Learning to live with uncertainty: The strategic implications of North Korea's nuclear weapons capability

Abstract

This article challenges the popular assumption that North Korea's nuclear weapons capability poses a dire threat to international security. It argues that the adverse impact of North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons has been exaggerated and that pessimistic accounts of the strategic implications of this capability have overlooked the strong status quo bias inherent in North Korea's worldview. These accounts have also glossed over the primarily defensive motives underpinning Pyongyang's quest for nuclear weapons. There are dangers attached to North Korea's nuclear capability, especially the possible transfer of fissile material to terrorist groups or rogue states, and the effect it may have in spurring regional neighbours to reassess their non-nuclear status. Contrary to common assumptions, however, the idea that a nuclear-armed North Korea is determined to foment regional instability and challenge the strategic status quo in East Asia is not supported by a close reading of Pyongyang's motives and worldview. The behaviour and statements of the regime suggest that the DPRK is predisposed to accept the logic of deterrence in its relationship with the US. As long as Washington maintains an active and robust posture of extended strategic deterrence on the Korean peninsula, the regime in Pyongyang will continue to be dissuaded from initiating the use of nuclear weapons against other regional states.

Notes

1. Alexandre Mansourov, ‘The Origins, Evolution, and Current Politics of the North Korean Nuclear Program’, The Nonproliferation Review, Vol.2, No.3 (Spring–Summer 1995), pp.28–9.

2. Federation of American Scientists, ‘North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program’, <http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/index.html>.

3. Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 1995), p.234. The reactor at Yongbyon is believed to have become operational in 1986, while the Taechon reactor has never been completed. Activity at both reactor sites was frozen under the 1994 Agreed Framework.

4. Reiss, Bridled Ambition, pp.242–3.

5. Global Security.org, ‘Yongbyon 5-MW(e) Reactor’, <www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/yongbyon-5.htm,> accessed 24 Aug. 2004.

6. For an insight into the policy dynamics of the 1993–94 nuclear crisis from the perspective of former senior Clinton administration officials, see Joel Wit, Daniel Poneman and Robert Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2004).

7. For the text, see Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, ‘Agreed Framework Between the United States of America and the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, Geneva, 21 October 1994’, <www.kedo.org/pdfs/AgreedFramework.pdf>.

8. Under the Agreed Framework, North Korea was not required to open up its undeclared sites for four to six years. With some justification, critics of the deal maintained that this compromised the integrity of the IAEA safeguards programme and permitted the North to remove further weapons-grade material from the two nuclear waste facilities near Yongbyon.

9. Rodney Jones and Mark McDonough, Tracking Nuclear Proliferation 1998: A Guide in Maps and Charts (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1998), p.148.

10. Ron Huisken, ‘Has North Korea Got the Bomb?’, Aus-CSCAP Newsletter, No.15 (May 2003), p.16.

11. For discussion on the strong linkage between the two programmes, see Daniel Pinkston, ‘Domestic Politics and Stakeholders in the North Korean Missile Development Program’, The Nonproliferation Review, Vol.10, No.2 (Summer 2003), pp.1–15.

12. The third stage of the rocket did not exit the Earth's atmosphere, rendering the overall test a failure.

13. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), North Korea's Weapons Programmes: A Net Assessment (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp.81–2.

14. See Sharon Squassoni, ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction: Trade Between North Korea and Pakistan’, Congressional Research Service Report, RL31900, 11 March 2004, <www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/RL31900.pdf>.

15. Peter Slevin and Karen De Young, ‘North Korea Reveals Nuclear Program’, The Washington Post, 17 Oct. 2002.

16. Howard French, ‘North Korea, Accusing US, Says Nuclear Pact Has Collapsed’, The New York Times, 21 Nov. 2002.

17. Jonathan Pollack, ‘The United States, North Korea, and the End of the Agreed Framework’, Naval War College Review, Vol.56, No.3 (Summer 2003), p.41.

18. CNN World News, ‘North Korea Leaves Nuclear Pact’, 10 Jan. 2003, <www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/01/10/nkorea.treaty/index.html>.

19. BBC News Online, ‘North Korea Admits Nuclear Arsenal’, 17 Nov. 2002, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2485829.stm>; Doug Struck, ‘North Korea Ratchets Up Nuclear Rhetoric’, The Washington Post, 6 April 2003; and Stephen Lunn and John Kerin, ‘N Korea Admits: We Want Nukes’, The Australian, 10 June 2003.

20. Following a visit to the DPRK in early 2004, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Siegfried Hecker, confirmed in Congressional testimony that North Korean authorities had in fact removed the 8,000 spent fuel rods from the Yongbyon cooling pond where they had been under IAEA safeguards until late 2002. See ‘US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Hearing on “Visit to the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Centre in North Korea”, Siegfried Hecker, Senior Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California, 21 January 2004’, <http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2004/HeckerTestimony040121.pdf>.

