Nuclear Weapons

U.S.-Russia Nuclear Arms Control
The U.S. and Russia have signed various arms control agreements through the years, but recent fissures once again raise the specter of a nuclear arms race.

Timeline by Jonathan Masters and Sabine Baumgartner May 10, 2022

If Russia Goes Nuclear: Three Scenarios for the Ukraine War
The odds remain slim, but an increasingly desperate Vladimir Putin could use Russia’s nuclear arsenal to turn its fortunes in the Ukraine war. 

Article by J. Andrés Gannon Nov 9, 2022

Factors Driving the Nuclear Weapons Debate in South Korea
The public debate in South Korea over nuclear weapons reflects South Korean desires to have greater agency over their own security, shaped by factors beyond concerns over U.S. credibility.

Blog Post by Jennifer Ahn Feb 17, 2023

The New Nuclear Era
The world is on the cusp of a new era where nuclear weapons are likely to play a bigger role.

Article by Richard Haass Oct 19, 2022

  • Iran
    January 4, 2018
    Podcast
    Mass anti-government protests roil Iran, North and South Korea prepare for possible peace talks, and presidential elections take place in the Czech Republic.
    Podcast with James M. Lindsay and Robert McMahon January 4, 2018 The World Next Week
  • North Korea
    Kim Jong-un’s Dialogue Offer and South Korea’s Choice
    With about five weeks to go until the Winter Olympics in South Korea, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un suddenly appeared to reverse course. Having focused on nuclear and missile testing while rejecting conciliatory calls from the South to open dialogue, Kim in a New Year’s speech made his own offer for talks on how to create a peaceful environment for the Olympics and the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding. The South quickly accepted, proposing to hold talks next week. But it may not be an unalloyed success for South Korea’s progressive President Moon Jae-in, who has staked his political future on improving relations in the North. In reality, it is an attempt to put him in an impossible bind. Read more in The Atlantic.
    Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder January 2, 2018 Asia Unbound
  • South Korea
    South Korea at the Crossroads
    An authoritative look at South Korea's foreign-policy choices in an increasingly uncertain Asia.
    Book by Scott A. Snyder March 17, 2020
  • Global
    Seven Foreign Policy Stories to Watch in 2018
    Two thousand seventeen had its fair share of big news stories. The same will be true of 2018. Some of those stories undoubtedly will be a surprise. Not many experts were warning a year ago of impending ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar. Yet it (sadly) became one of the biggest news stories of 2017. Maybe a year from now everyone will be talking about Egypt’s insurgency and a new financial crisis in the European Union (EU). Or maybe not. As Yogi Berra apparently didn’t say, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” But a fair number of significant world events are ones we know are coming—call them the “known knowns.” Here are seven known stories to follow closely in 2018. Any one of them could turn into the dominant news event of the year—or fade completely away. We’ll know in twelve months which will sizzle and which will fizzle. Iran’s Bid for Regional Hegemony. Iranian leaders must be pleased with how 2017 played out. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad looks to be securely in power in Damascus. Ditto Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Islamic State lost much of its territory. The Iraqi government retook the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Houthi rebels have Saudi Arabia bogged down in a quagmire in Yemen. Iranian involvement figured prominently in all of these developments, which has entrenched Iranian influence across the region. But this success is not Tehran’s doing alone. Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy missteps have helped as well. Besides its ill-considered Yemen adventure, Riyadh led the effort to embargo Qatar for its alleged pro-Iranian sympathies and support for terrorism. That has pushed Qatar closer to Tehran and created a diplomatic headache for Washington. (Qatar hosts the largest U.S. airbase in the Middle East.) Still, Saudi Arabia likely retains President Donald Trump’s ear. The new U.S. National Security Strategy vows to “neutralize Iranian malign influence.” Contrary to his campaign pledge, Trump hasn’t pulled the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He instead opted to refuse to certify Iran’s compliance. That effectively kicked the issue over to Capitol Hill. Congress has now effectively kicked it back to him. While the White House wants to turn up the heat on Tehran, the question remains how far it will be willing to go. After all, Europe opposes torpedoing the JCPOA, and the White House has its hands full with North Korea. One thing you can be sure of: Iran will press its advantage wherever it can. North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions. Something has to give. Trump has vowed to prevent North Korea from gaining the capability to hit the United States with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. He’s backed that up with angry tweets and threats to unleash “fire and fury.” So far North Korea isn’t blinking. Pyongyang boasted after its ballistic missile test last month that it “can now reach all of the mainland U.S.” That’s probably not true. However, the trend is not America’s friend. Unfortunately, Washington’s options for compelling Pyongyang to back down aren’t promising. China either can’t—or won’t—use its economic leverage to make North Korea cry uncle. Meanwhile, the cost of U.S. military action would likely be steep—possibly even “catastrophic.” A diplomatic solution might still be forged. But that would almost certainly require recognizing North Korea as a nuclear weapons power—at the risk that Pyongyang will pocket any concessions and then renege on its commitments. It has done that before. Yes, the United States can rely on deterrence to keep North Korea at bay. That strategy worked against the far larger Soviet threat. The danger is that Kim Jong-un may be willing to take risks that Soviet leaders weren’t. Of course, an assassination, coup, or popular uprising could scramble everything—and not necessarily in a good way. However the situation plays out, the current level of tensions creates the possibility that war will begin not through calculation but miscalculation. Crisis in Venezuela. Venezuela should be a prosperous and vibrant country. After all, it has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Instead, the country is gripped by a horrific economic and political crisis. The fault lies squarely with President Nicolás Maduro. He has implemented disastrous economic policies and run roughshod over the country’s constitution. Hungry Venezuelans bitterly joke about being on a “Maduro diet,” medicine is in short supply, and Maduro’s allies have frustrated efforts to change things at the ballot box. As bad as things were in 2017 for Venezuelans, things could be even worse in 2018. The International Monetary Fund projects that inflation will exceed 2,300 percent next year. And Maduro has banned three opposition parties from participating in next December’s presidential election. Venezuelans have taken to the streets to protest Maduro’s dictatorial ways. More than one hundred protestors have been killed, but nothing has changed. