Tag Archive for: North Korea

DPRK: ready to talk, but who’s listening?

On 29 November, after a 10-week hiatus, North Korea conducted another missile test. It was a new vehicle, the biggest yet seen, and it performed flawlessly, demonstrating that it could probably deliver a warhead to a target up to 13,000 kilometres away. Less than a decade ago, experts doubted that any North Korean rocket could even reach, let alone hit, any of the major Hawaiian islands.

North Korea’s media seemed to go out of its way to hail the DPRK’s arrival at this important level of capability. The official state broadcaster spoke of ‘completing the rocket weaponry system development’ and, quoting Kim Jong-un, ‘completing the state nuclear force’. The signals were too stark to ignore, and a number of seasoned observers suggested that Pyongyang was hinting that it might be open to negotiations. The question, of course, is negotiations about what?

Pyongyang is probably keen to start exploring the rewards that might flow from its long and exceedingly costly quest to acquire nuclear weapons and long-range missile-delivery systems—things like private talks with the US (excluding everyone, especially South Korea), economic and technological assistance to fast-track its economic development, a respectful diminution in US–ROK military exercises, and normal diplomatic relations with its regional neighbours and the US, for starters.

Washington is probably prepared to concede that North Korea’s nuclear and missile accomplishments aren’t trivial and that the US will have to be more generous and creative in its negotiations than it was in 2005–06—the last time the DPRK came to the point of accepting, in principle, a package of rewards in exchange for abandoning its nuclear program. But it’s much harder now to see the US being prepared to accept an unstable dictatorship with an imminent strategic nuclear capability as a new and permanent reality in Northeast Asia. Washington will want reversal and denuclearisation to remain the ultimate objectives of any negotiations.

The gulf between those positions almost certainly precludes any agreement to negotiate. The only imaginable ‘wild card’ that might bridge the gulf would be if China were convinced that nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula are unacceptable and was therefore prepared to engage in a prolonged process of cooperation and collaboration with Washington to take them out of Kim Jong-un’s hands. This wild-card scenario is unlikely for several reasons.

First, China (along with Russia, but in a diminishing role) bears significant responsibility for the character and capability of the North Korean regime that we confront today. The three of them started the Korean War in 1950. But, after the 1953 armistice, China and Russia simply tolerated a DPRK that spiraled into a darkness characterised by an extreme cult of personality, paranoia, a fiercely belligerent external posture, savage internal privation and repression, and a degree of militarisation that set a new global benchmark. That broad program of tolerance and neglect continued even as the increasingly dominant feature of the DPRK became its quest to acquire a nuclear weapons capability.

Second, China has never been a devotee of nuclear non-proliferation. It saw that the high priority which the US and its principal allies attached to that objective created strategic opportunities for anyone adept at operating in the grey zones of the international legal system. In aiding Pakistan’s nuclear development, China thought the gains were sufficiently strong and clear enough to risk generating international suspicion or exposure. In contrast, the intimate physical proximity and deep economic entanglement between North Korea and China make Chinese deniability more difficult, requiring China to work harder to protect its aura of good international citizenship. As an enabler of North Korea’s nuclear and missile accomplishments, China falls somewhere along the spectrum between negligence and calculation.

Third, as the DPRK has pressed its nuclear skills to the top of the international agenda, Beijing has more readily supported additional UN Security Council sanctions. President Xi Jinping joined US President Barack Obama in declaring that neither would ever ‘recognise’ the DPRK as a nuclear-weapon state, and China routinely declares its unswerving commitment to denuclearising the Korean peninsula. However, Beijing’s actions belie its public posturing. China has few peers when it comes to applying prompt and focused state power to reinforce a diplomatic strategy—think South Korea’s Lotte corporation after it donated a piece of land to host the THAAD missile defence system. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that China simply doesn’t consider the DPRK’s nuclear program dangerous enough to stop.

So, unless China begins to have second thoughts about the reasoning that has driven its approach in the past, it’s unlikely to change its policy. What could prompt such second thoughts? Perhaps Beijing hadn’t imagined this particular kind of Kim in Pyongyang, or a Donald Trump in the White House—let alone the synergies that could develop between them. Perhaps it has become less confident that it could dissuade Japan and South Korea from pursuing nuclear capabilities if a nuclear North Korea becomes a fixture and the US is a less dominant force in the region. I’m not aware of any evidence to support this wild-card development, but in its absence the region could be in for more excitement than anyone wants to cope with.

