Nuclear Weapons

On January 31, 2017, I testified together with Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt from the American Enterprise Institute before the Senate foreign relations committee on policy toward North Korea. My opening statement appears below, and my written testimony and a video recording of the hearing can be found here. Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. Your decision to hold a hearing on the North Korean threat so early in the new administration underscores the need for urgent and sustained attention to this vital national security issue. In my statement, I argue that the window of opportunity to achieve North Korea’s peaceful denuclearization may have closed and that Kim Jong Un has decided based on lessons from Iran, Iraq, and Libya that North Korea must be too nuclear to fail. Moreover, he intends to threaten the United States with a direct nuclear strike capability, a development that would heighten the risk and likelihood of military conflict. My recommendations are designed to minimize the risks of miscalculation on both sides. I have also focused on ways of avoiding unintended consequences arising from some of the steps that we must take to address North Korea’s nuclear challenge. To minimize miscalculation and underscore the urgency of the North Korea issue, I recommend that the president appoint a senior and trusted special envoy to comprehensively mobilize U.S. government resources, strengthen alliance solidarity with South Korea and Japan, separate the North Korea issue from other contentious issues in the U.S.-China relationship, and ensure that we can back our words toward North Korea with credible actions. As North Korea attempts to underscore that time is not on the side of the United States through provocations and crisis-instigation, the United States must avoid falling into the traps of acquiescence to a nuclear North Korea or premature unilateral military actions that might help North Korea break U.S. alliances. The United States must strengthen alliance cohesion while preparing for North Korean instability. General Mattis’s decision to visit U.S. allies in South Korea and Japan later this week as his first foreign destinations following his assumption of office sends a badly needed message of assurance and resolve to our allies at a time of transition and uncertainty in both Washington and Seoul. While China’s cooperation is necessary to place needed pressure on North Korea, we must also recognize that North Korea lives in the space created by Sino-U.S. strategic mistrust. This means that China’s inadequate enforcement of sanctions will never meet U.S. expectations due to differing American and Chinese strategic interests on the peninsula. An unintended consequence is that North Korea’s supply chain has become embedded in illicit Chinese procurement networks. While continuing to pressure China to enforce sanctions, the United States will have to use secondary sanctions on Chinese partners of North Korea if it hopes to stop North Korea’s nuclear and missile parts procurement. Tougher sanctions are necessary to block North Korea’s nuclear and missile development, but an unintended consequence of sanctions is that they reinforce the isolation and opacity that have enabled the Kim regime to survive by bolstering unity among North Korean elites. I recommend that we erode Kim Jong Un’s internal support base by making the argument that North Korean elites can have a better future outside the regime than in it and by increasing the incentives and pathways for them to exit North Korea. We should prioritize eroding the regime’s isolation by promoting information inflow and impose transparency by supporting and publicizing the powerful indictment of the Kim regime’s practices contained in the report of the UN commission of inquiry on human rights in North Korea.  

