{"id":35392,"date":"2017-11-09T14:35:26","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T03:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=35392"},"modified":"2018-05-23T10:40:50","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T00:40:50","slug":"a-deal-on-north-korean-nukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/a-deal-on-north-korean-nukes\/","title":{"rendered":"A deal on North Korean nukes?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

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<\/a> that North Korea could \u2018come to the table\u2019 and \u2018make a deal\u2019.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it\u2019s good to be wrong, and I\u2019d really like that to be the case here. But I\u2019m not confident that there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In any situation \u2018do nothing\u2019 is an option\u2014sometimes the best one. Here that would mean accepting North Korea\u2019s weapon programs and maintaining the status quo posture for American and allied forces and diplomacy. The upside of \u2018do nothing\u2019 is that there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

For those countries that are within striking distance of short- and medium-range missiles, we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014even when unlikely to have a decisive effect\u2014and wasn\u2019t especially aggressive in the use of force. The approach was often \u2018do nothing\u2019 or, more accurately, \u2018do nothing likely to be either effective or directly harmful\u2019. They even had a name for it: \u2018strategic patience<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

The \u2018America First\u2019 Trump administration has been talking up a more aggressive approach, while criticising Obama\u2019s<\/a>. It\u2019s possible that President Trump\u2019s instincts are more belligerent than those of the people advising him. But his rhetoric\u2014at least until this week\u2019s visit to Seoul\u2014certainly suggests a US that won\u2019t accept vulnerability to North Korean nukes.<\/p>\n

On the other side, Kim Jong-un has seen other strongmen toppled by the US, and he\u2019ll be noting Trump\u2019s threats to abandon its deal with Iran<\/a> despite no evidence of Iranian non-compliance. And the US failed to deliver its part of a previous nuclear agreement<\/a> with North Korea (though both sides were at fault). All that will feed Kim\u2019s desire for an effective deterrent to an American-led regime change.<\/p>\n

If the US and North Korea could<\/em> 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\u2019t covertly working on further systems, and wasn\u2019t likely to precipitously attack US allies or territories.<\/p>\n

Only one of those\u2014North Korea not working on long-range missile systems\u2014is objectively verifiable, but it would require Kim\u2019s compliance with an inspection regime (backed by intelligence work for added assurance). Even then, it wouldn\u2019t be unreasonable for the North Koreans to recall the \u2018Iraqi WMD\u2019 case that led to Saddam Hussein\u2019s downfall.<\/p>\n

Everything else is even less certain. The North Koreans would have to trust the reliability of American guarantees\u2014and have their own experience, as well as Iraq\u2019s, Iran\u2019s and Libya\u2019s, 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\u2014the most likely of which are American allies.<\/p>\n

Maybe Trump had something like that in mind when he spoke of a deal, but I\u2019m 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\u2019t want him to have it. And it\u2019s 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\u2014though it\u2019s preferable to a war with uncertain escalation prospects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week I finished drafting a paper on the Korean peninsula crisis for a talk in Japan next week. 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