Go to Your Room

Guest Opinion

By Jack Segal | Jan. 13, 2018

I spent years working to reduce the threat of nuclear war and, while we are far from what I had hoped for, there is a stable equilibrium among the globe’s nuclear powers.  That stability is now challenged by taunts that would get a child sent to their room for a time out.

On Jan. 2, President Trump tweeted, “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone … please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my button works!”

The president was responding to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s boast that North Korea is already nuclear-armed. White House Spokesperson Sara Huckabee Sanders unabashedly explained that the president’s tweet was "just a fact" and was not intended to taunt Kim. On Fox News (Jan. 7), CIA Director Mike Pompeo doubled down saying: “We want the regime to understand that … we are intent on resolving this … diplomatically … but this administration is prepared to do what it takes to assure that [the American] people are not held at risk from Kim Jong Un having a nuclear weapon."

We may be “prepared to do what it takes” to rid North Korea of its nuclear arsenal, but as I have written previously, that is simply not going to happen. Kim is close to being able to hit the U.S. with nuclear warheads and is not going to quit now. 

This leaves us in a dilemma. Since we will have to settle for a nuclear-armed North Korea — at least until there’s regime change in Pyongyang — we need to deter North Korea from attacking us. It won’t be easy. 

Deterrence is a complex business requiring objective measures: the size of one’s capabilities (or one’s “button,” I guess) and subjective analysis — creating the perception that, if attacked, the opponent is willing to use its resources in retaliation, irrespective of the likely outcome.

This assessment of capabilities and intent drove the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction. We each amassed enough nuclear firepower to convince each other that we could survive an attack and retaliate so overwhelmingly that the attacker could see no benefit from the exchange. It was a mutual suicide pact that deterred both from nuclear war.

But there is no experience with deterrence between a weak nuclear power (North Korea) and a superpower (the U.S.). Just last week, we saw a series of threats about using nuclear weapons such as we have not seen since the Cuban missile crisis. How Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump would handle a crisis is unknown. 

If Kim launches an intercontinental ballistic missile at a U.S. city, President Trump would certainly unleash the “fire and fury such as the world has never seen” on North Korea. But recently revealed analysis (New York Times, Jan. 7) tells us that U.S. intelligence on North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs is unreliable. If we fail to destroy Pyongyang’s well-hidden arsenal in our first retaliatory strikes, Kim might respond with further nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. Our existing defenses would not stop all the attacking missiles.

And what if Kim’s strategists in Pyongyang contrive a more clever scenario? Suppose Kim wants to use his nukes as a tool to coerce Seoul to reunify with Pyongyang, or to force us to lift our sanctions? To demonstrate his capabilities, perhaps Kim explodes a hydrogen bomb over international waters near Hawaii. No one is killed; no U.S. territory destroyed. (We exploded dozens such test nukes over the Pacific in the 1950s and ’60s.) How should the President respond then? 

Would Kim’s “gesture” justify an American nuclear counterattack on North Korea? Let’s make the problem more complicated. For the past year, the Trump administration has pursued a confusing China policy. On the one hand, the administration has been sharply critical of China’s expansionist actions and trade policies, while the president has personally lavished praise on China’s dictator, Xi Jinping. 

Suppose in an effort to reassure and calm Pyongyang, China extends its nuclear umbrella to North Korea, promising that if the North is attacked, Beijing will consider it an attack on China and use its nuclear arsenal to retaliate. (We’ve said as much for South Korea and Japan.)  A possible nuclear exchange with China is something even a temperamental or impulsive leader would not lightly opt for.

Therein lays the deterrence problem. Kim might well assess that he can use his nuclear arsenal as a tool of coercive diplomacy with little fear of a U.S. response. Absent an actual North Korean attack on an American city, I suggest that the American people are not willing to absorb retaliatory nuclear attacks on our territory despite any treaty commitments we have. Nothing Kim could do would warrant running that risk. 

Maybe that’s really why the President sent his fire and fury warning. He’s signaling that he alone has the button, and the American people will not be asked what we think he should do.

As Kim further refines his missiles and warheads and calculates how to leverage his nuclear status to his advantage, he will surely push the limits of our president’s patience. That could well trigger the most dangerous nuclear confrontation since the beginning of the nuclear age.

Jack Segal and Karen Puschel were negotiators at the U.S.-Soviet arms-control talks in Geneva. They co-chair the International Affairs Forum, which resumes Feb. 15 with Yale University Professor and China expert James Levinson speaking on U.S.-China trade. See tciaf.com for more information.