Miscalculating North Korea

OPINION:

“We fell in love!”

— President Donald Trump referring to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un after Singapore Summit (June 2018)

“All accidental wars are inadvertent and unintended, but not vice-versa.”

— Herman Kahn, “On Escalation” (1965)

In the still-growing strategic threat from North Korea, President Trump and his pertinent advisers must learn to make certain vital distinctions. To begin, nuclear war risks posed by inadvertence or accident should be differentiated from the specific conflict hazards of a deliberately-initiated nuclear war. Moreover, when the U.S. president considers the complex configurations of any unintentional nuclear war, his primary focus should be upon the expected stability of Pyongyang’s command, control and intelligence procedures.

This would be unrelated to being “in love” with Kim Jong-un.

Ultimately, any presidential focus on North Korea would require detail. In extraordinary circumstances, should Kim Jong-un’s command/control/intelligence processes display (1) unacceptably high risks of mechanical/electrical/computer failure; (2) indecipherable pre-delegations of nuclear launch authority; and/or (3) unpredictable/unreliable “launch-on-warning procedures,” a rational American president could experience a need to “preempt.” Here, the probable costs to the United States and its affected allies could be more-or-less overwhelming..

What might actually be expected after a Trump-ordered preemption against North Korea? When all significant factors are taken into account, Pyongyang, would expectedly target American military forces in the region and/or certain high-value South Korean armaments and personnel. Plainly, this is not the expectation of a US president avowedly “in love” with his North Korean counterpart.

There is more. In all plausible scenarios, each side would have to pay close attention to the anticipated wishes of Russia and China. In this connection, does President Trump reasonably believe that China would plan to support him in any still-upcoming nuclear crisis with North Korea? At a minimum, Mr. Trump’s ongoing and potentially catastrophic trade war with China would suggest a starkly negative reply.

If Donald Trump’s initial defensive first strike against North Korea were less than massive, a rational adversary in Pyongyang would likely take steps to ensure that its own selected reprisal was limited. But if the president’s rational attack upon North Korea were launched against an irrational enemy leadership, the response from Pyongyang could then be an all-out retaliation. By any sensible measure, whether directed at U.S. forces or at U.S. allies in the region, this sort of response could inflict very grave harms.

Even if nuclear brinksmanship in Northeast Asia should be played by fully rational adversaries, the rapidly accumulating momentum of events could demand that each “contestant” strive for “escalation dominance.” Significantly, it is in the unpracticed dynamics of any such explosive rivalry that the prospect of an Asian “Armageddon” scenario could pass into reality. This fearful outcome could be the result of an incremental escalation by one or both players, or of any sudden quantum leap in risk-taking destructiveness.

The only predictable element of this sobering narrative is the narrative’s boundless unpredictability. Even under the most favorable assumptions of enemy rationality, all relevant decision-makers would have to concern themselves with dense or confused communications, miscalculations, errors in information, unauthorized uses of strategic weapons, mechanical, electrical or computer malfunctions and even various poorly-recognized applications of cyber-defense or cyber-war.

One final distinction now needs to be made concerning inadvertent nuclear war and accidental nuclear war. By definition, an accidental nuclear war would be inadvertent; reciprocally, however, an inadvertent nuclear war need not be accidental. Instead, it could be the unwitting result of assorted adversarial misjudgments or miscalculations.

In such end-of-the-line circumstances, being “in love” with one’s adversary would offer Mr. Trump no palpable advantages.

• Louis Rene Beres is emeritus professor of international law at Purdue University. He is the author of 12 books including, most recently, “Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).