[Global NK Interview] North Korea's High-Intensity Provocations and Measures to Strengthen Deterrence on the Korean Peninsula

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JRHtK6CVNM

[Editor's Note]

The East Asia Institute's [Global NK Zoom & Connect] invited Professor Richard K. Betts of Columbia University to discuss the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on the global security environment and Northeast Asia. Professor Betts pointed out that the recent series of North Korean missile tests hold symbolic significance rather than bringing about substantial changes, and explained that North Korea's continued provocations suggest that hope for preventing North Korean nuclear tests through negotiation has largely vanished. He further stated that while the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence continues to be raised among allies, extended deterrence is "the best the U.S. can do." Regarding the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) deployment issue, which sparked heated debate between South Korea and China, he emphasized that it is a measure to counter North Korean threats. He also proposed seeking a solution for the frozen inter-Korean relations by negotiating a conventional arms reduction in exchange for the easing of economic sanctions.

I. Implications of North Korea's Weapons Development for China

• Professor Betts noted that North Korea has "pursued an independent course in ways that are not always in China's interest" in recent years, and that China "repeatedly experiences the limits of its control over North Korea."

• Nevertheless, he pointed out that "North Korea is one of China's few allies, in fact, almost its only ally." Professor Betts emphasized that "in alliance situations, because they fear losing connection with their partner state, even a weak, small ally can still have a lot of leverage on the stronger supporting ally."

• Regarding North Korea's security threat, he stated that "one of the most dangerous factors in the East Asian situation is the inability of the U.S. and China to consult seriously with each other about how to handle a crisis that might occur in the region."

• Professor Betts argued that "in the event of a sudden collapse, the U.S. could provide assurance to China by declaring a principle that U.S. forces would not enter North Korean territory and that South Korean forces alone would handle the situation."

• He stressed the importance of understanding "how North Korean nuclear weapons may affect Chinese calculations, and what sorts of pressure or control mechanisms China possesses."

II. North Korea's Missile Provocations

• Professor Betts pointed out that the recent series of North Korean missile tests "are not bringing about very significant changes in practical terms, as they themselves claim, but have symbolic significance." Nevertheless, he explained that North Korea's continued provocations show that "hope for preventing North Korean nuclear tests through negotiation has largely vanished."

• According to Professor Betts, the key challenge is to prevent "nuclear escalation and to deter potential enemies in Asia... to deter them from seeking political gain through the use of nuclear weapons." He noted that the U.S.'s "conventional military capabilities" for this purpose remain "quite credible."

• While the resurgence of Chinese animosity towards the U.S. and the shift in Chinese strategic planning towards great power war is concerning, he argued that these changes are significantly complicated by "a completely new situation outside the military arena – that is, economic globalization and a high level of economic interdependence."

III. U.S. Policy Toward North Korea

• Regarding the U.S. response to North Korea's nuclear capabilities, Professor Betts argued that the best response is to "rely on a traditional policy of strong deterrence." He emphasized that "the U.S. must maintain a policy based on the fundamental deterrent threat that if North Korea attacks the U.S. with nuclear weapons, the Kim Jong-un regime will cease to exist."

• While the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence continues to be raised among allies, Professor Betts stated that extended deterrence is "the best the U.S. can do." He pointed out that "the U.S. has made tremendous efforts on behalf of its allies for decades and has been committed to maintaining military alliances to defend Japan and South Korea."

• Professor Betts argued that "integrated deterrence is... just a slogan and a buzzword." While it is true that integrated deterrence signals that the U.S. is seeking "means other than pure military capability," he stressed that it is "a rhetorical device rather than a signal of policy change."

IV. Policy Recommendations for South Korea Toward North Korea

• Regarding the debate over South Korea's deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, Professor Betts emphasized that it is the only alternative to "waiting for North Korea to eliminate the threat itself." He explained that "it is clear that THAAD is not aimed at China, but is a response to North Korea."

