Now that the DPRK has developed long-range missiles and what appears to be a hydrogen bomb, what next? Does Kim Jung-un plan to incinerate a US city in the near future? Until now, nuclear powers have avoided war due to deterrence; it sometimes seems that a two-sided nuclear standoff, as in India–Pakistan, considerably reduces the risk of even conventional war. Is that likely to be the case in Korea?

Kim and his forebears have been willing to sacrifice heavily to obtain bombs and missiles in the face of international pressure. The same DPRK rulers have also compelled their population to sacrifice heavily to buy a powerful conventional war machine. The Soviet experience strongly suggests that sacrifice on this scale is unsustainable, although that may not be obvious to the DPRK leadership. Their plans may well include some means of recouping the cost of the build-up. In 1950, Kim’s grandfather, Kim Sung-il, appears to have seen in the conquest of South Korea the solution to the serious economic problems he had created in the DPRK. It’s likely, moreover, that he and his successors believe that the only reason the 1950 invasion failed was US intervention.

It seems to follow that the North Koreans see their nuclear weapons as cover for a projected attack on South Korea. One may doubt that Kim appreciates just how dangerous his presumed deterrence may be. During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union came to realise that nuclear deterrence had very limited impact beyond precluding the free use of nuclear weapons by either side. Kim hasn’t had long enough to reflect on this experience. We can’t tell whether his bluster indicates overconfidence. Kim’s view may be that the US nuclear counter-deterrent, which threatens the North Korean population, is irrelevant given his limited interest in its welfare.

At the very least, the North Korean capability must leave US allies in the region, particularly Japan and South Korea, uncertain of the umbrella that has been protecting them. Both may very well decide that they need their own nuclear deterrents, and both are well equipped to create them rapidly.

Either possibility is disastrous from a Chinese point of view. The prospect of Japanese nuclear armament is credible: Prime Minister Abe’s recent electoral triumph was partly driven by the perceived North Korean threat. The Chinese are also aware that, as a Korean nationalist, Kim may well press historic Korean claims to Chinese territory in Manchuria. He may require Chinese help to keep his economy afloat, but the Chinese lack any form of defence against Kim’s nuclear missiles.

Analyses of possible Chinese action typically show two possible outcomes, neither of which is attractive to the Chinese government. Either North Korea implodes, leaving South Koreans (and presumably American troops) on the border; or North Korea survives as an unstable nuclear regime. It seems likely that the Chinese see a third, much more attractive, option: to destroy Kim, replacing him with a pro-Chinese regime that stabilises North Korea and is willing to coexist with South Korea. Kim’s destruction of close advisers with ties to China suggests that he already suspects that the Chinese are trying to eliminate him. A recent press report that Chinese troops are massed at the border (nominally to assure stability in the event the regime implodes) is also suggestive. It seems entirely possible that Chinese President Xi told President Trump that he was trying to destroy Kim. It’s even possible that the stress applied to Kim’s regime by current US actions is likely to make it easier for the Chinese to find and attack Kim.

For the US and its allies, an obvious option is greatly increased investment in anti-missile weapons, which devalue Kim’s nuclear investment—though by how much it’s impossible to say. For example, the destruction of a long-range DPRK test missile in flight would much undermine Kim and it would devalue his deterrent. It also seems wise to continue to demonstrate that Kim’s nuclear deterrent doesn’t protect him against non-nuclear attack, for example by precision weapons. Kim and his predecessors spent heavily on tunnelling to protect various key assets, but he has no way of knowing how vulnerable they remain. Moreover, Kim’s resources are finite. The efforts he has made to develop expensive missiles and an expensive bomb limit what he can have spent on conventional air defence or, for that matter, missile defence. Demonstrating how thinly his resources have been spread may restrain Kim to some extent.

These remarks, based on those delivered at Russell Offices in Canberra on 11 October 2017 while a guest of the Sea Power Centre – Australia, are the author’s own, and should not necessarily be attributed to the US Government, the US Navy, or any other organisation with which he has been associated.

President Trump’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly has attracted considerable media attention—though mostly for his comments about North Korea and Iran. But I’d urge readers to examine the full text. That’s not because it’s an enjoyable literary exercise; Trump isn’t a natural wordsmith. Nor is he prone to over-intellectualising his core political instincts; he’s not Barack Obama. Still, the speech provides a fascinating set of insights into the Trumpian world view. And parts of it—especially those references to the need for strong sovereign nations to secure their future—have a portentous ring. Here’s a series of observations.

