[Global NK Interview] 북한 고강도 도발과 한반도내 억지력 강화 방안

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

[Editor's Note]

동아시아연구원 [Global NK Zoom & Connect]는 러시아-우크라이나 전쟁이 글로벌 안보환경과 동북아에 미치는 영향을 논의하기 위해 리처드 베츠(Richard K. Betts) 컬럼비아대(Columbia University) 교수를 초청하여 대담을 진행했습니다. 베츠 교수는 최근 일련의 북한 미사일 시험발사는 실질적인 차원에서 중요한 변화를 가져오기보다 상징적인 의미를 가진다고 지적하며, 계속되는 북한의 도발은 협상을 통해 북한 핵 실험을 막을 수 있다는 희망이 거의 사라졌음을 시사한다고 설명합니다. 이어, 미국 확장 억지력의 신뢰성 문제가 계속해서 동맹국들 사이에서 제기되고 있지만, 확장 억지가 “미국이 할 수 있는 최선”이라고 언급합니다. 한중 간 격렬한 논쟁을 불러온 사드(THAAD•고고도미사일방어체계) 배치 문제에 대해서는, 이것이 북한의 위협에 대응하기 위한 조치라는 점을 강조합니다. 아울러, 재래식 전력에 대한 군축 논의를 경제제재 완화와 교환하는 방식으로 협상을 진행하여 경색된 남북관계의 해법을 모색해볼 것을 제안합니다.

I. 북한 무기개발이 중국에 주는 함의

• 베츠 교수는 최근 몇 년간 북한이 “중국의 이익과 일치하지 않는 방식으로 독자적인 노선을 취해왔으며” 중국은 “북한에 대한 자국 통제권의 한계를 반복적으로 경험하고 있다”라고 언급한다.

• 그럼에도 불구하고, “북한은 중국의 몇 안 되는 동맹국 중 하나이며, 사실상 거의 유일한 동맹국”이라고 지적한다. 베츠 교수는 “(동맹상황에서는) 상대 파트너 국가와 연결성을 상실하는 것을 두려워하기 때문에, 약소 동맹국이라고 해도 강대국 동맹파트너에 대해 여전히 많은 영향력을 가질 수 있다”라고 강조한다.

• 북한의 안보 위협 관련해서는, “동아시아 정세에 있어 가장 위험한 요인 중 하나는 미국과 중국이 (지역 내에서) 발생하는 위기에 어떻게 대처할지에 대해 진지하게 협의할 수 있는 능력을 갖추고 있지 못한 것”이라고 지적한다.

• 베츠 교수는 “(급변사태 발생 시) 미군이 북한 영토 내로 진입하지 않고 한국군 단독으로 상황에 대처하는 방식의 원칙을 천명해서 중국에 대한 안전보장(assurance)을 제공할 수 있을 것이다”라고 주장한다.

• 그는 “북한 핵무기가 중국의 계산에 어떤 영향을 미치게 될 것인지, 중국은 어떤 압박이나 통제 수단을 가지는지”를 이해하는 것이 중요하다고 강조한다.

II. 북한의 미사일 도발

• 베츠 교수는 최근 일련의 북한 미사일 시험발사는 “그들 스스로 밝히는 것처럼 실질적인 차원에서 아주 중요한 변화를 가져오고 있는 것은 아니고, 상징적인 의미를 가진다”라고 지적한다. 그럼에도 불구하고, 계속되는 북한의 도발은 “협상을 통해 북한 핵 실험을 막을 수 있다는 희망이 거의 사라졌음”을 보여준다고 설명한다.

• 베츠 교수에 따르면, 핵확전(nucelar escalation) 방지와 “아시아의 잠재적 적들을 억지하는 것 ... 즉 핵무기를 사용해 정치적 이익을 취하려는 것을 방지”하는 것이 중요한 도전 과제이다. 그는 이를 위한 미국의 “재래식 군사적 능력”이 여전히 계속해서 “상당히 신뢰할 수 있는” 수준이라고 언급한다.

• “미국에 대한 중국의 적개심이 다시 부상하고, 중국 전략계획이 강대국 전쟁을 상정한 방식으로 전환”되는 것은 우려스럽지만, 이러한 변화는 “군사 영역 밖의 완전히 새로운 상황, 즉 경제적 세계화와 높은 수준의 경제적 상호의존성”에 의해 상당히 복잡한 양상을 띠게 되었다고 주장한다.