21. Glenn Kessler, ‘N. Korea Weapons Estimate Set to Rise’, The Washington Post, 28 April 2004.

22. In particular, see Jon Wolfsthal, ‘Freezing and Reversing North Korea's Plutonium Program’, in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, Verifying North Korean Nuclear Disarmament: A Technical Analysis, Working Paper 38 (2003), p.8; IISS, North Korea's Weapons Programmes, pp.47–8; and Sharon Squassoni, ‘North Korea's Nuclear Weapons: How Soon An Arsenal?’, Congressional Research Service Report, RS21391, 2 Feb. 2004, <www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/RS21391.pdf>.

23. It is important to make the distinction between actual acquisition – where a country acquires a nuclear capability with the intention of operationalizing this capability in broader force structure and doctrine – and threshold status – where a state has achieved all of the technical means required to acquire nuclear weapons, but for political reasons decides against operationalizing this capability.

24. Peter Feaver and Emerson Niou, ‘Managing Nuclear Proliferation: Condemn, Strike, or Assist?’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol.40, No.2 (June 1996), p.216.

25. The only example to date is South Africa which destroyed its small nuclear weapons inventory in 1991. There is some debate over why South Africa took this decision, but most agree that the primary motivation was the outgoing apartheid regime's fear that the nuclear force would fall into the hands of its majority government successors led by the African National Congress. There is some evidence that the US, which played a key role in the reversal process, shared this fear. See Ariel Levite, ‘Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited’, International Security, Vol.27, No.3 (Winter 2002–03), pp.84–5.

26. See, for example, Stephen Meyer, The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Harald Muller, ‘Maintaining a Non-Nuclear Weapons Status’, in Regina Cowen Carp (ed.), Security With Nuclear Weapons? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp.301–39; and Scott Sagan, ‘Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Three Models in Search of a Bomb’, International Security, Vol.21, No.3 (Winter 1996–97), pp.54–86.

27. Michael Mazarr, ‘Going Just a Little Nuclear: Nonproliferation Lessons from North Korea’, International Security, Vol.20, No.2 (Fall 1995), p.101.

28. For instance, see Michael O'Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki, Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal with a Nuclear Armed North Korea (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2003); Peter Van Ness, ‘The North Korean Nuclear Crisis: Four-Plus-Two – An Idea Whose Time Has Come’, Keynotes 04, Department of International Relations, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 2003; and Gavan McCormack, Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe (Sydney: Random House Australia, 2004).

29. James Kelly, ‘Dealing with North Korea's Nuclear Programs: Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington DC, 15 July 2004’, <www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2004/34395pf.htm>.

30. For discussion of the Japanese and ROK positions, see David Reese, ‘North Korea: Anatomy of a Rogue State’, in Marika Vicziany, David Wright-Neville and Peter Lentini (eds), Regional Security in the Asia Pacific: 9/11 and After (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004), pp.256–9.

31. Ming Liu, ‘China and the North Korean Crisis: Facing Test and Transition’, Pacific Affairs, Vol.76, No.3 (Fall 2003), p.357. There can be little doubt that Chinese policy-makers remain concerned about the effect a North Korean nuclear weapons capability could have in spurring Japan to reconsider its nuclear options.

32. For a recent reiteration of this position, see William Triplett, Rogue State: How a Nuclear North Korea Threatens America (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2004). For a broader analysis of the application of ‘rogue’ state to the DPRK, see Roland Bleiker, ‘A Rogue is a Rogue is a Rogue: US Foreign Policy and the Korean Nuclear Crisis’, International Affairs, Vol.79, No.4 (July 2003), pp.719–37.

33. ‘President Bush's State of the Union Address, Washington DC, 29 January 2002’, <www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html>.

34. Randall Newnham, ‘Nukes for Sale Cheap? Purchasing Peace with North Korea’, International Studies Perspectives, Vol.5, No.2 (May 2004), p.165.

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36. The International Institute of Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey: 2003-2004 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p.201.

37. For what remains one of the more convincing rebuttals of the pessimist school, see David Karl, ‘Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers’, International Security, Vol.21, No.3 (Winter 1996–97), pp.87–119.

38. For discussion on this conceptual linkage, see Richard Russell, ‘The Nuclear Peace Fallacy: How Deterrence Can Fail’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.26, No.1 (March 2003), pp.136–55.

39. This pessimistic view was certainly the dominant theme in commentary on the future of the India-Pakistan strategic relationship following their respective nuclear tests in May 1998. See, for example, Mario Carranza, ‘An Impossible Game: Stable Nuclear Deterrence After the Indian and Pakistani Tests’, The Nonproliferation Review, Vol.6, No.3 (Spring–Summer 1999), pp.11–24.

40. Glenn Snyder, Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), p.9.

41. Daniel Pinkston and Philip Saunders, ‘Seeing North Korea Clearly’, Survival, Vol.45, No.3 (Autumn 2003), p.91.

42. On the nature and scope of social control, see Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig, North Korea Through the Looking Glass (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2000), pp.127–47.

