Global NK: Друзья по интересам: Может ли Республика Корея рассчитывать на расширенное ядерное сдерживание США?

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Editor's Note

The extended nuclear deterrence provided by the US aims to protect South Korea from a third-party aggressor such as North Korea. However, there are issues related to the provider’s credibility and reliability. In this commentary, Professor Mason Richey, associate professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, examines whether South Korea should continue to rely on US extended nuclear deterrence by considering the status of the current US-ROK alliance. Professor Richey suggests three “mutually reinforcing paths” including strengthening South Korea’s conventional deterrence capabilities, initiating a Korean Peninsula Nuclear Planning mechanism, and having South Korea take post-US presidential election measures to improve relations with the US. As much as Seoul’s national security depends on Washington, US domestic political factors affect South Korea’s security. In this regard, the upcoming US election may provide a crossroad for the US-ROK alliance. Professor Richey argues that alliance recovery will be easier if Biden gets elected since his administration’s priority is to repair US alliances.

The extended nuclear deterrence provided by the US aims to protect South Korea from a third-party aggressor such as North Korea. However, there are issues related to the provider’s credibility and reliability. In this commentary, Professor Mason Richey, associate professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, examines whether South Korea should continue to rely on US extended nuclear deterrence by considering the status of the current US-ROK alliance. Professor Richey suggests three “mutually reinforcing paths” including strengthening South Korea’s conventional deterrence capabilities, initiating a Korean Peninsula Nuclear Planning mechanism, and having South Korea take post-US presidential election measures to improve relations with the US. As much as Seoul’s national security depends on Washington, US domestic political factors affect South Korea’s security. In this regard, the upcoming US election may provide a crossroad for the US-ROK alliance. Professor Richey argues that alliance recovery will be easier if Biden gets elected since his administration’s priority is to repair US alliances.

The logic of and motivation for extended nuclear deterrence are clear. The extension of the US nuclear umbrella to South Korea is intended to deter North Korea (and possibly other states such as China and Russia) from launching a nuclear attack on South Korea. This aims to promote stability in the East Asia region. It reduces South Korea’s incentive to develop an independent nuclear deterrent, helping prevent a proliferation arms race among neighboring states seeking their own paths of nuclear breakout. Moreover—and arguably more importantly—US extended nuclear deterrence for South Korea is intended to increase conventional deterrence as well, as Washington’s nuclear backstop for Seoul in theory disincentivizes[1] Pyongyang from launching a major[2] conventional attack for fear that it could escalate to an unwinnable nuclear conflict.

The logic of extended nuclear deterrence may be clear, but there always lingers the question of the credibility and reliability of the provider of extended nuclear deterrence. This is true both in general and in the particular case of the Korean peninsula.

US extended nuclear deterrence for South Korea is central to the security of both the Korean peninsula and East Asia writ large, yet is politically fragile. Hence the question: should South Korea count on US extended nuclear deterrence? This article examines the question from several perspectives, notably in light of strategic considerations and the current state of the US-ROK alliance.

Casting Doubt

If the conceptual logic of extended nuclear deterrence is clear, the willpower to execute its fundamental underpinning—launching a US nuclear strike against a third-party state on behalf of an ally—is highly uncertain. The clarity of the logic obscures the gravity of the act: the use of a uniquely[3] destructive weapon that potentially entails the death of millions and uncontrolled escalation presenting existential risk to humanity (if additional nuclear powers were to be drawn in). Ordering a nuclear attack on any state—even one directly at war with the US—is an enormous psychological burden for any US president; to do so primarily for the benefit of an ally, rather than primarily for the US and its population, requires an almost unimaginable level of fortitude. The credibility of extended nuclear deterrence rests, however, precisely on the assumption that this presidential fortitude is reliable, that the US president would trade San Francisco for Busan.[4] This unimaginable, yet reliable fortitude is necessary, and a heavy lift, even in the most favorable of circumstances, which, one hastens to add, do not obtain with the current situation of US extended nuclear deterrence for South Korea. Credible, reliable extended nuclear deterrence requires—in order to buttress the requisite presidential fortitude—a rock-solid relationship between allies (including between ally leaders), as well as the patron state’s principled purpose and clarity about the strategic value of meeting its extended nuclear deterrence obligations. There is reason to doubt this in the current situation under US president Donald Trump.

To begin with, Trump is notorious for his unreliability as a partner, an ingrained aspect of his psychological profile that extends back to his period as a businessman and has remained prominent during his White House mandate. Beyond his general propensity for personal betrayal, Trump has repeatedly denigrated US allies, including South Korea. Why should South Korea—and, perhaps more importantly from an extended deterrence perspective, North Korea or another nuclear-weapon-possessing adversary of South Korea—believe a generally mendacious and unreliable Trump would honor the US obligation of a retaliatory nuclear strike on behalf of South Korea when doing so potentially would put the US in danger, clearly violating Trump’s “America First” foreign policy orientation?

