イギリスの王立統合防衛・安全保障研究所（RUSI）のMalcolm Chalmers教授の書いた Preparing for War in Koreaから
RUSI は、Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies の略。
●ペンタゴンの情報機関によると、北朝鮮は2018年の終わりには核弾頭を持つ大陸間弾道ミサイル（ICBM）を持つ。
●平壌は、2020年までには25から60の核兵器を持つだろう。2020年代の半ばにはその数は80に達するかもしれない。
●アメリカにとって、北朝鮮の核武装に対応して軍事力を行使することは「想像できないこと」ではない。
●アメリカにとって「想像できないこと」とは、アメリカ本土を核攻撃する能力を北朝鮮が持つのを許容することだ。それはアメリカにとっては許可できない選択である。
●たとえ、そのために朝鮮半島で戦争が起きることになったとしても、たとえ新しい朝鮮戦争が始まることになったとしても（その規模が、もしも北朝鮮が韓国や日本に核爆弾を打ち込んで反撃するなら、より大きいものになる可能性があったとしても、もしも中国が参戦することになったとしても）、政治的・経済的な影響が全世界に及ぶものになったとしても、アメリカ市民を核武器で脅迫する政治体制を認めるような選択肢はありえない。
●もしも第二次朝鮮戦争になれば、北朝鮮は負けるだろうが、朝鮮半島の被害は莫大だろう。もしも核爆弾を使用することになったり、戦争が数ヶ月に及ぶなら、日本や中国の社会も莫大な被害が及ぶ。
●北朝鮮はアメリカの警告を無視し続けている。平壌は、ワシントンがそのような壊滅的な結果をもたらすような脅威を与えることは決してないだろうと信じているようだ。北朝鮮はもしかしたら正しいのかもしれない。しかし、もしも北朝鮮がアメリカに向けて大陸間弾道ミサイルを打ち続け、アメリカ大陸間近に落ちるようになったら、アメリカ大統領はもはや外交的手段は終わりだと確信することがありえる。
●北朝鮮の挑発に危機感を抱かされたアメリカは、時期を遅らせることなく、反撃ができないほどの大規模な軍事介入を起こすことになるだろう。特に「アメリカ第一」の外交政策のために、アメリカを守るという観点から、行動が起こされることだろう。
●北朝鮮に対して、核開発をさせないようにいろいろな努力が長年なされてきた。北朝鮮のGDPは、韓国のGDPの２％に過ぎない。しかし北朝鮮は自国の国民の利益よりも、指導者の地位の維持のために、1980年代初頭から核武装の開発のために莫大な資金を注ぎ込んできた。特に通常兵器が弱体なので、核武装の所有を望んでいる。
●北朝鮮の指導者は、イラクとリビアが核開発計画を放棄させられた後、政府が転覆させられたことを良く意識している。北朝鮮は、サダム・フセインやカダフィーがもしも核武装を手にしていたらアメリカは攻撃しなかっただろう、と主張する。
●インドやパキスタンも反対されたが核兵器を開発してしまい、それが既成事実として結局は受け入れられるようになった。北朝鮮もそれを目指している。
●アメリカやその同盟国は、北朝鮮が核兵器を使って、攻撃的な政策を推し進めようとしていると理解している。北朝鮮は、朝鮮戦争を平和条約で公式に終わらせ、独立国家として認められることを望むかもしれない。しかし、平和条約の締結如何に関わらず、朝鮮半島統一の強い願いが、将来、朝鮮半島を不安定にするだろう。
●アメリカとソ連、またアメリカと中国がそうであるように、アメリカと北朝鮮との間でも、北朝鮮が経済的な成長と共に、核技術を迅速に成長させ、2030年代には今日の中国と同等の核威嚇力を持つようになるだろう。
●制裁と外交の組み合わせで北朝鮮の核開発をおくらせることができるかもしれない。また技術的達成のためには多くの困難が残り、まだ時間が稼げるかもしれない。エリートクラスの権力闘争が炸裂するかもしれない。しかし、既に北朝鮮はあまりにも技術を確立しすぎている。今後数年、どのように事態が展開するか予想がつかない。アメリカが軍事的行動を起こすのは今を逃しては遅すぎる、今しかない、と信じさせるような事態が起こるかもしれない。
●戦争が起こる可能性がある。北朝鮮が奇襲を仕掛けて、アメリカに先制攻撃をするかもしれない。あるいは、北朝鮮のテスト・ミサイルがグアム島やカリフォルニア付近に落ちることによって、アメリカが攻撃を始めるかもしれない。
●もしも戦争が始まるなら、初期の段階ではアメリカは大量の空軍とサイバースペースでの攻撃となるだろう。北朝鮮は韓国と米軍基地を、通常兵器、化学兵器、核兵器などを使って反撃するだろう。
●戦争になれば、たとえ核兵器を使用しなくても多くの犠牲者が出るだろう。世界経済にも多くの影響を与えるだろう。韓国の同意無しにアメリカが先制攻撃をしたとしたら、それは「ニューヨークを守るために、ソウルを犠牲にする」という意味に取られるだろう。
Preparing for War in Korea
Malcolm Chalmers
Royal United Services Institute
for Defence and Security Studies
RUSI Whitehall Report 4-17, September 2017
Introduction
IN RECENT YEARS, North Korea has made considerable progress in acquiring a capability to threaten the 48 lower states of the US with nuclear-armed missiles. It may already have the capability to hit South Korea and Japan, and possibly also Guam and Alaska. The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency now reportedly estimates that North Korea is on course to produce a ‘reliable, nuclear-capable ICBM’ programme by the end of 2018, allowing it to move into assembly-line production shortly thereafter.1
At the same time, North Korea is thought to be making rapid progress in developing the range of supporting capabilities that are also needed for a credible strategic nuclear force, such as a larger stockpile of fissile material, solid-fuel engines, mobile missiles and miniaturised warheads. It is now believed that North Korea will shortly carry out re-entry vehicle tests, designed to demonstrate its capability to protect the warhead from the intense heat involved in the final stages of a missile’s trajectory. A sixth underground nuclear test has taken place, with a much higher yield than in previous tests, confirming that North Korea has made progress towards a thermonuclear bomb.2 Pyongyang is also exercising the various components of its capabilities – military units as well as hardware – so that it will be ready to use them rapidly in a crisis.3