• Professor Betts proposed two measures for South Korea to counter the North Korean threat: First, to promise North Korea that "the unification of the Korean Peninsula will not be achieved through military invasion." Second, to "find common ground in negotiations on conventional arms reduction... and exchange that for the easing of sanctions against North Korea." ■

IV. Biography

■ Richard K. BettsLeo A. Shifrin Professor of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He served as Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and is currently a Senior Fellow. Professor Betts was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution until 1990. He also served as a lecturer and visiting professor at Harvard University. He holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University.

■ Responsible and Edited by: Seungyeon Lee , EAI Research Fellow

    For inquiries: 82 2 2277 1683 (ext. 205) | slee@eai.or.kr

Video Transcript

My impression is that, in recent decades, China has been frustrated with the limits of its control over North Korea, frustrated that the North Koreans proceeded independently in ways that are not always in China’s interest. But the fact remains that North Korea is one of China’s few allies, almost its only ally.

And in a way that the U.S. has sometimes in the past seen with some of its allies, the weak small ally can still have a lot of leverage on the stronger supporting ally out of fear of losing that connection. So I have always thought that one of the dangerous things about the situation in East Asia is the inability of the U.S. and China to consult with each other in a serious way about how to handle a future crisis.

For example, the possibility of extreme instability or collapse of the North Korean regime. I don’t think that’s likely. I think in the U.S., at the end of the Cold War, there was too much optimism that all the communist regimes would collapse and some Americans were surprised when North Korea did not.

But the possibility of something like that happening is very dangerous because it’s hard to know how that would be handled. If South Korea moves into North Korea to restore order. If there is such a collapse what does China do? My own view is that the U.S. should make clear that in that sort of a situation, the U.S. will not move its forces into North Korea, and that South Korea should be able to handle the situation on its own, which hopefully might be some reassurance to China, but for various reasons

the U.S. may not want to make a pronouncement of that sort. I don’t know what the implications would be for relations with South Korea for trying to make discussion of this question more open. But it seems to me the lack of serious discussion is dangerous.

Although it’s understandable why there are limits on how seriously we can discuss it with the Chinese government, they obviously have constraints about admitting the possibility of certain situations that we might want to plan for. However, and the real question is how North Korean nuclear weapons may affect Chinese calculations about what sorts of pressure or control or constraint they may need to try to put on North Korea and how they can do it.

And I don’t know what their inner innermost decisions on that are. Well my view on this probably is not typical of many American observers of national security. But it seems to me these changes are not tremendously significant as they are portrayed. In other words, I think they are more symbolic in significance than (the) real substance because the real change was North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons in the first place, which goes back now over a decade.

The fact that it is developing missiles within the continental capability, we saw as something that was coming. And now of course the sooner it comes the worse the situation is. But the fact that the missiles are being tested is not a dramatic surprise.

It does represent a failure of our hopes that we might have used the prospect of negotiations as a leverage to keep them from testing enough to develop confidence in the capability. But the concessions that might have been necessary to get that to happen were not ones that the U.S. wanted to make anyway.

And the problem is a serious one because certainly we have the image in the U.S. of the North Korean regime being less rational or reliable or less cautious than the old Cold War nuclear powers we were accustomed to confronting in the past. I hope that’s not true. I hope that Kim Jong-un is, in the final analysis, a sensible strategist.

But there is no good way that I can think of to deal with the threat to the U.S from North Korean nuclear capability other than to rely on the traditional policy of strong deterrence . In the past, some American administrations and some strategists believed that there was a promise in anti-ballistic missile defenses that ABMs would be able to threaten, to shoot down incoming missiles and to defend against them satisfactorily.

I never had much confidence that that was a very solid solution. There’s disagreement about that among American technologists and strategists but I’ve always been skeptical, so fundamentally I think the U.S. still has to rely on the basic threat to Kim Jong-un that if he ever attacks the U.S. with a nuclear weapon, his regime will cease to exist and he and his family and everything he cares about will cease to exist.

I don’t know a better solution to prevent this use of those nuclear weapons against the U.S. Now against South Korea and Japan, the issues are somewhat different and that, of course, allies may be a little bit less confident that the U.S. would respond with nuclear weapons against North Korea than if the U.S. were attacked itself.