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled to neighboring countries. Latin American countries are divided over how to respond. The United States has already imposed sanctions on Venezuelan officials and may impose more. Trump’s suggestion that U.S. military intervention might be necessary drew rebukes from across Latin America and probably gave Maduro a much-needed propaganda victory. In all, Maduro isn’t likely to go unless Venezuelans make him go. Trump’s Effort to Transform Trade. President Trump has been complaining about America’s “horrible” trade deals since the mid-1980s, and he made it a central theme of his 2016 presidential campaign. But during his first eleven months in office he spent more time barking than biting on trade. True, he signed a presidential memorandum pulling the United States out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). However, he didn’t impose tariffs on China or withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, or the World Trade Organization (WTO), all steps he either implied or vowed on the campaign trail to take. That may soon change. The White House is moving to impose punitive actions on predatory Chinese trade practices, its demands for revamping NAFTA look to be unacceptable to Canada and Mexico, and it is waging a low-level war against the WTO. Trump’s push to counter what he calls “economic aggression” could create considerable turmoil abroad—and at home. America’s trading partners are likely to retaliate. No one knows how far such tit-for-tat actions might go. What is known is that some U.S. export sectors would be hurt. Meanwhile, Trump’s trade initiatives won’t fix what bothers him: America’s yawning trade deficit. The United States runs a deficit because Americans consume far more than they save. Tweaking trade deals won’t change that. To make matters worse, the tax bill he has championed will likely make the trade deficit larger. China’s Ambitions Abroad. Xi Jinping had a terrific 2017. He consolidated his hold on power and now ranks as China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. The question is, how will he use his new status? To judge by his 205-minute speech to China’s National Party Congress in October, he won’t be sitting on the sidelines; he will be flexing his muscles. He used the terms “great power” and “strong power” twenty-six times in his speech. Xi’s assertive foreign policy will likely mix soft and hard power. He will be offering substantial aid to countries throughout Asia under the banner of the One Belt One Road initiative. Most countries will find it hard to pass up these funds, even if they sometimes come with substantial strings attached. Beijing will also be supporting sympathetic politicians and groups overseas, a tactic that has started to trigger a backlash. The vinegar supplementing the honey will be China’s continued effort to turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake. Countries in Southeast Asia will be watching closely to see whether, and how, the United States pushes back on China’s effort to make itself the regional hegemon. A world order may hang in the balance. The Mueller Investigation. Americans aren’t the only ones watching to see what happens with the investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller is conducting. Foreign capitals are as well. President Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt,” and he dismisses allegations that his campaign colluded with Russia as “fake news.” Partisans on both sides think they know how the investigation will turn out. We’ll see who is right. What we know for sure is that Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has pled guilty to lying to the FBI, as has former Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos. Mueller also has indicted Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort and Manafort’s business partner and senior Trump campaign staffer, Rick Gates. Trump’s lawyers predict that the investigation will wrap up shortly; history suggests it could drag on for months. At a minimum, the investigation distracts White House attention from policymaking and raises doubts overseas as to whether Trump has the political capital to carry through on his threats and promises. At the maximum, the investigation could plunge the United States into an unprecedented constitutional crisis. Whether we get either extreme or an outcome somewhere in between, America’s democracy is being tested. We’ll see if we live up to the framers’ expectations. Democracy Under Stress. Democracy is under siege. Just examine the rankings that Freedom House generates—global freedom has been declining for over a decade. The problem isn’t just that emerging democracies like Thailand and Turkey have slid back into authoritarian rule, though that’s bad enough. Many Western democracies are struggling as well. The EU is threatening to strip Poland’s voting rights in EU institutions because Warsaw has adopted anti-democratic laws, while Spain faces a secessionist movement in Catalonia. Centrist political parties across Europe have been losing vote shares to parties on the two extremes. Traditional center-left parties have had the most trouble, having suffered humiliating defeats in the Netherlands, France, and Austria among other places. But center-right parties are struggling as well, as recent elections in Britain and Germany attest. The United States still has a robust two-party system, but its democracy also seems far from its glory days. Congress struggles to carry out is most basic function, funding the government, Trump regularly violates longstanding democratic norms, and many Americans view members of the opposite party unfavorably. It’s not surprising, then, that some now see the United States as a “flawed democracy.” Authoritarian governments like China and Russia are both working, in different ways, to undermine free and fair elections across the globe. Is democracy doomed? No. It remains popular worldwide, even if it has become less so among young people in democratic countries. There will be important elections in 2018 that could reverse the negative trends, though they might also give us more “illiberal democracies.” Here’s the thing about democracy: it empowers the people. It’s up to them to use that power wisely. Corey Cooper and Benjamin Shaver contributed to the preparation of this post.
    Blog Post by James M. Lindsay December 22, 2017 The Water's Edge
  • Global
    Visualizing 2018: The Essential Graphics
    CFR experts discuss the data worth tracking in the year ahead.
