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11. Redefining Success for the Trump-Kim Summit

Author:
Richard N. Holwill
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassadors Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
A meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un (KJU), the Supreme Leader of the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK), can be a success even if it fails to achieve President Trump’s announced goal: an end to the DPRK nuclear weapons program. This meeting starts by giving KJU one of his long-sought goals. It will, in effect, be more than a meeting. It will be a “summit” and will confer on KJU the status of the leader of a legitimate government. President Trump would be wise to redefine success. He should not fall into the trap of saying that success will be defined by a “denuclearization agreement.” While that should be a long-term goal, it will not happen at this meeting. Still, the summit will be successful if it produces a process that can lead to a substantial reduction of tension on the Korean Peninsula. This is not to say that an agreement on denuclearization is off the table. Rather, it is to rec­ognize that these talks could present a framework for negotiation that would be very valuable, even if they will fall short of a nuclear disarmament accord. To understand the difficulty of reaching a nuclear arms agreement, we need only look at the way the two leaders speak about denuclearization. Each appears to define it differently. President Trump applies the term to nuclear weapons in the DPRK. KJU speaks of it as applying to the entire Korean Peninsula. He will argue that, if he must allow a mean­ingful verification regime, so must U.S. forces in South Korea.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Deterrence, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

12. Will North Korea Denuclearize after the Singapore Summit? Lessons from the past

Author:
Naoko Aoki
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM)
Abstract:
Policy-makers, scholars, and analysts disagree about whether North Korea will take any meaningful denuclearization steps after its leader Kim Jong Un met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore in June 2018. Many believe that the breakdowns of the 1994 Agreed Framework and the Six Party Talks process in the 2000s show that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program cannot be constrained through cooperation. According to this view, Pyongyang violated its previous commitments once it received economic and political benefits, and it will do so again. The underlying assumption is that Washington was fully implementing its own commitments until Pyongyang broke the deal. But is this true? This paper discusses three key findings drawn from an analysis of U.S. implementation of past denuclearization agreements with North Korea. The first is that the United Stated did not always follow through with its cooperative commitments because of domestic political constraints, even when North Korea was fulfilling its commitments. This makes it difficult to determine whether North Korea ultimately did not honor its obligations because it never intended to or because it was responding to U.S. actions. The second is that some parts of past deals were more susceptible than others to being undercut by domestic opposition because they received insufficient political attention. The third is that such domestic interference could be minimized by obtaining the widest possible coalition of domestic support from the negotiation stage. The roadmap for North Korea’s denuclearization is unclear, as the Singapore summit did not determine concrete steps toward that goal. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Pyongyang in early July also did not yield specifics such as the scope and timeline of denuclearization. But based on the findings from past agreements, this paper argues that the only way for the United States to find out if engagement will work this time is to test North Korea’s intentions by carrying out Washington’s own cooperative commitments more consistently than in the past.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Nonproliferation, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and Korea

13. China’s Evolving Nuclear Forces: Changes, Rationales and Implications

Author:
Adam MacDonald
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
China is embarking on a comprehensive modernization program to quantitatively and qualitatively improve their nuclear force. These efforts, however, do not reflect or indicate a distinct shift in Chinese views towards or policy governing the purpose and use of nuclear weapons, but to achieve and maintain a secured second strike capability in a changing strategic landscape. Specifically, military developments by the United States including Ballistic Missile Defence and Precision Global Strike are seen as threatening the credibility of their nuclear deterrent, motivating the construction and deployment of a more modern, diverse and capable force. These force reconfigurations, however, create the potential of causing confusing and misunderstandings with the United States, and other nuclear powers, of the rationales informing their improvement. Ensuring the nuclear force balance between Beijing and Washington remains a minor and largely benign matter separated from and not influencing other more divisive matters is critical in the maintenance of their relatively stable, but increasingly complicated and tense, great power relationship and the international system in general. In order to achieve this, both states must clearly signal an understanding of their nuclear relationship as one defined by mutual vulnerability and the necessity of providing guarantees and evidence that their respective military technological developments and force structure changes are not designed to alter this reality.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Deterrence, and Modernization
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, and North America

