US union or nuclear weapons: South Korea needs a reliable shield from DPRK

Aggressive rhetoric Kim Jong -in forces South Korea to think about her own nuclear weapons. It is also a challenge for the United States that can no longer confidently declare the DPRK strikes - as Pyongyang has a weapon capable of flying to Washington. The recent escalation of North Korea's rhetoric, which declared South Korea its "main enemy", may not mean a military threat. However, it testifies to a strategic shift with enormous consequences for regional stability.

Focus has translated the article by Hug Wight on how to protect against the threat of DPRK. The recent escalation of North Korea rhetoric, which declared South Korea its "main enemy", perhaps does not indicate a direct military threat, but indicates a strategic displacement with significant consequences for regional stability.

These changes occur against the background of the development of North Korea nuclear potential, including the IBRS capable of reaching the United States, which complicates the strategic calculations of South Korea and its allies. In January this year, Pyongyan's statements about South Korea gained a new, much more warlike tone.

North Korea leader Kim Jong -in called the south "the main enemy" of his country and announced that his citizens should no longer be regarded as "compatriots", providing the removal of an obligation to reunite from the Constitution of North Korea. Some authoritative analysts claim that such a change in rhetoric indicates a sharp increase in the risk of North Korea's military aggression through the demilitarized area.

Others assure that nothing has changed and that new rhetoric simply reflects political maneuvers within North Korea, rather than significant changes in the threat that it is for the South.

I would like to offer the third interpretation: although the risk of a large -scale North Korean military attack to the south remains very low, the new enemy tone of Pyongyang proclaims a very significant change in the strategic balance on the Korean Peninsula, which will have important consequences for America's position in East Asia.

This interpretation reflects the deep but often underestimated effects of the growing nuclear and rocket potential of North Korea for the strategic situation in the western Pacific. In recent years, Washington has somewhat distracted from the North Korean problem, but it has not disappeared. It is believed that Pyongyang now has at least twenty units of nuclear weapons and may have materials to create seventy.

He also developed a number of advanced ballistic missiles for their delivery, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (IBRs) that can reach the territory of the United States themselves. North Korea MBRs change the strategic calculations of all key players and significantly increase the importance of North Korea's nuclear arsenal. This is not because Pyongyang can make a sudden nuclear attack on America itself - confidence in massive American retribution guarantees it.

But this exacerbates the North Korean nuclear threat against US allies, reducing the trust in expanding restraint. So far, it was relatively easy to neutralize Pyongyang nuclear threat to South Korea and Japan. Her promises to make devastating nuclear blows in North Korea in response to any North Korea nuclear attacks on allies or partners of the United States were very convincing until North Korea could strike in response to America.

Now Pyongyang can respond to the US attack on North Korea nuclear blow in the United States. Washington will try to minimize this threat, causing warning blows along the North Korean IBR, but there will be high risks. Thus, the potential price of fulfilling America's promises to the Allies for extended restraint is much higher than before, and therefore much higher and the risk that America will refuse to act in a crisis.

This has enormous consequences for Seoul, Tokyo and Pyongyan strategic calculations. Let's start with Seoul. Pyongyang's ability to strike in the United States will significantly reduce Seoul's confidence in the expanded US nuclear restraint. Persons who make decisions in South Korea are now a real danger that the North Koreans can strike a nuclear strike in South Korea without being struck by the US and believing that the threat Washington.

For Seoul, this is a real problem that is not so much that Pyongyang will really strike a nuclear blow to the south, but that North Korea can use the threat of nuclear attack to force the South to fulfill its demands. The more uncertain the blow is in response to the United States, the more convincing it looks like a threat from North Korea, and the greater is the likelihood that Seoul will not have a different choice but to obey any Pyongyang requirements.