Asia’s cities against North Korea

As Tokyo—and towns and cities across Japan—look ahead to 2018, they are dusting off long-neglected civil-defence infrastructure and nuclear-attack procedures. Schoolchildren are practising the kinds of nuclear-safety drills that I endured during my childhood, at the height of the Cold War. Police and emergency first responders are brushing up on measures that had fallen into disuse since the 1990s. Hospitals are undergoing stress tests of their readiness. Fallout shelters are being inspected and restored. And the potential of new innovations and resources to reinforce civilians’ security is being explored.

Much of this preparation—spurred by North Korea’s increasing belligerence, including launches of missiles over Japan—is occurring on the local level. And, beyond Japan, plenty of other Asian cities are pursuing similar initiatives to strengthen their civil defence. But cities can do more than lead the way in emergency-response preparedness; we can—and therefore must—play a central role in helping to avoid conflict and defuse tensions.

Like Tokyo’s governors during the Cold War, I do not believe that we will actually face the horrors of a nuclear attack. But when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of Tokyo’s citizens, my government and the agencies that it directs can never be too careful—or too ready. Anything less than our best efforts at preparedness would not only be reckless; it would also be an insult to the memory of those who died in the nuclear firestorms that followed the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Despite Japan’s uniquely intimate history with nuclear attacks, this vigilance is not limited to my country, much less to Tokyo. Though Tokyo is my primary responsibility, and the focus of all my thoughts and plans, I am also concerned with the fate of the capital of next-door South Korea, Tokyo’s great sister city.

I know the Korean people well, and I have no doubt that they, too, are preparing with their characteristic rigor and stoicism. Yet Seoul remains particularly vulnerable to the whims of North Korea’s impetuous and ruthless leader, Kim Jong-un—and that should concern all of Asia’s municipal leaders.

No city is an island, safe unto itself. That is why the leaders of Asia’s megacities should be fighting for policies that will help to neutralise the threat to the entire region, not just our own homes.

National governments will listen to us. After all, cities account for most of an economy’s dynamism; without their catalytic force, Asia’s rapid economic growth over the last four decades would not have been possible. And cities are the beating cultural heart of modern Asian societies.

It is time for Asia’s urban leaders to use this influence, by banding together to help mitigate the threat posed by the rogue Kim regime. For starters, this means fighting to ensure that, unlike in the past, the United Nations sanctions imposed on North Korea are enforced to the letter.

At the same time, Asia’s municipal leaders must use their own policing powers to prevent illicit wealth transfers from their jurisdictions to North Korea. This means pressuring financial institutions and, perhaps more important, unofficial money transfer networks, to halt any movement of funds to the North.

The leaders of Asia’s major cities must also use every contact with Chinese officials to urge them to agitate for stronger efforts by President Xi Jinping’s administration to rein in the Kim regime. Xi has so far been reluctant to tighten the screws on North Korea, owing largely to concerns about the potential consequences for China if the Kim regime collapses.

But the reality is that China’s great urban centers now face the same threat from the Kim regime as their counterparts elsewhere in Asia. In fact, now that China has voiced support for UN sanctions—a step that probably left Kim feeling betrayed—China’s cities may be among the most vulnerable.

Words are not enough; even the most heated rhetoric directed at the North has proved entirely useless, because it is not backed by action. For China, such action must reflect a full embrace of the goal of North Korean de-nuclearisation. To that end, the key policy initiative that Japan, South Korea and the United States must embrace is to negotiate, and conclude, an agreement with China about the security situation that will prevail on the Korean peninsula should the Kim regime collapse.

The contours of such an agreement are not hard to discern. The US, Japan and South Korea all hope for the eventual peaceful reunification of Korea. But China, fearing that outcome, needs assurances that America’s military presence in South Korea, which has been shrinking for over two decades and no longer includes nuclear weapons, will not be extended northward, towards China’s own border.

South Korea’s government could offer those assurances, with the blessing of its Japanese and American allies, agreeing today in a formal treaty lodged at the UN that no foreign power’s troops will be permitted to be stationed anywhere north of what is now the demilitarised zone that divides the two Koreas. Once the missile threat from the North was truly eliminated, South Korea could also remove the US-supplied Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system from its territory. As China has (wrongly) viewed the THAAD system as a threat to the viability of its own nuclear deterrent, such a move would eliminate what has become an open wound between the two countries.

To provide China with further assurances, and at no added risk to South Korea, Japan or the US, the UN could also place peacekeeping forces and inspectors on the ground. A small number of Chinese soldiers and inspectors could even be included in these groups, so long as they take orders from UN-appointed leaders.

