Nuclear Weapons

This post is co-authored by Sungtae "Jacky" Park, research associate for Korea Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  A version of this post is set to appear in Airpress. North Korea’s intense series of ballistic missile tests since last year has brought Kim Jong-un ever closer to mastering the capability to hit the continental United States. Washington and its allies are now acutely confronting the problem of how best to deter North Korea militarily, even as U.S. and regional policymakers continue to look for a way to convince Kim to stand down and reverse direction. North Korea’s ballistic missile development has persisted for decades. As listed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Defense Project, existing and developing capabilities include: Short-range ballistic missiles or SRBMs, with ranges defined to be 1,000 kilometers or under (KN-02, Hwasong-5 and 6, KN-18, and Scud-ER/extended-range Hwasong-6) Medium-range ballistic missiles or MRBMs, with ranges defined to be between 1,000 and 3,000 kilometers (No-dong, KN-11, and KN-15/Pukguksong-2, all under the range of 2,000 kilometers) Intermediate-range ballistic missiles or IRBMs, with ranges defined to be between 3,000 and 5,500 kilometers (Musudan and Hwasong-12) Intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs, with ranges defined as at least 5,500 kilometers (KN-08, KN-14, Hwasong-14, and Taepodong-2, all of which have ranges of at least 10,000 kilometers) The North Korean arsenal also includes cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles, rocket launchers, and various artillery pieces The diverseness of North Korea’s missile arsenal suggests that the Kim regime desires to practice deterrence vis-à-vis the United States both through denial of U.S. attack options and punishment for any attack. To begin with, Seoul, located thirty miles from the demilitarized zone, has always been hostage to North Korean conventional military threats, and now North Korea seeks to make Japanese and U.S. cities hostage to the threat of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. The North Koreans are seeking to establish deterrence by threatening to punish their adversaries with unbearable human cost if attacked. The North Koreans have also been developing the capability to strike U.S. bases in South Korea, Japan, and Guam with nuclear weapons, thereby seeking to minimize the chance of a U.S.-led attack succeeding by holding U.S. troops and transit/supply lines to the Korean front at risk and by seeking to greatly raise the cost of such an attack. The North Koreans are seeking to establish deterrence by seeking to deny the adversaries’ capability to achieve their objective. But the purpose of North Korea’s growing arsenal seems to go beyond deterrence. The North Koreans continue to call on the United States to sign a peace treaty that would likely include the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula and the end of the U.S.-South Korea alliance. Many experts suspect that Kim, after pushing the United States out of the Korean Peninsula, would seek to unify Korea on his terms by using or threatening to use nuclear weapons. With the North’s testing of ICBMs, there are growing concerns that the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence to South Korea would weaken if a major U.S. city (Los Angeles, for example) were to come under the threat of a nuclear strike. Many fear that the perception of American irresolution could tempt Pyongyang to seek Korean unification by force. In response, the United States and its allies have been redoubling efforts to deter and defend against North Korea’s expanding missile threat. The American strategy for deterrence by punishment, at least since the end of the Cold War, presumes that a major North Korean attack would result in the end of the Kim regime. For example, President Donald Trump has stated in his UN speech, albeit in an overdramatic manner, that, if “forced to defend itself or its allies,” the United States would have “no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” The South Koreans have also stated that they will go after the North Korean leadership and have even announced the formation of a unit specifically created to decapitate the North Korean leadership. With regard to deterrence by denial, the United States has been developing and deploying multiple types of missile defense systems. The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system's interceptors are deployed in Alaska and California to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles. Aegis SM-3 missiles are deployed on ships in the Pacific to defend U.S. and allied targets in the region. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system is deployed in South Korea and Guam for area defense, while the United States has also deployed Patriot batteries for point defense throughout the region. Japan and South Korea also have their own missile defense capabilities, although rather limited compared to U.S. capability. To strike and destroy North Korea’s nuclear weapons capabilities, the United States has B-2 bombers and F-22 fighter aircraft in the region that can be used to penetrate North Korean airspace to hit nuclear and missile targets. In addition, the U.S. navy can launch cruise missiles. The South Koreans, as part of their preemptive doctrine, are deploying ballistic and cruise missiles to strike North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities. Missile defense systems are expected to intercept any missile that initial strikes had failed to destroy. Without clear intelligence on North Korean targets, the likelihood of success of such strikes would be uncertain, however, and North Korea’s capability to massively retaliate against South Korea gives pause to any preventive option. As the North