Meanwhile, its capabilities for threatening immediate neighbours continue to grow, and its nuclear arsenal is projected to grow from between 13 and 30 at the end of 2016 to between 25 and 60 by 2020.4 It might expand further – perhaps to as many as 80 – by the mid-2020s.5
In response, the US administration has been united in issuing a series of scarcely veiled threats of military action if North Korea does not desist. President Donald Trump has made clear that he has not ruled out the possibility of preventive strikes. In addition to threatening ‘fire and fury ... the likes of which this world has never seen before’,6 he is reported to have said that:
We can’t let a madman with nuclear weapons let on the loose like that. We have a lot of firepower, more than he has times 20, but we don’t want to use it … I hope China solves the problem. But if China doesn’t do it, we’ll do it.7
On this issue, the president’s rhetoric is also being reflected in increasingly consistent statements by key administration officials and senior military officers. On 22 July, for example, General Joseph Dunford, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the most senior military adviser to the president, told the Aspen Security Conference that:
[A Korean war] would be horrific, and it would be a loss of life unlike any we have experienced in our lifetimes, and I mean anyone who’s been alive since World War II has never seen the loss of life that could occur if there’s a conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
But as I’ve told my counterparts, both friend and foe, it is not unimaginable to have military options to respond to North Korean nuclear capability. What’s unimaginable to me is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver, Colorado. That’s unimaginable to me. So my job will be to develop military options to make sure that doesn’t happen.8
More recently, even as the UN Security Council moved to adopt increasingly tough sanctions against North Korea in September, National Security Advisor General H R McMaster made clear that Kim Jong-un is ‘going to have to give up his nuclear weapons, because the president has said that he is not going to tolerate this regime threatening the United States and our citizens with a nuclear weapon’.9
This suggests that the US is prepared to maintain the option of preventive strikes against North Korean nuclear facilities despite the knowledge that these could result in a new Korean war, perhaps comparable in scale and loss of life with the conflicts in Iraq or even Vietnam.10 The scale of such a conflict could be even greater if North Korea were able to unleash a nuclear attack on South Korea or Japan before its forces were overrun, or if China became directly involved in the fighting. While the broader political and economic effects of such a conflict are highly unpredictable, they are likely to be global in nature, dwarfing the effects of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the two Koreas, casualties could run into the hundreds of thousands. China and Japan, the world’s second- and third-largest economies, could face severe disruption to their societies, especially if nuclear weapons were used or if a conventional war were to last for several months. US leaders also know that a war could put 60,000 American troops based in the region at risk, along with many tens of thousands of American civilians.