This is the agenda for peace and security that Asia’s cities, which have been leading the region into the future for decades now, should pursue in 2018. We must all now use our influence to ensure that ours is a future free from the threat of nuclear war.

Understanding the North Korea threat

North Korea recently tested its Hwasong-15 ballistic missile, reaching an altitude of 2,780 miles (4,475 kilometers) during its 53-minute flight. Using a flatter trajectory could provide Kim Jong-un’s regime with the capability of hitting the east coast of the United States. Although it has not yet demonstrated a re-entry vehicle capable of surviving atmospheric friction, North Korea announced that it has mastered nuclear strike capability and become a full-fledged nuclear state.

Like previous US presidents, Donald Trump has said that this state of affairs is intolerable. So now what?

Before turning to policy, it is important to dispose of several myths that interfere with clear analysis. First, Kim may be a vicious dictator, but he is not crazy or suicidal. Thus far, he has outplayed the US in this high-stakes game, but he understands that a nuclear exchange with the US means the end of the regime he is trying to preserve.

Second, the US has talked itself into Kim’s trap of exaggerating how much power his rocketry gives him. After all, North Korea has had nuclear weapons for more than a decade; they could be delivered to US ports on its east or west coast by other means, such as in the hold of a freighter.

Third, in this game of bluff and chicken, geography provides North Korea with local escalation dominance. With thousands of artillery tubes hidden in tunnels near the border, North Korea can threaten to wreak havoc on Seoul, South Korea’s nearby capital, by conventional means. The US found this out in 1994—long before North Korea had a nuclear weapon—when it planned a pre-emptive strike to destroy the North’s Yongbyon plutonium reprocessing plant, only to find that its allies in South Korea (and Japan) were deterred by the risk of conventional retaliation.

In terms of policy, China has proposed ‘a freeze for a freeze’ as a means to control the North’s nuclear ambitions. North Korea would halt all nuclear and missile tests (easily verifiable); while that would not reverse the North’s nuclear status, it would slow the development of its arsenal. In turn, the US would halt the annual military exercises that it conducts with South Korea. The US would reserve the right to resume exercises if North Korea violated its test ban, or exported nuclear materials.

Some see this as a good deal, but it depends on how one assesses Kim’s objectives. If all he wants is security, we could leave him alone, perhaps sign a peace treaty, relax sanctions, and let economic growth change the regime over time, as in China.

But North Korea under the Kim dynasty is not a status quo power. Since 1945, it has been an oddity: a hereditary communist dictatorship whose legitimacy rests on its claim to be the vanguard of Korean nationalism. Thus far, it has fallen behind in the economic competition with the South, but it hopes its nuclear status will change the balance.

As Sung-Yoon Lee of Tufts University recently warned, ‘for the North, menacing the US is a non-negotiable means of isolating and exercising dominance over Seoul. This is how the regime of Kim Jong-un seeks to ensure its long-term survival.’

If weakening the ties between the US and South Korea is central to Kim’s strategy, China’s freeze-for-freeze proposal plays into his hands. And, rather than reduce risks, it may embolden the North to return to risky conventional pressure on South Korea, such as in 2010, when it sank a South Korean corvette, killing 46 seamen, and shelled South Korean islands.

US policy options are limited. One is the limited use of force. Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, has been quoted on several occasions saying a preventive war may be necessary if diplomacy fails. But even if designed as a limited strike, would a decapitation effort or missile shoot-down remain limited? If not, casualties could range from the tens of thousands to much higher numbers.

Sanctions continue to be an option, but thus far they have not generated enough pressure to make the Kim regime give up what it regards as its key strategic asset. Chinese diplomacy and sanctions are also crucial, but thus far China has pulled its punches. It has not cut off food and fuel. China does not like Kim, but it does not want chaos—or Americans—on its border.

A possible package could be something like Cold War ‘GRIT’, or gradual reduction of international tension: The US assures China of its limited goals and agrees to coordinate its actions with the Chinese. No more marches to the Yalu River of the sort that triggered China’s intervention in the Korean War. In return, China uses its economic pressure and diplomacy to freeze the immediate threat posed by North Korean tests, but does not insist on a freeze on US forces.

Possible scaling back of US exercises in the future would depend on North Korean behaviour towards South Korea. The US would offer to negotiate a peace treaty after North Korea accepts détente with South Korea. The US and China would accept North Korea’s de facto nuclear status, but jointly reaffirm their long-term objective of a nuclear-free peninsula. North Korea agrees to stop tests and all further exports of nuclear materials. China threatens to impose food and fuel sanctions if North Korea cheats or breaks the agreement.