First, the speech reaffirms the Trump doctrine of ‘America first’—‘we can no longer be taken advantage of’. Indeed, there’s a defence of the doctrine as the natural bias of all statesmen: ‘I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries will always, and should always, put your countries first.’ But the doctrine is stated in an oddly qualified form. Each time he rehearses a key element, there’s a following thought beginning with a ‘but’. So, ‘the nation-state remains the best vehicle for elevating the human condition … But making a better life for our people also requires us to work together’. And ‘I will defend America’s interests above all else … But in fulfilling our obligations to our own nations, we … seek a future where all nations can be sovereign, prosperous and secure’. At times, the speech reads almost as though Trump is arguing with himself about the limits of America first.

Second, there’s a strong endorsement of nationalism and sovereignty that permeates the entire text. From his early characterisation of sovereignty, security and prosperity as ‘three beautiful pillars … of peace’ to his closing call ‘for a great reawakening of nations, for the revival of their spirits, their pride, their people, and their patriotism’, Trump’s speech turns at almost every key point on the virtues of strong, sovereign nations. True, those ‘proud, independent nations’ are still expected to find common cause in their shared interests, but this isn’t a speech about the merits of cosmopolitanism. Trump cites President Truman when arguing that, if the United Nations is to have any hope of success, it must depend on the ‘independent strength of its members’.

Third, and flowing directly from that endorsement, is a strong advocacy of patriotism. Trump argues for ‘nations that are rooted in their histories and invested in their destinies; nations that seek allies to befriend, not enemies to conquer; and most important of all, nations that are home to patriots, to men and women who are willing to sacrifice for their countries’. He goes on: ‘Patriotism led the Poles to die to save Poland; the French to fight for a free France; and the Brits to stand strong for Britain’. This theme of patriotism is an important one, because it answers one of Trump’s key questions: ‘Do we love our nations enough to protect their sovereignty and to take ownership of their futures?’

That notion—of acting now to protect the future—surfaces at a number of points in the speech. ‘We will slide down the path of complacency, numb to the challenges, threats, and even war that we face. Or do we have enough strength and pride to confront those dangers today, so that our citizens can enjoy peace and prosperity tomorrow?’ It’s a theme that adds a disturbing resonance to the speech. But it underlines an important point: Trump is saying, as clearly as he can, that he will not allow future strategic threats to the United States to emerge on his watch.

With that framework in mind, let’s turn to the comments on North Korea, one of those ‘rogue regimes’ that are ‘the scourge of our planet today’. The speech describes a ‘depraved regime’, ‘a band of criminals’ that starves, imprisons and tortures its own citizens, while pursuing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that ‘[threaten] the entire world’. Trump states bluntly that ‘if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, [the US] will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea’. Some might imagine that he’s signalling a willingness to embark on some new, finely crafted deterrence relationship between Washington and Pyongyang. I don’t think that’s the message. The threat is nested in a speech that basically says it’s important to confront threats now, rather than leaving them to grow.

A more intriguing question is whether the threat to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea constitutes an act of nuclear compellence. That is, is Trump threatening nuclear annihilation to compel North Korean denuclearisation? Well, he’s certainly clear that ‘it is time for North Korea to realize that … denuclearization is its only acceptable future’. But there’s nothing about the threat that suggests American use of its nuclear weapons to secure that objective. The threshold for US nuclear use on the Korean peninsula has always been high—not least because China and two US allies live close by. This speech doesn’t change that threshold. Still, Pyongyang’s leaders ought to be reading it closely.

North Korea’s sixth nuclear test is easily its most impressive. The fifth—in September last year—involved the detonation of a device similar in yield to the bomb the Americans dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The latest test features a substantially larger yield. Seismic signals are an imperfect indicator, but estimates currently range from about 70 kilotons all the way up to about 500 kilotons. It’s possible, but not certain, that the test featured a genuine thermonuclear device, a second-generation nuclear-weapon design in which a primary fission explosion ignites a secondary fusion stage. If any radionuclides have leaked from the test site, we’ll get a better picture of the explosion, but that could be some weeks away.