Koreans continue to develop their missile technology and increase the size of their arsenal, they will likely gain the advantage in terms of cost-benefit calculations vis-à-vis the United States. Assuming that North Korea will have dozens (or perhaps even far more) nuclear-tipped missiles, the United States and allies would have the task of destroying or intercepting every single one of them, while North Korea only needs one warhead to land on a densely populated area to potentially kill hundreds of thousands of people. It does not help that GMD only has the accuracy rate of approximately 50 percent under relatively benign circumstances and that the current "shot doctrine" states that the United State will be firing four to five interceptor missiles for every incoming ICBM. Taking into account the possibility that the North Koreans might develop dummy warheads, the task of defending against the North Korean threat will likely become more difficult into the future. These factors increase the American sense of urgency and raise the risks of preemption higher as North Korea edges closer to mastering the capability to directly threaten the continental United States. As the North Koreans advance their nuclear weapons capability, creating a more stable deterrence dynamics on the Korean Peninsula will become more complex. But just as the North Koreans merely have to create the possibility that a single warhead might slip and land on an American city, the Americans merely have to create the possibility that North Korean plans to decouple the U.S.-South Korea alliance and seek unification on Pyongyang’s terms might not work out. While the United States faces the cost-benefit disadvantage that naturally derives from deploying any missile defense system, its economy is also immeasurably larger than that of North Korea, which will have its own limit in increasing the size of its arsenal. The United States should continue to seek a diplomatic pathway to denuclearize North Korea. But regardless of prospects for a diplomatic settlement, the United States and its allies still have the means to create stable deterrence on the Korean Peninsula and should deepen their security cooperation to do so.

Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un released an unprecedented direct statement through KCNA in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s bombastic UN General Assembly speech. It deserves careful analysis as it represents a rare window onto Kim’s thinking about the United States. First, Kim reveals his expectation that Trump’s UN speech would consist of “stereotyped, prepared remarks” not different from prior statements since the U.S. President would be speaking “on the world’s largest official diplomatic stage.” In other words, Kim’s default assumption is that the U.S., at the center of the existing international order, is fundamentally constrained in its ability to respond to North Korea’s nuclear advancement. On the other hand, North Korea, as a guerrilla state existing outside the system, has exploited its independence from normative behavior that restrains other nations. Nevertheless, Kim confesses surprise at the tone of Trump’s remarks, observing that “a frightened dog barks louder.” This expression seems to suggest Kim feels his expanded threats are working and that Trump is on the defensive. Then, Kim provides advice that may mirror the advice of Trump’s advisors: “I would like to advise Trump to exercise prudence in selecting words and to be considerate of whom he speaks to when making a speech in front of the world.” This description of his own reaction to “the mentally deranged behavior of the U.S. president” seems to normalize Kim’s views, since they don’t deviate too far from what one might expect to find in a David Brooks column. Following a rather conventional analysis of global impact of the Trump presidency, Kim states that Trump is “surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician.” Unfortunately, Kim concludes based on this analysis that he has made the right decision to double-down on acquisition of a nuclear deterrent against the U.S. military threat.  Even more sobering is Kim’s conclusion that Trump’s rhetorical threats and insults leave Kim with no choice but to “consider with seriousness taking a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history,” and that he will make Trump “pay dearly for his rude nonsense calling for totally destroying the DPRK.” North Korea’s foreign minister hinted at one such measure: an above-ground thermonuclear explosion over the Pacific.  Finally, Kim reveals some perplexity at Trump’s comments before vowing an unyielding response: “I am now thinking hard about what response he could have expected from us when he allowed such eccentric words to trip off his tongue. Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation.” Thus, Kim and Trump are locked into a war of words, with no apparent exit ramp available. Worse, the U.S.-DPRK conflict has become personalized, and both men feel that their honor and their country’s dignity is at stake. As Sejong Institute North Korea specialist Paik Hak-soon has said, “There is no backing down in the North Korean rule book. It’s the very core of their leadership identity and motive.” North Korea is on the verge of being able to hold the U.S. vulnerable to nuclear weapons, after having nursed grievances over their own vulnerability to U.S. nuclear power and threats for almost 70 years. But Trump’s warnings should give Kim pause, precisely because Trump’s deliberate, over-the-top insults to Kim’s personal and national dignity might bait the North Korean leader into an escalatory spiral that he cannot control for the sake of preserving his and his country’s honor at all costs. That indeed would be suicidal, as Trump asserted. This post originally appeared in Forbes.

