that he has no control—or aim to ensure that he never experiences fear of imminent nuclear war. The risks associated with his belief in no control suggest that the latter may seem more desirable. But once Kim can target the United States with nuclear missiles, the frequency and boldness of his nuclear compellence threats will increase and intensify. Unless Washington grants him the diplomatic and economic concessions that he seeks— which is unlikely and undesirable if he and other states’ leaders learn that nuclear threats will eventually gain concessions—South Korea and the

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United States will have to fi nd a way to respond to his challenges and defend themselves. But defending Seoul from North Korean aggression gets back to the problem of preventing Kim’s fear of imminent destruction and his belief in lack of control. Seoul and especially Washington need to credibly assure Kim that they have no intention of destroying his regime in peacetime or during a crisis. While President Barack Obama stated that all options were on the table with regard to Iran and North Korea, he would have done well to unilaterally renounce any US moves toward Tehran, Pyongyang, or elsewhere aimed at regime change. Any targeted military strikes against Pyongyang would likely be perceived by Kim as signs of imminent regime change over which he has no control. Seoul and Washington need to calibrate a response to North Korean aggression that does not allow Pyongyang to revise the status quo but that does not cause Kim to believe that he has lost control of a crisis. They need to coordinate policies that prevent North Korea from sustaining revisions to the status quo but ensure that Kim always believes that he can deescalate the crisis. Stating that any nuclear missiles will be destroyed once they approach South Korean, Japanese, or US airspace might deter Kim from these flight paths and reassure him that his adversaries’ intentions are more defensive than offensive. If nuclear-armed missiles are to be destroyed on the launchpad, Washington and Seoul have to clearly communicate to Pyongyang that missiles without nuclear payloads will not be destroyed and that further uses of force will not be forthcoming. To credibly commit that Washington does not intend to strike Pyongyang, the United States needs to ensure that troops in South Korea do not go beyond the operational mandate of defending Seoul from North Korean challenges. This might signal to Pyongyang that Washington does not wish to engage in regime change in North Korea and only wishes to maintain the status quo. A reduced US role in organizing and implementing responses to North Korean provocations might also teach Pyongyang that Seoul and Washington do not have offensive ambitions. Any future US posture on the Korean Peninsula sufficient to engage in longer-term combat would unnecessarily threaten Pyongyang. The South Korean development of nuclear weapons might influence the probability of a nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula but would not alter the fundamental psychological logic outlined above. China’s aid to North Korea and its debatable influence over Pyongyang’s nuclear program also do not mitigate the psychological logic. If Seoul were to retaliate, careful signals must be sent to Pyongyang to the effect that Seoul is only defending South Korean vessels, territory, and forces, maintaining the status quo, and does not plan to push further into North Korean territory. Ideally, these maneuvers would be conducted with systems that Pyongyang understands to be best suited to defensive objectives. Retaliation against North Korean

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forces should be conducted by those forces ill-suited to an invasion of North Korea. Some might bemoan the fact that these policies effectively accept North Korea as a nuclear power. This is right and wrong. It is right insofar as it rejects arguments that claim that striking Pyongyang now is the best of a bad set of options. It is right in that much of this analysis has assumed that there are no ways of convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. It fi nds company in other work that argues that North Korea is unlikely to give up nuclear weapons and that we should focus on preventing Pyongyang from exporting its nuclear know-how and preventing inadvertent escalation on the Korean Peninsula.41 This conclusion is wrong in that it overlooks the fact that powerful economic, political, and technological forces will eventually undermine North Korea if military force and US nuclear weapons do not. The forces that isolate North Korea threaten to undermine the Kim dynasty. Ensuring that Kim experiences fear of imminent nuclear war, if he develops the capability to target the United States with nuclear weapons, and believes that he has control over his country’s fate will ensure that the road to peace and unification is not marked by nuclear war. Regime collapse short of the use of military force would require Washington and Seoul to credibly assure Kim and his associates that they have at least some control over their future. The United States has maintained wartime operational control (OPCON) over South Korean forces since the Korean War. While Seoul assumed peacetime control in 1994, the United States is still obliged to lead South Korea’s military in the event of war. South Korea was due to take over this role in 2012, but North Korean provocations caused this date to be pushed back to December 2015. In October 2014, South Korea and the United States decided again to postpone the transfer of the wartime OPCON; they set the mid-2020s as a proposed target date, but it is unclear exactly when the transfer will take place. South Korea’s deterrence relies heavily on the US military capability. After North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January 2016, B-52 and B-2 bombers joined the US-ROK joint exercises in order to demonstrate US resolve for the defense of South Korea and assure North Korea of US resolve. Also, the Park Guen-hye administration announced that South Korea, in addition to its own advancement of missile defense and preemptive strike capability, would open talks with the United States for the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense on South Korean territory. It has more recently signaled a willingness to accept this system. It is hard to imagine how the United States can credibly commit to leaving Kim with the belief that he has some control over the fate of his regime amid a nuclear crisis without handing over wartime OPCON of South Korea to Seoul and perhaps further substantially reducing US military

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forces on the Korean Peninsula. All of this would likely require humility in Washington and an acceptance of not only the limitations of US power in influencing North Korean behavior but also the dangers of unnecessarily provoking Pyongyang. Similarly, Seoul would need to take a more independent role in engaging with North Korea while being open to working with Washington to deal with North Korean belligerence. While nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula has become dangerous because Kim Jong-un has learned that nuclear compellence is safe, it can become safe when Kim learns that it is dangerous. The key is for Kim to experience fear of imminent nuclear war in a crisis and believe that he has some control over nuclear escalation.

Notes 1. Jacques E. C. Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 2. Kenneth N. Waltz and Scott D. Sagan, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (New York: Norton, 2013); Michael Horowitz, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons and International Conflict: Does Experience Matter?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (2009): 234–57; Erik Gartzke and Dong Joon Jo, “Bargaining, Nuclear Proliferation and Interstate Disputes,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (2009): 209–33; Erik Gartzke, “Nuclear Proliferation Dynamics and Conventional Conflict” (2010), http://dss .ucsd.edu/~egartzke/papers/nuketime_05032010.pdf; Kyle Beardsley and Victor Asal, “Nuclear Weapons as Shields,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 26 (2009): 235–55; Kyle Beardsley and Victor Asal, “Winning with the Bomb,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (2009): 278–301. 3. Peter D. Feaver, “Optimists, Pessimists, and Theories of Nuclear Proliferation Management,” Security Studies 4 (1995): 754–72, 769; David J. Karl, “Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers,” International Security 21 (1997): 87–119, 118; Alexander H. Montgomery and Scott D. Sagan, “The Perils of Predicting Proliferation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (2009): 320–28, 321; Robert Jervis, “Unipolarity: A Structural Perspective,” World Politics 61 (2009): 188–213, 212. 4. Glenn H. Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in Balance of Power, ed. Paul Seabury (San Francisco: Chandler, 1965), 184–201. 5. Gartzke and Jo, “Nuclear Proliferation and Interstate Disputes.” 6. See chapters by Sung Chull Kim and Terence Roehrig. 7. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Dan Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs: Learning, Alliances and World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). Throughout this chapter, I conflate “nuclear arsenal,” “nuclear deterrence,” “North Korean bomb,” and “strategic nuclear deterrent” to refer to the North Korean capability to target the

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United States with nuclear weapons. I make no assumptions that the regime has a survivable arsenal. Rather, the analysis here is based on the assumption that Kim develops enough nuclear weapons that he thinks will give him a survivable second-strike force. 8. Matthew Fuhrmann, Atomic Assistance: How “Atoms for Peace” Programs Cause Nuclear Insecurity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012); Matthew Kroenig, Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). 9. Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); Kenneth N. Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,” American Political Science Review 84 (1990): 731–45. 10. Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966). 11. Ibid.; Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 12. Jervis, Nuclear Revolution, 28–32. 13. Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, “Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail,” International Organization 67 (2013): 173–95. 14. McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988). 15. While the distinction between deterrence and compellence often blurs in cases like the Korean Peninsula, those who believe that North Korea has been engaged in deterrence rather than compellence need to show that the military and economic regional status quo has not been moving against the regime. 16. David Albright and Christina Walrond, “North Korea’s Estimated Stocks of Plutonium and Weapon Grade Uranium,” Institute for Science and International Security Report, August 16, 2012, http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/dprk_fissile _material_production_16Aug2012.pdf. 17. Victor Cha, The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), 237. 18. Michael D. Cohen, “The Psychology of Nuclear Crises: When Proliferation Causes Peace” (unpublished book manuscript). 19. Alexsandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: Norton, 1996); Alexsandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War (New York: Norton, 2007); William Taubman, Khrushchev (New York: Norton, 2003). 20. Cohen, “Psychology of Nuclear Crises.” 21. Yang Kuisong, “The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969: From Zhenbao Island to Sino-American Rapprochement,” Cold War History 1 (2000): 21–51. 22. Shiping Tang, “Fear in International Politics: Two Positions,” International Studies Review 10 (2008): 451–71. 23. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (London: Penguin, 1954); Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (1978): 167–214, 172; James G. Blight, The Shattered Crystal Ball: Fear and Learning in the Cuban Missile Crisis (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990); John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), 42–43.

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24. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Waltz Responds to Sagan,” in Kenneth N. Waltz and Scott D. Sagan, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (New York: Norton, 2003), 154. 25. Dominic D. P. Johnson and Dominic Tierney, “The Rubicon Theory of War: How the Path to Conflict Reaches the Point of No Return,” International Security 36 (2011): 7–40. 26. Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Putnam, 1996); Rose McDermott, “The Feeling of Rationality: The Meaning of Neuroscientific Advances for Political Science,” Perspectives on Politics 2 (2004): 691–706. 27. Stephen P. Rosen, War and Human Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 27–70. 28. Jennifer Lerner and Dacher Keltner, “Beyond Valence: Toward a Model of Emotion-Specific Influences on Judgment and Choice,” Cognition and Emotion 14 (2000): 473–93; Jennifer Lerner and Dacher Keltner, “Fear, Anger and Risk,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001): 146–59; Jennifer Lerner, Roxana M. Gonzalez, Deborah A. Small, and Baruch Fischhoff, “Effects of Fear and Anger on Perceived Risks of Terrorism: A National Field Experiment,” Psychological Science 14 (2003): 144–50. 29. Craig. A. Smith and Phoebe C. Ellsworth, “Patterns of Cognitive Appraisal in Emotion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48 (1985): 813–38. 30. Chan Jean Lee and Eduardo Andrade, “Fear, Social Projection and Financial Decision Making,” Journal of Marketing Research 48 (2011): 121–29. 31. John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, “The Evolutionary Psychology of the Emotions and Their Relationship to Internal Regulatory Variables,” in Handbook of the Emotions, 3rd ed., ed. Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett (New York: Guilford, 2010), 114–37, 119. 32. Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War, 484. 33. Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 112. 34. Norman Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate: John F. Kennedy, Pope John, Nikita Khrushchev (New York: Norton, 1972), 46. 35. Kuisong, “Sino-Soviet Border Clash”; John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, Imagined Enemies: China Prepares for Uncertain War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). 36. Cohen, “Psychology of Nuclear Crises.” 37. S. Paul Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); S. Paul Kapur, “Ten Years of Instability in Nuclear South Asia,” International Security 33 (2008): 71–94. 38. Ashley Tellis, Robert D. Blackwill, Peter Chalk, Kim Cragin, C. Christine Fair, Brian A. Jackson, Brian Michael Jenkins, Seth G. Jones, Nathaniel Shestak, and Angel Rabasa, “The Lessons of Mumbai,” RAND Occasional Paper, 2009, http://www.rand .org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP249.html; Jason Burke, “Mumbai Spy Says He Worked for Terrorists Then Briefed Pakistan: David Headley Helped Lakshar-e-Taiba Prepare Its Bloody Raid on Indian Soil While, He Says, Reporting to the ISI as It Fought to Retain ‘Ownership’ of the Group,” Guardian, October 19, 2010.

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39. Cold War International History Project, “The Global Cuban Missile Crisis at 50,” CWIHP Bulletin 17–18, 2010, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files /CWIHP_Cuban_Missile_Crisis_Bulletin_17–18.pdf. 40. James G. Blight, Bruce J. Allyn, and David A. Welch, Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 252, 481. 41. James A. Acton, “Focus on Nonproliferation—Not Disarmament—in North Korea,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 14, 2013, http://carnegie endowment.org/2013/02/14/focus- on- nonproliferation- not- disarmament- in- north -korea.

▼ 4

▲ THE UNRAVELING OF NORTH KOREA’S PROLIFERATION BLACKMAIL STRATEGY Tristan Volpe

Since the end of the Cold War, North Korea has repeatedly attempted to compel concessions from the United States by wielding the threat of nuclear proliferation. In the early 1990s, North Korea threatened to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons unless Washington provided energy assistance.1 During the Six-Party Talks a decade later, the North Koreans returned to concession-seeking diplomacy by restarting their mothballed plutonium facilities, producing large quantities of fissile material, and testing a nuclear device. 2 After these negotiations reached an impasse, North Korea avoided using its nuclear program as a bargaining chip until February 2012, when it agreed to a moratorium on “missile launches, nuclear tests and nuclear activities” in exchange for food aid. 3 But a satellite launch in April 2012 and another nuclear test in February 2013 left US officials wondering “why Pyongyang would edge close to a deal and then rip it to pieces within days.”4 Subsequent efforts in New York to privately broach terms for resuming denuclearization talks also came to an abrupt end when North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear weapon test in January 2016. 5 North Korea’s steady development of nuclear weapons raises the question of why Pyongyang used its underlying nuclear program to pursue coercive diplomacy at all. North Korean decision making is notoriously difficult to estimate, but the historical record suggests that the ruling Kim regime long desired nuclear weapons to offset conventional inferiority.6 As

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the Cold War ended, Pyongyang needed to ensure its continued survival amid a dramatic loss of power and Soviet protection. Nuclear weapons offered a robust and efficient deterrent shield.7 Furthermore, North Korea was isolated from the international economy and community, so the material consequences and normative opprobrium associated with nuclear proliferation were probably of little concern for the pariah regime.8 Finally, North Korea had invested considerable sums in its nuclear program for decades but received few material benefits from using this technical capacity to proliferate as a form of compellence against the United States.9 Despite these strong drivers of proliferation, North Korea appears to have employed its nuclear program as a bargaining instrument for two reasons. First, diplomacy allowed North Korea to protect and enhance its emerging nuclear program during a critical period of development. By cutting a deal with the United States in 1994, for instance, North Korea reduced the threat of preventive military action against the vulnerable Yongbyon plutonium complex and opened up room to develop other strategic assets— notably ballistic missiles and uranium enrichment—at other undeclared sites. Second, the ruling Kim regime’s survival came to depend on extorting concessions from foreign governments to sustain the military and political elite.10 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pyongyang needed fresh sources of foreign patronage and soon found that the threat of proliferation provided it with the ability to compel concessions from the United States.11 North Korea may have stumbled onto the blackmail potential of its nuclear program by accident, but it was well versed in identifying American and South Korean “pressure points” throughout the Cold War and then exploiting these vulnerabilities with coercive diplomatic campaigns.12 But when did nuclear latency give the North Koreans the strongest bargaining advantage over the United States? This chapter claims that there was an optimal range of nuclear technology for North Korea to possess for the purpose of successful compellence. The North Koreans were in the best position when the plutonium-production capability was just coming on line in the early 1990s. At this emerging stage of technical development, North Korea could issue a credible threat of proliferation backed by a relatively low- cost assurance to suspend and eventually disable nuclear activities at Yongbyon in exchange for concessions. Once North Korea’s nuclear program left this fissile material “sweet spot” by producing large quantities of plutonium and testing a nuclear weapon 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.

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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. As Thomas Schelling noted long ago, coercive threats have to be “stopped or reversed when the enemy complies, or else there is no inducement.”13 While North Korea continued to issue demands and consider offers at the negotiation table, the proliferation blackmail strategy unraveled because the government was unwilling to freeze or cap its strategic capabilities. Once the nuclear enterprise matured into an operational capacity, the Kim regime would likely pay high domestic costs in terms of “delegitimization and destabilization” if it decided to barter away this valuable asset.14 The rest of the chapter reviews two episodes of North Korean diplomacy to illustrate the bargaining benefits the Kim regime was able to reap from its emerging proliferation threat, as well as the barriers to denuclearization that set in as the nuclear enterprise matured over time. The fi rst case of proliferation blackmail from 1991 to 1994 shows how North Korea’s threat to produce plutonium applied enough pressure on the United States to comply with demands without requiring the regime to make a hard choice about proliferation. The second episode of nuclear diplomacy during the Six-Party Talks a decade later demonstrates how the menu of denuclearization options became more expensive, while the Kim regime grew increasingly unwilling to trade away its nuclear assets. The chapter concludes that North Korea is unlikely to freeze its modern nuclear activities in the absence of a major catalytic shock.

Proliferation Blackmail in the Sweet Spot The first crisis over North Korea’s capacity to produce plutonium in the early 1990s is a paradigmatic case of how an adversary can leverage an emerging threat of proliferation to compel concessions from the United States. This section reviews the four main stages of coercive diplomacy that unfolded between 1991 and 1994 to assess how North Korea was able to strike a low-cost and high-reward deal by freezing operations at Yongbyon. The fi rst stage of the nuclear crisis began in 1991 as construction on a plutonium-reprocessing plant at the Yongbyon nuclear research complex neared completion. The United States worried that the huge plant could soon be used to produce large quantities of weapons-grade plutonium from spent reactor fuel. Washington coordinated a campaign to reward North Korea with expanded trade and security benefits if it froze and uncovered operations with this sensitive technology. North Korea subsequently allowed International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) teams to inspect the nuclear

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complex in the spring of 1992. The inspectors uncovered evidence that North Korea had lied about its past experiments with plutonium separation. Pyongyang refused to provide more information but implied that it did have full reprocessing capabilities. In an interesting move, North Korea also kept IAEA surveillance devices in place so the agency could track diversion of spent fuel to the reprocessing plant. By the end of 1992, North Korea had generated a credible proliferation threat along with the ability to ratchet up pressure on the United States by moving to produce fissile material. During the second stage, North Korea issued a series of ultimatums, starting with an announcement on March 12, 1993, that it would withdraw from compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in ninety days.15 US officials believed that by starting a “ticking- clock” countdown to the production of fissile material and nuclear weapons, the North Koreans were “setting the stage to negotiate with the United States on a package that would secure the greatest benefits on the easiest terms possible.”16 In response, the Bill Clinton administration devised a diplomatic plan that focused on demanding nonproliferation assurances from Pyongyang, notably that North Korea return to the NPT, comply with the IAEA, verifiably declare all nuclear activities, and ship all plutonium and spent fuel out of the country.17 When formal negotiations began in June 1993, North Korean chief delegate Kang Sok-ju made the demands and assurances of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) more explicit in a meeting with American chief negotiator Robert Gallucci. Kang emphasized that “Pyongyang had the ‘capability’ to build such weapons, but going that route made little sense since the United States had a large nuclear arsenal. Kang proposed a deal. If the United States stopped threatening North Korea, his country would commit itself never to manufacture nuclear weapons.”18 The North Korean leadership understood that the threat of proliferation needed to be backed with a believable nonproliferation promise once compliance was forthcoming from the United States. Gallucci indicated that the United States would be willing to fulfi ll demands for energy imports and perhaps even nuclear reactors if North Korea made a credible commitment not to produce fissile material and nuclear weapons. Kang bluntly told Gallucci that North Korea would “proceed to extract enough plutonium from its spent fuel rods to build one or two weapons” if the United States resisted.19 Although Kang recognized the need for a credible nonproliferation promise, the North Koreans would not offer up such an assurance without fi rst extracting the greatest package of concessions possible from the United States. The negotiations deadlocked because Washington refused to capitulate without a nonproliferation promise from Pyong-

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yang. This circular negotiation pattern continued to stymie a deal over the next year. After the June 1993 meeting deadlocked, North Korea started to turn up the pressure with new activities at Yongbyon. North Korea allowed the IAEA to perform maintenance on the monitoring equipment at Yongbyon in May 1993 and to “install a new device at the reactor that would help monitor operations when the rods were unloaded.”20 Yet the United States continued to resist North Korean demands for significant concessions without a fi rm nonproliferation commitment on the bargaining table. 21 By March 1994, however, Washington became aware of a relatively modest increase in breakout speed based on information gleaned from IAEA inspections. Inspectors discovered that North Korea had quietly doubled its capacity to recover plutonium at Yongbyon. Cooperation with the IAEA “smacked of a ploy to build up negotiating leverage,” as the inspections indicated that North Korea “might ramp up its nuclear weapons program rapidly if diplomacy failed.”22 If the United States continued to rebuff North Korea’s demands, Pyongyang signaled it was prepared to quickly breakout and produce nuclear weapons.23 The third stage of the blackmail process began in the spring of 1994, when North Korea prepared to explicitly cross the fissile material redline. By this point, Washington had resisted Pyongyang’s efforts to extort concessions for over a year and refused to buy out the North Korean nuclear program without a promise to freeze and dismantle the plutonium-reprocessing capabilities at Yongbyon. On April 19, North Korea informed the United States that it would begin preparations to separate plutonium because Washington had no intention of giving Pyongyang anything. North Korea created another ticking-clock ultimatum. This time, however, Pyongyang’s brinksmanship forced Washington to weigh the risks of capitulation against the costs of preventive military action on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea’s reactor discharge campaign was a clear brinksmanship tactic designed to increase bargaining leverage over the United States. Similar to the NPT withdrawal crisis, Pyongyang sought to reassert “control of negotiations through the creation of perceived deadlines by which [Washington] should respond.”24 Since the plutonium-production process was set to begin on May 4, the United States had a few weeks to capitulate to “a package solution” and avert a major increase in North Korean nuclear latency. In this situation, the deadline to fissile material production was “combined with demands for unilateral concessions and threats of negative consequences in the event of failure to respond.”25 North Korea hoped its unsupervised defueling “would both force [the United States] to react and increase Pyongyang’s bargaining leverage by presenting a fait accompli that [Washington] would need to pay a higher diplomatic price to reverse.”26

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North Korea began to unload fuel from the reactor on May 12 without IAEA inspectors present. Pyongyang claimed it was preserving the historical information of past irradiation history in the rods and noted that the defueling process would take about two months to complete, which left “ample time for the United States and North Korea to strike a deal.”27 But when the IAEA team arrived several days later on May 19, they “discovered that Pyongyang’s unloading of the spent fuel was proceeding at twice the expected rate since it had two, not just one, machines to discharge the fuel. . . . Now it looked as though the rods would be removed in a matter of weeks.”28 Pyongyang then “threatened to escalate the crisis dramatically by expelling IAEA inspectors and disabling the agency’s monitoring equipment.”29 In response, the United States considered a preventive strike against a range of North Korean nuclear and regime targets. Yet the potential costs of retaliation from the Korean People’s Army were deemed unacceptable. When President Clinton asked Gen. Gary Luck, the commander of United States Forces Korea, whether the United States could successfully perform such a mission, Luck replied, “Yes, but at the cost of a million [civilian causalities] and a trillion [dollars in economic damage to South Korea].”30 The United States backed away from the preventive strike option but boosted military capabilities in the region and prepared to levy harsh sanctions on the Kim regime. With Washington’s bottom line revealed, Pyongyang likely wanted to fi nd a way out before the situation escalated out of control. The unexpected visit of former US president Jimmy Carter with Kim Il-sung provided an off ramp for North Korea to offer a promise of nuclear restraint. The two sides returned to the bargaining table and reached a deal. North Korea agreed to freeze operations at Yongbyon, seal the reprocessing facility for eventual dismantlement, store and ship its spent fuel out of the country, halt construction of two large reactors, and remain party to the NPT. “In short, North Korea’s capacity to separate plutonium was ended,” and it was “obligated to fully disclose its past nuclear activities.”31 Cooperation with the IAEA at each step provided a credible system of verification of these sunk costs for the United States. In return, the United States agreed to the phased delivery of $50 million in heavy fuel oil each year, $4 billion in modern proliferation-resistant nuclear reactor technology, the relaxation of economic and political barriers, and a formal assurance against the threat or use of nuclear weapons against the DPRK. The fi nal Agreed Framework between the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, signed on October 21, 1994, formalized this bargain.32 North Korea was able to strike a low- cost and high-reward deal because it could reassure the United States by freezing operations at Yongbyon. This was a modest price to pay. North Korea avoided military attack and reaped

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badly needed energy assistance. Washington believed that Pyongyang was unlikely to cease operations and agree to the eventual disablement of the 5-megawatt reactor and reprocessing plant if it wanted nuclear weapons in the near term. The United States also insisted upon several hand-tying mechanisms to increase the costs of reneging on the Agreed Framework while boosting the benefits of sustained cooperation. Ambassador Gallucci noted in December 1994 that the technical options might not be enough to constrain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions over the long term: “We entered into discussions . . . without any uncertainty or delusions about past North Korean behavior.” The Agreed Framework was “not based upon trust” but rather a tit-for-tat structure “so that we can withhold cooperation at any point that we determine that North Korea is not meeting its obligations under the agreement.”33 The American negotiators deconstructed the terms of the deal into a series of smaller steps, with the burden of up-front performance falling on the North Koreans. To receive the fi rst shipment of heavy oil, for example, North Korea had to verifiably halt all its declared nuclear operations. Larger benefits would only come several years later when the United States “had an opportunity to judge [North Korea’s] performance and its intentions.”34 To receive the full package of energy assistance, Pyongyang had to uphold its complete promise to disable the Yongbyon complex. The deal bound the Kim regime to its nonnuclear promise for as long as it valued the energy subsidies more than acquisition of nuclear weapons. The Agreed Framework, however, suffered from three limitations. First, it focused on eliminating North Korea’s plutonium-production capacity and did not curtail weaponization or delivery system programs. Secretary of State William Christopher acknowledged that the deal placed “highest priority on the elements of the North Korean program that most acutely threaten the United States. This means, fi rst and foremost, the accumulation of plutonium by North Korea.”35 Second, under the phased structure of the framework, North Korea was only required to come into full compliance with the IAEA and clear up the reprocessing discrepancies toward the end of the deal. The emphasis on declared facilities and materials left open the possibility of clandestine fuel- cycle operations. And by back-loading the dismantlement of the Yongbyon facilities, the Agreed Framework left open the possibility of future coercive diplomacy with nuclear technology. Third, and most important, the value of energy subsidies to the Kim regime relative to the acquisition of nuclear weapons was likely to change over time. Given the Kim regime’s immediate need to fi ll gaps in the military economy with imported fuel oil, the deal seemed genuine at the time. But even if Pyongyang valued energy more than deploying a nuclear deterrent in 1994, it still seemed unlikely that long-standing nuclear ambitions would disappear forever. The deal therefore had a decaying half-life. Once

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the regime stabilized itself with energy assistance or diversified its supply chain, the deal would start to be worth less. Pyongyang might become very reluctant to give up its nuclear fuel cycle at that point. One critic noted at the time, “The North is presumably betting that the opening to economic and political normalization will allow it to survive and plans to hang on to its mothballed nuclear program for leverage.”36 The United States was relying on assurance mechanisms that could become devalued once Pyongyang had to weigh the costs and benefits of eliminating its latent nuclear capabilities. Given these limitations, why did Washington not push the Kim regime for a stronger nonproliferation promise? The United States accepted the Agreed Framework because it believed the deal was imperfect but still credible. The Clinton administration understood the problems with the agreement and championed the commitment tactics as the best way to “attain all of our strategic objectives.”37 Washington believed that Pyongyang did not intend to proliferate with its plutonium program for the foreseeable future but was well aware that it might pursue other pathways to the bomb. The administration hoped the energy concessions would tie the Kim regime’s hands to a nonnuclear promise. If not, Washington concluded it had enough time to react. As a result, the United States was comfortable because the Agreed Framework would at least slow down and manage a nuclear proliferation on the peninsula. The United States also faced constraints in reaching an optimal bargain with North Korea. A perfect nonproliferation promise from North Korea would have dealt with the possibility of clandestine nuclear efforts or undeclared facilities and devised much stronger hand-tying mechanisms to firmly bind the Kim regime to its nonnuclear commitment. Pyongyang refused to implement such comprehensive constraints. The United States could not force it to do so and lacked the leverage needed to devise the sort of handtying policies that would create very high costs to breaking the Agreed Framework. During the crisis, the Clinton administration revealed that it was unwilling to take military action on the Korean Peninsula. The United States could only hurt the Kim regime so much with economic sanctions if it decided to break out down the road. In an ideal world, Washington would have turned to Beijing to act as a third-party guarantor of the Agreed Framework since China kept the Kim regime afloat with critical lifelines. But Beijing was not interested in collusion over nonproliferation at the time. Washington had few options available to craft assurance policies for the Agreed Framework. The limitations intrinsic to North Korea’s nonproliferation promise suggest that it is important to consider the actual set of commitment options available during the process of coercive diplomacy. As the fi rst nuclear crisis makes clear, the United States may be forced to settle for an ephemeral commitment, especially when continued diplomatic resistance or a preven-

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tive strike pose high costs. Even vocal critics of the Agreed Framework conceded this point. As Paul Wolfowitz admitted in 1995, “No one should suggest that a perfect agreement would have been possible given the regime that we are dealing with and given the risks and limitations of military options.”38 The key is to assess whether the United States believed North Korea’s promise was a credible means to manage the proliferation problem, albeit for a short time. The Kim regime walked away with a package of concessions precisely because the deal temporarily prevented North Korea’s production of plutonium.

The Proliferation Blackmail Strategy Starts to Unravel A second North Korean nuclear crisis illustrates how nuclear programs generate increasing returns over time as an operational capability but diminishing returns as a bargaining chip. In 2002, US officials claimed North Korea was cheating on the Agreed Framework with a covert uraniumenrichment program, so Washington stopped providing energy assistance. This revelation was problematic, as the North Koreans would have preferred to keep the Agreed Framework in place while they secretly acquired a stockpile of enriched uranium. North Korea withdrew from the NPT in January 2003, restarted the dormant plutonium program, and began to emulate the old concession-seeking diplomatic playbook from the 1990s. Yet this compellence campaign unraveled once it became clear that North Korea was no longer willing to seriously trade away its much more valuable nuclear weapon enterprise. At the outset, North Korea faced new barriers to cutting a deal. The George W. Bush administration initially made rewards conditional on an agreement for the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program and requested that China underwrite the diplomatic process as leader of the Six-Party Talks. Beijing had the motives and capacity to constrain Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Energy problems in the DPRK steadily worsened throughout the 1990s as the country suffered a severe “shortage of fuel oil, becoming increasingly dependent upon foreign oil supplies, with nearly total supply coming from China since 2003.”39 To maintain its military and economy, North Korea needed to increase its supply of energy beyond the fi xed imports under the Agreed Framework. China fi lled this critical energy gap to enhance its influence over North Korean behavior. “By strategically increasing North Korea’s dependence on China, Beijing could increase its political influence to force North Korea to comply with Chinese demands. . . . Beijing would want Pyongyang to be more dependent on Chinese influence in order to be capable of inducing the North’s compliance by threatening Pyongyang with the

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bargaining card of ‘absence of assistance.’ ”40 Beijing was only willing to turn the fuel oil spigot on and off within limits, though, “since a large-scale intensive disruption of energy supply could result in catastrophe in North Korea.”41 China therefore acquired the capacity to act as a third-party mediator of nuclear negotiations between the United States and North Korea. Although China was able to convene the Six-Party Talks as a multilateral forum for negotiating a nuclear deal, both the United States and North Korea adopted hard lines. President Bush admonished North Korea for playing “the old blackmail game,” while US officials remained adamant that they “would not ‘reward’ North Korea’s behavior.”42 Pyongyang attempted to break Washington’s tough stance by producing large quantities of plutonium from 2003 to 2005. Pyongyang threatened “a ‘physical demonstration’ of its nuclear capabilities” and followed through by dramatizing their possession of plutonium when a Track II delegation visited Yongbyon.43 A senior North Korean official admitted that the fissile material buildup was designed in part “to force Bush to negotiate on terms more favorable to North Korea.”44 Instead, the United States levied crippling sanctions against the regime’s financial assets. In reaction to the economic sanctions, the North Koreans boycotted negotiations and tested a nuclear weapon on October 9, 2006. The nuclear test was a watershed moment for Pyongyang’s nuclear policy. The leadership had to consider three paths forward. The fi rst was to abandon diplomacy altogether to focus on deploying a small but survivable nuclear arsenal. Second, North Korea could give up its entire nuclear enterprise in exchange for a package of concessions to be negotiated during future SixParty talks. The obvious downside was that the Kim regime would have to rely exclusively on its deteriorating conventional military forces for deterrence. In the end, the diplomatic record indicates that North Korea went with a third option to “have its cake and eat it too.” North Korea would retain its nuclear enterprise, but negotiators tried to bargain over how much the force would grow from this point. This way, North Korea could retain the nuclear program as a bargaining chip without forgoing the security benefits of nuclear deterrence. Pyongyang shifted its blackmail threat from proliferation to further increases in its nuclear capabilities. The key problem with this bargaining strategy was that the increase in fissile material and the weapon test made it difficult for North Korea to continue its rent-seeking stratagem for two reasons. First, by leaving the fissile material sweet spot, North Korea increased the requirements for issuing a nonnuclear promise. Any nuclear deal would be predicated on North Korea taking active steps to roll back three components of its nuclear program: nuclear fuel cycle assets and fissile material, ballistic missiles, and nuclear weapons. In contrast to the early 1990s, North Korea could no

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longer just freeze in place. The nuclear test revealed that the leadership in Pyongyang was willing to bear the consequences of overt proliferation. The prospect of further isolation, punishment, and possible alienation of Chinese patrons was not enough to constrain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. As a result, the United States wanted North Korea to send a costly signal of its true nuclear intentions by giving up some of its valuable strategic assets. Second, there were early indications that North Korea had already become unwilling to give up or seriously constrain its nuclear capabilities soon after the plutonium-reprocessing campaign in the winter of 2004. By February 2005, North Korea’s lead negotiator for the Six-Party Talks made a dramatic statement: “The time for discussing give and take type issues, such as freeze and reward, at the Six-Party Talks has passed. Now that we have become a dignified nuclear weapons possessing state, the Six-Party Talks must naturally become arms reduction talks.”45 By trying to shift the focus from nonproliferation to bilateral US-DPRK arms control negotiations, Pyongyang may have been signaling that the nuclear production complex was now too valuable to trade away. Nonetheless, the United States returned to the bargaining table in 2007 to explore whether North Korea might be persuaded to denuclearize in exchange for concessions. The United States offered rewards in exchange for “tangible and verifiable steps in denuclearization that would limit North Korea’s plutonium production.”46 Pyongyang agreed to an accord in February 2007 that neutralized the plutonium program and hashed out a road map for further reductions. If Pyongyang shut down and disabled the Yongbyon reactor, reprocessing plant, and fuel-fabrication plant, Washington was prepared to lift the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) sanctions and deliver a onetime shipment of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil. An additional 950,000 tons would be provided after the entire nuclear infrastructure had been declared and disabled.47 “The idea was to avoid ‘front-loading’ all of the North’s benefits before Pyongyang had taken concrete steps to disarm.”48 In many ways, the 2007 agreement was similar to the 1994 Agreed Framework, except Washington required Pyongyang take sequenced steps to roll back its nuclear capabilities before it would provide a onetime payout of energy assistance. Over the next year, North Korea started to shut down and disable facilities at Yongbyon but eventually refused to verifiably dismantle key parts of the nuclear complex. In particular, North Korean diplomats argued that “disablement did not imply dismantlement” and refused to render the reprocessing plant inoperative at Yongbyon.49 These disagreements boiled over into a controversy regarding verification. During the fi nal session of the Six-Party Talks in December 2008, the North Koreans balked “at any commitment to written, binding pledges on verification.”50 At this point, the process had a reached the point at which the United States required

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North Korea to stipulate how it was going to increase transparency and verify disablement before providing concessions. The North Koreans declined to move forward, and the agreement quickly fell apart. From the outside, the Kim regime appeared to decide that previously sufficient concessions were no longer good enough to trade away the nuclear program.

Conclusion North Korea’s track record of initial blackmail success in 1994 and subsequent failure during the Six-Party Talks underscores that nuclear latency conferred Pyongyang with the most bargaining leverage when its plutonium program was just starting to emerge. North Korea readily issued a credible proliferation threat and nonproliferation promise during the first nuclear crisis but found it harder to bargain for aid with the prospect of nuclear breakout during the Six-Party Talks. The closer North Korea moved toward the deployment of a nuclear deterrent, the costlier and more unattractive it became to actually barter away the underlying strategic capabilities. North Korea’s unwillingness to live up to the February 2007 agreement revealed a long-standing tension in its nuclear policy. Did North Korea really just want nuclear weapons? Or was the Kim regime ready to trade away its nuclear capability for a package of economic and political concession? In 1998, Joseph Nye claimed the US intelligence community remained “deeply divided on the question of whether the North wanted a bomb or was simply playing for aid.”51 The October 2006 nuclear test forced North Korea to resolve this quandary. Instead of giving up its nuclear infrastructure to reap a grand bargain with the United States, North Korea let its proliferation blackmail strategy unravel. North Korea’s subsequent pattern of coming to negotiations only to reject basic parameters or renege on interim agreements, such as the 2012 Leap Day Deal, led many in the United States to conclude that the Kim regime was focused on mastering “the technical capabilities that are vital to its nuclear deterrent.”52 The accelerated pace of nuclear tests in January and September 2016 further supported this conclusion. 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. But future attempts to bargain with the underlying nuclear enterprise itself are likely to fail and will only increase tension and the risk of confl ict on the Korean Peninsula. Unless a catalytic event shocks the leadership from its current path of warhead and missile development, the nuclear program is simply too valuable for the North Korean leadership to roll back or constrain.

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1. Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman, and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005). 2. Mike Chinoy, Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2009); Jonathan D. Pollack, No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security (Abingdon [UK]: Routledge, 2011). 3. US Department of State, “U.S.-DPRK Bilateral Discussions,” press statement, February 29, 2012. 4. Andrew Quinn, “Obama’s North Korean Leap of Faith Falls Short,” Reuters, March 30, 2012; Ankit Panda, “A Great Leap to Nowhere: Remembering the US-North Korea ‘Leap Day’ Deal,” Diplomat, February 29, 2016. 5. Alastair Gale and Carol E. Lee, “U.S. Agreed to North Korea Peace Talks before Latest Nuclear Test,” Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2016. 6. North Korea’s desire for nuclear weapons stems back more than half a century. During the 1950s and 1960s, Kim Il-sung reached out to the Soviet Union to train North Korean scientists and founded the nuclear research complex at Yongbyon. Beset by insecurity, Kim apparently saw nuclear weapons “as a strategic ‘equalizer’ and deterrent” against US-ROK combined forces in the South. But since Kim maintained personal and secretive control over the nuclear program at its genesis, North Korea’s “nuclear intentions were never written in any DPRK regulations or explicitly developed. . . . Instead, they were ‘hidden away’ in Kim Il-sung’s head, and he might have shared only reluctantly his thoughts and intentions with his close associates.” Alexandre Y. Mansourov, “The Origins, Evolution, and Current Politics of the North Korean Nuclear Program,” Nonproliferation Review (Spring–Summer 1995): 30. 7. Victor Cha, “North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: Badges, Shields, or Swords?,” Political Science Quarterly 117, no. 2 (2002): 209–30. 8. Etel Solingen, “The Political Economy of Nuclear Restraint,” International Security 19, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 126–69; Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995); T. V. Paul, Power Versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000). 9. Victor Cha, The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (New York: Ecco, 2012), 300. 10. Daniel Byman and Jennifer Lind, “Pyongyang’s Survival Strategy,” International Security 35 (Summer 2010): 64. 11. Nicholas Eberstadt, Mark Rubin, and Albina Tretyakova, “The Collapse of Soviet and Russian Trade with the DPRK, 1989–1993,” Korean Journal of National Unification 4 (1995): 87–104; Marcus Noland, “Why North Korea Will Muddle Through,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 4 (July 1, 1997): 106; Nicholas Eberstadt, The End of North Korea (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1999), 93–110. 12. Narushige Michishita, North Korea’s Military-Diplomatic Campaigns, 1966–2008 (Abingdon [UK]: Routledge, 2009). 13. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 76 14. Nicholas Eberstadt quoted in Gale and Lee, “U.S. Agreed to North Korea Peace Talks.”

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15. David Sanger, “North Korea, Fighting Inspection, Renounces Nuclear Arms Treaty,” New York Times, March 12, 1993. 16. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, 32, 37. 17. David Sanger, “U.S. Revising North Korea Strategy,” New York Times, November 22, 1993. 18. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, 53. 19. Ibid., 55. 20. Ibid., 44. 21. After inspectors found several broken seals on sensitive equipment, North Korea also requested a $300,000 payment before allowing them to continue the inspections. 22. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, 144. 23. David Sanger, “North Koreans Agree to Survey of Atomic Sites,” New York Times, February 16, 1994; Thomas Lippman, “As N. Korea Balks, U.S. Predicts Nuclear Inspections Will Go On,” New York Times, February 24, 1994; Thomas Lippman and T. R. Reid, “N. Korea Nuclear Inspection Begins,” Washington Post, March 4, 1994; Michael Gordon, “U.S. Cancels Talks with North Korean over Atom Inspections,” New York Times, March 17, 1994. 24. Snyder, Negotiating on the Edge, 81. 25. Ibid. 26. Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci, Going Critical, 171. 27. Ibid., 175. 28. Ibid., 182. 29. Ibid., 185. 30. Ibid., 181. 31. Testimony of Secretary of State William Christopher, “North Korea Nuclear Agreement,” Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, January 24 and 25, 1995 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office [GPO], 1995), 6. 32. Alan Riding, “U.S. and North Korea Sign Pact to End Nuclear Dispute,” New York Times, October 21, 1994. 33. Testimony of Robert Gallucci, “Implications of the U.S.-North Korea Nuclear Agreement,” Hearing before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, United States Senate, December 1, 1994 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1994), 12. 34. Testimony of Secretary of State William Christopher, 7. 35. Ibid. 36. Gilinsky, “Nuclear Blackmail: The 1994 US-DPRK Agreed Framework on North Korea’s Nuclear Program,” 12. 37. Testimony of Secretary of State William Christopher, 5. 38. Testimony of Paul Wolfowitz, “North Korea Nuclear Agreement,” Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, January 24 and 25, 1995 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1995), 69. 39. Julia Joo-A Lee, “To Fuel or Not to Fuel: China’s Energy Assistance to North Korea,” Asian Security 5 (2009): 47–48. 40. Ibid., 50. 41. Ibid., 62. 42. David E. Sanger, “North Korea Says It Now Possesses Nuclear Arsenal,” New York Times, April 25, 2003.

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43. “China and North Korea: Comrades Forever?,” Asia Report 112 (Washington, DC: International Crisis Group, February 1, 2006), 5. 44. Michishita, North Korea’s Military-Diplomatic Campaigns, 168. 45. Statements of the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs, February 10 and March 31, 2005, emphasis added. Quoted in Pollack, No Exit, 148. 46. Pollack, No Exit, 151. 47. Some of the disablement steps were reversible but would create a longer lead time between initiation of a decision to break out and the operational readiness of the facility. 48. Chinoy, Meltdown, 325. 49. Pollack, No Exit, 153. 50. Ibid., 155. More specifically, there was disagreement over whether the North Koreans had already agreed to a plan for verification in February 2007. 51. Quoted in David E. Sanger, “North Korea Site an A-Bomb Plant,” New York Times, August 17, 1998. 52. Jennifer Lind, Keir A. Lieber, and Daryl G. Press, “Pyongyang’s Nuclear Logic,” Foreign Affairs, February 13, 2013.

