It's time for the United States to face reality. Efforts to encourage Kim to abandon his weapons have not only failed, but he is as clear as ever about using them to protect his country. |
 | | Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times; images by Nosyrevy and Komarov Vitaly, via Getty Images |
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In 2006, North Korea became the eighth country in history to detonate an atomic bomb. Since Kim Jong-un assumed the country's leadership in 2011, he has displayed a growing taste for demonstrating his country's nuclear might: Last Tuesday morning, residents of northern Japan woke to the blare of alarms from cellphones, radios and public speakers warning them to seek shelter as North Korea fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile over its eastern neighbor for the first time in five years. One of 26 weapons tests in 2022, it came just a few weeks after North Korea had passed a law declaring itself a nuclear weapons state, enshrining the country's right to use a pre-emptive nuclear strike for self-defense and closing the door, avowedly forever, to disarmament. |
The question of how to keep or take nuclear weapons out of North Korea's hands has vexed every U.S. president for the past three decades. In a guest essay this week, Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear arms control expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, offers a provocative answer: Give up. |
"Turning a blind eye to North Korea's entry into the nuclear club will sting, but we are essentially already doing that," he argues. "U.S. officials do little more than talk about how Mr. Kim's nuclear program is unacceptable, as he builds bomb after bomb. It's time to cut our losses, face reality and take steps to reduce the risk of war on the Korean Peninsula." |
As Russia brings the world closer to nuclear war than it's been since at least the end of the Cold War, I got in touch with Lewis to hear more about the potential promise and peril of recognizing another authoritarian nuclear power. |
Q: You argue that if the United States abandoned its futile quest for disarmament, it would open the door to improving relations with North Korea, through, for example, economic cooperation or development assistance. Could you expand a bit on what that cooperation and assistance might look like? How would Washington address concerns that such aid might end up strengthening the dictatorship or being funneled toward Pyongyang's nuclear program? |
The easiest thing to do is to start by lifting some sanctions. There is no shortage of ideas for reforming the North Korean economy — it is a wreck. The big things North Korea needs at the moment are help with producing food and producing energy. I wouldn't worry too much about funds being diverted. North Korea is already spending heavily on its nuclear and missile programs. The point of abandoning disarmament as a goal is precisely that we accept North Korea is going to have nuclear weapons either way. What we should worry about is how North Korea behaves with those weapons. |
Q: At the moment, North Korea is one of the most isolated countries in the world. How do you imagine the country might be transformed by friendlier relations with the United States and other world powers? |
I think Kim Jong-un will actually be quite reluctant to really open his country for fear that it will unleash forces he can't control. So I don't expect North Korea to change radically. But I do think we can improve the quality of life for millions of people in North Korea and incentivize Kim Jong-un to be a less dangerous neighbor. If he and his cronies are doing well, they have incentives not to upset the apple cart. |
Q: In the world of nuclear strategy, there's a concept called the "stability-instability" paradox, which holds that nuclear weapons can make conventional warfare more likely rather than less. Because nuclear-armed states feel secure in the knowledge that neither side will chance annihilation, the theory goes, they develop a larger risk appetite for aggression. Some argue that we're now seeing this paradox at play with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Is there a risk that recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state would embolden it to wage its own conventional regional wars — against, in particular, South Korea? |
This is precisely the problem we have now — a nuclear-armed North Korea is free to conduct dangerous military provocations because it is shielded by its nuclear deterrent. One of the main reasons to drop disarmament as a policy goal is to help solve this problem. Accepting the fact of North Korea's nuclear status allows us to negotiate with North Korea about how they behave with those weapons. Obviously we're not going to be able to engage in economic assistance if North Korea is attacking its neighbors. |
Q: In your Times essay, you write that North Korea's recent missile tests have prompted calls in South Korea, which does not have nuclear weapons, to acquire them. Recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state, you suggest, might de-escalate this situation, because North Korea would no longer feel as much of a need to brandish its weapons. But while this scenario might weaken South Korea's claim to nuclear weapons on the basis of national security, I could also imagine it strengthening a different sort of claim, a moral one, that could be made by countries around the world: If North Korea can legitimately possess nuclear weapons, why can't we? Are you concerned about this possibility of — for lack of a better term — the democratization of nuclear entitlement? How would the United States and its nuclear-armed allies respond to it? |
Well, again we already have that problem. The fact of the matter is that the United States, China and North Korea all have nuclear weapons, as do six other states. If we stay on the current path, calls for nuclear weapons in Seoul will keep getting louder. The best way to keep Seoul from going nuclear is to reduce the threats that North Korea's nuclear weapons pose. This is one reason I raise Israel: Even though everyone knows Israel has the bomb, the international community has been able to keep Egypt from following it. A big part of that success has been Israel's decision to not talk about its nuclear weapons. |
| READ JEFFREY'S FULL ESSAY HERE | | |
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