North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ventured out in September to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, ending an era of self-imposed diplomatic isolation that began with the COVID-19 pandemic. The summit was largely due to the opportunities Pyongyang sees in the geopolitical arena. The discord was triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, adding to Moscow’s evident willingness to supply Pyongyang with critical raw materials and technologies and use its veto in the United Nations Security Council to protect its country. Pyongyang from foreign censorship.
North Korea’s exploitation of the growing divisions between Russia and the West, along with its likely insatiable ambitions for complex nuclear capabilities, prompt Washington to reassess the difficult situations posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and, by extension, the way the United States uses its techniques. the question. Korean Peninsula. The theory that tension could supersede Pyongyang’s strategic calculus and force Kim to disarm has proven futile. The changing geostrategic environment of Northeast Asia today only further limits the viability of any US strategy that prioritizes denuclearization over any other end of the Korean Peninsula. Washington will have to adopt a more pragmatic approach focused on proactive threat relief and traditional deterrence. Instead of relying on coercive economic pressures to replace North Korea’s calculations regarding the base price of its nuclear weapons – a dubious proposition even before Moscow joined Pyongyang – a US policy based on reducing threats was adopted. nuclear weapons and raise tensions while putting pressure on North Korea to re-engage. diplomatically. would be offering a more practical way to reduce the probability of a nuclear clash on the Korean Peninsula.
The Biden administration’s May 2021 review of North Korea policy concluded that, in addition to seeking the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the United States would work toward a “practical and calibrated approach” designed to “achieve progress practical that increases North Korea’s security. United States, our allies and deployed forces. In practice, this stated policy has failed despite US attempts to revive unrestricted diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang. North Korea has been unwilling to respond to U. S. diplomatic overtures and has cultivated closer ties with Moscow and Beijing, cementing a strategic recalibration that Kim first hinted at in the weeks and months that followed. the failure of the US-North Korea summit in Hanoi in February. 2019. In the absence of negotiations, Washington has focused exclusively on reassuring its regional allies, South Korea and Japan, and selling stronger trilateral ties between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. The governments of Japan and South Korea, for their part, have continued to expand their traditional roles with an eye toward advancing Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities.
As Biden’s leadership proceeded with its policy review, East Asia’s security environment was evolving, offering North Korea more and more opportunities to pursue its military modernization goals while also being immune to further foreign opprobrium. Moscow had yet to brazenly embrace Pyongyang, but in 2021, the two countries began expressing the view that sanctions against North Korea needed to be tightened, in addition to praising Pyongyang’s self-imposed moratorium in 2018 on long-range missiles and nuclear tests. The alignment between Moscow and Pyongyang has become more pronounced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the two countries share increasingly aligned interests in the face of threats perceived as not unusual by the United States and its allies. Today, Russia and China are blocking any censure or tightening of multilateral sanctions against Pyongyang at the United Nations Security Council, with China brazenly calling on the United States and its regional allies to address North Korea’s “legitimate security concerns. “
The immediate evolution of North Korea’s nutransparent functions has also affected the regional security environment. Since delivering a first five-year military modernization plan in 2021, Pyongyang has made significant progress in “further strengthening [its] nutransparent deterrent. ” has demonstrated a clear quantitative and qualitative advance in its missile functions through the launch of more complex missiles, capable of overcoming missile defense systems and greater prevention attempts by the United States and its allies. It is no longer appropriate to refer to the North Korean maximum. is released as “evidence”; These are more military application demonstrations and high-intensity nutransparent and traditional warfare rehearsals than attempts to compare new technologies.