During his annual New Year’s address on Sunday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un dropped a bombshell: He stated as part of his review of the past year’s accomplishments that North Korea has entered “the final stage in preparations to test-launch” an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). One that could hit the United States. That, at least, is Kim’s intent. For years, these threats were treated as bluster because it was clear that the country did not have the capabilities to match them. This may have changed in 2016. Last year, North Korea conducted missile tests of various types on twenty-four occasions, including tests of both its estimated 3,000 kilometer-range Musudan intermediate-range missile and submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). North Korean media claims that the country now has “standardized” a nuclear warhead that can be delivered on such missiles and to have made progress toward mastering atmospheric re-entry required to develop an ICBM. Some analysts assess that North Korea already has the ability to conduct a nuclear strike on the United States with an ICBM, and continued North Korean progress in this direction would give the country a small, but formidable nuclear strike capability by 2020. This burst of activity designed to expand North Korea’s capabilities is why Kim’s declarations of intent must be taken seriously. President-elect Donald Trump responded with two tweets:     "North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen!" — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017       "China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won’t help with North Korea. Nice!" — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017   But neither engaging in a rhetorical “threatdown” with North Korea nor expecting China to denuclearize the country obscures the fact that as long as North Korea continues to make progress toward nuclear development, time is not on the side of the United States. Kim Jong Un has staked his survival and his strategy on the idea that the United States, in the end, will acquiesce to a nuclear North Korea rather than engage in forceful regime change measures that would involve huge financial costs to China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. Kim asserted as much again in his New Year’s Day speech: Only when the United States sets aside its “hostile policy” by curtailing annual U.S.-ROK military exercises and recognizing a nuclear North Korea would conditions be in place for North Korea’s denuclearization. In essence, it seems Kim has absorbed the lessons of Iraq, Iran, and Libya by declaring that North Korea is too nuclear to fail. Kim is also betting that Sino-U.S. geostrategic mistrust will prevent the United States from making common cause with China to force regime change. China’s uneven implementation of economic sanctions against North Korea and prospects of a more confrontational Sino-U.S. relationship signaled in Trump’s tweets will give Kim grounds for hope. There are widespread expectations that Kim will test the Trump administration in its early days, just as North Korea greeted the Obama administration with missile and nuclear tests in 2009. The effective response would be for the Trump administration to find a way to work with China—which would surprise Kim. At a minimum, the president-elect must isolate North Korea as an essential area of cooperation in an otherwise contentious U.S.-China relationship. And to stop North Korea’s nuclear development, sanctions must be strengthened. Only then might Kim Jong Un recognize that his gambit has failed, and that he must end North Korea’s threats to conduct a nuclear strike on the United States. A version of this post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Sungtae (Jacky) Park is research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. On January 2, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that a nuclear North Korea capable of hitting parts of the United States "won’t happen." Yet, North Korea has been advancing its nuclear and missile capabilities at an alarming pace, and he will not be the first president to face the North Korean threat. George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all attempted but failed to address the issue. Trump cannot continue the current path and expect different results. But, before looking for a different path, the new administration first should ask a number of hard questions that might better shed light on the nature of the problem and the decisions that could or should be made. Read in The Diplomat about the four hard questions that should be asked...

The UN Security Council (UNSC) unanimously passed Resolution 2321 condemning North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, conducted on September 9, 2016. The resolution builds on Resolution 2270 passed by the UNSC only nine months earlier in response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test by imposing even tougher restrictions on North Korean maritime and financial activities, misuse of diplomatic channels for commercial purposes, and restrictions on North Korean trade. On paper, UNSC 2321 essentially calls upon member states to place North Korea under economic quarantine unless it reverses course on nuclear development. Most notably, the resolution imposes a numerical and volume cap of $400 million or 7.5 million tons/year of coal exports to China from 2017. According to Marcus Noland, this represents a $650 million reduction in coal exports compared to 2016 or an over 20 percent reduction in the value of North Korean merchandise goods exports of approximately $2.7 billion. An additional ban on North Korean exports of copper, nickel, silver, and zinc should cost the North Koreans an additional $100 million. Following the passage of each UNSC resolution imposing even tougher sanctions on North Korea, a pattern has emerged. First, there is the feeling with the release of each UNSC resolution that China has outperformed expectations by agreeing to tougher sanctions than expected. Then, there is the realization that China has left sufficient loopholes and wiggle room to ensure that North Korea pays a price for its nuclear weapons development, but not so large a price that North Korea’s stability is endangered. Finally, just when it becomes clear that China is easing off on the pressure, the cycle repeats itself, and North Korea conducts yet another nuclear or missile test. North Korea’s provocation cycle depends on China’s fundamental interest in peninsular stability to ensure that the umbilical cord from China through which Pyongyang receives essential “livelihood” support is never irreparably cut. Moreover, if early signs of distress were to develop in Pyongyang, China’s choke points to North Korea would quickly become lifelines once again. A similar repeating cycle of debate goes on in U.S. debates regarding the role of cooperation with China in policy toward North Korea. President-elect Donald Trump suggests he may repeat this cycle by suggesting that the United States should leave the North Korea problem to China. But to move toward a solution on North Korea, the Trump administration will have to find a way to break the cycle of dependency on China. Cooperation with China is necessary to exert maximum pressure on North Korea, but cooperation with China by itself may never be sufficient to present Kim Jong Un with an existential choice between survival and denuclearization. Indeed, Kim Jong Un has already rejected the premise that there could be such a choice by adopting byungjin (simultaneous nuclear and economic development), as the fundamental strategic line of the regime and as a source of legitimation for his rule. This leaves U.S. policymakers straining to maximize cooperation with China while simultaneously seeking the missing ingredient independent of cooperation with China that can finally fill the gap.

