Nuclear usability

What North Korea Means – and Doesn’t – for Nuclear Deterrence
Rather than underscoring the enduring logic of nuclear deterrence, the case of North Korea highlights its flimsiness.
John Borrie, Tim Caughley, and Wilfred Wan

September 15, 2017  The Diplomat

...The central paradox of nuclear deterrence rests in the rationale that it is “the very lethality of nuclear weapons that lessens the likelihood of their use sufficiently to make us safe.” There is no advantage to use given the inevitability of retaliation, as advanced by policymakers and theorists, and thus it follows states are reassured that nuclear weapons must not and therefore will not be used. Yet, as the credibility of the threat of use relies upon “risk, unpredictability, and extreme consequences,” states continue to be enhancing the possibility of escalation. Further, they appear to be lowering the very threshold for use — chipping away at the shared understanding of “unacceptable costs” key to the upkeep of nuclear deterrence.


Again, the North Korean case exposes the precarious logic of nuclear weapon-based deterrence. Its repeated and specific threats of use call into question whether the regime is constrained by the use “taboo.” The nature of its recent tests — emanating from multiple sites, with ranges that match those of U.S. bases in Japan and South Korea, and in the latest instances flying over Japan — coupled with an ever-improving capacity to weaponize its missiles add further cause for concern. With the Trump administration offering its own harsh rhetoric in response (a stark departure from predecessors), nuclear deterrence appears at risk of playing out to a catastrophic conclusion.


Yet nuclear deterrence proponents should be alarmed that nuclear-armed states are not merely normalizing the nuclear warfighting option with their rhetoric but with their practices and policies. Modernization programs widespread across possessor states have made these armaments more effective in locating and destroying targets, not just more credibly usable in a deterrent sense, but attractive for actual warfighting. Exacerbating this is the use of delivery systems — such as the air-launched cruise missiles maintained by the U.S., Russia, and France — that expand conventional and nuclear flexibility. Alarmingly, these program and military strategies are built on assumptions about the controllable nature of nuclear conflict and of the toxic, long-lasting radiation that would result...