Nuclear Weapons

The Chinese Ambassador to South Korea gave a rather dramatic warning to the leader of South Korea’s opposition Democratic Party on February 25 that a decision to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system would put China–South Korean relations at risk. Thus, it should not be surprising that threats of Chinese retaliation toward South Korea would surface following the July 8 U.S.-ROK announcement that the governments had decided to deploy THAAD in South Korea in response to North Korea’s growing missile threats. Despite emotional assertions that South Korea has compromised Chinese interests by pursuing self-defense against North Korea’s growing missile capabilities, China does not have the capability to punish South Korea without damaging its own economic and strategic interests on the Korean peninsula. The Global Times stated in a July 15 editorial that “Beijing must review and readjust its Korean Peninsula strategies in accordance with the latest threat from the peninsula, including its ROK policies.” At a bilateral meeting between South Korean and Chinese foreign ministers on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting on July 25, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi went out of his way to assert that the South Korean decision “has undermined the foundations of trust between the two countries.” At the same time that Wang Yi was making this claim, National Security Advisor Susan Rice reiterated the U.S. position on THAAD directly to Chinese counterparts during her meetings in Beijing: The decision to deploy THAAD was an “alliance decision” that was made “directly in response to the threat posed by North Korea in its nuclear and missile programs. It is purely a defensive measure. It is not aimed at any other party other than North Korea and the threat it poses. And this defensive weapon system is neither designed nor capable of threatening China’s security interests.” Threats of Chinese retaliation including reductions of tourist flows and visa approvals between China and South Korea and cancellations of Korean pop concerts and television dramas in China have inflamed a South Korean domestic political debate over THAAD deployment in an attempt to take advantage of domestic opposition and threaten the Korean public with retaliatory countermeasures designed to punish South Korea for what Beijing views as a strategic misjudgment. But China’s capacity to pursue economic countermeasures without sacrificing its own economic and political interests remains limited. First, Chinese threats of punishment are likely to alienate rather than win over the South Korean public, while risking damage to a vibrant economic relationship that has brought China and South Korea together. Threats to cut off economic ties or discriminate against South Korean exports are inconsistent with China’s World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations and will generate resentment among the South Korean public. China cannot hope to maintain friendly relations with its neighbors through economic threats or bullying. For instance, immediately following announcement of the deployment, the Global Times advocated cutting off economic ties with companies involved with THAAD and banning of Korean politicians and businesses that support deployment of the system. Such measures may roil South Korea’s domestic political debate, but the costs are so narrowly targeted that the vast majority of the Sino-South Korean economic relationship would not be affected by Chinese retaliatory measures. Second, China might consider retaliation against South Korea by boosting China–North Korea relations. For instance, the Chinese and North Korean foreign ministers traveled on the same plane to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in Laos and projected renewed closeness between the two countries at the ARF meeting in Laos. The Korea Times on July 25 reported that Chinese foot-dragging on UN statements condemning a spate of North Korean missile tests in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions was an instance of Chinese retaliation for the decision to deploy THAAD. Both of these measures seem to be attempts to impose a price and to sway South Korean domestic opinion by emphasizing that South Korea must pay a price for taking actions perceived to threaten China’s strategic and economic interests. However, Chinese retaliation options against South Korea in response to the THAAD decision are limited and counterproductive to China’s own strategic interests. China needs to retain good relations with South Korea as part of its long-term interest in ensuring that the Korean peninsula is friendly to Chinese interests, knowing that a unified Korea’s future strategic orientation is far more likely to be shaped by Seoul than Pyongyang. Second, closer Chinese relations with North Korea are not an effective means of punishment against South Korea given that it is in China’s interests to do more to bring the North Korean nuclear threat under control. Chinese objections to THAAD both underscore Chinese sensitivity to the U.S. presence on the peninsula and make clear China’s desire to limit the scope of the U.S.-ROK alliance to North Korea in the near-term while hoping that it will disappear completely as part of any process that might lead to Korean unification. Despite these concerns, Chinese senior officials have not backed away from the importance of a denuclearized North Korea. China’s immediate diplomatic focus is ensuring the success of the upcoming Group of Twenty (G20) meeting that China will host in Hangzhou, generating fears in South Korea that the brunt of Chinese retaliation will follow that international meeting. However, the G20 Summit also provides a valuable opportunity for a frank trilateral leaders-level discussion with Xi Jinping about the U.S.-ROK “alliance decision” to deploy THAAD, how it is linked to the growing North Korean nuclear and missile threat, and how to maintain regional stability in spite of North Korea’s destabilizing actions.