    Expert Roundup by Amanda Shendruk, Amy M. Jaffe, Patricia M. Kim, Alyssa Ayres , Edward Alden , Varun Sivaram , Adam Segal , Megan Roberts, Rachel B. Vogelstein, Scott A. Snyder and Brad W. Setser December 20, 2017
  • North Korea
    The Challenge From North Korea
    This Global Governance Working Paper is a new feature of the Council of Councils (CoC), an initiative of the Council on Foreign Relations. Targeting critical global problems where new, creative thinking is needed, the working papers identify new principles, rules, or institutional arrangements that can improve international cooperation in addressing long-standing or emerging global problems. The views and recommendations are the opinion of the authors only, do not necessarily represent a consensus of the CoC members, and are not the positions of the supporting institutions. The Council on Foreign Relations takes no institutional positions on policy issues and has no affiliation with the U.S. government. The Challenge A nuclear-armed North Korea is a threat to the fragile strategic equilibrium on the Korean Peninsula and to international security at large. Emboldened by a nuclear arsenal, the highly militarized regime of President Kim Jong-un could be tempted to embark on aggressive acts. Meanwhile, the United States could opt for preventive military action. Even if neither party seeks a military confrontation, conflict could ensue due to miscalculation or simple misreading of each other’s intentions. Limited military exchanges could spiral out of control, eventually involving not only North Korea, the United States, and its allies in the region—Japan and South Korea—but also China. The repercussions of North Korea’s nuclear challenge may not be limited to Northeast Asia, not least because the nonproliferation regime, a pillar of international security, would be dealt a serious, if not fatal, blow if regional adversaries sought to meet it by acquiring their own nuclear arsenals. The destabilizing effects of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic programs on regional and international security cannot be overestimated. In devising a response to the North Korean challenge, regional actors should remain committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but they should also implement security measures with observable results short of full denuclearization. Specifically, the United States and its allies should concentrate on sanctioning North Korea and on diplomatic action, actively seeking the involvement of China and Russia, while employing a strategy of deterrence and containment. North Korea’s Objectives According to President Kim, North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic programs are meant to establish “equilibrium” with U.S. forces. Kim craves the ultimate deterrent: a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the United States. In his eyes, this option is a necessary guarantee for his and his party’s continued rule—indeed, their survival. The brisk increase in number and scope of missile and nuclear tests in 2016 and 2017 is consistent with this goal. Kim may also be indulging in more daring thoughts, like taking advantage of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic programs to militarily pursue unification with the South. Recommendations To minimize the risks of a regional conflict, strategic miscalculation, or North Korean adventurism, the United States and its allies should pursue the following recommendations. Avoid a preventive military strike. It is tempting to handle North Korea the way Alexander the Great used to untie knots, namely by swinging a sword at them. Yet, there is no Gordian knot solution to North Korea. The notion that U.S. bombing of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic facilities holds the promise of a quick and definitive fix should be put aside. U.S. forces may be unable to find or destroy all nuclear and missile-related targets and would probably only slow down the North’s progress, at the cost, however, of a military confrontation that could escalate into a full-fledged regional war. The North’s arsenal of conventional capabilities and chemical and biological weapons has the capacity to inflict tremendous pain on South Korea, and no one should rule out the possibility of Kim using nuclear weapons. Nor can the eventuality of a reluctant China entering the fray to prevent the loss of a useful buffer between its own border and the U.S.-South Korean border be dismissed. Unsurprisingly, neither U.S. allies in the region nor China or Russia are in favor of preventive military action. Pursue a multipronged policy response. Containment and crisis management, not war, are the least bad ways to handle North Korea, and both warrant coordination among the regional powers. The wisest way to address this challenge is a policy mix involving defense and deterrence, sanctions, and diplomacy. While these different types of action can unfold independently, all actors involved should do their best to prevent actions in one area from undermining what can be done in another. The United States, Japan, and South Korea should work to improve their defense and deterrence assets while making an effort to coordinate with Russia and China, both bilaterally and in the United Nations, on sanctions and diplomacy. Strengthen U.S. and allied defenses. Strong defense and deterrence assets are essential to persuade the North that its opponents have the capacity to minimize the damage of an artillery or missile attack and respond to it effectively. Given the North’s growing ballistic capabilities, missile defense is an obvious starting point. The United States can bolster South Korea’s nationally operated missile defense assets, both on land (Patriots) and at sea (Aegis). Critically, U.S. and South Korean defense planners will have to work on overcoming technical and political impediments to the interoperability of the South’s system with the U.S.-built Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD), currently being deployed to the South. With the North having amplified its missile threat, and in the absence of any arms control arrangement, opposition to THAAD in South Korea has actually collapsed, with President Moon Jae-in, until recently a vocal opponent, now supporting it. However, China and Russia have fiercely opposed THAAD deployment for fear that its X-band radar would be used to track their own ballistic capabilities. Beijing, in particular, will likely continue its efforts to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington on the deployment of missile defense systems in South Korean territory. More generally, China’s ability to exert pressure on South Korea to influence the latter’s decision-making on security matters should not be underestimated. In view of that, Washington and Seoul should make clear that THAAD is exclusively tailored to North Korea’s ballistic threat, even going as far as to issue a declaration that they may remove it if that threat eventually vanishes. These are opportune steps to assuage Chinese and Russian concerns. There may also be room for confidence-building measures to assure China that THAAD radars have only limited abilities to detect and track Chinese missile launches. Establish more credible deterrence. Bolstering deterrence will involve a delicate balancing act between dissuading North Korea and not alarming China or Russia. Potentially harmful side effects on the global nonproliferation regime should also be avoided. The latter point is critical. Cold military logic would suggest that Japan and South Korea, in agreement with the United States, should build their own arsenals. This step would contribute to making Tokyo and Seoul masters of their own destinies and reduce the risk that U.S. territory becomes the target of a nuclear attack. Northeast Asia does not exist in a