Should America live with a North Korea that possesses nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)?
Former national security adviser Susan Rice says yes.
But current holder of that office, H.R. McMaster, says no. Speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” McMaster asserted that “classical deterrence theory” does not apply to North Korea. Kim Jong Un’s regime, McMaster believes, is too destabilizing to be allowed to possess nuclear ICBMs.
McMaster’s remarks have met close scrutiny from national security analysts.
Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, tweeted that “McMaster should know better… We have deterred brutal regimes that pose a direct, nuclear threat to US for decades.” Daalder’s sentiment was joined by one of the nation’s top strategic thinkers, Professor Tom Nichols, who suggested McMaster’s words are “…. also odd because [deterrence] is what we applied to Stalin’s [Soviet Union] and Mao’s [China].”
On paper, I would agree with Daalder and Nichols. History does indeed prove that the U.S. can succeed in deterring brutal regimes armed with nuclear weapons.
Still, I suspect that McMaster’s deterrence concern is not actually that Kim Jong Un is brutal, but that his brutality is so extreme it suggests he is an irrational actor. Rationality, after all, is the only possible variable that separates Kim’s prospective threat from that of China and Russia. Each of those nations knows that a nuclear attack on America would result in major nuclear reprisals. Kim is different in that he might simply not care.
I share McMaster’s viewpoint. Kim Jong Un’s behavior — sinking South Korean ships and executing his opponents with grotesque invention — suggest that the U.S. could not confidently deter his nuclear attack. The basic risk is that Kim would eventually misconstrue a political development, or believe he could get away with an attack, or simply feel aggrieved, and then launch against a U.S. territory or state. Insofar as Kim would attempt to overwhelm them in any attack if he could, anti-ballistic missile weapons cannot be trusted to render his nuclear ICBMs impotent.
Moreover, just one North Korean nuclear ICBM strike would be catastrophic for American society. Even if North Korea was totally annihilated in short order, many U.S. cities would quickly empty. Witnessing the devastation and suffering of the first attack, Americans would decide that the risk of city living was too high. The U.S. economy, civil society, and the pursuit of happiness would all burn with the rubble of the first city.
The president cannot accept such an existential risk.
Nevertheless, this is not to say that the military option is the only solution. As I noted on Monday, South Korea and the U.S. are implementing an increasingly nuanced diplomatic strategy. In addition, fearing Trump will use force if it does not, China is beginning to exert serious pressure on North Korea. These are positive developments. As is Kim Jong Un’s statement that he will hold off launching missiles towards Guam.
But there’s one final issue here: U.S. credibility in nuclear nonproliferation. If we have to live with North Korean ICBMs, we will have to live with Iranian, and then Saudi ICBMs. A nuclear arms race of deeply unpredictable actors, who make states like Pakistan look stable, will thus ripple throughout the world. That is a recipe for thermonuclear miscalculation.
Instead, the U.S. must pursue a deal that matches Kim’s compromises for our security to our compromises for his. I’ll write about what that deal might look like later this week.