On the eve of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s arrival in Washington for a summit with U.S. President Barack Obama, the New York Times published an editorial that weighed in on a subject certain to feature on the leaders’ agenda: India’s bid for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The Times opined that the United States should not support India’s membership bid as, “Membership would enhance India’s standing as a nuclear weapons state, but it is not merited until the country meets the group’s standards.” The editorial advised Obama to “press for India to adhere to the standards on nuclear proliferation to which other nuclear weapons states adhere.” It added that the 2008 U.S.-India civil-nuclear agreement had “encouraged” Pakistan to expand its nuclear weapons program. Many in India and the small community of India-watchers in Washington read these words in disbelief. First, the suggestion that Pakistan’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons, including those that can be deployed on a battlefield, is a direct result of civil-nuclear energy cooperation with India strikes many as a misread of Pakistan’s motivations. As C. Christine Fair has elucidated in great detail, Pakistan’s strategic culture rests on a constant quest to battle India, seeing itself as India’s equal, and unsatisfied with the territorial status quo. Second, the Times’ view that India has not met nuclear nonproliferation standards expected from it misreads the obligations India willingly took on in its civil-nuclear negotiation with the United States. Indian journalist Siddharth Varadarajan has analyzed Indian obligations carefully here, arguing that India should be held to the commitments it took on beginning in 2005. The Times has every right to an independent view. This of course does not reflect the clear commitment the United States government has made to India. However, the American paper of record should ground its arguments in an appraisal of the complete facts. The editorial skipped the most germane facts of the genesis of the civil-nuclear agreement, and therefore presented an incomplete view. India is not a signatory to the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), and in the nearly fifty years since the NPT’s inception, New Delhi has maintained one consistent objection: the Treaty creates nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” by legally defining a “nuclear weapons state” as one which tested nuclear devices before January 1, 1967. States which signed the treaty but had not tested before 1968 would fall into the legal category of “non-nuclear weapons states” and would take on specific obligations to ensure they did not develop a weapons program (full-scope safeguards on facilities, for example). The countries which met the threshold to be declared nuclear weapons states did not have a similar set of requirements. Former external affairs minister of India, Jaswant Singh, summarized India’s objection to the Treaty in his 1998 Foreign Affairs article, “Against Nuclear Apartheid.” When the New York Times speaks of India adhering to the standards of other “nuclear weapons states,” it skips over the fact that the term has a very specific, legal meaning in the NPT, and that India will never legally become a “nuclear weapons state” according to the terms of that treaty. Thus India has stayed outside of it. While only a handful of countries have remained outside the NPT (India, Pakistan, and Israel never signed; North Korea withdrew), in India’s case its civilian nuclear energy, defense, and high technology industries suffered from not being able to access the kinds of technology that the global nonproliferation regime prevented non-signatories from obtaining. New Delhi long stated that it believed in global disarmament, but on a “non-discriminatory” basis, and for that reason also refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, although since 1998 the country has repeatedly stated its commitment to a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing. Nonproliferation created a chasm between India and the United States after India’s 1974 “peaceful nuclear explosion.” From 2005 onward, the George W. Bush administration sought a way to deepen strategic cooperation with India—including defense cooperation and sharing of advanced technology—as well as to promote clean energy development in India through the civil-nuclear agreement. Due to India’s “neither-fish-nor-fowl” status, as Ashley Tellis put it, in the narrow legal terms of the NPT, and given the zero probability of India’s accession to the treaty, the civil-nuclear agreement carefully worked out a method to enable cooperation on nuclear energy, while setting aside the question of India’s weapons program. Through the terms of the agreement, India separated its civilian from its strategic programs. It agreed to put the civilian energy programs under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards (through an “India-specific safeguards” agreement) although this is usually obligatory only for non-nuclear weapons states. India also changed its domestic laws to align its export controls with those of the Missile Technology Control Regime, the NSG, the Wassenaar Arrangement, and the Australia Group. In other words, India took on obligations more extensive than the technical requirements of a “nuclear weapons state” under the NPT definition, while not formally becoming one. On its part, the U.S. committed to help shepherd India’s membership in these four key regimes. The question that U.S. policymakers struggled with—and the agreement was indeed controversial—rested not only on the larger strategic significance of deepened cooperation with India, but also on whether the global nonproliferation order was strengthened through the steps India agreed to take. Looking back on the eleven years since this all began, my own view is that the nonproliferation order has been undeniably strengthened since the advent of the nuclear deal. India had never proliferated its nuclear technology to any other country, and it was not going to sign the NPT to become a non-nuclear weapons state, so the fact that it has remained outside the Treaty has been a net-neutral development. But it has put its civilian reactors under IAEA safeguards, a new obligation that as a consequence limits the amount of weapons-usable material it could produce; it has strengthened its export controls domestically; and it now sees itself as a stakeholder in maintaining, not opposing, the nonproliferation order. India supports a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty; it continues to argue for globally nondiscriminatory nuclear disarmament; and it seeks to formally join the four above-mentioned nonproliferation regimes. It has also maintained its unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. By any metric this should be seen as more than meeting the “standards” required, and a net positive. The New York Times editorial board is entitled to oppose U.S. backing for an Indian place in the NSG. But its readers would be better served if its arguments didn’t elide important background information on how our two countries arrived at their present position. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa

I woke up early this morning, before 4 a.m. in fact, to head to NPR to be live when President Barack Obama spoke in Hiroshima. As I drove across a dark and quiet Washington, DC, the president was already beginning what has to be his most moving speech to date. As my city was waking up, the entire Japanese nation was listening to our president, the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site of the atomic bombings. If you have not heard it, you should take a moment to read it here. President Obama began by taking us back to that precise moment that changed human history, “a bright cloudless morning” when “death fell from the sky.” He reminded us why we must continue to visit Hiroshima, to remember “the terrible force” that took the lives of over 100,000 men, women, and children, among them not only Japanese but Koreans and even Americans held as prisoners of war. "Their souls," he continued, "ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are, and what we might become.” War fought throughout human history, by powerful and wealthy nations, he argued, affected most those who are “the innocents.” And he reminded us that our future is a choice. In echoes of his first speech on the need to find our way forward to a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama suggested that August 6, 1945 should be seen not as the “dawn of atomic warfare,” but as the “start of our moral awakening.” Throughout his speech, President Obama sought to put faces and feelings on the lives of those who were alive then, and on the human costs of war. He focused on our children. Early on he depicted the confusion of those children who were there in Hiroshima on the day of the atomic bombing, some of whom in fact were in the audience as survivors, or hibakusha. He spoke of the children of Hiroshima today who go through their days in peace –a precious thing, he noted, that must be “protected and extended to every child.” And, he spoke to the stories that we must choose to tell our children, the narratives that we provide that can lead us to reconciliation instead of war –a story of  “a common humanity... [where] cruelty is less easily accepted.” Moreover, President Obama highlighted the choices that will determine our future, which lie in the hands of the world’s leaders. Leaders must understand what he said “ordinary people” already know—those who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki seventy-one years ago were “like us,” with lives and families like ours. He noted that the nations that fought World War II were the wealthiest and most powerful, with magnificent civilizations, art, and culture. Yet he laid blame on “the base instinct for domination,” an instinct today that is “amplified by new capabilities” for destruction. He called on leaders to “reimagine our connection to the human race…to one another,” and reminded them to “learn” from Hiroshima and to “choose” to avoid and prevent the catastrophe of war. This plea to avoid the call of nationalism and competition, instead seeking the path of diplomacy and compromise, could not come at a better time for Asia. With North Korea in pursuit of a nuclear arsenal and China rising as a more assertive regional power, many across the region worry about a new inevitable competition across Asia. With even more destructive power, and with some –even in the United States –suggesting that nuclear weapons are inevitable for those like Japan that remain steadfastly opposed, President Obama’s reminder of the human cost of war is prescient. He also put World War II into a global context, reminding us that the scale of deliberate civilian killings in that conflict far outstripped any previous war. He spoke of the sixty million who died in that war—men, women, and children killed and “shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, and gassed” in the horrible “depravity” of that war. He noted too the many sites elsewhere around the world depicting the suffering of so many, reminding us that Hiroshima was not the only site of human suffering. But he did emphasize how the shock of the “mushroom cloud” brought into stark relief how far that global contest had taken us, how close we were to using our technology to “eliminate” human life. Carried in his pocket were four origami cranes, a symbol of hope and rebirth in Japan that has particular salience in Hiroshima. At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a special memorial statue was built to honor the story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who was four at the time of the atomic bombing and later died of leukemia at the age of twelve. During her illness, Sadako folded more than a thousand cranes, a practice thought to help realize wishes in Japan. Her brother, Masahiro Sasaki, took it upon himself to continue to share those cranes with those who sought peace, even taking one to the 9/11 Memorial Museum as well as to the Pearl Harbor Museum. Her story has been written about in many languages, and read by many children across the globe. One child who read the book was the son of Clifton Truman Daniels, the oldest grandson of President Harry Truman. In 2012, Clifton and Masahiro together toured the museum that President Obama visited today, finding a path to friendship in their common pursuit of peace. Seventy-one years later, the voices of the wartime generation are growing faint. Veterans who fought the war, and those that suffered its worst brutality are now in their final years of life.  That generation has been at the forefront of reconciliation dialogue and outreach between Japan and the United States, reaching out to those they fought against or those who families like theirs were decimated in war. Not all forgive, however, and sensitivities in both countries remain over those who suffered. My inbox today is already full of emails from all generations of Japanese and Americans deeply moved by the president’s visit and by his profound reminder of our shared responsibility in building peace. In Japan, there is widespread gratitude for the president’s visit; in the United States, our election may provide the opportunity for a more partisan reading. I was too deeply moved, and as an American, sincerely proud to watch our president finally demonstrate just how far our two nations have come. I hope leaders across Asia, indeed across the world, take heed of President Obama’s appeal to this generation to reach across national borders and to find courage in our shared humanity.