Still, the big conclusions are relatively straightforward. First, North Korea’s nuclear capabilities are no longer constrained to the detonation of relatively low-yield fission devices. The days are over when we could depict the North Korean nuclear program as merely the equivalent of the US program in 1945. Second, when the results from the sixth nuclear test are placed alongside the large strides that Pyongyang has made recently in ballistic-missile development, we’re fast approaching a crunch point where something must be done to corral the North’s nuclear arsenal. A fresh bout of hand-wringing and garment-rending—even another bout of sanctions—is probably not going to give us much leverage on the problem.

Each test, whether of missile or nuclear weapon, gradually builds North Korea’s capacities. True, none of the individual tests is a back-breaker by itself. But the broader programs are breaking the back of global and regional order. That’s because a North Korea equipped with nuclear-armed ICBMs is simply unacceptable. It’s unacceptable at the global level because a pariah state can’t be allowed to hold a sword over the head of the international community. And at the regional level, an emboldened North Korea will destabilise Northeast Asia—corroding the US’s Asian alliances and likely begetting a new wave of proliferation by latent nuclear states.

In brief, if North Korea keeps going down the path it’s currently taking, the outcomes are intolerable. A North Korea that had a slow-moving nuclear-weapons program boasting only limited reach was a tolerable threat. Regional nuclear competitions are relatively common—not to the point where we can become blasé about them, true, but still relatively common. Today’s North Korea has morphed into something much more deadly. It’s the sole nuclear-armed state outside the P5 that seeks intercontinental-range destructive capabilities. And yet it’s the nuclear-armed non-P5 state with the least equity in the international order.

Some argue that North Korea seeks nuclear weapons because of insecurity; that it’s fear of attack and invasion that’s the principal driver of Pyongyang’s WMD programs. Frankly, that argument’s not convincing. Security concerns might be sufficient to drive a small nuclear-weapons program, but not the one that now confronts us. Rather, Pyongyang seeks nuclear weapons as a status symbol, as the price of entry to the only one of the world’s exclusive clubs to which it might actually gain admittance. ICBM-equipped nuclear powers number only four: the US, Russia, China and North Korea. Kim Jong-un seeks international recognition on the basis of the only achievement his regime can boast—the development of a capability to pull down the global order on a day of his choosing.

Reversing that development is now an issue of urgency. I’d like to think that doing so might offer an occasion for international cooperation, because responsible great powers should share the judgement that having intercontinental-range nuclear weapons in the hands of a pariah state is an unacceptable condition. Still, the prevailing geopolitical winds scarcely seem conducive to such an outcome. And there’s a fair degree of slack in the steering wheel of US global leadership with President Trump in the White House.

But if we’re prepared to admit North Korea into the ranks of the world’s ICBM-equipped states, what’s the basis for denying that status to any future proliferator? Some years back, Robert O’Neill observed that ‘the bomb’ had successfully escaped the hands of first the superpowers, and then the great powers, to come to rest in the hands of the world’s underdogs. Accepting that the underdogs can wreak nuclear havoc at intercontinental ranges seems to drag us even closer to the abyss.

In one important respect, of course, nothing has changed after the sixth nuclear test: we still don’t have any easy options for reversing North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Kinetic options look costly, non-kinetic options ineffective. But doing nothing will be worse. A crisis postponed is not necessarily a crisis averted. A future North Korea would have more and better nuclear warheads, greater numbers of delivery vehicles, and proven nuclear technologies ready to be sold to the highest bidder.

With every tweet or meeting with a foreign leader that US President Donald Trump completes, American officials find themselves struggling to reassure allies that the United States remains committed to their security. Nowhere is this truer than in Asia, where longstanding US strategic engagement, backed up by the world’s most advanced military, has maintained the balance of power for decades.

Trump’s signature Asia policy—his pledge to stop North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons—should be a clear-cut example of American military resolve. Unfortunately for the region, it has proved to be anything but that.

In early June, Defense Secretary James Mattis tried his best to convince Asian counterparts gathered in Singapore that US support was unwavering. The presence of two US aircraft carriers off the Korean Peninsula—the first time in 20 years that US naval maneuvers included two carrier groups—was meant as a ‘message of reassurance’ against any aggression by North Korea.

