Global Ideals and Regional Realities:
Problems and Prospects for
East Asian Progress Toward Nuclear Disarmament
Wade L. Huntley
Associate Professor, Hiroshima Peace InstitutePrepared for Workshop on”Prospects for East Asian Nuclear Disarmament”
Hiroshima, Japan
March 11-12, 2004

The New Context of Disarmament
Disarmament efforts during the Cold War were necessarily shaped by the “bipolar” configuration ofinternational power under which the world’s two dominant states, the United States and the Soviet
Union, were locked in pitched ideological confrontation frozen by the specter of nuclear war. The restof the world’s states, to the extent that they were free to choose, necessarily defined their international
positions with respect to the two alliance systems anchored by the two most dominant states. In thecontext of such superpower competition, localized disputes frequently aroused the interests of one orboth dominant states, and often became proxies for superpower competition. In this manner, thesuperpower nuclear competition cast its shadow as well over more generically regional conflicts.
Because the advent of nuclear weapons in the world took place contemporaneously with the emergenceof this bipolar, ideologically-driven competition, the problems of nuclear arms control, nonproliferationand eventual disarmament were defined by this structure and rarely conceived of outside it. This wasinevitable and appropriate, for imagining how these problems might manifest themselves in a
multipolar and/or non-ideologically divided world were mere speculations with little relevance to thepractical challenges of the nuclear age.
Accordingly, the pursuit of nuclear disarmament focused on the United States and the Soviet Union.
Bilateral arms reductions were understood to be the top immediate priority. Curbing dangerous
deterrence policies was an adjunct to this priority. Similarly, stemming “horizontal” proliferation of
nuclear technology to more states was perceived to be intrinsically linked to rolling back “vertical”
proliferation by the two superpowers – a linkage enshrined in the Nonproliferation Treaty’s “grandbargain” committing the five “permanent” nuclear weapons states to the ultimate goal of disarmament.
The major multilateral nuclear weapons agreements of the Cold War era, as well as bilateral arms
control, hinged upon the participation of the two superpowers. Most arms control advocates assumed
that control of nuclear weapons could only be effectively pursued at this global level, and that auniversal global abolition of nuclear weapons was the necessary ultimate outcome.
The immediate aftermath of the Cold War saw encouraging progress toward this end. Negotiated andunilateral progress included elimination of an entire category of nuclear weapons in the INF treaty,
significant strategic reductions under a new START agreement, US withdrawal of overseas and surface
vessel nuclear deployments and US-Russia cooperation on fissile materials control in the former Soviet
Union. Multilateral achievements included indefinite extension of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT),
negotiation of a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and strengthening of related nuclear
technology export and safeguards regimes.

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Over the course of the 1990s, however, progress toward nuclear disarmament languished. Negotiations
for further strategic arms reductions by the United States and Russia slowed and stalled. Efforts in the
United States to reduce nuclear risks by de-targeting and de-alerting US nuclear forces met stiff
resistance. Fissures emerged in the NPT regime over both the lack of diligence by the “permanent”
nuclear powers in upholding their disarmament commitments and the problematic cooperation among
many key non-nuclear states with strengthened protocols for safeguarding NPT-permitted nuclear
activities. The 1998 nuclear tests by non-NPT members India and Pakistan dealt further blows to boththe NPT and CTBT, with the US Senate’s refusal to ratify the CTBT effectively neutralizing thattreaty’s impact. For advocates of nuclear disarmament, the post-Cold War “window of opportunity”
appeared to be closing.
Many explanations have emerged for the failure to realize the promise for progress toward nuclear
disarmament that the end of the Cold War initially seemed to offer. Some of these explanations arepolitical in nature, pointing to failures of will or policy on the part of individual leaders or governments
as a whole (including endemic resistance to arms control among governmental, military and defense
industry interests, particularly in the United States). Other explanations highlight the intractability of
security dilemmas in international politics and the inevitable appeal of nuclear weapons as both
strategic tools and symbols of national power and prestige.
This paper offers a third category of explanation for the slowed – and in many cases reversed – progress
toward nuclear weapons disarmament experienced since the mid-1990s. The essence of this third
category is failure to recognize how the end of the Cold War shifted the terrain of international politics
in ways decisively important to pursuit of nuclear disarmament, and the tardiness of both governments
and disarmament advocates to adjust priorities accordingly. Clearly understanding how the end of theCold War has created a new nuclear era, with different challenges and different pathways todisarmament, is essential to reconfiguring goals and priorities to effectively meet these challenges.
Two elements of the changed circumstances of this new era stand out most prominently: the role ofnuclear weapons policies as distinct from armament levels, and the emerging regional autonomy innuclear strategizing and decision-making.
Nuclear Arms and Nuclear Policy
The distinction between nuclear capabilities themselves (deployed nuclear weapons & associatedmaterial assets) and policies pertaining to those capabilities (including but not limited to nuclear
deterrence) is a critical one. Nuclear policies – including military policies of deployment and use
planning as well as political policies utilizing nuclear threats for specific international relations ends –function as the conduit through which specific and unique nuclear weapons capabilities and practices,on the one hand, and the political-security conditions within which nuclear strategies are promulgated,on the other, interact synergistically. The following figure depicts this relationship:
Nuclear Capabilities