The Trump administration issued a new Executive Order on September 21 expanding the U.S. Treasury’s authority to block North Koreans, and those who do business with or on behalf of North Koreans, from accessing the U.S. financial system. It represents the broadest effort to date to use economic pressure to reverse Kim Jong-un’s decision to pursue a capability to threaten the United States with nuclear weapons. The U.S. Treasury now has the capacity to target North Korean financial transactions and overseas labor networks, any entity that trades with North Korea, to bar vessels or aircraft that have visited or interacted with North Koreans within the prior six months from entry into U.S. ports, and to block North Korean assets that flow through the U.S. financial network. A measure of the power of the new authorities is that China’s central bank immediately issued an advisory to Chinese banks to stop providing financial services to new North Korean customers and to wind down loans with existing North Korean customers. Essentially, the Executive Order enables secondary sanctions on Chinese entities and puts Chinese entities that do substantial business with the U.S. at risk of facing significant financial losses, providing a powerful incentive for Chinese compliance with Treasury rules.   The breadth of the Executive Order should provide the United States with the capability to counter many of the sanction-evasion tactics North Korea has employed as part of a cat-and-mouse game. North Korean shell and front companies and dual ledgers kept with Chinese partners have enabled financial flows to and from the country that have enabled North Korea to safely embed its procurement activities in the global supply chain. Assistant Treasury Secretary Marshall Billingslea says his department engages “on a daily basis in ‘hand-to-hand’ financial combat with North Korea’s illicit networks.”     As the U.S. Treasury detects entities that violate the new Executive Order, those partners of North Korea will be at risk of having their U.S.-based assets frozen and/or blocked from the U.S. financial system.  If the U.S. Treasury applies its authorities aggressively and in concert with other financial authorities in Europe, Japan and South Korea, the isolating effect on flows to North Korea should be sufficient to impose serious economic hardship inside the country. The scope of the U.S. Treasury action is proportionate to the level and urgency of the threat from North Korea that the administration feels, in contrast to the UN Security Council resolutions, which are products of a consensus involving China and Russia as proponents of the lowest common denominator.   It is still not clear that North Korea will yield to economic pressure in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. After all, North Korea’s nuclear project is ultimately about Kim Jong-un’s survival, which he regards as a higher priority than economic hardship. Moreover, Kim himself will be the last North Korean to suffer from economic sanctions; rather severe restrictions on North Korea’s trade with the outside world may generate a renewed humanitarian crisis that would put at risk millions of North Korean people.   Thus, there is a risk that Kim Jong-un will see economic sanctions, in tandem with presidential threats of annihilation and continued shows-of-force along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and on North Korea’s east coast, as a strategy for regime change. That is why it must be paired with efforts to strengthen channels of diplomatic communication to North Korea that gives credibility to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s rhetoric that the U.S. does not seek North Korea’s collapse, or, for that matter, to wipe North Korea off the face of the earth. While North Korea uses missile and nuclear tests as its main tools by which to convince the U.S. to acquiesce to the country’s nuclear capability, the new U.S. economic sanctions are designed to magnify the costs of North Korea’s nuclear acquisition and put the survival of the Kim Jong-un regime sufficiently at risk to convince him to reverse direction and denuclearize. Unless both sides can find space to reduce misunderstanding, both North Korea and the United States are on a trajectory through their respective actions toward not just hand-to-hand economic conflict, but also a much more costly military confrontation. This post originally appeared on Forbes.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump delivered a go-it-alone message emphasizing the importance of sovereignty and self-defense at the United Nations this week. It hit many themes that should have appealed to North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un -- with the exception of his blistering language. “The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destro­y North Korea,” Trump declared. The has great strength & patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy #NoKo. pic.twitter.com/P4vAanXvgm — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2017 Not one to back down from a threat, Kim Jong-Un released an unprecedented personal statement, taking offense to Trump’s insulting language and stating that he “will consider with seriousness exercising a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history.” The North Korean foreign minister hinted at the possibility of a North Korean thermonuclear test over the Pacific Ocean. If there is a silver lining to this war of words, it is that both Trump and Kim now have each other’s direct attention, even while they trade invective. Boiling point But now that the temperature of the U.S.