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▼ 5

▲ DOES NUCLEARIZATION IMPACT THREAT CREDIBILITY? Insights from the Korean Peninsula Van Jackson

How has North Korea’s progress in developing a nuclear weapon capability affected US and South Korean perceptions of its credibility when making threats? And what might US and South Korean perceptions of North Korean threat credibility tell us about the impact nuclear weapons have for coercion and credibility generally? This chapter takes a comparative look at North Korean credibility since 2002 as a basis for considering whether and how its purported nuclear capability has played a role in its ability to coerce the US or South Korean governments. I argue that we can observe a pattern in North Korean interactions with the United States and South Korea in the twenty-fi rst century 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 fi nd its threats credible is at

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odds with arguments that assume or imply that nuclear threats are always— or ought to be—taken seriously. Recent research has found that North Korea’s track record of following through on threats (or its failure to) had a significant effect on whether the US and South Korean governments believed its subsequent threats.1 In this chapter, I fi nd that this basic claim holds even when confi ning our examination of North Korean credibility to only the period during which it is thought to have a nuclear weapon capability. 2 This fi nding not only illustrates the enduring importance of reputation in international relations, but also is significant for debates about the coercive utility of nuclear weapons. Since successful coercion requires the ability to make credible threats, and credible threats depended mostly on North Korea’s past word and deed despite having a nuclear capability, the North Korean case suggests that nuclear weapons do not have the intrinsic coercive value that some scholars seem to assign to them. Instead, the ability to coerce—even when possessing nuclear weapons—is still contingent on having cultivated a reputation for following through on threats made in the recent past. In other words, whatever the benefits or drawbacks of nuclear weapons, they do not change the basic formula for threat credibility: capability, the balance of interests, and perceived willingness to follow through on a threat (that is, a reputation for resolve). The remainder of this chapter will briefly introduce two separate but related theoretical debates that the case material weighs in on: reputations and the coercive value of nuclear weapons. It then examines two case histories involving North Korea since 2002, when it was suspected of developing a nuclear capability.3 The fi rst case involves North Korean threats vis-à-vis the United States through 2009. The second focuses on patterns of hostility between North and South Korea leading up to and through 2010. There are multiple reasons for choosing these cases. First, lessons from the cases themselves are relevant to policymakers even today. As recently as August 2015, North and South Korea experienced a crisis during which violence, military mobilization, and threats of war temporarily crowded out all other concerns. Second, on the basis of insights about credibility in the nuclear deterrence literature, the cases represent contexts in which threat credibility and reputation for resolve should be constant. In the US case they occur in a nuclear dyad, and in the South Korea case North Korea ostensibly has a nuclear advantage over the South. In such situations, the massive destructive power of a nuclear weapon makes the cost of incredulity about an adversary’s threats so high that North Korea’s threats should, out of an abundance of caution, be automatically believed. Third, and relatedly, the nuclear asymmetry between North and South Korea provides an interesting opportunity to observe how a state lacking nuclear weapons deals with an adversary possessing them. If ever nuclear

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weapons were to offer a coercive advantage to those who possess them, it would surely be against a state that lacks nuclear arms itself. Yet North Korean coercive violence against South Korea in 2010 did not prevent South Korean threats in turn, including several postcrisis “hand-tying” and “sunk cost” initiatives that can be interpreted as indicators of South Korean resolve. North Korean nuclear weapons did not seem to deter South Korean willingness to retaliate, which was constrained only by US entreaties based on escalation concerns.

Why Reputation Matters (and Why Some Don’t Think So) Reputation plays an outsized role in the lives of individuals and governments alike. Everyday mechanisms that allow for ratings based on performance—Yelp, Uber, and Airbnb, for example—operate reputational systems that empower users to make judgments about future quality based on past experience. Financial systems of all types also operate on the basis of reputation; this is why credit histories and loan defaults, whether individuals or governments, affect interest rates and future credit worthiness. Reputation is one way that people and states deal with a world of imperfect and incomplete information. In international relations, Thomas Schelling defined reputation as the “interdependence of commitments”—the causal relevance of past actions to expectations of future actions, mediated through the perception of others.4 Reputation affects a great many things, but most salient for theories of coercion is the effect of a reputation for resolve/irresoluteness on the ability to make credible threats. The entire research program on coercion is concerned with when and how threats do or do not work, and most of the early research on the subject recognized that, since perception is what determines reputation and perception has much to do with observations of past actions, judgments in the present about whether a threat is to be believed hinges to a great extent on observations of a track record. 5 Quite simply, states look to discern the intentions of others not only by assessing their capability but also by their past word and deed. Past performance in comparable contexts is an imperfect heuristic that states use in conjunction with other factors to make judgments about believability. But a generation of international relations scholarship has raised doubts about the effect of reputation on threat credibility.6 The two most defensible variants of this skepticism come from two very different research orientations, known as current calculus theory and constant calculus theory, respectively. Current calculus theory says that past actions have no bearing on the credibility calculations that states make about others’ threats in the present, pointing instead to two factors found in the present—the balance

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of capabilities and interests.7 Constant calculus theory takes a social psychological bent, arguing that credibility is often a function of identity and in-group/out-group dynamics, not behavioral signaling; states are likely to believe the threats of rivals because they assume the worst intentions of hostile “others.”8 The implication of either form of skeptical argument about reputation is grand: If states do not accrue reputations based on past word and deed, then they can decide any fool thing they like in the present with the expectation that others will not draw future inferences from it. Given the pervasiveness of reputation in social life and the importance that policymakers historically place on reputation,9 pessimistic claims that past actions do not bear on threat credibility in the present—even when under similar conditions—is discomfiting and counterintuitive. It is precisely because it is baffl ing to doubt the causal relevance of reputation that in recent years a spate of scholarship has attempted to demonstrate the relevance of various types of reputation in various contexts: reputations for reliability in fi nancial and alliance contexts,10 for toughness in dealing with insurgencies,11 and for honesty and resolve in dealing with adversaries.12

The Political Value of Nuclear Weapons (or Not) A separate debate has taken place in security studies concerning whether and when nuclear weapons are politically useful in dealing with adversaries. Some scholars have argued that any political value nuclear weapons might have had was limited to the early Cold War era when the United States maintained nuclear primacy, which disappeared once the Soviet Union moved toward parity and new nuclear powers emerged.13 Now nuclear weapons are “essentially irrelevant.”14 Others have argued that nuclear weapons are not systematically useful for something more than existential deterrence, but under narrow conditions involving highly adept statesmen, it is possible to extract political influence from them, as with Henry Kissinger’s handling of the 1973 Middle East crisis.15 More recently some scholars have argued that nuclear superiority does offer coercive value, among other reasons because you cannot be “out-escalated” and because it theoretically affords you a wider range of credible options for dealing with crisis and conflict.16 Yet any claim that nuclear weapons offer political benefits in the coercive sense still requires the ability to make credible threats that somehow tie to the fact of possessing nuclear weapons, even if only indirectly (as in conventional threats with the implied alternative of a nuclear option). Some in the nuclear coercion literature even expect that the threats of a nuclear-armed adversary are almost always credible because the cost of dismissing such threats and being wrong is unacceptably high.17 But if a state is not taken seriously when it issues threats, then its threats are robbed of coercive value.

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The sources of threat credibility thus still matter for answering any question about coercive leverage, even when nuclear weapons enter the picture. This brings us back to the reputations debate and whether past actions matter for threat credibility in the present, and the weight of recent theory and evidence tilts toward assigning reputations relevance.18 Nuclear weapons, in other words, are neither necessary nor sufficient to make credible nonnuclear threats, while follow-through on past actions is a crucial condition for making threats of any type.

A Nascent Nuclear Dyad: United States and North Korea, 2002–9 Between late 2002, when a period of tentative US–North Korea rapprochement fell apart,19 and 2009, when the Barack Obama administration came to office, both countries engaged in a mix of nuclear diplomacy and reciprocal but ultimately nonviolent coercion. Several features of this case prove puzzling absent recognition that the past word and deed of both North Korea and the United States affected how each made judgments relating to both credibility and resolve: North Korea’s willingness to twice conduct nuclear tests during this period (and eventually three more tests in 2013 and two in 2016, as of this writing), the belief among US officials that North Korean threats to conduct nuclear and missile tests were credible, and the routine US dismissals of North Korean threats to wage violence (whether nuclear or nonnuclear). These latter two observations in particular give insight into the central inquiry in this chapter: Does a nuclear weapon capability influence whether adversaries find your threats credible? Engagements and Outcomes

Upon coming into office in 2001, President George W. Bush had North Korea early on his agenda, in part because his administration perceived North Korea policy during the Bill Clinton administration as a failure. Under Clinton the United States reached a deal with North Korea called the Agreed Framework between the United States of America and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, ending the 1993–94 nuclear crisis through a series of promises—two light-water nuclear reactors (LWRs), five hundred thousand tons of heavy fuel oil per year until the LWRs were constructed, and a gradual diplomatic normalization with the United States—in exchange for an end to North Korea’s nuclear program and the reintroduction of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections.20 Under Bush, relations very quickly took on a hostile character. The negative shift in tone is typically attributed to North Korea’s inclusion in the “axis of evil” during President Bush’s State of the Union speech in January 2002 but had antecedents going

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back to at least the 1993–94 nuclear crisis.21 Prior to the axis-of-evil moment, North Korea seemed willing to continue the path of rapprochement started under Clinton,22 but thereafter it became much more sober about the prospect of improving relations with the United States.23 While the Bush administration’s attitude toward North Korea was openly hostile, piling blame entirely on the Bush administration would be somewhat unfair. A US intelligence review conducted during the Bush administration would reveal that North Korea was actively running a secret uranium-enrichment program during the late 1990s, in violation of the terms of the Agreed Framework, and may have had a crude nuclear capability by the late 1990s because of active collaboration with Pakistan despite the Agreed Framework.24 As the United States was preparing for a round of diplomacy with North Korea in June 2002, a violent clash between North and South Korea in the Yellow Sea delayed the US proposal to resume talks until October 2002. 25 Those talks, which involved a US delegation flying to Pyongyang, proved highly consequential. The US head of delegation, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, accused North Korea of secretly developing a uraniumenrichment program in violation of the Agreed Framework. North Korea’s deputy foreign minister, Kang Sok-ju, inquired, “What is wrong with us having our own uranium enrichment program? . . . We are bound to produce more powerful weapons than that. . . . The hostile policies of the U.S. administration have left us with no choice but to pursue such a program.”26 Relations quickly unraveled, and a mix of subtle coercion and diplomacy would characterize the next several years, but at no point did war with North Korea seem plausible, partly because of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and partly because North Korea never engaged in violent provocations against the United States. After expelling IAEA inspectors and removing IAEA surveillance cameras, North Korea on January 10, 2003, announced its withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which became effective the following day. 27 The United States, with its allies, responded by cutting off previously promised fuel oil shipments and immediately seeking United Nations (UN) Security Council sanctions, which North Korea had long stated constituted a “redline” tantamount to war. 28 In August 2003, a large diplomatic initiative, called the “Six- Party Talks,” began. The talks included China, Japan, both Koreas, Russia, and the United States. These negotiations progressed gradually until September 19, 2005, when a milestone agreement in the Six-Party Talks process was reached. The Six-Party Talks ostensibly addressed many issues: regional multilateralism, economic and diplomatic normalization, the provision of LWRs to North Korea for civilian energy, and even North Korea’s history of abducting Japanese civilians. But the core of Six-Party Talks negotiations aimed to end North Korea’s nuclear program. Victor Cha, who played an

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important role in these negotiations, described the September 19, 2005, joint statement of the Six-Party Talks as the fi rst formal North Korean acknowledgment that “it had nuclear weapons, that it would give them up, and that it would end all associated nuclear programs.”29 However, concurrent with this diplomatic push were, as ever, frequent North Korean threats of violence. Despite continued diplomacy, from 2003 through the joint statement of September 19, 2005, North Korea invoked some variant on its threat to turn Seoul into a “sea of fi re” nine times in English-language statements alone, arguing in many instances that US military action was the precipitating cause.30 In response to the United States seeking sanctions for North Korea’s NPT withdrawal in 2003, one of its main media organs claimed that “only a physical deterrence force . . . powerful enough to decisively beat back an attack . . . can avert war and protect the security of the country and the nation. This is a lesson drawn from the Iraqi war.”31 The North also continued to hold to a threat it made in the 1990s, that UN sanctions served as a “declaration of war.”32 North Korea further claimed that “behind the scenes of the six-party talks,” the United States was hatching a war scheme that North Korea would not tolerate, asserting that it would “completely destroy the enemy stronghold with merciless strikes and thus achieve a decisive victory in the confrontation with the U.S.”33 And in response to the US-led combined military exercise, North Korea issued threats typical of its responses to large military exercises, warning that “it is the will . . . of the army and the people of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] to react . . . with strong retaliation. . . . No force on earth can overpower their strength and break their will,”34 and that “the U.S. will be held wholly accountable for the disastrous consequences to be entailed by its reckless military moves.”35 Even North Korean statements that were intended to urge the United States to cooperate were in similarly threatening terms, such as a statement on January 24, 2004, that Pyongyang interpreted sanctions as “military provocations and acts of aggression against it and [would] strongly react against them” but that the United States could “avert a war” if it would change its “hostile policy.”36 But US officials paid little attention to such statements, dismissing “what Pyongyang and its representatives said as overheated posturing.”37 As one former senior official who participated in the Six-Party Talks commented, “To the extent that such [war] threats were made, I think we didn’t take them too seriously. I do believe we took seriously the threats to proceed in various ways on their nuclear program, as oft times the threats were carried out in succeeding weeks and months.”38 There were also several additional indications that US officials tended to be dismissive of North Korea’s threats of violence. First, the United States pursued UN sanctions—a long-standing redline—in response to North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT even as it

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was preparing the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Second, even though North Korea issued many threats from 2003 to 2005, we see almost no mention of these threats in the memoirs of those involved. On the contrary, we fi nd these written reflections consisting almost solely of references to the minutiae of nuclear diplomacy, with little discussion of the possibility of war.39 Third, there is no indication that the United States made any attempts to curb its military deployments and exercise regime on the Korean Peninsula. On the contrary, in 2003 in particular, the Bush administration made considerable increases in fighter, bomber, and naval deployments to the region.40 Fourth, the United States continued to coerce North Korea with nonmilitary instruments of pressure, including constructing counterproliferation coalitions and making requests of the international community to intercept North Korean weapon exports.41 The most significant pressure in this regard was a US fi nancial advisory that caused global fi nancial institutions to cut off North Koreans from their bank accounts for fear of their fi nancial reputations. Known simply as “Banco Delta Asia” (or BDA, after a bank in Macau that froze $25 million in North Korean funds), this economic move immediately undercut the joint statement of September 19, 2005. In sum, if the United States believed North Korea’s threats, it did not act like it. Nor did US officials talk much of war or crisis with North Korea, particularly in the context of the buildup for war with Iraq: “The feedback that I got from what the president was saying was, ‘Nothing that the North Koreans do will cause me to view this as a crisis.’ ”42 The BDA incident, which struck North Korean elites directly, rapidly undercut the progress represented by the joint statement of September 19, 2005, leading to North Korea’s fi rst nuclear test in October 2006. The North Koreans immediately shifted their diplomatic posture to a redress of fi nancial sanctions grievances, demanding the $25 million that BDA was withholding before its nuclear program could be discussed. With the Six-Party Talks at a standstill, North Korea reverted to coercive signaling, stating that “if the U.S. tries to pressure us, we will only take stronger measures. We will employ our traditional tactic of direct confrontation.”43 Ramping up its rhetoric further, North Korea threatened a nuclear attack on the United States in early July 2006, to which the White House spokesman responded with the dismissive quip that it was “deeply hypothetical” and did not warrant US attention.44 But within days, North Korea decided to break a moratorium on missile testing that it had voluntarily adopted as part of negotiations over its missile program in the 1990s, by fi ring a salvo of missiles—including an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). These missile tests alarmed the Bush administration, which actively started considering the mechanics and consequences of intercepting North Korea’s Taepodong-2 ICBM with a then nascent ballistic missile defense capability.

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As with so many instances of attempted coercion in the past, North Korea signaled its intentions in advance of its nuclear detonation. Whereas North Korea’s threat of a nuclear attack issued prior to the missile tests was dismissed by the White House as bluster, in the wake of the missile tests the comparatively more modest threats of a nuclear test were deemed instantly credible by US officials. US intelligence analysts had also suspected a nuclear test would be conducted, on the basis of information they gathered right after the missile launches.45 On October 3, 2006, North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the United States’ “hostile policy” toward it would “compel the DPRK to conduct a nuclear test.”46 US officials did not want to risk conflict by striking North Korean nuclear sites but still sought to dissuade North Korea from a nuclear test by fi rst securing a UN Security Council statement of warning and then by Christopher Hill—US envoy to the Six-Party Talks—asserting, “We are not going to live with a nuclear North Korea. We are not going to accept it.”47 On October 9, North Korea confi rmed that it conducted an underground nuclear test, and within days the UN Security Council issued Resolution 1718, requiring sanctions enforcement against North Korea on conventional arms, nuclear-related materials, and luxury goods.48 Several months later, Taku Yamasaki, a Japanese member of the Diet, visited Pyongyang and was told by his interlocutor that “it’s up to U.S. actions in the future” whether North Korea conducted a second nuclear test.49 Following the 2006 nuclear test and UN sanctions, the remainder of the Bush presidency would be spent holding multiple rounds of Six-Party Talks negotiations, during which modest progress was made toward détente, freezing North Korea’s declared nuclear facility at Yongbyon, arranging for the return of the symbolic $25 million withheld during the BDA incident, and resuming an initial shipment of heavy fuel oil. 50 But by late 2008, with the Bush presidency in its fi nal months, the tentative agreements reached over the prior eighteen months were stymied by North Korea’s refusal to come clean about its undeclared uranium enrichment and the US insistence that it do so. When President Obama came to office in January 2009, he had already committed himself to engaging hostile governments, 51 not only during his presidential campaign but also in his inaugural address: “We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”52 But the continuing confl ict over the opacity of North Korea’s uranium enrichment converged with a hard-line government in South Korea that was content to maintain hostile relations with North Korea. By February 2009, North Korea announced what it described as an upcoming “satellite launch,” which became a euphemism for a test of ICBM technology.53 Despite the administration’s stated preference for diplomatic engagement, it responded to North Korea’s

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announcement by warning publicly that such a move would violate UN Security Council Resolution 1718, scuttle diplomacy, and result in greater sanctions.54 On April 5, 2009, North Korea conducted its ICBM test, which led to a statement of condemnation from the UN Security Council, which in turn compelled the North Koreans to declare that the Six-Party Talks were dead.55 On April 28, 2009, two weeks after the statement of condemnation from the UN Security Council for its ICBM test, North Korea announced it would again detonate a nuclear device, a commitment on which it followed through on May 25, 2009. 56 North Korea’s 2013 nuclear test would follow the same pattern—advanced warning from North Korea, followed by US and South Korean condemnatory statements but no crisis reaction. US officials were completely unsurprised by either the 2009 or 2013 tests, which was consistent with recent historical patterns: Threats of violence against the United States may have been dismissed, but threats relating directly to North Korea’s nuclear and missile program were deemed credible.57 US analysts noticed the fact that on its nuclear program, North Korea’s word and deed seemed to match. North Korea’s bold forthrightness, declaring its tests in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions and then following through, actually helped manage expectations and avert crisis, even as those same actions worsened relations. 58 Credibility in the Context of a Nuclear Shadow

Although it is still disputed when precisely North Korea obtained the ability to detonate a nuclear device, the most extreme estimates go back as far as the mid-1990s.59 More conservative estimates, however, still allow us to describe the United States and North Korea as a nuclear dyad; North Korean diplomats told US officials as early as April 2003 that they “are now able to demonstrate, produce, and transfer nuclear weapons” and that “the important thing was to let the United States know that we have a nuclear capability.”60 It should thus follow that when North Korea threatens to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire” or to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, officials might demonstrate some level of consternation. Yet, even in such extreme instances, both North Korea’s coercive signaling and US perceptions of North Korean credibility depended upon inferences each made about the other based on the word and deed each observed. North Korea’s history of employing threats that far exceeded its behavior made US officials incredulous about North Korean threats even though it had a nuclear capability. From 2002 through 2009, North Korea issued a number of hyperbolic violent threats without following through on them, as had occurred so often in the past. During this period, North Korea threatened “merciless strikes” in response to US and South Korean military

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exercises, threatened to turn Seoul into a “sea of fi re” on many occasions, and continued to equate sanctions to a “declaration of war,” among other threats.61 US officials not only ignored these threats but, in the context of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, seemed determined to downplay such rhetoric as hollow. US officials dismissed North Korea’s threats of violence and war because of its history of incessant threat making, while nevertheless they believed warnings about its nuclear and missile programs. We know this not only because some former officials confi rm as much—as when North Korea threatened a nuclear attack against the United States in July 2006—but also because the United States was willing to blow past North Korea’s redline threats: It pressed for UN sanctions despite North Korean threats that UN sanctions equated to war, it moved forward with routine military exercises in spite of North Korea’s rhetoric about retaliation if it did so, and it continued to fi nd ways to pressure North Korea with nonmilitary means throughout much of this period. As incredible as US officials found North Korea’s threats about war and nuclear attacks, they judged North Korea’s nonviolent threats just the opposite way. After the July 2006 missile tests, US intelligence analysts paid heightened attention to North Korean movements and were quick to suspect that a nuclear test might be forthcoming on the basis of material indicators they were able to observe.62 When North Korea announced its intention to test a nuclear device less than three months later, the United States, far from considering the announcement “deeply hypothetical,” instead not only tried to build a consensus in the international community to warn North Korea not to conduct the test but also began the diplomatic effort necessary to announce what would become UN Security Council Resolution 1718, sanctioning North Korea for its test.63 When North Korea announced an ICBM test in early 2009, the newly arrived Obama administration did not downplay the announcement in order to move forward with the engagement agenda it had brought to office but, rather, counseled North Korea against taking such a step and immediately tried to secure a presidential statement of condemnation from the United Nations.64 When North Korea followed its ICBM test with an announcement that it would conduct a second nuclear detonation, the Obama administration likewise took the announcement seriously, tried to warn it away from conducting the test, and lined up UN Security Council support for what would become Resolution 1874, further sanctioning North Korea.65 North Korea’s decisions to conduct nuclear and missile tests, meanwhile, may have had all the Six-Party Talks participants as an intended audience and not just the United States. Regardless, there can be little doubt that North Korea believed it could conduct its series of tests without triggering either a war with, or retaliation from, the United States. With the United States bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, it had little appetite for war

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with North Korea despite retaining the capacity to do so. North Korea recognized that the United States sought to avoid confl ict in Korea, just as it recognized that the Bush administration in particular harbored no shortage of antipathy toward it. Its repeated decisions to send coercive signals in the way it did reflects this perspective, both by inference from its behavior and by some of the statements it made during diplomatic interactions with Six-Party Talks members. In sum, and in spite of North Korea possessing a nuclear capability, the scope of what US officials deemed credible was limited only to those actions that North Korea had recently threatened and executed, and the alignment of North Korean word and deed relating to missile and nuclear tests did not imbue its threats of war with any greater credibility than before the tests. Neither North Korea’s possession nor demonstration of a nuclear capability gave it any additional coercive leverage.

When a Nuclear State Attacks a Nonnuclear Rival: North and South Korea in 2010 Since 1976, North Korea has rarely targeted US forces with acts of violence. South Korea, however, has been less fortunate, suffering multiple North Korean attempts to assassinate its presidents, a terrorist bombing, and numerous attacks on its forces, particularly in the area of the disputed Northern Limit Line (NLL) maritime boundary.66 In 2010, North Korea launched two violent provocations—in March and again in November— against South Korea, then led by President Lee Myung-bak. Prior to the 2010 provocations, President Lee had shifted to a less conciliatory and more hostile footing toward North Korea compared with his two predecessors, and North Korea had shifted its violent rhetoric against South Korea accordingly.67 Engagements and Outcomes

In 2007, Lee Myung-bak from the conservative Grand National Party (now the Saenuri Party) ascended to the presidency of South Korea after ten consecutive years of progressive leadership. Under the presidencies of Kim Daejung (1997–2002) and Roh Moo-hyun (2002–7), South Korea pursued a rapprochement with North Korea by way of its Sunshine Policy, which involved unprecedented diplomatic engagement with, financial investment in, and humanitarian aid for the North.68 Soon after President Lee’s election in 2007, though, the South Korean government walked away from the Sunshine Policy and instead emphasized the implicitly more confrontational

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issues of denuclearization and human rights abuses in its policy toward North Korea.69 Although rumors of a secret presidential summit between the leaders of North and South Korea emerged at various points in 2009, by the end of the year relations were openly hostile. On November 4, 2009, North Korean media excoriated South Korea and the United States for a recent military exercise, obsessing specifically on the allegedly threatening role of South Korea’s navy in the area of the disputed NLL maritime boundary.70 The following week, North and South Korean naval forces clashed in the Yellow Sea, an event triggered by a North Korean ship violating the NLL, resulting in several North Korean casualties.71 Following the incident, North Korea declared a “peacetime naval fi ring zone” in the area of the NLL, stating that the North Korean navy would in the future assert its right to both traverse and fi re munitions in the area and that South Korea had no right to do so.72 In early 2010, North Korea did subsequently conduct artillery exercises in the area, to which South Korea responded with warning shots but otherwise allowing North Korea’s exercises to proceed.73 On March 26, 2010, North Korean naval forces launched a torpedo at a South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan, sinking it and killing forty-six sailors on board. A South Korean board of audit and inspection judged that the Republic of Korea (ROK) military had been unprepared for the attack.74 The attack was such a surprise that South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense initially downplayed the possibility that it had been a North Korean attack.75 Although the attack was a surprise by design based on the way it was conducted,76 North Korea had not only made clear its hostility toward South Korea, but it also displayed its heightened sensitivity to South Korean naval forces being in the Yellow Sea. On March 1, 2010, North Korean media threatened that US–South Korean joint military exercises would “bring the dark clouds of a nuclear war.”77 Faced with the annual Key Resolve / Foal Eagle military exercise in South Korea, which was to run from March 8 to March 18, North Korean media threatened that it could not stand by passively: “Our answer to the exercises is merciless and annihilating retaliation.”78 In the midst of the exercise, on March 15, North Korea focused its threats specifically on South Korean forces in the Yellow Sea, warning that it would not tolerate South Korean “warmonger” aggression.79 And on March 24, only days before the March 26 attack on the Cheonan, North Korea cited a conversation between President Lee and a senior South Korean naval officer as causing a confrontation between North and South Korea.80 That same day, North Korea excoriated in surprising detail South Korean military exercises then ongoing in the Yellow Sea, claiming that alleged South Korean naval aggression had caused the confrontation to reach “an extremely reckless phase.”81

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Although North Korea kept up its threats and bombast in the wake of the Cheonan sinking, it initially remained fairly quiet about the incident itself and denied responsibility for it at the United Nations.82 President Lee told US secretary of defense Robert Gates that North Korea must “feel consequences” and not “get away with things,” and Gates agreed.83 Nevertheless, South Korea refrained from retaliation and pursued a multilateral investigation into the cause of the Cheonan sinking, taking two months to conclude that North Korea was culpable. Upon releasing the results of the investigation, South Korea began increasing military exercises in the Yellow Sea, held high-level consultations with the United States, and announced a series of unilateral sanctions aimed at reducing economic connectivity between North and South, all of which were implemented over the remainder of 2010.84 At several points in November 2010, North Korea directly warned South Korea against conducting Hoguk (“Protect the Nation”), a regular military exercise in the Yellow Sea that tests South Korean amphibious and artillery capabilities, among others.85 South Korea ignored North Korea’s warnings and was transparent about its intention to conduct the exercise as scheduled.86 On the morning November 23, the Korean People’s Army (KPA) faxed one fi nal warning (addressed to the office of the South Korean president) not to move forward with Hoguk and inquired whether the exercise was aimed at invading the North.87 When South Korea began its artillery exercise later that day, it aimed the live-fi re portion away from North Korean territory in an attempt to avoid being provocative. North Korean forces responded by bombarding South Korea–controlled Yeonpyeong Island with more than hundred artillery shells, killing two ROK marines, two ROK civilians, and maiming or injuring sixteen more people. Despite forewarnings, “the artillery fi ring came as a surprise” to South Korean officials,88 an assessment supported by the fact that the ROK marines attacked on Yeonpyeong Island did not return fi re until thirteen minutes after shelling began and did not elevate the military alert level until seventeen minutes after the attack.89 Unlike with the Cheonan attack, for which North Korea was able to deny responsibility because it took place at sea with nobody around, the artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island was undeniable, not only because it involved long-range artillery that could only have come from North Korea but also because the incident was caught on video and broadcast over South Korean news in almost real time. South Korean units on Yeonpyeong Island defended themselves and returned fi re, as was customary when North Korea launched attacks in the Yellow Sea. South Korea also scrambled fighter aircraft but, at US pleading, refrained from using them to engage North Korean targets.90 The South Korean government’s posture immediately after the attack signaled that North Korea had crossed an unacceptable threshold and that

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it would no longer abide violent provocations in the way it had for the last thirty years. Through his spokesperson, President Lee directed “manifold retaliation” if North Korea launched another provocation and vowed specifically to strike a nearby North Korean missile base if provocations resumed.91 In the aftermath of the attack, North Korean media counterthreatened “merciless military counter-actions” if South Korea violated “.001 mm” of North Korean territory with such exercises.92 US officials believed both North and South Korea’s threats and frantically tried to stabilize the situation by both assuring and restraining South Korea.93 The United States sent the USS George Washington Carrier Strike Group, a political symbol of American military power, the following day on November 24 to assure South Korea and to signal commitment in the face of North Korean aggression, but the decision to do so had been made before the November 23 artillery attack.94 At the same time, US officials actively sought to constrain South Korea’s defiant scheduling of an artillery exercise in the Yellow Sea the following month, intended as a show of resolve. The Deputies Committee—a US interagency meeting of deputy-secretary-level officials under the auspices of the National Security Council—anguished about whether and how to persuade South Korea to not move forward with the exercise, fearing North Korea would escalate its violence if South Korea conducted the proscribed exercise. Ultimately the Deputies Committee decided the United States should send the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, to South Korea to convey the difficult dual message of assurance and restraint.95 Contrary to US preferences, though, South Korea went forward with its Yellow Sea exercise exactly one month after the Yeonpyeong Island attack, on December 23, and completed it without incident.96 In word and deed, the Lee administration made dramatic changes aimed at preventing North Korean provocations from occurring again; amped up military exercises were just the beginning. To the consternation of some US officials, South Korea began publicly and privately taking a much more assertive stance against North Korea than it had at any point since the President Park Chung-hee era.97 In March 2011, the Ministry of National Defense announced Defense Reform Plan 307 (DRP 307), formulated by a panel of eminent policy advisers close to President Lee. DRP 307 included more than seventy recommendations for reforming the South Korean military in light of North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile capabilities, as well as its willingness to resort to militarized violence.98 One of the most meaningful reforms was South Korea’s declaration of a new military doctrine variously dubbed “proactive deterrence” or “active deterrence,” which elaborated on President Lee’s threat of “manifold retaliation” in the event of future provocations. Proactive deterrence represented a doctrine of disproportionate retaliation, delegation of decision-making authority to tactical

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unit commanders, unilateral military action, and even preemptive strikes under certain conditions, all with the explicit goal of deterring North Korean provocations and making it harder for US officials to restrain South Korean authorities should they decide to act.99 Backing up these doctrinal changes, the South Korean government initiated development of longerrange ballistic missiles capable of quickly striking any target in North Korea.100 It also established a “Northwest Islands Command” and began a military buildup in the Yeonpyeong Island area that included everything that would be needed to launch a rapid and overwhelming series of strikes— including K9 howitzers, attack helicopters, and truck-mounted rocket launchers.101 In the three years following the attack on Yeonpyeong Island, North Korea did not conduct another violent provocation, but the rivalry between North and South intensified considerably. Since 2010, both countries—no longer only North Korea—have issued numerous threats and counterthreats, the Yellow Sea remains a hotly contested area, and North Korea has resorted to ever-more- creative ways to express its hostility as both sides now cultivate the appearance of being willing to risk war for principle, no matter how seemingly small the issue (a trademark of an enduring rivalry). Hostilities on the peninsula have grown so tense that in April 2013, the commander of United States Forces Korea, Gen. James Thurman, canceled scheduled testimony before Congress out of concern that confl ict could erupt during his absence.102 For its part, South Korea began imbuing North Korea’s threats with the presumption of credibility but seemed to believe that Seoul possessed superior resolve. Kim Jang- soo, President Park Geunhye’s national security adviser, stated that South Korea would continue to maintain an especially high level of readiness for war given North Korea’s record of hostility, regardless of whether North Korea’s threats “are merely rhetoric.”103 And while North Korea has avoided initiating direct violence against South Korea since 2010, it has found new ways to provoke it, resorting to various forms of cyberattack,104 aerial intrusions into South Korean territory by drone,105 and military signaling in the Yellow Sea, that make an eventual return to militarized violence more likely.106 Credibility in the Context of the Nuclear Shadow

North Korea’s history of bluffing numbed South Korean leaders not only to its threats of war but also to its deterrent threats intended to stop certain South Korean exercises in the Yellow Sea. When South Korea chose not to retaliate against North Korean provocations or issue redline threats in response to them, North Korea simply continued its violent behavior; only when South Korea issued counterthreats and adjusted its military posture accordingly did North Korean violence abate. And despite a thirty-year

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history of restraint when challenged with North Korean violence, South Korea’s own issuing of threats, which began in 2010, was taken seriously by North Korea, as can be inferred from the cessation of violence. North Korean threats in 2010 fell on deaf ears in South Korea. Prior to the attack the Cheonan on March 26, 2010, North Korea declared its intentions to take action in response to US and South Korean exercises, focusing especially on naval forces in the Yellow Sea.107 And as Key Resolve / Foal Eagle proceeded, North Korean media declared, “Our answer to the exercises is merciless and annihilating retaliation.”108 South Korean officials not only ignored these threats but also were reluctant to even assign blame to North Korea when the attack fi rst occurred.109 The same pattern would occur six months later. South Korea was transparent about its intention to conduct the Hoguk exercise in November, North Korea issued several warnings not to do so,110 and when South Korea moved forward with it, North Korea attacked Yeonpyeong Island. The problem was that North Korean threat rhetoric was a common response to US and South Korean exercises going back decades, even though North Korea rarely initiated violence in response to them.111 South Korean military exercises would hardly be necessary were it not for the hostility that pervaded peninsula relations, so there is no question that South Korea was aware of North Korea’s generally hostile intentions. What was missed were proximate, somewhat tailored threats that could only be associated with its attacks on the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong Island after they occurred because such signals were indecipherable in the context of the noise of ceaseless threatening language North Korea spewed without acting upon it.

Conclusion The cases examined here show overwhelmingly that North Korea’s development of a nuclear capability has not fundamentally changed either the coercive dynamics on the Korean Peninsula or the sources of threat credibility. North Korea’s alignment of word and deed—that is, following through (or not) on the threats it made—was more determinative of US perceptions of the former’s threat credibility than its possession of a nuclear capability. And in the case of the US–North Korean dyad, nuclear weapons played no identifiable role in either North Korea’s coercive tactics or US decisions to (nonviolently) countercoerce North Korea. The nuclear asymmetry between North and South Korea should intuitively lead one to expect that South Korean officials would take North Korean threats seriously. Conversely, North Korea’s purported nuclear advantage over the South—a unique form of material superiority—should somehow translate to a political advantage for the North, making it a

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“most likely” case for proponents of nuclear superiority.112 Yet in 2010, North Korea’s nuclear capability and saber rattling did not prevent South Korea from retaliation and possibly escalation; only US pressure on South Korean officials to restrain themselves prevented South Korean reciprocal violence against North Korea. We know this not only because of the admissions of US officials who described the situation and their role in it but also because of the measures the South Korean government took in the aftermath of North Korea’s 2010 attacks. DRP 307, a doctrine of proactive deterrence, and highly vocal threats promising manifold retaliation in the event of a subsequent provocation are, taken together, costly signals by South Korea that more North Korean violence would not be tolerated. And whether one can attribute North Korea’s subsequent restraint to successful South Korean deterrence or to other motivations, the fact remains that the absence of provocations was the aim of South Korean signaling. So, in a case that should have easily shown North Korea accruing some kind of crisis “win” over the South due to its nuclear prowess, the outcomes in this case seem to suggest the opposite: South Korea effectively achieved what it aimed to achieve, and North Korea’s threats were mostly deemed incredible by South Korean officials up and down the chain of command. Even when South Korea believed the North’s threats, the latter’s nuclear capability did not affect the South’s resolve to retaliate. We can thus infer from events in Korea that, at minimum, nuclear weapons are no remedy for problems of threat credibility, which has as much to do with historical track records of behavior as it does raw capability. More broadly, we can judge that nuclear weapons do not seem to provide political leverage beyond what could be achieved without them, which indirectly casts doubt on scholarship touting the benefits of nuclear superiority.

Notes The views expressed belong solely to the author and not the US government or any Department of Defense organization. Portions of this chapter first appeared in Van Jackson, Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in U.S.-North Korea Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 170–90. Borrowed portions reprinted with permission. 1. Van Jackson, Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in U.S.-North Korea Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 2. I use the term “nuclear capability,” “nuclear weapons,” and “nuclear weapon capability” interchangeably to refer to the ability to detonate a nuclear device. Defense analysts sometimes imply that a nuclear capability is only weaponized when it can be mated to a delivery vehicle such as an intercontinental ballistic missile, but this definition overlooks the potential of a nuclear capability to affect the calculations of an adversary even without operational delivery systems, as well as the destructive potential of nuclear explosions irrespective of delivery vehicle.

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3. Reasons for this timing are discussed in greater detail later, though regardless of precisely when one wishes to date a North Korean nuclear capability, its 2006 nuclear test proves that it was some time prior to 2006. 4. Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 124. 5. For some of the most canonical work, see Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960); Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970); and William Kaufman, “The Requirements of Deterrence,” in Military Policy and National Security, ed. William Kaufman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956), 12–38. 6. See, for example, Ted Hopf, Peripheral Visions: Deterrence Theory and American Foreign Policy in the Third World, 1965–1990 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994); Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing, Conflict among Nations: Bargaining, Decision-Making, and System Structure in International Crises (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 188; Shiping Tang, “Reputation, Cult of Reputation, and International Conflict,” Security Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 34–62; Vesna Danilovic, “The Sources of Threat Credibility in Extended Deterrence,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 45, no. 3 (2001): 341–69; and Joe Clare and Vesna Danilovic, “Reputation for Resolve, Interest, and Conflict,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 29, no. 1 (2012): 3–27. 7. Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 8. Jonathan Mercer, Reputation & International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). 9. Ernest May, “Lessons” of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Rinehart & Winston, 1971), 151. 10. Michael Tomz, Reputation and International Cooperation: Sovereign Debt across Three Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007); Gregory D. Miller, The Shadow of the Past: Reputation and Military Alliances before the First World War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012). 11. Barbara F. Walter, Reputation and Civil War: Why Separatist Conflicts Are So Violent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 12. Jackson, Rival Reputations. 13. Marc Trachtenberg, “A ‘Wasting Asset’: American Strategy and the Shifting Nuclear Balance, 1949–1954,” International Security 13 (1988): 5–49. 14. John Mueller, “The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons: Stability in the Postwar World,” International Security 13 (1988): 55–79. 15. Barry M. Blechman and Douglas M. Hart, “The Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons: The 1973 Middle East Crisis,” International Security 7 (1982): 132–56. 16. Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The Nukes We Need,” Foreign Affairs 88 (2009): 39–51. 17. See, for example, Oran Young, The Politics of Force: Bargaining during International Crises (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 311–36, and Kenneth N. Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,” American Political Science Review 84 (1990): 740.

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18. Jackson, Rival Reputations; Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo “Revisiting Reputation: How Past Actions Matter in International Politics,” International Organization 69 (2015): 473–95. 19. Van Jackson, “Threat Consensus and Rapprochement Failure: Revisiting the Collapse of U.S.-North Korea Relations, 1994–2002,” Foreign Policy Analysis, FirstView, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/fpa/orw034. 20. For an overview, see Van Jackson, “Making Diplomacy Work: Coercion and Conciliation in the First North Korean Nuclear Crisis,” Comparative Strategy 31, no. 2 (2012): 171–87. 21. Jackson, “Threat Consensus and Rapprochement Failure.” 22. “NK Official Calls for US to Continue Engagement,” Chosun Ilbo, February 6, 2001. 23. “Conclusion of Non-Aggression Treaty between DPRK and U.S. Called For,” Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), October 25, 2002. 24. George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 284; Mike Chinoy, Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis (New York: St. Martin’s, 2008), 81–91. See also Gordon Corera, Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A. Q. Khan Network (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). A high-level North Korean defector stated that Kim Jong-il admitted within the regime that North Korea possessed nuclear weapons as early as October 1994, though this statement is highly controversial. See Yeon-kwang Kim, “Hwang Jang-yeop ui godokhan waechim: Bang-mi donghaeng juijegi” [The Sole Scream of Hwang Jang-yop: I Covered His Trip to America], Wolgan Chosun, December 2003. 25. Chinoy, Meltdown, 92–93. 26. Yoichi Funabashi, The Peninsula Question: A Chronicle of the Second North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), 94. 27. “Text of North Korea’s Statement on NPT Withdrawal,” January 10, 2003, http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Deterrence/DPRKNPTstatement.shtml. 28. Steven R. Weisman, “Threats and Responses: United Nations; Diplomacy Should Resolve Korean Crisis, Powell Says,” New York Times, January 21, 2003. 29. Victor D. Cha, The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (New York: Ecco, 2012), 260. 30. Search conducted using http://www.nk-news.net/index.php. 31. “Statement of FM Spokesman Blasts UNSC’s Discussion of Korean Nuclear Issue,” KCNA, April 6, 2003. 32. “Spokesman for DPRK Foreign Ministry Assails Rice’s Reckless Remarks,” KCNA, April 25, 2005. 33. “11th Anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s Election as Chairman of NDC of DPRK,” KCNA, April 8, 2003. 34. “U.S. Dangerous Air Force Strategy against DPRK under Fire,” KCNA, March 9, 2003. 35. “DPRK Ready to Repel Any U.S. Military Attack,” KCNA, March 9, 2003. 36. “U.S. Urged to Drop Hostile Policy against the DPRK,” KCNA, January 24, 2004. 37. Chinoy, Meltdown, 273. 38. E-mail interview with former State Department official, March 24, 2014.

