North Korea's Balance of Terror

Kim Jong-un’s expanding arsenal of nuclear weapons is ushering in a dangerous new era of strategic instability.  

Kim regime claims to have mastered compact nuclear technology are the most trenchant indicator of a brave new world in which deterrence is based more on fear than certainty.  

Pyongyang’s words are spectacularly cheap.  But these recent words were preceded by repeated U.S. assessments warning that North Korea was on the verge of mastering the dark art of warhead miniaturization.  This alleged technological feat makes more ominous North Korea’s 2012 demonstration of long-range rockets and noisy efforts to field mobile missile launchers on land and at sea.  

Not even a man capable of executing his uncle and senior officials in order to demonstrate his hold on power intends to start a nuclear war.  Deterrence in its most primitive form will not evacuate the peninsula just because of Kim’s flirtation with weapons of mass disruption.  After all, a young man who thinks so highly of himself can hardly wish to commit suicide.  So what in the world is Kim Jong-un up to?

For some time regional governments have assumed that the cardinal aim of the Kim family dynasty was mere survival.  Having vanquished internal enemies—perceived and perhaps real—Kim Jong-un may be seeking more than consolidated power within North Korea.  Instead, the young general may be seeking to take his domestic balance of terror to the entire peninsula and beyond.

Whatever Kim’s calculus, the result is an era of ascending strategic instability.  The deployment of mobile, long-range nuclear-armed missiles will throw the ROK-US alliance into some disarray, perhaps creating the notion that Seoul and Washington could be decoupled, precluded from acting in concert at a critical moment of insecurity.  No doubt such fantasies help divert pressure away from the inhumane governance and intransigent diplomacy of Kim Jong-un.

The region is at risk if Kim Jong-un succeeds in only half of his policy determination to build a strong nuclear force and a wealthy economy.  While reduced evidence of famine is welcome, it is hardly proof that a heavily sanctioned, disconnected, oppressive, and distrusted North Korea can solve its structural economic problems without undertaking reforms that threaten the regime itself.  

Kim’s main aim is more psychological domination than physical destruction.  Yet the mere proliferation of North Korea’s latest disruptive technologies may still catalyze mass annihilation.  Kim may believe he can win, can eventually dominate the peninsula, can eventually neutralize American power and stare down an under-armed Republic of Korea without nuclear weapons.  

What Kim is trying to achieve stands in stark contrast with what the ROK-US alliance is seeking to accomplish: to denuclearize, deter, and defend.  We remain determined to denuclearize the peninsula, even though there is no hint that North Korea would ever abandon its nuclear weapons.  We have tended to deterrence, but deterrence based on old systems, not the new mobile, long-range threat that is finally emerging.  And we seek to defend critical targets, largely to shore up the credibility of deterrence.  But not even the deployment of THAAD will be sufficient to put up a critical shield should North Korea threaten to launch its future arsenal.

Sadly, there is first-mover advantage to an aggressor not bound by the same rule set. 

This means the challenges for the ROK-US alliance are magnified by North Korean gains in nuclear weapons, missiles, and cyber and space systems.  The ground beneath our feet is shifting.  Security conditions change.  Decades have passed since not only the 1953 Armistice, but also the period sometimes referred to as the second Korean war in the 1970s.  In addition, more recent efforts at inter-Korean relations have raised hope that this divided nation can find a way forward.  Unfortunately, North Korea’s asymmetric weapons programs are outpacing diplomacy, and now we are reentering a period of less stable deterrence.

The North Korean regime would no doubt like for us to declare it a permanent nuclear power, as it declares in its own constitution, and to deal with it as an equal major power.  Of all the scenarios one can imagine, this is the most unthinkable.  An era of strategic instability, however, is all too plausible.

Patrick M. Cronin is a Senior Advisor and Senior Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).