-DPRK relationship appears to have reached a boiling point, there is an urgent need for expanded diplomatic dialogue to prevent the increased risks of miscalculation and clearly establish the ground rules of nuclear deterrence between both sides. The major obstacle to diplomacy over the past decade has been North Korea’s abandonment of denuclearization as an objective, while the U.S. insists on it. North Korea's clear embrace of nuclear development under Kim Jong Un as a source of domestic legitimation and as an antidote to his country’s military weakness has hogtied any talks. But the extraordinary personal exchange between Trump and Kim should underscore the clear miscommunication risks between the two men as well as the need for expanded bandwidth to manage the crisis. Huge risk of miscommunication Trump’s misunderstanding of Kim Jong Un was reflected in his assertion that “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime” for two reasons. First, because Kim seeks to survive by removing his vulnerability to external attack and second, because Trump’s epithets constitute a direct challenge to North Korea’s leader-first system in which no one is allowed to insult the “supreme dignity” of Kim Jong Un. But Kim clearly does not grasp the extent to which the Trump administration finds Kim’s threats to “surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire” or other statements hinting at offensive use of nuclear capabilities to be intolerable. Once it is clear that North Korea has a reliable capability to directly strike the U.S. with a nuclear weapon, the risks of war due to miscalculation are likely to increase, not decrease, despite Kim's desire to stand toe-to-toe as a nuclear equal. This is magnified by a misunderstanding over intentions, uncertainty regarding North Korea’s nuclear doctrine, and the increasing focus on both sides on how to preempt worst case actions by the other. The only way to reduce the risks of miscalculation is to expand communication regarding how either side views provocative acts by the other. Continue the 'conversation' In the near term, both countries are likely to persist taking actions that may shape any future negotiation over North Korea’s nuclear status. So North Korea will continue with its testing, while the United States will continue with its economic sanctions. At the same time, both sides increasingly need to put into place safeguards to help manage the inordinate risks of tension escalation. Neither country will likely be willing to give up its efforts to shape the outcome of negotiations, yet there is a need to establish solid lines of communication as a means of reducing the risk of accidental war. At a minimum, Trump and Kim need to find a way to continue the conversation they have now started with a focus on how to reduce misunderstanding and risks of nuclear miscalculation, preferably in a less public and bombastic form. This post originally appeared on Forbes.

Israel is alarmed about Iran's intentions — but that's nothing new. Flawed as it is, the nuclear deal is holding.

North Korea’s sixth nuclear test on September 3, 2017, generated reports of tremors being felt as far away as Changchun, China, over 400 miles from the Punggye-ri test site. Although it stands to reason that the tremors also reached into the sparsely populated Russian Far East, both Russian media reports and the official reaction to the test were muted. Russia’s foreign ministry called for calm and for parties to “refrain from any actions that lead to a further escalation of tension.” The Chinese foreign ministry reaction was stronger, stating that “the Chinese government resolutely opposes and strongly condemns this.” Despite its geographic proximity and shared border with North Korea, Russia stands behind in coordination with China, with Beijing leading the response to North Korea’s nuclear development. After all, the brazenness of the North Korean test was unprecedented, and the humiliation for Xi Jinping was deeper, given that the test occurred on the eve of a BRICS summit in Xiamen, at which Putin was present, but that Xi had intended to use to further assert Chinese global leadership. China’s leading and Russia’s supporting roles on North Korea are a reversal from the international experience in the P-5 Plus One talks with Iran in which Russia played a leading role in negotiations with China in the background. China’s stake in North Korea is directly tied to Chinese interests in stability on the Korean peninsula, its historic role as convener of the Six Party Talks, and its central role as a supplier of food and fuel to North Korea. In contrast, Russia’s main contributions to Six Party Talks were accomplished through its inclusion in the talks; its ongoing mercantile interests in transit and energy links with North Korea shadow those of China but are distinctly marginal to China’s central role. Russia’s secondary role on Korean peninsular issues does not prevent Moscow from occasionally playing a spoiler role. In 2016, the United States engaged primarily with China to negotiate language for the UN Security Council Resolution in response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, only to have the text held up by Russian officials, who objected to language that would have restricted Russian sales of airplane fuel to North Korea. In negotiations on the just-passed UNSC Resolution 2375 following the sixth North Korean nuclear test, Russia and China combined to fight off a U.S. draft proposing a complete ban on oil sales and North