Public discussion of military options by the US leadership is designed to increase pressure on North Korea, which would be the biggest loser, as well as on China, whose unwillingness to cut off vital oil supplies to its erstwhile ally continues to limit the effectiveness of international sanctions. Pyongyang may yet be convinced that such a threat is credible, and it may respond by slowing the pace of its programme, perhaps even accepting a testing moratorium in return for scaling back US military exercises in South Korea. At present, however, North Korea appears to be willing to ignore US threats, believing – as indeed do most informed observers – that Washington would never be willing to deliver on a threat that could lead to such catastrophic consequences.
North Korea might be right. However, it is also possible that new developments – for example the launch of a North Korean ICBM into the eastern Pacific or a further test of a larger-yield warhead – might convince Trump that he is not prepared to preside over the exposure of the US population to a permanent risk of nuclear attack from Pyongyang, and that the time for diplomatic alternatives has ended.
In these circumstances, there would be a powerful military imperative for acting sooner rather than later, and in a manner that minimises the scale of likely retaliation. In doing so, US military leaders would also keep a close eye on North Korean defence preparations, looking for potential vulnerabilities – of key facilities or personnel – that might reduce the extent of effective retaliation. The exact timing of an attack could be determined by these operational considerations.
US domestic political calculations are likely to play a role. President Trump has shown that he is keenly aware of the impact of his actions on his popularity rating. His unexpected decision to authorise a limited air strike against Syria in April 2017, in response to President Bashar Al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, led to a temporary improvement in his approval ratings.11
War against North Korea might produce a similar outcome, at least in the short term, rallying public support behind the commander-in-chief and dividing his Democratic opponents. He could, no doubt, emphasise that he was prepared to take a tough decision that former President Barack Obama, who was wary of military adventures, would never have taken. He might also believe that it would be difficult for the mainstream media to maintain their focus on his past ties with Russia when US forces were fighting and dying in a Korean war.
At a more ideological level, the use of force against North Korea would be consistent with the president’s ‘America First’ approach to foreign policy, which puts US national interests above multilateral cooperation and the constraints of international law, is more sceptical of soft power as a policy instrument, and prioritises increased emphasis on the role of military force in supporting national interests. This approach has already been reflected in the decisions to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and the Paris Agreement on climate change. Trump may also be close to taking a decision on whether to undermine the nuclear deal with Iran, as part of a more robust approach to that country, and in defiance of the views of key European allies.12
A decision to attack North Korea, seeking to protect the US from a possible future threat, even if this risks devastating attacks on regional allies, would be the most striking demonstration of America First so far, defining a Trump presidency just as surely as the Iraq War did for President George W Bush.
1. Ellen Nakashima, Anna Fifield and Joby Warrick, ‘North Korea Could Cross ICBM Threshold Next Year, U.S. Officials Warn in New Assessment’, Washington Post, 25 July 2017.