vacuum, though. It is part of an international security system of which the nonproliferation regime based on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is a fundamental component. The NPT would be severely, if not fatally, damaged by a withdrawal of Japan and South Korea, two of its staunchest supporters. With the treaty weakened or gone, power politics would be a greater factor—or perhaps the only factor—shaping nonproliferation dynamics, which would be a far weaker guarantee that countries such as Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and many others (as varied as Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam) would stick to nonproliferation commitments. The security benefits that Japan and South Korea would gain by going nuclear should be weighed against the risk of generalized, uncontrolled proliferation. A nuclear-armed Japan and South Korea would also change the regional power structure, probably leading China and Russia to adjust their deterrence policies. This would likely reduce any chance of regional cooperation on North Korea. Deterrence should therefore unfold along more traditional patterns—extended nuclear deterrence (by the United States) and conventional deterrence. Reassurance should go both ways. Mechanisms to ensure extended nuclear deterrence should be put in place incrementally to avoid or minimize frictions with Russia and China. Thus far, the United States has refrained from committing permanent deployments of strategic assets—bombers or dual capable aircraft, nuclear-armed submarines, and carrier groups—to land bases and ports in South Korea. Increasing their periodic deployment through more intensive rotations is the wisest choice. For the same reason, redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea (which were removed in the early 1990s) is not advisable. Such a move would carry a high risk of escalating tensions with the North—but also with China—while bringing no strategic benefits not already provided by U.S. nuclear-armed submarines and nuclear-capable bombers. South Korea will need to bolster the credibility of its so-called massive retaliation and punishment plan, involving assets to destroy North Korea’s heavy artillery along the thirty-eighth parallel in the shortest timeframe possible and beefed-up strike capabilities—all matters on which assistance from the U.S. government and coordination with U.S. forces are essential. To that end, the United States and South Korea should increase cooperation on target acquisition, while also coordinating more with Japan on intelligence gathering. Enhanced cooperation will also be needed to strengthen digital defenses and exploit the North’s cyber vulnerabilities. Coordinate sanctions with regional powers. The purpose of sanctions is to punish and deter flagrant breaches of nonproliferation commitments—an important message also sent to any other potential proliferator. Targeted sanctions can also contribute to containing the Kim regime by denying it access to resources that could be crucial for the advancement of its nuclear and ballistic programs. These secondary functions of sanctions against North Korea remain important even if it continues its nuclear weapons program. Recent developments show that it is possible to build and keep a united diplomatic front involving such major powers as China and Russia around a robust package of sanctions. The UN Security Council (with resolutions 2371 and 2375) has prohibited North Korean exports of coal and textiles, banned natural gas imports, capped oil imports, curtailed financial transactions, and forbade arrangements that would result in additional North Korean citizens working abroad. The United States has gone much further with an executive order that threatens the freezing of assets held in the United States by foreign companies and individuals engaging in any financial or trade transactions with North Korean entities. These measures have the potential to inflict heavy pain on North Korea. Revenue from coal and textile exports and remittances are Pyongyang’s only significant remaining licit sources of foreign funding. North Korea’s heavy reliance on China for oil (and food) is also an important vulnerability, while targeting financial transactions is meant to curtail the North’s ability to get foreign currency, often through front companies set up abroad. With China apparently willing to play along with U.S. sanctions, North Korea may soon be under economic siege. Whether this will be enough to induce a change of course, however, remains open to question. The Kim regime has the luxury of not having to worry about the effects of sanctions on the population, widely subdued by years of propaganda and ruthless repression. In addition, thanks to some modest domestic reforms, the North’s economy has performed decently recently, which provides the regime with some slack. Moreover, China, frustrated as it may be by North Korea’s nuclear bravado, will refrain from taking steps that could lead to its collapse. China’s cooperation with the United States has increased lately, but Beijing’s fundamental strategic calculus—that a nuclear-armed North Korea would be better than a unified U.S.-allied Korea at its border—has not changed. Washington should bear this in mind, particularly when it comes to applying secondary sanctions. It is an open secret that China, like Russia (and many other countries), opposes such measures because they give the United States de facto extraterritorial jurisdiction. The United States would be wise to apply the new sanctions only against companies in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Explore options for realistic diplomacy. Sanctions can, and should, be used as bargaining chips in negotiations. Ideally, the dormant Six Party Talks should be resumed, although direct contact between the United States and North Korea and between the North and the South will be needed too. Even if the lifting of sanctions should be linked to denuclearization, limited exemptions and waivers could be promised in return for de-escalating measures by the North. In exchange for a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests, the United States could also offer not to increase its military activities and presence on the peninsula. Perhaps even more critically, the parties could agree on mechanisms to prevent accidental escalation, including hotlines, military-to-military contacts, and regular exchanges of information. There are also a number of incentives unrelated to sanctions that the regional powers can put on the table in order to persuade the North to exert self-restraint. South Korea could envisage the reopening of the Kaesong industrial complex and discuss the disputed maritime demarcation line in the Yellow Sea; Russia could be allowed to develop infrastructure projects in the North; and the United States, China, and South Korea could signal their readiness to start talks on a formal peace treaty. Conclusion North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic weapons development is a threat to international security and imperils the global nonproliferation regime. This strategy of deterrence and containment combined with regional power coordination would defuse the risk of events spiraling out of control. The most that can be reasonably hoped for in the current circumstances is not a resolution of the North Korea crisis, but injecting a higher degree of predictability into regional relations. For as long as all parties know where the trip wire triggering a major conflagration is, the risk they will deliberately walk or accidentally stumble into it will be far lower than it is now.
    Report by Riccardo Alcaro and Ettore Greco November 29, 2017 International Institutions and Global Governance Program
  • North Korea
    America First or U.S.-South Korea Alliance First in Dealing with North Korea?