Beyond the sheer problem of the unreliability and alliance hostility of Trump—who might, after all, soon be out of office and succeeded by Joe Biden, a seasoned supporter of US alliances—what he represents about the US body politic is also discouraging for US extended nuclear deterrence for South Korea. Trump’s administration—which, despite being riven with corruption, grift and graft, lawless opportunism, incompetence, and negligence, enjoys the support of 35%-45% of the population, who ipso facto finds this behavior benign—is an expression of how little the US government and broader population are dedicated to upholding the rule of law. This problem is unlikely to vanish even with Trump out of office—it is, rather, a flaw in the national character of the US at the moment. This raises the question—critical for South Korea—of how seriously a state that does not sufficiently respect domestic rule of law can be expected to respect its defense commitment to a treaty ally.

Additionally, one must recall that Trump’s foreign policy—including alliance hostility that casts doubt on extended nuclear deterrence for South Korea—is also an expression of the aggregate preference of the US population to be less militarily engaged abroad. The historical default foreign policy preference of the broad US population is moderate isolationism, with the more interventionist, proactive, alliance-focused post-WWII period an exception. It is worth asking if the US can be trusted to support a policy as laden as extended nuclear deterrence for South Korea—with the major risks that entails—given that the US population clearly supports removal of trivial numbers of US troops even from places such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, which have extremely limited capacity to inflict damage on the US territory.

Turning from domestic political factors in the US to the international strategic context for US extended nuclear deterrence for South Korea, the situation is also unfavorable. Any realistic adversary scenario involves a third-party state (North Korea, China, Russia) that could strike US territory with a residual (third) strike, if the US were itself to retaliate (second strike) on behalf of South Korea in reprisal for the third-party state’s initial (first) strike against South Korea. The US and South Korea may game out the scenarios to locate a point of US dominance on the escalation ladder (indeed this is one of the reasons for the US introduction of low-yield warheads for SLBMs in the western Pacific), but the bottom line is that the third-party states most likely to be involved in conflict with South Korea are sufficiently nuclear-armed that, under conflict conditions, a strike on US territory cannot be excluded. Consequently, there is a chance that the US president would avoid that risk by not launching a nuclear attack against said third-party state in accordance with US extended nuclear deterrence commitment.

South Korea must know this. North Korea certainly does. Indeed Pyongyang just provided a vivid picture of its own deterrence capabilities in its latest October 10 military parade, which displayed a new, larger ICBM and a new variant of the Pukguksong series SLBM. The ICBM (provisionally known as the Hwasong-16), which can strike anywhere in the continental US, is presumably capable of carrying multiple warheads and decoys or a larger thermonuclear warhead with better and more robust penetration aids and other countermeasures. These technologies seem designed to defeat US ballistic missile defense, which is a problem for extended nuclear deterrence because a sufficiently reliable and comprehensive missile defense sys-tem would buttress the US perception that it could strike North Korea without fear of reprisal. That is, to the extent that North Korean capabilities cast doubt on the effectiveness of US ballistic missile defense, they erode the credibility of extended nuclear deterrence for South Korea.[5] Less is known about the new Pukguksong SLBM, but its deployment would also complicate US calculations of its deterrence capabilities vis-à-vis North Korea.

Neither of these new sys-tems has been tested, and are ostensibly not ready for operational deployment. And in the case of North Korean SLBMs, there are enormous unanswered questions about command-and-control, the survivability of North Korea’s noisy and outdated submarines, and other aspects of reliability. Nonetheless, the ongoing quantitative and qualitative development and improvement of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal represent a technological wedge for decoupling Washington from Seoul. From a strategic perspective, the incentive structure to provide extended nuclear deterrence for the purpose of order building/maintenance and nonproliferation changes when the third-party state has nuclear weapons that can strike the extended nuclear deterrence provider.[6]

Effects and Responses

The bottom line is that in the current environment, South Korea cannot truly trust US extended nuclear deterrence. Yet it is also, seemingly, consigned to do so, absent a fraught attempt at developing an independent nuclear deterrent that would likely break the US-ROK military alliance and have grave effects on both the South Korean economy (which might face economic sanctions for proliferation activities) and regional stability in Northeast Asia. So, how might South Korea mitigate the downsides of this unenviable situation?

Three potentially mutually reinforcing paths come to mind. The first task is strengthening South Korea’s conventional deterrence capabilities. North Korea’s nuclear weapons do, of course, represent a risk to South Korean security, whether through inadvertent or intentional use, but both of these scenarios are exceedingly unlikely, and it is in fact North Korean conventional capabilities (with, to be sure, Pyongyang’s nuclear sword of Damocles hanging in the background) that are the greater and more direct threat to South Korea. If Seoul successfully invests in conventional deterrence capabilities,[7] it can likely raise the cost of North Korean conventional aggression sufficiently that North Korean leadership will not have a competitive strategy for enacting it. South Korea is already taking some of these steps, both through its rising defense budget—including for R&D and procurement—and the conceptual triad of Kill Chain, Korean Air and Missile Defense, and Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation. One notes also that Seoul should expect Pyongyang to continue to engage in “grey zone” actions that undermine South Korean security and resolve slowly over time, while no single action rises to a level sufficient to warrant a major South Korean kinetic response. It would behoove Seoul to develop better strategies, and the requisite capabilities for applying them, to deter, and if necessary, counter, these “grey zone” actions.