2. Jeffrey Lewis, ‘Welcome to the Thermonuclear Club, North Korea’, Foreign Policy, 4 September 2017.
3. Jeffrey Lewis, ‘North Korea is Practicing for Nuclear War’, Foreign Policy, 9 March 2017.
4. David Albright, ‘North Korea’s Nuclear Capabilities: A Fresh Look’, Institute for Science and International Security, 28 April 2017; Deb Riechmann and Matthew Pennington, ‘Estimates of North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Hard to Nail Down’, Washington Post, 18 August 2017.
5. Assuming up to five additional weapons produced annually between 2020 and 2025, less five used in further tests. For further detailed analysis, see Albright, ‘North Korea’s Nuclear Capabilities’.
6. Peter Baker and Choe Sang-Hun, ‘Trump Threatens “Fire and Fury” Against North Korea if it Endangers U.S.’, New York Times, 8 August 2017.
7. Quoted in Gideon Rachman, ‘North Korea and the Dangers of America First’, Financial Times, 26 June 2017.
8. Nahal Toosi, ‘Dunford: Military Option for North Korea not “Unimaginable”’, Politico, 22 July 2017.
9. David Nakamura and Anne Gearan, ‘US Warns that Time is Running out for Peaceful Solution with North Korea’, Washington Post, 17 September 2017.
10. The Vietnam War is estimated to have resulted in some 1.6 million battle deaths, of which around half were civilian. Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity (London: Penguin, 2011), p. 267. In addition to large numbers of combat deaths on all sides, the Iraq War is estimated to have resulted in around 200,000 civilian casualties between 2003 and 2017. See Iraq Body Count, ‘Documented Civilian Deaths from Violence’,
11. Amanda Woods, ‘Most Americans Approve of Trump’s Strike Against Syria: Poll’, New York Post, 10 April 2017.
12. Jana Winter, Robbie Gramer and Dan de Luce, ‘Trump Assigns White House Team to Target Iran Nuclear Deal, Sidelining State Department’, Foreign Policy, 21 July 2017.
I. Could Deterrence Work?
NORTH KOREA IS already a nuclear power, and it is making steady progress towards acquiring a capability for striking the continental US with long-range missiles. Successive efforts to divert Pyongyang from this path – involving engagement and rewards, isolation and sanctions, and now a growing threat of military force – have failed. In the absence of a preventive military strike, it is now likely that by the early 2020s North Korea will have the capability to launch a nuclear attack on the lower states and major cities of the US.
This would not be the first time that the US has faced the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a state whose foreign policy was based on confrontation with the US, led by a dictator who had committed mass atrocities against his own people. This was the case with the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War. Yet, in the end (and in the case of China after serious consideration was given to preventive strikes), the US reluctantly accepted that it had no choice but to accept the emergence of both the Soviet Union and China as nuclear-weapon states.1 Today, Russia and China remain the only two potentially hostile states that could threaten the US with nuclear attack. The US is not comfortable with this reality, but it has learned to live with it. It may yet decide that the uncertainties of mutual deterrence with a third adversary would be preferable to the likely consequences of a new Korean war.
The case for deterrence as the central element of a fall-back option is clear. The North Korean regime is brutal and immoral in the treatment of its own people. While the rest of the region – both communist and capitalist – has been enjoying rapid growth in popular living standards over a long period, North Korea’s people have fallen increasingly further behind regional norms. Recent Bank of Korea estimates suggest that, despite a 2016 upturn after the 2015 drought, total North Korean GDP still amounted to only 2% of that of South Korea, with per capita GDP estimated at $1,340, compared with $26,100 for South Korea. Even this comparison may be unduly flattering in relation to living standards, given the high proportion of resources that North Korea is devoting to its defence and security programmes.2
Yet, viewed in terms of its own interests rather than those of its people, the regime’s commitment to acquiring a strategic nuclear capability is arguably rational. It has sought such a capability consistently since the early 1980s, despite the considerable economic and political costs involved, because it believes that it will help protect the communist regime – built around the Kim family – from the external threats which it believes it has faced since the armistice
at the end of the Korean War. The regime correctly believes that it lives in a world where it is detested and without friends, and where even the communist leaders of China would dearly like to replace it with a more pliant leadership.