    As President Donald Trump was kicking off the first state visit under the progressive administration of Moon Jae-in, the life-or-death question in South Korean minds was whether Trump intended to take an America-first or an alliance-first approach in response to the growing North Korean threat.   How Trump views American alliance commitments to defend South Korea from North Korean aggression has become an urgent question as North Korea has expanded the range of its missiles and the yield of its nuclear explosions.  When the North Korean foreign minister threatened an above ground thermonuclear test in response to President Trump’s threat at the United Nations in September to destroy the country, there was every reason for South Koreans to worry that the war of words might trigger a military conflict, with potentially catastrophic consequences for South Korea. They may have been reassured somewhat when Trump, at a joint press conference with Moon in Seoul, urged the North Koreans to “come to the table and make a deal,” stating that military options are a last resort and that the current strategy remains one of economic pressure and political isolation.   Yet despite what Trump called “movement” on the issue, denuclearization remains a distant goal—and Trump’s ultimate strategy an open question. North Korean leaders believe that the ability to strike the United States with nuclear weapons will finally even the nuclear playing field, after it has lived under what it sees as the threat of American nuclear attacks for decades. Trump has stated that the United States will not tolerate vulnerability to a North Korean nuclear strike capability—which is getting ever-closer as the North approaches the means to fit a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile—and that “Rocket Man” is on a suicide mission. But the South Korean capital city of Seoul is only a few dozen miles south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and has lived with the risk of destruction from North Korean artillery and rocket launchers for decades, making redundant the threat from North Korea’s nuclear weapons that Koreans have lived with following North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006.   Kim Jong-un has stated that an “equilibrium” with the United States will remove the risk of an American attack on Pyongyang, despite worrisome evidence to the contrary. Both statements reveal misplaced assumptions that raise the risk of miscalculation and pose new tests for a U.S.-South Korean security alliance that has helped deter renewal of war with North Korea for decades.   South Korea’s embrace of the security alliance with the United States has proven to be the country’s best strategy for securing its stability and prosperity, even at the cost of South Korean aspirations for autonomy. The clash between the need for an alliance protector and the desire for autonomy has evolved as a result of South Korea’s democratic transformation and as South Korea has become the dominant power on the peninsula, surpassing the North in the 1970s.  South Korea’s dependency on the United States has remained critical in facing down North Korea’s nuclear threat, as well as managing China’s rise—not least because South Korea’s embrace of global trade interdependence relies on rules made by the United States.   But South Korean domestic debates about America’s reliability have grown in recent years on issues such as how to balance relations between Beijing and Washington. More recently, South Korean debates have centered on whether to request a return of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korean soil, or even whether South Korea should develop its own nuclear weapons to balance the North. Just last week, the Moon administration started walking the high wire in Moon’s diplomacy with Trump and Xi Jinping as it launched what it calls “balanced diplomacy,” the goal of which is to pursue a diplomatic rapprochement with China following over a year of friction over the U.S. deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) missile-defense system in South Korea. While emphasizing the importance of joint U.S.-South Korean defense and deterrence against North Korea, Moon reiterated the importance of balanced diplomacy as a way of diversifying South Korea’s diplomatic relations at his joint press conference with President Trump. But this effort has generated debate about whether Moon is sacrificing potential for strengthened trilateral U.S.-Japan-South Korean security cooperation for the sake of better relations with Beijing.   Still, given the effectiveness of the U.S.-South Korean security alliance in deterring conventional aggression from a far weaker North Korean adversary, Pyongyang, using its classic guerrilla mindset and tactics, has been testing the alliance with unconventional challenges. One end of the spectrum involves unconventional provocations short of war, as when the North Korean sinking of a Korean naval vessel and shelling of a South Korean-controlled island near the North Korean mainland in 2010 raised the risk of South Korean unilateral retaliation. In those cases, U.S. Forces in Korea counseled restraint.   On the opposite end of the spectrum, of course, is the nuclear threat on the U.S. mainland, which has reversed this dynamic, with South Korean president Moon insisting in a speech to the National Assembly days prior to President Trump’s arrival in Seoul that “no military action on the Korean peninsula will be taken without the prior consent of the Republic of Korea.” In both instances, a primary source of tension is whether an America-first approach involving unilateral U.S. action, or an alliance-based approach, is likely to be a more effective solution to the problem.   The America-first approach to North Korea runs the risk of playing into Kim Jong-un’s hands. North Korea’s quest for the capability to strike the United States allows it to test the credibility of American security commitments—would the U.S. president really risk Los Angeles to save Seoul if North Korea invaded the South?—demand withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea, and pursue North Korean-led unification of the Korean peninsula. On the one hand, South Koreans worry about the risk of American abandonment of South Korea under threat of North Korean blackmail. On the other hand, they worry that a premature American strike on North Korea will entrap South Korea in a conflict that could potentially cost millions of Korean lives and threaten the economic base of one of the top 15 economies in the world. North Korea’s pressure on the alliance, combined with America’s own mixed signals—for instance Trump’s suggestion that South Korea and Japan should pursue their own nuclear arms during the election campaign—may together give Kim Jong-un hope that Trump might cave in and bring U.S. Forces in Korea home.   From an America first perspective, the Trump administration will want to examine every measure available to prevent North Korea from expanding its power to extort respect and resources from the rest of the world. In this view, the idea of nuclear vulnerability to Kim Jong-un is intolerable and must be stopped at all costs, including preventive war. But a premature unilateral strike on North Korea will most probably break both the U.S.-South Korea alliance, by precipitating a South Korean domestic backlash over whether conflict was necessary, and endanger the U.S.-led security architecture in Asia—in addition to forcing the United States to bear disproportionate costs for a protracted post-conflict stabilization process on the Korean peninsula.   On the other hand, an alliance-first approach to countering North Korea supports the continuation of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure and engagement campaign against North Korea. It holds the line on North Korean dreams of coercing the South into Korean unification while countering North Korean threats with certain knowledge in Pyongyang that crisis escalation would prevent Kim Jong-un from achieving his essential objective of regime survival, a solid form of restraint against North Korean adventurism. It should buy the time necessary to fully implement the Trump administration’s efforts to squeeze North Korea by building ever-greater coercive pressure in support of a diplomatic solution to the current crisis. Significantly, the strategy uses economic coercion in a fashion that more fairly distributes costs to all the concerned parties, including China, by forcing China to accept the necessity of sanctions enforcement.   Most importantly, the U.S.-South Korea alliance serves as an important brake on premature military action through preventive war without compromising U.S. capability to take actions in its own self-defense—actions which ultimately would be understandable to American allies—in the event that North Korea were to launch an attack on the United States.   This post originally appeared in The Atlantic.  
    Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder November 7, 2017 Asia Unbound
  • North Korea
    Can the United States, China, and South Korea Cooperate on North Korea?
    This post is co-authored by Sungtae "Jacky" Park, research associate for Korea Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Yet again, Asia watchers are pondering how China might be able to help with the North Korean crisis. The vast majority in the Washington DC policy community is skeptical that Beijing has the will or the intent to reign in Pyongyang by seriously enforcing the existing sanctions against the regime. However, Kim Heung-kyu, director of the China Policy Institute and professor at Ajou University in South Korea, argues in a new CFR discussion paper, China and the U.S.-ROK Alliance: Promoting a Trilateral Dialogue, that the Chinese discourse toward North Korea has greatly shifted under Xi Jinping and that time is rife to seek U.S.-China-South Korea trilateral cooperation on North Korea. According to Kim, two major schools of foreign policy thought, the developing country school and the traditional geopolitics school, competed for dominance in China under Hu Jintao. The developing country school, which was the mainstream, considered China as a developing country that needed to focus on economic development above all other goals. Based on this thinking, China’s Korea policy was rather passive and focused on stability and status quo. Under Xi, especially after North Korea’s third nuclear test in 2013, China has forged a closer relationship with South Korea. Moreover, calls for tougher sanctions and Chinese support for Korean unification on South Korean terms have also increased in the Chinese discourse. At the same time, the China-North Korea relationship has entered one of the worst periods in its history. Under Xi Jinping, China has adopted an increasingly active and vocal stance on Korea-related issues. For example, on February 17, 2016, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi suggested pursuing parallel negotiations for denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula on one hand and a peace treaty on the other hand. In March 2017, Wang suggested a dual suspension of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and of U.S.-South Korea joint military drills. Both suggestions did not lead to any breakthrough. But Kim argues that the Chinese have also become more open to embracing various mini- and multilateral talks to deal with North Korea–related issues. Kim Heung-kyu argues that, given this shift, China now could be willing to join a trilateral dialogue with the United States and South Korea on North Korea at track 1.7 level, which would include government officials on the U.S. and South Korean sides and nongovernmental experts authorized to discuss sensitive matters by the government on the Chinese side. With enough trust-building, such dialogues could eventually make way for official government-to-government talks on North Korea. To create room for such possibilities, Kim argues that South Korea should intensify diplomacy with China and reach a consensus on stability and the end state on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea should also avoid creating the perception that it is becoming part of any effort to isolate or contain China, particularly on issues such as the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system. The Americans and South Koreans should assure the Chinese that the U.S.-Korea alliance is not aimed at seeking regime change in North Korea and that a unified Korea would not be adversarial to Chinese interests. Given that Kim is deeply familiar with the scholarly opinion in China, his paper should be an insightful read at a time when the United States and South Korea need to understand China’s policy toward North Korea better than ever.
    Blog Post by Scott A. Snyder and Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound November 7, 2017 Asia Unbound
  • South Korea
    China and the U.S.-ROK Alliance: Promoting a Trilateral Dialogue
    With increased understanding and mutual trust, the three countries could help denuclearize North Korea, establish crisis management mechanisms, and reach an end state on the Korean Peninsula.
    Report by Heung-kyu Kim November 7, 2017
  • United States
    VICE Special Report: A World in Disarray
    A World in Disarray, a VICE special report, draws on Richard Haass's eponymous book and explores the disorder in today’s international landscape using four regional case studies: Syria, Ukraine, the South China Sea, and North Korea.
    Teaching Notes by Richard Haass November 1, 2017
  • North Korea
    A Grand Bargain for the Long Game on the Korean Peninsula
    Patricia Kim is the Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Despite President Trump’s threats to destroy North Korea if necessary, and recent steps by Beijing to reduce its trade with Pyongyang, a resolution of the North Korean nuclear crisis is nowhere in sight. While no quick fix exists to denuclearize North Korea, negotiating a freeze, and ultimately dismantling its nuclear program, will require all of the major powers in the region to stand together and present the Kim regime with a stark choice—nuclear weapons or regime survival—through both economic pressure and diplomatic assurances. But to rally all of North Korea’s neighbors to present such an ultimatum, the inherent struggle over the regional balance of power that lies at the heart of the current crisis must be addressed first. President Trump should use his inaugural trip to Asia this month to begin exploring a grand bargain with the major powers of the region—China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia—that outlines mutually acceptable scenarios on the Korean Peninsula, and can serve as the basis for extended diplomatic coordination between the five parties. The purpose of the grand bargain would be twofold. First, to assure all five parties, especially Beijing, that joining Washington to pressure North Korea, even at the risk of the Kim regime’s collapse, will not sway the regional balance of power in a manner that undercuts any one state’s fundamental interests. And second, to send a message to Pyongyang that it can no longer rely on the strategic gaps