Maybe We Should Take the North Koreans at Their Word

Shortly after North Korea exploded its second nuclear device in three years on Monday morning, it released a statement explaining why. "The republic has conducted another underground nuclear testing successfully in order to strengthen our defensive nuclear deterrence." If the Obama Administration hopes to dissuade Pyongyang from the nuclear course it seems so hell bent on pursuing, Washington must understand just how adroitly nuclear arms do appear to serve North Korea's national security. In other words, perhaps we should recognize that they mean what they say.

From the dawn of history until the dawn of the nuclear age, it seemed rather self-evident that for virtually any state in virtually any strategic situation, the more military power one could wield relative to one's adversaries, the more security one gained. That all changed, however, with Alamogordo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the Cold War's long atomic arms race, it slowly dawned on "nuclear use theorists" -- whom one can hardly resist acronyming as NUTS -- that in the nuclear age, security did not necessarily require superiority. Security required simply an ability to retaliate after an adversary had struck, to inflict upon that opponent "unacceptable damage" in reply. If an adversary knew, no matter how much devastation it might inflict in a first strike, that the chances were good that it would receive massive damage as a consequence (even far less damage than it had inflicted as long as that damage was "unacceptable"), then, according to the logic of nuclear deterrence, that adversary would be dissuaded from striking first. What possible political benefit could outweigh the cost of the possible obliteration of, oh, a state's capital city, and the leaders of that state themselves, and perhaps more than a million lives therein?

Admittedly, the unassailable logic of this "unacceptable damage" model of nuclear deterrence -- which we might as well call UD -- failed to put the brakes on a spiraling Soviet/American nuclear arms competition that began almost immediately after the USSR acquired nuclear weapons of its own in 1949. Instead, a different model of nuclear deterrence emerged, deterrence exercised by the capability completely to wipe out the opponent's society, "mutually assured destruction," which soon came to be known to all as MAD. There were other scenarios of aggression -- nuclear attacks on an adversary's nuclear weapons, nuclear or conventional attacks on an adversary's closest allies (in Western and Eastern Europe) -- that nuclear weapons were supposed to deter as well. However, the Big Job of nuclear weapons was to dissuade the other side from using their nuclear weapons against one's own cities and society, by threatening to deliver massive nuclear devastation on the opponent's cities and society in reply. "The Department of Defense," said an Ohio congressman in the early 1960s, with some exasperation, "has become the Department of Retaliation."

Nevertheless, those who engaged in an effort to slow the arms race often employed the logic of UD in their attempts to do so. "Our twenty thousandth bomb," said Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the Manhattan Project that built the world's first atomic weapons, as early as 1953, "will not in any deep strategic sense offset their two thousandth." "Deterrence does not depend on superiority," said the great strategist Bernard Brodie in 1965. "There is no foreign policy objective today that is so threatened," said retired admiral and former CIA director Stansfield Turner in 1998, "that we would ... accept the risk of receiving just one nuclear detonation in retaliation."

Consider how directly the logic of UD applies to the contemporary international environment, to the twin nuclear challenges that have dominated the headlines during most of the past decade, and to the most immediate nuclear proliferation issues now confronting the Obama Administration. Because the most persuasive explanation for the nuclear quests on which both Iran and North Korea have embarked is, indeed, the notion that "deterrence does not depend on superiority." Deterrence depends only an ability to strike back. Iran and North Korea appear to be seeking small nuclear arsenals in order to deter potential adversaries from launching an attack upon them -- by threatening them with unacceptable damage in retaliation.

Neither North Korea nor Iran could hope to defeat its most powerful potential adversary -- the United States -- in any kind of direct military confrontation. They cannot repel an actual attack upon them. They cannot shoot American planes and missiles out of the sky. Indeed, no state can.

However, what these countries can aspire to do is to dissuade the American leviathan from launching such an attack. How? By developing the capability to instantly vaporize an American military base or three in Iraq or Qatar or South Korea or Japan, or an entire U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf or the Sea of Japan, or even an American city on one coast or the other. And by making it implicitly clear that they would respond to any kind of assault by employing that capability immediately, before it's too late, following the venerable maxim: "Use them or lose them." The obliteration of an entire American military base, or an entire American naval formation, or an entire American city, would clearly seem to qualify as "unacceptable damage" for the United States.