Moreover, North Korea’s leaders are well aware of, and make frequent reference to,3 the fate of the rulers of Iraq and Libya, both of whom were coerced into giving up their nuclear weapon programmes, were then overthrown in US-led invasions in which the UK participated, and subsequently killed with US support. The US would never have attacked Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qadhafi, North Korean statements argue, if they had already acquired a credible nuclear retaliatory capability.4 North Korea is determined to avoid a similar fate by creating a nuclear deterrent of its own.
In addition to this core deterrent rationale, the regime’s propaganda appeals to its people’s strong sense of nationalism, using the nuclear programme to demonstrate its willingness to stand up to an aggressive superpower which, in its telling, sought to destroy it in 1950 and failed, and is looking for another opportunity to do so. The regime’s commitment to nuclear weapons may also be driven in part by its awareness of its relative weakness in conventional military capabilities, and a desire to limit the resources devoted to the military as a whole, given likely budget challenges.
The regime likely believes that its security and prestige depends on its possession of nuclear weapons, not on their use. The US did not want to enter a deterrent relationship with the Soviet Union or China. But it was forced to accept one with each. Similarly, Western states sought to persuade India and Pakistan not to develop their own nuclear capabilities, but they have now accepted their nuclear status as an unfortunate reality. North Korean officials make clear that their objective is to achieve in the future what India has already achieved – acceptance of the country as a nuclear power, on a par in this regard with the eight other states that already have these weapons.
The US and its regional allies are understandably concerned that North Korea could use its nuclear force as a shield behind which it would then be able to pursue a more aggressive policy in other areas, seeking to undermine South Korean confidence in the US alliance and pressing for the withdrawal of US troops.5 In order to manage such risks, it would be more important than ever for Washington to emphasise the strength of US security guarantees to its allies, including by strengthening forward-based military capabilities. If the perceived credibility of these guarantees were to falter, however, it could trigger a drive for greater strategic autonomy by South Korea and Japan, possibly including the acquisition of their own nuclear weapons.
The successful acquisition of a strategic nuclear force by North Korea might perhaps be used to bargain for a broader peace settlement with the US and South Korea. With the options of denuclearisation and regime change off the table, North Korea might seek to argue for a relaxation of sanctions from a position of strength, along with a scaling back of military exercises, the opening of diplomatic relations and a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. In return, the US might demand verifiable assurances that nuclear and missile technologies would not be transferred to others, perhaps along with limits on further increases in the size of the North Korean arsenal. Unlike China and Russia, or indeed Iran, North Korea is not seeking to be a major regional power competing with the US for dominance over its neighbouring states.
There is therefore no reason, it might argue, why it could not be left in peace as an independent state. If the West had been prepared to accept India and Pakistan as nuclear-armed states, why not North Korea?
Unfortunately, things are not so simple. The continuing commitment of both Korean states to the goal of reunification would be a strong driver of instability in the event of a future political crisis in the North, and would remain so even if a new peace treaty were signed. International concern over North Korea’s repressive human rights record remains, and this would limit prospects for a more fundamental détente in wider political relations (as it did in relation to both the Soviet Union and China).
As the evolution of US nuclear relations with Russia and China has demonstrated, moreover, mutual deterrence is a dynamic relationship, in which each side seeks to gain advantage over the other, even as each reluctantly accepts the reality of mutual vulnerability. As in the cases of US–Soviet and US–Chinese political détente, a deterrent relationship between the US and North Korea would likely co-exist with continuing investments by both sides in new technologies and capabilities. The US and South Korea would invest in new missile defence and offensive conventional capabilities designed to negate North Korean nuclear advantages. North Korea would seek to expand its capability for an assured second-strike capability that could overcome US missile defences. As a consequence, as is now being seen in India and Pakistan, what would initially be a small North Korean nuclear force could grow steadily over time. Economic and technological factors might constrain the pace of this growth, but by the 2030s North Korea might have a capability for hitting the continental US that is as powerful as the one China has today.