The prospects for such a China-centred package are not high; but if it fails, the US should not panic. If it could deter a much stronger Soviet Union from taking an isolated West Berlin for three decades, it can deter North Korea. The US should reinforce its deterrent and defence capability through its alliances with South Korea and Japan. The presence of nearly 50,000 US troops in Japan, and some 28,000 in Korea, makes extended deterrence credible. Kim cannot kill South Koreans or Japanese without killing Americans, and that, as he surely knows, would mean the end of his regime.

Trump’s missing North Korea strategy

US President Donald Trump certainly has a point when he complains that he inherited the difficult problem in North Korea. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has shown no interest in negotiation, or even in listening to what anyone has to say about his reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles needed to deliver them.

But the fact that Trump inherited the problem does not absolve him of responsibility for addressing it. So far, he has failed even to articulate, much less implement, a strategy for dealing with North Korea. Almost one year into his presidency, his only achievement has been to secure additional sanctions at the United Nations. Worse still, his bitter complaints about his predecessors suggest that he has no idea what to do next.

Trump’s latest attempt to deal with the problem came earlier this month, when he noisily announced that his administration was putting North Korea back on the US Department of State’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. His decision, though justified in light of Kim’s behaviour, was largely symbolic, as was former president George W. Bush’s October 2008 decision to remove North Korea from that list in the first place.

The Trump White House claims that redesignating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism is a ‘critical step’. It is not. In fact, the US Department of the Treasury does not even require such a designation to formulate additional sanctions.

State sponsors of terrorism are ineligible for US military support—which was hardly a possibility for North Korea. And the United States is legally prohibited from supporting any loans or other forms of assistance offered to state sponsors of terrorism by international financial institutions of which the US is a member. North Korea, however, is not a member of any international financial institution.

As many have pointed out, the terrorism list is by no means a complete compendium of countries whose security services may have been involved with terrorist groups. Currently, the full list includes just four countries: Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Despite the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez’s well-known ties to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)—which the US State Department designates as a terrorist organisation—Venezuela managed to stay off the list. Similarly, many believe that Pakistan’s security services maintain ties with groups that would clearly qualify the country for inclusion on the list.

Still, even as a symbolic gesture, the context of Bush’s decision to remove North Korea from the list was entirely different from that of Trump’s decision to restore it. In 2008, North Korea had satisfied certain conditions. First, it agreed to participate in the six-party talks with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US (which I represented as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs). The talks’ explicit goal was to denuclearise the Korean peninsula, and they resulted in North Korea closing its nuclear facility in Yongbyon.

Moreover, at the time of its delisting, North Korea was also participating in talks to establish a verification system for its nuclear activities. The regime invited international inspectors to Yongbyon, and provided substantial records of the Yongbyon reactor’s operations, which are still one of the most accurate resources for measuring the amount of plutonium actually produced there.

At the time, North Korea had agreed to blow up the Yongbyon reactor’s cooling tower, to reciprocate the US’s symbolic act with one of its own. It was a partial deal, to be sure. But Trump would have taken it in a New York minute.

Subsequently, the agreement did begin to unravel, owing to North Korea’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge that it ever had a program, past or present, to develop fissile material through highly enriched uranium (HEU). The regime failed to explain international purchases of equipment consistent with such a program; and samples of specialised materials that it provided to US diplomats raised suspicions further.

After a several-year hiatus, the Yongbyon nuclear reactor is operational once again. Notably, all six of the underground nuclear tests that North Korea has conducted since 2006 have been consistent with plutonium harvested from the reactor before the six-party talks. The possibility that North Korea is operating an HEU facility somewhere in its tunnelled landscape is undoubtedly a cause for great concern. But Yongbyon, contrary to those who have argued that it was on its last legs, has always constituted a clear and present danger.

The fact that Trump can put North Korea back on the terrorism list with little bureaucratic fuss and virtually no international repercussions demonstrates why the list is a useful sanction for the US to have at its disposal. The standard for de-designation—no acts of terrorism or cooperation with terrorist groups in the past six months—is flexible enough that removal from the list can readily be used as a diplomatic bargaining chip. Likewise, de-designation can easily be reversed when conditions merit it—such as when Kim orchestrates the assassination of his half-brother in a Malaysian airport.

Solving the North Korea problem will require a seriousness of purpose and a level of discipline that Trump has not yet exhibited. An effective policy would include cooperation with China, not gushing flattery for China’s leaders. That cooperation would have to be based on a long-term commitment, not one-off transactions. And, perhaps more importantly, it would require daily engagement not just with China, but with all of the other regional stakeholders as well.