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39. See, for example, Charles L. Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007); Cha, Impossible State. 40. Chinoy, Meltdown, 158–60. 41. Ibid., 144–45. 42. As quoted ibid., 151. 43. “DPRK Threatens to Boost Nuclear Arsenal,” Reuters, April 13, 2006. 44. “North Korea Threatens Nuclear Retaliation to Possible U.S. Strike,” Reuters, July 3, 2006. 45. “North Korea Appears to Be Preparing for Nuclear Test,” ABC News Online, August 17, 2006, http://abcnews.go.com/international/story?id=2326083&page=1. 46. “DPRK Foreign Ministry Clarifies Stand on New Measure to Bolster War Deterrent,” KCNA, October 3, 2006; David E. Sanger, “North Korea Plans Its First Nuclear Test,” New York Times, October 3, 2006. 47. Dafna Linzer, “U.S. Won’t Accept a Nuclear North Korea,” Washington Post, October 5, 2006. 48. Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, 153. 49. “U.S., North Korean Nuclear Negotiators Meet,” Kyodo News, January 13, 2007. 50. Cha, Impossible State, 268–69. 51. “Transcript: Fourth Democratic Debate,” New York Times, July 24, 2007; “Transcript: First Presidential Debate,” CBS News Online, September 26, 2008, http:// www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/06/politics/2008debates/main4504409.shtml. 52. Office of the President of the United States, “President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address,” January 21, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address/. 53. “N. Korea: Ready to Launch Satellite,” CNN Online, February 24, 2009, http:// www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/23/nkorea.satellite/index.html?iref=nextin. 54. Jeffrey Bader, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2012), 30–33, 52. 55. “DPRK Foreign Ministry Vehemently Refutes UNSC’s ‘Presidential Statement,’ ” KCNA, April 14, 2009. 56. Scott Snyder, “Second Nuclear Test: North Korea Does What It Says,” Global security.org, May 25, 2009, http://sitrep.globalsecurity.org/articles/090525351-second -nuclear-test-north-kore.htm. 57. Peter Foster, “North Korea Nuclear Test: An Analysis,” Telegraph, May 25, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/5382922/North-Korea -nuclear-test-an-analysis.html; “North Korea’s Nuclear Test and Its Aftermath: Coping with the Fallout,” NTI.org, June 25, 2009, http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/north -koreas-nuclear-test-aftermath/. 58. It should be noted that North Korea’s January 6, 2016, nuclear test deviated from the historical pattern in two meaningful respects: It was not preceded by an ICBM test, and North Korea offered no obvious forewarning that the test would be taking place. Given its surprising nature, the aftermath of the test produced a commensurately larger reaction than the prior tests, which had been less surprising, leading to a new round of sanctions, South Korea’s closing of the jointly run Kaesong Industrial Complex, and a freshly legitimated discourse in South Korea about the need to develop an independent nuclear weapon capability. As of this writing, North Korea’s September 9, 2016, nuclear test resulted in a similar pattern: surprise due to lack of forewarning, discussions of tightened sanctions, and growing calls in South Korea for nuclear weapons of its own.

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59. Kim, “Hwang Jang-Yeop ui godokhan waechim.” In an interview with comedian Jon Stewart, James Baker, secretary of state from 1988 to 1992, claimed that North Korea had a “crude nuclear device” when he was secretary of state. See The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, October 9, 2006, http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/m63kkd/james -baker-pt-1. 60. As quoted in Funabashi, Peninsula Question, 126. 61. “11th Anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s Election as Chairman of NDC of DPRK,” KCNA, April 8, 2004; “Spokesman for DPRK Foreign Ministry Assails Rice’s Reckless Remarks,” KCNA, April 25, 2005. 62. “North Korea Appears to Be Preparing for Nuclear Test,” ABC News Online, August 17, 2006, http://abcnews.go.com/international/story?id=2326083&page=1. 63. Dafna Linzer, “U.S. Won’t Accept a Nuclear North Korea,” Washington Post, October 5, 2006; Pritchard, Failed Diplomacy, 153. 64. Bader, Obama and China’s Rise, 26–39. 65. Ibid.; United Nations Security Council, “Security Council, Acting Unanimously, Condemns in Strongest Terms Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Nuclear Test, Toughens Sanctions,” June 12, 2009, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/sc9679 .doc.htm. 66. For a history of the NLL and the contention surrounding it, see Terence Roehrig, The Origins of the Northern Limit Line Dispute (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center, 2012), http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-origins-the-northern -limit-line-dispute. 67. See, for example, “Lee Myung-bak and His Gentries’ Treacherous Outbursts under Fire in S. Korea,” KCNA, April 2, 2008. 68. For an overview, see Chung-in Moon, Kim Dae-jung Government and Sunshine Policy: Promises and Challenges (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 1999), and Key-young Song, South Korean Engagement Policies and North Korea: Identities, Norms, and the Sunshine Policy (New York: Routledge, 2006). 69. Gi-Wook Shin and Kristin C. Burke, “North Korea and Identity Politics in South Korea,” Brown Journal of World Affairs 15 (2008). 70. “U.S.–S. Korea Joint War Exercises Censured,” KCNA, November 4, 2009. 71. Sam Kim, “Koreas Clash in Yellow Sea, Blame Each Other,” Yonhap, November 10, 2009. 72. “KPA Navy Sets Up Firing Zone on MDL,” KCNA, December 21, 2009. 73. “N. Korea Fires in Western Sea Border,” Yonhap, January 27, 2010. 74. “Watchdog Blasts Military over Handling of Cheonan Sinking,” Chosun Ilbo, June 11, 2010, http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/06/11/2010061100479 .html. 75. “South Korea Urges Restraint over Sunken Warship,” BBC News, April 1, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8598267.stm. 76. Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of Korea, Joint Investigation Report on the Attack against the ROK Ship Cheonan (Seoul: Ministry of National Defense, 2010). 77. “Stop to War Exercises Demanded in South Korea,” KCNA, March 1, 2010. 78. “Projected DPRK-Target Joint Military Exercises Blasted,” KCNA, March 2, 2010.

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79. “DPRK-Target War Maneuvers Assailed,” KCNA, March 15, 2010. 80. “S. Korean Authorities Accused of Crying Out for Confrontation,” KCNA, March 15, 2010. 81. “U.S.–S. Korea War Exercises under Fire,” KCNA, March 24, 2010. 82. United Nations, Press Conference on Situation in Korean Peninsula: DPRK Permanent Representative to the United Nations Sin Son Ho, June 15, 2010, http://www .un.org/News/briefings/docs/2010/100615_Cheonan.doc.htm. 83. Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: Knopf, 2013), 416. 84. Ibid., 418; “U.S., S. Korea Plan Military Exercises,” Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2010. 85. “KPA Supreme Command Issues Communiqué,” KCNA, November 23, 2010. 86. “Military to Kick Off Annual Defense Drill Next Week,” Yonhap, November 16, 2010. 87. This was according to a statement by President Lee’s spokesperson, Kim Heejung, as quoted in “North Korea Fires Artillery in Sea Near Western Border,” Korea Herald, November 23, 2010, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20101123000840. 88. Ibid. 89. “Military Knew of N. Korean Artillery Move before Attack,” Chosun Ilbo, November 26, 2010. The time delay between being attacked and returning fire is fast for a unit not expecting to be attacked but slow for a unit anticipating an incident. The timed sequence of events is reported in “NK Fires Shells onto S. Korean Island, Kills 2 Marines,” Dong-A Ilbo, November 24, 2010. 90. According to Secretary Gates’s memoir, President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, and Gates himself called their South Korean counterparts upon learning of the North Korean attack, urging South Korea to refrain from airstrikes or further escalation. Gates, Duty, 497. See also “Report: N. Korea Fires on S. Korea, Injuring at Least 17,” CNN, November 24, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/23/nkorea.skorea.military.fire/index.html ?hpt=T1&iref=BN1. 91. “S. Korea May Strike N. Korea’s Missile Base: President Lee,” Korea Herald, November 23, 2010, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20101123001275; “NK Fires Shells onto S. Korean Island, Kills 2 Marines,” Dong-A Ilbo, November 24, 2010. 92. “KPA Supreme Command Issues Communiqué,” KCNA, November 23, 2010. 93. Gates, Duty, 497; Bader, Obama and China’s Rise, 87–91. 94. President Obama communicated to President Lee his commitment to send the George Washington before the attack occurred, and in fact the United States had been debating how such a deployment would be choreographed for months prior, as early as June. See Bader, Obama and China’s Rise, 87–91. 95. Ibid., 90–91. 96. “S. Korea Stages Huge Show of Force near DMZ,” Chosun Ilbo, December 24, 2010. 97. Abraham M. Denmark, “Proactive Deterrence: The Challenge of Escalation Control on the Korean Peninsula,” Academic Paper Series (Washington, DC: Korea Economic Institute, 2011). 98. “Defense Reform Plan 307,” KBS World, March 9, 2011, http://rki.kbs.co.kr /english/news/news_issue_detail.htm?lang=e¤t_page=4&No=21105; Rhee Sang-

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woo, From Defense to Deterrence: The Core of Defense Reform Plan 307 (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2011). 99. Rhee, From Defense to Deterrence. 100. Sung-won Shim, “U.S., South Korea Agree on Longer Range Ballistic Missiles,” Reuters, October 7, 2012. 101. “Israeli Spike Missiles Deployed,” Korea Times, May 19, 2013. 102. US Senate Committee on Armed Services, Hearing to Receive Testimony on US Pacific Command and US Forces Korea in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2014 and the Future Years Defense Program, April 9, 2013. 103. “South Korea Confirms North Korea Making Missile, Nuclear Test Preparations,” VOA News, April 8, 2013, http://www.voanews.com/content/south-korea-confirms-north -korea-making-missile-nuclear-test-preparations/1636754.html. 104. Sang-Hun Choe, “Computer Networks in South Korea are Paralyzed in Cyber Attacks,” New York Times, March 20, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/world /asia/south-korea-computer-network-crashes.html?_r=0. 105. Van Jackson, “Kim Jong Un’s Tin Can Air Force,” Foreign Policy, November 12, 2014, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/11/12/kim-jong-uns-tin-can-air-force/. 106. Victor Cha, “South Korea Exchanges Artillery Fire with North Korea,” Critical Questions (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2014), http:// csis.org/publication/south-korea-exchanges-artillery-fire-north-korea; Euan McKirdy and Stella Kim, “North Korea Fires on South Korea during North’s Military Drills; South Responds,” CNN World, April 1, 2014. 107. “DPRK-Target War Maneuvers Assailed,” KCNA, March 15, 2010. 108. “Projected DPRK-Target Joint Military Exercises Blasted,” KCNA, March 2, 2010. 109. “South Korea Urges Restraint over Sunken Warship,” BBC News, April 1, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8598267.stm. 110. “KPA Supreme Command Issues Communiqué,” KCNA, November 23, 2010. 111. One study of North Korean threat making in response to major exercises dating back to 1976 found that North Korea did routinely make exercise-related threats but did not systematically change the frequency of the threats from baseline hostile relations when exercises were not occurring. See Vincent D’Orazio, “War Games: North Korea’s Reaction to U.S. and South Korean Military Exercises,” Journal of East Asian Studies 12 (2012): 275–94. 112. Matt Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve: Explaining Nuclear Crisis Outcomes,” International Organization 67, no. 1 (2013): 141–71.

▼ 6

▲ THE NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR THREAT AND SOUTH KOREA’S DETERRENCE STRATEGY Chaesung Chun

On January 6, 2016, North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test and claimed that the regime had succeeded in developing hydrogen bombs. On September 9, the North conducted its fi fth test, claiming that it was the successful test of a bomb enabling it to produce a variety of smaller, lighter, and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power. These tests were followed by a test of a long-range missile engine, which the North claims to be a new, high-powered type for launching a geostationary satellite. Pyongyang has explicitly stated that its purpose is to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that can reach US territory. It is improbable that North Korea will slow down its nuclear buildup and even more improbable that the North will give up its nuclear programs. North Korea argues that the motive in going nuclear is to deter a US nuclear fi rst strike, but this is highly unpersuasive.1 With an enhanced second-strike ability to attack the American mainland, North Korea would like to negotiate with Washington and Seoul to get the most profitable outcome from a perceived position of strength. The regime might also think of using nuclear weapons if Kim Jong-un’s power is under serious challenge. There is no doubt that deterrence will be the foundation for stability and peace on the Korean Peninsula. However, unlike many ongoing interstate rivalries, a status quo or stability between the two based on the military balance is not a sustainable equilibrium. Korea is a divided country, and

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two Koreas are officially at war because the Korean War ended by armistice, not a peace treaty, in 1953. Peace between the two Koreas is obviously a desirable condition, but as the two Koreas both hope to reunify the Korean Peninsula on their own terms, stability or negative peace—meaning merely the absence of war—is not the ultimate goal. Although North Korea can be successfully deterred for the time being, North Korea, being aware of its weak position in the competition with South Korea, will continue to rely on military means and especially nuclear weapons. South Korea’s strategy of deterrence is therefore only a part of South Korea’s North Korea policy in a broader sense. Deterrence itself is not a purpose but only a basis from which the two Koreas can start negotiations for denuclearization, reconciliation, and ultimately reunification. South Korea has tried to combine the two pillars of deterrence and sanctions to develop a balance of power upon which they can negotiate future reconciliation and engagement with the North. This chapter will examine North Korea’s efforts to enhance nuclear capability and South Korea’s deterrence strategy. It will critically review deterrence theory and explore whether it will be applicable in devising deterrence strategy to deal with the totalitarian North.

Growing North Korea’s Nuclear Threats under the Kim Jong-un Regime Growing threats from North Korea originate in structural factors related to its domestic political structure. Kim Jung-un, having assumed power without any previous policy experience, had to prove himself to be a capable leader. He chose the most effective and visible option. He concentrated resources on developing nuclear weapons, setting an accelerated pace, and justifying his policies with a new doctrine of simultaneously developing the economy. North Korean Nuclear Capability under the Byeongjin Strategy

After Kim Jong-il’s death in December 2011, North Korea longed for the status of a formal nuclear state. On March, 31, 2013, Kim Jong-un declared the so-called byeongjin strategy, meaning a strategy aiming at both economic development and the building of nuclear weapons simultaneously. At the same time, North Korea declared that it is now a constitutional nuclear power and that it will not pursue the purpose of denuclearization. This strategy is fundamentally different from Kim Jong-un’s, since Kim Jong-il at least did not deny the denuclearization of North Korea as the final outcome of negotiations with neighboring powers.2

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After conducting the third nuclear test on February 12, 2013, North Korea has endeavored to enhance its capability for nuclear weapons and also to increase conventional threats to South Korea and its neighbors. On January 6, 2016, it announced it had conducted its fi rst successful test of a hydrogen bomb, the fourth nuclear test since October 9, 2006. For the last ten years, North Korea ceaselessly enhanced its nuclear capability, and many argue that North Korea has become an operational nuclear power. It is still unclear whether the blast detected was large enough to have been a full thermonuclear device, but it may have involved some nuclear fusion. On February 7, North Korea conducted another long-range missile test, and it may have succeeded in miniaturizing the nuclear warhead: A few months later, Kim Jong-un announced that North Korean scientists had been able to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on a missile. Intelligence agencies in surrounding countries now believe that North Korea is capable of miniaturizing a nuclear weapon and putting it on its KN- 08 mobile ICBM.3 For the past two years, North Korea has test-fi red submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) several times. On April 23, 2016, North Korea tested an SLBM for probably the fifth time and displayed pictures of such an event for the third time. The design was still in its earliest stages, and much work, including the development of a full-scale motor, appeared to still be required. However, on August 24, 2016, North Korea tested from a submarine another ballistic missile that flew about five hundred kilometers in the longest fl ight by that type of North Korean weapon. The problem for South Korea is that its Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) system is focused on the interception of land-based ballistic missiles. It has become more important to current deter threats from the seas surrounding the Korean Peninsula as North Korea may deploy SLBMs with nuclear warheads much earlier than expected.4 Explaining North Korean Nuclear Motives

North Korean nuclear weapons serve multiple purposes. First, North Korea continuously reproduces the statement that its nuclear weapons are to deter a US nuclear attack, arguing that Washington excluded North Korea from a nuclear no-first-use commitment. Second, Kim Jong-un wants to perpetuate a totalitarian regime and consolidate his power by personalizing control over the country. Given North Korea’s struggling economy, nuclear weapons provide him with political legitimation of his economically ineffective rule by showing his militant resolve to fight the United States. By continuously enhancing nuclear capability, he sends the message to the people that the outside security threat is increasing. This excuse of military expenditure justifies the poor attempt to revive the economy. Third, when political utilization of nuclear weapons for power consolidation is no longer required,

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Kim can begin to deal with outside powers to elicit economic assistance. This is an old pattern: North Korea nuclearizes, then receives maximum economic assistance for denuclearization. Fourth, Kim may use nuclear weapons purely for offensive purposes. North Korea may start an all-out war using nuclear weapons with the confidence of controlling a crisis and winning if it is sure of US reluctance to retaliate with nuclear weapons. It is also probable that Kim Jong-un relies on the slim chance of continuing his dictatorship even after a disastrous nuclear war. The North Korean argument that Pyongyang develops nuclear weapons for the purpose of nuclear deterrence is on weak ground for three reasons. First, both South Korea and the United States have no intention of fi rst attacking North Korea with nuclear or conventional weapons for any reason unless a North Korean attack is unequivocal and imminent. Second, Washington would not conduct a surgical strike against Pyongyang’s nuclear facilities unless North Korea further develops a nuclear capability with entirely offensive purposes or seriously proliferates nuclear weapons. And third, the current nuclear power of North Korea is further below the level of deterrence by denial and also by punishment because of the enormous capability gap between the nuclear capability of the North and that of the Republic of Korea (ROK)–US alliance. North Korea lacks both the missile defense system to deny the attack and the retaliatory capacity from South Korea and the United States. North Korea, under some situations, may decide to use nuclear weapons for aggressive reasons, but this does not mean that North Korea’s nuclear weapons have any deterrent effects. Since Kim Jong-un inherited power in 2012, he has repeatedly announced that nuclear weapons are not the object of any deal for denuclearization or for eliciting economic assistance. During the period of Kim Jong-il’s reign, each stage of developing nuclear weapons and conventional provocations tended to be followed by a proposal for negotiations with South Korea, mostly for economic assistance. However, Kim Jong-un never explicitly utilized nuclear power for economic gains. As the task of political consolidation has been more urgent, Kim Jong-un seems to emphasize security threats from the United States, and to a lesser extent from South Korea, and to show the regime’s capability to develop nuclear programs. It is uncertain whether a strong domestic power base would allow him to use nuclear power for economic purposes, but so far the pattern is different from that of his father.

South Korea’s Strategy of Deterring North Korean Offense What would be the right course of deterrence for South Korea under these conditions? North Korea has declared an intention to develop nuclear weap-

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ons to deter nuclear attack from the United States with South Korean support: They would retaliate with nuclear weapons when they are attacked with nuclear weapons. As North Korea is governed by a young, inexperienced, despotic leader and has a faltering economy, there is a possibility that nuclear weapons may be actually used in a confrontation. This poses a serious challenge for both South Korea and the United States and also for Japan in terms of how to deter a North Korean nuclear attack. The ROK-US alliance has focused on deterring North Korea’s frequent provocations and a possible offensive by conventional means, because the US tactical nuclear weapons were withdrawn in 1991. There is no doubt now that extended deterrence based on the alliance is the most significant and reliable measure for deterrence for South Korea to adopt. South Korea has tried to combine deterrence by punishment based on extended deterrence and deterrence by denial by developing the KillChain and KAMD systems. However, fear will loom large in South Korea that the United States may be reluctant to run nuclear risks with North Korea, giving rise to the problem of decoupling. Both South Korea and the United States need to convince Pyongyang and the South Koreans that the United States is willing to accept high costs in defense of an ally, even though US vital interests are not necessarily at stake.5 Yet there is no doubt that South Korea needs to maintain a sufficient level of extended deterrence in partnership with the United States to cope with North Korea’s purely offensive strategy.6 Patrick Morgan devised the distinction between “general” and “immediate” deterrence. He argued that today immediate deterrence is relatively rare because it assumes a very severe confl ict and the need for imminent action.7 In the case of the Korean Peninsula, the need for immediate deterrence has not yet dissipated. When the two Koreas are sure of the other party’s defensive intentions and focus on lessening the security dilemma, mutual deterrence becomes easier and tends to be based on a strategically compatible understanding about the concept and purpose of deterrence. The inter-Korean relationship with Kim Jong-il’s North Korea could have a very slim basis for mutual understanding. As long as Kim Jong-un’s military strategy is uncertain and his domestic political base seems so fragile, the appropriate level of deterrence is hard to establish.8 South Korea tried to strengthen extended deterrence based on the ROK-US alliance and also started to build the mechanism of deterrence by retaliation. Extended deterrence has come to be the core aspect of Seoul’s deterrence strategy. The joint communiqué of the Forty-Sixth ROK-US Security Consultative Meeting, on October 23, 2014, emphasized the continued US commitment to providing and strengthening extended deterrence for the ROK using the full range of military capabilities, including the US nuclear umbrella, conventional strike, and missile defense capabilities. It also aimed

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to ensure that extended deterrence for the ROK remains credible, capable, and enduring. The US secretary of defense and the ROK minister of national defense decided to periodically review the implementation progress of the bilateral Tailored Deterrence Strategy against North Korean Nuclear and Other WMD Threats. In addition, the secretary and the minister noted that the Tailored Deterrence Strategy Table Top Exercise contributed to enhancing the alliance’s understanding of the Tailored Deterrence Strategy and to preparing political and military response procedures for various situations. The United States and the ROK are committed to maintaining close consultation on deterrence matters to achieve tailored deterrence against key North Korean threats and to maximize its effects. In addition, the two secretaries reaffi rmed their commitment to reinforcing the alliance’s renewed deterrence by denial and response capabilities against North Korean missile threats through the establishment of Concepts and Principles of ROK-US Alliance Comprehensive Counter-Missile Operations to detect, defend, disrupt, and destroy missile threats, including nuclear and biochemical warheads. They also reaffi rmed that the ROK will seek to develop, by the mid-2020s, its own Kill- Chain and KAMD systems, which will be critical military capabilities for responding to the North Korean nuclear and missile threat and also interoperable with alliance systems. To this end, the secretary and the minister also decided to enhance information sharing on North Korean missile threats. The United States and the ROK are committed to maintaining close consultation to develop comprehensive alliance capabilities to counter North Korean nuclear, other WMD, and ballistic missile threats.9 When South Korea decides to pursue deterrence by denial, it will not be easy to clarify the sufficient level of deterrence with the unpredictable level of North Korea’s nuclear capacity. South Korea developed the Kill Chain as a practical means of realizing the proactive deterrence strategy. In this strategy, surveillance, reconnaissance, and air-strike systems are key parts of the Kill Chain. But the Kill Chain is not designed to deter all of the North’s missiles before they are launched. South Korea needs to improve the KAMD system to intercept any missiles launched against the South. These days South Korean military specialists and the public are conducting hot debates concerning the need to establish a multilayered missile defense system by focusing on the terminal phase and low-altitude defense, and they plan to develop the KAMD system into a more advanced, mediumaltitude defense concept. South Korea is planning to secure systems such as PAC-3, M-SAM, and L-SAM. Also, it decided to allow the US forces to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on Korean soil. The ongoing discussion revolves around fi nding an appropriate site for the THAAD system, its future Koreanization, and the means to fend off heated opposition from China and Russia.10

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Conventional threats from North Korea are also increasing. As was clearly manifested in the case of the Cheonan incident, it is an impending imperative for South Korea to design more active and tailored deterrence. In 2013, the United States and South Korea agreed to establish active deterrence against North Korea’s military provocations, with the idea that both nations would jointly respond to the North’s local provocations, the South taking the lead and the United States in support. The two countries established the Combined Counter-Provocation Plan, which improved combined readiness and developed a posture to allow the two nations to immediately and decisively respond to any North Korean provocation. Among the lowlevel incidents the deal is meant to deter are maritime-border incursions, the shelling of border islands, and infi ltration of South Korean territory by low-flying fighter jets or by special forces units. The Assumption of Rationality in Deterrence Theory and North Korea

Can North Korea be deterred? As indicated above, nuclear weapons have obvious domestic utilities. Kim Jong-un should consolidate his domestic power base and also compete with South Korea regarding the prospect of reunification. When he is successfully deterred by the United States and South Korea, he loses political legitimacy, more so without notable economic achievements. Deterring North Korean nuclear offense should take account of these situations, since we are dealing with a divided political entity controlled by a relatively inexperienced dictator. Kim’s continuous failure to develop nuclear power as a result of the US and South Korean deterrent power may drive him to consider actually using nuclear weapons to protect the regime from the domestic and outside challenge. Deterrence as a theory is based on the assumption of actor rationality. As deterrence aims at the attacker’s inaction by threatening retaliatory harm, it influences the attacker’s risk calculus. Rational decision makers are supposed to make decisions on the basis of a logical process of information free from biases and distortion.11 Some analysts argue that one flaw of deterrence theory is that its rationality might guide the actor to risk-taking that will provoke its own destruction. The prospect of an unpredictable leader with unknown levels of risk acceptance highly complicates the plausibility of deterring the opponent. The assumption of a rational adversary is subject to general skepticism and specific doubts when dealing with North Korea. Theoretically, deterrence is premised upon several elements, such as actors’ rationality and self-interests. Deterrence is possible when a defender displays sufficient capability and credibility with a certain level of mutual communication. Inter-Korean relations before Kim Jong-un assumed that power tended to be based upon mutually shared concepts of rationality and

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evaluations of capacity with frequent communications, even though communication was associated with mutual confl ict and antagonism. Yet it is true that deterrence is also possible when the concept of deterrence is shared and socially constructed. Inter-Korean relations from 1994 to 2011 showed these tendencies, because there have been inter-Korean summit meetings and Kim Jong-il had safely personalized North Korean power leading to inner political stability. Kim Jong-un’s regime has radically changed inter-Korean relations. Most important, North Korea’s and South Korea’s national strategies have fundamentally changed, and the existing common ground for dealing with North Korean nuclear matters has broken down. It is still uncertain that Kim has consolidated his power base. As the basic components defining inter-Korean relations so far have lost ground, the meaning of mutual deterrence has also changed. As deterrence is possible under the broader framework of each strategy to the other, it is necessary to look at Kim’s strategy and his military programs. Although Kim Jong-un is functionally rational, there may be many psychological and political elements for biases that will increase the likelihood of nonrational or subrational behavior.12 However, as much literature has shown, people are resistant to information that is incoherent to their cognitive framework and belief systems. As Janice Gross Stein argues, cognitive psychology demonstrates the limit of decision makers’ rationality. Especially in times of risk and uncertainty, leaders retain a number of heuristics and biases, which impair the process of judgment. Adherence to heuristics and biases makes decision makers resist dissonant information to preserve personal consistency.13 There are ample bases to think that this tendency will be reinforced in dictatorships. The dictator with absolute decision-making power can make important decisions on the basis of personal judgment. When he or she has already formed a specific frame for evaluating the strategic environment, it is hard for the dictator to be open to new information. If the legitimacy of the dictatorship depends on the performance of the dictator, there will be a high cost to policy change because it may suggest that earlier decisions were poor. In the case of Kim Jong-un’s North Korea, political power is highly concentrated in the dictator. Especially in the initial stage of political consolidation, other political elites are afraid of being purged in the middle of political succession and turmoil. Not guided or helped by fearful bureaucrats, such young and inexperienced leaders should make critical decisions and show infallibility to consolidate power. Cognitive psychology also demonstrates that political leaders are subject to attribution error and loss aversion. As people tend to exaggerate dispositional factors over situational things, putting heavier emphasis on personality attributes than external contraints, they criticize others’ decisions rather

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than contemplate the overall strategic environment. Frequent purges in North Korea exemplify this trend. Also, leaders are risk averse when things go well but become more risk acceptant when things go badly.14 Kim Jong-un, after several years of consolidating power after Kim Jong-il’s death in December 2011, has coherently criticized the United States and South Korea for these countries’ alleged efforts at regime elimination and military antagonism. North Korea’s inner and external situation has posed a serious threat to regime survivability, but it is doubtful if Kim reached a rational evaluation of his own country’s survivability. Under a deteriorating status quo, the possibility of more risk-acceptant behavior, such as more frequent provocations, nuclear tests, or even military attack, becomes stronger. Conditions for Deterrence of a Dictator in a Divided Country

Deterring North Korea under these conditions will be harder than the literature regarding deterrence usually assumes. Arguments about deterring rogue states deal with this difficulty. Rogue states “brutalize their own people, display no regard for international law, threaten their neighbors, are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, sponsor terrorism around the globe, and reject basic human values,”15 risking their lives and the general welfare of their countries. Dictators in these states attempt to preserve their own political power, with the minimum winning coalition that will perpetuate their political rule. Dictators do not care about people’s level of life, focusing only on the maintenance of political support from the minimum range of political elites.16 In this case, threatening massive harm to the people of the challenger will not deter aggressive action. As far as the dictator may survive and reserve political power in spite of considerable loss, he or she may attempt to change the status quo with the expectation that the attack may be rewarded. What is worse for North Korea is that the ultimate situation of political failure would be reunification by absorption with the leadership of South Korea. If reunified in favor of South Korea and the alliance with the United States, the position of Kim Jong-un as a totalitarian leader would be in serious danger. There have been diverse criticisms of North Korea’s human rights situation, and the international society under the leadership of the United Nations may put Kim Jong-un on international trial for his wrongdoings. This complicates the possibility of deterring Kim Jong-un when he decides to use military means, including nuclear weapons, when his regime and power is at stake. Under hypothetical situations such as public revolt in the North against Kim’s rule, all-out war possibly started from border clashes with South Korea, or surgical strikes to nuclear facilities by the ROK-US alliance, Kim might rationally believe that he has much to gain, or

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at least little to lose, from using nuclear weapons.17 This situation resembles the difficult case of deterring terrorists who are willing to die for some other values and causes. Under the most desperate situation, Kim might risk his own political regime to destroy South Korea for his own cause or honor. This is the case of what Ivan Arreguín-Toft called “unconventional deterrence.” When an adversary is motivated by some sort of nationalism or religious inspiration and is willing to sacrifice his own life, it is hard to effectively threaten and deter him. When Kim resorts to nuclear weapons to preserve his own power or to leave a legacy, the usual threats will not bring about the desired outcome.18 Deterrence applies not just to theory but to strategy as well. As Morgan argues, the rationality assumption is essential in developing deterrence theory, but deterrence strategy does not necessarily require this rationality assumption. What is needed in deterrence strategy in practice is “sufficient fear of the consequences of the threatened retaliation to not do what has been indicated. The underlying perceptions and judgments that constitute and are shaped by this fear and that lead to abandoning plans to attack may be irrational, rational, or some combination of the two.”19 The most crucial factor will be the clear and uncompromising determination to attack the adversary. Deterrence succeeds when the strength of the will to retaliate is fully dictated and communicated. In the case of North Korea, Kim Jong-un may attempt to use nuclear weapons hoping that South Korea and the United States will not retaliate with nuclear weapons to save the peninsula from nuclear disaster and that he would begin to dictate the terms of his preservation. From the above, one thing is clear: Deterrence is context-specific. When the defender tries to deter the challenger, he needs to understand the latter’s history, culture, language, religion, and worldviews.20 The equilibrium between the deterred and the deterrer cannot be sought a priori but only through an evaluation of a specific strategic context. What is unacceptable damage and what is the desired benefit will be decided by particular contexts in which the deterrence game is being played. In the case of inter-Korean relations, the Korean people are divided but largely wish for reunification regardless of where they live. But reunification means the radical transformation of the current political system, and two Koreas will resist being absorbed by the other, deterring not only military attack but also any political attempt to take the initiative for reunification. As the power gap between two Koreas becomes wider and Kim Jong-un feels more threatened by the possibility of the South absorbing the North, he may attempt to resist reunification with different forms of all-out war, including nuclear war. Because the cost-benefit calculus for Kim’s nuclear attack will be influenced by changing inter-Korean relations, how Seoul should and likely would deter North Korean attacks will also change.

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Deterrence as a Social Construction and North Korea

The classical approach to deterrence posits deterrence from aggression as the main objective.21 However, as deterrence is inherently psychological, we have to take into account the process by which the involved parties share common or conflictual understanding of the meaning of deterrence. Much of this involves the process of learning. As the concept of deterrence among concerned parties is not exogenously given, we have to pay attention to the processes whereby parties depend on perception and learning and sharing meanings.22 South Korea and Kim Jong-un’s North Korea are at the very initial stage of this learning process. The future of Kim’s strategic concept depends on future political dynamics in North Korea that are subject to unpredictability. If both Koreas, divided but aiming at reunification, want to share the regime of deterrence, there should be efforts to form discourse that shape both actors’ knowledge, type of communication, and understanding of reality. Here the question is how and in what way the North Korea of Kim Jong-un is rational and whether it is deterrable in a traditional sense. Scholars studying deterrence address the question of whether rogue states are deterrable. They argue that imbalances of interests and commitments among opponents, psychological barriers, and the rationality of irrationality are so challenging that deterrence is highly limited. The sustainability of Kim Jong-un’s regime depends upon the success of the byeongjin strategy. If North Korea’s nuclear weapons cannot be used as a means for eliciting more economic assistance from outside, the very legitimacy of Kim’s rule will be subject to his people’s doubt. The problem here is that Kim, in the face of losing power, may consider carrying out an actual WMD attack or threaten one in a very plausible way. He may think of starting an all-out war against South Korea, a situation in which escalation would be inevitable and lead to his consideration of nuclear weapons for victory or for at least a favorable cease-fire. To move from an immediate deterrence position, it is imperative to go for more general deterrence. Morgan writes that “general deterrence has to do with anticipating possible or potential threats, often hypothetical and from an unspecified attacker, and adopting a posture designed to deter other actors from ever beginning to think about launching an attack and becoming the ‘potential’ or ‘would-be’ challengers so prominent in deterrence theory.”23 In the case of North Korea, we know who the challenger is but need to prepare for North Korea’s attack with a wide range of aggression evolving from the war-like situation to sparse provocations. Establishing the platform to share the understanding of deterrence under the overall framework of engaging with North Korea is necessary. Lawrence Freedman argues that

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deterrence works best when the targets are able to act rationally, and when the deterrer and the deterred are working within a sufficiently shared normative framework so that it is possible to inculcate a sense of appropriate behavior in defined situations that can be reinforced by a combination of social pressures and a sense of fair and effective punishment. Norms, therefore, do not develop and exist independently of assertions of power and interest.24

He also notes: Norms play an important role in systems maintenance following the establishment of a deterrence relationship, in that stability depends not only on the fear of the consequences of an attempt to break out of the relationship but an understanding of what might be done to reassure the other that no attempt was being made and also to set the terms for being able to move beyond deterrence.25

The core of the North Korean problem is how to defi ne its future strategic status with a credible assurance from outside powers. North Korea is a country in constant insecurity of being absorbed by the South, betrayed by China, and allegedly threatened by the United States. North Korea will not give up nuclear weapons unless it feels assured of its survivability. Kim Jong-un will seriously consider giving up nuclear weapons only if the option of abandonment of nuclear weapons turns out to be the only way to preserve his regime. North Korean nuclear weapons are not just to be deterred but also to be dismantled and negotiated for inter-Korean dialogue and/or concessions, which makes the task of deterrence quite complicated. Both South Korea and the United States have constantly declared their intention to assure North Korea of its survivability. However, incoherent policy coming from domestic considerations, and an intransient negotiation strategy have prevented both parties from building trust. North Korea will not be persuaded by verbal guarantees or economic assistance short of full political support.26 At this stage, strategic interaction should be complemented by more communicative interaction. Communicative interaction is about understanding the preferences of the other party and delivering one’s own preferences in a more credible form. It aims at “coming to understanding over the conditions of interaction rather than an orientation towards achieving immediate self-interest.”27

Strategy of Engagement and the Game of Reassurance toward North Korea Successful engagement with North Korea will weaken Kim Jong-un’s excuse of developing nuclear weapons and military provocation against South Korea.

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North Korea has consistently insisted that the reason for nuclear development is to deter a nuclear first-strike by the United States against its territory. For the North Korean leadership, the US goal is ultimately the elimination of the North Korean regime and reunification in favor of South Korea. If engaging with the North turns out to be successful, North Korea may feel sure of US and South Korean intentions for peaceful coexistence and gradual reunification. The strategy of engagement is composed of several things. First, the party should reassure the target country that one is not threatening or antagonistic. Second, it should start the policy of reconciliation and peaceful exchange to invite the other to the cooperation game. In this process, it is important for the engager to hedge against the possibility of the other’s betrayal. Third, by gradually building trust, there would be structural bases to foster the change of the other’s system and behavior. 28 These processes are not easy. Especially the fi rst stage of reassuring the other of peaceful intention would affect the target country’s risk calculus to develop and use military means, including nuclear weapons. Then, as a part of the engagement policy, the initial strategy of reassurance would work to send signals regarding one’s benign intentions. In this process, it is also possible for the sender to seek the receiver’s intentions and purposes. Uncertainty about the other’s cost-benefit calculus and strategic intention is a precondition to start the game of reassurance. Trust results only gradually after a series of both successful and failing processes of mutual reassurance. 29 One way of reinforcing the credibility is to use publicity in communicative interaction. South Korea has endeavored to reassure North Korea of peaceful intention and lower the level of North Korea’s nuclear development by eliminating the North’s excuses for nuclear armament. South Korea tried to raise audience costs—the political punishment political leaders face when reneging on promises—and verifiability so that the signaling can be appreciated as just more than cheap talk. For the future, this effort should go with military deterrence. In this process, South Korea’s dynamic democratic political process would help send signals to and influence preferences of the North Korean regime. To convince North Korea of the genuine intentions of South Korea and neighboring countries, more public debate and discourses about the future of North Korea needs to be augmented. South Korea should persuade North Korea to give up nuclear weapons and go for economic recovery with security guarantees, which both South Korea and the international community are willing to provide. If North Korea witnesses an increased public discussion of its role and status in Northeast Asia, it may seek to conform to the expectations of international society, not because of its own good intentions but because of its will to survive.30 In this case, even a slight indication of any Seoul government’s

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intention to absorb North Korea would further incite North Korea’s worry, leading to increased mistrust of outside powers.

Conclusion US secretary of defense William Perry once noted that rogue regimes “may not buy into our deterrence theory. Indeed, they may be madder than MAD.”31 We have North Korea with a young and unpredictable dictator at his formative period. North Korea has declared itself a nuclear state and has rejected any negotiation for denuclearization. There are ample grounds for saying that Kim Jong-un is not rational in a traditional sense and that North Korea will become more and more undeterrable. It is crucial at this moment to reinforce the posture of immediate deterrence. As North Korea develops much more destructive and diversified nuclear warheads, ICBMs with a longer range, and the technology for SLBMs, coping with these challenges with a corresponding posture is essential. However, in the game of deterrence and balance of terror, perception and subjective judgment loom large. For the deterrence to work, credibility and communication is as important as capability. It is very hard to predict the context-specific rationality of Kim Jong-un and North Korea’s costbenefit calculus. Changes in North Korea’s domestic political, economic, and ideational situation; inter-Korean relations; and a changing power shift in Northeast Asia would affect North Korea’s calculation. To produce a mutually stable concept of deterrence, there should be a gradual process of forging a socially constructed regime of deterrence based on the fear of consequences or otherwise based on assurance between the two Koreas and among major powers in the region. As North Korea is both the threat to be deterred and the partner for reunification, the combination of deterrence and engagement is indispensable. There will be a long and painful road to reassure North Korea of South Korea’s peaceful intentions and to transform a highly offensive game into a defensive one.

Notes 1. For the debate regarding defensive versus offensive versions of security strategy, see Shiping Tang, A Theory of Security Strategy for Our Time (New York; Palgrave, 2010). See also John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001). 2. North Korea defined itself as a nuclear weapons state in its constitution in 2012. Also, North Korea declared that it is “a full-fledged nuclear weapons state” after a plenary meeting of the Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee on March 31, 2013, and then issued the document of the Law of Nuclear Weapons State at the Supreme People’s Assembly on April 1.

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3. With the development of North Korean nuclear weapons, the game of nuclear deterrence and balance of terror began. For the difference between balance of power and balance of terror, see Michael Sheehan, The Balance of Power: History and Theory (New York: Routledge, 1996), 177–78. He writes that “with the balance of terror . . . the calculations are quite different. Here, deterrence is everything and is achieved through the threat of unendurable punishment. If the threat ever has to be implemented, the result is an all-out nuclear war, with catastrophic consequences for both sides. Both sides have a powerful incentive to avoid action that requires the deterrent threats ever to be implemented. If nuclear weapons are ever used, then deterrence will have failed. Whereas war in the balance of power system was a legitimate and appropriate part of the balancing process, in nuclear deterrence it signifies the catastrophic failure of that process.” 4. John Schilling, “A New Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile for North Korea,” 38 North, April 25, 2016. And see also Sang-min Lee, “South Korea’s ‘Proactive Deterrence’ Strategy and Policy Suggestions to Develop the KAMD,” Military Official Center for Security & Strategy, KIDA, October 24, 2014. 5. For the question of decoupling, see Shane Smith, “Implications for US Extended Deterrence and Assurance in East Asia,” US-Korea Institute at SAIS, November 2015. 6. For an extensive argument regarding extended deterrence in Asia, see Andrew O’Neil, Asia, the US and Extended Nuclear Deterrence: Atomic Umbrellas in the TwentyFirst Century (New York: Routledge, 2013). 7. Patrick M. Morgan, Deterrence Now (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), xvi. 8. There are other dilemmas for South Korea, such as a credibility gap, a targeting dilemma, and a stability-instability paradox. See Geun Wook Lee, “Unholy Trinity in Nuclear Deterrence: Three Dilemmas of Nuclear Weapons,” Korean Journal of Security Affairs 12 (2007): 5–18. 9. See the full text of joint communiqué of the Forty-Sixth S. Korea-U.S. Security Consultative Meeting, October 23, 2014. See also Kyudok Hong, “Option 1: Enhancing Military Deterrence,” Asian Forum 4, no. 3 (special forum, June, 11, 2015). 10. See Kyung-young Chung, “Debate on THAAD Deployment and ROK National Security,” East Asia Institute, working paper, October 2015. 11. Morgan, Deterrence Now, 8. 12. Derek D. Smith, Deterring America: Rogue States and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); James H. Lebovic, Deterring International Terrorism: US National Security Policy after 9/11 (London: Routledge, 2007). 13. Janice Gross Stein, “Rational Deterrence against ‘Irrational’ Adversaries? No Common Knowledge,” in Complex Deterrence: Strategy in the Global Age, ed. T. V. Paul, Patrick M. Morgan, and James J. Wirtz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 62–63. 14. Stein, “Rational Deterrence against ‘Irrational’ Adversaries?,” 66. 15. Smith, Deterring America, 14. 16. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2012). 17. North Korea’s formal position on using nuclear weapons was indicated during the Supreme People’s Assembly of North Korea in April 2013, at which it was declared that “the nuclear weapons of the DPRK can be used only by a final order of the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army to repel invasion or attack from a hostile nuclear

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weapons state and make retaliatory strikes; the DPRK shall neither use nukes against the nonnuclear states nor threaten them with those weapons unless they join a hostile nuclear weapons state in its invasion and attack on the DPRK.” 18. Ivan Arreguín-Toft, “Unconventional Deterrence: How the Weak Deter the Strong,” in Paul, Morgan, and Wirtz, Complex Deterrence, 209. 19. Patrick Morgan, “North Korea and Nuclear Deterrence,” International Journal of Korean Unification Studies 13 (2004), 10. 20. Stein, “Rational Deterrence against ‘Irrational’ Adversaries?,” 77. 21. See various arguments in Keith B. Payne, Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997); Robert Powell, Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Thérèse Delpech, Deterrence in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Cold War for a New Era of Strategic Piracy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2012); and David G. Coleman and Joseph M. Siracusa, Real-World Nuclear Deterrence: The Making of International Strategy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006). 22. For a constructivist approach to nuclear use, see Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-use of Nuclear Weapons since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 23. Morgan, Deterrence Now, xvi. 24. Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Cambridge: Polity Press 2004), 5. 25. Lawrence Freedman, “Deterrence: A Reply,” Journal of Strategic Studies 28 (2005): 794. 26. Other than verbal means, a state can deploy other types of reassurance attempts: nonmilitary and military deeds. Tang, Theory of Security Strategy, 148. 27. Marc Lynch, “Why Engage? China and the Logic of Communicative Engagement,” European Journal of International Relations 8 (2002): 192. 28. Tang, Theory of Security Strategy, 102 29. Ibid., 130–36. Also Tang argues that “if extensive trust has to come before any reassurance signal, no reassurance is possible. This is simply because reassurance actually is driven by the desire to build trust and reduce mistrust, and building trust via reassurance fundamentally depends on taking some risk in the possibility that the other side is untrustworthy” (p. 140). 30. James D. Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes,” American Political Science Review 88 (1994): 577–92; James D. Fearon, “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands versus Sinking Costs,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (1997): 68–90. 31. Smith, Deterring America, 36.