The seventh congress of the North Korean Workers’ Party (WPK) held from May 6 to 8 was a carefully choreographed affair designed to show the world that its newly installed Chairman Kim Jong-un is fully in control of the North Korean state. By taking the title of Chairman, Kim has signaled that he is no longer reliant solely on the legacy of his father and grandfather, that he is determined to lead, and that he expects the international community to accommodate his absolute leadership of a nuclear North Korea. Through his speech at the conference, Kim Jong-un revealed big plans to safeguard North Korea’s security through its nuclear accomplishments and grow its economy. But Kim has not yet shown how he will gain international acquiescence to North Korea’s nuclear development or how he can secure international support for North Korea’s economic growth. Kim’s plans for economic development are laudable. In his first public speech in 2012, Kim stated that his people should “never have to tighten their belt again.” Since then, North Korea has improved its agricultural production, experimented with limited agricultural reforms, transferred some decision-making responsibility from the state to the firm level, and has stopped opposing private market transactions. The North Korean economy is reported to have grown by one or two percent per year, with the Hyundai Research Institute reporting that North Korea’s annual GDP growth may have reached as high as seven percent. Kim’s reestablishment of a new five-year economic plan at the Party Congress provides needed leadership designed to stoke North Korea’s economic growth. But Kim’s twin emphasis on nuclear and economic development—his Byungjin policy—stands in the way of a real economic take-off because it starves North Korea of opportunities for external economic cooperation. Kim may exhort his people to improve agriculture, construction, and light industry and to become a scientifically and technologically powerful state in areas including information technology, nano-technology, bioengineering, energy, space, and nuclear technology. But the North Korean economy will fail in these areas unless his country is connected to the outside world. International opposition to North Korea’s nuclear development results in sanctions that generate economic pressures on North Korea and cut the country off from the outside world. As much as Kim needs connection to the outside world in order to achieve economic growth, he needs political isolation for his system to survive. Kim may regard North Korea’s nuclear deterrent capabilities as an insurance policy against growing challenges to the legitimacy of his single-man rule. Kim’s power depends on his ability to stand atop a system in which he commands absolute loyalty by suppressing both internal and external political competition. The Party Conference affirmed Kim’s monopoly on power and showcased both his demands and the rewards for absolute fealty among the highest-ranking members of North Korean society. In this respect, Kim’s nuclear program serves two purposes: it helps to ensure North Korea’s isolation by engendering international hostility to the regime while also defending an otherwise vulnerable North Korean state against the possibility of attacks from external enemies. Thus, Kim may regard his formula as his best chance to both preserve his system and maintain the status quo. This is why Kim declared: “We will consistently take hold on the strategic line of simultaneously pushing forward the economic construction and the building of nuclear force and boost self-defensive nuclear force both in quality and quantity as long as the imperialists persist in their nuclear threat and arbitrary practices.” By declaring the permanence of a nuclear North Korea at the Workers’ Party Congress, Kim Jong-un has used the issue to shore up his power internally, but at the expense of North Korea’s international standing. Instead of accepting North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, the international community has consistently condemned its nuclear pursuit and is bent on increasing pressure on Kim through economic sanctions. This makes the nuclear program a primary obstacle to North Korea’s ability to achieve its economic goals. Kim asserted at the Workers’ Party Congress that North Korea would be a responsible nuclear power, pledging only to use nuclear weapons if it is attacked with nuclear weapons. He also called for global denuclearization, perhaps in an attempt to align North Korea with the position of the five legitimate nuclear weapons states originally recognized in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But North Korea’s unilateral exit from the NPT, its failure to meet past denuclearization pledges, and the extreme concentration of political power in the hands of Kim Jong-un are insurmountable barriers to international acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. In response to Kim’s claim that North Korea would be a “permanent” nuclear weapons state, South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesperson reiterated that; “it is only when the North shows sincerity about denuclearization that genuine dialogue is possible.” The United States has rejected North Korean peace overtures, insisting that peace talks are meaningless without talks on denuclearization. Even China’s proposal for talks envisages the United States and North Korea engaging in parallel peace and denuclearization talks. The international community insists that Kim must choose between economic and nuclear development because the last thing the world thinks Kim Jong-un needs, even at his own party coronation, is two slices of cake. This article originally appeared on TheMarkNews.com.

    Kim Jong Un has been intensifying his efforts to develop a long-range nuclear strike capability since the beginning of 2016. The more vulnerable he feels atop a weakening North Korea, the more he seeks a silver bullet to ensure the regime’s long-term survival. This dynamic has been in play for decades, especially as North Korea pursued nuclear weapons to compensate for the loss of its powerful patrons in Moscow and Beijing and fell further behind a far more prosperous South Korea. But Pyongyang’s insecurity has intensified even more under Kim, who, since coming to power in 2012, declared his father’s bequest of a nuclear program as a crowning achievement, changed the constitution to declare North Korea a nuclear state, and declared nuclear and economic development as his twin priorities. Read the full article on CNN.    