A decade has passed since North Korea first tested a nuclear weapon, on October 9, 2006. It conducted its fifth nuclear test last September, and there are rumors that a sixth will come within weeks or months. The United States has tried to both negotiate with and sanction North Korea while strengthening deterrence with South Korea and conducting shows of force to underscore the U.S. commitment to South Korean defense, but these measures have not halted, much less reversed, North Korea’s nuclear program. Instead, following the leadership transition from Kim Jong-il to Kim Jong-un, North Korea has elevated its nuclear program to a primary strategic commitment, reigniting debates among U.S. experts over whether the U.S. goal of “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization” is feasible. North Korea has conducted four tests during the Obama administration, and the president reiterated after the latest one that the United States “does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state.” Yet the longer that North Korea is able to expand its nuclear delivery capability, the more empty U.S. condemnations may become and the closer North Korea will edge toward winning de facto acceptance of its nuclear status. North Korea is believed to have twelve to twenty nuclear bombs and recently successfully tested intermediate-range ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Its latest nuclear test was estimated to yield ten to fifteen kilotons, and U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials believe that the country now has the capability to miniaturize warheads to fit them on Nodong class medium-range missiles. Amid these developments, a review of North Korean and U.S. official statements surrounding each of North Korea’s nuclear tests over the past decade is useful for understanding the evolution of North Korea’s threat. North Korea’s Initial Intentions “The longer that North Korea is able to expand its nuclear delivery capability, the more empty U.S. condemnations may become and the closer North Korea will edge toward winning de facto acceptance of its nuclear status.” At least eighteen months prior to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) first nuclear test, in October 2006, its foreign ministry signaled Pyongyang’s intentions to carry one out. On February 10, 2005, the ministry announced that North Korea was compelled to “bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal in order to protect the ideology, system, freedom, and democracy chosen by the people.” The following month, the DPRK declared that the Six Party Talks on its denuclearization (negotiations between the United States, China, Japan, Russia, North and South Korea)should be transformed into mutual disarmament talks. It had interpreted the Bush administration’s nuclear posture review as implying that Pyongyang could become a target of U.S. nuclear weapons. It said that the United States should rescind what it called a policy aimed at toppling the DPRK through nuclear war as a prerequisite of its own denuclearization. Although a Six Party Talks joint statement from September 2005 envisioned the DPRK denuclearizing in return for steps toward U.S.-DPRK and DPRK-Japan diplomatic normalization, economic assistance, and the establishment of a permanent peace regime, subsequent talks were stalemated after the U.S. Treasury designated Banco Delta Asia (BDA) a “primary money laundering concern” and froze more than $25 million in North Korean funds. North Korea presented its decision to conduct the test in 2006 as a response to U.S. efforts to “isolate and stifle” the regime. At the time it stated a no-first-use nuclear posture, asserted that it would prevent the transfer nuclear weapons and technology, and pledged to “do its utmost to realize the denuclearization of the peninsula and give impetus to the worldwide nuclear disarmament and the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons.” The foreign ministry reaffirmed its willingness to return to negotiations. The Evolution of North Korea’s Nuclear Statements North Korea’s statements following subsequent nuclear tests, in 2009, 2013, and 2016, have portrayed them as enhancing its self-defense capabilities and improving peninsular peace and stability. They have also included assurances of safety regarding potential nuclear fallout. After each test, North Korea has claimed dramatic increases in its capability of one or another facet of its nuclear program: ability to independently develop its own technology (2006), explosive power and technology (2009), miniaturization (2013), hydrogen bomb (2016), and standardization of a warhead, which essential to building a strategic nuclear force (2016). At the DPRK’s seventh Workers’ Party Congress, in May 2016, Kim Jong-un put forward the idea that North Korea’s policy emphasizing the