OPINION:
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, speaking to the Reagan National Defense Forum on Dec. 2, offered up a doomsday prediction. When asked how close the United States and North Korea are to war, Mr. McMaster replied, “It’s increasing every day.” Sen. Jim Inhofe, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, seconded that statement in even more distressing language: “It is important for us here in the Senate to communicate to the American people the credible, grave, and immediate threat that we face . We don’t have the luxury of time.”
Before we drive ourselves off the rhetorical cliff, U.S. officials holding the keys to the country’s national security need to begin thinking critically and rationally. Failing to do so could lead to actions that harm U.S. soldiers, taxpayers and citizens. Despite the progress North Korea has made on its weapons programs, U.S. officials must look at the big picture and analyze the national security danger posed by Kim Jong-un. Part of that is recognizing that capability does not equal intent.
Just because Kim Jong-un is a dictator with a decades-old nuclear capability and a nascent ICBM program does not change the fact that we have an overwhelming advantage in conventional and nuclear capabilities — that means deterrence and peace through strength will hold if we avoid miscalculation.
The North Korean nuclear issue is not an existential danger to the United States as Mr. Inhofe so casually claims, but a difficult problem that can be managed with the right combination of Cold War-style nuclear deterrence, common-sense crisis management diplomacy, and regional containment.
In the Trump administration’s assessment, the Kim regime is nothing but a troublemaker and repeat offender of U.N. Security Council resolutions on everything from basic human rights to the research, development and production of ballistic missile technology. The nation has a permanent spot on the U.N. Security Council’s agenda — being the only country in the 21st century to test nuclear weapons is no small matter. And from the standpoint of the global nonproliferation architecture, Pyongyang’s decades-old quest to join the nuclear club is about the least unproductive thing the North Koreans could be doing.
Managing the North Korean challenges requires, not an intensive campaign of threat inflation from politicians on the Senate floor, but a clear, accurate, hard-headed and comprehensive assessment of why Pyongyang insists on constructing a credible nuclear deterrent — and why it is dead-set against denuclearization.
In Pyongyang’s case, the desire for self-preservation is all encompassing. Unlike China, Japan, Russia or even Malaysia, North Korea is a weak nation surrounded by adversaries and fair-weather friends on all sides, boasting an economy smaller than the U.S. state of Vermont and almost wholly dependent on imports for its energy needs.
Indeed, for a nation with no economic prospects and hardly any friends, allies or partners in the international state system, attaining a nuclear weapons capability is an inherent act. A nuclear deterrent and the long-range missiles to carry it are Pyongyang’s two gold-plated shields, the only tools that would prevent a more powerful neighbor or adversary from invading.
The Kim regime understands, however, that even preparing for an attack — let alone executing one — would consign himself, his family, his legacy and tens of millions of his countrymen to a painful and fiery nuclear death. This is likely why the North Koreans have not sent a nuclear-tipped missile flying to Seoul or Tokyo since the regime first acquired a nuclear capability 11 years ago.
An in-depth study of official North Korean documents and news releases by the European Council on Foreign Relations concluded that nuclear weapons are frequently portrayed in the Hermit Kingdom’s discourse as an integral part “of a defensive, rather than an offensive, strategy.” The report notes that the North Koreans “never mention the possibility of using the country’s nuclear capacity for blackmail — to coerce or intimidate South Korea and Japan — or to carry out acts of terrorism.” This is a fundamental point, because it strongly suggests that a suicidal, offensive nuclear weapons attack on Americans or American allies in South Korea and Japan is not what Pyongyang is seeking to accomplish.
This is not to say that Kim would never decide to utilize his nuclear arsenal in the event of a conflict. Deploying weapons of mass destruction in response to a preventive U.S. military operation is definitely an option for the North Korean regime and one Kim will very likely entertain in order to exert maximum retaliatory punishment on the U.S. Considering that even a limited U.S. strike on North Korea’s missile silos or its Yongbyon plutonium facility has a risk of swiftly escalating into a full-blown peninsular war — a war that would cause immense physical destruction in Seoul and Tokyo and kill potentially hundreds of thousands of people by conventional weapons alone — the White House has an added incentive to replace emotions and fear with sound, analytic judgment.
The North Korean threat will only transform into a crisis if the U.S. pursues a military option to disarm Kim Jong-un or depose his regime. Absent that extreme scenario, a nuclear-armed North Korea can be deterred — as they have been since going nuclear in 2006 — and contained just as the Soviet Union and Communist China were deterred and contained during 47 years of the Cold War.
The next time you hear a senator, a foreign policy pundit or a senior administration official argue that the clock on North Korea is ticking and that it would be preferable to launch a military operation now rather than later, remember that this was the very same logic national security hard-liners employed in the Cold War during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the rise of Red China, and during Moscow’s strategic arms buildup. Thankfully, their recommendations were rightly ignored then, and they should be ignored now.
• Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
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