The following is a guest post by Naomi Egel, research associate in the International Institutions and Global Governance program. The nuclear security summits, one of President Obama’s greatest legacies, have unquestionably made the world safer by reducing global quantities of fissile materials and improving the security of existing nuclear and radioactive materials. When President Obama hosted the first such summit in 2010, there was plenty of skepticism about what an ad hoc gathering of heads of state could accomplish. But that meeting surpassed expectations—as did subsequent ones in Seoul in 2012 and The Hague in 2014. World leaders arrived at each summit with meaningful pledges to lock up the world’s most dangerous materials—and they followed through on them. The fourth (and last) summit, held just two weeks ago (March 31-April 1, 2016) in Washington, went even further. It established mechanisms to ensure continued progress on nuclear security without summitry. The 2016 summit attained several noteworthy goals. First, it achieved the required number of ratifications to bring into force the amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials, paving the way for more rigorous global physical nuclear security standards. Second, China and India endorsed a joint statement from the 2014 summit in The Hague, through which states agreed to implement International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recommendations to strengthen nuclear and radiological source security. Third, Argentina completed the removal of all of its highly enriched uranium (HEU), effectively making Latin American an HEU-free zone. Fourth, Japan announced the successful removal of more than five hundred kilograms of HEU and separated plutonium from its territory. Most importantly, world leaders guaranteed that cooperation on nuclear security would outlive the summit process, creating a contact group led by the sherpas (national points of contact for the summits) to sustain momentum on the issue. They also endorsed five action plans, each of which will be carried out by a different multilateral agency or initiative: the United Nations, the IAEA, INTERPOL, the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, and the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction. Delivering on these action plans will not be easy. It remains to be seen how the five multilateral bodies—each with its own distinctive politics, institutional culture, and membership—will incorporate the nuclear security agenda into their existing operations. At the UN and IAEA, for instance, political jockeying already threatens many worthwhile initiatives. Moreover, these organizations and initiatives will require increased and sustained funding to accomplish the additional missions they have now adopted. There are also areas where the summit fell short. Most importantly, it focused entirely on improving the security and transparency of civilian stocks of nuclear material, while remaining silent on the military stocks that comprise roughly 83 percent of fissile material worldwide. In addition, Russia’s nonattendance meant that the summit made no progress with the country that holds the most fissile material in the world. And while China engaged far more actively than in past summits, both India and Pakistan remained reluctant to participate. But there are also issues the summit was never intended to address—namely, disarmament—and the success of the summit should not be measured against false metrics. More positively, the new contact group is a laudable innovation, which will help ensure the implementation and consolidation of commitments agreed through the summit process. While it is not intended to generate new commitments, it could help push forward new thinking and generate momentum to hold another nuclear summit in the future. Beyond their tangible contributions to nuclear security, the summits have introduced a promising new model of international cooperation. They are part of a larger shift away from formal, standing institutions—which tend to seek consensus-based outcome documents—to informal groupings that make progress through “opt-in” contributions from individual countries (or groups of countries). The second nuclear security summit in Seoul popularized the concept of “gift baskets”—voluntary initiatives offered by different groupings of countries. That approach has since been picked up by the Global Health Security Agenda (as “action packages”) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (as “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” or INDCs). At the Paris climate conference last December, this approach helped break the deadlock on climate change negotiations and drive global contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This individualized model—whether termed gift baskets, action packages, or INDCs—is a pragmatic approach to global governance. It recognizes that national interests and capacities are diverse and uneven, and that the most promising route to cooperation is to allow states to contribute what their own circumstances permit, rather than seeking the lowest common denominator that can command consensus. Less certain is whether this general approach will lead to sustained—and intensified—contributions, or whether its primary value is in galvanizing action where there is low-hanging fruit ready to be picked. The future trajectories of gift baskets are also unclear: will they be opened up to allow all states—including those not invited to the summits—to participate? The nuclear security summits have made the world a safer place—surely a cause for celebration. At the same time, much hard work lies ahead, as the world seeks to turn these ad-hoc initiatives into a sustainable framework for preventing nuclear terrorism.

Sungtae “Jacky” Park is research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. In February, the United States and South Korea decided to begin official discussions on deploying the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on the Korean Peninsula. In response, Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Qiu Guohong said that deployment of the system could destroy the Beijing-Seoul relationship “in an instant.” The floor leader of South Korea’s ruling Saenuri party, Won Yoo-cheol, calling Qiu’s remarks “rude,” said that they “disregarded the sovereignty and the security of the Republic of Korea.” While some analysts see China’s blunt position on this issue as a way to drive a wedge in the U.S.-Korea alliance, Beijing’s motivations are in fact defensive. China’s leadership is concerned about THAAD at the strategic level and sees the system as part of a broader U.S. strategy to contain China. Read more on CSIS.org...