▼ 7

▲ STABILITY OR INSTABILITY? The US Response to North Korean Nuclear Weapons Terence Roehrig

The possibilit y of North Korea relinquishing its nuclear capability is a fading memory. Indeed, North Korea will likely continue to grow its nuclear weapon stockpile to maintain a small nuclear deterrent along with landbased mobile ballistic missiles and eventually a ballistic missile submarine. A June 2016 study put Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons arsenal at thirteen to twenty-one warheads based on separated plutonium and enriched uranium.1 North Korea destroyed the cooling tower at Yongbyon in 2008, largely a symbolic act, but reports indicate it has been restarted, possibly providing the capability of producing one additional nuclear weapon per year, in addition to any output from its uranium-enrichment program. 2 Nuclear deterrence is a core element of North Korea’s national security strategy to maintain the survival of the North Korean regime. In his 2015 New Year address, Kim Jong-un declared: “The present situation, in which high-handedness based on strength is rampant and justice and truth are trampled ruthlessly in the international arena, eloquently demonstrates that we were just in our efforts to fi rmly consolidate our self-reliant defence capability with the nuclear deterrent as its backbone and safeguard our national sovereignty, the lifeblood of the country, under the unfurled banner of Songun.”3 Finally, in the formal announcement of the January 2016 nuclear weapon test, North Korea proclaimed that “there can neither be suspended nuclear development nor nuclear dismantlement on the part of

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the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) unless the United States has rolled back its vicious hostile policy toward the former. The army and people of DPRK will steadily escalate its nuclear deterrence of justice both in quality and quantity to reliably guarantee the future of the revolutionary cause of Juche for all ages.”4 Thus, Northeast Asia will need to learn to live with a nuclear-armed North Korea. For years, scholars and analysts have debated the role nuclear weapons play in state behavior. Studies have focused on the dynamics of US-Soviet relations during the Cold War and the impact nuclear weapons have had on new entrants to the nuclear club such as India and Pakistan. 5 International relations scholars have often examined this issue in the context of the stability-instability paradox whereby possession of nuclear weapons helps to maintain strategic stability but then allows the possibility of provocative behavior at lower levels because nuclear weapons provide a shield that makes escalation unlikely. Early in the Cold War, B. H. Liddell Hart argued that “to the extent that the H-bomb reduces the likelihood of full-scale war, it increases the possibilities of limited war pursued by widespread local aggression.”6 For Korean security, this literature provides a framework for examining the impact of North Korean nuclear weapons on the region. Whether the stability-instability paradox will accurately describe security under a nuclear North Korea is uncertain and, at this point in time, does not appear to have made North Korea any more tolerant of risk than it has been in the past. However, these considerations remain important elements for which officials and military planners need to remain vigilant. While scholars have addressed the role nuclear weapons might play in emboldening state behavior, less has been done to examine how other states respond to a more risk-tolerant adversary. The US response to North Korea is a case study of how states might react to the possibility of an emboldened adversary at both strategic and nonstrategic levels and the degree to which these measures are effective. US actions have largely been in three areas. First, US policy, often described as “strategic patience,” has sought to obtain a diplomatic solution to the problem of denuclearizing North Korea. Washington has offered to open a dialogue with North Korea so long as the goal of the talks is DPRK denuclearization. But if the DPRK continues to ignore its commitment to give up nuclear weapons as spelled out in the 2005 Six-Party Talks agreement, Washington will maintain the sanctions regime against North Korea and bolster efforts to prevent Pyongyang from proliferating materials and expertise to other nuclear aspirants. Second, the US military has also sought to address the evolving North Korean military challenge at both strategic and lower levels with the goal of strengthening deterrence while improving the ability to respond should deterrence fail. Through increased joint planning and preparation, the

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United States and South Korea have sought to increase their capability and resolve to deter and, if need be, respond to North Korea’s growing nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Finally, the United States has worked with its two regional allies, South Korea and Japan, to reassure them of the US defense commitment and build combined, trilateral military capabilities and cooperative security arrangements to better defend these allies should deterrence fail. In all of these areas, the United States must continue to work closely with its allies to address the political and military challenges of a nuclear North Korea. The goal of denuclearization may be impossible to reach short of the North Korean regime collapsing, but continued efforts to reinforce deterrence that demonstrate the likelihood of a joint response help to convince Pyongyang that the costs would be severe should its behavior become too tolerant of the risk associated with the stability-instability paradox and stray outside certain boundaries. The remainder of this chapter will examine North Korean military capabilities and provocative actions that create instability in the region, discuss the US diplomatic, military, and alliance management efforts to deal with the dynamics of a potential stability-instability paradox, and conclude with an assessment of US policy.

The North Korea Challenge: Capabilities The DPRK maintains a large, formidable military capability that continues to be a threat to regional security. The Korean People’s Army (KPA) has 1.19 million personnel, making it the fourth largest in the world behind China, the United States, and India. This active-duty force is supported by 600,000 reservists and 5.7 million members of paramilitary units.7 The army, the largest branch of the KPA, fields over 4,000 tanks of different types and more than 8,500 self-propelled and towed artillery, along with 5,100 multiple rocket launchers (MRLs). North Korea’s tank force exceeds the 2,414 tanks maintained by the South. However, the numbers are balanced by the age of North Korea’s tanks; many are old Soviet models such as the T-34, T-54/55, and T-62 and Chinese light tanks. Pyongyang has worked to modernize its tank force, but the total number it has been able to deploy owing to economic constraints is uncertain. The artillery and MRL systems are a serious worry, as many of these have sufficient range to reach much of Seoul. In addition, North Korea has added new 240 mm and 300 mm MRL systems to its arsenal that provided increased range compared to the older weapons.8 The KPA has used artillery on several occasions to conduct lower-level operations, including the November 2010 shelling of Yeonpyeong Island and the August 2015 artillery exchange along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). North Korea

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also has developed a strong, well-trained special operations force of two hundred thousand strong that has been used in the past for infiltration operations.9 The Korean People’s Navy (KPN) has 382 coastal and patrol vessels but only three frigates to compare with South Korea’s large, modern naval force. Reports indicate the KPN has built two new helicopter- carrying frigates to help protect its West Sea fisheries and improve its antisubmarine warfare capability to counter South Korea’s growing submarine force.10 The KPN has been an instigator for actions along the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the West Sea maritime line that North Korea does not accept. More menacing is North Korea’s submarine fleet, which consists of seventy-two boats, including twenty Yeono- class midget submarines, the type that likely fi red the torpedo that sank the Republic of Korea (ROK) corvette Cheonan in March 2010. North Korean submarines can disrupt ROK shipping lanes and deliver special operations personnel to positions south of the DMZ. The Korean People’s Air Force (KPAF) has a sizable number of planes, with a total of 545 combat aircraft, including bombers, fighters, and ground-attack planes, providing a quantity advantage over the ROK Air Force. However, the majority of its airframes are of older Soviet and Chinese models, with only fi fty-two of the more advanced versions of the Soviet MiG-29 fighter and Su-25 ground-attack plane. Most of the KPAF would face a challenging task against modern ROK and US fighters. Moreover, the training and readiness of the force remains in question given the lack of fuel and spare parts, along with estimates that KPAF pilots train a paltry twenty hours per year in their aircraft.11 North Korean conventional forces would cause tremendous death and destruction in the early days of a confl ict. Moreover, some of these assets are the likely capabilities North Korea would use to confi rm the stabilityinstability paradox. Yet, given the shortage of fuel and spare parts, along with problems in logistics, the DPRK would have a difficult time sustaining major combat operations beyond sixty to ninety days. In addition, much of North Korea’s conventional capability is old Soviet-era equipment that continues to age and compromises its effectiveness. However, despite these difficulties, North Korea’s conventional forces remain a dangerous threat, particularly the artillery and rockets that can reach Seoul, providing the capability to punish South Korea without nuclear weapons. In part to address its aging conventional force and the costs it would entail to modernize, North Korea has acquired a number of asymmetrical capabilities. The most serious are its ballistic missile and nuclear weapon programs. For several decades, North Korea has been working on its ballistic missile force.12 Pyongyang possesses approximately 500 short-range Scud missiles capable of targeting most of the Korean Peninsula and 150 to 200 medium-range Nodong missiles that can reach almost all of Japan.13

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North Korea has also conducted tests of the short-range KN- 02, a solidfuel, mobile ballistic missile based on the Soviet SS-21. Work continues on longer-range systems, including two mobile missiles, the Musudan and the KN- 08. The Musudan has had failed several flight tests, but fi nally one in June 2016 was deemed a success; North Korea has yet to fl ight test the KN- 08, but both have been deployed and put on display in parades. The Musudan is believed to be an intermediate-range missile capable of reaching Guam, while the KN- 08 is an intercontinental ballistic missile, but the actual capabilities of both are uncertain.14 North Korea also continues work on other long-range systems such as the Taepodong missile, which is also is projected to have intercontinental range.15 Finally, North Korea has been working to build a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) along with a submarine to launch it. Since October 2014, it has conducted several tests of the SLBM designated the KN-11 from shore, on a submerged platform, and from its Sinpo- class submarine. The success of recent tests has surprised analysts with the progress of the SLBM program and moved up estimates for when Pyongyang may have a functioning ballistic missile submarine. However, DPRK scientists face a number of hurdles before they can reach that goal.16 North Korea’s nuclear weapon ambitions remain the most serious threat. The DPRK has tested a nuclear weapon on five occasions: October 2006, May 2009, February 2013, January 2016, and again in September 2016. It is believed to have thirteen to twenty-one nuclear warheads, but a 2015 report authored by David Albright provided three possible scenarios for North Korea’s future arsenal, projecting a stockpile of twenty, fi fty, or one hundred nuclear weapons by 2020.17 Regarding the question of whether the North has mastered the technological challenge of miniaturizing a warhead, the majority of assessments are now converging on the consensus that North Korea has mastered this problem, though defi nitive evidence such as a test of a nuclear-armed missile has yet to occur.18 In March 2016, Kim Jong-un appeared with scientists next to a silver globe that was likely a mock-up of a nuclear warhead, and the following month the ROK government fi nally provided an assessment that North Korea likely can mount a warhead on a ballistic missile.19 The progress North Korea has made toward having an effective and reliable nuclear deterrent with ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead is uncertain. However, it is clear that it will reach this goal at some point in the future. Yet, North Korean scientists and technicians face numerous challenges to ensure a reliable nuclear deterrent, including development of a long-range reentry vehicle that can survive the jarring return through the atmosphere, improvement of the range and accuracy of its ballistic missile force, and conversion of its missile force from liquid to solid fuel. These are difficult problems to overcome. In addition, retired US

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Air Force colonel and missileer Dana Struckman argues that “building a nuclear weapon and its delivery system, and then keeping them operational for the long term is hard—even harder for those states attempting to do it under the umbrella of international sanctions and monitoring,” and that “it won’t be easy . . . or cheap.”20 North Korea’s program is a serious concern that requires the close attention of policymakers, and North Korea may already be able to mount a nuclear warhead on a medium-range Nodong missile. The United States, South Korea, and others will not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapon state, but the use of force to take out the North Korean program is unlikely. In the end, there may be little that can be done to address North Korean nuclear weapons other than reinforcing deterrence, improving missile defense, ensuring the DPRK does not become a proliferator to other entities, and through continued sanctions, making it difficult and costly for North Korea to maintain its program. Finally, North Korea has two other asymmetrical capabilities that are serious challenges for US and ROK defense planners. North Korea is believed to have from 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical munitions, including sarin, mustard gas, phosgene, and V-agents among others.21 DPRK chemical weapons are manufactured indigenously and deliverable on ballistic missiles, rockets, and artillery. North Korea also has a biological weapon program, but far less is known about this effort. The second asymmetrical challenge is a growing offensive cyber capability. 22 The DPRK’s cyber force is contained in Bureau 121 and consists of six thousand personnel in its “cyber army.”23 Over the past several years, North Korean hackers have been blamed for taking down the websites of South Korean fi nancial institutions, media outlets, and parts of the ROK government. In 2009, North Korean hackers are believed to have orchestrated a coordinated attack on ROK government websites, including the Blue House (the South Korean equivalent of the White House) and the Defense Ministry, along with the US Department of the Treasury and Federal Trade Commission. In March 2013, North Korean operatives took down sites for three South Korean television stations (KBS, MBC, and YTN) and three banks (Shinhan, Nonghyup, and Jeju). 24 DPRK hackers penetrated the networks of the Sony Corporation in 2014 in response to the pending release of the movie The Interview, a comedy whose plotline entailed the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. North Korea denied responsibility for the cyberattack but congratulated those who undertook such a “noble act.” The cyber domain is another area North Korea could seek to disrupt under the cover of nuclear weapons. 25 Despite suggestions by some cybersecurity experts that North Korea may not have been the culprit, Washington insisted it was certain that Pyongyang was behind the attack, and later a press report uncovered that the National Security Agency had penetrated North Korean networks in 2010. 26

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While North Korean military capabilities that provide the tools to generate instability continue to grow, the DPRK’s willingness to disrupt security in the region is not a new phenomenon and has long been a serious concern. North Korea attempted to challenge strategic stability in 1950 and reunify the peninsula by force, though ultimately failing. Though it has never again challenged strategic stability in a similar manner, it never stopped lower-level provocations. Throughout the 1960s, Kim Il-sung sought to foster revolutionary forces and build a base in the South that would lead to reunification of the fatherland.27 The late 1960s marked a particularly concerted effort in which the incursions of North Korean operatives into the South reached new heights. Most of these infiltrators were either killed or captured, but they did much to raise tension levels. The most serious DPRK infiltration attempt came on January 21, 1968, when a thirty-one-man commando squad attempted to assassinate President Park Chung-hee at his Blue House residence in Seoul. In later years, North Korea was responsible for other destabilizing actions, including another assassination attempt in 1974 that failed to kill Park but claimed his wife, Yuk Young-soo; the 1976 axe murder of two US soldiers near Panmunjom; the bomb that destroyed KAL flight 858 in 1987 killing all on board; and in 1983, the attempted assassination of President Chun Doo-whan in Burma, which resulted in the deaths of three high-level officials and fourteen others in the South Korean delegation. Though the types of incidents have changed over the years, North Korea continues to take periodic actions that generate instability. Among the many examples, here we look at three in greater detail—weapon tests, violations of the NLL, and incendiary rhetoric. Though these have not sparked a major clash between North Korean and ROK-US forces, at times escalation to a broader confl ict was a very real possibility, and they have done much to disturb regional security. These and other incidents remain serious potential flashpoints for disrupting stability in Korea. Weapon Tests

Each time North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon, tension levels in Northeast Asia have risen. After the January 2016 test, the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed unanimously another resolution that imposed increased sanctions in a campaign to punish and convince North Korea to refrain from further testing and to move toward denuclearization. Yet, if North Korea desires a working, effective nuclear deterrent, it may likely have to conduct subsequent tests again at some point in the future. Missile tests have also been a serious source of consternation, not only for the possibility of accidents but also as indicators of the progress North

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Korea has made in improving this capability. In August 1998, North Korea tested a long-range Taepodong-1 missile that traveled over Japanese airspace. Japanese leaders were incensed by the test, and one press report noted, “North Korea yesterday stirred up a strategic weapons storm in the Pacific.”28 Since then, North Korea has followed with regular tests of various rockets and missiles, sometimes to test a new system and sometimes to make a deterrence statement, often in response to the annual fall and spring ROK-US military exercises. For example, on April 13, 2012, the DPRK attempted to launch a satellite into orbit. North Korean authorities provided unprecedented access to international media to cover the event, which turned out to be a serious embarrassment when the missile failed soon after takeoff. Though North Korea claimed the launch was a space vehicle, the technology is the same as that of a ballistic missile and is prohibited under the UN Security Council resolutions that had followed previous nuclear weapon tests. In addition, the launch scuttled what became known as the Leap Day Deal between Washington and Pyongyang, which imposed limits on North Korean testing in return for US nutritional assistance. North Korea conducted a similar space launch on December 12, 2012, with a more successful result, though the satellite did not end up functioning as intended. The launch was followed in February 2013 by the DPRK’s third nuclear test and more sanctions, along with a tense spring of heightened concerns for stability in Korea. More missile tests occurred in subsequent years of short- and medium-range missiles, tests that have become somewhat routine. In addition, North Korea has conducted of series of tests of the intermediate-range Musudan and has continued testing of its SLBM, tests that have often been observed in person by Kim Jong-un, an indication of the importance of the program. Pyongyang tried another satellite launch in February 2016, and though the satellite reached the necessary altitude, it was reported to be “tumbling in orbit” and not functioning properly.29 All of these launches demonstrate North Korea’s continued work on this capability. Disputes along the NLL

On August 30, 1953, the UN Command promulgated the NLL, a maritime border in the West Sea between North and South Korea.30 The demarcation line was drawn to keep ROK vessels from straying northward, and DPRK officials were not notified of the line. Over the years, the NLL has been a source of conflict between Seoul and Pyongyang that has often lead to violence, with ships sunk and sailors killed on both sides. In 1973, North Korea declared the line void, and in 1999, after the first major naval engagement between the two sides that was instigated by the North, Pyongyang proclaimed its own version of the maritime line between the two Koreas. In addition to numerous small-scale incursions by DPRK fishing boats and naval vessels, other clashes occurred in June 2002 and November 2009. The NLL

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became a focal point for security concerns in March 2010 when a North Korean torpedo sank the Cheonan, killing forty-six sailors, followed by the artillery barrage of Yeonpyeong Island in November in which two civilians and two ROK marines stationed on the island were killed. After these incidents, South Korea beefed up its military assets on the five Northwest Islands, which lie along the NLL, and there have been no major incidents since. The NLL remains an important security line between the North and South. Yet, North Korea has every right to protest the NLL without violence and according to international law is not completely unreasonable with its objections. However, violations of the NLL by North Korean vessels continue, and the NLL remains a potential zone of confl ict where a small incident could escalate into a wider conflagration. North Korean Rhetoric

Finally, North Korean leaders and state-run media outlets are well known for provocative and threatening outbursts. Spring 2013 was a particularly bad time as it followed a satellite launch, a nuclear test, additional UN Security Council resolutions, and ROK-US military exercises. For example, in April 2013, a commentary in the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) noted: “The arrows indicating the merciless retaliatory strikes have already been drawn directing [sic] at the U.S. mainland, U.S. military bases in the Pacific and all other bases where the U.S. imperialist aggression forces station [sic]. The powerful strike means of the revolution [sic] armed forces of the DPRK have been put in their places and the coordinates of targets put into the warheads. Just pressing the button will be enough to turn the strongholds of the enemies into a sea of fire.”31 In another April piece, KCNA noted, “If the enemies dare provoke the DPRK while going reckless, it will immediately blow them up with an annihilating strike with the use of powerful nuclear means.”32 March and April 2016 saw a similar confluence of events, leading to DPRK threats to drop a hydrogen bomb on Manhattan, the release of videos depicting attacks on the White House and the Blue House, and nasty personal attacks hurled at Park Geun-hye and Barack Obama. While many have become desensitized to these outbursts and most of these actions are North Korean deterrence posturing, they continue to jangle nerves and raise serious questions about DPRK intentions.

US Responses to the North Korean Challenges The US response to the potential stability-instability dynamics of a nuclear North Korea has been challenging. While Washington and others insist that denuclearization remains the goal and efforts continue to coax and coerce

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North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, increasingly the DPRK is being dealt with as a de facto nuclear state. Over the past decade, the United States has pursued a policy often described as “strategic patience,” a willingness to use diplomacy to achieve North Korean denuclearization while maintaining economic and political pressure in addition to fortifying strategic deterrence and discouraging lower-level provocations. Moreover, the United States has also sought to build greater trilateral cooperation to address the North Korea challenge. We now turn to a more detailed discussion of each of these tracks. Diplomatic Efforts

President Barack Obama came into office in January 2009 promising in his inaugural address to reset relations with several adversaries, including North Korea. Consequently, many expected the Obama administration would reach out to Pyongyang to begin some type of dialogue to address the nuclear weapon problem. On May 25, 2009, North Korea brought the likelihood of improved relations to a screeching halt with the detonation of its second nuclear device. The benchmark for US–North Korea relations became the September 2005 agreement concluded during the Six-Party Talks, whereby “the DPRK committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning, at an early date, to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards.”33 For Washington, this was the starting point for negotiations with North Korea; renewed Six-Party dialogue would not return to the question of whether North Korea would denuclearize but, rather, how this would occur. North Korea could not attempt to renegotiate its commitment in return for additional aid or lifting sanctions. In October 2009, the then secretary of state Hillary Clinton maintained: Thwarting the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran is critical to shoring up the nonproliferation regime. Within the framework of the six-party talks, we are prepared to meet bilaterally with North Korea, but North Korea’s return to the negotiating table is not enough. Current sanctions will not be relaxed until Pyongyang takes verifiable, irreversible steps toward complete denuclearization. Its leaders should be under no illusion that the United States will ever have normal, sanctions-free relations with a nuclear armed North Korea.34

Despite early indications in the Obama administration that improved relations might have been possible, US-DPRK ties remained tense, and progress seemed unlikely. The United States, and others in the Six-Party process will not accept a nuclear North Korea, and under the September 2005 agreement, North

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Korea has already committed to that end. Negotiations are desirable, but they will have conditions—namely, that the goal of talks is denuclearization and that Pyongyang must provide an indication that it is sincere about fulfilling that goal. Until that time, Washington is prepared to wait out Pyongyang, believing this problem can be contained and unwilling to compromise on a deal that has already been struck. Should North Korea comply and take irreversible measures toward denuclearization, aid and investment will begin to flow and revive the moribund North Korean economy. If North Korea continues its unwillingness to denuclearize, UN and US sanctions will remain in place, with further sanctions forthcoming should Pyongyang conduct more nuclear weapon tests or undertake other provocative actions. At times, critics and some members of the Obama administration questioned the wisdom of maintaining a policy of strategic patience, given North Korea’s determination to maintain its nuclear program. Moreover, some have argued strategic patience is based on an unrealistic expectation that North Korea will eventually collapse.35 US policy has produced no tangible results, while North Korea has continued to test and improve its nuclear and missile capabilities. As a result, Obama reached out to North Korea, and on February 29, 2012, Washington announced the conclusion of the Leap Day Deal. Under the terms of the arrangement, North Korea agreed to forgo any further tests of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, suspend enriching uranium, and readmit inspectors from the IAEA. In return, the United States would provide 240,000 tons of “nutritional assistance,” a label for food aid that could not be easily diverted for sale or use by the KPA.36 Some early criticism focused on linking humanitarian assistance to security goals, but the Leap Day Deal provided a glimmer of hope that progress on at least containing the North Korean program might be possible. These hopes were short-lived, as soon afterward North Korea announced its intention to launch a satellite into orbit. 37 Despite warnings from the United States and many others, North Korea conducted the space launch on April 12, 2012, in part to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birth. As mentioned above, the launch turned out to be an abject failure.38 After that time, the Obama administration was reluctant to reach out too far to Pyongyang, largely letting Seoul take the lead. Some efforts at dialogue continued, often through the “New York channel” at the UN, but most of these meetings were quiet and produced little progress. The Obama administration continued to maintain that it was willing to meet with North Korea but that the DPRK had to show some sign of willingness to work toward denuclearization. 39 North Korea called for the resumption of talks without preconditions and a halt to ROK- US military exercises. In early January 2016, Pyongyang approached

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Washington on the possibility of talks to conclude a formal peace treaty to replace the current armistice that has been in place since 1953. The Obama administration insisted that the focus on denuclearization remain but that it would also be willing to discuss a peace treaty. North Korea declined the US counterproposal and shortly after conducted its fourth nuclear weapon test.40 Despite these and other efforts, diplomatic progress remained deadlocked. Though some have argued that strategic patience has been the best policy given the lack of more palatable options, critics on both the left and right maintain the policy has obtained nothing but more tests, improved North Korean capabilities, and increased tensions. Those on the left maintain greater effort should be made to engage North Korea to lower tension levels and seek to reduce DPRK insecurities, which are argued to be the chief motivation behind its desire for nuclear weapons. North Korea may not be willing to give up its nuclear weapons in the short term, but dialogue might be able to cap its weapon programs, reduce its hostility toward the United States and South Korea, constrain any proliferation activities, and move toward denuclearization at a later date. Conservatives argue that engaging North Korea will never work and that the only solution is more pressure, particularly an increase of economic sanctions to coerce the regime into giving up its nuclear weapons. Indeed, perhaps the only solution, according to this line of argument, is to turn up the pressure sufficiently high to collapse the Kim regime and move toward reunification under South Korea.41 Conservatives say that this is the only way to achieve denuclearization and a solution to the security problems on the Korean Peninsula. Which of these two policy directions is the best route remains contested and each has its difficulties. However, given the other issues on the US foreign policy agenda and relative paucity of time left for Obama, there will likely be no major initiatives during the remainder of this term, and it will remain for the winner of the presidential election, Donald Trump, to decide if a new path is warranted. Economic Responses

As North Korean nuclear weapon and ballistic missile capabilities have grown, Washington has been very reluctant to consider the use of force to remove these programs in a manner similar to the actions taken by Israel against Iraq and Syria. Instead, the United States has resorted to the use of sanctions to make the acquisition of materials and technology more difficult and provide a degree of economic punishment to coerce North Korea into giving up its nuclear ambitions. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel

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noted that sanctions are not intended to hurt the North Korean people or “to destroy North Korea, but to bring its leaders to their senses.”42 US sanctions on North Korea have been essentially of two types.43 First, the United States has led the effort to pass UN Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions after each nuclear test that progressively increased pressure on North Korea. These sanctions are designed to block further development of Pyongyang’s nuclear program and halt proliferation activities. In March 2016, the UN Security Council approved Resolution 2276, which extended sanctions to include the export of coal, iron ore, gold, and rare earth minerals, along with expanded provisions for inspecting North Korean cargo transiting to and from its ports. Second, the United States has imposed various Treasury Department sanctions through executive orders beginning in 2005 during the George W. Bush administration and continuing through the Obama years.44 In 1988, North Korea was added to the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism and placed under a number of corresponding sanctions, including prohibitions on US foreign assistance, limits on arms sales and dual-use technology, and a requirement that Washington oppose Pyongyang’s access to loans from the World Bank and other international fi nancial institutions. In 2008, North Korea was removed from the list but there have been calls to have it relisted.45 Finally, President Obama issued several executive orders to increase the level of sanctions on the DPRK. In January 2015, following the cyberattack on Sony, he sanctioned ten individuals and three institutions, including the Reconnaissance General Bureau, which is responsible for North Korean cyber operations along with DPRK arms sales.46 After the 2016 nuclear test, Obama issued another executive order that further tightened sanctions. Despite all of these efforts, North Korea has been able to work around many of these sanctions, in part owing to its lack of connectivity to the global economy and lax enforcement, though the 2016 sanctions appear to be having a greater impact. Military Responses

While diplomacy to solve the problem has been deadlocked, the United States, in concert with its allies in the region, has worked to bolster deterrence and maintain peace and stability in the region. The chief challenge is deterring lower-level provocations, such as the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island and weapon tests. As the stability-instability paradox suggests, strategic deterrence on the Korean Peninsula has been solid; the likelihood of a North Korean invasion of the South is remote, but North Korea may be emboldened to conduct lower-level operations, believing its possession of a

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nuclear deterrent provides the ultimate security guarantee for the regime. It is uncertain whether North Korea will move in this direction, but to address these concerns Washington and Seoul have undertaken several measures to bolster deterrence at all levels. We begin first with strategic deterrence. Reinforcing Strategic Deterrence To directly address the North Korean nuclear problem during the October 2013 Security Consultative Meeting (SCM), Washington and Seoul announced the conclusion of a Tailored Deterrence Strategy. The strategy is a bilateral plan to address North Korea’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapon programs by developing a set of options to counter these capabilities. The strategy evolved from discussions within the Extended Deterrence Policy Committee (EDPC), another effort to address nuclear weapons and extended deterrence. The EDPC, now named the Deterrence Strategy Committee, is a bilateral planning group formed in 2010 to enhance understanding and planning on nuclear weapons, extended deterrence, and the nuclear umbrella. The SCM joint communiqué noted that the Tailored Deterrence Strategy “establishes a strategic Alliance framework for tailoring deterrence against key North Korean nuclear threat scenarios across armistice and wartime, and strengthens the integration of Alliance capabilities to maximize their deterrent effects. The ROK and the United States are committed to maintaining close consultation on deterrence matters to ensure that extended deterrence for the ROK remains credible, capable, and enduring.”47 Details of the strategy are classified, but some reports indicate preemptive strikes on North Korean nuclear and missile targets are planned should Pyongyang appear to be preparing to use its nuclear weapons.48 Defense planners have utilized the Tailored Deterrence Strategy in joint ROK-US exercises for the 2016 spring exercises.49 Another area of emphasis at the strategic level has been ballistic missile defense (BMD). Whether deployed with a nuclear, chemical, or conventional warhead, North Korea’s ballistic missile force has long been a serious concern for US and ROK defense planners. Continued testing and improvement of several types of missiles over the past decade, along with the large numbers of short- and intermediate-range missiles, have lead officials to devote significant resources to BMD. In the Asia-Pacific, the Pentagon has worked to construct a regional BMD system with key allies including Australia, Japan, and South Korea. BMD assets include Aegis destroyers equipped with AN/SPY-1 radar that can track multiple targets at one time. These ships can be equipped with SM-3 missiles capable of shooting down incoming ballistic missiles at high altitudes, though these are expensive systems. US destroyers along with several Japanese destroyers are equipped with the SM-3, but ROK destroyers do not have this capability, though ROK Navy leaders are working to

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acquire them. The United States has also sent two TPY X-band radars to Japan to assist in tracking North Korean ballistic missile launches. Japan has been an eager participant in the regional BMD effort, but South Korea has not, insisting it will develop its own independent Korea Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) system and a “Kill Chain” capable of launching conventional, preemptive strikes against North Korean missile targets should that become necessary. Chinese officials have long argued that the US regional system is primarily directed against Beijing’s deterrent and has regularly expressed its objections, despite US insistence that the chief concern is North Korea.50 Chinese officials have put significant pressure on Seoul to refrain from joining, and ROK officials have been reluctant for fear of angering its largest trading partner and the key driver of South Korean economic growth.51 The Pentagon has also raised the possibility of deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea to defend US forces based there. THAAD is a “hit-to-kill” missile interceptor with range sufficient to shoot down short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles at high altitudes. In spring 2013, the Pentagon deployed a THAAD system to Guam in response to North Korean threats to strike US targets in the region, though it was questionable whether North Korea had the capability to do so.52 Officials in Seoul are concerned that deployment of a THAAD battery to South Korea is an incremental step that might give the appearance of joining the US regional BMD system. After an April 2015 meeting in Seoul, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter declared that THAAD was not on the US-ROK agenda, apparently setting the issue on the back burner.53 After North Korea’s January nuclear test, THAAD resurfaced. China’s initial response to the test was discouraging, so Seoul announced that it was reconsidering the decision to let Washington deploy a THAAD battery to South Korea and in July 2016 agreed to the deployment. Finally, the United States and South Korea made another strategic-level decision, in large measure based on the prevailing North Korea threat—to postpone the return of wartime operational control (OPCON) to South Korea. At the start of the Korean War, ROK president Syngman Rhee turned over OPCON of the country’s forces to the UN Command. When the war ended, OPCON shifted to the US military in South Korea. In 1994, the United States returned peacetime OPCON, giving ROK commanders control of their forces during normal peacetime operations. In 2002, President Roh Moo-hyun argued that wartime OPCON should be returned as well, maintaining this was an issue of ROK sovereignty. The return would mean that in wartime, the ROK military would be in the lead as the supported command, while the US military would be the supporting command. US officials agreed to the transfer, and April 17, 2012, was set for the return of wartime OPCON. However, as the date approached and security concerns

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increased after the sinking of the Cheonan, ROK officials asked for a postponement, which they received in June 2010. The new date was set for December 2015, but this too was postponed in October 2014. Worries about the North Korean threat were important reasons for another delay but so too were concerns that South Korea simply did not possess the necessary capabilities to be in the lead. Formally announced in the October 2014 SCM communiqué was a “conditions-based approach” whereby OPCON would be transferred at an appropriate time “when critical ROK and Alliance military capabilities are secured and the security environment on the Korean Peninsula and in the region is conducive to a stable OPCON transition.”54 In 2018, officials will begin assessing whether the transfer could occur by 2020, but this is not set as a fi rm date for the change. 55 Addressing Lower-Level Provocations While the United States and South Korea implemented several measures to buttress deterrence at the strategic level, the more challenging problem has been trying to shore up deterrence of lower-level provocations where the stability-instability paradox predicts more activity. Following the sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, Washington and Seoul began to reassess possible ways to address provocative North Korean behavior and more effectively deter these actions in the first place. The result was the announcement on March 22, 2013, of the Combined CounterProvocation Plan (CCP). Details of the CCP are classified, but it has South Korea in the lead for responding to North Korean provocations that fall short of all-out war, with options for requesting US assistance and the possibility of joint ROK-US actions. One US official noted the CCP “defines action down to the tactical level and locks in alliance political consultations at the highest level.”56 An ROK spokesman asserted that the CCP increases ROK joint readiness to “quickly and firmly punish any kind of provocations of North Korea.”57 Despite these efforts to codify a joint and determined ROK-US response, much will depend on the nature of the North Korean provocation and the ROK and US leaders in charge at the time. The timing and nature of ROK- US responses will be nearly impossible to script precisely ahead of events, but planning will help to facilitate a more smooth and coordinated response by both allies. The CCP addresses actions that occur during peacetime under armistice conditions and does not alter current OPCON arrangements. In the wake of the Yeonpyeong Island shelling, South Korea made it very clear that it would respond the next time North Korea used military force. Moreover, the planning and exercises of a possible joint ROK- US response has been an important effort to reinforce deterrence. 58

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Since North Korea conducted its first nuclear weapon test in 2006, the regional security environment has been irreparably changed. Security concerns have been heightened, imposing greater challenges for the United States and its two key alliance partners in the region, South Korea and Japan. Washington has gone to great lengths to reassure its two allies of the US defense commitment and in particular to provide reassurances of the US nuclear umbrella as a specific response to North Korea’s nuclear weapon program. In addition, Washington has sought to bolster trilateral cooperation with Seoul and Tokyo to address North Korean behavior and the uncertainty about China’s strategic direction. For years, US and South Korean officials have held regular meetings to collaborate and coordinate planning for the defense of the peninsula. Every fall since the late 1960s, two forums, the SCM and the Military Committee Meeting (MCM), have gathered to discuss security issues and alliance cooperation to address the challenges. The SCM is a high-level meeting of the ROK defense minister and the US secretary of defense. The MCM is a meeting of the chairmen of the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Pacific Command commander, the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate, and the commander of US Forces Korea. The latter is the US four-star general who is also commander of UN Command and, during wartime, the Combined Forces Command. The SCM releases a joint communiqué after every fall meeting that provides important indicators of the military direction of the alliance, including threat assessment, alliance initiatives, joint planning, and confi rmation of the alliance’s importance. The 2015 joint communiqué “reaffi rmed the two nation’s mutual commitment to the fundamental mission of the alliance to defend the ROK through a robust combined defense posture, as well as to the enhancement of mutual security based on the US-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty.”59 Moreover, US and ROK defense officials “reiterated the fi rm view . . . that North Korea’s policies and actions, including its United Nations–proscribed nuclear and ballistic missile programs and proliferation activities, pose a serious threat to regional stability and global security, as well as to the integrity of the global nonproliferation regime,” and as a result “any North Korean aggression or military provocation is not to be tolerated and that the ROK and the United States would work shoulder to shoulder to demonstrate our combined resolve.”60 The SCM communiqués also provide a nuclear security guarantee and since 1978 have included a line to the effect that “Korea is and will continue to be under the U.S. nuclear umbrella.”61 The 2015 joint communiqué stated, “The Secretary [Secretary of Defense Carter] reaffi rmed the

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continued US commitment to provide and strengthen extended deterrence for the ROK using the full range of military capabilities, including the U.S. nuclear umbrella, conventional strike, and missile defense capabilities.”62 The rewording of this commitment to include conventional strike and missile defense, fi rst done in 2009, is an important indicator that the US commitment is more than simply the possibility of using nuclear weapons. US leaders have provided assurances in other venues, including immediately after North Korea’s fi rst nuclear test in 2006. Before leaving on a plane to Seoul and Tokyo to reassure US allies of Washington’s continuing commitment, the then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice declared that “the United States has both the will and capability to meet the full range of our security and deterrent commitments,” a less than subtle reference to US nuclear capabilities.63 In June 2009, in the wake of North Korea’s second test in May, Presidents Barack Obama and Lee Myung-bak included a line in their Joint Vision Statement reiterating “the continuing commitment of extended deterrence, including the U.S. nuclear umbrella.”64 South Korean officials lobbied hard for the summit to include this explicit reference to the nuclear umbrella, and though Washington was reluctant, it acceded to Seoul’s wishes. Most likely, the administration hesitated to provide the statement because it ran counter to Obama’s Prague speech two months earlier, which had downplayed the role of nuclear weapons in international security while calling for their eventual elimination.65 The United States has gone to similar lengths over the years to reassure Japan of the US defense commitment and the nuclear umbrella. In April 2010, the United States released its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the document that provides the primary insight into US nuclear strategy and doctrine. The NPR restated the Obama administration’s goal of reducing the role of nuclear weapons in international security and eventually moving toward a total elimination of nuclear stockpiles. Yet, it also maintained that “so long as nuclear weapons exist, the United States will maintain safe, secure, and effective nuclear forces.”66 The NPR also maintained that “the fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons . . . is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners.”67 Moreover, the United States would continue to provide an extended deterrence commitment to its allies but would only consider using nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.”68 As a result, while the United States has reduced the role of nuclear weapons, they remain part of the extended deterrence commitment, but the United States will also strengthen and utilize conventional options that provide significant and usable capabilities to bolster deterrence. Rose Gottemoeller, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, phrased it thus in a 2014 interview:

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Extended deterrence is not only about nuclear weapons. Extended deterrence has to do with our complete alliance relationship and that, of course, contains within it a full panoply of weapons systems and everything that goes with weapons systems to make them effective—such as effective command, control, communications, and reconnaissance capabilities. Conventional weapons— and very effective conventional weapons at that—are a core, inherent part of extended deterrence. And, along with that, when we get to where the President wants to go, which is—as he mentioned in his Prague speech in 2009—the security of a world without nuclear weapons, our extended deterrence relationship with our allies will still be very much intact, and very coherent in the array of conventional defense that we will have to offer them.69

Thus, extended deterrence is about far more than the nuclear umbrella and includes the totality of US assets and the US commitment to defend its allies. While these efforts are intended to reassure threatened allies, they are also part of US nonproliferation goals. Assurances to include South Korea and Japan under the US nuclear umbrella are intended to convince both allies that they need not acquire their own nuclear weapons. Even though these are two US allies, the United States does not wish to see the region have more nuclear weapon states than is already the case. Indeed, there are many problems for South Korea and Japan should they decide to go down that path, an action that would likely have serious consequences for their respective alliances.70 Thus, while the nuclear umbrella and other measures to reassure South Korea and Japan are part of US extended deterrence, they are also a crucial element of US nonproliferation policy. The link between US extended deterrence and nonproliferation also contains an inherent contradiction. Extended deterrence and the assurances provided to allies have the opposite effect on adversaries. If an enemy is acquiring nuclear weapons because of security concerns, further threats of retaliation, either conventional or nuclear, toward that enemy to reassure allies will likely reinforce the foe’s motives for acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place. Consequently, extended nuclear deterrence is a double- edged sword and can be a problematic nonproliferation policy in the long run.