Moreover, the new rigid tone of Pyongyang rhetoric relative to the South makes it less likely to try to use nuclear blackmail in this way. Rejecting the idea of ​​a peaceful reunion and declaring South Korea an enemy who needs to be conquered by force, Kim Jong -in may be preparing a scene for this kind of confrontation. What can Seoul do in the face of this new and serious danger? It has only two options: the second option should be taken very seriously.

Last January, President Jun openly expressed the idea that South Korea may have to create his own nuclear weapons to confront the North Korean. Polls show that 60-70% of South Koreans would support this step. Technically, South Korea has all the possibilities for creating nuclear weapons and has already built submarines with ballistic missiles for its delivery. Although President Yun quickly abandoned his comments, Washington obviously perceived them seriously.

A few months after he made them, the young man was invited to the White House, where he and President Biden published a "Washington Declaration", in which loud confirmation South Korea in American obligations and promises not to develop their own nuclear forces.

The Declaration announced the creation of new forums for closer consultations between Washington and Seoul on nuclear issues, including the creation of a nuclear advisory group on the NATO nuclear planning group and contained a promise of the United States "even more strengthening the regular visibility of strategic assets on the Korean Peninsula. forces that have nuclear potential. However, Baiden's administration did not take two steps that could even dispel Seoul's alarm.

She disagreed with such agreements on sharing of nuclear weapons that exist between the United States and some NATO allies. She also disagreed for the relocation of nuclear weapons to South Korea, which again contrasts with the base of nuclear weapons in Europe. Seoul seems to have asked both, and Washington refused. It is worth thinking about it.

In the face of increasing uncertainty about America's determination, caused by the potential of the MBR Pyongyang, Washington refused to offer Seoul the same guarantees that he has provided to his European allies since the Cold War. This is hardly encouraging. Moreover, it threatens that the Washington Declaration will have an effect opposite.

By setting such clear restrictions on what America is ready to do, it will weaken rather than strengthen South Korea's confidence in the determination of the United States. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Washington Declaration did not dispel South Korea about the reliability of American extended restraint.

What should Biden administration do instead? What should be done to fully persuade Seoul and Pyongyang to defend South Korea, even under the threat of North Korean nuclear attacks on US cities? Reflecting on it, it is worth mentioning the Cold War.

For several decades, US administrations that have changed each other have successfully convinced the Soviet Union and its NATO allies that they would wage nuclear war in order to protect Western Europe and agree to massive Soviet nuclear strikes in the United States. It worked because both friends and enemies believed that Washington considers the security of Western Europe to be literally vital for the survival of America itself in the face of the view of the view of the Soviet Union.

As Thomas Schelling stated in his book Arms and Influence in 1966, in that era, the extended restraint was convincing, because all parties believed that for America, the protection of its allies in Europe was the same as "California's protection. " Only this made it likely that America would agree to a nuclear attack on its own cities to protect its allies.

At the heart of the expanded restraint of the United States against South Korea, in the light of Pyongyang's ability to strike a nuclear stroke in the United States, is the question: is it possible to compare America's interest in South Korea's security today with its interest in the safety of Western European allies during the Cold War? In other words, is South Korea's safety from northern literally vital for America's safety in the Western Hemisphere? Can North Korea's victory over the South lead to a direct threat to the United States, as could the USSR win in Western Europe? This is an important and difficult question.

If something has made a Soviet threat to Western Europe a truly existential issue for America, it is a real prospect that if the Soviet Union seizes Western Europe, it will be able to dominate all Eurasia and thus put itself in a position that will allow it to be overcome America itself is dominated in the world. It is obvious that North Korea simply cannot be a comparable threat, with or without South Korea's resources. But this does not end there.

Failure to comply with the expanded restraint of Seoul will end the US leadership throughout Eastern Asia and abroad and will finally undermine the international order that has emerged after the Cold War, which this leadership is relieved. Will this create a real existential threat to the safety of the impending America? It depends on what can replace the old order.