Nuclear Policies

Political-Security
Conditions

The importance of nuclear weapons policies was recognized during the Cold War, typified by theperpetual debate between advocates of “minimum deterrence” and “war-fighting” nuclear strategies.
The relevance of such nuclear weapons policy alternatives to pursuing nuclear disarmament was also
widely understood.
In this period, however, concern for the autonomous role of nuclear policies in driving nuclear dangers,
and shaping disarmament prospects, was relatively muted. This resulted mainly because, in theideologically-polarized climate of the Cold War confrontation, both nuclear strategists and nuclear“Prospects for East Asian Nuclear Disarmament”

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abolitionists tended to regard nuclear weapons issues as largely independent of politics. For the former,
the existence of nuclear weapons imposed a logic of its own, bestowing a certain universality totheories of deterrence and warfighting. For the latter, a parallel independent logic obtained: thecataclysmic potential of widespread nuclear warfare rendered their use as a weapon of war“unthinkable” and established the primacy of the imperative of nuclear disarmament.
The manner by which the Cold War ended belies this political autonomy of nuclear weapons. Despite
force levels and launching capabilities as lethal as ever, the perceived threat of deliberate nuclear war
between the United States and Russia has been dramatically reduced. A fundamental source of thisreduced threat of war was the elimination of the ideologically-driven animosities and uncertainties
between these countries that always lurked behind the abstract veneer of strategic theory. A priorequally important source was political transformation within the Soviet Union (and then Russia and theother Soviet successor states) – for if the Cold War’s ideological divides had ended instead with a US
descent into totalitarianism, one can hardly imagine that superpower relations would have improved as
dramatically.
Thus, improved political circumstances within Russia and consequent improved US-Russia relations,
not arms control per se, moved the superpowers toward greater actual peace. Indeed, the transformed
US-Russia relationship marking the end of the Cold War enabled dramatic nuclear arms reductions
dwarfing the achievements of decades of arduous Cold War arms control negotiations. The historicallesson is that evolving political conditions are far more determinative than abstract strategic logic or
operational doctrines of the ultimate role and disposition of nuclear weapons.1
These conditions created opportunities for moderating nuclear weapons policies, as well as reducing
nuclear weapons levels. Unfortunately, this second opportunity went largely unrealized: progress in
reducing reliance by states on threats to use their nuclear weapons for security policy purposes did notmatch progress toward reducing the dangers of deployed nuclear weapons. The United States
reinforced rather than relaxed its reliance on nuclear deterrence, and other states similarly expanded
security reliance on nuclear weapons threats (including the threat to develop nuclear capabilities). Suchcontinued dependence on nuclear deterrence and nuclear blackmail reflected sustained belief in thecoercive value of possessing nuclear weapons. Following the September 11 attacks, the attraction to
non-state actors of gaining such coercive capacity is now also clear.
In the absence of a corresponding disengagement from reliance on nuclear weapons threats, progress incontrol of non-conventional weapons capabilities inevitably slowed and stalled. This stalling has, inturn, increasingly impinged on further improvement in US-Russia political and security relations. The
continuing role of nuclear threats also increasingly obstructs conflict resolution in key regional contexts
throughout the world. In whatever contexts nuclear weapons threats have remained salient, thesethreats have served not only to increase the risks and dangers of outbreaks of violence, but also toentrench status quos and impinge progress toward domestic political reform, international stability andpeace.
These developments highlight the critical linking function between nuclear capabilities and security
conditions that policies premising nuclear threats serve. This linking function has become all the moresalient to nuclear disarmament in the context of the post-Cold War global political-security climate, inwhich ideologically frozen polarization has given way to more fluid and diffuse security relationships
and focused bipolar nuclear arms racing has been supplanted by more diversified arms development
and proliferation challenges. The more nuclear threats and counter-treats interact and overshadow
security relations, the more difficult it becomes to achieve meaningful reductions in the armamentcapabilities that give credibility to those threats, or to achieve progress in solving the political andsecurity tensions that inspire resort to those threats.
1

For an early theoretical exposition of this point, see Patrick Morgan, Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis,
Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977, pp.13f.

