The Nuts and Bolts of North Korea’s Nuclear Strategy

North Korea has been in the news recently for refusing to comply with the UN Security Council’s resolution of terminating its nuclear program and continuing to test its increasingly advanced ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles). North Korea also conducted a hydrogen bomb test, as well as releasing a picture of what appears to be a hydrogen bomb being loaded into an ICBM warhead recently.

The lack of attention to and the underestimation of North Korea’s nuclear program advancement resulted in the escalation today. Many presume that it will not be long before North Korea develops a missile capable of hitting the entire United States, including major cities such as New York. This prediction makes it even more urgent to have a clear understanding of North Korea’s nuclear strategy.

Why is North Korea such a threat?

The main reason is that the nation simply does not behave rationally, like other nuclear powers—this is why it is sometimes referred to as a “rogue state.” To quote Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.” A nuclear power, traditionally, has the responsibility to protect its citizens from other nuclear threats, as well as to be reasonable on when to take steps down to deescalate a situation and prevent a nuclear war. This is typically due to the fact that before North Korea, nuclear powers were generally major, industrially developed countries with a substantial population—in other words, nations that have a lot to lose if a nuclear war breaks out. However, North Korea is different. The only thing that keeps North Korea from collapsing is its regime’s brutal and dictatorial control of the population. When a regime allows hundreds of thousands of its citizens to starve to death while the rich and the powerful enjoy a luxurious lifestyle, sending millions to their death in a military conflict does not concern its leaders as much. Another key reason why North Korea is a great threat is how dangerously pro-war the people are. Decades of brainwashing propaganda and education have made North Koreans see the West as their nemesis.

We can see from the interviews of the North Korean people that they dream of a war in which they can “inflict great damage” on the enemy. “To inflict great damage”, not “to defeat.” That is the key essence of North Korea’s military strategy. As foolish as the North Korean leadership may sometimes seem, even they know that it is impossible to win against the United States. From air superiority, to naval power, to the equipment and training of troops, the United States tops North Korea in almost everything. However, there is one thing North Korea has over the United States, which is the fact that North Korea feels that it can afford to lose 50,000 men, anytime, anywhere. The United States, on the other hand, cannot.

The World recognizes the United States as the dominant military superpower, which also means the expectation for the US military is high, especially from its citizens. America lost over one million men during WWII, but still had massive domestic support. On the other hand, the American government was humiliated when it suffered the loss of 60,000 men in the Vietnam war. This is because the public deemed Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as worthy opponents and did not think of the Viet Cong in the same way. The American public have a low image of North Korea, thus, they expect the American military to defeat North Korea easily. Therefore, any significant loss of lives of Americans or US allies will be deemed unacceptable in the US. North Korea knows this and it is the core tenet of North Korea’s deterrence against the United States. North Korea knows that it will lose if war breaks out, but it bet on being able to inflict massive damage upon the US and its allies, and continues to employ this threat to prevent the US from going to war with it. To accomplish this, North Korea pursues military advancement with weapons that can do great damage to the civilian population of their opponent rather than pursuing traditional military technology that aims to destroy the enemy’s military. Their great effort in the development of nuclear bombs is, perhaps, the best example. Besides that, North Korea also has some 10,000 artillery units stationed along the mountain ranges near the DMZ, which can obliterate Seoul within minutes.

The North Korean nuclear strategy is very much different from that of other nations. As Nobel prize winner Thomas Schelling stated in his work The Diplomacy of Violence, in a traditional sense, “The very efficiency of nuclear weapons could make them ideal for starting war, if they can suddenly eliminate the enemy’s capability to shoot back.” North Korea also has another approach. It does not possess the ability to destroy another nuclear power’s ability to retaliate in a responding nuclear strike, and it is too small in size to absorb a nuclear strike, unlike the United States, Russia or China. Its nuclear strategy is in fact very similar to that of Israel. North Korea and Israel are both small in size, surrounded by powerful nations they view as enemies; both possess a militarism ideology; both lack the ability to have a great quantity of nuclear warheads; and both are limited regional powers. North Korea sees its nuclear power as a shield against their much more powerful opponents. For North Korea, such opponents include the United States, Japan, South Korea, and even possibly China; for Israel, such opponents are Jordan, Syria, Iran, and Egypt. Unlike Israel, North Korea is significantly behind in traditional—that is, non-WMD forces—military powers. Their fighters, tanks and equipment are outdated and their ability to conduct a modern, high-tech conflict is virtually nonexistent. Therefore, it can only depend on WMDs such as nukes and heavy artillery forces to conduct an asymmetrical deterrence against what it views as “aggressors”.

Such a mentality of holding the enemy population hostage is dangerous, but very possibly the only option for North Korea. In a more sympathetic view, North Korea pursuing nuclear weapons may simply be a self-defensive measure. What this means is that it is extremely unlikely, or even impossible, for North Korea to stop its nuclear program because they see it as their savior. It is also useless to spend effort on making North Korea stop its nuclear program now, since they already possess the ability to manufacture, arm, and deliver a hydrogen bomb.

What does this mean to South Korea, to Japan, and to the world at large? This means North Korea is completely uncontrollable. No matter its original intent in developing nuclear weapons, the simple fact that hydrogen bombs, along with ICBMs, are in the hand of an unstable, radical, and irrational regime is bad news for the 7 billion people on planet Earth. The world can simply not overlook the current threat that the new Asian nuclear power poses to everyone else.

For more information, please visit The National Interest, Quartz, and the Independent, or read Thomas Schelling’s The Diplomacy of Violence.