Moreover, to deter an American attack, Iran and North Korea do not need thousands of nuclear warheads. They just need a couple of dozen, well hidden and well protected. American military planners might be almost certain that they could take out all the nuclear weapons in these countries in some kind of a dramatic lightning "surgical strike." However, with nuclear weapons, "almost" is not good enough. Even the barest possibility that such a strike would fail, and that just one or two nuclear weapons would make it into the air, detonate over targets, and result in massive "unacceptable damage" for the United States, would in virtually any conceivable circumstance serve to dissuade Washington from undertaking such a strike.

In addition, it is crucial to recognize that Iran and North Korea would not intend for their nascent nuclear arsenals to deter only nuclear attacks upon them. If the entire nuclear arsenal of the United States disappeared tomorrow morning, but America's conventional military superiority remained, it still would be the case that the only possible military asset that these states could acquire, to effectively deter an American military assault, would be the nuclear asset.

The "Korean Committee for Solidarity with World Peoples," a mouthpiece for the North Korean government, captured Pyongyang's logic quite plainly just weeks after the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003. "The Iraqi war taught the lesson that ... the security of the nation can be protected only when a country has a physical deterrent force ..." Similarly, a few weeks earlier, just before the Iraq invasion began, a North Korean general was asked to defend his country's nuclear weapons program, and with refreshing candor replied, "We see what you are getting ready to do with Iraq. And you are not going to do it to us."

It really is quite a remarkable development. North Korea today is one of the most desperate countries in the world. Most of its citizens are either languishing in gulags or chronically starving. And yet -- in contrast to all the debate that has taken place in recent years about whether the United States and/or Israel ought to launch a preemptive strike on Iran -- no one seems to be proposing any kind of military strike on North Korea. Why not? Because of the mere possibility that North Korea could impose unacceptable damage upon us in reply.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about UD is that it seems every bit as effective as MAD. North Korea today possesses no more than a handful of nuclear warheads, and maintains nothing like a "mutual" nuclear balance with the United States. In addition, the retaliation that North Korea can threaten cannot promise anything like a complete "assured destruction." To vaporize an American carrier group in the Sea of Japan, or a vast American military base in South Korea or Japan, or even an American city, would not be at all the same thing as the "destruction" of the entire American nation -- as the USSR was able to threaten under MAD.

And yet, MAD and UD, it seems, exercise deterrence in precisely the same way. Astonishingly, it seems that Washington finds itself every bit as thoroughly deterred by a North Korea with probably fewer than 10 nuclear weapons as it did by a Soviet Union with 10,000. Although UD hardly contains the rich acronymphomaniacal irony wrought by MAD, it appears that both North Korea and Iran intend now to base their national security strategies solidly upon it.

There is very little reason to suppose that other states will not soon follow their lead.

President Obama, of course, to his great credit, has not only made a nuclear weapon-free Iran and North Korea one of his central foreign policy priorities, he has begun to chart a course toward a nuclear weapon-free world. In a groundbreaking speech before a huge outdoor rally in Prague on April 5th, he said, "Today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." (Unfortunately, he followed that with the statement that nuclear weapons abolition would not "be achieved quickly, perhaps not in my lifetime," suggesting that neither he nor the nuclear policy officials in his administration fully appreciate the magnitude and immediacy of the nuclear peril. Do they really think the human race can retain nuclear weapons for another half century or so, yet manage to dodge the bullet of nuclear accident, or nuclear terror, or a nuclear crisis spinning out of control every single time?)

The one thing we can probably say for sure about the prospects for universal nuclear disarmament is that no state will agree either to abjure or to dismantle nuclear weapons unless it believes that such a course is the best course for its own national security. To persuade states like North Korea and Iran to climb aboard the train to abolition would probably require simultaneous initiatives on three parallel tracks. One track would deliver foreign and defense policies that assure weaker states that we do not intend to attack them, that just as we expect them to abide by the world rule of law they can expect the same from us, that the weak need not cower in fear before the strong. Another track would deliver diplomatic overtures that convince weaker states that on balance, overall, their national security will better be served in a world where no one possesses nuclear weapons, rather than in a world where they do -- but so too do many others. And another track still would deliver nuclear weapons policies that directly address the long-simmering resentments around the world about the long-standing nuclear double standard, that directly acknowledge our legacy of nuclear hypocrisy, and that directly connect nuclear non-proliferation to nuclear disarmament.