14. Pragmatic, Not Mad: The Rationality of North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Author:
Mark Halchin
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
The reasoning behind North Korea’s continued efforts to develop a nuclear deterrent remains puzzling to many, with the heavy costs and behavior of the regime leading to the belief that it is irrational. This paper argues that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is instead a rational strategy for the regime. The perceived threat from South Korean and American military forces, as well as its own ineffective conventional forces, make a North Korean nuclear program a viable and relatively cheap deterrent. Its limited foreign relations and near-total dependence on China largely insulate it from economic punishment. Finally, the nature of the regime allows it to disregard popular opinion while forcing it to accommodate military demands for a nuclear deterrent. The necessity of nuclear weapons for defence and the few downsides of possessing them means that Pyongyang is unlikely to give them up, thus dooming denuclearization efforts to failure.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Deterrence, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, South Korea, North Korea, and North America

15. Ballistic Missile Defense in South Korea: Separate Systems Against a Common Threat

Author:
Joshua Pollack
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM)
Abstract:
Some of the most enduring disagreements in the alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) concern ballistic missile defenses (BMD). At the same time that South Korea has expanded its conventional offensive missile program, it has declined American proposals for a regionally integrated BMD architecture, insisting on developing its own national system in parallel to the defenses operated by U.S. Forces Korea (USFK). American appeals for interoperability between U.S. and ROK systems have been received cautiously, as were proposals to enhance its own BMD in Korea by introducing the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) to the Peninsula for several years. A desire for expanded autonomy in national security appears to underpin Seoul’s attitudes on BMD. Rather than rely passively on American protection against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, South Korea’s military leaders have focused on developing precision-strike capabilities to intimidate Pyongyang, and resisted simply accepting an American BMD umbrella. Even more than they desire greater independence from their American patron-ally, South Koreans are suspicious of entanglements with Japan, their former colonial master, whose own defensive systems are already integrated with the American regional BMD architecture. This outlook encourages the pursuit of independent defense capabilities and discourages institutionalizing trilateral security arrangements.
Topic:
Security, Nuclear Weapons, Regional Cooperation, Nonproliferation, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

16. Stability at Low Nuclear Numbers

Author:
Catherine Kelleher
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM)
Abstract:
What conditions are needed for a stable transition to a new nuclear order, one in which the total number of nuclear weapons would be reduced to very low numbers, perhaps even zero? We have addressed the myriad issues raised by this question with funding from a grant on “Creating Conditions for a Stable Transition to a New Nuclear Order,” co-directed by Catherine Kelleher and Judith Reppy, from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University. Our project had three goals: to take a fresh look at the theoretical underpinnings of the arguments about strategic security and nuclear doctrines; to encourage members of the younger generation (NextGen) scholars working on nuclear security issues to see themselves as part of a network that stretches from scholars in the field to active participants in the policy process; and to disseminate the products of the project to the policy community, in Washington and elsewhere. We convened five workshops—in Berlin (December 2014); Ithaca, NY (November 2015 and November 2016); Monterey, CA (February 2016); and Washington, DC (May 2016)—and held five discussion (“reach-in”) meetings with Washington insiders at the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC. This essay concentrates on our project’s first goal: a re-assessment of the deterrence literature and the conditions for stability during a transition period to low nuclear numbers, perhaps nuclear zero. It is based on the work of the participants in the workshops and on our own reading of the literature, both from the early days of the nuclear age and more recent contributions following the end of the Cold War.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Nonproliferation, Missile Defense, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, South Korea, and North Korea

17. KEDO: How Multilateral Cooperation Helped an Unprecedented North Korean Project

Author:
Naoko Aoki
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM)
Abstract:
In 1994, the United States and North Korea signed the Agreed Framework, in which Pyongyang promised to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for energy aid and improvement of relations with Washington. An international consortium led by the United States was created to implement the key provisions of the deal, including the delivery of two light water reactor (LWR) units. While multi-national efforts are common in commercial nuclear projects, the case of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) was unique. KEDO’s challenges ranged from the lack of diplomatic relations between its main members and North Korea, to the country’s poor infrastructure. This paper examines KEDO’s experience and concludes that cooperation among its member states—Japan, South Korea, the United States and others—helped ensure the project’s financial and political feasibility, even if work did not proceed smoothly. While the construction of the LWRs was never completed due to larger political changes, KEDO’s experience offers lessons for future nuclear projects that face similar hurdles. EXPLORE:
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Regional Cooperation, Nonproliferation, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