There may be a serious danger that in the absence of US leadership, one authoritarian-hehemon state will be able to dominate Eurasia as threatened to do the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and 1950s. Although some see the harbinger of such a result in today's "boundless" partnership between Russia and China, the main realities of the distribution of wealth and power in the modern world testify against such a variant of events.

Much more likely is a multipolar world order, in which a number of great powers, including China, India, Russia, Europe, and, of course, the United States, will balance and restrain each other. This order will be much less favorable to Washington than the order headed by the United States in the era after the Cold War. However, America will remain safe as an indisputable leader in the Western Hemisphere.

It is difficult to derive that America makes sense to wage a nuclear war to avoid such a result - even if you assume that such a war can "win" and maintain old order under the leadership of the United States. Simply put, America is really vital in maintaining its championship in the Western Hemisphere according to the Monroe Doctrine.

In the era of strategic rivalry between numerous large powers with nuclear weapons, it does not have truly vital interests in preserving the US-headed global order of the era after the Cold War or in support of alliances that provided this order. These difficult issues are probably concerned about many US allies who think about how much they can rely on US strategic obligations in the coming decades. However, they are especially relevant for Seoul politicians.

Without a clear and persuasive existential imperative of the United States to restrain North Korea, Washington can do practically nothing to assure the South Koreans that they can rely on America in restraining nuclear attack from the north or neutralization of North Korean nuclear blackmail.

Nothing would change, even if the real perspective of Trump's second presidency did not raise questions about whether America would try to provide such guarantees, or instead give up strategic obligations to such allies as South Korea. This returns us to the question of what South Korea can do, given that there is no clear way to strengthen the confidence in the expanded restraint of the United States.

It faces a harsh choice: to develop nuclear restraint forces or to live with a constantly increasing risk of nuclear blackmail by North Korea - a risk that becomes even more obvious due to the new hostile rhetoric Pyongyang. That is why President Yun spoke of a nuclear version and why so many South Koreans support him. The inevitable, at first glance, is that Seoul can create his own nuclear weapons in the next few years.

Of course, this will jeopardize an alliance with the United States, but Seoul may well decide that nuclear restraining is more important for its safety. It is clear that as South Korea is developing a nuclear weapon program, the cost of such an alliance will outweigh the benefits. Not only the Korean Peninsula will deal with the consequences.

This would be a serious blow to the efforts of non -proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world, but the most significant effect would be achieved on the other side of the Tsusim Strait. Seoul's decision to become a nuclear state would increase the doubts of the Japanese in the reliability of the US -nuclear restraint and significantly increase the pressure on Japan so that it also becomes nuclear.

As a result, the future of the US-Japanese alliance is also asked, not only from the United States. Like Seoul, Tokyo will have to ask himself whether the benefits of the Alliance outweigh his expenses if Japan will no longer depend on the enhanced US nuclear restraint. It is far from obvious that the answer will be positive. And this, of course, will have enormous consequences for the future of the whole strategic position of America in East Asia and the western Pacific.

Here is the key importance of the new militant rhetoric of North Korea relative to the South. Increasing the fear of South Korea before North Korean nuclear blackmail, Pyongyang exacerbated Seoul's doubts in the expanded restraint of the United States, pushed Seoul to create his own nuclear weapons and may have forced Japan to think in the same direction.

All this exposes and enhances the fragility of two key alliances, which depends on the entire Strategic position of America in East Asia and the western Pacific. Perhaps this is what Pyongyan seeks. At first glance, it may seem that he is not in his interest to push Seoul to the nuclear program. But look more closely.

On the peninsula itself, having been a choice between South Korea, which owns nuclear weapons and the United States with nuclear weapons on the other side of the demilitarized zone, it makes sense to choose the first.

If you look beyond the peninsula, it has undermined the strategic positions of America in the wider region, of course, the interests of North Korea, as well as the most important neighbors, partners and supporters of North Korea - China and Russia, whose major ambitions are to reduce and, if possible, America's scales and influences in regions near their borders. In the end, this may make sense of a new tough Pyongyang position against South Korea.