But neither Mattis’s speech, nor the muscle flexing at sea, did much to bolster US credibility in South Korea, or to restrain the North’s nuclear ambitions. The problem wasn’t Mattis’s speechwriters, or the US Navy’s ‘show the flag’ naval exercise. It was Trump himself.

From threatening military strikes on the North while all but inviting Kim Jong-un to a Mar-a-Lago tête-à-tête, to threatening to tear up trade and defense pacts with South Korea, Trump has thoroughly confused America’s Asian allies. The effects of his contradictory statements will come home to roost later this month, when South Korean President Moon Jae-in visits Washington, DC. Moon is crafting his own approach to dealing with Kim, while Trump’s behavior could hardly be undermining US influence more.

Moon’s desire to take a different tack with the North should come as no surprise. A long-time advocate of a softer line, he acknowledges the North Korean threat, but believes that the South has time to seek a solution by reviving economic ties and dialogue. The strategy harks back to the South Korea’s decade-old ‘Sunshine Policy,’ former president Roh Moo-hyun’s unsuccessful outreach to the North, which Moon supported. Today, Moon is entertaining a range of similar ‘soft’ options—such as reducing military tensions, increasing people-to-people contacts, and offering more humanitarian aid—to help shift course gradually.

More fundamentally, Moon believes that the US has steered the alliance’s North Korea strategy off course. He wants South Korea to be in the driver’s seat, with his government as mediator between the US and North Korea. Moon laid down his marker on June 7, when he announced a freeze on deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) US anti-missile system in South Korea, because of his questions about allied decision-making. The freeze, which includes an ‘environmental review,’ is a none-too-veiled signal to expect more assertiveness on national security and North Korea policy.

Moon is well positioned to capitalize on Trump’s self-inflicted wounds—which have included threats of unilateral military action, protectionist mantras, and the abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Moon, who was elected to boost jobs and curb corruption, campaigned on sweeping away his predecessor’s policies, including her hardline approach toward North Korea. Even if sparks fly in Washington later this month, Moon is unlikely to pay a political price at home. South Koreans broadly support a strong relationship with the US. But they also follow American politics closely, and these days, many regard the dangers of erratic leadership as no longer being confined to Kim’s regime.

Indeed, Trump’s statements about the US-South Korean relationship have ranged from the impolitic to the bizarre—such as accusing the South of unfair trade deals and then threatening to send South Korean leaders a bill for the THAAD system. He has also issued unnerving military pronouncements, like an April prediction of a possible ‘major, major conflict‘ on the peninsula. Those comments, made during an interview with Reuters, seemed to overlook the deployment of 700,000 North Korean soldiers just above the demilitarized zone, which would make any war with the North devastating to the South.

Trump’s approach to the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula has produced equally troubling knock-on effects. China, South Korea’s leading trade partner, is a case in point. With South Korea’s economy struggling to sustain growth, China is leveraging its position by registering its opposition to THAAD. Calling the system a threat, the Chinese have been boycotting South Korean goods, stalling investment, and curbing what had been a booming tourist trade.

How hard Moon presses Trump for a different approach to North Korea remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: Trump’s standing among South Koreans won’t be what keeps Moon mum. According to the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul-based think tank, Koreans gave Trump exceptionally low approval ratings during his 2016 presidential campaign, and his popularity remains at rock-bottom levels. Even with China’s recent THAAD-related arm-twisting, Chinese President Xi Jinping rates more favorably among South Koreans than Trump.

Moon will have many questions for Trump about US leadership in Asia—questions that Mattis was unable to answer. Given the risks posed by an unpredictable US president, South Koreans’ unease is easy to understand. Before Trump, 11 US presidents helped maintain stability on the Korean peninsula by building alliances, using diplomacy, calibrating their rhetoric, and deploying American military strength. Since the end of the Korean War, no president has even casually, much less flippantly, called the US role on the peninsula into question. None, that is, until now.

Australia has only one agreement that automatically commits us to war and it isn’t ANZUS. At the signing of the armistice in Korea in 1953 we agreed, with South Korea’s allies, that we would defend the South in the event of an attack by the North. It had nothing to do with the US alliance, but rather is a UN commitment. It was associated with a set of non-aggression pacts which were repudiated by North Korea in 2013. At that time a UN spokesperson said the pacts couldn’t be unilaterally repudiated under terms registered with the UN and that Pyongyang was considered bound. The stakes for Australia are high indeed.