18. Fears of War on the Korean Peninsula

Author:
Dario Kuntić
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Development and International Relations (IRMO)
Abstract:
War is lurking on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea has embarked on an accelerated buildup of weapons of mass destruction and modernization of its already large conventional force. It has been consistently testing a series of ballistic and intercontinental missiles, performing nuclear tests, and accelerating toward development of a fully functional nuclear weapon that could strike the United States. The North Korean regime is now estimated to have as many as twenty nuclear warheads and could soon be able to make some to �it on the missiles necessary to deliver them. With time running out, Washington may come to the conclusion that a preventive military strike against North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs is the only way to deprive Pyongyang of capability to launch a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile on the US. On a visit to Seoul in March this year, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson left open the option of a military strike to prevent the development of nuclear weapons program from advancing too far, vowed to defend allies in the region, and ruled out negotiations with Pyongyang. As Washington and Pyongyang escalate their war of words, with both sides hinting it could end with a nuclear con�lict, the prospect of serious con�lict is stronger than ever.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Nonproliferation, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

19. Nuclear Deterrence: The Wohlstetter-Blackett Debate Re-visited

Author:
Rajesh Basrur
Publication Date:
04-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
The Cold War debate between Albert Wohlstetter and Patrick Blackett over the requirements of effective deterrence is of profound relevance half a century later. The two thinkers offered systematic arguments for their maximalist (Wohlstetter) and minimalist (Blackett) positions. How we conceive of these requirements shapes the kinds of nuclear weapons doctrines, forces and postures we adopt. Whereas the Wohlstetter-Blackett debate was based largely on deductive logic, the opposing arguments can today be assessed on the basis of evidence drawing from nearly seven decades of strategic behaviour between nuclear rivals. An analysis of major confrontations in five nuclear dyads – United States-Soviet Union, United States-China, Soviet Union-China, India-Pakistan, and United States-North Korea – clearly offers much stronger support for Blackett‟s minimalist case than for Wohlstetter‟s maximalist one. Effective deterrence does not require second-strike capability as defined by Wohlstetter and the nuclear balance has no effect on a state‟s capacity to deter. Consequently, the central tenets of orthodox nuclear deterrence theory and doctrine are shown to be without foundation. For policymakers, the optimal forces and postures required for effective deterrence are therefore less demanding and the hurdles in the path of arms control and at least partial disarmament less difficult to cross.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Nonproliferation, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
Pakistan, United States, China, India, and Asia

20. The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal: Triumph of the Business Lobby

Author:
Subrata Ghoshroy
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
MIT Center for International Studies
Abstract:
South Asia has come a long way since the days of SEATO and CENTO1 —the U.S.- sponsored pacts to contain China and keep India under check. Gone are the days when the Seventh Fleet flexed its muscle on the Bay of Bengal in support of a beleaguered Pakistan in its military campaign against the “mukti bahini”—the freedom fighters in erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Once the leader of the non-aligned, the Indian government has not expressed even a whimper of protest about what has been happening to Iraq, Lebanon, or Gaza. India and the United States now are “natural allies,” apparently forged primarily by mutual economic interests. But there was the China factor as well. Although left unsaid, China entered in to the calculation of both India and the United States. The Bush administration is careful not to revive the notion of the Cold War policy of containing China, but many in the Congress are not so reticent. At the same time, the Indian government is equally careful to highlight the growing normalization of relations and the growing trade ties with Beijing. But the clamor in the security community in New Delhi is all about countering China—a topic I heard repeatedly during my recent visit to the region. So its importance cannot be discounted. But the economic incentives of the deal have not earned as much scrutiny, a major oversight in the public discourse.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Deterrence, and Denuclearization
Political Geography:
United States, China, India, Asia, and North America