Pyongyang also, for the first time, brazenly moved toward advancing and deploying tactical nutransparent weapons (shorter-range nutransparent delivery systems with lower explosive yields), which would lower the threshold for nutransparent use. Whereas Kim previously relied on sometimes imprecise, higher-yield nutransparent weapons that would be impractical for attacking military targets, North Korea now sees tactical nutransparent weapons as giving it the ability to “repel” an attack on its territory at through the US and South Korean armed forces. cash. if deterrence fails. Kim would try to use those low-yield weapons while keeping higher-yield, longer-range missiles in reserve to force Washington and Seoul to stop any further escalation. In addition, the North Korean parliament passed a law that cements nuclear weapons as the centerpiece of Pyongyang’s national defense strategy and indicates the clear objective of relying on this arsenal at the beginning of a conflict, a strategy that aims to counteract pressure from North Korea. Traditional attacks. inferiority of the army compared to the alliance between the United States and South Korea. While Kim declares that Pyongyang will “never give up” its nutransparent weapons, denutransparentization is an unrealistic goal in the short term and, at best, a dubious goal in the long term.
Kim’s meeting with Putin, who is taking an opposing stance against the backdrop of North Korea’s ongoing nuclear modernization, signals an important reset in Pyongyang’s progress toward strengthening its strategic interests. The two leaders unabashedly discussed unprecedented degrees of possible technical cooperation during their meeting at the Vostochny Cosmodrome – an air-delivery facility in Russia’s Far East – due to Pyongyang’s continued interest in air-delivery technologies and satellites. Although Kim and Putin have not issued a joint document outlining any quid pro quo, they have much to gain from each other. North Korea has a huge number of artillery shells and rockets that are compatible with Russia’s older military systems, while Moscow can offer Pyongyang a variety of benefits, from technical know-how (such as space capabilities) to products such as food or raw materials. cousins.
The United States has unsurprisingly condemned Russia’s club in North Korea, but Pyongyang’s new strategic convergence with Moscow has not led the Biden administration to reconsider American policy, even though it arguably represents one of the most positive geostrategic advances for North Korea since the end of the Cold War. Regardless of the lofty ambitions of the political review, the United States has failed to reduce the risk posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, or influence Kim’s decisions, beyond relying on deterrence to avoid a primary war. to Pyongyang’s unprecedented wave of missile activity in 2022 and 2023 imply a general normalization of North Korea’s nuclear program. This scenario is unsustainable, as an out-of-control rapprochement between Russia and North Korea – especially with unprecedented degrees of technical cooperation – could be growing. the risk that North Korea represents to the United States and its allies.
To lessen this threat, Washington can no longer continue its prestige quo strategy toward North Korea. The U. S. should begin by prioritizing threat relief over denuclearization, as a more practical way to avoid nuclear war, the primary vital security goal of the U. S. and its countries. allies on the peninsula. It is vital not to forget that North Korea also has a basic interest in avoiding unwanted nuclear war. A U. S. policy focused on harm relief would mediate this mutual interest, offering a starting point for discussion and progress. in contrast to Pyongyang’s failure to denuclearize. Risk alleviation efforts, particularly aimed at addressing misperceptions and preventing accidental or accidental escalation, would go a long way toward selling this mutual benefit.
As Pyongyang seeks to gain merit amid wonderful divisions of forces, policymakers in Washington deserve not to complacently assume that North Korea’s habit of seeking roles through arms progression before turning to international relations will be repeated. Given North Korea’s more favorable ties with Russia (and in all likelihood China), Kim would likely see no urgency in re-engaging with the United States. Under these circumstances, Washington will have to make proactive proposals to reduce nuclear dangers without compromising overall deterrence. enough for Washington to bring Pyongyang to the negotiating table in practical terms, as the lack of implementation of sanctions through Russia and China diminishes the perceived merits of such concessions for North Korea. Still, Washington deserves limited sanctions relief bureaucracy if it can help. incentivize North Korea to comply with damage relief efforts.
