By Van Jackson
A look at how Pyongyang views — and might use — its nuclear weapons.
While there can be no certainty about how North Korea views its nuclear arsenal and how it might be employed, I have growing doubts about many contemporary arguments advanced by North Korea and nuclear experts. The collective conventional wisdom seems to point to a peacetime nuclear first-use strategy (dubbed “asymmetric escalation”) or a “catalytic” strategy intended for the principal purpose of scaring China into intervening on North Korea’s behalf.
There are numerous reasons to be skeptical about either of these strategies. Instead, evidence and logic seem to support the idea that North Korea is seeking an assured retaliation capability in peacetime, and a wartime strategy of asymmetric escalation.
In his recent book, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, Vipin Narang suggests three types of nuclear strategies facing nascent nuclear states: catalytic; asymmetric escalation; and assured retaliation. Nuclear posture can serve other types of purposes, but Narang makes a strong case that these are the three most relevant to politico-military strategy. In a catalytic strategy, nuclear weapons serve the purpose of bringing a patron closer to its nuclear weapon-wielding client. Asymmetric escalation relies on nuclear first-use as a way of compelling de-escalation in a crisis or conflict, or to reap political benefit. And an assured retaliation strategy deploys nuclear weapons with the aim of ensuring its nuclear force can survive any first strike on it to launch nuclear second-strikes in turn.
Surprisingly, Narang does not take up the case of North Korea in his mostly well-conceived book, but he obliges us with a spinoff article applying his book’s framework to North Korea. His argument, in effect, is that we should expect North Korea to choose a catalytic nuclear strategy that would scare China into joining a conflict on its side, assuming North Korea believes China would be reasonably likely to do so. If North Korea does not see China as a likely or reliable patron, then North Korea would likely move to an asymmetric escalation posture. The historical basis for this logic is most closely found in the case of South Africa, whose nuclear posture was intended to draw the United States into protecting it against a potential Soviet threat during the Cold War. I find this line of reasoning to be completely rational, and completely wrong.
Read the full story at The Diplomat