Can America Live With a Nuclear North Korea?
The Trump administration claims “all options are on the table” for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program—from using military force, to pressuring China to punish its North Korean ally, to Donald Trump negotiating directly with Kim Jong Un. But what do those options look like? And what consequences could they have? This series explores these questions, option by option by option.
The Trump administration’s most striking statement on North Korea has come not from Donald Trump himself, with his talk of locked-and-loaded fire and fury, but from the president’s national-security adviser, H.R. McMaster. In an August interview with ABC, McMaster said something that received little attention relative to its import. He disagreed with the assessment of Susan Rice, his predecessor in the Obama administration, that the United States and its allies could, if need be, “tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea” and “rely on traditional deterrence” to prevent the North from using them, just as they had deterred the Soviet Union from using its much more massive nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.
McMaster, who has a doctorate in military history, suggested that “classical deterrence theory” couldn’t be applied to a nuclear-armed North Korea because Kim Jong Un’s regime was different than other governments with nuclear weapons. It is ruthless, he argued, inflicting “unspeakable brutality against its own people” and its opponents, even killing off Kim’s half-brother with VX nerve agent smack in the middle of a Malaysian airport.
Maybe McMaster wasn’t articulating administration policy; other have hinted that deterrence can work with North Korea. But consider what it means), and since international efforts to coax and coerce North Korea off this course have so far failed, McMaster’s logic leads to some dark places.
