Quote of the week:
“Go, my people, enter your chambers,
And lock your doors behind you.
Hide but a little moment,
Until the indignation passes.”
— Isaiah
At times like these, Biblical prophecy is called for. Instead, we get op-eds.
Donald Trump spirals downward. He has no other place to go. Due to circumstances comprehensible only in retrospect, he became president. The corners he has cut and the deals he has struck will be his undoing. He is temperamentally unsuited to be president and to have sole authority to launch a nuclear strike. In due course, he will be ushered out, the victimizer posing as ultimate victim. Bipartisan sighs of relief will accompany his departure. He will rally what remains of his base, until they, too, will eventually move on, disinterested in whatever shiny object he tries to sell.
The first order of business for American citizens during the Trump presidency is to do everything in our collective power to limit the damage he can do. Since the most harm could result from a preventive war to disarm North Korea of its nuclear weapons, this aspect of damage limitation must have the highest priority.
Kim Jong Un is doing his part to prompt another preventive war. As provocations go, overflying Japan with a ballistic missile and carrying out another nuclear test are almost, but not yet, chart-toppers. These actions warrant even greater economic penalties, especially from China and Russia, as well as other clarifications of the folly of this young Maximum Leader’s current course. Tit-for-tat military rejoinders to his provocations also merit consideration — but only if they do not prompt conventional warfare and the use of nuclear weapons.
Along with nuclear deterrence, the other essential “pre-positioned” elements to deter North Korea are forward deployed military capabilities, theater missile defenses, sanctions and diplomacy backed by international law. The latter may seem quaint to the tough-minded, but it is an inconvenient fact that under international law, the only justification for a preventive war is if an adversary poses an imminent threat of attack.
In the case of North Korea, this construct is reversed: A first strike by North Korea’s untested leader seems within the realm of possibility only if he feels threatened by imminent U.S. attack. Thus, Trump will not have international law on his side if he decides to authorize a preventive war, and when Washington acts as the world’s most powerful rule breaker, U.S. leadership and alliances are badly eroded. When the two strongest nuclear-armed states engage in wars of choice and the blatant disregard for international borders, they reduce to rubble the two mainstays that have helped to keep the peace since World War II.
A second reason for restraint relates to the track record of the tough guys advocating another war: After the extended traumas of Afghanistan and Iraq, another U.S. military campaign must be nearly immaculate in its execution and almost immediate in North Korea’s capitulation. Let those who predict this result after predicting a cakewalk and cheerleading the war in Iraq come forward and forthrightly say so. Yes, there is one significant difference between a preventive war against Kim Jong Un than against Saddam Hussein: the former most assuredly possesses nuclear weapons. Does this make another war more compelling or more devastating?
A third reason for restraint relates to the track record of a badly wounded great power that has lost its moorings after 9/11. A war with North Korea would be the third fought by the United States in just sixteen years. The first two continue without end. U.S. expeditionary forces have been through Hell and back, and yet war hawks, having been temporarily foiled by successful diplomacy to strictly limit Iran’s bomb-making capacity, are busy setting the predicates for another war of choice.
Yes, the threat posed by Kim Jong Un and the North Korean nuclear program is very real. And yes, tougher measures against North Korea are needed. But what if sanctions do not succeed in forcing Kim Jong Un to capitulate and give up that which he holds most dear? Then what? Another war with heavy casualties will hand Beijing the keys to Asia and cause far wider ruptures in U.S. alliances in the Pacific and in Europe. America’s treasury will go deeper into the red and its standing in the world will decline further and faster – even after victory on the Korean peninsula.
There is no justice or justification in another war of choice that results in the deaths of many thousands of allied and U.S. civilians and soldiers, as well as the deaths of countless innocents in North Korea. Worse, there is no justice or justification in another war of choice that results in even a single mushroom cloud.
The norm of not using nuclear weapons on battlefields has been extended for seven decades since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This norm is the most important safety factor in a world of growing nuclear dangers. The reappearance of mushroom clouds on battlefields would be devastating enough; they could also prompt renewed nuclear testing by major and regional powers, as well as the shredding of what’s left of the nuclear safety net now being cut by Vladimir Putin and Republicans on Capitol Hill. Is a seven decade-old norm to be broken because a country with thousands of deliverable nuclear weapons has convinced itself that it cannot deter the use of one or more by North Korea?
The methods used by American Presidents to prevent the battlefield use of nuclear weapons by paranoid mass murderers like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong can also be employed against the likes of Kim Jong Un. These methods included deterrence, but deterrence alone did not prevent wars or reduce nuclear dangers. Deterrence requires diplomacy to prevent mushroom clouds. This has succeeded before, and might succeed again. Direct diplomacy with Kim Jong Un also might fail, but it has to be tried.
Nuclear strategists who seek to “strengthen” deterrence by fine-tuning weapon effects and yields are living in an unreal world. Safety doesn’t come from smaller mushroom clouds; it comes from no mushroom clouds. Not one pre-eminent strategic analyst has ever authored a convincing explanation of how two nuclear-armed states – having failed at diplomacy so badly that mushroom clouds have appeared — can succeed at controlling nuclear escalation. The surest way to achieve escalation control is to not use nuclear weapons on battlefields.
For a war of choice against North Korea to succeed, U.S. armed forces would need to prevent a single mushroom cloud on the battlefield. They would also need to prevent significant casualties. If the Pentagon cannot assure these results, then a third war since 9/11 would invite folly.
A wiser course would be to rely upon the instruments that have succeeded in preventing mushroom clouds since 1945: a strong military and alliances, deterrence, a purposeful military presence in the region, and active diplomacy. One of these key elements is now missing – direct U.S. diplomacy to reduce nuclear dangers with North Korea. But here’s the rub: direct diplomacy is unlikely to eliminate the threat that Americans fear most. If Donald Trump cannot abide by a mutual deterrence relationship with North Korea, then for as long as he is in the White House and Kim Jong Un remains in power, the prospect of another war on the Korean peninsula lies before us.
Note to readers: A shorter version of this essay appeared in Breaking Defense.