How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea?

Let’s start this post with a simple assessment of the present situation with respect to a nuclear-armed North Korea. At this point

• North Korea has nuclear weapons.
• We don’t actually know the size of its nuclear arsenal. It’s thought to be more than 50 but fewer than 100 weapons.
• It is believed to have the missile capability of delivering a nuclear weapon anywhere in the continental U. S.

Onwards to the impetus for this post. In his Washington Post column Josh Rogin says that opening negotiations with North Korea is an urgent necessity, won’t wait until the administration is ready, and the situation is probably different than the administration is expecting:

“North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs grew over the last four years,” a senior administration official told me. “The regime and its arsenal became an even greater threat.”

and

If the Biden team doesn’t make the first move, it risks being accused of returning to Obama’s pattern of “strategic patience,” waiting for Kim Jong Un to come crawling. But the record shows that North Korea is more likely to buck than buckle, and a long silence from Washington could be broken by the loud boom from a new nuclear test. That would set off a familiar escalatory cycle that could make real progress unattainable.

and acknowledges the basic challenge to negotiations:

The elephant in the room is China. Beijing is not likely to help the United States increase pressure on North Korea, as it did in 2017. Linking North Korea diplomacy to the U.S.-China relationship didn’t work in the Trump administration, and U.S.-China relations aren’t likely getting better soon.

In the past I’ve made this analogy. When you’re worried about the neighbor’s dog biting you, you don’t negotiate with the dog. The only negotiations worth conducting are with China but there are some even more basic questions I’d really like answered:

1. Is North Korea deterrable?

   North Korea has the ability to hurt the United States but we have the ability to destroy North Korea utterly. Which brings us to the even more fundamental question—

2. Do we still believe in deterrence?

I’ve written extensively about nuclear deterrence over the years. It has physical requirements, policy requirements, and psychological requirements. The physical requirement is that you must have the ability to response in case of nuclear attack. We’ve got that. The policy requirement is that you must be committed to acting decisively in the case of nuclear attack. The psychological component is that your opponent (in this case North Korea) must believe that you will they face destruction if they attack us with nuclear weapons.

I believe that we no longer plan to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances which, essentially, means we no longer believe in deterrence. The North Koreans are aware of this. At least they’re certainly acting as if that’s what they believe. Maybe they believe their bunkers will protect them. For deterrence to work we need to believe in it ourselves. I wish President Biden the best of luck in convincing his caucus that we will use nuclear weapons.