The power decisively to adjust all those variables, of course, does not reside in Pyongyang or Tehran. It resides instead in Washington.

Tad Daley is the Writing Fellow with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Nobel Peace Laureate disarmament advocacy organization. His first book, APOCALYPSE NEVER: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World, is forthcoming from Rutgers University Press in January 2010.

Comments

[randyjet]

The fact is that it is not nuclear deterance that stops the US, but the million troops army of North Korea. Seoul is very close to the DMZ and can be hit by artillery from the North. Any US attack will give them license to do so. It is that UD which has stayed the US hand. The anti-missile defense can already negate any so called threat from North Korea at this time, but it will be of limited duration.

The regime is not a stable or even rational one, and I have no doubt that if Kim Jong Il knew he was dying, he would not hesitate to launch a nuclear strike against the US without ANY attack from the US. Nor can we discount the probability that he would sell nukes to terrorists. To assume that North Korea is acting rationally is a stretch given their past behavior. The very nature of that regime falls well outside any normal government. It is more like a huge CULT and so using the normal parameters on it is absurd. Stalin was at least rational and could be depended on to act in the best interests of the Soviet Union as he percieved it. The same is NOT true of Kim.

In short, we have to make sure that they cannot possess nuclear weapons at all. If that takes a military strike, then we have to be willing to do it and the sooner the better.

[outnow]

Tad,

Good points. Compare a deranged suspect in a shoot out with the cops. What does he do in the face of overwhelming force? He takes hostages.

The entire poulation of the world is held hostage to nukes and other WMD. Our greatest fear, other than our life-style, supported by bogus credit, is the fallout from our own deterrence - nuclear radiation.

Ian Fleming showed us in the James Bond novel, "Dr. No," that a single person could blackmail the mighty U.S. The populations of Japan and South Korea are in the line of fire. UD is sufficient apparently. Iran and North Korea do not seem interested in joining the family of nations.

If these tin-horn dictators call our bluff, we w ill be "forced" to respond. The problem with MAD is that it is a self-fulfilling prophesy. The UD phemonenon is like the armed suspect facing a SWAT squad - he will take hostages to even up the odds, even if fatal to himself, he will take great pleasure in threatening and actually doing what he threatened. I would take Kim Jong Ill very seriously.

[guyfrombrooklyn]

I'm always dumbfounded as to hear of the necessity to maintain a high number of missiles in ANY arsenal.

How many preemptive strikes destroy the world? My guess is 1. Yes ONE.

How important is the who's on who's side, ally question if your country looks like a newly created crater?

How does the superpower backing up the ally decide as to how many are used to retaliate?

Men go about mulling ways to destroy Mother Earth like there's an alternative planet.

Wow. And we're the highest form of intelligence on earth.

[SK9]

This has seemed obvious for some time. The lessons after the axis of evil speech were all too clear. I disagree with the comment that we cannot make these states feel more secure. It is US they fear. If we could persuade them that we will not invade, or devastate their countries, we might have a chance to get them to give up their present course. Iran is far more amenable to such arguments I believe, but the fact that we continue to act as if we do not know that Israel maintains a stockpile (100~200?) nuclear warheads is not helpful.

[williambanzai7]

BANZAI7 News--Undisclosed sources have disclosed that North Korean leader Kim Jong IL is a bondholder of General Motors. The disclosures also indicate that Kim was a big purchaser of Chrysler and GM credit default swaps in trades opposite American International Group.

Knowledgeable unknown sources indicate that Dear Leader will lose his shirt if GM files for Chapter 11 as expected on June 1. Dear Leader was apparently infuriated by the terms of GM's proposed exchange offer and rumors that the UAW is slated to receive more equity in a Federal financed bankruptcy restructuring.