The UN Security Council (UNSC) has passed Resolution 2270 condemning North Korea for its January 6 nuclear test and February 7 missile launch. The language of the new resolution greatly expands the breadth and depth of previous sanctions resolutions (1695, 1718, 1874, 2087, and 2094) on North Korea, but its impact ultimately will depend on political will of member states, particularly China, to enforce implementation. The new UN resolution broadens the scope of previous sanctions by targeting both North Korean natural resources sales, which are a source of foreign exchange earnings for the Kim Jong-un regime, and North Korean imports of aviation and rocket fuel. But falling global energy prices and China’s coal industry cuts have probably already had a bigger impact than sanctions on North Korean coal exports, while implementation of an aviation and rocket fuel ban will rely on China’s ability to block smuggling activities across the border with North Korea. The resolution broadens the scope of financial sanctions by imposing a freeze on North Korean assets and by banning new financial channels to and from North Korea. The resolution also deepens the implementation of previous sanctions by requiring states to inspect all cargo to or from North Korea, by banning charter vessels and airplanes to and from North Korea, and by calling on states to de-register North Korean-owned vessels. However, implementation of inspections depends on voluntary cooperation of member states, including China, and North Korea is adept at using foreign-flagged vessels and other forms of misdirection to obscure imports of sensitive items. The new resolution addresses known loopholes in North Korean illicit activities that have been revealed through the work of the UN Panel of Experts on Sanctions toward North Korea established in UNSC Resolution 1718 in 2009. The panel investigates reports from member states regarding North Korean violations of UNSC resolutions and has submitted an annual report to the United Nations on North Korean violations and strategies used to evade sanctions. These reports have provided the basis for the UN resolution to embargo trade in small arms and arms repair and servicing by North Korea and have provided the basis for designations against North Korean entities including diplomats and North Korean controlled companies and vessels operating in violation of past sanctions resolutions. On paper, the contents of UNSC Resolution 2270 represent a significant increase in pressure on North Korea for its nuclear and missile development efforts, but as with past UN sanctions, the effort is incremental, and the effects will play out over years. Given that achieving simultaneous development of North Korea’s nuclear program and economy undergirds Kim Jong-un’s domestic position, he is unlikely to abandon the nuclear program. As Kim faces a Workers’ Party of Korea congress in May, it is even more unlikely that he will abandon the nuclear program when tougher sanctions are putting his economic improvement efforts at risk. Yet, the apparent price of China’s acquiescence to a tough resolution appears to have included a clear insistence that the sanctions are designed to induce negotiations, not regime change. China’s active implementation of UN resolutions also appears premised on U.S. and South Korean willingness to downplay pursuit of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which is now being officially discussed within the alliance. Impatience with China’s loose implementation of past UNSC resolutions has induced more active efforts by other states to impose much tougher unilateral sanctions on North Korea. South Korea’s closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex will cost North Korea at least $100 million per year, while new U.S. legislation puts teeth into efforts to target North Korea’s financial transactions as well as its external trade partners. However, the effective sanctioning of most of North Korea’s trade partners also requires Chinese cooperation since Chinese companies are the primary intermediaries for North Korea’s overseas trade. An omission in the resolution involves North Korean labor exports, which have emerged as a significant stream of North Korean foreign exchange earnings for the export of workers in fields such as construction and logging. But Russia and China, as the primary hosts of such labor, may also be the countries least willing to cooperate in shutting it down. These measures may indeed hurt North Korea more than might have anticipated in Pyongyang’s own preparations for its nuclear and missile tests and their aftermath. China abjures regime change as an acceptable outcome of enhanced sanctions and urges a return to negotiations, but there is no apparent intersection between U.S. insistence on denuclearization negotiations and North Korean proposals to negotiate a peace agreement. As a result, both the United States and North Korea seem stuck in their own respective cul de sacs, unable to move forward and unwilling to reverse course. In this test of wills, it will take time for sanctions to achieve their desired effect. Even if they do, it is not clear that any of the concerned parties are truly prepared for the consequences of success.