Korea’s low-cost labor exports for foreign currency-earning purposes. In conjunction with the adoption of UNSC Resolution 2375, Russian and Chinese officials reinforced each other’s call for diplomacy as the essential missing ingredient necessary to solve the North Korean nuclear stand-off while expressing skepticism on the efficacy of sanctions. The Russian foreign ministry has expressed its support for China’s dual suspension proposal, which calls on the United States and South Korea to end their twice annual military exercises in return for a moratorium on North Korean nuclear and missile testing. But the United States objects to this starting point for talks since the tests are what the UNSC Resolutions and the sanctions are already punishing, whereas military readiness remains the key to effective deterrence. Another reason why Russia might feel unsatisfied with the call for additional economic sanctions against North Korea is that Russia is also the object of redoubled American sanctions toward Russia through Congressional legislation passed targeting both Russia and North Korea. The Russians resent being lumped together with North Korea while simultaneously being asked to cooperate on sanctions against North Korea. Given Russia’s desire to remain relevant as a player on Korean peninsula-related issues, Moscow’s primary objective will be to secure a continued presence in any future revival of multilateral diplomacy with North Korea. A more aggressive scenario might have Russia play a spoiler role in opposing U.S. interests, but this strategy is risky given the unpredictability and historically-evident costs of being dragged into renewed North Korean-made military conflict. This post is set to appear in the October edition of Formiche.

Following a public demonstration of a completely “homemade” nuclear device claimed to have “great destructive power,” North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test, which the U.S. Geological Survey reported as generating a 6.3 magnitude explosion. The test, accompanied by a demand that the United States abandon its “hostile policy” toward North Korea, directly defies President Donald Trump’s warnings that North Korean threats would be met with “fire and fury, and frankly power that the world has never seen.” If the president follows through on his rhetoric, the United States will be involved in what Defense Secretary Mattis has characterized as a “catastrophic” military conflict to permanently end the North Korea threat. Such a conflict could consume Trump’s presidency and drastically transform the political landscape; it would probably not relieve Trump’s domestic political difficulties but compound them. Whatever doubts are openly circulating within Congress regarding Trump’s leadership could be magnified and underscored if Trump becomes a war president. But if the president does not follow through on his rhetoric, he will be seen as a paper tiger and his power to effectively use the bully pulpit of the presidency would be further reduced. The credibility of the president globally might take a hit, but in not following up on rhetorical threats toward North Korea, Trump would in reality be little different from Clinton or Bush. Trump will want to handle North Korea’s sixth nuclear test different from Obama, so a U.N. Security Council resolution will not be enough. On the other hand, the Trump administration must be careful to avoid escalating a crisis without adequate preparations to ensure that the administration is not entrapped by North Korea into an outcome unfavorable to U.S. interests. There has been growing Congressional interest in an expanded secondary sanctions regime against North Korea, especially against Chinese counterparts with business interests in North Korea. There is also support for utilizing unilateral financial measures more aggressively to cut off the money flow to North Korea, even though existing U.N. sanctions have virtually quarantined North Korea—on paper. China has less grounds to object to U.S. self-defensive measures following North Korea’s sixth nuclear test. But the task of applying those sanctions in practice requires cooperation from the Chinese, and to a lesser extent, the Russians, as well as other members of the international community.   In addition to sectoral bans on coal and seafood products, China and Russia will be under great pressure to agree to an oil embargo and a cut-off of support for North Korean laborers working abroad. While these measures may bring additional financial pain and isolation to North Korea’s leadership, they will take time, and they occur against the backdrop of rumors that Kim Jong Un has stockpiled significant petroleum reserves in order to ride out likely repercussions of an international oil embargo on North Korea. But time is increasingly not on Trump’s side.   