Recommended Citation "Rattling the American Cage: North Korean Nuclear Threats and Escalation Potential", NAPSNet Policy Forum, April 04, 2013, https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-policy-forum/rattling-the-american-cage-north-korean-nuclear-threats-and-escalation-potential-2/

by Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos

April 4, 2013

A version of this report was also published as The Only Way To Find Out North Korea’s Intentions Is To Talk in US News on April 4, 2013.

Click here to download a pdf of this report.

I. Introduction

Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos write: “We do not believe that North Korea intends to attack South Korea, pre-emptively or otherwise, in the current cycle of threat projection. However, miscalculation, accidents, or “wild cards” can all activate an unstoppable chain of events that lead to uncontrollable escalation…Talk is cheap, valuable, and entails no concessions. In the current charged environment, the only way to obtain badly needed information about North Korean intentions and therefore, the real level of threat, is to talk to them.”

Peter Hayes is director of Nautilus Institute and Professor of International Relations at RMIT University in Melbourne. Roger Cavazos is an Associate of Nautilus Institute and retired US military intelligence officer.

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Nautilus Institute. Readers should note that Nautilus seeks a diversity of views and opinions on significant topics in order to identify common ground.

II. Policy Forum by Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos

Rattling the American Cage: North Korean Nuclear Threats and Escalation Potential

The signal to noise ratio on the Korean Peninsula is usually very low with a great deal of noise and only a few signals. Recently, the signals increased in amplitude and frequency but so too has the noise. Interpreting the signals correctly is even more challenging when the parties are not talking to each other but rather, past each other.

North Korean threat rhetoric is often hard to decipher. For example: “If the US imperialists brandish nuclear weapons, we — in complete contrast to former times — will by means of diversified, precision nuclear strike in our own style turn not just Seoul, but even Washington, into a sea of fire.”[1]

Thus wrote a North Korean official in the authoritative party newspaper Rodong Simun on March 6, 2013. This was the first time the North threatened to use nuclear weapons against cities, emulating the operational practices of the United States, China, and Russia. Perhaps that was the point.

This was followed shortly by a March 7 2013 declaration that North Korean forces could “carry out preemptive nuclear strikes on the strongholds of the aggressors”[2]—another attempt to assert that the North is a nuclear weapons state on equal footing with the United States, China, and Russia – a status that can only be accorded via the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is therefore unreachable for North Korea.

How seriously should we take these threats?

If we read the DPRK decisive system-wide policy pronouncements, and not just those public but tactical in nature statements designed to twang nerves in Washington or Seoul we find a more deliberate positioning of the North Korean nuclear weapons strategy than the casual reader might assume from reading the headlines based on the latest threat statement from Pyongyang, or the latest riposte from Washington.

Until mid-March, DPRK foreign affairs officials asserted that as “an all-powerful treasured sword that defends the country’s sovereignty and security,” its nuclear weapons were not negotiable. At least, not “as long as the United States’ nuclear threats and hostile policy exist.”[3] As late as March 16, when this statement was broadcast, the North held open the possibility that it might abandon its nuclear weapons provided US nuclear threats and hostility are removed.

This posture shifted dramatically in the last week of March. On March 25, US B52 bombers flew over South Korea in military exercises that simulated nuclear bombing runs against North Korea.[4] Nuclear-capable B2 stealth bombers followed on March 28 [5] and F22 stealth fighters on March 31 that could accompany B2 bombers in a nuclear strike mission on North Korea.[6]

There are very deep North Korean memories of airpower killing an estimated twenty percent of the populace and flattening most vertical structures during the Korean War [7]. The nuclear-capable B-52 and F111 flights and the near war during Operation Paul Bunyan in 1976 struck a particularly resonant chord at the time with the North Koreans. What one side intends as deterrence can easily be perceived as a provocation given an unsettled strategic environment. The B52s and B2s flights may also have the effect of reducing China’s influence to zero or even negative in Pyongyang given its inability to affect the US mobilization of countervailing nuclear threat against the North.

Beijing may also perceive that this unilateral move shows that the United States has given up on China to influence Pyongyang. From the Chinese perspective, sending the bombers embodies the “Pivot” in the worst possible way—especially given the likely association in Chinese minds of the B2 bombers over Korea with the mistaken stealth bombings of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 during the war in Kosovo.

On March 26, the North Korean foreign affairs ministry informed the UN Security Council that the United States was “fostering a vicious cycle of escalating tensions in order to come up with an international justification for provoking a nuclear war against us under the pretext of “non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.”

“The United States,” it said, “is now fully mobilizing its “three nuclear strike means” in the preparations for a nuclear war of northward aggression”—referring to US bombers, land-based missiles, and submarine-based missiles.[8]

On March 2, North Korea’s supreme commander Kim Jong Un ordered North Korean forces, including artillery, rockets, and missiles, to “enter No 1 combat ready posture.” He told his subordinates that the DPRK would “answer the US imperialists’ nuclear blackmail with a merciless nuclear attack.”[9]

It is unclear what “No 1 combat ready posture” consists of because that was the first time North Korea has announced that level of preparation. Again, North Korea likely felt threatened by unprecedented U.S. actions and responded in an unprecedented manner. However, it is important to note that North Korea did not actually move their military forces in any observable ways.

Three days later, on March 31, Kim presided over a pre-announced Korean Worker’s Party Central Committee Plenum that “set forth a new strategic line on carrying out economic construction and building nuclear armed forces simultaneously.”[10] (see Attachment 1). To this end, the Party directed that the Korean Peoples’ Army should make nuclear forces “pivotal” in all aspects of military strategy and deterrence.