Needless to say, such a policy would benefit from a US secretary of state who is committed to maintaining a team of experienced diplomatic professionals, and from recognition by Trump and his advisers that building on the efforts of one’s predecessors is more effective than accusing them of making the job harder. Unfortunately, that last lesson continues to elude this administration.

The Pandora’s box of the digital age

Is the world sliding dangerously towards cyber Armageddon? Let us hope not; but let us also apprehend the threat, and focus on what to do about it.

One country after another has begun exploring options for bolstering its offensive capabilities in cyberspace, and many other countries have already done so. This is a dangerous escalation. In fact, few other trends pose a bigger threat to global stability.

Almost all societies have become heavily dependent on the internet, the world’s most important piece of infrastructure—and also the infrastructure upon which all other infrastructure relies. The so-called Internet of Things is a misnomer; soon enough, it will be the ‘Internet of Everything’. And our current era is not a Fourth Industrial Revolution; it is the beginning of the digital age, and the end of the industrial age altogether.

The digital age has introduced new vulnerabilities that hackers, cyber criminals and other malign actors are already routinely exploiting. But even more alarming is the eagerness of national governments to conduct cyberwarfare operations against one another.

We have already reached the stage at which every conflict has a cyber dimension. The United States and Israel crossed the Rubicon in 2010 by launching the Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Now, there is no telling where ongoing but hidden cyber conflicts begin and end.

Things were different in the old world of nuclear weapons, which are complicated and expensive devices based on technology that only a few highly educated specialists have mastered. Cyber weapons, by contrast, are generally inexpensive to develop or acquire, and deceptively easy to use. As a result, even weak and fragile states can become significant cyber powers.

Worse still, cyberwar technologies have been proliferating at an alarming pace. While there are extensive safeguards in place to control access to sensitive nuclear technologies and materials, there is almost nothing preventing the dissemination of malicious software code.

To understand the scale of the threat we face, look no further than the ‘WannaCry’ virus that, among other things, almost shut down the British National Health Service this past May. The virus exploited a vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows operating system that the US National Security Agency had already discovered, but did not report to Microsoft. After this information was leaked or stolen from the NSA, North Korea quickly put the ransomware to use, which should come as no surprise. In recent years, North Korea has launched numerous cyberattacks around the world, most notably against Sony Pictures, but also against many financial institutions.

And, of course, North Korea is hardly an exception. Russia, China and Israel have also developed cyber weapons, which they are busy trying to implant in systems around the world. This growing threat is precisely why other countries have started talking about acquiring offensive cyber capabilities of their own: they want to have a deterrent to ward off attacks from other cyber powers. Cybersecurity is regarded as complicated and costly; but cyber offence is seen as inexpensive and sexy.

The problem is that, while deterrence works in the nuclear world, it isn’t particularly effective in the cyber world. Rogue actors—and North Korea is hardly the only example—are far less vulnerable than developed countries to cyber counterstrikes. They can attack again and again without risking serious consequences.

Cyberattacks’ often-ambiguous origins make it even harder to apply a rational theory of deterrence to the cyber world. Identifying the responsible party, if possible at all, takes time; and the risk of misattribution is always there. I doubt we will ever see unambiguous proof that Israel is conducting offensive cyber operations; but that certainly doesn’t mean that it isn’t.

In the darkness of cyberspace, sophisticated actors can hide behind oblivious third parties, who are then exposed to counterstrikes by the party under attack. And in the ongoing conflict among Gulf countries, at least one government may have contracted hackers based in other countries to conduct operations against an adversary. This method of avoiding detection will almost certainly become the norm.

In a world riven by geopolitical rivalries large and small, such ambiguity and saber-rattling in the cyber realm could have catastrophic results. Nuclear weapons are generally subject to clear, strict and elaborate systems of command and control. But who can control the legions of cyber warriors on the dark web?

Given that we are still in the early stages of the digital age, it is anyone’s guess what will come next. Governments may start developing autonomous counterstrike systems that, even if they fall short of Dr Strangelove’s Doomsday Machine, will usher in a world vulnerable to myriad unintended consequences.

Most obviously, cyber weapons will become a staple in outright wars. The United Nations Charter affirms all member states’ right to self-defence—a right that is, admittedly, increasingly open to interpretation in a kinetic, digitised world. The charter also touches on questions of international law, particularly with respect to non-combatants and civilian infrastructure in conflict zones.