Preparations for conventional military action against North Korea would run up against a variety of obstacles. Evacuation of expatriate civilians from and positioning of augmented U.S. forces in South Korea would take weeks if not months and could trigger North Korean preemptive measures. Plus, South Korean President Moon Jae In has insisted that no military action should take place on the peninsula without Seoul’s concurrence. North Korea is probably counting on South Korea to restrain the United States from unilateral military action against it given that up to one million South Korean casualties could result from a retaliation by Pyongyang. A preemptive decapitation strike would likely face the same risk of North Korean retaliation. Finally, Trump could talk to Kim, even at risk of acquiescing to the reality that North Korea is a nuclear state. Clearly, North Korea is using the tests to shape the strategic environment in its favor. But there is slim evidence that Kim is ready or willing to talk, given that he has to date had no interaction with any other international leader, and there are no indications that North Korea is willing to negotiate a compromise or make concessions. North Korea’s sixth test pushes the United States closer to a strategic choice between two unacceptable options : acquiescence to North Korea as a nuclear power, or “catastrophic” military conflict to permanently end the North Korea threat. Even if North Korea were to be recognized as a nuclear state, it is not clear that Kim’s sense of vulnerability would be reduced. Kim must not be allowed at all costs to export his vulnerability to the rest of the world: that should be Trump’s primary goal. This post originally appeared on Forbes.

Attempts by the United States and Japan to intercept North Korean ballistic missiles headed toward Guam could fail and undermine the credibility of missile defense.

North Korea under Kim Jong Un has become a parasite that increasingly threatens both the Korean Peninsula and the world. Kim’s nuclear weapons program has given him hope that time is on his side, and incrementalism at the U.N. Security Council has fed that hope. The United States needs to buy more time against North Korea’s nuclearization efforts and use it effectively to halt and eventually reverse North Korea’s current course. But Kim’s effort to export his own sense of vulnerability to the United States will not succeed and will result in his own demise. How that process plays out remains important because it will determine the distribution of costs across the region that will in turn affect the shape of a new security order in northeast Asia. Read more in The Hill

North Korea has accelerated the timeline for its missile development with two ICBM tests in July. Then the United States engineered a UN Security Council resolution designed to shut down North Korea’s coal, iron and seafood exports and pressure Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear program. North Korea responded by threatening to take “physical action” -- in the past 24 hours state-run news agency KCNA said its military was “examining the operational plan” to strike the U.S. island of Guam in the Pacific.   President Donald Trump had warned that if North Korea makes further threats against the United States, “they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” It seems like a good time to take a deep breath and review the stakes, interests and strategies of both sides. The war of words underscores both the American rejection of the idea of vulnerability to a nuclear-armed Kim and the increasing dangers of miscalculation that would accompany a North Korean capability to follow through on its past offensive threats to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon. The intensity of the rhetorical escalation underscores the fact that North Korea is on a trajectory of confrontation with Washington that Defense Secretary James Mattis characterized as “catastrophic.” Level playing field Keenly aware of both internal and external vulnerabilities and North Korea’s relative weakness, Kim has grasped that nothing short of a nuclear capability will be sufficient to ensure his survival, and he has embedded himself in the global supply chain while increasing his political isolation. Having learned the lessons of Iran, Iraq and Libya, the young leader wants North Korea to be too nuclear to fail.  North Korea also wants to level the playing field with the United States after having lived with the threat of nuclear annihilation since the U.S. threatened nuclear use during the Korean War. For Kim, nuclear weapons are a “treasured sword” and a silver bullet capable of keeping domestic and international enemies at bay. Kim cannot give up nuclear weapons without attaining equivalent and ironclad assurances of regime survival. Without such an arsenal, Kim has no means of drawing in the U.S. Sanctions Washington wants to use pressure through international economic sanctions to drive Kim back to the negotiating table and to denuclearization. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has issued assurances that the United States does not seek regime change, collapse of North Korea, rapid Korean reunification, or to move U.S. troops into North Korea while trying to crank up the pressure dial to force Kim back to talks. Each North Korean physical demonstration of its expanded nuclear and missile capability affirms that the regime is inherently destabilizing and that the Kim dynasty poses a direct risk to Chinese national interests. It underscores that the United States is right to employ economic sanctions to cut the umbilical cord to the global economy that has enabled Kim to expand his threat.  But China has its hand on the pressure dial and the U.S. hand is on China’s hand, limiting U.S. ability to threaten North Korea’s economic collapse. The U.S. wants North Korea’s denuclearization and a halt to the North’s expanding nuclear threats. But North Korea cannot show weakness in the face of U.S. pressure, and redoubles its efforts to shape American strategic choices by expanding its missile and nuclear testing. The more the crisis escalates, the greater the dangers of miscalculation, and the harder it will be for either side to find an exit ramp from a high-stakes crisis. This post originally appeared on Forbes.