Intelligence analysts suspect that the controversy created by North Korean missile launches and bomb tests is actually an elaborate smoke screen for a new kind of derivative instrument called a Kimchee Put. Dear Leader was once heard commenting: "FWMD, do I have that?"

When asked about credit default trades with North Korea, AIG CEO Ed Liddy said: "I'll have to look into it."

Asked to comment on Kimchee puts, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said: "The whole idea stinks."

Kim's father Kim II Sung ("Kimchee Kahuna") was a well known water board enthusiast.

[mcnary]

I hear you can smoke indoors in North Korea.

[BryantG]

wow, cool.

[Johnnie Orange]

Your explanation of the military logic of nuclear weapons is clear (and obvious). But you don't provide any evidence that the U.S. doesn't recognize this, which is supposed to be your thesis.
Also, your solutions are not serious. Of course we can't convince nations that they are under no threat from any of their neighbors. North Korea and Iran are under threat of imminent attack precisely because they are developing WMD that threaten their neighbors. If they can't be stopped from gaining nuclear capability, the inescapable logic of deterrence forces their neighbors to either develop their own or turn to other nuclear powers for protection.
Are you trying to say that the entire problem could be solved if the U.S. would just understand the logic of nuclear deterrence?

[Donkslayer]

The article is well thought-out, but it assumes (of course) that the "bad" nations are really "good" nations turned bad by big bad capitalist Western imperialism. Does anyone really think the mullahs wouldn't be the mullahs if the US gave up its entire military might tomorrow?

The other GLARING hole in the author's argument is that it assumes all nations (or tribes or groups like Al Qaeda) would all arrive at the UD point at the same level of loss. Personally, I'm certain that Iran would be willing to lose 80% of its usable territory if it won a war against and annihilated Israel, and I think North Korea would fight to its own oblivion.

[Rule Of Law]

And that, my friend, is exactly the math of terror that our fear mongering govt. wants you to believe. Communism, Capitalism, Fascism, all lies used to create the us vs them dynamic necessary to keep the money flowing. The people of those countries are no more martial than you or I. But their 1%--just like our 1%--leads them to the same conclusions using the same math.

[jhNY]

The nuclear deterrent has always been attractive to those who face an adversary with greater population and resources for war-making, such as the US did after WWII. No military planners here doubted that the Soviet Union's practical advantage in conventional warfare in any possible European confrontation was anything less than overwhelming, given the small size of armed forces and complexity of command structure that the West could put up against a massive attack from the East . As a larger standing army was politically unpopular here, and and impractical if not unthinkable among the nations of Western Europe, atomic weapons became the centerpiece of our European strategy. When the USSR developed its own atomic weapons, our response was to build more than they could. When the Chinese developed atomic weapons, our overbuilding became compulsive, but as we could not conceive of a conventional military victory against our more populous foes, and as we were determined to outlast if not defeat the communists, we saw no other choice. In short, the history of the US's nuclear weapons development is a classic case of a smaller power attempting to tilt the odds in their favor by means of overwhelmingly destructive weapons that would deter the empire-building impulses of an enemy with larger conventional miltary capacities. Which is why it is so ironic to listen to our leaders' shock and incredulity that a small nation like North Korea or Iran might want to a similar advantage today.

[Rule Of Law]

Tad this is a well considered article, and I support your efforts to create a nuclear free world.

However--and this is a big however--right after the "fall of the Soviet Union" up jumps the radical Islamic threat; Terrorism. Then Saddam, then terrorism again, then Saddam--again. You get the picture. Throw in Iran as the middle east bogeyman with their axis of evil buddies N. Korea and you have the perfect ongoing MIC orchestrated high level of fear necessary to continue America's present course of imperial conquest. Most of the laws and signing statements that Bush got away with would not have been possible in peace time. Same for Obama. Too many, from Walter Lippman and Goering to the neocons of today have pointed out how critical the ramping up and manipulation of fear is to achieving the goals of control and profit that the corporate state seeks.

Korea, Iran, and even at the top leadership, the Al Qaeda's of the world, are all just playing their part on the world stage in a carefully choreographed dance meant to keep power in the hands of the powerful and the money moving. I'd like to get excited about N Korea, but I already gave in the so called cold war.