Trilateral Cooperation: The United States, South Korea, and Japan Another US response to ensure stability has been efforts to promote greater trilateral cooperation between South Korea and Japan. US leaders have worked hard to promote dialogue at the highest levels in an attempt to ameliorate the difficult relations between its two allies. In March 2014, Obama held a trilateral meeting with Park Geun-hye and Shinz¯o Abe on the sidelines of the third Nuclear Security Summit, in The Hague. Obama remarked: “It is the first time that the three of us have an opportunity to

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meet together [on] some serious challenges that we all face. Over the last five years, close coordination between our three countries succeeded in changing the game with North Korea: our trilateral cooperation has sent a strong signal to Pyongyang that its provocations and threats will be met with a unified response.”71 These efforts are also part of the overall rebalance strategy. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel noted in January 2014, “In terms of what rebalance is, I can attest very deliberately that the U.S. strategy—the Obama administration’s strategy—began and begins with our friends and allies and partners. The very fi rst visitor to the White House in 2009 was the prime minister of Japan. The president of Korea was not far behind; the prime minister of Australia was not far behind. In the Asia-Pacific region, our strategy has been to strengthen our partnerships and modernize our alliances, and that has been a major and active project for the last five years.”72 In addition to high-level meetings, Washington has also sought to encourage contacts at lower levels, including minister-level meetings on the sidelines of the Asia Security Summit (more commonly known as the Shangri-La Dialogue) and assistant/deputy-level trilateral meetings.73 Direct military cooperation also occurs, especially between the three navies through exercises that are either trilateral operations or part of larger multilateral exercises.74 Indeed, there is often more cooperation occurring than many are aware of. The navies hold numerous exercises that deal with search and rescue (SAR), counterpiracy, and humanitarian assistance. For example, in December 2013 in the wake of China’s declaration of an expanded air defense identification zone, South Korea and Japan conducted a SAR exercise in the vicinity of the ROK-administered reef of Ieo-do. Both refrained from submitting fl ight plans to China to demonstrate their refusal to recognize the Chinese zone.75 In January 2014, the three navies held a joint counterpiracy exercise off the Horn of Africa that included boarding, search and seizure, medical training, and deck landing. Finally, in December 2014, the three navies conducted a trilateral SAR exercise off the coast of Jeju Island.76 The three navies have a good working relationship and understand why cooperation is necessary. Yet, these activities must often be conducted with little fanfare, and because of disputes over history and the Dokdo/Takeshima Islands, deeper levels of cooperation have been difficult to achieve.77 South Korea and Japan were close to deepening their defense relationship in June 2012 with an intelligence-sharing agreement called the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). Cooperation under the agreement would have dealt with North Korea and capitalized on South Korea’s strengths in human intelligence while leveraging Japan’s signals intelligence assets. Washington worked very hard for the conclusion of

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the agreement, but minutes before representatives were to sign the pact, South Korea pulled out, in large part owing to mishandling of the politics of the issue. Both Tokyo and Seoul have these types of agreements with others, and a GSOMIA would have facilitated more direct intelligence sharing in a variety of ways. Yet South Korea’s reluctance put the issue on hold. A chance to conclude an information-sharing agreement rose again in April 2014 when the ROK government expressed an interest in concluding a deal. After several rounds of talks including meetings on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue and with continued encouragement from Washington, the allies concluded a trilateral intelligence-sharing arrangement (TISA).78 At Seoul’s insistence, the measure was confi ned to sharing intelligence on North Korea’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs to avoid any indication that the agreement was directed at China. Though the TISA will have a relatively small impact on intelligence sharing, in part because it maintains the arrangement of the United States as an intermediary rather than direct sharing between Japan and South Korea, it was an important step to advance trilateral cooperation, and without US efforts would have likely not come to fruition.79 One last element of trilateral cooperation that is often overlooked by many analysts is the critical role Japanese bases would play if war broke out in Korea. At the end of the Korean War, Tokyo agreed to a UN-Japan Status of Forces Agreement to provide logistics support through seven US bases located in Japan to facilitate the flow of forces and supplies to the Korean Peninsula. Known as United Nations Command Rear, its headquarters are located at Yokota Air Base, and the bases have been described by a UN Command leader in South Korea as “essential to our mission,” and “a critical enabler to our response to crisis.”80

Conclusion Short of a regime collapse and Korean reunification under Seoul’s leadership, the DPRK will continue to exist for some time, and it will have nuclear weapons. Strategic deterrence has been stable for over six decades and will likely continue, though now it will have the added overlay of North Korean nuclear weapons. Thus, the “stability” side of the paradox will remain. North Korea will not commit regime suicide by using nuclear weapons unless its survival is at stake, so its chief use of nuclear weapons is for deterrence. To be sure, there are serious concerns for stability in a crisis that could potentially involve nuclear weapons, making it paramount that crisis management mechanisms are in place and all sides work to avoid having security devolve into a crisis in the first place. However, baring a crisis that escalates, strategic stability will hold.

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The more difficult challenge has been to prevent potential problems at lower levels that are predicted by the instability side of the paradox. To address these concerns, US and ROK planners have sought better ways to deter lower-level provocations such as those that occurred in 2010. South Korea has also taken unilateral actions such as improving its BMD capabilities and developing a Kill Chain of conventional assets, including extendedrange cruise and ballistic missiles that can strike North Korean targets either preemptively or in rapid response to a North Korean action. In September 2016, South Korea announced the development of the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation concept, which will operationalize plans for preemptive strikes on North Korean targets should an attack or nuclear weapon use appear imminent. So far, these efforts along with the joint CCP appear to be succeeding. While North Korea continues weapon tests and its abrasive rhetoric, much of this should be read as deterrence and not the offensive, risk-taking behavior predicted by the stability-instability paradox.81 More important, ROK statements and actions following the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island indicating that they would indeed retaliate should North Korea conduct another similar kinetic action have likely played an important role in deterring North Korea. In fact, North Korea’s apparent focus on the cyber realm may show that deterrence is working; rather than challenge Seoul with an overt military operation, Pyongyang has opted for more covert cyber actions that do not carry as a great a risk for direct military retaliation. The challenges posed by the possibility of a stability-instability paradox in Korea have been complex and multifaceted. The response undertaken by the ROK and the United States largely in the context of the alliance has focused on increasing their deterrence postures at several levels. The North Korean nuclear problem will not go away, and no one is truly interested in conducting a military operation to take out the DPRK nuclear forces or a regime- change operation that would lead to war. Though a DPRK collapse may be the only route to denuclearization, the goal of economic sanctions is to change North Korean policy, not collapse the regime. In the end, the competition of security postures where both sides will seek to deter the other will remain. With continued attention to maintaining a strong alliance, deterrence will hold at both the strategic and lower levels, despite the predictions of the stability-instability paradox.

Notes 1. David Albright and Serena Kelleher-Vergantini, “Plutonium, Tritium, and Highly Enriched Uranium Production at the Yongbyon Nuclear Site,” Institute for Science and International Studies, June 14, 2016, http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents /Pu_HEU_and_tritium_production_at_Yongbyon_June_14_2016_FINAL.pdf.

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2. Nick Hansen, “North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Facility: Restart of the 5 MWe Reactor?,” 38 North, January 28, 2015, http://38north.org/2015/01/yongbyon012815/. 3. Kim Jong-un, “New Year Address,” Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), January 1, 2015, http://www.kcna.kp/kcna.user.article.retrieveNewsViewInfoList.kcmsf#this 4. “DPRK Proves Successful in H-bomb Test,” KCNA, January 6, 2016. 5. Benjamin S. Lambeth, “The Political Potential of Equivalence,” International Security 2 (Fall 1979): 22–39; Robert Jervis “The Political Effects of Nuclear Weapons: A Comment,” International Security 13 (Fall 1988): 80–90; Šumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur, India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Peter R. Lavoy, “The Strategic Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation,” Security Studies 4 (Summer 1995): 695–753. 6. B. H. Liddell Hart, Deterrent or Defense: A Fresh Look at the West’s Military Position (New York: Praeger, 1960), 23. See also Glenn Snyder, Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 226. 7. International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), The Military Balance 2015 (London: IISS, 2016), 264. 8. Bruce Bechtol Jr., North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era: A New International Security Dilemma (New York: Palgrave, 2014), 28–29. 9. ROK Ministry of Defense, 2014 Defense White Paper, 29. 10. Joseph Bermudez Jr., “New North Korean Helicopter Frigates Spotted,” 38 North, May 15, 2014, http://38north.org/2014/05/jbermudez051514/. 11. IISS, Military Balance 2015, 266. 12. Markus Schiller, “Characterizing the North Korean Missile Threat,” RAND, 2012, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/2012/RAND_TR12 68.pdf; Daniel Pinkston, “The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program,” International Crisis Group, February 2008, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub 842.pdf. 13. Greg Thielmann, “Sorting Out the Nuclear and Missile Threats from North Korea,” Arms Control Association, May 21, 2013, http://www.armscontrol.org/files /TAB_Sorting_Out_North_Korea_2013.pdf. 14. Markus Schiller and Robert H. Schmucker, “The Assumed KN-08 Technology,” April 26, 2012, http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/files/2012/05/Addendum_KN-08 _Analysis_Schiller_Schmucker.pdf. 15. John Schilling and Henry Kan, “The Future of North Korean Nuclear Delivery Systems,” US-Korea Institute, SAIS, 2015, http://38north.org/wp-content/uploads/2015 /09/NKNF_Delivery-Systems.pdf. 16. John Schilling, “North Korea’s SLBM Program Progresses, But Still Long Road Ahead,” 38 North, August 26, 2016, http://38north.org/tag/john-schilling/. 17. David Albright, “Future Directions in the DPRK’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Three Scenarios for 2020,” US-Korea Institute, SAIS, 2015, http://38north.org/wp-content /uploads/2015/02/NKNF-Future-Directions-2020-Albright-0215.pdf. 18. See Jeffrey Lewis, “North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: The Great Miniaturization Debate,” 38 North, February 5, 2015, http://38north.org/2015/02/jlewis020515/; Bruce Klingner, “Allies Should Confront Imminent North Korean Nuclear Threat,” Heritage Foundation, June 3, 2014, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/06/allies-should -confront-imminent-north-korean-nuclear-threat.

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19. Choe Sang-Hun, “South Korea Says North Has Capacity to Put Nuclear Warhead on a Missile,” New York Times, April 5, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06 /world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-warhead-rodong-missile.html?_r=0. 20. Dana Struckman and Terence Roehrig, “Not So Fast: Pyongyang’s Nuclear Weapons Ambitions,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, February 20, 2013, http://journal.georgetown.edu/not-so-fast-pyongyangs-nuclear-weapons-ambitions-by -dana-struckman-and-terence-roehrig/. 21. “Strategic Weapons Systems: North Korea,” Jane’s Sentinel Security Assessment, January 20, 2011, http://jmsa.janes.com/JDIC/JMSA. 22. Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea’s Cyber Warfare and Challenges for the U.S.-ROK Alliance,” Korea Economic Institute Academic Paper Series, December 2, 2014, http://keia.org/sites/default/files/publications/kei_aps_mansourov_final.pdf. 23. “North Korea Boosted ‘Cyber Forces’ to 6,000 Troops, South Says,” Reuters, January 6, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/06/us-northkorea-southkorea -idUSKBN0KF1CD20150106. 24. Choe Sang-Hun, “Computer Networks in South Korea Are Paralyzed in Cyberattacks,” New York Times, March 20, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/world /asia/south-korea-computer-network-crashes.html?_r=0. 25. Stephan Haggard and Jon R. Lindsay, “North Korea and the Sony Hack: Exporting Instability through Cyberspace,” Asia-Pacific Issues, East-West Center, May 2015. 26. David Sanger and Martin Fackler, “N.S.A. Breached North Korean Networks before Sony Attack, Officials Say,” New York Times, January 18, 2015, http://www.nytimes .com/2015/01/19/world/asia/nsa-tapped-into-north-korean-networks-before-sony-attack -officials-say.html?_r=0. 27. Terence Roehrig, From Deterrence to Engagement: The U.S. Defense Commitment to South Korea (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006), 44–45. 28. John Gittings, “North Korea Fires Missile over Japan,” Guardian, September 1, 1998, http://www.theguardian.com/world/1998/sep/01/northkorea. 29. Tiffany Ap, “North Korea Satellite ‘Tumbling in Orbit,’ US Official Says, CNN, February 9, 2016. http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/08/asia/north-korea-rocket-launch/. 30. Terence Roehrig, “Korean Dispute over the Northern Limit Line: Security, Economics, or International Law?,” Maryland Series in Contemporary Asian Studies 2008, no. 3 (article 1), http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mscas/vol2008/iss3/1. 31. “CPRK Warns US, S. Korea Not to Make Misjudgment,” KCNA, April 11, 2013. 32. “Nodong Sinmun Denounces S. Korean Large-Scale Joint Firepower Drills,” KCNA, April 13, 2013. 33. US Department of State, “Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks,” September 19, 2005, http://www.state.gov/p/eap/regional/c15455.htm. 34. Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Remarks at the United States Institute of Peace,” US Department of State, October 21, 2009, http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton /rm/2009a/10/130806.htm. 35. Jong Kun Choi, “The Perils of Strategic Patience with North Korea,” Washington Quarterly 38, no. 4 (Winter 2016): 57–72. 36. US Department of State, “Press Statement: U.S.-DPRK Bilateral Discussions,” February 29, 2012, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/02/184869.htm. 37. “North Korea Satellite Plan Is Highly Provocative, Says US,” Guardian, March 16, 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/16/north-korea-satellite-highly -provocative.

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38. Choe Sang-Hun and Rick Gladstone, “North Korean Rocket Fails Moments after Liftoff,” New York Times, April 12, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13 /world/asia/north-korea-launches-rocket-defying-world-warnings.html?pagewanted=all. 39. See Sung Kim, “Remarks to Reports at the Westin Chaoyang Hotel,” January 30, 2015, http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2015/01/236976.htm, and Glyn Davies, “U.S. Policy towards North Korea,” Statement before the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, July 30, 2014, http://www.state.gov /p/eap/rls/rm/2014/07/229936.htm. 40. Alastair Gale and Carol E. Lee, “U.S. Agreed to North Korea Peace Talks before Latest Nuclear Test,” Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles /u-s-agreed-to-north-korea-peace-talks-1456076019. 41. Sue Mi Terry, “A Korea Whole and Free: Why Unifying the Peninsula Won’t Be So Bad after All,” Foreign Affairs 93 (July–August 2014): 153–62; Mark Fitzpatrick, “North Korea: Is Regime Change the Answer?” Survival 55, no. 3 (June–July 2013): 7–20. 42. US Department of State, Daniel Russel, “North Korea: How to Approach the Nuclear Threat,” April 4, 2016, http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2016/04/255492.htm. 43. See John S. Park, “The Key to the North Korean Targeted Sanctions Puzzle,” Washington Quarterly 37 (Fall 2014): 201–2. 44. See US Department of the Treasury, “North Korea Sanctions,” April 22, 2015, http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/pages/nkorea.aspx; Park, “Key to the North Korean Targeted Sanctions Puzzle.” 45. Joshua Stanton, “Arsenal of Terror: North Korea, State Sponsor of Terror,” Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2015, http://www.hrnk.org/uploads/ files/4_27_15_Stanton_ArsenalofTerror.pdf. 46. David E. Sanger and Michael S. Schmidt, “More Sanctions on North Korea after Sony Case,” New York Times, January 2, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/03/us /in-response-to-sony-attack-us-levies-sanctions-on-10-north-koreans.html?_r=0. 47. US Department of Defense, “Joint Communiqué: The 45th ROK-U.S. Security Consultative Meeting,” October 2, 2013, http://archive.defense.gov/pubs/Joint%20Com munique,%2045th%20ROK-U.S.%20Security%20Consultative%20Meeting.pdf. 48. Kwanwoo Jun, “U.S., South Korea Sign Pact on Deterrence against North,” Wall Street Journal, October 2, 2013, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405270230490 6704579110891808197868. 49. Brice Padden, “U.S., South Korea to Practice Offense during Joint Exercises,” Voice of America, February 22, 2016, http://www.voanews.com/content/us-south-koreaforces-to-practice-offense-during-joint-exercises/3201231.html. 50. “China Criticizes U.S. Missile Defense Radar in Japan,” Reuters, October 23, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/23/us-china-japan-usa-idUSKCN0IC16P20141023. 51. Choi Kang and Kim Gi Bum, “Breaking the Myth of Missile Defense,” Issue Briefs, Asan Institute, August 8, 2014, http://en.asaninst.org/contents/breaking-the-mythof-missile-defense/. 52. Karen DeYoung, “U.S. to Deploy Anti-missile System to Guam,” Washington Post, April 3, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-todeploy- anti- missile- system- to- guam/2013/04/03/b939ecfc- 9c89–11e2- a941a19bce7af755_story.html. 53. Oh Seok-min, “Carter: U.S. Not Ready to Discuss THAAD Deployment in S. Korea,” Yonhap, April 10, 2015, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2015/04/10/6 /0301000000AEN20150410006252315F.html.

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54. US Department of Defense, “Joint Communiqué: The 46th ROK-U.S. Security Consultative Meeting,” October 23, 2014, http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents /pubs/46th_SCM_Joint_Communique.pdf. 55. US Department of Defense, “Press Briefing by Secretary Hagel and ROK Minister of National Defense Han Min Koo in the Pentagon Briefing Room,” October 23, 2014, http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5524. 56. David Sanger and Thom Shanker, “U.S. Designs a Korea Response Proportional to the Provocation,” New York Times, April 7, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08 /world/asia/us-and-south-korea-devise-plan-to-counter-north.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. 57. Steve Herman, “US, South Korea Announce New Counter-Attack Plan,” Voice of America, March 25, 2013, http://www.voanews.com/content/us-south-koreaannounce-new-counter-attack-plan/1627869.html. 58. Terence Roehrig, “Reinforcing Deterrence: The U.S. Military Response to North Korean Provocations,” in Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies: Facing Reality in East Asia; Tough Decisions on Competition and Cooperation, ed. Gilbert Rozman (Washington, DC: Korea Economic Institute, 2015), 221–39. 59. US Department of Defense, “Joint Communiqué: The 47th ROK-U.S. Security Consultative Meeting,” November 1, 2015, http://www.usfk.mil/Media/News/tabid /12660/Article/626859/full-text-of-47th-rok-us-joint-communique.aspx. 60. Ibid. 61. “Joint Communiqué: The 11th ROK-U.S. Security Consultative Meeting,” October 1978, in the author’s possession. 62. US Department of Defense, “Joint Communiqué: 47th ROK-U.S. Security Consultative Meeting.” 63. Glenn Kessler and Dafna Linzer, “Rice Trip to Push Full Sanctions for N. Korea,” Washington Post, October 17, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content /article/2006/10/16/AR2006101600445.html. 64. “Joint Vision for the Alliance of the United States of America and the Republic of Korea,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, June 16, 2009, http://www.white house.gov/the_press_office/Joint-vision-for-the-alliance-of-the-United-States-of-America -and-the-Republic-of-Korea/. 65. “Remarks by President Barack Obama in Prague as Delivered,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, April 5, 2009, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office /remarks-president-barack-obama-prague-delivered. 66. US Department of Defense, “Nuclear Posture Review Report,” April 2010, 6. 67. Ibid., 15. 68. Ibid., 17. 69. Michael Chermin and Sabin Ray, “On the Frontline of U.S. Nuclear Policy with Under Secretary Rose Gottemoeller,” Brown Journal of World Affairs 21 (Fall 2014): 255–56. 70. For example, see Mark Fitzpatrick, “Why South Korea Should Not ‘Go Nuclear,’ ” Korea Herald, February 19, 2016, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud =20160219000241, and Terence Roehrig, “The Case for a Nuclear-free South,” JoongAng Daily, June 19, 2014, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2 990820. 71. Thomas Escrit and Steve Holland, “Obama Brings U.S. Allies South Korea and Japan Together for Talks,” Reuters, March 25, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article /2014/03/25/us-japan-korea-trilateral-idUSBREA2O1OT20140325.

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72. Daniel R. Russel, “Transatlantic Interests in Asia,” remarks at Chatham House, January 13, 2014, http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2014/01/219881.htm. 73. Oh Seok-min, “S. Korea, Japan, U.S. to Hold Defense Talks on N. Korea,” Yonhap News, May 30, 2015, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2015/05/29/22/030 1000000AEN20150529009400315F.html. 74. Samuel J. Mun, “ ‘Destined to Cooperate’: Japan-ROK Naval Cooperation and Its Implications for U.S. Strategic Interests in Northeast Asia,” Project 2049 Institute, January 31, 2014, http://www.project2049.net/documents/Japan_ROK_naval_cooperation_Sam _Mun.pdf. 75. Kim Eun-jung, “S. Korea, Japan Conduct Search, Rescue Drill in East China Sea,” Yonhap News, December 12, 2013, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2013 /12/12/23/0301000000AEN20131212007100315F.html. 76. “Japan, South Korea, and U.S. Begin Search and Rescue Exercise,” Japan Times, July 22, 2014, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/07/22/national/japan-south-korea -u-s-begin-search-rescue-exercise/. 77. Author interview, July 1, 2015. 78. US Department of Defense, “Trilateral Information Sharing Arrangement,” December 2014, http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/Trilateral-Information -Sharing-Arrangement.pdf. 79. Martin Fackler, “Japan and South Korea Vow to Share Intelligence about North via the U.S.,” New York Times, December 29, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/30 /world/asia/japan-south-korea-north-intelligence.html?_r=0. 80. Osakabe Yasuo, “UNC Celebrates the 67th Anniversary of the United Nations in Japan,” Yokota Air Base Public Affairs Office, November 28, 2012, http://www.yokota. af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/2053/Article/410942/unc- celebrates- the- 67th -anniversary-of-the-united-nations-in-japan.aspx 81. Terence Roehrig, “North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, and the Stability-Instability Paradox,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 28, no. 2 (Summer 2016): 417–34.

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▼ 8

▲ BETWEEN THE BOMB AND THE UNITED STATES China Faces the Nuclear North Korea Fei-Ling Wang

A major development in world affairs today, especially the East Asian international relations, is the rise of Chinese power. With the world’s largest population and foreign currency reserve and the second largest economy and military budget, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is now advocating a grand “China Dream” that openly calls for a rejuvenation of China’s past power and glory.1 While the prospects of China’s rise and its future actions are both still profoundly uncertain, the PRC is becoming ever more active, with an ambitious foreign policy typically befitting a rising regional superpower with global aspirations.2 As indicated by several important developments, China is increasingly willing and able on the world stage, promising more Chinese demands—China’s new “international security activism”— down the road.3 Few other countries feel the rising Chinese power more acutely than China’s immediate neighbors in Northeast Asia, a region that has historically shaped today’s China and is currently crucial to China’s security and economy.4 China (and its ally North Korea) has accumulated significant “deficit of trust” in the region, according to Chinese analysts.5 Some have speculated that, in the long run especially, China’s imperialist tradition in the region is likely to remanifest itself.6 Some have already observed that Beijing is pursuing its own version of the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Pacific.7 In profound ways, how China deals with its neighboring nations shows well the intent and style of its rising power.

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On the ground, China now directly encounters and mightily struggles with the powerfully confi ning East Asian security structure that was born during the Cold War many decades ago. The treaty alliances that anchor this structure deeply involve the “outsider” of the United States, the main ideological and political adversary of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing. Eternally worrying about regime survival, the PRC has thus pursued a top foreign policy objective of resisting and reducing the presence and influence of the United States in its neighborhood, even at the expenses of China’s national and people’s interest. A manifestation of this has been China’s policy toward North Korea and especially the North Korean bomb—it has become a litmus test of the nature and limitation of Chinese power for the world to see. Beijing’s failure, reflecting its unwillingness more than its inability, 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 both stagnant, if not deteriorating, as now there are four nuclear states on its border—the only country in the world with that kind of deadly confi nement. Left alone, the North Korean bomb undercuts China’s power and prestige everyday as it poisons China–South Korea relations and undermines the Chinese leadership in the region and beyond, with more and graver uncertainties and chain reactions. To apply its substantial but likely one-shot power to force a denuclearization of the the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), China would risk losing its only treaty ally and ideological comrade and thus strengthen the hands of the United States—a dreadful blow to the CCP regime. The catch-22 predicament Beijing faces in dealing with the nuclear North Korea, therefore, illustrates the politicized, suboptimal nature of PRC foreign policy, which may serve the CCP regime well but at the heavy expense of China’s national interest. In light of that nuanced understanding of what is behind China’s policy toward the North Korean bomb, however, there seems to be still some peculiar opportunities for a continued peace and stability in Northeast Asia.

Three Alliances in East Asia and China’s Three-Rs Strategy Like other powers, China is not pursuing its foreign policy in a vacuum with total freedom. The development and action of the many partners, rivals, especially neighbors critically define and shape the Chinese foreign policy. The long-lasting Cold War–era power structure in East Asia remains both the given environment that confines the PRC and the natural target for the increasingly revisionist projection of Chinese power. Three alliances still constitute the bulk of East Asian international relations: the US-Korea alli-

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ance, the US-Japan alliance, and the PRC-DPRK alliance.8 Furthermore, the Chinese foreign policy is peculiarly driven by two sets of interests that sometimes overlap and are identical but often in serious conflict and competition: the national interest of China as a sovereign and growing “normal” unit of the Westphalian international system and the political interest of the CCP regime as an autocratic and ideologically lonely government. To be sure, all states make and implement their foreign policies with the imprint of the regimes’ wishes and desires, and regime security is often part of national interests. But the foreign policy of the nondemocratic one-party regime of the CCP is particularly and rigidly politicized to serve the regime’s survival and security first and foremost. The gap, even divorce, between China’s national interests and the CCP’s political interests therefore has been profound and consistent.9 The anchoring rivalry and animosity between Beijing and Washington/Tokyo stem mostly from the pursuit of CCP’s political interest instead of China’s national interest, as the latter does not justify the kind of fanned hostility with the United States or Japan. A rising power such as China “naturally” develops revisionist demands. For any revisionist foreign policy objectives to successfully serve and promote Chinese national interests in the region and beyond, China must reckon with the three alliances and may or may not seek to alter them in significant ways. The United States, the main force behind the restraining East Asian security structure, is also the chief ideological and political adversary to the CCP in Beijing. While the US-anchored East Asian security framework may be somewhat inconvenient but not necessarily obstructing—much less detrimental—to China’s national security and economic prosperity, the US presence and leadership embodied through this framework always represents a sharp contrast, a stark challenge, and an implied mortal threat to the CCP/PRC political system. Therefore, China’s rise is heavily shadowed and tilted by the CCP’s political interest. Essentially, the rising Chinese power is therefore shaped and confi ned in East Asia by the complex relationship between the PRC and the United States, the world’s two largest and closely linked economies that have drastically different and fundamentally competing political systems. Various speculations are already abundant about the future of that relationship, ranging from the so-called Beijing-Washington G-2 idea or a “Chinamerica” new world order, to a new Chinese rule of the world, to a fierce geopolitical struggle between the United States and the PRC first in the Western Pacific, to a coming realization of the decades-old prophecies of global clashes between the Western and the Eastern civilizations.10 In East Asia, however, the linchpin of the consequential PRC-US relationship is the Korean Peninsula, on which two of the three alliances have faced each other since the Korean War over six decades ago and where Beijing and Washington share some rare common interests, as well as confront profound differences and conflicts.

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The epic enormity, uncertain dynamics, and ever- changing factors of the rise of China demand extensive yet nuanced analyses to ascertain the future of China-US relations. Central to that effort is the need to understand the strategic visions, values and norms, and policy preferences that guide the two great powers. While the American strategic preferences and value system are relatively stable and transparent, the most common aphorism used to describe Chinese strategic intentions has remained, for many years now, the word “uncertainty.”11 Contrary to some of the conventional wisdom and despite the notoriously arcane and opaque nature of Chinese politics, however, Beijing’s basic strategy toward the United States is in fact rather unambiguous: Essentially, China eyes the top position of global power and leadership currently occupied by the United States with a great amount of complex feelings of antipathy, dread, and envy. The deeply rooted ideational path and the historical logic of Chinese polity determine that, without a sea change of sociopolitical institutions and values at home, the PRC is destined to be a lasting rival of and challenger to the United States, and Beijing is trying everything to resist, reduce, and replace American power and leadership so as to reorder fi rst the neighborhood and then wherever and whenever possible, even if doing so directly opposes China’s national interest.12 As one senior US official commented in 2015, China and the United States are in “different beds with different dreams.”13 To China’s neighbors and the world at large, Beijing’s “three-Rs” strategy of resisting, reducing, and replacing is likely to significantly constrain international cooperation.14 It will increasingly force the nations, especially in Asia, to choose sides voluntarily or involuntarily and to settle past scores and current and future issues with growing deference to Chinese demands and preferences. This three-Rs strategy is deeply rooted in the peculiar Chinese traditional and ideational foundation for the making of Chinese foreign policy. It is also necessitated by the current Chinese politics: The rising PRC needs to counter the American power so as to safeguard Beijing’s core interest of political survival and regime security.15

China Faces North Korea Fundamentally conditioned by the China-US relationship from the very beginning, Chinese foreign policy toward the Korean Peninsula in general and toward North Korea in particular has been complex, dynamic yet understandable. With a history filled with discords, disputes, and conflicts ever since the early days of the Korean War, North Korea has not been a reliable ally to the PRC, let alone a true friend.16 As earlier works have demonstrated, Beijing has continuously pursued a highly pragmatic, even schizophrenically realist policy since the 1990s to gain economic benefits

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and earn external peace while sticking to its clear objective of dealing with the United States for political interests.17 Barring any major changes in the China-US relationship and any fundamental changes inside the PRC, Beijing is expected to prefer the continued survival of the DPRK regime for its political and strategic needs while developing ever-closer relations with the Republic of Korea (ROK) for important economic interests and considerations of cultivating counterweight to Japan and the United States. Nominally supporting Korean unification, the PRC seeks to maintain the political status quo and a denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, precisely in that order.18 In the spring of 2016, PRC leader Xi Jinping reaffirmed that for his China Dream and Asia Dream, “China would absolutely not allow chaos on the Korean Peninsula.”19 However, the uncertainties and complications of China-US relations and the growing China-Japan discord will likely develop further to profoundly affect and reshape China’s strategic calculation about the Korean Peninsula. Beijing has already appeared to accept the nuclear North Korea. It may also be willing to entertain a Seoul-dominated united Korea if—a big if indeed—it is certain that the united Korea would be firmly on Beijing’s side in the growing China-US rivalry in the region.20 Overall, looking through various lenses, Chinese analysts today seem to have complex and somewhat diverse views about North Korea, especially as a nuclear state, but largely still carefully tread the CCP’s party lines rather than focus on China’s national interests.21 The new anger and loud displeasure displayed by Beijing in the aftermath of Pyongyang’s defiant test of a “hydrogen bomb” in January 2016 and a ballistic missile in March 2016 have prompted Beijing to support more United Nations (UN) Security Council sanctions against North Korea but have not moved China any closer to abandoning the DPRK regime.22 After the North Koreans defiantly tested more ballistic missiles in the spring and summer of 2016, Beijing seemed to still refuse to do the “outsourced” work for the United States to compel Pyongyang, other than by issuing yet more angry statements.23 Beijing seems to have continued the same policy after North Korea’s fifth nuclear test on September 9, 2016. The PRC has been rewarded for its pragmatic Korea policies with great strategic maneuverability in its interaction with the United States over how to address the provocative moves of the DPRK; considerable international prestige for Beijing’s hosting of the multilateral talks about Korean issues, however unfruitful those talks may have been so far; and enormous economic benefits through its deepening and booming trade and investment deals with South Korea to form a great East Asian chain of production that has enabled China’s lucrative exports to the United States. Beijing’s acrobatic, multidimensional Korea policy, while certainly designed to serve China’s own interests, has indeed contributed to the maintenance of the status quo on the Korean Peninsula, including the Korean division, for the time being.

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But Beijing’s recognition of the ROK in 1993 and its rapidly expanding friendship and business ties with the South Koreans ever since, as well as its policy of quietly opposing Korean unification, have had their backlashes. Necessarily squeezed and naturally feeling shortchanged and even let down by its Chinese comrades, the DPRK embarked in the mid-1990s on a daring road to provocatively yet cleverly acquire nuclear weapons for its regime security and bargaining position. The North Korean nuclearization has threatened to break the international regime of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), destabilized Northeast Asia through opening up the uncertainties about the Japanese and ROK reactions, and alarmed and agitated the United States. It has inevitably weakened and harmed the power and national interests of the PRC, which is now still the only “legitimate” nuclear power in East Asia, and put both the Chinese reputation of peaceful rising and the Sino-DPRK alliance to test. In addition to its nuclear ambition, the DPRK has also engaged in numerous actions of provocation, such as testing ballistic missiles and shelling South Korea, to make noisy demands. All of those are arguably rational for the security and survival of Pyongyang’s dynastic regime, but none of them appears to be in good coordination with PRC foreign policy, let alone serving Beijing’s strategic interests in the region. In response, Beijing has addressed the development and seized upon the opportunity, however, to cultivate a rare but real common strategic interest with the United States of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula to strengthen its hands in relations with Washington, especially in the difficult years prior to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Since then, the distracted United States further allowed and assisted the Chinese to recoup and extract more prestige by gracing the many rounds of the Beijing-hosted Six-Party Talks, involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States. 24 North Korea’s desperate and daring defiance has thus provided a major stage for the Chinese government to score multilateral diplomacy points, earn international responsibility and leadership credits, and manage its relationship with the United States.25 Nevertheless, despite great fanfare and high hopes, those talks have largely come up empty-handed and now are practically defunct because the United States has refused to grant what Pyongyang wants without genuine denuclearization moves and China has refused to truly pressure Pyongyang to give up its bomb, even after the 2016 North Korean tests. Politically valuable accomplishment of diplomacy in Northeast Asia notwithstanding, China as a nation has endured significant costs for the CCP on this: The PRC has been providing massive economic aid to sustain the failed North Korean economy, “even as it tightens sanctions on North Korean nuclear programs.”26 The largely one-way flow of Chinese resources and, lately, the growing commercial deals have had only limited economic

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returns with even less diplomatic gains for China, sometimes not even so much as a sincere appreciation from Pyongyang.27 With its new bomb, North Korea has become the less inferior partner in the PRC-DPRK alliance and acquired significantly more bargaining, even extortion-like power over Beijing, as some PRC analysts have now openly acknowledged. 28 More important, perhaps, China’s national interests and even national security have in fact suffered despite the rise of the Chinese economic and military might: China has now become the only country in the world with four nuclear powers at its border, and the DPRK-started nuclear proliferation would further undermine China’s power position and freedom of action in East Asia if the North Korean nuclear program continues to brew a chain reaction of an arms race, even a nuclear arms race, in the region. For Beijing, a nuclear Japan appears to be one of the biggest nightmares and perhaps the worst outcome of the DPRK bomb. Worse still, China has to only count on the goodwill of the United States to prevent that from happening.29 For all that, it is natural to see that China has been increasingly open in words and actions about its deep frustration with the nuclear North Koreans after 2012.30 But the political line of the three-Rs strategy against the United States remains clear and strong in guiding the Chinese policy, even after Pyongyang’s highly irritating acts in 2016. 31

Chinese Views about the North Korean Bomb The PRC has traditionally had its own peculiar views about nuclear weapons, although those views have been influenced over the years by the more internationally shared norms and perceptions.32 China’s attitude to and relationship with the NPT have also evolved over the decades, and it only formally joined the NPT in 1992, twenty-eight years after it tested its own first nuclear weapon.33 Just like the other legitimate nuclear powers, China gradually accepted the US-led NPT regime and developed its own export control of nuclear materials and technology.34 Moving away from the notion that nuclear weapons are usable in military conflicts to settle political disputes, Beijing has by the early twenty-first century accepted the general concept that nuclear weapons are mostly only tools of deterrence and symbols of international status and joined the NPT’s international effort to control weapons of mass destruction.35 However, periodically some Chinese analysts and military officers still openly call for more active and assertive “first use” of nuclear weapons for international conflicts, “just like other (conventional) weapons,” even for attacking another nuclear power like the United States.36 Some Chinese nuclear policy experts seem to still harbor strong doubts about the deterrence role of nuclear weapons.37 Such wanton and belligerent big talk, nonetheless, seems to have quite a following, especially among the so-called angry youth in

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Chinese cyberspace. In practice, the PRC has been constantly engaging in active programs to modernize its nuclear arsenal, especially its delivery systems and the related space, undersea, and information technologies.38 The North Korean bomb, which allegedly had early material and technological support from China (and later technological support from Pakistan), has aroused, therefore, a spectrum of different reviews in China. On the one end, some believe that the DPRK is just following the PRC playbook in developing the bomb for self-reliant provision of regime and national security and to raise its international power and stature. Given the shared ideological identification and the long-standing anti-American orientation of the DPRK, China should not force its only ally and comrade to cave into the American pressure to denuclearize. Some even argue for more vigorous support for the North Korean–professed anti-Americanism. On the other end, a perhaps stronger voice (especially inside the professional PRC foreign policy community) asserts that the North Korean bomb is a gravely serious challenge to Chinese power and security. China should adhere to the NPT, which is “in China’s fundamental interests”; Beijing should stop its ineffective “hesitance between maintaining stability and denuclearization” so as to assume a greater role and more responsibility; and China should employ all leverages, including “to normalize the PRC-DPRK relations,” a euphemism for discontinuing the Beijing-Pyongyang treaty alliance, for a thorough denuclearization of North Korea. Maintaining the status quo and “preventing another Korean War,” however, still remains the top concern to those calling for denuclearizing the DPRK.39 The Chinese netizens have also expressed significant disgust over North Korea’s “successful” nuclear “blackmailing” of China and the “dynastic paupers” in Pyongyang. In private, many Chinese have simply suggested to abandon the Kim regime and let it collapse. On balance, the Chinese view about the North Korean bomb seems to be largely a compromise of some of those diverse opinions of the dilemma created by the North Korean bomb, a view still fundamentally dictated by the CCP’s political interests and objectives.40 In practice, Beijing is therefore seen wobbling with its ambivalent policy for stability of the status quo and also for denuclearization. The shadow of the three-Rs strategy is long and dark.41 As some PRC analysts have openly argued, the North Korean bomb may indeed be “violating China’s wish and interests . . . but it is a price [that] must be paid for China to support [North] Korea to oppose and check the United States,” since the security threat possessed by the North Korean bomb “is much larger to the United States than to China.” Furthermore, the existence of the DPRK, even nuclear armed, continues a strategic buffer between China and the United States and provides, more important, a “useful bargaining chip in the Sino-American game” as Washington “needs Chinese cooperation more” if Pyongyang continues to cause more

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trouble.42 Even though not many Chinese analysts have openly embraced the nuclear-stability logic advocated by Kenneth Waltz in the case of Iran,43 many Chinese do not object to the notion that nuclear weapons in the hands of the “good people” are not inherently evil. So, the Chinese policy toward the nuclear North Korea is just “how to control and manage” this strategic asset, rather than getting rid of it, let alone at a heavy cost to the CCP/PRC: risking the loss of the only treaty ally it has.44 Increasingly discussed behind closed doors by those worrying that China might actually be the fi rst and real victim of the DPRK bomb or a North Korean nuclear disaster, however, this mainstream view remains intact after the events in 2016, as the Chinese official media insisted cynically that the Chinese would not be the “fi rst victims” of the Pyongyang bomb anyway.45

The Chinese Catch-22: Between the North Korean Bomb and the United States Grudgingly, Beijing has grown to “swallow the bitter fruit” and tacitly accept the nuclear North Korea despite its genuine wish and open rhetoric against the DPRK nuclear program, which could enhance the US-Japan alliance and even lead to nuclearization of the whole of East Asia.46 As a fellow authoritarian regime that went through frightening international isolation and gambled its own security and survival on developing nuclear weapons, the CCP/PRC seems to have a hard time logically dissuading its North Korean comrades from following suit. As the only treaty ally that services as a useful strategic buffer or asset and a rare ideological companion (the only after the US-Cuba rapprochement), North Korea’s existence itself is of considerable value to the PRC, especially to the CCP rulers in the eternal fight to resist and reduce the United States power. However, unlike most other patron-client relationships, the PRC-DPRK relationship has always featured a defiant Pyongyang and a maladroit Beijing. The repeated brutal purges of the DPRK top leadership by its ruler, such as the dramatic execution of Jang Song-taek in December 2013, have effectively limited, even rooted out, Chinese influence in Pyongyang.47 It is often not the dog that wags the tail but the other way around in the PRC-DPRK alliance.48 This is indeed a powerful, yet underexamined problem—even failure—of the overpoliticized Chinese foreign policy. Therefore, caught between a rock (the CCP’s political interests of resisting the US-Japan alliance) and a hard place (China’s national interests of opposing the North Korean nuclear program), Beijing has little choice but to continue its seemingly useful policy of milking the situation for as much political gain as possible to help its rivalry with the United States and Japan, while leaving the status quo of Korean division and the North Korean

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bomb drifting, hoping for the best.49 This is arguably a clever albeit expedient political decision, but it incurs considerable and growing costs for China’s national interests, even national security, in a rather irresponsible way. China’s freedom of action is also affected, as its main geopolitical rival, the US-Japan alliance, gets to make empowering moves justified by the North Korean bomb, as reflected by the historic “groundbreaking upgrade” of the alliance in April 2015.50 The US “pivot to Asia” and efforts such as the “U.S.-Japan-ROK Trilateral Dialogue,” as well as the upgrades of military technologies by the American and Japanese militaries in the Western Pacific, may indeed “put China in an ever-shrinking security box.”51 The upgraded military ties among the United States, Japan, and India, exemplified by the Malabar exercises and sharing of military technology, 52 further altered China’s security environment. The decision by South Korea to fi nally deploy the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, especially its X-Band radar, in the summer of 2016 is just one of such negative consequences Beijing dislikes ardently. 53 Even Russia started to offer help with the North Korean space program, undermining China’s power over Pyongyang.54 The rising China is therefore interestingly and unfortunately confi ned on the Korean Peninsula by its only ally’s defiant, desperate, but rational—and seemingly effective—drive for regime survival through acquisition of the bomb. In order to check the United States, Beijing is now ironically checked by its perceived and professed strategic asset. Empirically, the PRC keeps on playing its self-anointed role of the mediator and its pretended “neutral” role of the host for peace.55 On the one hand, China increasingly shows displeasure and disapproval of the North Korean bomb by promising more pressure on the defiant Pyongyang, especially after the highly infuriating North Korean tests in 2016.56 The PRC has indeed made some noticeable and potentially profound new gestures and actions: President Xi Jinping took a much- celebrated state visit to South Korea in July 2014 to toast the “special” and “traditional” Sino-Korean friendship but has largely turned a cold shoulder to North Korean leaders, changing a traditional routine of his predecessors who would visit Pyongyang before Seoul.57 Beijing has also openly joined some international sanctions on Pyongyang’s nuclear program, especially in the area of fi nancial transactions. China indeed has lots more power over North Korea since it is the “largest and the dominant” foreign donor and patron,58 literally feeding the DPRK. Yet, without much genuine confidence about Seoul’s future strategic reorientation in the China-US competition as the trade-off, and also dreading the consequences of a collapsing DPRK with the bomb, Beijing seems to still have no strategic intention or political will to really apply its potentially decisive but likely one-shot pressure to seriously cripple North Korea into submission on the nuclear issue. Like what happened to

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another former ally, Albania, in the 1970s and 1980s, Beijing’s seemingly powerful leverage may well, once applied, have only a one-shot effect and then quickly force its beneficiary to run to the enemy’s camp (that of the United States) and become an open nemesis with lightning speed. 59 Indeed, in the spring of 2016, some in Beijing had already circulated a supposed Japanese report based on an alleged DPRK “internal document” showing that Kim Jong-un “now hates China more than the U.S. and South Korea” and issued orders to “resist Chinese repression policies.”60 Enhancing rather than reducing American power in Northeast Asia, though it may not negatively impact China’s national interest, is categorically unacceptable to the CCP. Once again, the CCP’s political needs and calculus dictate the Chinese foreign policy. Perhaps also, Beijing seems to know what some American analysts have concluded: “North Korea was never serious about giving up a nuclear program . . . that it saw as vital to regime protection and internal legitimacy.”61 On the other hand, the negative consequences brought by the North Korean bomb on Chinese national interest and national security are now growing and have started to concern the Chinese foreign policy community and the increasingly nationalistic Chinese elites at large. It may have then started to affect the CCP’s political calculation centered on its regime survival and security. In 2013, a senior Chinese official and analyst, Deng Yuwen, who was the deputy editor of a major journal of the CCP’s Central Party School, characterized the DPRK as a “Kim Dynasty” that is now increasingly a major liability, even a lethal danger, for China and called for Beijing to “abandon” Pyongyang in favor of denuclearization and Korean unification.62 Despite that such views are in fact widely shared inside China, however, Beijing still curbs them publicly, in this case by penalizing Deng with a paid suspension.63 Nevertheless, Deng (lately a member of an “unofficial” think tank in Beijing) continued to publish overseas about a pending collapse of the DPRK in ten to fi fteen years.64 Such occasionally open expression of harsh Chinese views, effective or not in influencing Pyongyang, signifies the mood in Beijing. In reality, while continuing its shielding of Pyongyang on issues of human rights, Beijing has now shown more clearly that it opposes DPRK’s new nuclear tests. Geting rid of the North Korean bomb (or at least limiting the chain reactions that are likely to follow, without toppling the Pyongyang regime or driving it to defect to the United States) remains the top PRC diplomatic objective. And to make the United States and its allies do the heavy lifting is naturally smart thinking, even though that means Beijing has to grudgingly continue to rely on the credible “extended deterrence” provided by the US nuclear umbrella in Northeast Asia to prevent the easily accomplished Japanese and ROK nuclearization.65 Thus, Beijing has essentially urged the United States, and its allies, to also accept North

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Korea’s nuclear status and ideally share the Chinese burden of fi nancially sustaining the DPRK so as to, hopefully, buy a possible denuclearization or at least nonproliferation and continue the status quo on the Korean Peninsula.66 The US policy since 2013 has shown that the Chinese effort may have been somewhat effective.67 To pursue the CCP’s political interest and China’s national interest, which are in conflict with regard to the issue of the North Korean nuclear program, Beijing is often visibly tiring of the DPRK and increasingly frustrated but still “unable to abandon” Pyongyang.68 This is especially true when China is yet to have its much craved “Rich Country and Strong Army” so as to rid the CCP of its eternal fear of regime nonsurvival.69 Stuck in its endless struggle to resist, reduce, and replace American power and American leadership, Beijing thus ironically allows and even finances the North Korean bomb, canceling much of the geopolitical gains made by the prosperous Chinese economy and the rapid buildup of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in East Asia. New ideas are often simply suppressed. For example, senior government analysts in Beijing have already openly warned against people who “use the [North] Korean issue” to smuggle in and instigate “a color revolution in China.”70 The CCP appears to be afraid that an honest and thorough nationalist reexamination of China’s failed policy about the North Korean bomb and criticisms of its Pyongyang comrades may start and inflame a nationalist political movement in China to threaten the party’s rule. Therefore, rational and even crafty for the CCP leadership, China’s policy toward the North Korean bomb has been mainly expedient and reactionary, clearly suboptimal to China’s national interest.