Moreover, even if mutual deterrence appeared to work in times of stability, it is less clear that this would remain the case in the event of a serious internal crisis in North Korea. In such a scenario, potentially involving an exploitation of internal conflicts by China and/or South Korea, nuclear risks could increase as competing factions struggled for advantage. In order to minimise such risks, there would be a strong case for the US and South Korea to work closely with China to support stability within North Korea. In reality, it is by no means clear that such cooperation would be possible.
Moreover, it is far from clear that Trump’s leading advisers accept the case for relying on deterrence. Trump’s national security advisor, General H R McMaster, said in August that ‘classical deterrence theory’ does not apply in the case of North Korea because of the nature of the regime.6 This was a direct rebuttal of the argument made a few days earlier by Susan Rice – his predecessor in the Obama administration – that the US and its allies could, if need be, ‘tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea’ and ‘rely on traditional deterrence’.7 Insofar as McMaster’s analysis accurately reflects official US policy, it may make war more likely.
The End of Strategic Patience
Faced with the prospect that its major cities might soon become vulnerable to North Korean nuclear attack, the argument for preventive strikes is gaining ground in the US. So far, there has been a strong argument for waiting to see whether some combination of sanctions and diplomacy might delay or halt the North Korean programme before it acquires a credible intercontinental capability. After all, the technical obstacles to this achievement seemed formidable, and an ambitious programme of covert cyber and electronic strikes promised to buy more time.8 The long-predicted implosion of the regime might have taken place, most likely triggered by an intensification of elite power struggles. It was therefore reasonable to hope that the ‘strategic patience’ approach pursued by the Obama administration and those before it had a reasonable chance of success, negating the case for military action.
Yet this approach has become progressively less credible as North Korea has taken further steps towards building a strategic nuclear force, both against the US and its Asian allies. The successful testing of an ICBM on 4 July may prove to be a decisive moment in this regard. But the US also needs to take account of North Korea’s growing capabilities for retaliatory nuclear strikes against South Korea and Japan. The risks involved in a preventive strike, as a result, are set to rise rapidly, and at an unpredictable pace, over the next few years. Some of Trump’s key advisers may believe, therefore, that it is now or never for the US to take military action.
1. William Burr and Jeffrey T Richelson, ‘Whether to “Strangle the Baby in the Cradle’’: The United States and the Chinese Nuclear Program 1960–64’, International Security (Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter 2000/01).
2. Christine Kim and Jane Chung, ‘North Korea 2016 Economic Growth at 17-Year High Despite Sanctions’, Reuters Business News, 21 July 2017.
3. Mark Gollom, ‘Kim Jong-un Views Nuclear Weapons as a Way to Escape Fate of Saddam and Gadhafi’, CBC News, 13 August 2017; RT News, ‘“H-Bomb of Justice”: Pyongyang Brings up Iraq and Libya Doom as Nuclear Deterrence Justification’, 9 January 2016.
4. Ibid.
5. John K Warden, North Korea’s Nuclear Posture: An Evolving Challenge for U.S. Deterrence, Proliferation Papers No. 58 (Paris: Institut français des relations internationales, 2017).
6. ABC News, ‘“This Week” Transcript 8-13-17: Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Anthony Scaramucci’, 13 August 2017.
7. Susan Rice, ‘It’s Not Too Late on North Korea’, New York Times, 10 August 2017. See also Uri Friedman, ‘Can America Live With a Nuclear North Korea?’, The Atlantic, 14 September 2017.
8. David E Sanger and William J Broad, ‘Trump Inherits a Secret Cyber War Against North Korean Missiles’, New York Times, 4 March 2017.