The only way to stand down from a nuclear confrontation is to reassure Kim Jong Un that the United States won’t — and can’t —…
In confronting North Korea’s adamant pursuit of nuclear weapons, so far nothing has been effective. Pledges to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula have failed. United Nations resolutions have failed. Increasingly severe sanctions have failed. And insults not only fail but also reinforce the hard-line stance of Kim Jong Un. In the latest provocation, Pyongyang resumed its slate of ballistic missile launches, firing a test salvo eastward on Tuesday, Nov. 28.
Are there any other options left worth pursuing? Cold War experience offers insight into a basic factor — a posture of strategic reassurance — that has persuaded other countries to forgo a nuclear-weapons option.
What is the central concern driving North Korea’s quest for nuclear weapons? Pyongyang claims it is a well-founded fear that the United States and South Korea plan aggression to overthrow the Kim regime. To Americans, that fear seems absurd; Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has explicitly denied any such intention. Yet it is the stated basis for the intensive, costly missile and nuclear programs that make Kim Jong Un so dangerous. It would be prudent to address it directly, demonstrating first that the threat of invasion against the North is unreal and, second, that absent the threat, continued defiance of international demands for nuclear and missile restraint has more sinister purposes.
Declarations by Washington and Seoul are insufficient, but more potent approaches are available. Those approaches rely on policies that helped induce several potential nuclear-weapons states to forego such arsenals. Three critical examples were Germany, Japan, and South Korea — all countries with far more substantial technological bases than North Korea. Their choice of self-restraint rested on many factors, none more critical than the security afforded by military alliance with the United States, bolstered by deployment on their territory of U. S. military forces. As historian Michael Howard explained years ago, reassurance of allies is scarcely less crucial than deterrence of adversaries. Durable strategic stability depends on both.
Understandably, attempts to stop North Korea’s reckless conduct have centered on coercive diplomacy and threats of military strikes. It may yet become necessary to employ some measure of force; continued overflights of Japan by North Korean missiles, for example, are powerful incentives to fire interceptors against them. There is nearly universal consensus among analysts, however, that overt military action carries grave risk of escalation to major war.
For years, a constant theme of debates and intermittent negotiations has been that Beijing holds the key to halting this disturbing trend. Although China is the Kim government’s main trading partner and strongest security supporter, it downplays its leverage to compel that government to alter course. The Chinese are clear, however, that a nuclearized Korean Peninsula is not in their interest. Gradually, reluctantly, Beijing has been drawn into the multilateral campaign to pressure Pyongyang economically and politically. Recent months have seen China joining strong U. N. Security Council resolutions and stern sanctions against North Korea, particularly in pledging curtailment of trade between the two neighbors.
