Trump and Kim Jong Un face real and important constraints.
On Tuesday night, in response to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s claim to have a nuclear button on his desk, President Trump tweeted, “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
This is not the first time that things have gotten personal in the U. S.-North Korea standoff. Much of the rhetoric between the two leaders and media commentary about the risk of war focuses on the leadership of Trump and Kim — or “Little Rocket Man,” as Trump has called the North Korean leader.
But how much could these two singular leaders really propel us to a nuclear war? Trump’s tweets and other actions certainly can increase the risk of conflict — consistent with our research on how the decisions of individual leaders affect military conflict.
However, in this case, other factors, including geography and military capabilities, will matter more than tweets or the characteristics of leaders. And these factors reduce the likelihood of war.
Leaders can be important for international conflict
For the past few generations, political scientists who write about the outbreak of conflict mainly argued that leaders were irrelevant, focusing instead on international factors such as great power relations or domestic political factors such as whether the two countries involved had democratic institutions .
But more and more scholarship suggests that leaders make a large difference in determining whether and how countries go to war. And it’s not just in dictatorships such as that of North Korea; even more constrained leaders, such as U. S. presidents, matter. Leaders’ beliefs and experiences before coming into office can be critical in determining whether a country goes to war and what military strategy will be used in the event of war.
But structural forces are strong in this case
Even if leaders have discretion, they are constrained by material and situational constraints. No U. S. or North Korean leader can realistically change or avoid some of these constraints.
One constraint stems from the two sides’ formidable military capabilities, which mean that a general war with North Korea would be devastating, as Barry Posen argued last year. Even before North Korea acquired a nuclear capability, its artillery put tremendous pressure on South Korea. Add to that its missile arsenal — which, as nuclear experts have chronicled, can now probably deliver an intercontinental ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead against the United States.