between its neighbors to continue its “byungjin” policy of pursuing both nuclear weapons and economic development. The grand bargain, which could be formalized in a joint statement, should begin with the premise that none of the parties seek North Korea’s collapse, and that all are willing to extend a security guarantee and assist with its integration into the global economy, in conjunction with concrete steps by Pyongyang to freeze and ultimately abandon its nuclear program. But the deal should also include a clear commitment that all five parties will continue to enforce and increase sanctions until North Korea takes such steps. The grand bargain will also need to address what would happen if the Kim regime were to collapse as an unintended result of the pressure campaign. One reasonable plan is to have the South Korean government take charge of the unification of the Korean Peninsula, with the assistance of U.S. and Chinese troops to secure nuclear material and ensure an orderly transition in the immediate aftermath. The plan should also include a commitment by all parties to assist in the stabilization of a unified and neutral Korea that can enjoy equitable and coordinated relationships with all of the powers in the region. Striking such a deal will not be easy by any means, and will have to address conflicting interests and mutual skepticism on all sides. First, the United States and South Korea will need to have a serious conversation on whether and how they are prepared to modify their alliance in the case of unification, in order to gain China’s support for a unified Korean Peninsula led by the South Korean government. President Trump will also have to find a way to persuade the other parties that the U.S. government will stand by the provisions in the deal, despite a poor track record of pursuing regime change and wavering on past commitments like the Iran deal. And President Xi Jinping will also need to assure all parties, especially South Korea, that China would respect the independence of a unified Korean Peninsula, especially one with a modified security relationship with the United States, should such a state arise. Addressing such challenges will be tough to say the least, but not impossible, with creative and persistent diplomacy. The time is ripe to strike a grand bargain. Asian leaders and citizens are increasingly worried about the prospects for war in their neighborhood, and would welcome a deal that lays out a diplomatic path forward with clear ground rules on the Korean Peninsula. Perhaps most significantly, Beijing, which has traditionally sheltered Pyongyang, is increasingly frustrated with its wayward ally, and faces growing calls by Chinese political elites to reevaluate whether its North Korea policy is still in China’s best interests. And now that President Xi has emerged an even stronger leader after the Nineteenth Party Congress, he should have more political space to partake in grand deal-making. Finally, it is imperative to lock down Russia into an agreement before it expands its minor spoiler-role of helping North Korea flout sanctions. President Trump takes pride in his ability to make deals, and he should use his upcoming trip to lay the groundwork to strike a grand bargain with his regional partners. While any deal is unlikely to result in immediate denuclearization, an extended campaign of economic pressure and clear diplomatic assurances could one day lead to wariness and changed minds among North Korea’s elites, who now have more access to outside information and creature comforts than ever before. And if the Kim regime collapses before such a point, a grand bargain will serve as a valuable blueprint for the way forward on the Korean Peninsula.
    Blog Post by Patricia M. Kim November 1, 2017 Asia Unbound
  • Iran
    The President’s Iran Decision: Next Steps
    Philip H. Gordon testified before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa on Wednesday, October 25, 2017, discussing President Trump's decision to decertify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Gordon argued that the United States can do more to counter an Iranian regime that remains implacably hostile to the United States, but the best way to do that—and to prevent Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon—is to continue to enforce the JCPOA.  Main Points The JCPOA is doing what it was designed to do—prevent Iran from advancing toward a nuclear weapons capability. Before the deal, Iran had a large and growing nuclear program and was only months away from producing enough nuclear material for a bomb. Today it is more than a year away from that capacity, committed never to “seek, acquire, or develop” a nuclear weapon or do nuclear weaponization work, and subject indefinitely to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s most intrusive inspections regime. Terminating the JCPOA—as the President has threatened to do—would isolate the United States, badly undermine U.S. credibility around the world, and allow Iran to resume its full range of nuclear activities—with no realistic alternative plan for curbing them. The JCPOA resulted from more than two years of difficult, multilateral negotiations, has been endorsed by the UN Security Council, and is supported by the vast majority of countries around the world—including those whose sanctions were necessary to bring Iran to the table in the first place. The result of pulling out of the deal out of concern about “sunset” provisions more than a decade away would effectively be to “sunset” the entire agreement immediately. The United States can do more to prevent Iran from threatening U.S. interests in the region and around the world while acting consistent with the JCPOA and keeping the support of its allies. It should fully enforce the deal; penalize Iran through sanctions and other measures for its long-range ballistic missile development, support for terrorism, and regional intervention; work with European allies to support such measures; strengthen key regional allies such as Israel and the Gulf States (including support for missile defense); engage diplomatically to reduce the conflicts Iran exacerbates and exploits; and begin discussions with European and other partners on ways to complement, supplement, or extend the JCPOA over time.  