Conclusion Just like elsewhere, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, where there seems to be a costly and consequential split in Chinese foreign policy between China’s national/people’s interest and Beijing’s political interest,71 in the Korean Peninsula there is also an impact on Chinese diplomacy of a divorce between China’s national interest and the CCP’s core mission of regime survival. Nourished by the surging calls of the PRC statist nationalism or patriotism, the rising Chinese power is already seen exercising a “new” leadership in East Asia as part of the overall strategic game with the United States. The CCP hopes to reduce and replace the dreaded American power in the region through acquiring deference and submission based on fear or courting, to be generated by achieving a power parity, even superiority, in the region versus the United States. This is further powered by the “important decision to build China into a great maritime power” made by the CCP leadership—an unspecified but grand new plan for the expansion of Chinese maritime pres-

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ence and power.72 An outspoken spokesman of the PLA openly declared that the PRC must build up its military power as fast as it can so to “make foes suffer and give friends goodies” and that “only when we are not afraid of the United States anymore, other nations will then be afraid of us.”73 Unfortunately, however, China’s only treaty ally has come into the middle of that grand strategy for its own political interest. The nuclear North Korea has compromised Beijing’s new position of power and leadership. Between the North Korean nuclear bomb and the United States, Beijing has so far largely chosen Pyongyang, however resentfully, compromising and undermining its new power and freedom of action thus at the expense of China’s national interest. Without a major political change in China that lessens the CCP’s dictation of Chinese foreign policy or a major geopolitical shift such as a realignment in Northeast Asia, Beijing will continue to walk the tightwire of keeping the nuclear North Korea safe while dealing with the United States to hopefully deter Pyongyang’s further nuclear ambitions and especially prevent a chain reaction that may lead to a nuclear Japan. Total denuclearization of the DPRK now appears to be realistically a low priority for Beijing, even though Beijing and Moscow still repeat their wishes for more efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula through the largely defunct Six-Party Talks.74 To perhaps illustrate how Pyongyang thinks about the Chinese and Russians, however, Kim Jong-un did not attend the Russian military parade to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II in May 2015, when Moscow could really have used a show of support from the North Koreans as it was being shunned by the West for its annexation of Crimea. Kim also refused to attend the Chinese version of that parade in Beijing in September 2015. Opportunities still exist, though, for the continuation of peace and stability in Northeast Asia. The overlap of China’s national interest and the CCP’s political interest with regard to the North Korean bomb may in fact emerge and grow to prompt more effective Chinese efforts for the NPT and denuclearization. An intersection of US and Chinese diplomatic objectives may also continue and affect this issue. A window of opportunity thus exists, and may even widen, for concerted action by the United States and China to seriously control the situation and to eventually get rid of the festering nuclear issue in Northeast Asia so as to prevent a nuclear chain reaction, which would be contrary to both American and Chinese interests. Lately, Beijing seems to be fi rm on ensuring that the North Korean provocations stay under a safe limit. More skillful management of China’s ties with North Korea may help to deter Pyongyang and keep the North Korean bomb secured. Worried about their own regime survival in the same way, Beijing and Pyongyang may have a rather common sense about how to play the nuclear card safely in order to maximize political and economic benefits, without getting burned by a real military confrontation with the United

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States and its allies. The schizophrenic policy driven by the confl icting Chinese national interest versus the CCP’s political interest may continue. After gestures and moves to show displeasure about the DPRK provocations, Beijing soon made conciliatory and accommodating statements through the new Chinese ambassador to the DPRK, Li Jinjun, who incidentally was only allowed to meet Kim Jong-un more than two months after arriving on the job, a very unusually cold treatment of an envoy. After Xi Jinping visited Seoul in 2014, a top CCP leader, Liu Yunshan, went to Pyongyang in 2015. After joining the new UN sanctions punishing Pyongyang in March 2016, Beijing quickly acted to “protect” the DPRK from harsher-still US sanctions. The PRC may intend to have the best of both worlds: to prevent nuclear proliferation and a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia while continuing to resist and reduce American power through rebalancing and enhancing its ties with Pyongyang so as to “deepen cooperation” with its ideological comrade.75 Pyongyang, however, defiantly tested its “biggest” nuclear bomb on September 9, 2016.76 As expected, Beijing condemned the test but blamed all sides other than China and urged calm for “stability.”77 A diminution, even dismantling, of the US-ROK alliance (such as the idea proposed by some South Korean analysts “to limit the strategic flexibility of US forces stationed in South Korea, the most sensitive issue to China, to the objective of maintaining peace on and stability of the Korean Peninsula”78) and a new PRC-ROK united front (fi rst in the name of “against Japan”) may effectively encourage many inside the PRC to adopt a new policy toward the DPRK and persuade Beijing to get really serious about the North Korean bomb and even support a ROK-led Korean unification. But, just as there are significant doubts about and opposition to a rapid Korean unification inside and outside South Korea itself,79 profound questions remain about if, what, and how the South Koreans would ever be willing to pay Beijing for getting rid of the North Korean bomb. An evident chain reaction of the North Korean bomb, such as serious attempts by Japan to follow suit, would also powerfully alter Beijing’s rationale. Much, of course, depends still on what transpires in China-US relations.80 To Chinese, the question is not if or whether the PRC should or would abandon North Korea—it is just a matter of right price and right timing.81 The CCP’s political interest, rather than China’s national interest, is the main—even sole—criterion. A keen observer noted in 2015 that the nuclear North Korea, with its concerned efforts to develop effective delivery systems such as submarine-launched ballistic missiles, has already infringed on China’s “core interests,” including its political interest of regime survival and security, and may thus change the game to cause Beijing to alter its failed policy toward Pyongyang.82 Given the analysis in this chapter, it is clear that the nuclear DPRK has indeed cost China in terms

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of its national interest and national security but has had so far relatively light impact on the real core interest of the PRC diplomacy: the political survival and power of the CCP served by the pursuit of the three-Rs strategy against the United States. If and when Beijing deems that the damages caused by the North Korean bomb to Chinese national interests and national security start to impair the CCP regime and reduce, even cancel, the payoff from upsetting and costing the United States in the region, China may then be fully expected to deal with North Korean denuclearization more seriously and aggressively. The catch is that, by that time, it may be way too late already, and the nuclear chain reaction may have already taken place in East Asia. For one thing, Seoul has fi nally decided to deploy THAAD, and Beijing has openly vented its anger and vowed to take actions of revenge.83 Last, of course, there is the danger that the North Korean nuclear issue may get out of control, given the inevitable misperceptions and miscalculations that have abundantly colored the history of East Asian international relations over the past century. If push comes to shove, an externally forced denuclearization could drive a desperate regime in Pyongyang to do desperate things,84 with uncertain but likely grave consequences for China’s national security, economic prosperity, and ultimately the CCP’s power.85 In that sense, the nuclear North Korea may have already acquired significant deterrence against and meaningful confinement of the mighty rising China, with just five nuclear tests and some rudimentary bombs and missiles.86 Chinese analysts have indeed acknowledged that and have started to suggest to Americans as well that they “treat the DPRK as a [legitimate] nuclear power” in any future denuclearization talks.87 That lesson, of course, could be easily picked up by China’s other neighbors and may materialize further to constitute more costs to be borne by the Chinese nation and the Chinese people for the continuation of the CCP/PRC political system.

Notes 1. “Xi Zongshuji 15 pian wenzhang xitong chanshu ‘zhongguo meng’ ” [General Secretary Xi systematically elaborated ‘China Dream’ in 15 articles], June 19, 2013, http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/0619/c40531–21891787.html. For more on the official version of the China Dream, see CCP Central Document Studies Bureau, Xi Jinping guangyu shixian zhonghua minzu weida fuxing de zhongguo meng lunshu zhaibian [Selections of Xi Jinping’s words on realizing the China Dream for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation] (Beijing: Zhongyang Wenxian, 2013). For an analysis of this China Dream, see Ming Wan, “Xi Jinping’s ‘China Dream’: Same Bed, Different Dreams?” Asian Forum, August 2, 2013. 2. David Lampton, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Henry Kissinger, On China (New York:

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Penguin, 2011); Robert Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012); John J. Mearsheimer, “Can China Rise Peacefully?” National Interest, October 25, 2014. 3. Ely Ratner, Elbridge Colby, Andrew Erickson, Zachary Hosford, and Alexander Sullivan, More Willing and Able: Charting China’s International Security Activism (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2015). 4. Sheila A. Smith, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 5. Shen Dingli, “Changing Security Environment in Northeast Asia and the TrustBuilding Process on the Korean Peninsula,” in The Trust-Building Process and Korean Unification, ed. Choi Jinwook (Seoul: KINU, 2014): 89–110. 6. Yuan-kang Wang, Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). 7. Steven Walt, “Dealing with a Chinese Monroe Doctrine,” New York Times, May 3, 2012. 8. The Beijing-Pyongyang military alliance is based on the PRC-DPRK Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance Treaty, first signed in 1961, automatically renewed twice, and currently effective until 2021. 9. For how the CCP repeatedly ceded Chinese territories for its regime survival and security, see M. Taylor Fravel, “Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation: Explaining China’s Compromises in Territorial Disputes,” International Security 30 (Fall 2005): 46–83. For how the Chinese foreign policy has always been shaped by the CCP’s domestic political agenda, see John W. Garver, China’s Quest: Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 10. Niall Ferguson, “What ‘Chimerica’ Hath Wrought,” American Interest, January–February 2009; Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 2009); Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: Norton, 2011); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). For an Asian optimistic view, see Hoo Tiang Boon, “G2 or Chimerica? The Growing Institutionalisation of US-China Relations,” Eurasia Review, RSIS, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, no. 137, July 23, 2013. 11. Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 12. Fei-Ling Wang, “Resisting, Reducing, and Replacing: China’s Strategy and Policy towards the United States,” in China’s Domestic Politics and Foreign Policies, and Major Countries’ Strategies on China, ed. Jung-Ho Bae (Seoul: KINU, 2012), 155–86. For a later expansion of this thesis, see Fei-Ling Wang, “China’s Four-R Strategy toward the United States: Resisting, Reducing, Replacing and Reordering,” in Studies on China, ed. Mahendra Gaur (New Delhi: Foreign Policy Research Centre, 2015). 13. Author’s interview in Washington, May 2015. 14. Rosemary Foot and Andrew Walter, China, the United States, and Global Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 15. Fei-Ling Wang, “Beijing’s Incentive Structure: The Pursuit of Preservation, Prosperity, and Power,” in China Rising: Power and Motivation in Chinese Foreign Policy, ed. Yong Deng and Fei-Ling Wang (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). Top PRC diplomats openly declare that China’s main foreign policy goal is indeed to safeguard its

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political system. Dai Binguo quoted in Li Jing, “Shoulun zhongmei jingji duihua” [First round of Sino-American economic dialogue], China News Agency, July 29, 2009; Wang Yi, “Shixi xinxing quanqiuzhili tixi de goujian ji zhidu jianshe” [Analyzing the building and institutional construction of a new type of global governance system], Guowai Lilun Dongtai, no. 8 (2013): 5–11. 16. Shen Zhihua, “Zhongchao guangxi jingtian neimu” [The shocking inside story of Sino-Korean relations], September 3, 2013, http://history.sina.com.cn/his/zl/2013 –09–03/102952867.shtml. 17. Fei-Ling Wang, “Changing Views: Chinese Perception of the United States–South Korea Alliance,” in Problems of Post-Communism (formerly Problems of Communism) (July–August 1996): 25–34; Fei-Ling Wang, Tacit Acceptance and Watchful Eyes: Beijing’s Views about the U.S.-ROK Alliance (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, January 1997); Fei-Ling Wang, “Joining the Major Powers for the Status Quo: China’s Views and Policy on Korean Reunification,” Pacific Affairs 72 (Summer 1999): 167–85; Fei-Ling Wang, “Looking East: China’s Policy toward the Korean Peninsula,” in Engagement with North Korea: A Viable Alternative, ed. Sung Chull Kim and David C. Kang (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009), 47–72. 18. Jung-Ho Bae, Young-Ho Park, Jae-Jeok Park, Dongsoo Kim, and Jangho Kim, The Perceptions of Northeast Asia’s Four States on Korean Unification (Seoul: KINU, 2014), 28–37; Liu Ming, Wang Cheng-zhi, and Cui Rong-wei, “Chinese Perspectives on the East Asian Security Environment and the Korean Peninsula,” in The Trust-Building Process and Korean Unification, ed. Choi Jinwook (Seoul: KINU, 2014), 69. 19. Xi Jinping, “Zai yaxin wuci waizhang huiyi kaimoshi shang de jianghua” (Speech at the opening ceremony of the 5th CICA Foreign Ministers Meeting), Xinhua, April 28, 2016. 20. Author’s interviews with Chinese officials, officers, and scholars, 2012–14. 21. Carla Freeman, ed., China and North Korea: Strategic and Policy Perspectives from a Changing China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 22. For example, Beijing reportedly lobbied Washington to lift the new sanctions so as not to really crush the North Koran economy. Michelle Nichols, Louis Charbonneau, and James Pearson, “Exclusive: U.N. Lifts North Korea Sanctions on Four Ships at China’s Request,” Reuters, March 22, 2016. 23. “Mei nuying zhiwang jiang chaohe wenti waibao gei zhongguo” [The US should not count on outsourcing the Korean nuclear issue to China], Huanqiu Shibao, editorial, April 25, 2016. 24. Jayshree Bajoria and Beina Xu, “The Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s Nuclear Program,” CFR Backgrounders, September 30, 2013; Xiaodong Liang, “The Six-Party Talks at a Glance,” Arms Control Association, May 4, 2012, https://www.armscontrol .org/factsheets/6partytalks. 25. Scott A. Snyder, “China’s Persistent Support for the Six-Party Talks,” Atlantic, September 19, 2013; Tony Munroe and Ben Blanchard, “North Korea’s Neighbors Push to Resume Six-Party Talks,” Reuters, March 26, 2015. 26. James Reilly, “The Curious Case of China’s Aid to North Korea,” Asian Survey 54 (November–December 2014): 1158–83. 27. Author’s interviews of Chinese diplomats and officials, 2012–13. PRC citizens have also started to complain openly about this: for example, “Zhongguo wei shemu hui yuanzhu bei chaoxian” [Why is China aiding North Korea?], July 23, 2007, http://bbs .tianya.cn/post-worldlook-155877–1.shtml.

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28. “Chaoxian yinggai jiji di zouchu zhanlue gaoya” [(North) Korea should actively walk out the strategic pressure], Huanqiu Shibao, editorial, April 11, 2013; author’s interviews with Chinese analysts, 2016. 29. Author’s interviews of Chinese analysts and officials in 2010–15. 30. Jaewoo Choo, “China’s Frustration over North Korea: Editorial Analysis, Dec. 2012–April 2013,” Korean Journal of Security Affairs 18 (June 2013): 4–21. 31. David Francis, “Beijing Blasts New U.S. Sanctions on North Korea,” Foreign Policy, March 17, 2016. 32. Tong Zhao, “Trust-Building in the U.S.-Chinese Nuclear Relationship: Impact of Operational-Level Engagement,” PhD thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014. 33. Baogen Zhou, “Zhongguo yu hebukuosan jizhi de yizhong jiangou zhuyi fenxi” [China and the global nuclear nonproliferation regime: a constructivist analysis], Shijie Zhengzhi yu Jingji, no. 2 (2003): 23–27. 34. Li Bin & Zhao Tong eds., Lijie zhongguo hesiwei [Understanding Chinese nuclear thinking], (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian, 2016). 35. Li Bin and Xiao Tiefeng, “Congsheng hewuqi de zuoyong” [Rethinking the role of nuclear weapons], Waijiao Pinglun, no. 3 (2010): 3–9; Du Binwei, “Fangzhi hewuqi kuosan jizhi de pingxi yji chulu” [On the nuclear nonproliferation system and its solutions], Shehui Zhuyi Yanjiu, no. 2 (2010): 132–36. 36. The outspoken PLA major general Zhu Chenghu was noted by international observers for such assertions but has only got a mild reprimand. “Jiefangjun shaojiang hewu ximeilun de zhenxiang” [True story of PLA major general calling for attacking the US with nuclear weapons], Fenghuang Wang, September 5, 2015; “Zhu Chdnghu zao jiguo” [Zhu Chenghu is Reprimanded], Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore, December 23, 2005. In an interview in 2013, Zhu confirmed to the author that he was mildly punished for his views regarding the use nuclear weapons against the United States. 37. Senior Chinese analysts speaking at the US-China Seminar on Chinese Nuclear Perspectives, Washington, May 12, 2015. 38. Lyle J. Goldstein and Andrew S. Erickson, China’s Nuclear Force Modernization (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2005); David E. Sanger and William J. Broadmay, “China Making Some Missiles More Powerful,” New York Times, May 17, 2015. 39. Zhang Tuosheng, “Chaohe wenti yu zhongguo zhengce” [(North) Korean nuclear issue and Chinese Policy], Guoji Anquan Yanjiu, no. 5 (2013): 52–64. 40. For an example of mainstream Chinese views, see Li Dunqiu, “Buneng ‘fangqi’ Chaoxian zhe 65nian de huoban” [Can’t “abandon” the 65-year partner (North) Korea], Huanqiu Shibao, Beijing, November 2, 2014; Cao Shigong, “Shi chaoxian wei baiynalang zhe que daju guan” [Those who think (North) Korea is an ungrateful wolf do not have macro views], Huanqiu Shibao, December 2, 2014; and Wang Hongguang, “Renhe huanhe bandao jushi de judong dou yingdang shou huanying” [Should welcome any move of détente on the peninsula], Huanqiu Shibao, January 27, 2015. 41. Gu Guoliang, “Cooperation and Differences between China and the U.S. in Handling the North Korean Nuclear Issue,” Korean Review 2 (May 2012): 63–80. 42. Zhou Huilai, “Zhongguo fangqi chaoxian hai weishi guozao” [It’s too early for China to abandon North Korea], Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore, June 15, 2010. 43. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb: Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability,” Foreign Affairs 14 (2012).

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44. Zhou, “Zhongguo fangqi chaoxian hai weishi guozao.” 45. “Mei nuying zhiwang jiang chaohe wenti waibao gei zhongguo.” 46. Author’s interview of a Chinese senior military analyst, 2013. 47. Emily Rauhala, “Kim Jong-un’s Purge of His Uncle May Test Ties with China,” Time, December 9, 2013; “China Loses North Korea Link but May Welcome Purge,” South China Morning Post, December 12, 2013. Jang was rumored to be colluding with Beijing to plot against Kim Jong-un. 48. For an analysis of how North Korea has cleverly and effectively bargained and balanced against China in the post–Cold War era, see Ramon Pacheco Pardo and Jeffrey Reeves, “Weak Power Bargaining with China: Mongolia and North Korea in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Contemporary China 23 (2014): 1152–73. 49. To a lesser extent, similar resistance to and accommodation of the hegemon by the rising powers are identified with regard to the Iranian nuclear issue. Moritz Pieper, “Chinese, Russian, and Turkish Policies in the Iranian Nuclear Dossier: Between Resistance to Hegemony and Hegemonic Accommodation,” Asian Journal of Peacemaking 2 (2014): 17–36. 50. The Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation, Department of Defense, Washington, April 27, 2015. 51. Donald S. Zagoria, “U.S.-Japan-ROK Trilateral Dialogue,” National Committee on American Foreign Policy, May 2012; Clint Richards, “X-Band and THAAD as Good as Anti-China Trilateral Defense Agreement?” Diplomat, October 24, 2014, http://thediplo mat.com/2014/10/x-band-and-thaad-as-good-as-anti-china-trilateral-defense-agreement/. 52. Rajat Pandit, “India, US and Japan to Kick Off Malabar Naval Exercise Tomorrow,” Times of India, July 23, 2014. 53. “China’s Objection of THAAD Deployment in S. Korea,” Vantage Point 38 (March 2015): 18–21; Teng Jianqun, “Why Is China Unhappy with the Deployment of THAAD in the ROK?,” Asan Forum, March 31, 2015, http://www.theasanforum.org/an -chinese-perspective/; Kang Seung-woo, “THAAD Decision Irreversible: Park,” Korean Times, Seoul, August 2, 2016. 54. Aaron Morrison, “Russia and North Korea Space Program,” International Business Times, April 17, 2015. 55. Beijing has constantly tried to persuade Seoul to hold summit talks with Pyongyang to stabilize the situations, for example, as revealed by former ROK president Lee Myung-bak’s memoir published in early 2015. Choe Sang-Hunjan, “North Korea Sought Talks and Attached a Hefty Price Tag, South’s Ex-Leader Says,” New York Times, January 30, 2015. 56. Michael R. Gordon, “China Set to Press North Korea Further on Nuclear Aims, Kerry Says,” New York Times, February 15, 2014; Anthony Kuhn, “Why China Supports New Sanctions against North Korea,” NPR, March 18, 2016. 57. North Korea network expert panel, “China Snubs North Korea with Leader’s Visit to South Korea,” Guardian, July 3, 2014. Yet, Beijing dispatched Liu Yunshan, a top leader, to attend Pyongyang’s big celebration for its party’s seventieth birthday the next year. Fenghuang xinwen (Phoenix news), http://news.ifeng.com/world/special/lysfwcx/, October 12, 2015. 58. Mark E. Manyin and Mary Beth D. Nikitin, “Foreign Assistance to North Korea,” Congressional Research Service, 2014.

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59. Liu Zhihe, “Chaoxian: Xia yige albania?” [(North) Korea: The next Albania?], 21ccom.net, July 2, 2015, http://www.21ccom.net/articles/world/zlwj/20150702126339 _all.html. 60. Yue Cheng, “Jin Zhengen duihua chouheng chao meihan” [Kim Jong-un hates China more than US and South Korea], Duowei Xinwen, Beijing, http://global.dwnews .com/news/2016–03–27/59728176.html. 61. Sue Mi Terry and Max Boot, “The Wrong Lessons from North Korea: Avoiding a Nuclear Iran,” Foreign Affairs, April 22, 2015. 62. Deng Yuwen, “China Should Abandon North Korea,” Financial Times, February 27, 2013. Several Chinese analysts the author privately interviewed in 2013 and 2014 “agreed fully” with Deng, although some thought Deng had “just jumped the gun.” 63. Jane Perlez, “Chinese Editor Suspended for Article on North Korea,” New York Times, April 2, 2013. 64. Deng Yuwen, “Chaoxian bengkui de kenengxing jiqi fangshi” [The possibility and ways of a Korean collapse], Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore, April 30, 2016. 65. Terence Roehrig, South Korea, Japan and the U.S. Nuclear Umbrella: Extended Deterrence and Nuclear Weapons in the Post–Cold War World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 66. Shannon Tiezzi, “China Responds to North Korea’s Nuclear Threat,” Diplomat, November 21, 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/11/china-responds-to-north-koreas -nuclear-threat/; “China Urges US to Accept North Korea’s ‘Olive Branch,’ ” Diplomat, January 17, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/china-urges-us-to-accept-north-koreas -olive-branch/. 67. See Terence Roehrig’s chapter in this volume. 68. Julian Ryall, “Frustrated China Unable to Abandon North Korea,” Deutsche Welle, May 22, 2014, http://www.dw.com/en/frustrated-china-unable-to-abandon-north -korea/a-17652998. 69. Hu Jintao, “Meeting the PLA Delegation,” Xinhua and CCTV, March 12, 2011. 70. Ren Weidong, “Jingti jie chaoxian huati zuo zhongguo wenzhang” [Watch out for borrowing Korean topic for Chinese article], Huanqiu Shibao, October 13, 2014. 71. Fei-Ling Wang and Esi A. Elliot, “China in Africa: Presence, Perceptions and Prospects,” Journal of Contemporary China 23 (2014): 1012–32. 72. CCTV, “Xi Jinping: Tuidong haiyang qiangguo jianshe” [Xi Jinping: To push forward the construction of a maritime great power], CCTV news, Beijing, July 31, 2013. 73. PLA Navy major general Yang Yi quoted in Liu Bin et al., “Sijuji ganbu de ‘shijie guan’ ” [Worldviews of the bureau-level officials], Nanfang Zhoumu, Guangzhou, April 27, 2012. 74. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, “Zhonghua renmin gongheguo he erluosi lianbang guanyu shenhua quanmian zhenlue huoban guanxi, changdao hezuo gongyin de linahe shengming” [The joint communiqué by the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation on deepening comprehensive strategic partnership, promoting winwin cooperation], Moscow, May 8, 2015, http://www.mfa.gov.cn/chn//gxh/zlb/smgg/ t1262144.htm. 75. Guo Yina and Lu Rui, “Chinese Ambassador to [North] Korea: China and [North] Korea Should Seize the Opportunity to Deepen Cooperation,” Xinhua, May 4, 2015. 76. “North Korea’s ‘Biggest’ Nuclear Test Sparks Global Outrage,” BBC News, September 9, 2016.

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77. Xinhua Commentary, “Chaoxian heshiyan rang diqu jushi gengjia fuza” [Korean nuclear test further complicated the regional situation], Xinhua, September 9, 2016. 78. Chung Jae-jung, “Views on Contingency Plan of China under Xi Jinping’s Leadership for Abrupt Serious Development in North Korea,” Vantage Point 38 (April 2015): 40. 79. Sue Mi Terry, “A Korea Whole and Free: Why Unifying the Peninsula Won’t Be So Bad after All,” Foreign Affairs, July–August 2014; John Delury and Chung-in Moon, “A Reunified Theory: Should We Welcome the Collapse of North Korea?” Foreign Affairs, November–December 2014. 80. The United States, especially Congress, seems to be developing more new suspicions about Beijing regarding the latter’s NPT commitment. See Steven Mufson, “Obama’s Quiet Nuclear Deal with China Raises Proliferation Concerns,” Washington Post, May 10, 2015. 81. Zhou Huilai, “Zhongguo fangqi chaoxian hai weishiguozao” [It’s too early for China to abandon (North) Korea], Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore, June 15, 2010; Jane Perlez, “Chinese Annoyance with North Korea Bubbles to the Surface,” New York Times, December 21, 2014. The election of US President Donald Trump and the political scandal involving ROK President Park in late 2016 may indeed create more possibilities and even new openings for Beijing to reconsider its relationship with North Korea. 82. Xu Litai, “Bei han chufan zhongguo hexin liye” [North Korea offends China’s core interest], May 21, 2015, 21ccom, http://21ccom.net/articles/world/qqgc/20150518 124817.html. 83. Jun Baoyan, “Zhongguo jundui jianjue baowei guojia liyi” [Chinese military resolutely protects national interests], Jiefangjun Bao, July 13, 2016. 84. See Michael D. Cohen’s chapter in this volume. 85. Chinese officials have started to openly voice this concern. Fu Yin, “People’s Congress Press Conference,” Xinhua, March 4, 2016. 86. See Sung Chull Kim’s chapter in this volume. 87. Senior Chinese scholars and military analysts from Beijing, speaking at the USChina Seminar on Chinese Nuclear Perspectives, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, May 12, 2015.

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▲ SPEAR VERSUS SHIELD? North Korea’s Nuclear Path and Challenges to the NPT System Yangmo Ku

Since its inception in 1968, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has played a critical role in spreading the norm of nuclear nonproliferation and in preventing many non-nuclear-weapon states from developing nuclear weapons.1 Scholars estimate that without the making of the NPT, approximately fi fteen countries would have become nuclear states in the 1960s and 1970s. 2 After the end of the Cold War, several former Soviet republics—Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus—possessed many nuclear weapons but returned them to Russia voluntarily. 3 South Africa and Libya also gave up their nuclear weapon programs in 1991 and 2003, respectively. As shown in these examples, the NPT has been an important legal means to preclude nuclear proliferation in the international community. However, the NPT has also demonstrated its weakness as three states— India, Pakistan, and Israel—never signed the treaty and therefore developed nuclear weapons outside the treaty’s jurisdiction. This has seriously damaged the universality of the NPT. In addition, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea), which had signed the NPT in 1985, withdrew from the treaty in 2003 and became a de facto nuclear power. It is important to note that North Korea’s nuclear adventurism has caused additional damage to the validity of the NPT because it set a precedent for other NPT members to consider whether they want to develop nuclear weapons in the future.

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Since its withdrawal from the NPT in 2003, the DPRK has continually sought to develop nuclear weapons and, thus far, has conducted five nuclear tests. It has showed marked progress in its missile programs as well. A report issued by the US-Korea Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies estimates that North Korea currently possesses ten to sixteen nuclear weapons, including six to eight devices fashioned from plutonium and four to eight from weapons-grade uranium.4 The DPRK has also advanced its capacity to miniaturize nuclear warheads for missiles, though technological problems remain. On the basis of these accomplishments, the Kim Jong-un regime has pursued since March 2013 the so- called byeongjin strategy, which focuses on two targets simultaneously—nuclear and economic development—for national success. 5 In this context, this chapter addresses following questions: Why has North Korea persistently sought to develop nuclear weapons? How has the DPRK taken advantage of the weakness of the NPT system to achieve the status of a de facto nuclear state? What implications does nuclear North Korea have for the NPT system and the East Asian region? By answering these questions, this chapter argues that regime survival has consistently been the most important motive for North Korea’s nuclear development. North Korea became a de facto nuclear power by primarily utilizing four weak elements in the NPT system: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards system, the NPT withdrawal clause, few constraints on transfers of nuclear technology, and the freedom to conduct underground nuclear tests. The chapter also contends that the NPT system itself will continue to have little actual power to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem. Additionally, North Korea’s persistent nuclear threat could gradually increase neighboring countries’ desire to acquire nuclear weapons, thus damaging peace and stability in the East Asian region. In the subsequent sections, this chapter first explores basic characteristics of the NPT system. While examining North Korea’s nuclear path, it then analyzes how the DPRK has, since its signing of the treaty in 1985, leveraged the weakness of the NPT system to attain the status of a de facto (though not a de jure) nuclear state. Finally, it describes some of the implications that the North Korean nuclear problem has for the NPT system and the East Asian region, before outlining a possible solution to reduce regional tensions.

Basic Characteristics of the NPT System The NPT and its operational arm, the IAEA, have been at the center of a vast nonproliferation regime encompassing various restrictive rules and specialized control institutions, including the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and the

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Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Over the last forty-five years, the NPT has served as a conceptual framework “essential for understanding and properly addressing a wide range of issues that relate to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.”6 The NPT, which came into effect on March 5, 1970, had the following three objectives: (1) to prevent nonnuclear states from acquiring nuclear weapons, (2) to disarm the nuclear weapons of the five nuclear states, and (3) to guarantee nonnuclear states’ rights to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.7 This treaty came out of a grand bargain between the non-nuclear-weapon states and the five nuclear weapon states. The former accepted the nonproliferation obligation in return for the latter’s disarmament obligations and sharing of nuclear technology for peaceful uses. The IAEA, established in 1957, has taken the responsibility for enforcing the terms of the NPT. As shown in its Article 3, the NPT assigned the task of assuring compliance with its terms to the IAEA in order to prevent diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.8 To fulfill its nonproliferation mandate, “the most important task of the IAEA is the prompt detection and reporting of unauthorized nuclear work in any non-nuclear-weapon state that is a party to the NPT.”9 According to Article 2 of the IAEA statute, the agency’s primary goal is to encourage the peaceful uses of atomic energy while seeking to make sure that nuclear materials would not be utilized for any military purpose.10 This NPT system, however, has fundamental weaknesses. First of all, depending on the intent of users, peaceful nuclear activities can be easily diverted for military purposes. The advance of technology further lowered the technological barriers between civilian nuclear activities and nuclear weapons. One example is the spread of centrifuge enrichment technology. This technology enables states to produce low- enriched uranium to fuel reactors, but states can use the same technology to make a nuclear bomb by acquiring weapons-grade uranium within weeks.11 Second, NPT members are allowed, under Article 10, to withdraw from the treaty on three months’ notice. Third, the NPT and the IAEA have an ineffective enforcement mechanism. If NPT member states violate IAEA safeguards, the IAEA must inform the UN Security Council of their violations. In response, the UN Security Council is supposed to enact a resolution to assess blame for the violation and to enact some sort of punishment. This enforcement mechanism, however, does not often work well because of diverging interests among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

North Korea’s Nuclear Path and Challenges to the NPT System It appears that regime survival has been the most significant motive for North Korea’s nuclear development.12 During the Korean War (1950–53),

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the founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung, began to pursue nuclear weapons owing to the US nuclear threat from several sources. US general Douglas MacArthur seriously took into consideration the use of nuclear weapons to end the war early.13 In addition, President Dwight Eisenhower deployed numerous tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea in the 1950s. By the 1970s, more than seven hundred US nuclear weapons were there. Under these circumstances, the DPRK kept asking its patron, the Soviet Union, to provide it with a nuclear facility. As a result, in 1965 the Soviet Union established a nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, and the DPRK tried to produce plutonium to use to develop nuclear weapons in order to deter what it perceived to be American aggression and South Korean acquiescence. The end of the Cold War may have further sparked North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The DPRK suddenly lost its communist allies, including the Soviet Union and East European countries. The loss of economic aid greatly damaged the North Korean economy, as the DPRK had been heavily dependent on trade with those countries. Moreover, the North Korean state became politically isolated from the international community because the Soviet Union restored diplomatic relations with the North’s archenemy, South Korea, in 1990. The Soviet Union also allowed South Korea to join the United Nations (UN). Even China normalized its relationship with the Republic of Korea (ROK), in 1992. Responding to these aggravating circumstances, North Korea reaffi rmed its desire to pursue nuclear development, as it could use its nuclear program as a military guarantor for its regime’s survival and acquire a diplomatic bargaining chip with the United States and its allies.14 Given such a significantly weakened economy and isolated political condition, North Korea may have resorted to an asymmetrical force—nuclear threat—for its survival, as the DPRK could no longer compete with South Korea in terms of conventional military forces. Furthermore, the DPRK leaders may have learned from two incidents— the 2003 Iraq War and the 2011 Libyan Civil War—that giving up nuclear weapons could easily lead to a military invasion and regime collapse.15 Iraq’s Saddam Hussein tried to develop nuclear weapons in the 1990s but ceased doing so later and was ultimately removed from power by the United States. The Muammar Qaddafi regime in Libya voluntarily abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 because of Western persuasion and pressure. But this made it easier for forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to conduct a military intervention into the Libyan Civil War during the Arab Spring of 2011, and Libyan rebel forces fi nally killed Qaddafi. Kim Jong-il’s stroke in 2008 may have also strengthened North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, because its strong nuclear capability was regarded as a guarantor of regime survival under unstable domestic conditions.16 This could be a cause of two North Korean provocations, the launch of a longrange rocket in April 2009 and its second nuclear test in May 2009.

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Given the DPRK’s nuclear ambitions, the following sections address how the DPRK has taken advantage of the weaknesses of the NPT system to achieve the status of a de facto nuclear state. North Korea has utilized the following four weak elements of the NPT system: the IAEA safeguards system, the NPT withdrawal clause, unrestrained transfers of nuclear technology, and the holding of underground nuclear tests. IAEA Safeguards System

According to the NPT, all non-nuclear-weapon states are subject to comprehensive safeguards thoroughly implemented by the IAEA. All states that sign the NPT must make a comprehensive safeguards agreement (CSA) with the IAEA within eighteen months of signature. The IAEA has the right to judge a state’s compliance of its safeguards by verifying that “nuclear material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”17 A CSA includes “provisions for the timely detection of diversion of significant quantities of nuclear materials using materials accountancy, containment, and surveillance of all nuclear materials.”18 As mentioned before, following the enforcement mechanism of the NPT system, the IAEA must inform the UN Security Council if NPT member states violate IAEA safeguards. It is up to the UN Security Council to assess such violations and adopt sanctions of some kind to rectify them. North Korea, however, was not effectively constrained by the IAEA’s safeguards system.19 In the early 1980s, the United States became highly concerned about North Korea’s nuclear program, which had been tracked by US satellites. Using indigenous expertise and the foreign procurement of materials, North Korea began constructing a 5-megawatt gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon to produce plutonium. The reactor went operational in January 1986. 20 The United States urged Moscow to persuade Pyongyang to sign the NPT in the hope that it would lead to international inspections and control of the DPRK’s nuclear facilities. In December 1985, the Soviet Union, which held talks with the Kim Il-sung regime over civilian nuclear power stations, promised to provide four light-water nuclear reactors to the DPRK in return for a nonproliferation pledge. As a result of Soviet persuasion, North Korea signed the NPT on December 12, 1985.21 Despite the DPRK’s joining the NPT, it was not until April 1992 that North Korea signed its NPT-mandated CSA.22 The IAEA had little ability to force North Korea to sign the CSA as stipulated in the NPT. Instead, North Korea was prompted to sign the safeguards agreement by the 1991 US withdrawal of its tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea, the 1991 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and the ROK’s promise to suspend the annual Team Spirit joint military exercises with the United States in return for the DPRK’s signing of the CSA.23 During

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that delay period, North Korea avoided the IAEA’s thorough inspection of its nuclear facilities and gained enough plutonium to develop several nuclear weapons. Even after its signature on the CSA, North Korea did not fully accept IAEA safeguards by denying access to other suspicious nuclear facilities that the DPRK had not originally declared. In July 1992, the IAEA revealed that North Korea had likely attempted three reprocessing campaigns (not one, as it had claimed in its May 1992 declaration to the IAEA).24 Facing IAEA’s unprecedented request for special inspections and Washington’s adoption of a hard-line approach, the DPRK threatened to withdraw from the NPT in 1993, though it repealed its withdrawal decision one day before it came into effect. Therefore, although North Korea was a signatory of the NPT, the treaty and IAEA safeguards system did not prevent it from extracting nuclear materials from its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. Meanwhile, Iraq’s secret nuclear program became a backdrop for the introduction of a change to the IAEA’s safeguards system. Iraq’s clandestine nuclear program, masked by its IAEA-inspected peaceful project, was discovered after the 1990 Gulf War. This surprise raised serious international concerns over the effectiveness of the IAEA’s traditional safeguards system. The IAEA was only able to inspect materials and facilities that each state declared under the safeguard convention. This narrow approach failed to detect serious noncompliance beyond those declared facilities. Thus, disclosure of Iraq’s secret violations of the IAEA’s traditional safeguards prompted the IAEA to improve its safeguards system. As a consequence, the IAEA announced in 1997 the making of the Model Additional Protocol (INFCIRC/540), which “extended the obligations of states to declare, report and grant on-site access to their entire range of nuclear fuel cycle activities—from mining to the disposition of nuclear waste.”25 As a breakthrough legal instrument to improve the safeguards system, the Model Additional Protocol granted IAEA inspectors the right to seek out and make known all undeclared nuclear activities. However, this new protocol has a clear limitation: It is up to NPT members to voluntarily accept the agreement. North Korea has not accepted the Model Additional Protocol and thus is not subject to the strengthened safeguards system. Withdrawal from the NPT

Moving beyond the weak IAEA safeguards system, North Korea adroitly took advantage of Article 10 of the NPT, which allows each party to withdraw from the treaty “if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of the treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.”26 A state that intends to withdraw from the NPT is just required to give notice of such withdrawal to all other NPT members and to the UN Security Council three months in advance. Over the last forty-five years of

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the NPT, only North Korea has applied this clause, as it withdrew from the NPT in January 2003. This provocative act did not bring about any immediate sanctions on the DPRK, although it did damage its international image and economic cooperation with other nations in the long term. This escape clause in the NPT provided North Korea with a useful means to fulfill its nuclear ambitions. North Korea’s diplomatic threat to withdraw from the NPT worked well during the first nuclear crisis in 1992–94. Facing international pressure to give up its nuclear ambitions, the DPRK embarked on nuclear brinksmanship and skillfully leveraged the United States and the IAEA.27 When North Korea refused required IAEA inspections in 1992, the United States feared a North Korean withdrawal from the NPT, which would seriously undermine the then upcoming 1995 NPT Review Conference. This led to the delayed investigation of North Korea’s alleged violation.28 In March 1993, another North Korean threat to quit the NPT ushered in hasty diplomatic maneuvers led by the United States that brought significant advantages to North Korea. In July 1993, the United States initiated a series of diplomatic negotiations with the DPRK in Geneva. During this diplomatic process, the United States actually planned to bomb the North Korean nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.29 However, this tension eased owing to the mediation of former US president Jimmy Carter in June 1994. As a result of their negotiations, the United States and North Korea reached the so-called Agreed Framework, in which the DPRK promised to freeze development at its nuclear facilities in return for annual receipt of 500,000 tons of heavy oil and the provision of two 2,000-megawatt light-water reactors by the United States and its allies. Unlike the onetime meeting of January 1992, these nuclear discussions meant ongoing, direct diplomatic negotiations with the United States, the fi rst time this had happened since the Korean War. As a result, the IAEA became marginalized because the DPRK would discuss safeguards matters with the United States instead. South Korea was likewise excluded from the nuclear process. Furthermore, North Korea achieved the status of a de facto nuclear state after its actual withdrawal from the NPT. The revelation of North Korea’s secret uranium- enrichment program in October 2002 led to the second nuclear crisis, culminating in DPRK’s withdrawal from the NPT in January 2003. After that, the DPRK “kicked out IAEA inspectors, restarted a nuclear reactor that had been frozen under the 1994 Agreed Framework, and moved spent fuel rods to a reprocessing facility that can produce plutonium.”30 This clearly revealed the fundamental weakness of the NPT and the IAEA, which had little capacity to constrain North Korea’s provocative actions. In February 2003, the IAEA Board of Governors declared that the DPRK had not complied with its obligations under its CSA based on the NPT, thereby requesting the UN Security Council’s involvement.