country’s nuclear development would be a “permanent strategic line,” but also presented the country as a “responsible nuclear power” that would only use nuclear weapons as a retaliatory measure against a nuclear attack. The DPRK statement accompanying its September 2016 test shows that North Korean strategic objectives had evolved from defensive deterrence to the capability to pursue nuclear retaliation. How the United States Has Responded President George W. Bush responded to North Korea’s 2006 nuclear test by vowing to coordinate a UN condemnation of North Korea, warning of the dangers of North Korean nuclear proliferation, and reassuring U.S. allies in Asia that the United States would continue to meet its security commitments in the face of a growing nuclear threat. Bush also reiterated his administration’s commitment to diplomacy, signaling a desire to return to the Six Party Talks. The talks reconvened in Beijing in December of that year, and, in February 2007, its members reached an agreement on initial actions toward denuclearization. North Korea would declare its nuclear facilities in exchange for the United States easing sanctions and removing it from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.     “Absent China’s willingness to cut off its economic lifeline to North Korea, North Korea will continue to survive as a parasite, living off of Chinese fears of its collapse or disappearance.”     Obama too has consistently said that North Korea’s nuclear testing is unacceptable, repeated the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea, and characterized the nuclear testing as a self-prescription for isolation and, eventually, regime failure. U.S. allies, including Japan and South Korea, have consistently sought assurances that the United States will honor its commitments to defend against North Korean nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, China has promoted a return to diplomatic negotiations. In response to North Korea’s first nuclear test, Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan traveled to Pyongyang to facilitate North Korea’s return to the negotiating table. These mediation efforts have foundered, however, since North Korea abandoned the Six Party Talks in 2008. In the process, the DPRK also discarded the “action-for-action” approach that had been embraced by the Six Party Talks, in which it would denuclearize in exchange for normalized diplomatic relations with the United States. Instead, North Korea insisted that the United States abandon its hostility toward its regime as a prerequisite for arms-control discussions. This has shut down prospects for renewed negotiations. North Korea’s Efforts to Shape U.S. Choices North Korea’s nuclear sprint in 2016 appears designed to gain survivability of its nuclear deterrent. It also seems to reinforce the country’s intention to develop a direct-strike capability on the United States to overcome Pyongyang’s vulnerabilities and reframe the U.S.-DPRK relationship as one between two nuclear powers. North Korea believes this sprint will enable it to: 1)      reduce its remaining vulnerabilities from its currently limited nuclear deterrent vis-à-vis the United States by enhancing the credibility of its threats and the range of a potential strike; 2)      exploit potential South Korean concerns that the United States might abandon its commitment to defend South Korea if it fears that North Korea could conduct a retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States; and 3)      claim to domestic audiences that North Korea has achieved at least one part of its goal of being a “strong and prosperous state” by 2020. North Korea has long seen U.S. and South Korean political transitions as opportunities to test the mettle of new leaderships as it pursues its strategic objective of winning acquiescence to its status as a nuclear state. Kim Jong-un likely believes that he can survive as leader and North Korea will prosper if he can win U.S. acquiescence to a nuclear North Korea, and it is not surprising that he might see this course as a viable pathway forward. After all, North Korea has successfully exploited divisions among the China, South Korea, and the United States for a decade now while steadily improving its nuclear capabilities. Still, the United States has kept North Korea in the penalty box as an outlier state due to its pursuit of nuclear weapons. But if its goal of North Korea’s denuclearization is indefinitely suspended, the nonproliferation norm embodied by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty will undoubtedly be weakened. Absent China’s willingness to cut off its economic lifeline to North Korea, North Korea will continue to survive as a parasite, living off of Chinese fears of its collapse or disappearance. This piece originally appeared as a CFR expert brief here.