Proactive threat relief proposals may also simply involve transparency measures, such as missile launch notifications; exchanges on nuclear doctrines between U. S. and North Korean officials; and open discussions on strategic stability between North Korea, the United States, and their regional allies. For such threat relief proposals to work, Washington would have to engage in negotiations with North Korea on the basis of the tentative effects that denuclearization has far eliminated. US. Policymakers probably also deserve to lessen perceived threats against Pyongyang, for example by reducing the types or scale of regional military trainings; adjust their own characterizations of the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal; or be more in tune with how the alliance’s narratives about army readiness and training could potentially accidentally escalate tensions. It will be imperative to strike a balance between taking measures to maintain deterrence and avoiding measures that could also unnecessarily fuel instability in relations. with Pyongyang.
A policy that prioritizes threat relief would not tolerate Pyongyang’s nuclear program or save denuclearization as a long-term aspiration. Indeed, measures to diminish more immediate nuclear threats can allow for long-term progress toward denuclearization. But prioritizing denuclearization in the short term hampers efforts to diminish the greatest and most serious threats to the United States and its allies in the years ahead. Above all, it is time for the United States and its allies to recognize that it is not North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons that poses the greatest threat to its interests, but the option for those weapons to be used in conflicts.
To complement its proactive threat relief efforts, the United States also deserves to place greater emphasis on the traditional – rather than nuclear – facets of its broader deterrence dating back to Seoul. Over the past year, Washington’s attention has largely focused on nuclear deterrence as a reaction. to the ongoing debate in South Korea on obtaining an independent nuclear arsenal, as evidenced by the Washington Declaration, issued during South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s stopover at the White House in April 2023, which highlights the importance of nuclear weapons in deterring North Korea. Even if the focus on the nuclear size of the alliance is aimed at appeasing South Korea’s considerations about the credibility of the U. S. nuclear umbrella, such an approach threatens to hamper long-term negotiations with Pyongyang. It also threatens to undermine the deterrent price of the alliance’s traditional functions and amplify threats of escalation by suggesting that only nuclear weapons can deter them.
Focusing on traditional deterrence rather than nuclear deterrence can help reduce the risks of escalation and maintain the full scope of the alliance’s deterrence capability. Conventional military capabilities, such as the precision strike assets that Seoul has and continues to invest significantly in, can do much more to deter North Korea because they can credibly keep North Korean assets at risk without expanding the nuclear temperature in the peninsula. Conventional military forces are also much more flexible in handling limited crisis contingencies, such as North Korea’s limited attempts at territorial revisionism, in which the US nuclear arsenal remains the ultimate safety net and a possible option to respond to North Korea’s nuclear use against allied cities or towns. American territory. Greater coordination and integration of alliance command design will be imperative to ensure the combat capability necessary for credible traditional deterrence. The Washington Declaration’s call to link South Korea’s new strategic command with the U. S. -South Korea combined forces command, while vague, is a vital starting point, as is the deterrence strategy. adapted from South Korea. the recently finalized alliance for North Korea.
Historical analogies have limited application in the existing security environment in Northeast Asia and may even lead policymakers to damaging conclusions. Unlike the dynamics of the early Cold War, in which NATO was conventionally inferior to the Soviet Union, North Korea is conventionally inferior to the U. S. -South Korean alliance and seeks to compensate for this inferiority with weapons. nuclear. As a result, adding more nuclear capabilities, whether in the form of U. S. nuclear deployments on the Korean Peninsula or South Korean nuclear weapons, would do little to increase deterrence, but could particularly incentivize Pyongyang to use nuclear weapons first and last. Beginning of a conflict.
Kim’s rapprochement with Russia may make it tempting to cancel the United States’ commitment to a nuclear-armed North Korea entirely. Washington deserves to reiterate, however, that Pyongyang has been willing to seek benefits wherever it can. In fact, the United States has long been the big winner of North Korea’s foreign policy. An ambitious review of the American technique could give Pyongyang an explanation for why to review its international relations once again. This would not be a capitulation but a recognition of the truth that the United States and its allies will coexist with a nuclear-armed North Korea for years, if not decades, to come. Given this truth, the number one objective will have to be to keep the nuclear threat as low as possible.