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However, the UN Security Council could not take any immediate action toward North Korea because China and Russia were opposed to the council’s involvement, given the overarching division in the council over the Iraqi War. Because of this stalemate, South Korea and Japan pushed the United States to resume talks with North Korea. Pressed by Seoul and Tokyo, the George W. Bush administration initiated multilateral talks chaired by China in August 2003. The Six-Party Talks, in which the United States, China, the DPRK, the ROK, Japan, and Russia participated, had six rounds of negotiations from 2003 to 2008. Although they produced a 2005 joint statement and a 2007 joint action plan, the talks could not finally resolve the North Korean nuclear problem, owing to the DPRK’s provocative actions and the United States’ inflexible stance.31 Utilizing weaknesses of the NPT system and ineffective multilateral talks, therefore, North Korea gradually advanced its nuclear capability with few constraints. Unrestricted Transfers of Nuclear Technology

North Korea also challenged the NPT system by acquiring nuclear technology from Pakistan. The DPRK conducted missiles-for-nuclear-technology trade with Pakistan between the mid-1990s and early 2000s. It was reported that the DPRK provided Pakistan with “missile parts it needs to build a nuclear arsenal capable of reaching every strategic site in India.” In return for this, Pakistan provided North Korea with “many of the designs for gas centrifuges and much of the machinery it needs to make highly enriched uranium for the country’s latest nuclear weapon project.”32 In February 2004, this news was confirmed. Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, accepted full responsibility for leaking weapon secrets and equipment to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. It was believed that “A. Q. Khan could not have sold nuclear secrets and sent technology for enriching uranium abroad without the knowledge of top military officials.”33 In the early 1990s, Pakistan eagerly sought nuclear delivery systems based on its already acquired capability to build nuclear weapons using highly enriched uranium cores. It was necessary for Pakistan to invest in ballistic missiles in order to have a secure nuclear-strike capability against India. Despite its strong ambitions for developing missile programs, Pakistan had many constraints, including US-led multinational efforts to restrict trade in ballistic and cruise missile technology.34 In 1987, the United States and its allies established the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in an attempt to restrict the spread of ballistic missiles. Owing to this restraint, Pakistan could not purchase long-range ballistic missiles from China, which received strong pressure from the United States, and thus it chose North Korea as an alternative supplier. Of course, North Korea had not signed the MTCR. Pakistan’s lack of hard currency hampered it from purchasing

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North Korean ballistic missiles, but “it could provide North Korea with a route to nuclear weapons using highly enriched uranium. This route would not only circumvent North Korea’s Agreed Framework with the United States, but would also be difficult to detect using satellite imagery.”35 As an NPT signatory, North Korea evidently violated its NPT obligations by developing a centrifuge-based uranium-enrichment program with the support from Pakistan. Under DPRK’s 1992 CSA, North Korea was not prohibited from conducting uranium enrichment because North Korea would only have to declare such facilities when safeguarded material was introduced into the facility.36 But it is a clear violation of Article 2 of the NPT, 37 which stipulates that “each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer . . . of nuclear weapons . . . not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons . . . and not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.”38 Simply put, under this article, North Korea agreed not to produce or otherwise secure nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. This was also a violation of the 1992 Joint Declaration of a Denuclearized Korean Peninsula, under which North Korea promised not to undertake plutonium reprocessing or uranium enrichment. Additionally, according to the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea was required to make progress in implementing the joint declaration. Strictly speaking, it was not a violation of any international treaty for Pakistan—a nonsignatory to the NPT—to have a nuclear trade with North Korea. The nuclearfor-missile deal did, however, violate “Pakistan’s solemn assurances to the international community that it would abide by global nonproliferation norms and export control regulations.”39 Therefore, the NPT system had not functioned effectively, failing to preclude A. Q. Khan from transferring nuclear technology to other states, including North Korea, Iran, and Libya.40 Freedom to Conduct Underground Nuclear Tests

Since its withdrawal from the NPT in January 2003, North Korea has enjoyed freedom to conduct underground nuclear tests. Outside the NPT, the DPRK was able to conduct nuclear tests five times—once in 2006, 2009, and 2013 and twice in 2016—as well as gain more nuclear materials through reprocessing at plutonium-based facilities at Yongbyon. The NPT, the IAEA, and the UN Security Council could not prevent North Korea from taking such provocative actions. The Six-Party Talks also failed to hinder the DPRK from pursuing its nuclear adventurism, although it produced two agreements in September 2005 and February 2007. Those nuclear tests enabled North Korea to enhance its nuclear capability, seriously damaging the validity and credibility of the NPT system.

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Another pillar of the nonproliferation regime, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), should have played a key role in constraining North Korea’s nuclear tests. The Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited all nonunderground nuclear explosions, dates from 1963. The international community was unable to adopt a comprehensive ban on nuclear explosive testing primarily owing to the lack of an incentive for nuclear weapon states, particularly France and China, to conclude an agreement to cover underground tests.41 In the wake of long negotiations, the CTBT was fi nally opened for signature in 1996, and more than a hundred countries signed the treaty in that year. According to the treaty, “each State Party undertakes not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion, and to prohibit and prevent any such nuclear explosion at any place under its jurisdiction or control.”42 Moreover, the CTBT had “no special withdrawal clause and it called for an elaborate global network of observational technology to help to verify compliance by detecting and confi rming violations.”43 However, this treaty has not yet entered into force owing to nonratification by eight major states, including the United States and China. Negotiations over the CTBT have been very difficult because of disputes over the CTBT’s scope, the monitoring and verification systems, procedures for onsite inspections, and conditions for the treaty’s entry into force. As of September 2016, 183 countries have signed the treaty, and 164 have ratified it.44 But North Korea has not signed the CTBT. Thus, the CTBT has made no significant progress in preventing North Korea’s underground nuclear tests. Given the enforcement mechanism of the NPT system, in which the IAEA reports states’ violations of the NPT to the UN Security Council, North Korea’s nuclear tests brought about the imposition of UN Security Council’s economic sanctions. UN Resolutions 1718, 1874, 2094, and 2270 were adopted after the nuclear tests. UN Resolution 2087 was also made after North Korea’s fi ring of a long-range missile in January 2013. These resolutions prohibited North Korea’s arms trade with other nations (except in small arms), banned the exporting of luxury goods to the DPRK, and restricted fi nancial exchanges with North Korean trade companies.45 However, these UN Security Council resolutions and economic sanctions have not worked effectively, as China, the DPRK’s patron, has taken a lukewarm stance on the issue. For China, the denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula is an important policy goal, but it does not want North Korea to collapse because of harsh economic sanctions. Chinese leaders are afraid of the negative consequences that the North Korean collapse could bring, such as a massive influx of North Korean refugees into Chinese territory, sharing a border with a nation potentially hostile to China, and an unstable regional economic order. Taking advantage of China’s ambivalent stance, North Korea has continued to conduct nuclear and missile tests despite economic

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sanctions, thereby becoming a de facto nuclear state. Given this result, the NPT system has been ineffective in restraining North Korea’s development as a nuclear power.

Conclusion: Implications of Nuclear North Korea North Korea’s skillful use of the weak NPT system enabled the DPRK to become a de facto nuclear state. Thus, some experts argue that the beginning of the end of the NPT has arrived. Others claim that though the NPT did not prevent North Korea from acquiring a nuclear capacity, it has impeded the nation’s import of critical technologies and, in so doing, has slowed the North Korean nuclear and missile programs and raised their cost. Moving beyond these claims, what other implications does a nuclear North Korea have with regard to the NPT system and, in addition, to the future stability of the East Asian region? First, the NPT system itself will continually have little actual power to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem unless North Korea returns to the NPT and the international community greatly improves the NPT’s enforcement mechanism simultaneously. As noted earlier, North Korea has seriously damaged the norm of nuclear nonproliferation in the world. The NPT system has not worked effectively in dealing with its recalcitrance. Instead, bilateral and multilateral dialogues have played and will play a key role in addressing North Korea’s nuclear adventurism, though they have not been successful thus far. Following the fi rst nuclear crisis in 1992–94, bilateral negotiations between the United States and North Korea culminated in the Agreed Framework, in which the US and its allies promised to provide the DPRK with heavy oil and two light-water reactors in return for its freezing of nuclear facilities. But this agreement was officially annulled in October 2002, when North Korea’s secret uranium-enrichment program was revealed. In the wake of the second nuclear crisis, the United States chose to handle the issue multilaterally, and the Six-Party Talks began. From 2003 to 2008, six countries—the US, China, the ROK, the DPRK, Japan, and Russia—often conducted multilateral dialogues to resolve the North Korean nuclear problem. As a result of these talks, two joint agreements were made on September 19, 2005, and February 13, 2007. However, these agreements did not produce successful outcomes. Therefore, the international community depended on either bilateral or multilateral dialogues to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, rather than emphasizing international institutions such as the NPT and the IAEA. Second, the process in which the DPRK has attained the status of a de facto nuclear state offers two opposing implications. On the one hand, such process may have set a bad precedent for the proliferation of nuclear

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weapons. A country that potentially seeks nuclear armament could use the North Korean case as a model for developing nuclear weapons. In other words, a precedent has been provided of a country that could become a nuclear state if it can endure harsh international pressure. On the other hand, the North Korean case may have taught others the importance of adhering to the NPT. North Korea’s economic underdevelopment and diplomatic isolation could give a clear message that nuclear development would bring too much sacrifice to a potential nuclear state. Over the last two and a half decades, North Korea has lost important opportunities to cultivate its economy, as its consistent nuclear adventurism led to the imposition of harsh economic sanctions from the United Nations and individual states, particularly the United States. In addition, the DPRK’s nuclear development generated an image of a rogue state in the international community and thus prevented the DPRK from attracting foreign investment, which is an important factor for economic growth. As a consequence, North Korean citizens suffer most from their unruly regime’s nuclear adventurism, as international economic sanctions exert tremendous hardships not on elite groups but on the common people. North Korean elites can sustain their privileges even under terrible economic conditions while “around two million children, pregnant women and elderly North Koreans are suffering from malnutrition and 18 million people are experiencing some kind of food shortage.”46 Third, North Korea as a de facto nuclear power could increase neighboring countries’ desires to have nuclear weapons, although it does not immediately push other Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea to develop them. Indeed, some conservative politicians and thinkers in Japan and South Korea have mentioned the necessity of developing a nuclear weapon program to counter North Korea’s nuclear threats. For instance, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s former secretary general Ishiba Shigeru stated, “Having nuclear plants shows to other nations that Japan can make nuclear weapons. . . . With nearby North Korea working on a weapons program, Japan needs to assert itself and say it can also make them—but is choosing not to do so.”47 Ultra-hawkish politicians such as former Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintaro and the late former finance minister Nakagawa Shoichi openly argued that Japan should have nuclear weapons.48 South Korean politician Chung Mong-joon also said, “We could not maintain peace without the balance of terror. . . . We want a nuclear weapons free Korean Peninsula, but paradoxically we need to develop nuclear weapons to achieve that goal.”49 Conservative commentator Kim Dae-jung also argued that South Korea needed to start its own nuclear weapon program and make Northeast Asia a safe region by the balance of nuclear terror. 50 In addition, 66 percent of the South Korean public surveyed by the Asan Institute for Policy Analysis in February 2013 supported

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South Korea’s autonomous development of nuclear weapons for deterring North Korea’s nuclear threats. 51 In this context, how should the international community deal with the North Korean nuclear problem, which seems extremely hard to resolve? Answers are difficult to come by owing to an intrinsic dilemma. The United States and North Korea currently have no strong motives for resuming diplomatic talks, as the two previous diplomatic attempts in the 1990s and 2000s failed and resulted in strong mutual mistrust. A preemptive attack against North Korea’s nuclear facilities cannot be a viable option either, because it could trigger the second Korean War and bring about tremendous military and civilian casualties. On the other hand, maintaining strategic patience, a policy taken by the Barack Obama administration, could allow the DPRK to stockpile more nuclear weapons and to even develop the technology to put a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile. 52 Another plausible scenario—the collapse of the current Kim Jong-un regime triggered by power struggles among its top leaders—could be very dangerous too, because it could produce political and military instability and spark an unintended military confl ict between South and North Korea, as well as between the United States and China. For this reason, it might be inappropriate for the international community to push too ardently for the DPRK’s regime to collapse. Meanwhile, many pundits have predicted since 1994 the demise of the North Korean regime, but the DPRK has shown a significant level of resilience in response to internal and external shocks, including the death of top leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, harsh economic crises, and international economic sanctions. It would be implausible, furthermore, to imagine that the international community, particularly the United States, recognizes North Korea as a de jure nuclear state and makes efforts to control the transfer of the DPRK’s nuclear technology and materials to other nations or nonstate actors. These actions could deal a fatal blow to the validity of the NPT by rewarding a serious rule violator. Considering these circumstances, I think there is currently no panacea for resolving the North Korean nuclear problem. It also appears unrealistic to expect the Kim Jong-un regime to return to the NPT and/or to the negotiating table for denuclearization. The regime has already declared North Korea to be a nuclear state, and it places enormous weight on nuclear weapons for enhancing its regime security and legitimacy. In this adverse circumstance, one feasible option might be to try to manage the North Korean nuclear crisis more safely through an engagement policy. Given the history of the nuclear standoff between the DPRK and the international community over the last two decades, I realize that North Korea’s nuclear development was at least frozen and delayed during diplomatic talks. Of course, this goal would not be easy to achieve owing to the DPRK’s recalcitrant actions and

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top US leaders’ notably negative view of the DPRK. Nevertheless, this engagement policy is worthy of pursuit, as it could at least lead to the more stable management of the North Korean nuclear crisis than the other options mentioned above—an increase in North Korea’s nuclear weapon stockpile, political and military instability, or the outbreak of war.

Notes 1. In this chapter, the NPT system is defined as a mechanism in which the NonProliferation Treaty and its agent, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) operate. The treaty itself functions as a legal means to provide overarching guidelines for nuclear nonproliferation, and the IAEA works as a practical agent to fulfill the mission. This definition is much narrower than that of a nonproliferation regime, which encompasses a variety of restrictive rules and specialized control institutions, including the NPT, the IAEA, the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and the NuclearWeapon-Free Zones (NWFZs). 2. Mark Hilborne, “The NPT,” in Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation, ed. Harsh V. Pant (New York: Routledge, 2012), 255. 3. Hans Blix, “Introduction: The Present Nuclear Order, How It Came About, Why It May Not Last,” in Nuclear Proliferation and International Order: Challenges to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, ed. Olav Njolstad (New York: Routledge, 2011), 7. 4. Joel S. Wit and Sun Young Ahn, “North Korea’s Nuclear Futures: Technology and Strategy,” US-Korea Institute at SAIS (2015), 17. 5. Tak Sung Han and Jeon Kyung Joo, “Can North Korea Catch Two Rabbits at Once: Nuke and Economy? One Year of the Byeongjin Line in North Korea and Its Future,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 26 (June 2014): 133–53. 6. Hee-Seog Kwon, “Is the NPT in Trouble? Setting the Stage for the 2015 Review Conference,” Asian Journal of Peacebuilding 2 (2014): 264. 7. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), “Information Circular (INFCIRC/ 140): Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” (April 22, 1970), https://www .iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/documents/infcircs/1970/infcirc140.pdf. 8. Richard D. Burns and Philip E. Coyle III, The Challenges of Nuclear NonProliferation (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 53–57. 9. Pierre Goldschmidt, “Safeguards Noncompliance: A Challenge for the IAEA and the UN Security Council,” Arms Control Today, January–February 2010. 10. IAEA, “The Statute of the IAEA,” https://www.iaea.org/about/statute#a1–2. 11. Victor Gilinsky and Henry Sokolski, “Serious Rules for Nuclear Power without Proliferation,” Nonproliferation Review 21 (2014): 79. 12. For a detailed account of North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear development, see the Wilson Center, “North Korean Nuclear History,” http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org /collection/113/north-korean-nuclear-history. 13. Walter C. Clemens, “North Korea’s Quest for Nuclear Weapons: New Historical Evidence,” Journal of East Asian Studies 10 (2010): 127–54. 14. Leon V. Sigal, “How to Bring North Korea Back into the NPT,” in Njolstad, Nuclear Proliferation and International Order, 67.

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15. Jing-Dong Yuan, “DPRK Nuclear Challenges and the Politics of Nonproliferation,” in North Korean Nuclear Operationality: Regional Security and Nonproliferation, ed. Gregory J. Moore (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 220. 16. Moojin Yang, “Bukhaek munje ui gyeongkwa wa jaengjeom, geurigo jeongchaekjeok jeeon” [The North Korean nuclear problems: The progress, issues, and policy proposals], Hyundae Bukhan Yeongu 16 (2013): 114–15. 17. IAEA, “Information Circular (INFCIRC/153): The Structure and Content of Agreements between the Agency and States Required in Connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” (June 1972), https://www.iaea.org/sites/default /files/publications/documents/infcircs/1972/infcirc153.pdf. 18. Robert L. Brown, Nuclear Authority: The IAEA and the Absolute Weapon (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015), 70. 19. Jihwan Hwang, “Haekhwaksan ui gukjejeongchi wa bihwaksan ui yuigi: Bukhan kwa iran ui sarye yeongu” [International relations of nuclear proliferation and the nonproliferation regime in crisis: Challenges from North Korea and Iran], Gukjekwangye Yeongu 14 (December 2008): 66–70. 20. Mary Beki Nikitin, “North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: Technical Issues,” Congressional Research Service Report, RL34256 (April 3, 2013): 1. 21. Balbina Y. Hwang, “North Korea: An Isolationist Nuclear State,” in Pant, Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation, 200. 22. Brown, Nuclear Authority, 108–11. Because of this delay, the United States became very suspicious of North Korea’s acts. Indeed, the United States initially took into consideration North Korea’s expressed insecurities and offered, in exchange for signing its CSA, to begin negotiations on diplomatic normalization and economic relations, including trade. 23. Hwang, “North Korea: An Isolationist Nuclear State,” 204. 24. Sigal, “How to Bring North Korea Back,” 67. 25. Burns and Coyle, Challenges of Nuclear Non-Proliferation, 56. 26. IAEA, “Information Circular (INFCIRC/140).” 27. Hwang, “North Korea: An Isolationist Nuclear State,” 205: In late 1992, the United States was undergoing a significant political change from twelve years of conservative Republican rule to the liberal Democratic rule of President Bill Clinton. The IAEA had been struggling to restore legitimacy in the wake of its ineffective inspections in Iraq before the Gulf War. 28. Gilinsky and Sokolski, “Serious Rules for Nuclear Power,” 88. 29. Yuan, “DPRK Nuclear Challenges,” 219. 30. Jean du Preez and William Potter, “North Korea’s Withdrawal from the NPT: A Reality Check,” http://archive.is/xfli. 31. For a detailed account of the process of the Six-Party Talks, see Sigal, “How to Bring North Korea Back,” 65–81. 32. David E. Sanger, “In North Korea and Pakistan, Deep Roots of Nuclear Barter,” New York Times, November 24, 2002. 33. Mike Collett-White, “Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Seeks Clemency for Leaks,” Washington Post, February 4, 2004. 34. Gaurav Kampani, “Second Tier Proliferation: The Case of Pakistan and North Korea,” Nonproliferation Review 9 (Fall–Winter 2002): 109–11. 35. Sharon A. Squassoni, “Weapons of Mass Destruction: Trade between North Korea and Pakistan,” CRS Report for Congress, March 11, 2004, 4–5. The 1994 Agreed

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Framework did not directly address uranium enrichment, as it only dealt with the freezing of North Korea’s plutonium-based nuclear programs. 36. Ibid., 5. 37. Justin Farber, “A Legal Interpretation of North Korea’s Nuclear Program,” Global Tides 6 (2012): 5. While emphasizing North Korea’s violation of Article 2 of the NPT, Farber says, “If North Korea, as a signatory of the NPT, ever pursued the acquirement of nuclear weapons in any way, it would violate international law.” 38. IAEA, “Information Circular (INFCIRC/140).” 39. Kampani, “Second Tier Proliferation,” 107. 40. Paul K. Kerr, Steven A. Hildreth, and Mary Beth D. Nikitin, “Iran-North KoreaSyria Ballistic Missile and Nuclear Cooperation,” CRS Report, May 11, 2015. The NPT system could not constrain North Korea’s transfer of nuclear technology to Syria as well. According to official US accounts, “North Korea assisted Syria with building a nuclear reactor that may have been part of a Syrian nuclear weapons programs.” However, the CRS report claims, “there is no evidence that Iran and North Korea have engaged in nuclear-related trade or cooperation between the two,” despite the existence of their ballistic missile technology cooperation. Although some media reports have indicated alleged instances of nuclear-related cooperation between the two nations, “this information remains speculative and unconfirmed by official sources.” 41. Dean Knox, “The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: Foundations, Context and Outlook,” in Pant, Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation, 263–65. 42. Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, “Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty,” http://www.ctbto.org/fileadmin/content /treaty/treaty_text.pdf. 43. Burns and Coyle, Challenges of Nuclear Non-Proliferation, 90. 44. Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, “Status of Signature and Ratification,” http://www.ctbto.org/the-treaty/status -of-signature-and-ratification. 45. Hyoung-soo Jang, “Daebuk gyeongje jaeje: Hyunghwang kwa jeonmang [Economic sanctions on North Korea: Current situation and future outlook],” KDI Bukhan Gyeongje Yeongu (March 2013): 39–41. 46. Elizabeth Shim, “Majority of North Koreans Suffer from Food Insecurity, Says U.N.,” United Press International, April 9, 2015. 47. “Japan Pro-Bomb Voices Grow Louder amid Nuke Debate,” Associated Press, July 31, 2012. 48. “Nuclear Arms Card for Japan,” Japan Times, April 29, 2013. 49. “Chung Mong-joon: Bukhaek upaegyomyon urido jache haekmujang haeya” [Chung Mong-joon: South Korea should also have nuclear capabilities to remove North Korean nuclear weapons], Yonhap, June 3, 2012. 50. Dae-jung Kim, “Hanguk ui haekmugi nonuihal pilyodo updan malinga?” [South Korean nuclear weapons: Is there no value in discussing the issue?], Chosun Ilbo, February 7, 2011. 51. Jiyoon Kim, Friedhoff Karl, and Chungku Kang, “The Fallout: South Korean Public Opinion Following North Korea’s Third Nuclear Test,” Asan Institute for Policy Studies, Issue Brief, no. 46 (February 25, 2013): 9. 52. Wit and Ahn, “North Korea’s Nuclear Futures,” 11–12.

CONCLUSION Deterrence and Beyond Sung Chull Kim and Michael D. Cohen

The North Korean nuclear challenge is now best thought of as a deterrence problem rather than a denuclearization one. What North Korean provocations can South Korea and the United States deter? What would China’s role be in light of its rivalry with the United States? Can the NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) regime be salvaged in the aftermath of North Korea’s evasion? What are the best policies for regional actors to realize their objectives, peace on the Korean Peninsula, and more broadly, regional stability and international security? North Korea’s nuclear path has entered a “competency trap” and thus is not likely to reverse itself in the near future. According to James March and Johan Olsen, a competency trap is where old institutions resist accommodation of newer efficient elements.1 In North Korea, the competency trap takes place in the redistribution of resources, bureaucratic inertia, and leaders’ security concerns. The few who have taken advantage of the expansion of nuclear weapon development face few incentives to yield their gains. Organizational and bureaucratic structures are in line with the security strategy that is based on nuclear weapons and supporting delivery systems. North Korea has exercised coercive, revisionist diplomacy not simply because it has nuclear weapons but also because its nuclear advancement has made the old bargaining chip, which was used in the 1990s, less beneficial. Tristan Volpe aptly noted this in his chapter. For instance, at the negotiation stage of the Agreed Framework in Geneva in 1994, North Korea, in exchange for only “freezing” its program, was able to obtain the pledge of two light-water reactors. However, the continued increase of its plutonium stockpile and the advancement of its uranium- enrichment program have resulted in a stronger hand when bargaining over its status. The meaning of freeze or denuclearization now differs significantly from that of the period of the negotiation for the Agreed Framework. The United States has adopted “strategic patience” and increased the level of sanctions; it is not likely to replicate the Iran nuclear deal of July 2015 on the Korean

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Peninsula, particularly after North Korea’s fi fth nuclear test in September 2016. The costs of negotiation have therefore increased for every party. The international community, including the five states that participated in the Six-Party Talks from 2003 to 2008, now needs more diplomatic and economic resources to stop or denuclearize North Korea. North Korea also is in a dilemma. On the one hand, its bargaining chip has become too expensive; on the other hand, the pouring of resources to the nuclear program, coupled with the tightened sanctions initiated by the United Nations (UN), will continue to stagnate its economy and likely endanger the legitimacy of the Kim Jong-un regime. North Korea’s above-mentioned competency trap and its diverse provocations on the Korean Peninsula have raised new research questions about the behavior of small nuclear powers and its effect on regional stability. In addition to the long-addressed issues of denuclearization of and engagement with North Korea, scholars and policymakers need to come to terms with the challenges of deterring Pyongyang. Conventional and nuclear deterrence was a significant topic throughout the Cold War. Applying what we know about deterrence to the Korean Peninsula will enrich our understanding of the North Korean nuclear challenge and substantially enrich discussions about policy trade-offs. It is, however, noteworthy that in dealing with the North Korean challenge, the concept of deterrence needs further sophistication and elaboration. The Kenneth N. Waltz–Scott D. Sagan debate has been useful for understanding different aspects of nuclear states’ behavior and approach to risk, but as Thérèse Delpech has pointed out, the behavior of the small nuclear states such as North Korea seems to have long been more risk acceptant than that of the great nuclear powers. The stability-instability paradox, a notion originally presented by Glenn Snyder, seems applicable to the Korean Peninsula, but what type of violence it would cause is unclear.2 As Michael D. Cohen pointed out in his chapter, extant frameworks do not allow us to explain variation in the foreign policy assertiveness of nuclear powers. US extended deterrence is the bottom line of the deterrence strategy on the Korean Peninsula, but its assurance that North Korea perceives needs to be better incorporated into scholarly and policy discussions. Furthermore, there are unique sources of perpetuating insecurity on the peninsula, such as national division, the despotic regime in Pyongyang, and the increasing USChina rivalry. Therefore, despite Washington’s superior nuclear and conventional capability and its joint efforts with South Korea to deter the North, stabilizing deterrence on the Korean Peninsula is not easily achieved.

Limits of Deterrence on the Korean Peninsula To what extent does deterrence work on the Korean Peninsula? North Korea is continuing its nuclear advancement and revisionist strategy; the regime is

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not only surviving but also applying compellence on South Korea and the international community. For example, with five nuclear tests since 2006 and the continued ballistic missile firings, despite warnings from many sides, North Korea has demonstrated that it does not care about international concerns, including those of the United States and South Korea. Furthermore, it has continued military and nonmilitary provocations, including cyberattacks. The consequence is that deterrence against North Korea works to prevent a war but not that much else. This situation seems to support the stability-instability paradox. This is not good news. The logic of the stability-instability paradox is that two competing nuclear powers are not likely to escalate to a nuclear war, but if this is true, then they are likely to conduct indirect or low-intensity attacks. North Korean behavior seems consistent with this logic; however, it is not the same as the standard dyadic setup in the stability-instability paradox. North Korean provocations play out in trilateral relations. Its provocations against South Korea aim to penetrate into the vulnerability of the United States’ extended-deterrence commitments. While enhancing its nuclear capability, North Korea has conducted various forms of low-intensity attacks against South Korea, the ally of the United States: the sinking of a South Korean navy ship Cheonan, the artillery attack on the South Korean island Yeonpyeong, the escalation of cyberattacks, and the placing of mines in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) (for more details, see the chapters by Sung Chull Kim, Van Jackson, and Terence Roehrig). In response, South Korea has strengthened its military cooperation with US forces and adopted the Tailored Deterrence Strategy. Given this situation, the key question is whether or not it is possible to establish a stabilizing deterrence on the Korean Peninsula out of Pyongyang’s low-intensity provocations, backed by its nuclear advancement, and Seoul and Washington’s efforts to contain them. A stabilizing deterrence over the small nuclear power’s challenge requires that the defender nuclear state, the United States in this case, is able to assure the challenger that provocations will be followed by punishments and that restraints will be met with reciprocal restraints. For its part, North Korea has made strenuous efforts to enhance the credibility of its nuclear threat. It has tried to prove that its words and deeds match. Not only has North Korea under Kim Jong-un reiterated its resolve to continue nuclear advancement, including miniaturizing and diversifying the weapons, but it has also demonstrated this through nuclear and missile tests, defying international and inter-Korean agreements. Van Jackson’s chapter in this volume showed that North Korean threats on nuclear tests and missile launches have been followed by corresponding actions. North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests—in 2006, 2009, and 2013 and twice in 2016. It has proved that its weapons’ explosive power is

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increasing. In particular, the September 2016 test produced more yield than previous ones, paralleling, observers estimate, that of the bomb used on Hiroshima. North Korea has also continued the advancement of delivery systems—advancing intermediate-range ballistic missiles, developing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and introducing and deploying mobile launchers. Inasmuch as the North Korean nuclear threat aims at the United States, the latter is concerned about extended-deterrence credibility, which has been challenged. An exception to the match between North Korea’s words and deeds is its blatant threats of an all-out war—that is, a nuclear war. The talks of nuclear war are bluffing and blackmailing rather than credible threats. The nuclear advancement has emboldened North Korean authorities to commit low-intensity provocations; in other words, the nuclear threats have sustained those provocations even if not escalating into an all- out war or a nuclear war. After the collapse of the Six-Party Talks at the end of 2008 and its second nuclear test in 2009, North Korea instigated two crises in 2010 with its sinking of the Cheonan in March and its shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November. The United States and South Korea have had an assurance problem. During the two incidents in 2010, the allies appeared to give an impression to the North that they had backed down because of their limited retaliation to the provocations. In response to China’s ambivalent stance over the incidents and its call for restraint of all relevant parties rather than criticizing North Korea, the United States restrained South Korea after the Cheonan incident.3 This was a disappointing outcome for South Korea. Likewise, after North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeong, the United States’ joint naval exercises with South Korea abated tensions surrounding the incident but without sufficient explicit warnings toward North Korea’s bad behavior. China saw that the joint exercises, just as Beijing wished, served as a useful tool for constraining South Korea.4 Consequently, in coping with the North Korean provocations, the United States and South Korea suffered from a lack of intra-alliance assurance and the concomitant limited display of resolve. On the basis of the lessons taken from the two incidents in 2010, the United States and South Korea adopted the Tailored Deterrence Strategy, which is an activist strategy of developing diverse options to counter North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and conventional provocations. Details of the Tailored Deterrence Strategy, even if not publicized, have been implemented since 2014 in the joint exercises held annually by the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK). Owing to the strengthened US-ROK military cooperation and particularly tailored deterrence, North Korea has tended to avoid direct armed provocations against South Korea. In this regard, the US and South Korean Tailored Deterrence Strategy seems to have been at

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least partly successful. But it is fair to say that it has not been able to establish a stabilizing deterrence on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea has developed new modes of provocations: committing both conventional and nonconventional types of attacks while concealing the commandership of the operations. One was a cyberattack to disrupt the information-technology infrastructure of South Korean banks, government agencies, and telecommunications, and the other was laying mines in the DMZ. The dilemma in deterrence on the Korean Peninsula was well signified by the aftermath of the mine incident that occurred at the inter-Korean border in August 2015. In response to the incident, in which two South Korean soldiers lost their legs to North Korean–laid ATM-74 mines, South Korea demonstrated its resolve to directly confront North Korea. South Korea resumed anti–North Korean loudspeaker broadcasting in retaliation, eleven years after the 2004 South-North agreement to stop such broadcasts.5 North Korea declared a quasi state of war, forward-deployed artillery, and apparently put fifty submarines to sea; South Korea raised its alert level from WATCHCON 3 to 2, signifying a vital threat; and US military intelligence and strategic assets were readied to support the South Korean military operations. Neither side wanted to back down or further escalate. The standoff ended with high-level talks between South and North Korea on August 25. The North expressed regret regarding the mine incident, whereas the South stopped the broadcasting and pledged not to resume it unless further provocations occurred.6 Did the military standoff and its resolution suggest a stabilizing deterrence on the Korean Peninsula? The answer is no. Both sides understood that escalation of the conflict would be disastrous. As the standoff ended, there was a widespread view, particularly in South Korea, that the Park Geun-hye administration’s principled approach had forced Pyongyang to virtually admit responsibility for the mine incident. Also, the North revealed its most sensitive and weakest nerve, the Kim Jong-un regime’s legitimization, which the South’s border broadcasting targeted. However, the inter-Korean high-level agreement in August 2015 was wiped away immediately. That is, the agreement meant a fragile, temporary balance on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea issued nuclear threats again during the seventieth anniversary of the Korean Workers’ Party on October 10 by restating the byeongjin strategy—simultaneous development of nuclear deterrent and economy (detailed in Chaesung Chun’s chapter). North Korea conducted the fourth nuclear test in January 2016 and a long-range ballistic missile test in the following month; in response, South Korea resumed its loudspeaker broadcasting at the inter-Korean border and decided to close the Gaesong Industrial Complex, which was immediately followed by North Korea’s retaliation and declaration of its confiscation of the South Korean assets remaining in the complex. As the UN Security Council

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adopted Resolution 2270 in March, North Korea test-fi red its Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile, which apparently aimed to demonstrate the credibility of its threat. North Korea declared that it was willing to preemptively use the nuclear weapons against South Korea, a declaration that starkly differed from its previous position. Moreover, on September 9, 2016, it conducted its fi fth nuclear test in an attempt to miniaturize the nuclear warhead. The difficulty of establishing a stabilizing deterrence lies, in part, in a built-in problem of extended deterrence, as Sung Chull Kim pointed out in his chapter. The challenger and the defender, who may reach stability at the nuclear level, are North Korea and the United States; at the low-intensity level, however, the challenger North Korea’s provocations target South Korea. Thus, instability on the peninsula at the low-intensity level in this extended-deterrence situation is likely to be more serious than in the bilateral situation. This is so because the dilemma of abandonment and entrapment is at work in this extended-deterrence situation. South Korea worries about abandonment or incomplete commitment, whereas the United States is concerned about the risk of entrapment. The US resolve for the security of South Korea is stronger than ever before. Amid the tension rising around the fourth nuclear test, the strong resolve of the United States was exemplified by its initiative to adopt an unprecedentedly coercive UN Security Council resolution and by its strengthened joint military exercises with South Korea (using strategic assets such as aircraft carriers and B-52, B-2, and F-22 aircraft). However, for South Korea, the US resolve is far from complete. In the eyes of South Koreans, the United States is also concerned about the risk of a war, or any kind of military conflict at least, on the Korean Peninsula. For North Korea, this is the point of weakness, which it repeatedly challenges. A related problem appears in the nuclear umbrella, which is the central issue of the US assurance for its East Asian allies South Korea and Japan. As Terence Roehrig notes, an unanswered question is whether the United States would actually use nuclear weapons in the event of escalating conflict on the peninsula. In the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in 2002, the United States revealed a contingency plan for the use of nuclear weapons against seven countries, including North Korea. Insofar as the use is concerned, however, the US nuclear posture was scaled back. In the 2010 NPR, the United States adopted a negative security assurance, which did not explicitly specify North Korea as a target for the US use of nuclear weapons. For the perceived incomplete nuclear umbrella, some South Korean advocates for a further strengthened US-ROK alliance argue that the nuclear-umbrella clause should be included in the mutual defense treaty, which was established in 1953 and has been continued until today.7 Despite the treaty’s vital role of sustaining the alliance and the security of South

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Korea, the United States has little reason to stipulate the clause in the bilateral treaty. Indeed, there is no bilateral security treaty in which the United States articulates its intention to use nuclear weapons. In sum, a stabilizing deterrence is difficult to establish on the peninsula because of both North Korea’s low-intensity provocations, backed by its continued nuclear advancement, and the built-in problem of extended deterrence. In response to North Korea’s repeated nuclear tests, the South Koreans do not simply feel the threat but question the US nuclear umbrella and its related assurance. The result is their frequent call for South Korea’s nuclear development. Indeed, after North Korea’s two nuclear tests in 2016, many ruling party members (and even some opposition party members) in the National Assembly argued in favor of nuclear armament. The US response to North Korea’s increasing nuclear threats was a reconfi rmation of its assurance of extended deterrence, including the flying of US bombers over South Korea in a show of force and the test-firings of Minuteman III ICBMs from an air base in California.8 However, a gap between US assurance and South Korean perception is likely to widen.

The Complex Regional Dynamics Deterrence, as well as denuclearization, on the Korean Peninsula is complicated by regional politics, particularly by China’s rise and the US-China rivalry in the Asia-Pacific region. Of course, North Korea’s nuclear weapon issue preceded the rise of China and the US-China rivalry; nuclear North Korea and its related tension on the Korean Peninsula are neither a result of China’s rise nor a proxy of the China-US rivalry. But the increasing contention between the United States and China hampers and limits cooperation between the two great powers over the North Korean issue despite their common interest in ratcheting down tensions. North Korea seems to have taken advantage of this. This is particularly true in relation to North Korea’s nuclear test on January 6, 2016, and its missile tests in the following months. The United States and China diverged at the UN over the extent of the economic sanctions, and thus the adoption of Security Council Resolution 2270 was delayed until March 2. Afterward, North Korea committed a series of provocations with the firing of a long-range rocket, which apparently was a ballistic missile, and several Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The regime also test-fired SLBMs, demonstrating significant technological advancement. North Korea will be able to deploy these weapons in the field earlier than observers have expected. On September 9, it alarmed the world by conducting its fifth nuclear test, which apparently produced a more powerful yield than previous tests. It is fair to say that North Korea has taken advantage of the rivalry between the United States

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and China; because of the rivalry, the two big powers have failed to produce concerted efforts to constrain those destabilizing acts. China’s diplomatic efforts were distinctive in the multilateral negotiations at the Six-Party Talks in 2003, striving to find a common ground among the different interests and preferences of the participants. After the breakdown of the talks in 2008, however, in order to keep North Korea within its sphere of influence, China guarded North Korea when sanctions were implemented for Pyongyang’s provocative behavior. Despite North Korea’s repeated nuclear tests and missile firings, China opposed adoption of Chapter VII, Article 42, which allows the use of air, sea, and land forces to enforce sanctions.9 Consequently, the sanctions on North Korea focused on economic and financial sanctions and diplomatic pressure, thus having a limited effect on restricting activities related to development of weapons of mass destruction. After the September 2016 nuclear test, it is a prevalent assessment among the observers that the sanctions regime, specifically the UN Security Council resolutions, failed to achieve its intended objectives because of the loopholes China left open for North Korea to avoid the sanctions.10 It is, however, noteworthy that North Korea’s nuclear path, and its provocations backed by the nuclear advancement, would have two different implications for China’s national interest. It would damage Beijing’s international standing as a responsible partner for the maintenance of stability and peace in the Asia-Pacific. It is also true that North Korea is not a state that directly challenges China. For the time being, North Korea contributes to checking US power in the region. As Fei-Ling Wang noted in his chapter, North Korea’s nuclear weapons help the Chinese Communist Party’s interest of reducing, resisting, and replacing the US influence in the region. Thus, China certainly maintains its policy of red lines toward the peninsula: no North Korean collapse and no bordering with a unified Korea that hosts US forces. It is in China’s interest that North Korea remain a buffer zone between its territory and the United States’ power. But, as Wang pointed out, Beijing’s commitment to these red lines allows North Korea to get away with a spate of behavior that directly threatens Beijing, not least of which would be the nuclearization of South Korea and Japan in response to Pyongyang’s truculence. North Korea’s nuclear development has directed more South Korean attention to China’s influence on the Korean Peninsula. Beijing’s interest lies not in choosing one of the two Koreas but in subtly dealing with both. Xi Jinping has listened to the South Korean position about North Korea recently. In doing so, he has successfully attracted the attention of the Park Geun-hye administration. As the Park administration has reiterated that reunification is the solution to North Korea’s nuclear challenge, Xi symbolically stated at the PRC-ROK summit in August 2015 that China would continue to support peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and the

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independent and peaceful unification of Korea.11 One may not conclude from Xi’s statement that China would not mind the South Korean style of unification; China’s priority lies in the status quo on the divided peninsula.12 In return, however, Park attended the military parade in Beijing for the seventieth anniversary of Victory over Japan Day, held in September 2015.13 She tried to employ a hedge strategy toward China because Seoul needed Beijing’s collaboration in coping with North Korean nuclear development. Since North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January 2016, the prospect for close China-ROK security cooperation has faltered. While believing that South Korea is the weakest link in the US-Japan-ROK security triangle, China has tried to take advantage of South Korea’s hedge strategy toward Beijing. Japan has gone hand in hand with the United States in all important security matters, as seen in the joint development of missile defense, the 2015 revision of US-Japan security guidelines, and Japan’s changes of the domestic law in accordance with the revision. In contrast, South Korea has taken an independent path of developing the Korean Air and Missile Defense and the Kill Chain and has been reluctant to participate in the US-led missile defense system. South Korea’s motivation was mainly associated with its wish for the improvement of the Seoul-Beijing relationship. In the same vein, South Korea was reluctant in expressing its position on the issue of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment. Although speculations flourished about a possible US deployment of THAAD in one of the US bases in South Korea, Seoul consistently denied the possibility in consideration of China’s strong opposition. However, after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January 2016, South Korea, despite its anticipation of China’s protest, dramatically changed its stance on THAAD. South Korean president Park stated on January 13, 2016, that South Korea would review the US plan for the deployment of THAAD on Korean territory.14 The Chinese ambassador in Seoul warned that a possible deployment of a THAAD battery would destroy South Korea’s ties with China.15 In the end, US-ROK military officials declared on July 7 that the two governments had decided to deploy THAAD in South Korea. For South Korea the decision virtually meant Seoul’s abandonment of its pursuit of a hedge strategy toward Beijing, and for China it was seen as an attempt to neutralize Beijing’s missile installations in eastern China. Between the United States and China, a game is going on in dealing with the increasingly provocative North Korea. It took place over the extent of sanctions on North Korea right after the fourth nuclear test. In order to induce China’s tough stance on North Korea, Washington, along with Seoul, brought up the issue of THAAD deployment. In response to China’s strong opposition, US secretary of state John Kerry argued that “if we can get to denuclearization [of North Korea], there is no need to deploy THAAD.”16 Apparently US and South Korean pressure over the issue partly

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contributed to persuading Beijing to join Washington and Seoul in the adoption of the unprecedentedly punitive UN sanctions after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test. The game has continued after the UN resolution was adopted in March 2016. US pressure on China repeated after Xi unexpectedly met North Korean envoy Ri Su-yong, whose visit to Beijing on June 1 was apparently aimed at fi nding a breakthrough amid toughened international sanctions. At that meeting, Xi relieved the envoy by saying that China “attached great importance to developing a friendly relationship with North Korea” and was seeking “calm” on the Korean Peninsula.17 The Chinese top leader’s statement was apparently in support of the isolated and bellicose ally. In response, the US Department of the Treasury took an independent measure to raise the level of sanctions against North Korea, calling for a secondary boycott by labeling the country a primary money-laundering concern. Under this new measure, non-American banks and others, particularly those of China, are prohibited from conducting dollar transactions with North Koreans.18 The tit-for-tat move between China and the United States signifies that the North Korean question is a power game between the great powers. Just as China often uses the North Korean issue to check US influence in the region, the United States tries to use its strategic assets, such as THAAD, and instruments of sanctions to press China. As the US- China rivalry intensifies and the North Korean nuclear push continues, the game over North Korea is only likely to escalate. Also, North Korea is likely to continue to take advantage of the rivalry between the two superpowers. What is the critical limit for China’s tolerance of a nuclear North Korea? As the touchiest issue, South Korea’s and Japan’s positions on their nuclear armament is likely to decide China’s tolerance limit for North Korea’s nuclear defiance. If North Korea’s strategic use of its nuclear deterrent and the Kim regime’s continued provocations force South Korea and Japan to seriously deliberate the indigenous nuclear weapon question, Beijing would be much more likely to collaborate with the United States and with South Korea and Japan. China’s choice might be a grand compromise with the United States to contain North Korea, whereas the United States would persuade its allies not to take the indigenous nuclear path. Because a nuclear North Korea might drive the key players in East Asia into the nuclear orbit, Beijing needs to assess both its maximum interest and its leverage over Pyongyang. Nuclear armament of the two US allies would be a dreadful security outcome for China and would severely constrain Beijing’s influence in the Asia-Pacific. The Chinese dilemma is that it is difficult to assess and predict the limit of South Korea’s and Japan’s patience over the issue of North Korea’s nuclear advancement. Moreover, severely pressuring North Korea to put limits on its nuclear agenda would probably also involve pressuring the stability of the regime.