It has been almost three weeks since North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test, but China and the United States have not yet reached agreement on the text of a new UN Security Council resolution condemning the country. In the aftermath of the fourth nuclear test, the Security Council took almost two months to come up with a resolution; the average number of days between a North Korean provocation and a Security Council resolution was 27 during the Obama administration’s tenure. Based on the growing length of time following UN condemnation of North Korea’s successive tests since 2006, North Korea’s leadership probably feels affirmed in its judgement that it can effectively exploit geostrategic distrust between the U.S. and China. U.S.-China differences  Moreover, North Korea seeks to use impending transitions in the U.S., South Korea and even at the United Nations to flout UN Security Council resolutions with impunity. Immediately following North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter publically noted that China “shares important responsibility for this development and has an important responsibility to reverse it.” In response, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson. Hua Chunying, said that “[w]hoever started the trouble should end it” and that the U.S. should “take on its due responsibility.” Sino-U.S. differences over the implementation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system persist, and the task of hashing out agreement on a new UN Security Council resolution condemning North Korea appears to have taken a back seat to the crisis in Syria. A new UNSC resolution On the positive side of the ledger, China cooperated with the U.S. to crack down on the Hongxiang company, which has been revealed to have engaged in and facilitated illicit transactions and dual use shipments of sensitive chemicals for North Korea’s missile and nuclear development as part of the $500 million in trade over five years that the company has conducted with North Korea. These developments have been facilitated in part by two new sanctions reports, evaluated by Steph Haggard, here and here. Negotiations on a new UNSC resolution are reportedly focused on closing “livelihood” loopholes on shipments of North Korean coal products to China and tightening restrictions on North Korean overseas labor to other countries, Sino-DPRK tourism, or exports of North Korean textiles to China. However, it will be necessary to reach out and touch leadership assets and interests to get the attention of Kim Jong Un. What we should do to strengthen sanctions If such sanctions do not prove to be effective due to China’s inability or unwillingness to enforce them properly, the U.S. should be prepared to take the following measures unilaterally: 1. Impose secondary sanctions on Chinese steel companies that use North Korean coal products. Chinese companies should not be allowed to take advantage of cut-rate North Korean coal to unfairly enhance their competitive advantage in the international market while facilitating North Korea’s nuclear weapons development. Chinese consumers of North Korean coal are therefore legitimate targets of U.S. secondary sanctions. 2. Target Chinese small and medium enterprises that continue to do business as usual with North Korea. There are companies similar to the Hongxiang group that play a gateway role for both legitimate trade and embedded North Korean procurement of dual use items. A recent study by John Park and Jim Walsh on North Korean sanctions evasion techniques highlights North Korean efforts to embed cut-out companies as customers in Chinese procurement networks as a primary means of sidestepping sanctions. 3. Push Chinese authorities to crack down Chinese banks that deal with North Korean citizens since they use multiple personal accounts containing millions of dollars for state purposes. Since opening an account requires identification, Chinese authorities should be able to identify and cut off all North Korean account holders. If necessary, impose secondary sanctions on these banks. 4. Strengthen implementation of shipping sanctions to impose a de facto quarantine on North Korea. A report by Asan Institute for Policy Studies and Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) highlighting the role of China’s Hongxiang company in sanctions evasion recommends proactive monitoring of North Korea’s foreign flagged fleet to ensure enforcement of the existing UNSC resolution, drawing particular attention to data showing that Cambodia and Sierra Leone are flags of choice for the North Korean shipping fleet. The debate we must make North Korea have Despite external efforts to strengthen the international sanctions regime, there is precious little evidence to suggest that Kim Jong Un hears or cares more about efforts by external actors to convince him to reverse course than he cares about the internal factors that have led him to embrace nuclear development. In this respect, sanctions remain a blunt instrument to the extent that they have thus far failed, in combination with other measures, to induce a more active internal debate within Pyongyang over the question of whether North Korea’s survival without nuclear weapons is a viable option. This post originally appeared on Forbes Asia. See the original post here.