But what about the countless conflicts that do not reach the threshold of all-out war? So far, efforts to establish universal rules and norms governing state behaviour in cyberspace have failed. It is clear that some countries want to preserve their complete freedom of action in this domain.

But that poses an obvious danger. As the NSA leaks have shown, there is no way to restrict access to destructive cyber weapons, and there is no reason to hope that the rules of restraint that governed the nuclear age will work in the cyber age.

Unfortunately, a binding international agreement to restrict the development and use of offensive cyber weapons in non-war situations is probably a long way off. In the meantime, we need to call greater attention to the dangers of cyber-weapon proliferation, and urge governments to develop defensive rather than offensive capabilities. An arms race in cyberspace has no winners.

A deal on North Korean nukes?

Earlier this week I finished drafting a paper on the Korean peninsula crisis for a talk in Japan next week. I concluded, somewhat glumly, that the prospect of a deal between the US and the other parties involved was slim, and that military action was a very real possibility. Within hours of typing my last full stop, President Trump was telling the Koreas that North Korea could ‘come to the table’ and ‘make a deal’.

Sometimes it’s good to be wrong, and I’d really like that to be the case here. But I’m not confident that there’s really a deal in the making. We have no detail of what might be involved, but an analysis of the positions of all the parties suggests that someone is going to be left unhappy.

In any situation ‘do nothing’ is an option—sometimes the best one. Here that would mean accepting North Korea’s weapon programs and maintaining the status quo posture for American and allied forces and diplomacy. The upside of ‘do nothing’ is that there’s no risk of preventive action spiralling into disaster. The downside, obviously, is that North Korea would develop weapon systems that risk a future catastrophe. The calculus is whether the total future risk from doing nothing is greater or less than that of taking action. An added complication is that both the assessment and reality of short- and long-term risks vary between different parties.

For those countries that are within striking distance of short- and medium-range missiles, we’re already at the point where active steps can bring a catastrophic response. South Korea, China and Japan have to factor the possibility of a nuclear counterattack into any estimate of costs and benefits. That necessarily makes doing nothing more attractive than it would have been before North Korea had nuclear capabilities. But we have to deal with current realities.

Countries whose mainlands are beyond the range of North Korean missiles, but which will come within range of long-range missiles under development, have an incentive to act now. The US doesn’t yet have to worry about a nuclear missile hitting Los Angeles, so its calculus is different from that of Seoul or Tokyo. The US is yet to pass the risk threshold already crossed by more proximate nations.

A crucial question is how the US will weigh its own safety against the safety of its north Asian allies. A multilateralist US that put a high premium on the safety of Japan and South Korea would be loath to take steps with high escalatory risk. A more self-centred US might weigh its own physical safety higher than that of its partners. The Obama administration had the former characteristic. It was prepared to back sanction regimes—even when unlikely to have a decisive effect—and wasn’t especially aggressive in the use of force. The approach was often ‘do nothing’ or, more accurately, ‘do nothing likely to be either effective or directly harmful’. They even had a name for it: ‘strategic patience’.

The ‘America First’ Trump administration has been talking up a more aggressive approach, while criticising Obama’s. It’s possible that President Trump’s instincts are more belligerent than those of the people advising him. But his rhetoric—at least until this week’s visit to Seoul—certainly suggests a US that won’t accept vulnerability to North Korean nukes.

On the other side, Kim Jong-un has seen other strongmen toppled by the US, and he’ll be noting Trump’s threats to abandon its deal with Iran despite no evidence of Iranian non-compliance. And the US failed to deliver its part of a previous nuclear agreement with North Korea (though both sides were at fault). All that will feed Kim’s desire for an effective deterrent to an American-led regime change.

If the US and North Korea could agree to the status quo, there might be a stable equilibrium. For it to work, Kim would have to believe that he had sufficient deterrent power to forestall American efforts to remove him, without an ability to strike the continental US. And Washington would have to believe that North Korea wasn’t covertly working on further systems, and wasn’t likely to precipitously attack US allies or territories.

Only one of those—North Korea not working on long-range missile systems—is objectively verifiable, but it would require Kim’s compliance with an inspection regime (backed by intelligence work for added assurance). Even then, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for the North Koreans to recall the ‘Iraqi WMD’ case that led to Saddam Hussein’s downfall.

Everything else is even less certain. The North Koreans would have to trust the reliability of American guarantees—and have their own experience, as well as Iraq’s, Iran’s and Libya’s, to learn from. And the Americans would have to be convinced that North Korea would be content with mutual vulnerability and not be inclined to use its weapons against other targets—the most likely of which are American allies.

