There is now no choice but to the “bite the bomb” and accept a nuclear North Korea.
Last week, the Nobel committee expressed an improbable hope by awarding its peace prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. This week, we are seeing a likely reality of more, not less, nukes in our future.
U. S. President Donald Trump’s unraveling of the Iran deal dashes the hope of negotiations with North Korea and risks creating a fresh nuclear crisis in the Mideast. As Harvard’s Graham Allison writes, “For all its flaws, the nuclear agreement is the one major hurdle preventing Iran from becoming a second North Korea — a rogue state with nuclear weapons.”
In a provocative essay, veteran Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan says it is time to accept the fait accompli of North Korea as a nuclear state and the establishment of a new balance of deterrence in the region, with Japan and South Korea going nuclear to defend themselves. Because North Korea now directly threatens the U. S., Kausikan argues, the pragmatic assumption of America’s allies must be that, in any conflict, Washington will protect itself first ahead of its allies.
That folding defense umbrella will leave Japan not only vulnerable to North Korea but also to domination by the other nuclear power in the neighborhood — China. “The decision to go nuclear will be extremely difficult for any Japanese government,” Kausikan acknowledges. “But when America’s extended deterrence is eroded, a Japan without an independent nuclear deterrent would be subordinate to China. This is an existential issue for Japan.” And if Japan goes nuclear, he sees South Korea doing so in turn.
Neither Japan nor South Korea are eager to become nuclear-armed states, Kausikan writes, and Washington is wary. “But for all three,” he says, “this is the least bad option. Japan and South Korea will remain within the U. S.-led Northeast Asian alliance, just as France and the U. K. remained within NATO. But a six-way balance of mutually assured destruction — among the U. S., China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea — will eventually be established in Northeast Asia.” Once established, Kausikan believes such a balance “will be stabilizing” because “all six countries are rational and are functioning polities” that will not invite their own destruction.
Chinese analyst Cui Lei adds another voice to those Asian realists who acknowledge that North Korea has already become a de facto member of the nuclear club and has little incentive to disarm. “The window of opportunity to roll back North Korean weapon programs has been closed,” he writes from Beijing. The long record shows sanctions won’t work, he argues, and a military assault, as many have said, is too catastrophic to contemplate.