President Trump has been gripped by the North Koreans’ steady progress towards an ICBM that could reach the continental US. His ‘never going to happen’ pledge publicly established a ‘red line’; it will be a litmus test of his credibility. The issue’s unique status is underlined by the president’s apparent willingness to read all related briefs and intelligence reports. If diplomatic efforts, ramped up sanctions and Chinese persuasion fail, then Trump has made clear that military options will be seriously considered.

The Trump red line hasn’t been extended to shorter range missiles or the nuclear program generally. However, military pre-emption associated with it would significantly raise the prospect of a North Korean response making consideration of even broader pre-emption necessary. That could spell devastation for South Korea and cause massive damage both to Japan and to US bases in Japan and Guam. A major war would result; minimising those consequences would be the main task for the allied military. A subsequent North Korean attack on the South would engage Australia’s 1953 armistice obligations.

Trump’s red line is drawn on a situation Asia understands well. He has put American credibility on the line. To the North Koreans he has said that he would be ‘honoured’ to engage Kim Jong-un in discussions on nuclear matters, making clear that regime change in Pyongyang isn’t on his agenda. Nonetheless, North Korea presses on.

With the Chinese, Trump has deployed a range of carrots and sticks, all of which carry their own implications in the minds of Asian leaders. The stick is that China, a longstanding enabler of North Korea’s program, faces the prospect of a war on its border and a harsher American attitude on bilateral issues. The carrots have been extraordinary: a walk-back on Taiwan, a trade agreement, a retreat from freedom-of-navigation patrols in the South China Sea, and an effective enhancement of China’s regional status (the opposite of Trump’s stated intention in the presidential election campaign).

Despite paying close attention to briefings, Trump appears not to have grasped the regional context. The ally most affected is South Korea. Seoul has been roiled by an apparent presidential indifference to South Korea’s fate in all this. Nothing the president has done has allayed local concerns at what they call the ‘Trump risk’.

Consider here the extraordinary series of comments and initiatives by Trump in the last month of the South Korean presidential campaign. First was the announcement that a carrier task force—an ‘armada’ in his words—has been dispatched as a signal that Pyongyang’s actions could draw a military response. Fear, then ridicule, was the reaction in South Korea when its appearance was delayed.

Second, Trump erroneously opined that South Korea had once been occupied by China, reinforcing a South Korean view that he knew nothing about them. He also indicated that it might be necessary to renegotiate or repudiate the US–ROK free trade treaty.

Finally, having deployed the THAAD missile defence system—a controversial move in South Korea and heavily related to the defence of American troops in the region—Trump claimed that South Korea should pay. All of Trump’s interventions roiled a South Korean presidential election campaign in which Moon Jae-in, the overwhelming winner, sought to reset the Seoul–Pyongyang dynamic.

The risks of a pre-emptive strike are acceptable to Trump. However, the red line is limited. A freeze of the contemporary position with strong verification might just be possible (though it isn’t on the table currently). Such a deal would stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program short of an ICBM, but it would massively complicate the global non-proliferation regime. The Iran deal was doable in part because Tehran’s public position was that it didn’t want a nuclear weapon. Kim Jong-un is way beyond that. Fig leaves would be necessary. Somehow North Korea’s six-party commitment not to proceed to a nuclear weapon would have to be in any agreement.

China will underperform. Beijing won’t get the North Koreans to a complete rollback or to a negotiation focused on achieving that goal, so vital to the non-proliferation regime. It isn’t vital to Trump, who is overwhelmingly motivated by perception. North Korea not proceeding with an ICBM gets him there domestically.

For the rest of the region, it’s important to cool the situation. Lessons, however, have been drawn. South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are developing their own local defences and defence industries. This experience will accelerate that trend. Lessening dependence on the US military is now on the agenda in all three countries. But that is long term.

In the meantime, the trio seek breathing space. Return the US deterrent to a latent status. It shouldn’t be at the forefront of diplomacy but credible enough should Pyongyang consider a more active approach to its nuclear ambitions. Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei now hope they can lift the threshold of that eventuality.