A second step is considering initiating a Korean Peninsula Nuclear Planning mechanism in which South Korea would have a role. With some adjustment for different contexts, this would be analogous to the Nuclear Planning Group в НАТО. Это укрепило бы доверие по вопросам ядерной политики — стратегии, вариантов/целей ядерного применения и т. д. — как со стороны США, так и со стороны Республики Корея. Важно отметить, что это формально вовлекло бы Сеул в процесс рассмотрения и адаптации политики расширенного ядерного сдерживания как функции развивающихся угроз. Этот подход — который предлагался и ранее, и имеет некоторые недостатки, включая предполагаемую крутую кривую обучения Сеула в этой области из-за отсутствия опыта — является промежуточным шагом между бездействием и повторным размещением[8] американского ядерного оружия на территории Южной Кореи, что, несомненно, было бы крайне провокационным по отношению к Северной Корее и Пекину, и для чего в Южной Корее недостаточно общественной поддержки. США, как правило, готовы рассматривать такой тип сотрудничества в области обороны высокого уровня только с ближайшими союзниками, к которым Южная Корея по-прежнему относится. Несмотря на некоторую недавнюю турбулентность в альянсе — большая часть которой вызвана особенностями президента Трампа — существует история институционального сотрудничества между внешнеполитическими и оборонными ведомствами США и Южной Кореи, а также высокий уровень общественной поддержки альянса среди более широкого населения обеих стран. Эти столпы сотрудничества могли бы быть использованы для поддержки создания механизма ядерного планирования Корейского полуострова.

Наконец, Сеулу следует предпринять шаги — после президентских выборов в США — для смягчения напряженности в отношениях с Вашингтоном. Это, вероятно, будет проще с администрацией Байдена, учитывая его заявления о том, что главным приоритетом внешней политики будет восстановление американских альянсов. Однако это критически важно независимо от того, кто выиграет выборы. В конечном счете, расширенное ядерное сдерживание настолько же надежно, насколько прочен альянс, в который оно встроено. Для этого Сеулу следует рассмотреть, в какой степени эта прочность может быть укреплена путем проявления большего активного интереса камериканским интересам безопасности в более широком регионе Восточной Азии. Это трудно для правительств Южной Кореи, которые, по понятным причинам, озабочены Корейским полуостровом и обеспокоены тем, чтобы не задеть Пекин, однако было бы полезно для альянса США и Республики Корея, и, следовательно, для расширенного ядерного сдерживания, если бы Сеул продемонстрировал, что он также заинтересован в региональной политике Вашингтона. Услуга за услугу. ■

[1] Несмотря на парадокс «стабильность/нестабильность». См.: Гленн Снайдер, «Сдерживание и оборона» (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961), с. 226.

[2] Низкоуровневая и асимметричная агрессия рассматриваются ниже.

[3] Действительно, существует целая литература, обсуждающая, как ядерное оружиеsui generis характер породил сильный нормативный запрет — «ядерное табу» — на первое применение ядерного оружия.

[4] Во время холодной войны Франция проводила независимую ядерную политику вне контекста НАТО именно потому, что Шарль де Голльне верил , что США «обменяют Нью-Йорк на Париж».

[5] Это также верно для Японии.

[6] Опять же, это также верно для Японии.

[7] Включая, но не ограничиваясь: истребителями, ракетами и системами противоракетной/воздушной обороны, технологиями противолодочной борьбы, разведкой/наблюдением/разведкой, усовершенствованными наземными боевыми системами, автономными системами и робототехникой для смягчения будущих демографических проблем, связанных с нехваткой рабочей силы, кибернетическими возможностями и т. д.

[8] В последнее время велисьнекоторые дебаты о возможности повторного размещения американского тактического ядерного оружия на территории Южной Кореи.

• Мейсон Ричи является доцентом международной политики в Университете иностранных языков Ханкук (Сеул, Южная Корея) и старшим обозревателем в Азиатском обществе (Корея). Доктор Ричи также занимал должности приглашенного научного сотрудника POSCO в Центре Восток-Запад (Гонолулу, Гавайи) и стипендиата DAAD в Потсдамском университете. Его исследования сосредоточены на внешней политике и политике безопасности США и Европы применительно к Азиатско-Тихоокеанскому региону. Недавние научные статьи появились (среди прочего) в Pacific Review, Asian Security, Global Governance и Foreign Policy Analysis. Более короткие аналитические статьи и мнения были опубликованы в 38North, War on the Rocks, Le Monde, Sueddeutsche Zeitung и Forbes, среди других изданий. Он является соредактором тома The Future of the Korean Peninsula: Korea 2032» (Routledge, готовится к выходу в 2021 г.).

• Ответственный за выпуск и редактирование: Пэк Чин Гён, научный сотрудник EAI
              Контакты: 02 2277 1683 (доб. 209) | j.baek@eai.or.kr