By Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press
Foreign Affairs, April 1, 2013
Conflict With North Korea Could Go Nuclear -- But Washington
Can Reduce the Risk
As
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un issues increasingly over-the-top threats --
including intimations that he might launch nuclear strikes against the United
States -- officials in Washington have sought to reassure the public and U.S.
allies. North Korea, they say, may initiate cyberattacks or other limited
provocations, but the leaders in Pyongyang wish to survive, so they are highly
unlikely to do anything as foolhardy as using nuclear weapons.
Despite
those assurances, however, the risk of nuclear war with North Korea is far from
remote. Although Pyongyang’s tired threats are probably bluster, the current
crisis has substantially increased the risk of a conventional conflict -- and
any conventional war with North Korea is likely to go nuclear. Washington
should continue its efforts to prevent war on the Korean Peninsula. But equally
important, it must rapidly take steps -- including re-evaluating U.S. war plans
-- to dampen the risks of nuclear escalation if conventional war erupts.
Ironically,
the risk of North Korean nuclear war stems not from weakness on the part of the
United States and South Korea but from their strength. If war erupted, the
North Korean army, short on training and armed with decrepit equipment, would
prove no match for the U.S.–South Korean Combined Forces Command. Make no
mistake, Seoul would suffer some damage, but a conventional war would be a
rout, and CFC forces would quickly cross the border and head north.
The risk of nuclear war with North Korea is far from remote.
At
that point, North Korea’s inner circle would face a grave decision: how to
avoid the terrible fates of such defeated leaders as Saddam Hussein and Muammar
al-Qaddafi. Kim, his family, and his cronies could try to escape to China and
plead for a comfortable, lifelong sanctuary there -- an increasingly dim
prospect given Beijing’s growing frustration with Kim’s regime. Pyongyang’s
only other option would be to try to force a cease-fire by playing its only
trump card: nuclear escalation.
It’s
impossible to know how exactly Kim might employ his nuclear arsenal to stop the
CFC from marching to Pyongyang. But the effectiveness of his strategy would not
depend on what North Korea initially destroyed, such as a South Korean port or
a U.S. airbase in Japan. The key to coercion is the hostage that is still
alive: half a dozen South Korean or Japanese cities, which Kim could threaten
to attack unless the CFC accepted a cease-fire.
This
strategy, planning to use nuclear escalation to stalemate a militarily superior
foe, is not far-fetched. In fact, it was NATO’s strategy for most of the Cold
War. Back then, when the alliance felt outgunned by the massive conventional
forces of the Warsaw Pact, NATO planned to use nuclear weapons coercively to
thwart a major conventional attack. Today, both Pakistan and Russia rely on
that same strategy to deal with the overwhelming conventional threats that they
face. Experts too easily dismiss the notion that North Korea’s rulers
might deliberately escalate a conventional conflict, but if their choice is
between escalation and a noose, it is unclear why they would be less ruthless
than those who once devised plans to defend NATO.
Even
if the United States and South Korea anticipated the danger of marching to
Pyongyang and adopted limited objectives in a war, nuclear escalation would
still be likely. That’s because the style of conventional war that the United
States has mastered over the past two decades is highly escalatory.
The
core of U.S. conventional military strategy, refined during recent wars, is to
incapacitate the enemy by disabling its central nervous system -- its ability
to understand what is happening on the battlefield, make decisions, and control
its forces. Against Serbia, Libya, and Iraq (twice), the key targets in the
first days of conflict were not enemy tanks, ships, or planes but leadership
bunkers, military command sites, and means of communication. This new American
way of war has been enormously effective. But if directed against a
nuclear-armed opponent, it would pressure the enemy to escalate a conflict.
Preventing
escalation in the midst of a war would require convincing North Korea’s leaders
that they would survive, and so attacks designed to isolate and blind the
regime would be counterproductive. Once airstrikes began pummeling leadership
bunkers and severing communication links, the Kim regime would have no way of
discerning how minimalist or maximalist the CFC’s objectives were. It would
face powerful incentives to make the CFC attacks stop immediately -- a job for
which nuclear weapons are well suited.
The
sliver of good news is that North Korea may not yet have the capabilities to
carry out this strategy. It may not be able to tip its ballistic missiles with
a nuclear payload, and its other means of delivering nuclear weapons remain
limited. Given the rate of progress, however, if the regime does not have these
capabilities today, it will soon.
What
can be done? First, Washington and Seoul must make every effort to avoid war in
the current crisis. The United States is undoubtedly (and appropriately)
quietly reinforcing U.S. forces in the region, and the CFC is understandably
considering what red lines might trigger a pre-emptive conventional strike. But
the fact that war with North Korea probably means nuclear war should temper any
consideration of limited pre-emptive strikes. Pre-emption means war, and war
means nuclear.
Second,
U.S. and South Korean planners need to develop truly limited conventional
military options for the Peninsula -- limited not merely in their objectives
but also in terms of the military operations they unleash. Perhaps the greatest
danger of all is if the U.S. president and the South Korean president
incorrectly believe that they have limited military options available; they and
their senior advisers may not fully appreciate that those supposedly limited
options in fact entail hundreds of airstrikes against high-value targets, such
as leadership, command-and-control systems, and perhaps even against
nuclear-weapons sites.
Third,
American and South Korean leaders should urge China to develop “golden
parachute” plans for the North Korean leadership and their families. Leaders in
Pyongyang will keep their nuclear weapons holstered during a war only if they
believe that they and their families have a safe and secure future somewhere.
In the past, China has been understandably reluctant to hold official talks
with the United States about facilitating the demise of its ally. But the
prospect of nuclear war next door could induce Beijing to take more direct
steps, including preparing an escape plan now and revealing it to Kim as soon
as a first shot is fired.
More
broadly, the strategic dilemma Washington faces today extends beyond the
current standoff with North Korea: how to run a network of global alliances
when nuclear weapons allow enemies to nullify the United States’ superior
military might. American officials used to extol the ability of nuclear weapons
to stalemate powerful enemies. Now the shoe is on the other foot. There is
every reason to believe that North Korea has adopted NATO’s old strategy. As
the current standoff is making frighteningly clear, deterring escalation,
especially during conventional wars, is not last century’s concern; it may be the
single toughest strategic problem confronting the United States for decades to
come.
Courtesy: Foreign Affairs
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