[Global NK Interview] What the U.S. and ROK Should Do to Prevent Armed Conflict on the Korean Peninsula

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qx6xfjynTk

Matthew Bunn, Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, discusses the measures that South Korea and the United States should take to prevent armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula. He emphasizes that uncertainty about the adversary's intentions increases the possibility of military conflict between the ROK-U.S. alliance and North Korea. Therefore, when South Korea and the United States take military actions to strengthen deterrence against North Korea, they must anticipate North Korea's reactions and response directions and prepare for them in advance. Furthermore, Professor Bunn stresses that ultimately, denuclearization of North Korea is necessary to resolve security issues on the Korean Peninsula, and systematic confidence-building measures must be established to achieve this ultimate goal.

※ This interview was presented at the first session of the Global NK International Conference on the theme of “Nuclear Competition and the East Asian Security Crisis: ROK-U.S.-China Policies Toward North Korea and Military Conflict Scenarios.”

I. What should the U.S. and ROK consider to avoid escalation in the Korean Peninsula?

• Whenever a state makes its key decision, its security implication to the adversary and the adversary’s potential response must be considered. In this context, in order to maximize security, the state must assess both the defense-deterrent value and provocation risks.

• What the ROK and U.S. see as deterrent and defensive may be seen as an offensive threat to the DPRK. In crisis, therefore, North Korean misperceptions of ROK-U.S. actions could provoke unwanted escalation.

• Escalation risks link deterrence of large-scale war and smaller provocations. “Core” deterrence, or stopping a full-scale war “out of the blue” is likely to be strong, but deterrence of smaller-scale provocations may fail. Big concern on deterrence lies on the inadvertent steps that could lead to war when small conflicts get out of control.

• In planning responses to provocations, combined ROK-U.S. forces need to consider both the effect on deterring further outrages and the risk of provoking DPRK.

II. Why is crisis management on the Korean Peninsula so difficult?

• “Deterring Without Provoking” Policy Dilemma #1: ROK-U.S. want conventional superiority for defense and deterrence, but history suggests that side facing conventional inferiority is more likely to use nuclear weapons.

• “Deterring Without Provoking” Policy Dilemma #2: ROK and U.S. want to improve their ability to target DPRK nuclear forces, thereby exacerbating DPRK fear of such targeting. This increases incentive to build more weapons or even pre-delegate nuclear use authority.

III. How can the U.S. and ROK provide reassurance to North Korea?

• Reduce the temperature, strategically include provocation risk in planning, apply confidence-building measures, and employ nuclear restraints.

■ Matthew Bunn is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

■ Edited by: Jisu Park, EAI Research Fellow

    Contact: 02 2277 1683 (ext. 208) | jspark@eai.or.kr

Video Transcript

foreign make a key decision you need to think about what your adversary or competitor is likely to do in response so Otto von Bismarck the German leader remarked that it's very dangerous to play chess one move at a time to think only about the move you're going to make and not the move that the adversary will make in response and what that will mean to the game and so the problem is one of the problems is misperception that what the United States and the Republic of Korea may see as completely defensive the

North Koreans may see as an offensive threat that they need to respond to and that response may be endanger our security and so to maximize our security each time we're making a weapons purchase laying out a military a plan taking a military action in a crisis or conflict we need to think about how will that look to the other side and how will they respond and how will that affect our security so think about uh in a crisis or as it might evolve into our conflict imagine that the North Koreans commit

another awful provocation shelling an island again or something like that South Korea might well believe that it was necessary and reasonable to strike back to re-establish deterrence you could imagine that North Korea might see what the U.S and ROK forces had done as an escalation and might use a few conventionally armed missiles perhaps on U.S air bases to interfere with what we were doing and as a warning but once the North Koreans started using missiles the United States and the Republic of Korea might well decide we need to go

after the North Korean missiles with the kill chain approach that then puts the North Koreans in what strategists call I use them or lose them position where if they don't use their nuclear weapons they might not have them anymore and the campaign to hunt for and destroy the North Korean missiles might look to North Korea very much like the campaign that would be the Prelude to invading North Korea and so there's a real Danger that that might provoke North Korean nuclear years nonetheless I think that core deterrence

is likely to be very strong U.S and ROK forces combined can certainly defeat a North Korean invasion of the South if it's conventional only and North Korea knows that there would be gigantic risks to the survival of its regime if it were to use nuclear weapons so I worry more about the inadvertent steps to war when a crisis or small conflict is getting out of control the things that happened that neither side initially intended before the conflict began um and so we have to think about the risk of what we may be provoking

with each military action uh that we take and the lessons of the crises of the Cold War which we've been exploring in a bit more detail in a project we call data for deterrence in our Harvard group is that crises are really very difficult to manage and I'll say a little bit more about that in a moment John F Kennedy after the Cuban Missile Crisis drew a number of lessons but two of the important ones I think were one you always have to give your adversary some face-saving way to get out of the crisis

without escalating the war two in a crisis modern militaries are large unwieldy organizations all sorts of things happen that neither leader actually intended uh as he pithily put it there's always one son of a who doesn't get the word so the need to deter without provoking the adversary to do more does create difficult dilemmas United States and the ROK of course would want to maintain conventional superiority over North Korea and yet if you look at these crises of the Cold War when one side was really

conventionally inferior they were more likely to consider the use of nuclear weapons because they had few non-nuclear options for example West Berlin was completely surrounded by Soviet or East German forces there was no way to defend it with conventional forces alone and so the United States planned to use nuclear weapons early in a conflict if the Soviet Union ever tried to seize West Berlin fortunately that deterred that plan deterred the Soviet Union from ever trying to cities West Virginia so similarly the ROK and the United

States would like to maintain the ability to threaten North Korean missiles North Korean leadership but that threat then provokes the North Koreans to think I need more better different missiles to keep my Force survivable and those dilemmas are not unique to this peninsula they exist between the United States and China they exist between the United States and Russia there are certainly things the United States and NATO would like to do to that would help Ukraine in its war that they don't do because

they fear that it would provoke Russian actions that would be contrary to Ukraine's interests and to NATO's interests and similarly there are many things Russia would love to be able to do to prosecute its war in Ukraine that it doesn't do it doesn't attack for example weapon supplies to Ukraine while they're still in NATO countries because it fears the result of provoking nada thank you ultimately deterrence requires reassurance of the adversary as Thomas shelling put it stop or I'll shoot implies

if you stop I won't shoot and you have to convince the adversary that you won't shoot if they stop uh and so reassurance becomes a fundamental part of successful deterrence so what kinds of things could we do to try to mitigate some of these dilemmas I think if we can find a way and so far North Korea is just rejecting any Outreach but if we can find a way reducing the temperature and the the hostility and the intensity of the hostility on the peninsula is I think the most important step we could take work uh

systematically including the risk of provocation in our planning we ought to have a group whose job is to constantly assess and be the sort of voice of provocation risk in a certain there are confidence building measures that could be taken some of them unilaterally even if North Korea isn't responding some of them jointly if and when we managed to get back to talks with North Korea and then ultimately if we do manage to get back to talks with North Korea they're not realistically giving up their nuclear weapons anytime soon we

should keep denuclearization as the long-term goal but in the near term we should focus on particular restraints that we think would reduce the risk and we need to do more thinking about exactly what we would ask for in those first steps and what we would offer in return