43. Scott Snyder, ‘Negotiating on the Edge: Patterns in North Korea's Negotiating Style’, World Affairs, Vol.163, No.1 (Summer 2000), p.7.

44. For discussion on the increasingly powerful position of the military, see Chung-in Moon and Hideshi Takesada, ‘North Korea: Institutionalised Military Intervention’, in Muthiah Alagappa (ed.), Coercion and Governance: The Declining Political Role of the Military in Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp.357–82.

45. On the role of regime ideology in shaping North Korea's interaction with the outside world, see Adrian Buzo, The Guerilla Dynasty: Politics and Leadership in North Korea (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1999).

46. Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (London: Warner Books, 1999), pp.399–406.

47. Homer Hodge, ‘North Korea's Military Strategy’, Parameters: US Army War College Quarterly, Vol.33, No.1 (Spring 2003), p.70.

48. Selig Harrison, ‘Ending the Korean War’, The Korean Journal of International Studies, Vol.27, No.1 (Spring 2002), pp.7–8.

49. Wit, Poneman and Gallucci, Going Critical, pp.288–94 and passim.

50. Cited in Daniel Pinkston, ‘Bargaining Failure and the North Korean Nuclear Program's Impact on International Nonproliferation Regimes’, KNDU Review, Vol.8, No.2 (Dec. 2003), p.11.

51. For discussion, see Michael O'Hanlon, ‘Stopping a North Korean Invasion: Why Defending South Korea is Easier Than the Pentagon Thinks’, International Security, Vol.22, No.4 (Spring 1998), pp.135–70; Joseph Bermudez, The Armed Forces of North Korea (London: IB Tauris, 2001); and Dennis Van Vranken Hickey, ‘Reaching for Regional Power Status: A Net Assessment of the Military Capabilities of the ROK’, The Journal of East Asian Affairs, Vol.17, No.1 (Spring–Summer 2003), pp.93–120.

52. Victor Cha, ‘North Korea's Weapons of Mass Destruction: Badges, Shields, or Swords?’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol.117, No.2 (Summer 2002), p.220.

53. The 2001 US Nuclear Posture Review – elements of which were leaked by the Bush administration – listed seven countries that were incorporated into American contingency plans determining nuclear strike capabilities: North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, China and Russia. See Andrew Newman, ‘Arms Control, Proliferation and Terrorism: The Bush Administration's Post-September 11 Security Strategy’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.27, No.1 (March 2004), p.69.

54. Andrew Ward, ‘Iraq War Shows Deterrent Needed, Says N Korea’, The Financial Times, 6 April 2003; and Sang-Hun Choe, ‘N Korea: Disarming Will Lead to Invasion’, The Washington Post, 18 March 2004.

55. Following North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT in early 2003, China made it clear to the US that it would veto any American draft resolution introduced into the UN Security Council condemning Pyongyang's actions. See Peter Hartcher, ‘Security Council to Discuss Nuclear Crisis’, The Australian Financial Review, 4 April 2003.

56. In 1994, the US leaked to the media sections of its upgraded blueprint for fighting a war on the Korean peninsula in the event of a North Korean invasion – Operational Plan 5027. The latter was updated to include counter-offensive operations undertaken inside North Korea with the intention of destroying the regime in Pyongyang. Up until 1994, the basic US-ROK war plan had been to push DPRK forces back across the 38th parallel – essentially the status quo ante. For details, see Global Security.org, ‘OpPlan 5027 Major Theatre War – West’, <www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/oplan-5027.htm>.

57. ‘America's Troop Deployments: Moving On’, The Economist, 21 Aug. 2004, pp.27–8.

58. US Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, 30 Sept. 2001, <www.dod.gov/pubs/qdr2001.pdf>. While the US no longer deploys tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea, and although the US Navy has removed nuclear weapons from its surface fleet, American submarines traversing the Pacific Ocean are armed with a nuclear cruise missile capability and B-52s stationed in Guam in the Pacific remain nuclear-capable. These ‘theatre’ force elements could be supplemented by nuclear-capable systems on the continental US including the B-2 bomber force and, of course, America's massive ICBM arsenal.

59. David Kang, ‘International Relations Theory and the Second Korean War’, International Studies Quarterly, Vol.47, No.3 (2003), p.304.

60. Ayson and Taylor, ‘Attacking North Korea’, p.276.

61. Robert Litwak, ‘Nonproliferation and the Dilemmas of Regime Change’, Survival, Vol.45, No.4 (Winter 2003–04), pp. 23–6.

62. Jon Wolfsthal, ‘Asia's Nuclear Dominos?’, Current History (April 2003), pp.170–75.

63. Kenneth Pyle, ‘Restructuring Foreign and Defence Policy: Japan’, in Anthony McGrew and Christopher Brook (eds), Asia Pacific in the New World Order (London: Routledge, 1998), pp.124–5.

64. Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 3rd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p.438.

65. Marc Trachtenberg, ‘Strategic Thought in America, 1952–1966’, Political Science Quarterly, Vol.104, No.2 (Summer 1989), p.326.