III. 미국의 대북정책

• 북핵 능력에 대한 미국의 대응과 관련하여, 베츠 교수는 최선의 대응은 “전통적 방식의 강력한 억지 정책에 의존하는 것”이라고 주장한다. 그는 “북한이 핵무기를 사용하여 미국을 공격하는 경우, 김정은 정권은 존재하지 않게 될 것이라는 기본적인 억지위협에 기초한 정책을 미국은 유지해야 한다”라고 강조한다.

• 미국 확장 억지력의 신뢰성 문제가 계속해서 동맹국들 사이에서 제기되고 있지만, 베츠 교수는 확장 억지가 “미국이 할 수 있는 최선”이라고 언급한다. 그는 “미국은 수십 년 동안 동맹국을 대신해 엄청난 노력을 기울여 왔으며, 일본과 한국을 방어하기 위해 군사 동맹을 유지해(committed) 왔다”라는 점을 지적한다.

• 베츠 교수는 “통합 억지(integrated deterrence)는... 슬로건이자 유행어”에 불과하다고 주장한다. 통합 억지가 미국이 “순수한 군사 능력 이외의 수단”을 찾고 있다는 신호를 보내는(signal) 것은 맞지만, “정책 변경에 대한 신호라기보다는 수사학적 장치”라고 강조한다.

IV. 한국의 대북정책 제언

• 한국의 고고도미사일방어체계(THAAD, 이하 사드) 배치 논쟁과 관련하여, 베츠 교수는 “북한 스스로 위협을 제거하기를 기다리는 것”에 대한 유일한 대안이라고 강조한다. 그는 “사드는 중국을 겨냥한 것이 아니라, 북한에 대한 대응책인 것이 명백하다”라고 설명한다.

• 베츠 교수는 한국이 북한 위협에 대응할 수 있는 2가지 방안을 제시한다. 첫째는 “한반도 통일은 군사적 침공을 통해 이루어지지 않을 것”이라고 북한에 약속하는 것이다. 둘째는 “재래식 전력 군축 협상에서 접점을 찾고 ... 그것을 대북제재 완화와 맞바꾸는” 것이다. ■

IV. 약력

■ 리처드 베츠 (Richard K. Betts)_ 컬럼비이 대학교(Columbia University) 레오 쉬프린(Leo A. Shifrin) 전쟁과 평화연구 교수. 미국외교협회(Council on Foreign Relations) 국가안보연구부장을 지냈으며, 현재는 수석연구원으로 재직 중이다. 베츠 교수는 1990년까지 브루킹스 연구소(Brookings Institution)의 선임연구원을 역임했다. 또한, 하버드대(Harvard University)에서 행정학 강사와 방문 교수를 역임한 바 있다. 그는 하버드대에서 정치학 학사, 석사, 박사 학위를 취득하였다.

■ 담당 및 편집: 이승연 , EAI 연구원

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

영상 스크립트

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 the economic interdependence complicates the potential military efforts. And with China, that’s magnified because China is far more integrated in the global economy than Russia has been.

So to what extent American capabilities could 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 is going to require a lot more attention and planning and thinking in the coming years.

Perhaps just because I’m old and cranky, I think integrated deterrence is basically a slogan and a buzzword. And I’m 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’re looking more closely or putting somewhat more emphasis on other instruments besides purely military capabilities. But I think it’s more a rhetorical device than some 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’s 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 don’t think we can be surprised if at some point, in the not distant future, leadership in Beijing says we’ve been very patient about Taiwan. We haven’t made our demands very strongly.

We’ve offered different solutions like the “one country, two systems.” We’ve been very reasonable about this. But it’s time to settle the issue. Now hopefully that won’t 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, the 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 that is, 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’s a crisis over Taiwan I don’t think it’s 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’s a long standing dilemma but that dilemma could get more serious. So I would think that’s 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’re sorry but the North Korean threat has to be dealt with. And if you don’t like the THAAD system in South Korea, then you need to lean on the North Koreans to eliminate the threat. So there’s a way out for China, hypothetically, if they’re 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 can’t object to that reasoning.

To me, hypothetically thinking like a detached strategist who doesn't know all of 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 that can be made is 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 and their conventional military security and to trade that for a 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's not an original idea. It doesn't solve the problem since it's probably unrealistic to think that that can be done.

But I don't 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's 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’s) hard to see how it's going to happen otherwise.

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