In former CIA and NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden’s new memoir, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, he describes the case of Al Kibar, in which Israeli officials informed the United States in 2007 about a building under construction in Syria that they thought was a nuclear reactor. Hayden writes, “Then we gave the data to a red team, dedicated contrarians, and directed they come up with an alternative explanation. Build an alternative case as to why it’s not a nuclear reactor; why it’s not intended to produce plutonium for a weapon; why North Korea is not involved.” (p. 258) For the full story of the red teaming of Al Kibar, read this excerpt from my book—based upon interviews with senior Bush administration officials—Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy. Red teaming is not only about using a devil’s advocate to scrutinize and challenge day-to-day operations. For institutions facing a significant decision, red teaming may also be a one-time effort. We can see how a properly administrated red team can help ensure that a crucial decision is the right one by studying the following example found in recent national security decision making. In April 2007, Israeli national security officials surprised their American counterparts by informing them about a large building under construction at Al Kibar in a valley in the eastern desert of Syria. In oneon- one briefings, the Israeli officials provided dozens of internal and external color photographs dating back to before 2003. The evidence strongly suggested that the building was a nuclear reactor, remarkably similar to the gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor in Yongbyon, North Korea. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert then delivered his request to President George W. Bush: “George, I’m asking you to bomb the compound.” Senior Bush administration officials were deeply troubled. North Korea had conducted its first nuclear weapons test the previous October using plutonium produced in the Yongbyon reactor. The Israeli briefings reinforced the US intelligence community (IC) assessments of “sustained nuclear cooperation” between North Korea and Syria. Though the IC had been monitoring the construction of a facility that they had described as “enigmatic” since 2005, the new Israeli photographs cast the compound in Al Kibar under a harsh new light. Immediately, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-led task force reevaluated all of the available intelligence related to Al Kibar and North Korea’s nuclear cooperation with Syria. Given the flawed intelligence assessment that resulted in the incorrect conclusion in 2002 about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), nobody wanted to be wrong again. As Bush told his intelligence chiefs: “Gotta be secret, and gotta be sure.” The CIA task force reaffirmed the Israeli officials’ claims, but Bush administration officials took extraordinary measures to increase their confidence level. To ensure that they could be nearly certain in their assessment of Al Kibar, they employed devil’s advocate techniques markedly similar to those invented by the Vatican centuries earlier. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told IC officials to assemble some of their best analysts to review the data to see if the facility could be anything other than a reactor. The CIA director, General Michael Hayden, was similarly concerned given that “we had a poor record of assessing the WMD programs of countries bordering the Euphrates River.” He noted, “You increase your certainty by widening the circle, but we still had to keep the circle small to keep it a secret.” To do this, the IC employed two red teams that were totally independent from the task force and had not yet been “read in” on the intelligence regarding Al Kibar. Bush’s intelligence chiefs so thoroughly bought into the concept of red teaming that they issued the two groups opposing goals: one would be commissioned to prove “yes” and the other to prove “no.” The “yes” red team assessment came from a private sector analyst who held a top-secret security clearance and was well known for his proficiency in monitoring nuclear weapons programs. The analyst was not told where the facility was located, but was provided with the Israeli and American internal and overhead imagery of it. The obvious efforts to camouflage the reactor vessel and the spent fuel pools within a building that had nearly an identical footprint to that of the Yongbyon reactor, and the trenches and pipes leading to a nearby water source (the Euphrates) were among several telltale giveaways. Within a few days, the analyst informed the IC officials, “That’s a North Korean reactor.” Hayden’s “no” red team was composed of senior analysts from the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC). This team received the same access to all the available data and intelligence as its counterpart, but was explicitly instructed to reach a hypothesis that the facility in Syria was not a nuclear reactor. “Prove to me that it is something else,” the CIA director told them. Over the course of the following week, the WINPAC group considered whether Al Kibar could contain a chemical weapons production or storage site, or something related to missile or rocket programs. Anything was plausible—they even investigated the possibility that it might be some sort of secretive nonweapons- related vanity project of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They also explored whether al-Assad had directed that a mock-up of a reactor be built, simply because he wanted it to be bombed for some reason. Another senior CIA official recalled that they had particular difficulty finding an alternative explanation for the internal photographs of the facility, which not only closely resembled Yongbyon but also even contained what appeared to be North Korean workers. “The alternative hypothesis that they came up with, for which the most evidence unquestionably and markedly lined up behind, was that it was a fake nuclear reactor,” Hayden recalled. At the weekly Tuesday afternoon meeting in Hadley’s office, a handful of senior officials met to discuss what to do about the purported Syrian reactor. The results of the red-teaming exercises gave officials a high degree of confidence that they had their facts straight. They took comfort in the additional levels of scrutiny that had been applied to the initial intelligence estimates. “It gave us more confidence about the instinct and conclusion of the intelligence community regarding whether it was a reactor. Every other alternative explanation was not plausible,” according to Hadley. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who attended all of these meetings, also recalled, “Everybody agreed that we could not find an alternative to this being a nuclear reactor.” However, even though the Al Kibar compound was all but confirmed to be a nuclear reactor, this did not mean that the United States should accede to Prime Minister Olmert’s request to destroy it. While Hayden could comfortably declare, “That’s a reactor. I have high confidence,” the red teams had notably found no evidence of a facility required to separate spent reactor fuel into bomb-grade plutonium or of weaponization work, which further led him to state, “On [the question whether] it is part of a nuclear weapons program, I have low confidence.” Bush subsequently told Olmert that the United States would not participate in a military attack: “I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it’s a weapons program.” The two independent intelligence assessments provided Bush administration officials with far greater confidence about what was being constructed in the Syrian desert. They informed Bush’s decision-making calculus, even though his primary concern remained the risks to US interests in the Middle East if he authorized another preemptive attack on a Muslim country. With bombing now off the table, the CIA developed options to covertly sabotage the reactor before it went critical; however, CIA Deputy Director Stephen Kappes told the White House that sabotage had a low likelihood of success. Therefore, Bush chose to pursue diplomatic channels by going public with the intelligence to the United Nations Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency, in order to pressure Syria to verifiably dismantle the reactor. Before this could happen, four Israeli fighter jets destroyed the suspected reactor at Al Kibar on September 6, 2007, without any resistance from Syria’s air defenses or overt support from the United States. In this case, the findings of the two devil’s advocates, based on their independent analysis of available intelligence, greatly enhanced the credibility of the intelligence estimates regarding the existence of a nuclear reactor, and enabled Bush to make up his mind on the basis of more complete and vetted information. Ultimately, the president decided to refrain from launching strikes. This was a classic example of red teaming in action—having outsiders test the validity of the intelligence and consider the possibility of alternate hypotheses.