For the senior-most leadership of the entire country to announce where and when they would assemble indicates there were at least some in positions of power who did not believe a decapitation strike or pre-emptive attack was imminent. Moreover, a key indicator of US intention to conduct a pre-emptive attack on North Korea based on prior experience—in particular, the August 1976 crisis—is the concurrent presence of US nuclear strike bombers appearing in Korean airspace and US aircraft carrier battlegroups offshore. In this standoff, there are no US aircraft carriers near Korea, a fact that is well known to North Korean intelligence. Nonetheless, the rhetorical threats continue increasing from Pyongyang even as the real signals of conventional threats remains static.

What to make of this roller coaster ride of nuclear invective and threat rhetoric?

First, the US decision to reassure South Korea (and itself apparently) that it might consider a nuclear strike on North Korea if the North attacked the South by sending nuclear-capable aircraft and submarines to exercise in and around Korea was tailor-made to prompt Northern leaders to escalate. It provided a perfect, undeniable rationale for conservatives in Pyongyang opposed to dialogue with the United States to shoot down any residual notions that the North might enter into a dialogue about the future of its nuclear weapons.

Thus, the DPRK’s atomic energy department announced [11] on April 2 that it would “readjust” and “restart” its uranium enrichment plant and plutonium-producing 5MW reactor at Nyongbyon (hereafter Yongbyon), the latter having been disabled in October 2007 as part of denuclearization talks—a slap in the face of not only the United States, but also China.

Second, North Korea does not have the resources to have a very large military and an economy. It’s economy is broken. It is sustained only by food and oil provided by China, and the manual labor of its work force digging out minerals for export, and its long-suffering agricultural industry. The only way that Kim Jong Un can square this circle is to reduce the size of the conventional military and to push demobilized soldiers into the civilian economy. North Korea lacks the huge surplus labor dedicated to agriculture that China possessed. To the extent that nuclear weapons allow Kim to substitute nuclear for conventional forces, the former may enable him to pursue military and economic goals simultaneously—at least in theory.

Third, the Party ended its March 31 directive by noting: “As a responsible nuclear weapons state, the DPRK will make positive efforts to prevent the nuclear proliferation, ensure peace and security in Asia and the rest of the world and realize the denuclearization of the world.”

On April 1, the DPRK’s Supreme People’s Assembly promulgated a law to consolidate the North’s status as a “nuclear weapons state” that enshrined the Party’s directive into domestic law, and laid down important fundamentals for future nuclear weapons doctrine [12] (Attachment 2). Many states have written policy into domestic law as a way of ensuring programmatic (budgeting) access and establishing a bureaucracy to establish inertia and prevent change – this is a classic signal of political will to stick to a decision. It also has the effect of raising the cost to change.

Here, Kim signaled that the door is not yet closed totally on negotiations over his nuclear weapons program. By demonstrating his ability to challenge the United States with the most virulent possible threats, he has positioned himself to be North Korea’s Richard Nixon to engage the United States.

As a down payment on that option, he also indicated, albeit ambiguously, that the North does not intend to cross the United States by exporting nuclear weapons or materials.

The DPRK’s nuclear strategy is not about deterrence or reassurance. It has plenty of conventional forces for deterrence or self-reassurance, even if they are relatively inferior and more so with every day that passes.

Rather, these statements are opportunistic, and express its authentic strategy which is extortionate. The North’s nuclear forces are intended to compel their adversaries to change their policies towards the DPRK, not to deter unprovoked external attack—except when such an attack might actually be in motion.

Also, charismatic leadership in a “partisan state” based on an ideology born in guerilla strategy requires an endless streams of reaffirmation in the form of battles against external forces. [13] Although Kim Jong Un appears to be secure in his rule, at least on the surface, he needs to establish his own credentials separate to the revolutionary legacy of his grandfather and the military-first politics of his father. Confrontation with the United States and virulent nuclear threat is perfect for this renewal of charismatic leadership.

In the latest ambiguous posturing and messaging, the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) which served as an oasis of exchange that continued even during previous fatal incidents has been affected for two days straight(as of this writing). There is precedent for closing KIC, but it is rare. North Korea said they allowed their activities in Kaesong to continue in order to benefit the South Korean companies who were operating shops in the KIC. However, if South Korea continued to insult North Korea then North Korea announced would close the zone.

Kaesong is an important symbol of what little Korean unity exists. It is also an important demilitarized area that presents an invasion corridor or “dagger aimed at the heart” of Pyongyang that traverses the DMZ. Threatening to shut down KIC casts a shadow of war over the entire ROK economy. When a rumor circulated for only a few hours that North Korea would close the zone, South Korea’s stock market lost almost over a percentage and a half. [14] For all these reasons, threatening to shut down KIC is a perfect wedge to push Seoul to pressure Washington to capitulate to North Korean demands.

We do not believe that North Korea intends to attack South Korea, pre-emptively or otherwise, in the current cycle of threat projection. However, miscalculation, accidents, or “wild cards” can all activate an unstoppable chain of events that lead to uncontrollable escalation. Who would have guessed, for example, that a former North Korean defector would steal a fishing vessel from the island of Pyeoncheon, and return to the North across the Northern Limit Line at this of all possible times?

Talk is cheap, valuable, and entails no concessions. In the current charged environment, the only way to obtain badly needed information about North Korean intentions and therefore, the real level of threat, is to talk to them.

In this regard, it is easy to find the bad news and reasons to have a continuing standoff and fight. It’s harder to find the tiny signals that all is not lost. The latter are what matters. We believe we have discerned some of these signals and that these deserve to be the subject of discussions between North Korea and the United States as a matter of urgency.

III. Attachment I