ASAN North Korea Conference: ABSTRACT

Robert A. Manning

Nuclear Strategy and Deterrence

U.S. extended deterrence has been — and continues to be — a cornerstone of stability not only on the Korean Peninsula, but for the Asia-Pacific region. In fact, a changing, more complex security landscape in Northeast Asia give deterrence and strategic stability a heightened importance in the period to 2025. This evolving security environment poses new challenges and threats. At the same time, the non-nuclear tools and elements of extended deterrence are expanding to complement the nuclear umbrella.

The emerging security environment features growing North Korean missile and nuclear capabilities with potential qualitative changes – for example, a mobile ICBM – judged by some analysts as likely to be deployed by the end of this decade or sooner. It also features an increasingly capable China with military assets that could constrain US maritime access in East Asia. How to strengthen the architecture of deterrence in region without increasing security dilemmas vis-à-vis China is one of the policy challenges ahead. Deterrence on the Korean Peninsula spills over into the regional equation.

The Obama administration’s needs to find the balance between its stated goal of moving toward zero nuclear weapons and the credibility of the US security guarantee. Given that Asian nuclear weapons states (China, India and Pakistan) are building up, and potential proliferating states, particularly North Korea and Iran are part of the strategic equation, it is not a safe assumption that further US nuclear reductions mean a safer world. Less may not necessarily be better. The uncertainty about the quantity and quality of North Korean nuclear weapons is another factor impacting nuclear strategy. How much enriched uranium capabilities enhance the size and impact of Pyongyang’s potential arsenal needs to be determined.

Strengthening the architecture of deterrence to 2025 also requires not only factoring in changes in the threat environment, but also determining how the non-nuclear components of deterrence are best utilized and integrated into the structure and content of deterrence. There are several aspects involved. First, there is the role of missile defense: what likely deployable missile defenses are possible, and how would they complicate or devalue North Korean strategic assets? What are the limits of missile defense beyond which China perceives its strategic deterrent is at risk? Second, there is the prospective role of conventional strike weapons and new and emerging weapons technologies such as directed-energy weapons. Do they reduce the nuclear requirements of deterrence? Third, what is the role of cyber and space in the deterrence equation? And lastly, the enhanced capabilities of US allies, the ROK and Japan, complement the US role in deterrence. What improved ROK capabilities bolster deterrence? Post 2015, how does the decision to retain and expand the CFC after transfer of wartime operational control effect overall deterrence? What are the possibilities and limits of US-ROK-Japan trilateral coordination on deterrence-related issues. To the degree that a more trilaterally integrated ISR and missile defense network possible, overall deterrence of North Korea would be further strengthened.