And that traditionally has been a problem in alliance relations for the U.S. with its European allies and NATO going back to the 1950s and 1960s and ever since. I think the solution there is to simply argue that it is in our interest to convince the North Koreans that it would be suicidal for them to use nuclear weapons and also to emphasize the strength of conventional military defenses against North Korean forces so that the use of nuclear weapons would never seem a solution to North Korea.

It’s hard to see a political and military situation in which North Korea’s initiating the use of nuclear weapons would make sense. How it would help to conquer South Korea, for example, in a way that would be useful to North Korea and that would not provoke retaliation.

Now with Japan, of course, the special historic animosities between Korea and Japan. I’ll lend a different sort of perhaps political or emotional ingredient in this whole calculation, but again it seems an extreme stretch to see a crisis in which North Korea would have the incentive to threaten Japan in that way.

Japan is not going to invade Korea again. It’s not going to threaten to do so. So for North Korea, the real threat from Japan is the use of American forces that might be supported by their infrastructure and support bases in Japan. So that’s a fight with the U.S. as much or more than it is with Japan.

And so it would be hard to see that they could feel they could threaten Japan in a nuclear way that would not bring in the American deterrent. Extended deterrence for South Korea and Japan. That’s always been an issue with all American allies. And it’s always gone both ways too because very often, allied governments are worried that the U.S. is not dependable and its promises to provide a nuclear umbrella.

Very often, the citizens of allied countries, the voters, are not enthusiastic about the idea of American nuclear posturing. So we get criticism from both sides among our allies on this question. And to me there is no perfect solution. There is a logical reason that cautious strategists in our East Asian allied countries might worry.

But we have to do the best we can. And we have to say we’ve been using this policy for over seventy years since the Korean war and it’s the best we can do. The real solution is to remind our allies of the efforts the U.S. has always made for its allies in the post-World War II era.

Personally, I have always been amused when sometimes the U.S. is criticized for a lack of credibility because of actions such as the final withdrawal from Vietnam or now from Afghanistan. When it seems to me, the real lesson is the U.S. made huge efforts on behalf of those allies for many years spent, many American lives and many billions of American dollars supporting those allies militarily in war.

And finally, after long periods in which both of those allies showed that they were incapable of standing up to their enemies, eventually the U.S. gave up its support. But it seems to me, it’s a lot, to expect more effort than the U.S. has traditionally made in those cases.

And that’s simply a way of saying the U.S. has been committed militarily to defend Japan and South Korea. It has deployed forces in the region to do so. It has regularly engaged in joint planning and exercises and the creation of military bases and infrastructure to facilitate the reinforcement of American military capabilities in the event of war.

And all of those efforts point, it seems to me, to a reliable American commitment to fight for those allies if they’re attacked. Now the question of nuclear escalation, it’s I think, the first challenge of strategy to provide the capabilities and incentives to deter potential enemies in Asia, North Korea, or hypothetically China to deter them from seeing any potential benefit in initiating the use of nuclear weapons.

If necessary, it nevertheless happens to consider appropriate retaliation, which could be limited according to the circumstances. So there’s no perfect solution to that reassurance. But it seems to me the conventional military efforts that we have made are quite credible.

And the first line of defense which ought to be emphasized, a particular problem we face in the future, is the reemergence of Chinese American antagonism and the shift of strategic planning towards the prospect of a major war between the great powers, which for most of the post-Cold War era we had not worried about.

And that shift is now complicated by a completely new situation outside the military arena – that is economic globalization and the tremendous economic interdependence, which is now a reality, which complicates potential military engagement in ways that are not completely easy to predict.

We see some of this potential challenge emerging in the Ukraine war, how economic interdependence complicates potential military efforts. With China, that is magnified because China is far more integrated into the global economy than Russia has been.

So, to what extent could American capabilities be compromised or complicated by supply chain questions, by dependencies we had not thought a lot about because they were undertaken for business reasons rather than controlled by military strategists? That is something that will require a lot more attention, planning, and thinking in the coming years.

Perhaps, just because I am old and cranky, I think integrated deterrence is basically a slogan and a buzzword. I am skeptical that it really reflects very significant change. We have always, in principle, tried to think of everything that could contribute to deterrence.