Douglas Mo is an intern at the Council on Foreign Relations and a rising senior at Colby College. On the evening of June 20th, President Donald Trump tweeted: “While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!” Based on this tweet, President Trump appeared to give up on his plan to rely on China to solve the North Korean crisis. Nine days later, the Trump administration imposed secondary sanctions on a Chinese shipping company that sends coal and steel between China and North Korea; the Bank of Dandong, a Chinese entity accused of laundering money for North Korea; and two Chinese citizens, who helped North Korea evade sanctions. Then, after North Korea’s successful ICBM test on July 4th, the Trump administration proposed wider sanctions against countries that conduct business with North Korea. Unfortunately, these sanctions will neither work, nor convince China to act. Here are three reasons why. First, secondary sanctions rest on the mistaken belief that China is more concerned about trade with the United States than stability on the Korean Peninsula. China fears that a collapsed regime will lead to millions of North Korean refugees spilling across its border. In addition, although Beijing objects to a nuclear North Korea, it is even more concerned about the prospect of a unified Korea with Seoul as its capital. North Korea serves as a buffer between China and the U.S. regional alliance system. Because of these two considerations, China has largely turned a blind eye to its companies that do business in North Korea and only sporadically implements some of the sanctions that directly relate to the North’s ballistic missile program. Second, UN Security Council sanctions have not succeeded and are unlikely to succeed in the future. Since 2006, the UN Security Council has passed four sanctions resolutions against North Korea. These resolutions require member countries to comply with a series of obligations, such as preventing North Korea from accessing banking and financial services. However, enforcement of UN sanctions has been “insufficient and highly inconsistent” and has created countless loopholes that have been exploited by North Korea. There is no reason to expect that this situation will change in the near future. Third, the North Korean regime has found ways to access capital outside of its borders, such as sending thousands of its citizens abroad to operate a number of state-run restaurants that provide finances for Pyongyang. Sanctions crippled Iran economically because of the nation’s heavy reliance on the international oil market and financial system. In contrast, North Korea has diffuse sources of foreign currency, a tradition of operating in a gray area of illegal trade, and exerts greater control over its own people, thus making Pyongyang less susceptible to punitive economic measures, like sanctions. Given the limited effectiveness of sanctions on North Korea and China, it is time for the administration to take a new approach. President Trump and President Xi should pursue a two-step strategy. The United States should first adopt the dual freeze proposal suggested by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and reiterated by two Chinese officials at the U.S.-China Diplomatic and Security Dialogue held in Washington on June 21st. Under this scenario, the United States would suspend U.S.-South Korean military exercises in exchange for the suspension of North Korean missile development and testing. In return, China should agree to help monitor North Korea’s actions by withholding economic benefits. Beijing can do this by providing disbursements to Pyongyang, as well as security assurances, for North Korean compliance – a proposal recently introduced by Victor Cha and Jake Sullivan, foreign-policy advisers in the Bush and Obama administrations, respectively. If North Korea continues to develop its weapons program or conducts any missile tests, Beijing will lose not only its financial contributions but also diplomatic credibility. North Korea is often referred to as the land of lousy options. Although the United States would not achieve all of its goals, pursuing the dual freeze option and having China monitor North Korea’s actions through payments is the least-bad option. It will help manage risk escalation in the region, and also shift a reasonable amount of responsibility to Beijing for reigning in Pyongyang.

North Korea’s test of an intercontinental ballistic missile during the week of the Hamburg summit injects an air of crisis into an already tricky set of meetings.