    Testimony by Philip H. Gordon October 25, 2017
  • Iran
    Mrs. Clinton and the Trump Nuclear Decision
    Hillary Clinton is now complaining that President Trump has broken America’s word with his policy on the Iran nuclear agreement, the JCPOA. For reasons I will explain below, this is a subject on which she should really be silent. Trump has refused to certify to Congress that Iran is fully and verifiably complying with the deal or that the deal is in America’s national security interest. In doing so he follows U.S. law, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA). And Trump has said that if improvements in the JCPOA are impossible to achieve, he may renounce the agreement entirely. Speaking on the Fareed Zakaria GPS show on CNN this past weekend about Trump’s decision, Clinton said that “First of all, it basically says America's word is not good.” She said Trump "is upending the kind of trust and credibility of the United States' position and negotiation that is imperative to maintain." But that is exactly and precisely what Clinton, and Obama, did in 2009 in the face of another agreement by the preceding president. In 2003, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced that Israel would remove some or all settlements in Gaza. President George W. Bush fully supported that decision, and continued the support during 2004 and 2005, when Sharon faced tough opposition to it in Israel. On April 14, 2004, Mr. Bush gave Mr. Sharon a letter saying that "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Previous administrations had declared that Israeli settlements beyond the 1949 lines, often called the "1967 borders," were illegal. Mr. Bush now said that in any realistic peace agreement Israel would be able to negotiate the retention of some of those settlements. Moreover, Bush had negotiated with Israel on the question of settlement expansion. Four days after the president's letter to Sharon, Sharon's Chief of Staff Dov Weissglas wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that "I wish to reconfirm the following understanding, which had been reached between us: 1. Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of settlement activities, an effort will be made in the next few days to have a better definition of the construction line of settlements in Judea & Samaria." What were the “agreed principles?” Sharon had stated those limits clearly and publicly in December 2003: "Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements." Where did those four principles come from? They were the product of discussions and negotiations between Israeli and American officials and had been discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush as early as their meeting in Aqaba, Jordan in June 2003. So: there were negotiations, there were face to face discussions between President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon, Sharon mentioned the exact agreed principles in speeches, and Bush wrote a letter mentioning the new American view. What’s more, Congress voted by overwhelming majorities to support Bush in all this, by lopsided margins: 95 to 3 in the Senate on June 23, 2004 and 407 to 9 in the House of Representatives on June 24. And then the Obama administration arrived in office, and simply denied that any agreement on settlements existed. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton said on June 17, 2009 that "in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements." Marvin Kalb, the long-time CBS newsman, wrote in his book The Road to War: Presidential Commitments Honored and Betrayed that “Obama’s new secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, put a nail [in the coffin of] the Bush-Sharon exchange of letters by immediately making it clear that the Obama administration wanted no part of them.” Clinton, and Obama, simply decided to ignore commitments made, orally and in writing, to another government and then endorsed by both Houses of Congress. Now along comes Clinton to claim that President Trump, by following the INARA legislation, “basically says America's word is not good” and that he "is upending the kind of trust and credibility of the United States' position.” The double standard here is perhaps not shocking, but nevertheless deserves note. It seems that to Mrs. Clinton, some agreements are sacrosanct while others may be cavalierly ignored and dismissed—and the distinction between the two types is that she likes some and doesn’t like others. It is her standard that will surely “upend the trust and credibility” of the United States ( to use her language).   As to Mr. Trump’s recent decision, how it can be said that he is harming American credibility by following U.S. law, the INARA legislation, escapes me. In fact, there was every expectation that the Obama administration would follow the Bush agreement with Israel, given its almost unanimous support in Congress. By contrast, the JCPOA had zero Republican support in Congress and the 2016 Republican Platform stated that “We consider the Administration’s deal with Iran, to lift international sanctions and make hundreds of billions of dollars available to the Mullahs, a personal agreement between the President and his negotiat­ing partners and non-binding on the next president….A Republican president will not be bound by it.” No surprises here when that is exactly what happens. Mrs. Clinton's criticism is unfair, especially given her own track record.         
    Blog Post by Elliott Abrams October 15, 2017 Pressure Points
  • Iran Nuclear Agreement
    Will Decertification Spike the Iran Nuclear Accord?
    Even if Congress declines to reinstate sanctions on Iran after President Trump’s address, the nuclear agreement will still be on shaky footing.
    Interview with Zachary Laub and Ariane Tabatabai October 13, 2017
  • Israel
    The Coming Confrontation Between Israel and Iran
    In the United States, discussions of Iran have for the last few years been mostly about the JCPOA—the nuclear deal negotiated by President Obama. In the Middle East, things are different. This is because while we have been debating, Iran has been acting. And Israel has been reacting. Israel has struck sites in Syria one hundred times in the last five years, bombing when it saw an Iranian effort to move high-tech materiel to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Last month Israel bombed the so-called Scientific Studies and Researchers Center in Masyaf, a city in central Syria, a military site where chemical weapons and precision bombs were said to be produced. Now, there are reports (such as this column by the top Israeli military analyst, Alex Fishman, in the newspaper Yediot Achronot) that Iran is planning to build a military airfield near Damascus, where the IRGC (Revolutionary Guards) could build up their presence and operate. And that Iran and the Assad regime are negotiating over giving Iran its own naval pier in the port of Tartus. And that Iran may actually deploy a division of soldiers in Syria. Such developments would be unacceptable to Israel, and it will convey this message to Russia and to the United States. Russia’s defense minister will soon visit Israel, after which Israel’s defense minister will visit Washington. Previous Israeli efforts to get Putin to stop Iran (during Netanyahu’s four visits to Moscow in the last year) have failed, which suggests that Israel will need to do so itself, alone—unless the new Iran policy being debated inside the Trump administration leads the United States to seek ways to stop the steady expansion of Iran’s military presence and influence in the Middle East. That remains to be seen. Rumors suggest that the Trump administration may label the IRGC a terrorist group, which could open the door to using counter-terrorism authorities to stop its expansion. Whatever the debate over the JCPOA, there may well be a broader consensus in the administration that Iran’s growing military role in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the region must be countered. Whatever the American conclusion, if Iran does indeed plan to establish a large and permanent military footprint in Syria—complete with permanent naval and air bases and a major ground force—Israel will have fateful decisions to make. Such an Iranian presence on the Mediterranean and on Israel’s border would change the military balance in the region and fundamentally change Israel’s security situation. And under the JCPOA as agreed by Obama, remember, limits on Iran’s nuclear program begin to end in only 8 years, Iran may now perfect its ICBM program, and there are no inspections of military sites where further nuclear weapons research may be underway. As Sen. Tom Cotton said recently, “If Iran doesn’t have a covert nuclear program today, it would be the first time in a generation.” Israel could be a decade away from a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and has bases in Syria—and could logically therefore even place nuclear weapons in Syria, just miles from Israel’s border. Fishman, the dean of Israel’s military correspondents, writes that “If the Israeli diplomatic move fails to bear fruit, we [Israel] are headed toward a conflict with the Iranians.” That conclusion, and the Iranian moves that make it a growing possibility, should be on the minds of Trump administration officials as they contemplate a new policy toward Iran’s ceaseless drive for power in the Middle East.    
    Blog Post by Elliott Abrams October 8, 2017 Pressure Points