Sungtae “Jacky” Park is research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. Parts of this article were adapted from his report, The Korean Pivot and the Return of Great Power Politics in Northeast Asia. The Kim Jong-un regime is intent on developing a secure and deliverable nuclear deterrent. If the regime achieves its objective, North Korea could become the most dangerous nuclear-weapons state in the world, not because the Kim regime is irrational, but because North Korea is the only existing nuclear-weapons state that could conceivably collapse without a warning. Does the logic of deterrence extend to a dying regime? Read more in The National Interest...

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) announced that it successfully launched the Kwangmyongsong-4 satellite at 9:30 am on February 7, 2016. But the United States regards DPRK satellite launches as thinly-veiled efforts to advance its long-range ballistic missile capabilities. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the latest launch as “a flagrant violation of UN Security Council Resolutions related to the DPRK use of ballistic missile technology.” This compilation of statements by U.S. government officials over the past five years shows U.S. assessments regarding North Korea’s ballistic missile capabilities. January 11, 2011: Then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says during a visit to Beijing that North Korea could have the ability to hit the continental United States with a ballistic missile in five years. [New York Times] January 27, 2011: Then-Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen says in an interview to the Financial Times: "There’s little doubt in my mind, unless North Korea is deterred, that sometime in the next, I’m not sure but, five to ten years, the provocations...will continue at a much higher threat level, which could include a nuclear-capable ICBM." [Yonhap] March 11, 2011: Then-U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess says: "The North may now have several plutonium-based nuclear warheads that it can deliver by ballistic missiles and aircraft as well as by conventional means." [Yonhap] March 18, 2013: Then-Vice Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James Winnefeld says: “We believe the KN-08 probably does have the range to reach the United States.” KN-08 (also known as No-Dong C and Hwasong-13) is a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile under development by North Korea. The missile was first displayed during a military parade in April 2012. [Hankyoreh] April 11, 2013: The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assesses that North Korea has successfully miniaturized its nuclear warheads to fit on ballistic missiles, although the agency notes that the nuclear missile’s “reliability will be low.” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Lieutenant General (retired) James R. Clapper Jr. releases a statement soon after noting that the DIA assessment did not reflect the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment as a whole and that he believes that “North Korea has not yet demonstrated the full range of capabilities necessary for a nuclear armed missile.” Pentagon Press Secretary George Little says: “It would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced in the passage.” [New York Times] [New York Times] April 16, 2013: U.S. President Barack Obama says: “You know, based on our current intelligence assessments, we do not think that they have that capacity [ability to mount a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile to hit the United States].” [New York Times] October 24, 2014: U.S. Forces Korea Commander General Curtis M. Scaparrotti says that North Koreans “have the capability to have miniaturized the device [a nuclear warhead] at this point, and they have the technology to potentially actually deliver what they say they have,” but he also says that a nuclear-tipped missile “that complex, without it being tested, the probability of it being effective is pretty darn low.” [New York Times] April 7, 2015: Head of the U.S. Northern Command Admiral William Gortney says: “Our assessment is that they have the ability to put a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 and shoot it at the homeland.” KN-08, as noted above, is a road-mobile intercontinental missile. [Bloomberg] May 19, 2015: Admiral James Winnefeld refutes North Korea’s claim of a successful submarine-launched ballistic missile ejection test and says that the North Koreans “have not gotten as far as their clever video editors and spinmeisters would have us believe…They are years away from developing this capability.” [Washington Post] May 20, 2015: North Korea claims that it can miniaturize its nuclear warheads, but U.S. National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell says: "We do not think that they have that capacity." [CNN] October 8, 2015: Admiral William Gortney reiterates the assessment during an Atlantic Council event that the North Koreans “have the capability to reach the [U.S.] homeland with a nuclear weapon from a rocket.” [Guardian] Compiled by Sungtae "Jacky" Park, research associate for Korea studies