Sungtae “Jacky” Park is research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. Since the July 7 announcement by the U.S.-Korea alliance to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on the Korean peninsula, analysts and commentators have been discussing whether and how Beijing would retaliate against Seoul and whether the decision would lead to a dangerous arms race between the United States and China. These are important questions, but Thucydides might say that they are also missing the forest for the trees. By itself, the THAAD controversy is not a make-or-break issue in China-South Korea relations or in the U.S.-China arms race dynamics but is simply one symptom of broader trends, namely the increasingly zero-sum nature of the U.S.-China competition in Asia and the evolution in strategic military technologies. Read more in The National Interest...

The Council on Foreign Relations has just released a report of an independent task force on policy toward North Korea, titled A Sharper Choice on North Korea: Engaging China for a Stable Northeast Asia,  directed by Adam Mount, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and co-chaired by retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, and former Senator Sam Nunn (R-GA). The task force grapples comprehensively with all the dimensions of U.S. policy toward North Korea, breaking new ground in its recommendations in several areas and confirming the stepped up efforts by the Barack Obama administration and Congress to reinvigorate the U.S. response in others. The product benefits from the participation of a diverse group of specialists and former policymakers who bring a wealth of experience to the elusive task of effectively addressing the challenge to U.S. and South Korean interests posed by the North Korean regime, both through its nuclear development and its human rights practices. The report identifies a set of logical and needed issues and recommendations that a new U.S. administration will want to seriously consider when it takes office in January of 2017. Given its penchant for capitalizing on transition periods in U.S. and South Korean politics, North Korea will likely ensure that it tops the president’s inbox as one of the most serious, dangerous, and complex global challenges that he or she will face by 2020. The task force recommendations include the following: Diplomacy           Engage China in serious discussions about the future of the Korean peninsula, preferably through five party talks that would include Japan, Russia, and South Korea along with China and the United States.             Pursue a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear and missile development as a first step toward denuclearization and a comprehensive peace agreement.   Human Rights           Signal a willingness to suspend North Korea’s credentials at the United Nations if it does not show real progress on human rights. Facilitate information flows to North Korea and support international efforts to seek accountability for North Korean individuals and entities responsible for crimes against humanity while expanding U.S. sanctions against them.   Sanctions           Invest in rigorous enforcement of the existing sanctions regime and apply escalating pressure on North Korea’s illicit activities. Should North Korea fail to reenter negotiations, the United States should work with its allies to expand sanctions to target the full range of the regime’s illicit activities.   Strengthen Deterrence and Defense           Pursue deepened U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral collaboration to strengthen deterrence and defense, including adoption of a collective security commitment and expanded allied capacity to strengthen coordination and capabilities to defend against a range of North Korean capabilities.             Build a trilateral capacity to intercept all North Korean mid-range or long-range missile launches whether they are declared to be ballistic missile tests or civil space launch vehicles.   The report offers considerably more detail and grist for debates surrounding each of these recommendations that represent course corrections and departures from the Obama administration’s approach that has been built on pressure and deterrence while leaving open the possibility for dialogue—if North Korea is willing to credibly demonstrate its willingness to pursue denuclearization. Four nuclear tests and eight years later, it is clear that a new administration may perceive that the window for persuasion of North Korea is closing or that insufficient pressures have been brought to bear to achieve North Korea’s denuclearization. These circumstances provide a starker backdrop and fewer options for policymakers in the next administration who will view the North Korea problem with fresh eyes and greater urgency. Regardless of how they will decide to approach North Korea’s challenge, the report is a valuable starting point for those deliberations.