Now, “integrated deterrence” may mean we are looking more closely or putting somewhat more emphasis on other instruments besides purely military capabilities. But I think it is more a rhetorical device than a signal about a change in policy or strategy that our adversaries or allies really need to worry about.

To me, the main problem in Asia for the U.S. in the coming years is probably the Taiwan issue. Now, Korea may not be far behind, but it seems to me the Taiwan issue is more likely to be a potential source of crisis. Now, I think, at least for a while, the Ukraine war has perhaps pushed back the danger of Chinese demands over Taiwan, but, personally, I think, at least in the U.S., there has been too much complacency about how indefinite or how long-lasting the status quo over Taiwan can be.

I think until recently, at least until the past year or two, many Americans, even in the national security community, have more or less assumed that the status quo over Taiwan could last forever. And that seems to me unlikely. I think that complacency occurred because, until recently, Beijing never pressed the issue. It was not their first priority.

Going back a few decades, the first priority was the Four Modernizations. And military modernization was at the bottom of the list of priorities. And the resolution of the Taiwan question was simply postponed. It was something that could be dealt with when China became stronger.

Well, now China is stronger, and we can hope that they will continue to be cautious about Taiwan. But I do not think we can be surprised if at some point, in the not-distant future, leadership in Beijing says, "We have been very patient about Taiwan. We haven't made our demands very strongly."

We have offered different solutions, like “one country, two systems.” We have been very reasonable about this. But it is time to settle the issue. Now, hopefully, that will not happen. But if it does, it should be no surprise. And it seems to me, we are not in an ideal position to deal with it because there is still some ambiguity about the nature and extent of the U.S. commitment to defend Taiwan.

To me, American policy, in a sense, is that it will defend Taiwan as long as it is a rebellious province, but it will not defend Taiwan if it is an independent country, in order to deter Taiwan from declaring independence. But it seems to me that that policy, while it may make sense to sophisticated elites or strategists, will seem quite strange to normal people.

And if there is a crisis over Taiwan, I do not think it is yet clear how that will play in domestic politics in the U.S. So the danger is that the U.S. will not make clear what its policy on Taiwan is. The other danger is if it does make it clear, which could provoke a crisis.

So it is a long-standing dilemma, but that dilemma could get more serious. So I would think that is a somewhat more probable danger than another Korean war, but I would put instability in North Korea and South Korean relations next on the list. The THAAD system, it seems to me. I understand the controversy about it and Chinese sensitivities.

But I think the best strategic solution is to tell the Chinese, "We are sorry, but the North Korean threat has to be dealt with. And if you do not like the THAAD system in South Korea, then you need to lean on the North Koreans to eliminate the threat." So there is a way out for China, hypothetically, if they are willing to expand the political capital to put pressure on North Korea. And otherwise, we simply have to say the THAAD system is not designed primarily against China, but it is the obvious response to North Korea, and they cannot object to that reasoning.

To me, hypothetically thinking like a detached strategist who does not know all the political complications involved, it has seemed to me that we should press from our side for a deal with North Korea that links conventional military arms control and denuclearization.

Two credible promises, insofar as they can be made, are that Korean unification will not be brought about by military aggression from the West, from South Korea or the U.S., and to try to find a conventional arms control solution that would at least give some degree of confidence to both sides regarding their conventional military security, and to trade that for relief from sanctions for North Korea.

But if North Korea is unwilling to compromise its military capabilities or to denuclearize, it seems to me that price should be the maintenance of the strongest sanctions possible. Now, that is not an original idea. It does not solve the problem, since it is probably unrealistic to think that that can be done.

But I do not know a better solution. If I did, I would get the Nobel Prize. But if the main incentive for North Korea is relief from sanctions, it seems to me we should demand a major price, which does not seem to be the price of North Korean regime security, but simply a reduction of military threat.

And to leave open the question of unification, which, as a naive Westerner, it has always seemed to me hard to envision Korean unification in any way other than a collapse of North Korea. Now, it may be seen differently by many in Korea, but it is hard to see how it is going to happen otherwise.

But leave open the prospect, in principle and for negotiation, if you can reduce the military tension in exchange for some economic relief for North Korea.