Conclusion

205 The Fallout on the NPT Regime

North Korean nuclear development has seriously undermined the NPT regime in general and the IAEA’s supervisory arm in particular. The North Korean case set a bad precedent in the history of the NPT regime. Above all, North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT damaged the perceived effectiveness and reliability of the treaty in slowing the spread of nuclear weapons. To stay in or exit from the NPT became a North Korean bargaining chip in 1993, and North Korea’s eventual withdrawal in 2003 reinforced beliefs that the NPT has no enforcement power over a withdrawing state and that Article 10 of the treaty may be used as a sanctuary for a defiant state. The North Korean case will remain an example that a state crossing the threshold between peaceful use of the nuclear technology and military use may use Article 10 of the NPT as a negotiation tool and even freely chose its path afterward. As Yangmo Ku elaborated in his chapter, North Korea has penetrated into the weakness of the NPT, which is unable to contain transfer of sensitive, critical technology between nuclear aspirants. North Korea signed the treaty in 1985, and the IAEA Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement entered into force in 1992. The transfer of uranium-enrichment equipment from Pakistan to North Korea in the late 1990s was unchecked by the NPT regime because Pakistan did not have treaty member status.19 The NPT and the IAEA have no authority to trace back the nonmember state’s records of supply. The limits of the NPT regime also appear in the UN Security Council– mandated sanctions. The NPT is denounced by nonnuclear states for its unequal provision of the five nuclear states’ privileged status. Even worse, the five nuclear states—at the same time five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the so- called P5)—are always divided in dealing with outlaws, particularly when they adopt UN Security Council resolutions. Regarding North Korea’s repeated nuclear tests, the P5 has split on the extent of the sanctions and revealed the coordination problem in their implementation. North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January 2016 forced the P5 to collaborate to produce an unprecedentedly strict resolution, but whether the P5 would make a concerted effort to fully implement the resolution is unclear. The sanctions’ effect on the UN Security Council resolutions on North Korea’s provocations is likely to be limited. These weaknesses do not devalue the existence of the NPT regime and the treaty per se. The treaty, despite the problems of unequal provision, continues to address nonproliferation objectives. Along with such nonproliferation mechanisms such as the treaty, IAEA safeguards, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines, the existing NPT regime restricts the transfer of technology, facilities, and materials, particularly when establishing atomic energy cooperation agreements between suppliers and recipients.

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What can make the NPT a more credible regime with enforcement power, in the face of the limitations mentioned above, might be the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by major nuclear powers such as the United States and China. The CTBT was a major achievement for nonproliferation in the post–Cold War era, owing not only to the long struggle of organized anti-nuclear-weapons movements but also to the major powers’ participation. Just as the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty contributed to constraining the nuclear states’ atmospheric and oceanic tests, so too the CTBT, if ratified by the two great powers, would have a constraining effect on underground nuclear tests by small nuclear states such as North Korea. Whereas the NPT regime reveals its weakness in the front end of nuclear weapon development, the CTBT will be able to supplement these weaknesses in the back end and to limit and delay, if not stop, their nuclear advancement. North Korea is not a state that cares about legal provisions, but the latter would delegitimize the position of those states that are relatively tolerant of North Korea’s nuclear provocations.

Deterrence and Beyond It is hard to escape the conclusion that the North Korean nuclear challenge generates more pessimism than optimism. The security situation in the AsiaPacific will seriously deteriorate if North Korea’s nuclear advancement is not dealt with quickly. As the possibility of denuclearization fades away, deterrence remains a serious and urgent agenda. As Patrick Morgan aptly noted in his chapter, deterrence in general and that on the Korean Peninsula in particular are crude. Elements of deterrence have penetrated into every aspect of peninsula dynamics: international sanctions, US policy toward the Korean Peninsula, inter-Korean relations, and the two Koreas’ external relations. It is difficult for South Korea and the United States—and the international community broadly speaking—to establish a stabilizing deterrence in which they can comfortably constrain both North Korean nuclear advancement, such as testing, sophisticating, and improving warheads and delivery systems, and Pyongyang’s strategic use of them. Deterrence is closely related to domestic politics of all the relevant states, to international power politics shown in the China-US rivalry, and to the psychological dimension particularly at the moment of escalation. The most pressing challenge is that of the near term. North Korea is likely to soon develop strategic nuclear missiles, increase its confrontations with Seoul and Washington, and plunge the peninsula into its most dangerous nuclear crisis. When Kim Jong-un does so, Washington and Seoul have to individually and collectively work out how to best deter and reassure North Korea. They must ensure that Kim believes that the costs and likeli-

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hood of their retaliation is so great that nuclear coercion is not worth undertaking. But if Kim comes to conclude that it is highly probable that his own destruction is inevitable, he may resort to conventional—and possibly nuclear—force to defend himself, deter aggression, or gamble for resurrection. This challenge by itself is hard enough to overcome, but extended deterrence raises new challenges. Washington and Seoul need to continue coordinating responses to different North Korean provocations to ensure that both agree on the calibration of coercion and assurance. Seoul, which has greater stakes than distant Washington does, has long wanted greater commitments but now expresses its stern resolve to respond forcefully to North Korean attacks. The United States needs to coordinate such operations with Seoul in such a way that fits with regional stability and deters and reassures North Korea. The US-ROK alliance would also do well to continue military cooperation and joint exercises that signal to Pyongyang that responses to the most likely land, sea, and air challenges have been agreed upon, developed, and operationalized. North Korea would most likely attempt to undermine the alliance through questioning Washington’s commitment to a long fight. If the United States and South Korea can credibly signal to the North that undermining their shared interests and preferences would be difficult and that this unanimity applies not only to deterring challenges but also to living with an inevitably nuclear North Korea, a stabilizing deterrence can be built out of such great asymmetry. Because of the uniqueness of Kim’s dictatorial regime, the unanimity and credibility of the United States and South Korea’s signals should target the top leader. The US-ROK joint exercise titled Chamsu Jakjeon (Beheading Operation), which took place after the North’s fourth nuclear test, rightly sent such signals to Pyongyang, although the term seemed too insulting. The United States would do well to come to terms with China on the North Korean challenge. But this most likely requires a greater settlement. As long as both Washington and Beijing believe that greater stakes elsewhere require more competition, any agreement on addressing the North Korean nuclear issue will remain elusive. For the United States and China, the North Korean challenge is not only a global proliferation problem, horizontal and vertical, but also a serious threat to regional security. On the one hand, given US- China rivalry, as far as North Korea is skewed toward or aligned with China, a nuclear North Korea will be more likely to serve the interest of China. In this regard, within the US- China competition, the United States’ strategic patience will simply delay any solution. On the other hand, if North Korea does not stop provocations but escalates tension into a nuclear crisis, or if its continued nuclear advancement at a certain moment is viewed to be crossing the tolerance level, Chinese interests would be seriously damaged. Both Washington and Beijing certainly

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do not want to be entrapped in such a crisis on the Korean Peninsula. In view of the likely rising costs of inducing North Korea’s cooperation, the sooner a settlement that can address North Korea becomes feasible, the better for the interests of China and the United States and for international stability. South Korea and the United States must prepare for and fi nd the right time to enter a dialogue for reducing tensions and threats. For the two, the improvement of a preemptive-strike capability and the Tailored Deterrence Strategy will not always guarantee a durable deterrence situation. Sanctions alone, without being framed within a comprehensive policy, will not be able to curb Pyongyang’s determination of nuclear advancement and its low-intensity provocations. For North Korea, the sensitive nerve of Kim Jong-un’s legitimization—the so- called dignity—is apparently one of the most vulnerable parts of the regime; at the same time, it will be a volatile, explosive element in the event of an unexpected domestic crisis. Without dialogue and tension-reduction efforts between Seoul and Washington on the one hand and Pyongyang on the other, the current confrontational situation is likely to develop into a nuclear crisis. Cohen has shown that should Kim Jong-un perceive loss of control over nuclear and possibly conventional escalation, the crisis would likely escalate. The relationship between the divided Koreas is not the same as that of other states, as Chaesung Chun noted in his chapter. The important agreements of the two Koreas have stipulated that inter- Korean relations are not a state-to-state relationship but “a special interim relationship stemming from the process towards reunification” and that confederation, although having different meanings in the South and the North, is a transitional stage toward a fuller Korean unification. 20 Resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue will be possible when North Korea comes to conceive its own vision of politics, security and safety, economy, and identity and when it can be made to envision a peace regime on the peninsula and a peaceful unification of the two Koreas. North Korea still fears the United States, and the Kim Jong-un regime, in the process of legitimization, needs the warrior image with nuclear weapons. North Korea, in comparison to South Korea, feels the relative deprivation of economic and diplomatic capabilities. Given this, projection of unification by way of the South-North confederation would contribute to eliminating the North’s fear of absorption by the South Korean system. This transitional approach would be able to reduce China’s fear of bordering a South Korea hosting US forces and thus open an opportunity of serious US- China talks on the future of the peninsula. In sum, deterrence as a strategy is more complex than deterrence as a theory. Theoretically, deterrence is a threat to prevent the enemy from provoking an anticipated and devastating outcome. If both sides feel the same, there will emerge a balance that might be called a stabilizing deterrence. Deterrence is an indispensable element for the security of those states that

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must cope with external nuclear threats. In reality, there are many elements that actually obstruct rather than facilitate deterrence. Deterrence against North Korea or a stabilizing deterrence on the peninsula needs concerted efforts, whether they are transmission of signals of assurance or demonstration of credible military capabilities. And deterrence must take place in diverse fronts—such as sanctions, diplomacy, military force, and dialogues. What should be noted is that the objective of deterrence per se is so narrow that it is one of the most exhausting strategies. It requires relevant states to pour lots of resources into a single objective, the outcome of which is later not tradable for any other values of security, as evidenced by the exhausting US-Soviet nuclear deterrence during the Cold War. Deterrence is necessary but should be deliberated within a broader, comprehensive security policy and diplomacy. Those states that are directly affected by North Korea’s nuclear advancement—particularly South Korea, the United States, and China—must make earnest efforts to collectively seek a path that will make deterrence unnecessary. But doing so will most likely rely intensively on deterrence for the foreseeable future.

Notes 1. For the notion, James March and Johan Olsen, Rediscovering Institution: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989), 63. For further discussions or similar views, see Sung Chull Kim, North Korea under Kim Jong Il: From Consolidation to Systemic Dissonance (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006), 23–24, and Dorothy J. Solinger, China’s Transition from Socialism: Stalinist Legacies and Market Reforms, 1980–1990 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharp, 1993), 66. 2. For the contending arguments about the outcome of nuclear armaments, see Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 2013); Kenneth N. Waltz, “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb: Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability,” Foreign Affairs 91 (2012): 2–5; Glenn Snyder, Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961); Glenn Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in The Balance of Power, ed. Paul Seabury (San Francisco: Chandler, 1965); and Michael D. Cohen, “How Nuclear South Asia Is Like Cold War Europe: The Stability-Instability Paradox Revisited,” Non-Proliferation Review 20, no. 3 (November 2013). For small nuclear powers’ behavior today, see Thérèse Delpech, Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Cold War for a New Era of Strategic Piracy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2012). 3. The US urging of South Korea’s restraint on the North Korean provocations is exemplified by the Rangoon incident in 1983, in which sixteen South Korean ministers and presidential secretaries were killed. The United States wanted South Korea’s measured response to North Korea’s sinking of the Cheonan, which killed forty-six sailors in 2010. The United States, along with China, called for restraint by both Koreas during the exchanges of artillery shelling in August 2015. See “U.S. Urges Seoul to Exercise Restraint on Killings,” New York Times, October 13, 1983; Glenn Kessler, “U.S. Officials Urge

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Measured Response in Attack on South Korean Warship,” Washington Post, May 21, 2010; and “Migukeun bukhane, Chunggukeun nambukha myeongsi anhanchae ‘jaje’ yocheong” [Call on Restraints: US to North Korea; China virtually to both Koreas without mentioning], Hankyoreh, August 21, 2015, http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/international /america/705484.html. 4. International Crisis Group, “China and Inter-Korean Clashes in the Yellow Sea,” Asia Report No. 200, January 27, 2011, 9. 5. The broadcasting touched the nerve of North Korea in that it denounced the three generations of the Kim dynasty and poor management of the people’s living standard. 6. For the August standoff, see Choe Sang-hun, “Koreas Agree on Deal to Diffuse Tension,” New York Times, August 24, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/world /asia/south-korea-vows-not-to-back-down-in-military-standoff-with-north.html?_r=0. 7. For example, see Kim Tae-woo, “Seoul Insensible on N.K. Nukes,” Korea Herald, April 8, 2015, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20150408000465. 8. “U.S. Air Force Test-fires Intercontinental Ballistic Missile across Pacific,” UPI, September 9, 2016, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/09/08/US-Air-Force -test-fires-intercontinental-ballistic-missile-across-Pacific/7491473340904/. 9. Article 42 reads in part: “Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.” http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-vii /index.html. 10. David E. Sanger, Choe Sang-hun, and Jane Perlez, “A Big Blast in North Korea, Big Questions on U.S. Policy,” New York Times, September 9, 2016, http://www.nytimes .com/2016/09/10/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-test.html?ref=world&_r=0. 11. “Returning from China, Pres. Park Says Unification Is Still the ‘Ultimate Goal,’ ” Hankyoreh, September 5, 2015, http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national /707575.html. 12. The Chinese media reported that Xi stated that “China always sticks to realizing denuclearization of the peninsula, maintaining peace and stability, and resolving the issue through dialogue and consultation” and that “both the south and north sides are welcomed to continue improving their relations through dialogue, boost reconciliation and cooperation, and achieve independent and peaceful unification.” “China, ROK Vow to Boost Cooperation,” People’s Daily, September 2, 2015. 13. Riding this tide, China has also tried to drive a wedge between South Korea and Japan in dealing with the Shinzo Abe cabinet’s historical revisionism. For example, see Xi’s speech at Seoul National University in 2014: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “President Xi Jinping Delivers an Important Speech in ROK’s Seoul National University,” July 4, 2014, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/topics_665678 /xjpzxdhgjxgsfw/t1172436.shtml. 14. Kang Seung-woo, “Park Hints at THAAD Deployment,” Korea Times, January 13, 2016. 15. Kang Seung-woo, “Chinese Envoy Summoned over THAAD Remarks,” Korea Times, February 24, 2016. 16. For the US position, see Chang Jae-soon, “Kerry: THAAD Not Necessary If N. Korea Is Denuclearized,” Yonhap News, February 24, 2016.

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17. Jane Perlez, “Xi Jinping, China’s President, Unexpectedly Meets with North Korean Envoy,” New York Times, June 1, 2016. 18. “Caught between Superpowers,” JoongAng Daily, June 18, 2016. 19. For the Pakistan–North Korea technology transfer, see Smith, “Pakistan’s NuclearBomb Maker.” 20. See “Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, and Exchanges and Cooperation between the South and the North (Basic Agreement),” signed on December 13, 1991. http://2001–2009.state.gov/t/ac/rls/or/2004/31012.htm. On June 15, 2000, the summit between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il that produced the South-North Joint Declaration followed that spirit by stating: “We have agreed that there is a common element in the South’s concept of a confederation and the North’s formula for a loose form of federation. The South and the North agreed to promote reunification in that direction.” http://english.mosf.go.kr/pre/view.do?bcd=N0001&seq=1692.

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C ON T R IBU T OR S

Chaesung Chun is a professor in the Department of International Relations at Seoul National University, specializing in international relations theory and security relations in East Asia. He is a director of the Center for International Studies at Seoul National University and also a director of the Asian Security Initiative of the East Asian Institute. He is a member of the Presidential Committee for Preparation for Unification and of the advisory committees for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and for the Ministry of Reunification. He was a visiting professor at Keio University in Tokyo from 2010 to 2011. He received his MA degree from Seoul National University and his PhD degree from Northwestern University, both in the field of international relations theory. Major books and articles include East Asian International Relations, Is Politics Moral: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Transcendental Realism, “A Study on the Formation of European Modern States System,” “Critique of Constructivism from the Perspective of Postmodernism and Realism,” and “The Rise of New Powers and the Responding Strategies of Other Countries.” Michael D. Cohen is a senior lecturer in the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University. He was previously assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern Denmark and in 2014–15 was a visiting scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His research addresses the causes and consequences of interstate confl ict and coercion, with a focus on Asia. His forthcoming book addresses how nuclear proliferation causes and resolves interstate confl ict. His research has been published in journals such as International Security, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, The NonProliferation Review, and Strategic Studies Quarterly and has been funded by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, the Simons Foundation, and the Nordic International Studies Association. Van Jackson is an associate professor in the College of Security Studies at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS). He is the

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author of the book Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in U.S.North Korea Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He is also an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. Prior to joining APCSS, Dr. Jackson was a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow and taught courses on Asian security, international relations theory, and defense strategy and policy at Georgetown University and the Catholic University of America. He also previously served in several policy positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, including as Korea policy director and adviser for Asia-Pacific strategy. His academic research has appeared in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Asian Security, Comparative Strategy, and Contemporary Security Policy. His research interests include Asian security studies, US foreign policy, reputations and credibility, relational approaches to international security, “gray zone” conflicts, and diplomatic history. His current book project draws on relationalism and historical institutionalism to explain the pattern of American expansion into the Asia-Pacific as it emerged as a “Pacific power” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He holds a PhD in world politics from the Catholic University of America and is an honors graduate of the Korean-language program at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. Sung Chull Kim is Humanities Korea Professor at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. Before holding this position, he served as a senior fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification (1992–2003) and a professor at Hiroshima City University’s Hiroshima Peace Institute (2003–12). Kim has written widely on security in Northeast Asia, South and North Korean politics, and political transition and state violence. Kim is the author of a number of books, including North Korea under Kim Jong Il: From Consolidation to Systemic Dissonance (SUNY Press, 2006) and Partnership within Hierarchy: The Evolving East Asian Security Triangle (SUNY Press, 2017). He has edited several books, including Regional Cooperation and Its Enemies in Northeast Asia (Routledge, 2006, with Edward Friedman), Engagement with North Korea (with David Kang, SUNY Press, 2009), State Violence in East Asia (with N. Ganesan, University Press of Kentucky, 2013), and Jaenangwa pyeonghwa (Disaster and peace) (Acanet, 2015). Also, he has contributed articles to academic journals, including Systems Research and Behavioral Science (formerly Behavioral Science), Eastern European Politics, Development and Society, and Issues and Studies. Kim is currently the editor of the Asian Journal of Peacebuilding. Yangmo Ku is assistant professor of political science at Norwich University. His research focuses on East Asian security, US foreign policy, and the

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politics of memory and reconciliation in East Asia and Europe. His previous research has appeared in a number of journals, including the Journal of East Asian Studies, Asian Perspective, Pacific Focus, the Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, the Norwich Review of International and Transnational Crime, the Yale Journal of International Affairs, and the Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, as well as in a volume edited by Mikyoung Kim, The Routledge Handbook of Memory and Reconciliation in East Asia (Routledge, 2015). He previously taught in the School of International Service at American University and received his PhD in political science from George Washington University. Patrick Morgan is professor emeritus of political science and Emeritus Tierney Chair in Global Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He is a specialist in national and international security affairs; also, he is a founding member of the Council on US-Korean Security Studies. His writings on Korean and Northeast Asian security affairs appear periodically. He is the author or editor of a number of books, including International Security: Problems and Solutions (CQ Press, 2006), Deterrence Now (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Complex Deterrence: Strategy in the Global Age (coedited with T. V. Paul and James Wirtz, University of Chicago Press, 2009). He is currently working on projects on the evolution of US alliances since the Cold War and on the contemporary crisis in global security management. He does occasional consulting on security affairs. Terence Roehrig is professor of national security affairs and the director of the Asia-Pacific Studies Group at the US Naval War College. He has been a research fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in the International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom and was president of the Association of Korean Political Studies. He has published several books, including most recently South Korea’s Rise: Economic Development, Power, and Foreign Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2014), a work coauthored with Uk Heo. In addition, he is a coauthor of South Korea since 1980 and the sole author of two books, From Deterrence to Engagement: The U.S. Defense Commitment to South Korea (Lexington Books, 2007) and The Prosecution of Former Military Leaders in Newly Democratic Nations: The Cases of Argentina, Greece, and South Korea (McFarland, 2001). He has published numerous articles and book chapters on Korean and East Asian security issues, North Korea’s nuclear weapon program, the Northern Limit Line dispute, deterrence, the US–South Korea alliance, human rights, and transitional justice. Roehrig received his PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

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Tristan Volpe is an associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research examines the spread of sensitive technology in the nuclear age, with an emphasis on the use of nuclear latency as a bargaining chip and the impact of enabling technologies such as 3-D printing on strategies of proliferation. Volpe was previously the 2015 Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and a fellow at Livermore National Laboratory from 2013 until 2015. He received doctoral and bachelor’s degrees in political science from George Washington University and the University of California, Los Angeles, respectively. Fei-Ling Wang is a professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology. He has taught at the US Military Academy and the US Air Force Academy and held visiting and adjunct positions in China, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has published six books (two coedited) and over seventy book chapters and articles. His articles are in journals and newspapers such as the China Quarterly, the Christian Science Monitor, Harvard International Review, the International Herald Tribune, the Journal of Contemporary China, the New York Times, Pacific Affairs, and the Washington Quarterly. He has appeared in news media such as Al Jazeera, the Associated Press, the BBC, CNBC, Businessweek, CNN, Radio China International, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the South China Morning Post, UPI, the Wall Street Journal, and the Xinhua News Agency. Wang has had numerous research grants, including a Minerva Chair grant, a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant, and a Hitachi Fellowship.

INDE X

Tables are indicated by t following the page number. Abe, Shinz¯o, 147, 210n13 actor rationality, deterrence and, 119–21 Afghanistan, 99 Agreed Framework, 79, 80, 81, 83, 94, 187, 189, 195 air force, 132 airplane bombing, 135 Albright, David, 133 alliances: in East Asia, China and, 158–60 allies, reassurance of, 145–47 Arab Spring, 182 arms control, 19, 23–24 arms reduction, 19 Armstrong, Charles, 49 army, 131–32 artillery, 5, 131. See also Yeonpyeong Island assassination attempts, 135 assured retaliation, in deterrence, 37t, 38 asymmetrical capabilities, 132–34 asymmetrical escalation, 22, 48 attribution error, 120–21 Australia, 29n3 ballistic missile defense (BMD), 142–43. See also intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs); Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Banco Delta Asia (BDA), 83, 96 BDA. See Banco Delta Asia (BDA) Beheading Operation, 207 Beijing-Washington G-2 idea, 159 Belarus, 43, 179 blackmail, proliferation as, 73–84

BMD. See ballistic missile defense (BMD) Bundy, McGeorge, 58 Burma, 135 Bush, George W., 42–43, 81–82, 93–94, 141, 186 byeongjin strategy, 2, 114–15, 123, 180, 199 calculus theory, 91–92 Campbell, Kurt, 45 capabilities, 131–34 Carter, Ashton, 1, 143, 145–46 Carter, Jimmy, 78 CCP. See Chinese Communist Party (CCP); Combined Counter-Provocation Plan (CCP) Central Military Commission, 35 Cha, Victor, 5, 59, 94–95 Chamsu Jakjeon (Beheading Operation), 207 Cheonan sinking, 5, 59, 101–2, 105; deterrence and, 38, 119; emboldening and, 198; navy and, 132; Northern Limit Line and, 137; operational control and, 144; restraint in response to, 40, 209n3; United States and, 46 China, 6–8, 20, 23; and alliances in East Asia, 158–60; Asian security legacy and, 158; commitment to peace by, 202–3; dependence on, 81–82; Korean War and, 160; maritime power of, 168–69; “Monroe Doctrine” of, 157; Non-Proliferation Treaty and, 162, 163, 177n80; North

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218 China (continued) Korea and, 160–63; North Korean nuclear capabilities and, 163–68; and North Korean nuclear status, 41; as nuclear power, 162; Obama administration and, 44–45; Partial Test Ban Treaty and, 188; pragmatism of, 161–62; revisionism of, 159; rise of, 157; Russia and, 176n74; sanctions and, 170, 173n22; Six-Party Talks and, 162, 169, 202; Soviet Union and, 64; Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and, 166, 203; testing and, 188–89; “three-Rs” strategy of, 45, 158–60; United States and, 165–68 “China Dream,” 157, 161 “Chinamerica,” 159 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 158, 159 Chun Doo-whan, 135 Chung Mong-joon, 190 Clinton, Bill, 5–6, 59, 76, 78, 80, 93, 193n27 Clinton, Hillary, 44, 111n90, 138 Cohen, Michael D., 196, 208 Cold War: China and, 158; compellence in, 58; Cuban Missile Crisis in, 60, 63–65; nuclearization and, 182; provocations during, 40; regional situation and, 18; Soviet nuclear weapons after, 179; unification of Germany after, 26–27 collapse, of North Korea, 21–22 collective actor management, 18 Combined Counter-Provocation Plan (CCP), 119, 144 compellence, 57–61, 70n15 “competency trap,” 195 competitive management, 18 comprehensive safeguards agreement (CSA), 183–84, 193n22, 205 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), 181, 188, 206 computer hacking, 134 constitution, of North Korea, 33 context, deterrence and, 122 control, 61–66

Index credibility, 98–100, 104–5 CSA. See comprehensive safeguards agreement (CSA) CTBT. See Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) Cuba, 5, 43 Cuban Missile Crisis, 60, 63–65 cultural interchange, 19 “cyber army,” 134, 141 Defense Reform Plan 307 (DRP 307), 103–4, 106 defensive systems, 27 delivery systems, 37 Delpech, Thérèse, 196 Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), 27, 131, 197 democracy, 43 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). See North Korea deterrence, 16–17, 20–24; attribution error and, 120–21; beyond, 206–9; cognitive psychology and, 120–21; compellence vs., 57–58, 70n15; as context-specific, 122; dictatorship and, 121–22; emergence of, as term, by North Korea, 44; in evolution of nuclear doctrine, 32–33; Kim Jong-un on, 129; limits of, 196–201; military balance in, 37t, 39–40; missiles and, 133; modes of, 36–42, 37t; as North Korean strategy, 31–32, 36–42, 37t; preemptive attack prevention in, 37t, 38; proliferation and, 129; rationality in, 119–21; recognition of nuclear status in, 37t, 40–42; revisionist strategy and, 37t, 42–47; as social construction, 123–24; as South Korean strategy, 116–24; status quo and, 37–38, 37t; tailored, 43; in Tailored Deterrence Strategy, 118, 142; testing and, 33, 129–30; theory, 119–21; United States and, 48–49; war prevention in, 37t, 39 dictatorships, 43, 121–22 diplomacy, 74, 138–40. See also NonProliferation Treaty (NPT); Six-Party Talks

Index DMZ. See Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) DPRK. See North Korea DRP. See Defense Reform Plan 307 (DRP 307) East Germany, 26–27 economic interaction, 19 economic responses, 140–41. See also sanctions economy, of North Korea, 115 EDPC. See Extended Deterrence Policy Committee (EDPC) Eisenhower, Dwight, 182 energy: from China, 81–82; nuclear, 44, 75–79, 83–84, 93–94; subsidies, 79–80 engagement, 124–26 Extended Deterrence Policy Committee (EDPC), 142 F-22 aircraft, 43 familial interchange, 19 fear, 56–57, 61–66 first use, 35–36 Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, 180 Foal Eagle, 105 France, 188 Freedman, Lawrence, 123–24 G-2 idea, 159 Gaesong Industrial Complex, 40, 61, 199 Gallucci, Robert, 76–77, 79 Gates, Robert, 1, 102, 111n90 General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), 148–49 Germany, 26–27 Gottemoeller, Rose, 146–47 Grand National Party, 100 GSOMIA. See General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) Guam, 1, 61, 133, 143 hacking, 134 Hagel, Chuck, 1 Hart, B. H. Liddell, 130 Hawaii, 61

219 Hiroshima bombing, 2 Hoguk, 102 Hussein, Saddam, 5, 38 IAEA. See International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ICBMs. See intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) imperialism, 157 India, 33, 35, 51n13, 58, 60, 64, 130, 179 inspections. See International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) intellectual interchange, 19 intelligence sharing, 159 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 1, 51n17, 59, 96–97, 97–98, 198. See also missile(s) International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 44, 86n21, 138, 180; expulsion of, 94; light-water reactors and, 93; Non-Proliferation Treaty and, 181, 183–84, 185; proliferation and, 75–78; safeguards, 183–84 international system management, 18 Interview, The (film), 134, 141 Iran, 7, 67; Clinton, Hillary on, 138; diplomacy with, 5, 27, 29n6; proliferation and, 20, 23; in Quadrennial Defense Review, 43; technology transfer and, 21, 29n6, 186, 187; United States nuclear deal with, 195 Iraq, 5, 7, 38, 42, 43, 65, 99, 140, 182 Ishiba Shigeru, 190 Israel, 33, 179 Jammu military base, 60 Japan: American alliance with, 159; China and, 166; Non-Proliferation Treaty and, 186; and North Korean nuclear status, 41; nuclearization of, 169, 190; proliferation in, 4; as target, 2, 132, 136; testing and, 59; in trilateral relationship, 147–49 Joint Declaration of a Denuclearized Korean Peninsula, 187 Joint Vision Statement, 146

220 Kaesong Industrial Region. See Gaesong Industrial Complex KAMD. See Korea Air and Missile Defense System (KAMD) Kang Sok-ju, 76–77, 94 Kashmir, 58, 60, 64 Kazakhstan, 179 Keltner, Dacher, 62 Kennedy, John F., 64 Kerry, John, 203 Key Resolve, 105 Khan, Abdul Qadeer, 186, 187 Khrushchev, Nikita, 59, 60, 63–64 Kill Chain, 47, 117, 118, 143, 203 Kim Dae-jung, 100, 190, 211n20 Kim Il-sung, 33, 85n6, 182 Kim Jong-il, 26; death of, 66, 114; disappearances of, 43; Iraq and, 43; stroke, 182 Kim Jong-un: byeongjin strategy and, 114, 180; control by, 67; on deterrence, 129; as dictator, 121–22; fear on part of, 65; legitimization of, 208; on nuclear weapons, 1–2; rationality of, 120; as successor, 50n9; threats under, 114–16 Kim Yong-nam, 40 Kissinger, Henry, 92 KN-02, 133 KN-08, 133 Korea Air and Missile Defense System (KAMD), 47, 115, 117, 118, 143. See also ballistic missile defense (BMD) Korean Air Lines Flight 858, 135 Korean People’s Air Force (KPAF), 132 Korean People’s Army (KPA), 131–32 Korean People’s Navy (KPN), 132 Korean War, 2, 5, 58, 68, 114, 160, 181–82 Korean Workers’ Party (KWP), 34, 50n9 KPAF. See Korean People’s Air Force (KPAF) KPN. See Korean People’s Navy (KPN) Krepon, Michael, 35 KWP. See Korean Workers’ Party (KWP)

Index Laskhar-e-Taiba, 64. See also Carter, Jimmy launch detection, 27 Law on Consolidating the Status of a Self-Defensive Nuclear Weapons State. See Nuclear Weapons State Law laws, in policy adoption, 34 Leap Day Deal, 84, 136, 139 Lee Myung-bak, 100, 103, 146, 175n55 Lerner, Jennifer, 62 Lewis, Jeffrey, 3 Libya, 5, 7, 179, 182, 186, 187 light-water nuclear reactors (LWRs), 93–94 Li Jinjun, 170 loss aversion, 120–21 low-level provocations, 144 L-SAM, 118 Luck, Gary, 5–6, 78 LWRs. See light-water nuclear reactors (LWRs) Mao Zedong, 58, 60, 64 MCM. See Military Committee Meeting (MCM) media, 137 Middle East crisis of 1973, 92 military balance, between North and South Korea, 37t, 39–40 military capabilities, 131–34 Military Committee Meeting (MCM), 145 military exercises, 36, 68, 102, 207 military responses, 141–44 mines, 197, 199 miniaturization, 36 missile(s): capabilities, 132–33; defense, 142–43; intercontinental ballistic, 1, 51n17, 59, 96–97, 97–98, 198; KN-02, 133; KN-08, 133; and Korean Air and Missile Defense System, 47, 115, 117, 118; Musudan, 37, 51n17, 61, 133, 200; Nodong, 51n17, 132; Scud, 51n17, 132; submarine-launched ballistic, 37, 115, 133, 198, 201; Taepodong-1, 59, 136; Taepodong-2, 51n17, 96–97. See also testing

Index Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), 180, 186–87 Monroe Doctrine, 157 Morgan, Patrick, 3, 117, 122, 123, 206 motivations, of North Korea, 24–25, 115–16 MRLs. See multiple rocket launchers (MRLs) M-SAM, 118 MTCR. See Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) Mullen, Michael, 103, 111n90 multiple rocket launchers (MRLs), 131 Musharraf, Pervez, 60, 64 Musudan missile, 37, 51n17, 61, 133, 200 Mutual Defense Treaty, 145 Myanmar, 43 Nagasaki bombing, 2 Nakagawa Shoichi, 190 Narang, Vipin, 35 National Defense Commission, 36 National Security Strategy (NSS), 42, 43 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) navy, 132 Nixon, Richard, 2 NLL. See Northern Limit Line (NLL) Nodong missile, 51n17, 132 nonproliferation, 20–22 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 4, 33, 45, 76, 78, 95–96; basics of, 180–81; challenges to, 181–89; China and, 162, 163, 177n80; International Atomic Energy Agency and, 181, 183–84, 185; objectives of, 181; Pakistan and, 187; role of, 179; technology transfers and, 187; undermining of, 205–6; as weak, 189; withdrawal from, 12, 33, 45, 76, 77, 94–96, 184–86, 205 normalization, 44 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 182 Northern Limit Line (NLL), 100, 101, 132, 136–37

221 North Korea: actions of, 135–37; antagonization of South Korea by, 5; capabilities of, 131–34; China and, 160–68; collapse of, 21–22; economy of, 115; feelings toward South Korea of, 16; motivations of, 24–25; United States and, 16 Northwest Islands Command, 104 NPR. See Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) NPT. See Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) NSS. See National Security Strategy (NSS) nuclear doctrine: evolution of, 32–36; Nuclear Weapons State Law and, 34–36 nuclear energy, 44, 75–79, 83–84, 93–94 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. See Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), 42, 45–46, 146, 200 Nuclear Security Summit, 147 nuclear status recognition, in deterrence, 37t, 40–42 Nuclear Suppliers Group, 180, 205 nuclear testing. See testing nuclear war prevention, deterrence in, 37t, 39 Nuclear Weapons State Law, 32, 33–36, 45–46 Obama, Barack, 67, 139; Bush vs., in approach to North Korea, 44–45; deterrence and, 46; diplomacy and, 138, 139–40, 191; engagement and, 93, 97–98; in Joint Vision Statement, 146; military power shifts in, 53n46; sanctions and, 141; testing and, 99; on trilateral cooperation, 147–48; Yeonpyeong attack and, 111n90 OPCON. See operational control (OPCON) operational control (OPCON), 68–69, 143–44 PAC-3, 118 Pakistan, 8, 21, 64, 130; “asymmetrical escalation” posture of, 35, 48;

222 Pakistan (continued) compellence and, 58, 60; deterrence and, 20; Non-Proliferation Treaty and, 179, 186; proliferation and, 23; technology transfers from, 164, 186–87, 205; terrorism and, 22; testing and, 33; uranium enrichment and, 94 Park Chung-hee, 103, 135 Park Geun-hye, 46–47, 68, 147 Park Gil-yon, 40, 46 Partial Test Ban Treaty, 188 Perry, William, 126 plutonium, 36, 59, 75–77 Politburo, 35 political usefulness, of nuclear weapons, 92–93 preemptive attack prevention, in deterrence, 37t, 38, 42 proliferation, 4, 20–22; as blackmail, 73–84; deterrence and, 129; diplomacy and, 74; drivers of, 73–74 propaganda, 137 Protect the Nation exercises, 102 Qaddafi, Muammar, 4, 182 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), 43 Radio Free Asia, 59 Rangoon bombing, 40, 209n3 rationality, deterrence and, 119–21 reassurance, 124–26 Republican Party, 42–43 Republic of Korea (ROK). See South Korea reputation, 91–92 retaliation, 35–36; assured, in deterrence, 37t, 38 revisionist strategy, 37t, 42–47, 159 rhetoric, 137 risk, 61–66 Ri Su-yong, 204 rocket launchers, 131 rogue states, 121 Roh Moo-hyun, 100 Russel, Daniel, 140–41, 148

Index Russia, 20, 23, 58, 162, 176n74, 179, 186. See also Soviet Union Saenuri Party, 100 Sagan, Scott, 35, 39, 196 sanctions, 31, 59, 78, 130, 140–41, 195–96; China and, 45, 170, 173n22, 201; financial, 82, 83, 190; limits of, 80; Non-Proliferation Treaty and, 94–96, 188; peace treaty and, 41; public discontent over, 49; reactions to, 82, 99; severe, 55; testing and, 109n58; unification and, 19 Schelling, Thomas, 57, 75 SCM. See Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) Scud missiles, 51n17, 132 Security Consultative Meeting (SCM), 46, 142, 145–46 Security Council Resolution 1718, 99 Security Council Resolution 2270, 200 Security Council Resolution 2276, 141 Seoul, 2 Sheehan, Michael, 127n3 Six-Party Talks, 75, 84; breakdown of, 38; China and, 162, 169, 202; concession-seeking in, 73; denuclearization and, 40; deterrence and, 37, 44; Non-Proliferation Treaty and, 186; proliferation and, 81, 83; threats and, 95–97 SLBM. See submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) Snyder, Glenn, 196 Snyder, Scott, 45 social construction, deterrence as, 123–24 Sony Corporation, 134, 141 South Africa, 179 South Korea: attacks on, 100–105; cyber attacks on, 134; deterrence strategy of, 116–24; military balance with, 37t, 39–40; in military exercises, 36; North Korea’s feelings toward, 16; nuclearization of, 190; proliferation in, 4; sinking of ship of, by North Korea, 5; strategic environment of,

Index 5–6; as target, 2, 132; in trilateral relationship, 32, 147–49; United States and, 6, 46–47, 48 South-North Joint Declaration, 211n20 Soviet Union, 18, 58, 59, 60, 63–64, 64–65, 182. See also Russia status recognition, in deterrence, 37t, 40–42 Strategic Forces, 35 Struckman, Dana, 134 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), 37, 115, 133, 198, 201 subsidies, energy, 79–80 Sunshine Policy, 100 Syria, 43, 44, 140, 194n40 Taepodong-1 missile, 59, 136 Taepodong-2 missile, 51n17, 96–97 Tailored Deterrence Strategy, 118, 142, 198–99 tanks, 131 technology transfers, 186–87, 194n40 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), 68, 118, 143, 166, 171, 203–4. See also ballistic missile defense (BMD) terrorism, 22, 135, 141 testing, 135–36; Banco Delta Asia and, 96–97; byeongjin and, 115; China and, 188–89; compellence and, 58; deterrence and, 33, 43, 129–30; increasing power of, 197–98; military exercises and, 68; Obama and, 97–98; predictions of, 99, 109n58; sanctions for, 99; underground, 187–89 THAAD. See Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Thompson, Julia, 35 threats: credibility and, 98–100; hyperbolic, 98–99; under Kim Jong-un, 114–16; reputation and, 91–92; in rhetoric, 137 “three-Rs” strategy, 45, 158–60 Thurman, James, 104 TISA. See trilateral intelligence-sharing agreement (TISA)

223 Tokyo, 2 tracking, of North Korean weapons, 27 trilateral intelligence-sharing agreement (TISA), 159 trilateral relationship, 32, 147–49 Ukraine, 179 underground testing, 187–89. See also testing unification, 19, 25–26 unipolar management, 18 United Nations Security Council, 4 United States: China and, 165–68; Cold War and, 18; cyber attacks on, 134; deterrence and, 48–49; Iraq and, 42–43; in military exercises, 36; normalization with, 44; North Korea and, 16; Nuclear Weapons State Law and, 36; proliferation by North Korea as blackmail of, 73–84; responses of, 137–44; South Korea and, 6, 46–47, 48; as target, 2, 3, 4, 55, 60–61, 66, 113; in trilateral relationship, 32, 147–49; unification and, 25–26; Yeonpyeong Island attack and, 103. See also Bush, George W.; Carter, Jimmy; Clinton, Bill; Obama, Barack uranium-enrichment program, 36, 59, 187, 205 U.S.-Japan-ROK Trilateral Dialogue, 166 Ussuri River, 58, 60 Voice of America, 59 Volpe, Tristan, 195 Waltz, Kenneth N., 39, 165, 196 Wang, Fei-Ling, 45 war prevention, deterrence in, 37t, 39 Washington, D.C., 2, 3, 4 White, Ralph K., 42 Wolfowitz, Paul, 81 World Bank, 141 World War II, 2 Xi Jinping, 161, 166, 202, 210n12

224 Yeonpyeong Island, 5, 38, 41, 59, 94, 102–3, 105, 111nn89–90, 131, 137, 150, 198 Yokota Air Base, 149 Yongbyon reactor, 44, 85n6

Index Yuk Young-soo, 135 Zhenbao Island, 60, 64 Zhu Chenghu, 174n36 Zimbabwe, 43