U.S. President Barack Obama stated clearly immediately following North Korea’s fifth nuclear test that “the United States does not, and never will, accept North Korea as a nuclear state. Far from achieving its stated national security and economic development goals, North Korea’s provocative and destabilizing actions have instead served to isolate and impoverish its people through its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities.” There are three primary reasons that support President Obama’s statement that, indeed, the United States will never be able to accept North Korea as a nuclear state. First, the United States cannot accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state for normative reasons; North Korea had signed onto the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear state and then abandoned the treaty in order to pursue nuclear capabilities. Tolerating North Korea’s nuclear status would be equivalent to setting a precedent for other NPT signatories to violate the treaty. Second, the United States cannot accept the North Korea’s nuclear weapons program because of the threat that a nuclear North Korea poses to South Korea’s security, both through possible extortion and potential use of nuclear weapons in a conflict with a conventionally stronger South Korea in which nuclear weapons are the North’s only real advantage. If North Korea attains a strike and survival capability against the United States, the U.S.-South Korea alliance will also come under considerable pressure in ways that will complicate military planning and political coordination within the alliance, even as the United States seeks to maintain its commitment to extended deterrence, which includes the premise that if North Korea were to use nuclear weapons, it would spell the end of the North Korean regime in relatively short order. Third, political power in North Korea, a totalitarian state, is considerably more concentrated compared to other nuclear weapons states such as Pakistan. This means that internal North Korean decision-making on nuclear use would be unchecked and would ultimately depend on a single individual, Kim Jong-un, compounding the risks and dangers of living with North Korea with a survivable nuclear deterrent and direct strike capability on the United States. It should not be surprising that the North Korean foreign ministry criticized President Obama’s statement, arguing that his denial of North Korea’s status as a nuclear weapons state “is as foolish an act as trying to eclipse the sun with a palm.” But in this context, it is worth some reflection in Pyongyang about exactly what North Korea has accomplished since 2009, when the regime abandoned six-party negotiations and argued that the United States must first abandon its “hostile policy” toward North Korea and then pursue mutual nuclear disarmament. As a result, there has been almost no space for diplomacy between the United States and North Korea. By taking advantage of the last American presidential transition to double down on nuclear development by conducting four tests since Obama’s inauguration in 2009, North Korea has made itself a threat to global security, while Myanmar, Iran, and Cuba were each able to take advantage of diplomacy with the Obama administration and establish more normal relations with the United States. It feels ironic and surreal when I recall conversations in Beijing with a Chinese Korea analyst on Election Day 2008, at which time the Chinese analyst asked: “Where will Obama visit first: Tehran or Pyongyang?” In this context, North Korea’s nuclear breakout—and Kim Jong Un’s decision to build his legitimacy on the nuclear accomplishments of his father and grandfather—will likely be regarded as an enormous strategic misjudgment. The North Korean foreign ministry stated: “We will continue to take measures for increasing the nuclear force of the country in quality and in quantity to safeguard the dignity and the right to existence of the DPRK and ensure genuine peace from the U.S. increasing threat of nuclear war.” It is sobering and sad to think that one young man persists in raising the risks, costs, and likelihood of nuclear war at the possible cost of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives against the failing legitimacy of his own hereditary state.