Maybe Trump had something like that in mind when he spoke of a deal, but I’m not confident that the trust required for a status quo solution can be generated. Kim likely wants more deterrence than he currently has, and the US doesn’t want him to have it. And it’s not unreasonable for Japan and South Korea to regard North Korean short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles as unacceptable. So, even if the US can strike a deal that stops North Korea short of an ICBM, it will be of little comfort for the rest of north Asia. And leaving Tokyo and Seoul vulnerable in exchange for safeguarding American cities would probably weaken the US alliance framework. That would be an outcome to none of our benefits—though it’s preferable to a war with uncertain escalation prospects.

The DPRK dilemmas

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.

North Korea: where to now?

A growing list of observers contend that North Korea is now out of reach, that its nuclear program is irreversible and that the smart option is to accept this fact and start concentrating on deterrence and stability with a nuclear North Korea in the loop. It’s hard to quarrel with that view, but let’s see what the situation looks like.

A couple of broad observations stemming from how we got to where we are on this matter seem germane to the way forward. First, by virtue of acts of commission and omission, China and Russia bear a deep responsibility for the character of the regime in the DPRK and for the path that it has elected to travel. China in particular, but also Russia, have to this point done as little as possible (or as much as they thought necessary to preserve the image of responsible states) to address and resolve the DPRK question. (The Gorbachev era was to some extent an exception.) They haven’t felt obligated or compelled to incur costs or take risks to nudge it towards a more positive trajectory.

Second, the curious fact that the DPRK seems both invulnerable and utterly paranoid about its security points to some plausible lines of reasoning: (a) that an atmosphere of constant alarm and insecurity serves crucial domestic purposes, namely, the ultimate justification for draconian measures of social control including fanatical devotion to the leader, and (b) that, for deep-seated historical reasons, the DPRK has a rather limited appetite for security support from China.

It’s abundantly clear that no peaceful solution to the Korean issue will emerge from the US seeking to either entice or coerce Pyongyang from a distance. The US and China, on the other hand, working as a team and committed to sustained cooperation and collaboration on the objective of rolling back the DPRK’s nuclear program could be another matter.

Why might Washington and Beijing be willing to embrace such an approach? Two reasons stand out. First, the DPRK has surged unexpectedly to an effective nuclear-weapon capability and has a young leader who may have a strong faith in the ability of his nuclear weapons to deliver policy objectives beyond simple deterrence of attack. That puts the DPRK back into a position where it could generate circumstances that will drag the US and China/Russia into open conflict, something that the latter countries have been keen to avoid since the Korean War.

China’s stance on the most recent set of sanctions has brought it closer to the US position than it has been in some three decades, suggesting real concern that its prior tolerance will be exposed and/or that Pyongyang could become too big for its boots. The second concerns a maturing sensation in both major powers that adjusting to a new distribution of economic power could involve dangerous ambiguities for an extended period and that studying past transitions offers fewer reassuring insights than was once thought. What adds to the potential force of these two considerations is that they could be mutually reinforcing.

Any propensity for Washington and Beijing to collaborate openly and purposefully on finding a peaceful outcome on the Korean peninsula would have to be built on dependable bilateral understandings on such things as (a) how to de-conflict their actions—particularly with respect to the DPRK’s strategic nuclear capabilities—in the event of a crisis or conflict in which events unfold very rapidly, and (b) any boundaries that both sides should respect regarding the political and security arrangements they reach or aspire to reach with the states (or state) on the peninsula.

The second crucial conversation will be that between Beijing and Pyongyang. It would be a message of ‘tough love’, namely, that Beijing will remain a dependable source of political, economic and security support for the DPRK on the condition that it commit to capping and eventually eliminating its nuclear-weapon capability. Beijing will have to make clear that it has come reluctantly but firmly to the conclusion that denuclearising the peninsula is in China’s core interests.

And it will also have to make clear that it has reached an understanding with the United States about its support for Pyongyang in the negotiations towards denuclearisation and about China–US collaboration to suppress any DPRK endeavours to frustrate that purpose. To be very specific, the DPRK needs to be assured that it can be confident of Chinese support as it prepares for a future without nuclear weapons, but also be convinced that China will no longer shy away from measures that could put the regime at risk if it declines to negotiate in good faith to achieve that objective.

These ideas represent a significant departure from the experience to date and could be dismissed as fanciful for that reason alone. But it’s worth asking the question: How confident are Washington and Beijing likely to be at this point that the DPRK will abandon its belligerence and be content to exist quietly behind its nuclear deterrent? Beijing might also be wondering whether Washington still has the will and the authority to quash the possible (probable?) interest in Japan and South Korea to get their own nuclear weapons if the DPRK arsenal is accepted as a permanent capability.

