Is this why America will try to deter North Korea?
Forcibly disarming Pyongyang could and probably would involve sacrificing thousands of American and Korean lives. Here’s a crude yardstick. The Korean War, a conventional conflict to preserve an independent South Korea, cost the United States some 37,000 military lives. Many more service folk suffered wounds. Thirty-seven thousand. That’s more than fivefold the combined American military death toll from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars since 9/11. And that leaves aside countless more Korean military and civilian lives expended fighting to the current standstill along the inter-Korean border.
It’s hard to see how war could be waged more cheaply than it was in 1950-1953 when the principal combatants, not to mention North Korea’s ally China and neighbor Russia, all boast nuclear weapons to accompany formidable conventional forces.
Perhaps America will have to deter North Korea. But the price comparison isn't necessarily accurate.
Is the author saying that China (or Russia!) will intervene to save North Korea and start a fight with South Korea, Japan, and America--and perhaps the UN technically because the war authorized by the UN in 1950 is merely suspended and not ended?
Because that Chinese intervention is why the Korean War cost so much in American lives. Because when it was just North Korea on the battlefield, it took 3 months to halt the North Korean offensive at the Pusan Perimeter, launch a combined land and amphibious attack (the latter at Inchon), and cross the 38th parallel to invade North Korea.
It was only the intervention by China after North Korea's military was crushed that led to the high cost with a lengthy and larger military campaign.
Today, South Korea has an effective military that is superior to the North Korean military even if it is far smaller, unlike 1950 when South Korea had a police force rather than a military to fight off the Russian-armed and Chinese-supported North Korean army; and when America's army was fat and lazy after letting our guard down after World War II.
So the price of a new conventional war is likely to be lower as long as we don't cross certain red lines--as we did in 1950 to provoke a Chinese intervention.
If it goes nuclear, the price goes up. But there is a chance that allied attacks combined with layered but thin missile defenses could stop North Korea from using nukes. So China or Russia would have to escalate to nukes in defense of North Korea to raise the cost with that means. Is that likely?
We may not want to take the risk of doing something other than accepting a North Korean nuclear arsenal but the cost issue isn't as simple as the author suggests.
Indeed, the author doesn't consider the very real risks of a policy of deterrence as I laid out here:
Option 1: Accepting a nuclear North Korea.
This could either be with negotiated limits on their nukes or without. Sometimes doing nothing works out. The plan would be to deter North Korea as we have with the Soviets and the Russians.
The safety net would be missile defenses (American, Japanese, and South Korea) that would at least guard against an accidental launch and potentially stop an attack if not reduce the lethality.
Could it work?
Sure. If by working you mean that North Korea continues as a nutball state that kills and oppresses its people. And if you mean giving North Korea a shield behind which they can commit even more against South Korea, secure that any response by South Korea or America could be met with nuclear escalation. But sure, maybe North Korea never uses nukes. Maybe in time the North Koreans tire of the expense of nukes and decide to get rid of them as no longer useful. Ukraine did (and possibly regretted it after Russia invaded and annexed portions of their territory). Khazakstan did. South Africa did. Maybe North Korea will, too. And maybe one day decades in the future the North Koreans reform into a less horrible regime.
Heck, basically doing nothing might work if some black swan event comes along to spare us from the problem. Maybe Kim Jong-Un slips and falls in the bath tub and dies. Maybe some revolutionary technology is developed that makes nuclear warheads obsolete. Maybe an earthquake destroys Pyongyang. Maybe Kim literally gets religion and recants his evil path. Maybe an asteroid slams North Korea. One can't rule out the world will get lucky.
What could go wrong?
North Korea might want nukes to use them on South Korea and Japan, holding out some to deter American nuclear counter-attacks, believing the resulting chaos and American retreat will deliver South Korea to North Korean control.
North Korea could decide to use nukes out of fear that America is about to use nuclear weapons against them. It doesn't matter if we are planning such an attack if North Korea believes we are. After all, they say we've been plotting to invade them for over 50 years now.
Just how good will North Korea's early warning system be? If they have any? Just what would trigger a North Korean launch, anyway? Who in that North Korean launch chain will be the one to say "I'm not sure if nukes are heading our way. Let's wait."?
North Korea might accidentally launch a weapon.
South Korea and Japan may go nuclear, unsure if America will risk Seattle for Tokyo or Seoul.
Vietnam and Taiwan may follow as long as someone else went first to deter China.
China will increase their own nuclear forces in response to a regional nuclear proliferation.
The cost of maintaining vigilance around North Korea for decades will be considerable.
North Korea might invade South Korea under the theory that their nuclear weapons are a safety net in case of failure which will deter America from leading a counter-attack north of the DMZ.
North Korea could sell nuclear technology or actual weapons to dangerous states like Iran under mullah nutballs. (Which means that destroying the Iranian nutball regime to take a dangerous customer off the board increases the chance that this option could work.)
Consider too that over several decades of deterrence there is some small chance that over time there will be a significant chance that North Korea will launch a nuke by accident or by mistake. And if proliferation takes place there will be more places that error or accident could happen.
And of course, on the last part, we probably won't get lucky in a dramatic fashion. That fact is why it would be lucky if something happened.
Excuse me for the lengthy quote. But this shows that accepting North Korea as a nuclear power isn't obviously a better option than striking North Korea. And I say this as someone who once thought deterring North Korea was our best option. But that was before North Korea became a partner with Iran to go nuclear and before I thought through the logic of deterrence on the Korean peninsula rather than simply assuming it would work as well as it did--in retrospect--between America and the USSR.
[In a pre-publication UPDATE this author argues that it is wrong to assume deterrence would work with North Korea just because it worked with the Soviet Union.]
And note that my options did not include convincing North Korea to voluntarily give up their nukes. Although I did include squeezing North Korea economically to coerce them. Our policy is kind of like that but with a carrot of real prosperity following real de-nuclearization.
Let's hope Trump's gambit works. Because no option is obviously better than any other option.