The direction of North Korea’s nuclear program has been clear for more than a decade, since it first tested a nuclear device in October 2006. But the pace has quickened, with two nuclear tests and tests of several missile platforms that will reduce warning time and extend North Korea’s capability to credibly deliver a nuclear weapon. The North Koreans have insisted that they are a “permanent” nuclear state and have signaled that the United States is their ultimate target, threatening nuclear strikes on the mainland. The Obama administration’s primary response, termed “strategic patience”, has strengthened deterrence and has led to a series of United Nations sanctions resolutions designed to increase international pressure. The American goal has been to change Kim Jong-un’s strategic calculus by showing him that having nuclear weapons is detrimental to his regime’s survival. Read the rest of the article in which Scott Snyder makes a recommendation on how to bridge the gap caused by Sino-U.S. mistrust in the Guardian.

North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test (second in 2016) on September 9, 2016, the sixty-eighth anniversary of the country’s founding. North Korea claimed the test would enable it to build a nuclear warhead that is “able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets.” South Korean President Park Geun-hye condemned the “fanatic recklessness” of the North Korean leadership. U.S. President Barack Obama stated that North Korea’s actions would have “serious consequences.” The Chinese foreign ministry stated that it was “resolutely opposed to North Korea’s latest nuclear test and strongly urges North Korea to stop taking any actions that will worsen the situation.” The UN Security Council will no doubt act to condemn the test and to pass a sanctions resolution even stricter than the measures passed only six months ago in response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test. Among other measures, the resolution will attempt to close the “livelihood” exemption loophole that China has left open on a humanitarian basis, target North Korea’s export of labor to other countries as a means of earning foreign exchange, extend the ban on aviation fuel to include crude oil, widen the ban on exports to include textiles, and prohibit tourism in North Korea. However, words and sanctions have not deterred Kim Jong Un from doubling down on nuclear development and pledging to become a “permanent nuclear state.” North Korea’s nuclear aspirations have become a foundation for Kim Jong Un’s domestic legitimacy. Most worrisome is the quickened frequency of North Korean nuclear and missile tests, which have come in such quick succession that the UN Security Council has resorted to statements condemning clusters of tests, instead of condemning individual tests, in recent weeks. North Korea’s dash to attain a long-range strike capability and survivability for its nuclear deterrent is designed to enhance the credibility of North Korean threats and raise defense costs of the country’s adversaries. By taking these steps, North Korea is betting that the world will acquiesce to a nuclear North Korea rather than mobilizing the level of coercion necessary to force North Korea to reverse course and pursue denuclearization. In so doing, North Korea lives in the space created by geostrategic distrust between China and the United States and continues to take for granted China’s commitment to stability over denuclearization. The backdrop of Sino-U.S. tensions over the South China Sea and disputes over the U.S.-South Korea alliance decision to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea provides North Korea with hope that the United States and China will never unite to take collective action to remove the North Korean regime. North Korea knows that China prizes stability overall and fears the geostrategic disadvantages to Beijing of national unification led by Seoul and supported by Washington. Nevertheless, a nuclear North Korea under the leadership of Kim Jong Un has proven itself to be inherently destabilizing, reminding Chinese leaders on an almost weekly basis in recent months that their goal of a stable periphery has been compromised by North Korean recklessness and disregard for Chinese national security interests. At some point, one would expect that China will be forced to take unilateral action to ensure that a more benign and stable North Korea can perpetuate its buffer role in exchange for Chinese support. Alternatively, China will be pushed to take collective action with the United States, South Korea, and the global community to show Kim Jong Un that a nuclear North Korea does not provide him or his regime with a viable survival option. The goal of enhancing external pressure on North Korea through sanctions will only work if it induces a recognition among the regime’s elites that a nuclear weapons program is not a viable security option and that North Korea must move in a different direction. However, even this step represents a threat to Kim Jong Un because it threatens the Kim family-led power structure and challenges the monolithic leadership of the suryong/supreme leader. Nevertheless, if nuclear weapons development has truly become a central tool by which the Kim family justifies the perpetuation of its rule domestically, denuclearization is possible only as a product of regime change; the only alternative to regime change is acquiescence to North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. Such is the strategic choice that North Korea’s current course poses to the United States and its allies.