Trump at the United Nations

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.

Pre-emptive thinking about pre-emptive strikes

Articles discussing pre-emptive strikes on North Korea are now everywhere. Based on a small number of in-depth analytical studies, they detail military challenges, human costs and likely outcomes. While those articles prepare us for the short term, they ignore the potential long-term strategic change that would result from a conflict on the Korean peninsula.

We’ve seen this before in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Articles discussed the military challenges, human costs and likely outcomes. But the conflict ultimately upset the delicate regional balance of power and led to an outbreak of suppressed identity conflicts, dispersion of military know-how, and an uncontrolled spread in disruptive ideologies. Those effects weren’t unforeseen, but rather ignored in the rush to war.

Before anything happens in Korea, we should be aware of the speculative long-term strategic implications of a pre-emptive strike.

First, conflict on the Korean peninsula could result in a momentous change in China’s role in the region and ultimately the globe. That could range from absolute regional dominance to collapse and disintegration into internal instability.

Regardless of the outcome of the conflict, South Korea could reject a self-interested, value-less, America-first approach to the region and choose to accept China’s dominance as the price to be paid for unification. For most South Koreans, China’s current steady position of reiterating the need for de-escalation, multilateral dialogue, and ultimately denuclearisation—essentially, diplomacy—stands in stark contrast to the incoherence and fecklessness of Donald Trump’s bluster. Throughout history, when China was weak, external states or greater independence came to the Korean peninsula. When China was strong, the Korean peninsula fell under its influence. It was from this point that China’s regional influence grew. China’s dominance on the Korean peninsula could again be a launching pad for dominance in East Asia.

Alternatively, unification could spread dissatisfaction and opposition to authoritarian rule across the region, leading to internal instability in China. Political disruption, economic dislocation and descent into instability are possible outcomes. Even in the most favourable unification scenario, North Koreans with direct or indirect experience of the momentous human rights abuses that China implicitly supported could act as a powerful constraint to China’s long-term influence in a unified Korea. China’s current policies aimed at maintaining the status quo are founded on the fears of such potential outcomes. Regardless of which way the dice fall, China’s regional role will change. A pre-emptive strike in Korea would precipitate that change.

Second, conflict on the Korean peninsula could exacerbate trends in US isolationism. The potential scale of conflict on the Korean peninsula, the uncertainty, and an unavoidable lack of public support in yet another war of questionable merit could exacerbate current trends towards isolationism that have been growing in the US—trends that arguably brought about the election of Trump. Isolationism inherently accepts that major powers have a right to influence their immediate regions. Conflict on the Korean peninsula thus has implications for Taiwan, Hong Kong, the South China Sea, Southeast Asia and India, as well as for peripheral regions to which a major power conflict would ultimately move.

Third, conflict on the Korean peninsula could result in an unbalanced and contested region. Sudden unification of North and South Korea would produce a single state with potentially divided loyalties and a population of around 75 million. A unified Korea would be within the range of major second-tier developed states, such as Germany (80 million), France (66 million) and the United Kingdom (64 million). An often-cited report by Goldman Sachs projects a unified Korean economy to surpass France’s, Germany’s and even Japan’s within 30 to 40 years. The stability of the entire region would depend on the direction in which a unified Korea turns.

For 60 years, division along the 38th parallel stabilised the external struggle to influence the Korean peninsula. Sudden unification could again lead to an ongoing struggle—and potentially a major power conflict—to influence the Korean peninsula. The struggles of external states to influence the Korean peninsula caused the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), the Russo-Japanese War (1905–05), the Korean War (1950–53) and numerous other historical conflicts on the peninsula. While the final result may be unknown, an unbalanced and contested region is a certainty.

All long-term assessments are inherently speculative and based on assumptions that may or may not pan out. But it pays to speculate when the costs are so high. Creativity in analysis is essential. Who would have thought that the Iraq invasion would have led to today’s Middle East and North Africa, as well as regional refugee crises and global terrorist threats? In hindsight, removing a known rogue to replace it with an unknown, unbalanced and contested region wasn’t good policy—and still isn’t.

As part of the region, and a country that has benefited substantially from prolonged stability and American dominance in East Asia, Australia, along with other regional middle powers, has a vested interest in avoiding such outcomes. Any discussion of a potential US pre-emptive strike should also include the speculative long-term economic, political and strategic implications.