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Regional and Global Dynamics
During the Cold War, the globalized nature of major security issues imposed a global dimension oneven generically regional problems. Consequently, disarmament advocates focused on global
determinants of states’ nuclear policies, prioritized control of nuclear weapons at the global level, andsought global nuclear disarmament as the principal goal as well as the necessary ultimate outcome. As aconsequence, during the Cold War, pursuing disarmament through regional initiatives, such as thegeneration of regionally defined “nuclear free zones,” was often viewed as supplemental to globally
focused efforts, rather than as principally useful in its own right.
The end of the Cold War has “loosened” world politics by lessoning the influence of overarching global
security circumstances on many regional security environments. In the absence of superimposed
superpower competition, more geographically proximate and immediate security concerns take onhigher priority in state security policy-making. The heightened salience of regional over global
perspectives in many states' security outlooks drives autonomous development of regionallyidentifiable security environments. Events and trends in these regional contexts have, in turn, taken on
a greater role in shaping the overarching global security motif. Thus, while the global and regional
security “levels” continue to interact bi-directionally, the end of the Cold War has shifted the weight ofinfluence from the global to the regional level, as the following graph depicts:

RegionCold War

Post-Cold War

Global Level

Global Level
RegionRegionRegionNuclear policy decision-making has followed this trend, exemplified by developments in Northeast
Asia. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions appear driven almost exclusively by its government’s concerns
over the country’s own territorial integrity. Any decision in Japan to exercise its latent nuclear
capability would almost certainly be triggered by security developments in Korea or China. China,
while still concerned about the United States in its nuclear weapons policies, is no longer concerned
about its position vis-à-vis a global superpower competition and is focused mainly on potential US
nuclear coercion with respect to Taiwan.
The United States emerged from the Cold War as the world’s only truly global power. Yet, its nuclear
weapons policies are also evolving toward greater regional specification. During the Cold War, theUnited States established a network of alliance relationships, girded by extended nuclear deterrence
guarantees, as a bulwark to protect vital interests from Soviet threats and contain Soviet influence.
With the end of the Cold War, US extended nuclear deterrence relationships are no longer embedded in
an encompassing strategic deterrence framework. In Northeast Asia, in particular, maintaining
extended nuclear deterrence alliance relationships with Japan and South Korea is increasingly justified
on regional bases, including not only protection against regional threats but also the supposition thatany relaxation of nuclear deterrence guarantees would signal a weakening of broader US security
guarantees and catalyze US allies to act to preserve their security by more independent means.
Consequently, the regional determinants of states’ reliance on nuclear threats and nuclear capabilities(latent or extant) are now of vital concern to the pursuit of nuclear disarmament – at regional and global
levels. The implicit assumption of many Cold War era disarmament efforts – that regional progress
would follow progress at the global level, and could not be realized in its absence – no longer conforms
to current circumstances. Thus, rather than asking only how progress toward global nuclear
disarmament could help improve regional security situations, the question now becomes what states in“Prospects for East Asian Nuclear Disarmament”

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a specific region can do to move toward nuclear disarmament within their region, and thereby facilitate
global disarmament in the process.
In an age in which nuclear disarmament seems as distant and unachievable as ever, this perspective
offers a crucial measure of hope. The disaggregation of world security relations and nuclear decisionmaking determinants creates more potential than existed in the Cold War for progress on arms control& nonproliferation to occur in regional contexts relatively independently. Moreover, such autonomous
progress in one region or circumstance can positively (albeit not determinably) influence developments
in other contexts.
To concentrate on regional determinants does not mean simply shifting the weight of attention fromglobal to regional levels to align with shifted realities. Rather, highlighting the salience of regional
determinants of nuclear weapons decision-making can serve to emphasize the synergistic relationshipof regional and global factors, and hence the need to pursue disarmament at both global and regional
levels in a similarly synergistic fashion. Elucidating the links between disarmament efforts at theregional and global levels will help promote understanding of disparate contemporary arms control andnonproliferation challenges and facilitate integrative disarmament efforts addressing these diverse
challenges in mutually reinforcing manners.
Such an approach will emphasize resolving regional security dilemmas as a necessary condition forachieving regional disarmament objectives. Establishing regional “nuclear-free zones” as an element or
product of regional collective security mechanisms offers one concrete expression of this linkage. As
with disarmament efforts, progress toward instituting viable collective security at regional levels canalso contribute to strengthening collective security at the global level (e.g. through the United Nations).

Post-Cold War Nuclear Policy in Northeast Asia
Developments in Northeast Asia over the past fifteen years exemplify how proliferation of nuclear
capabilities and propagation of nuclear threats now proceeds primarily along regional lines and forregionally defined purposes. All the principal states in Northeast Asia now rely upon some form of
nuclear deterrence or coercion as a central element of their security postures. Hence, it is not surprisingthat recent developments in the region – centered on US and North Korean nuclear policies andpractices but abetted by the contingent policies of other states – have propelled the recent erosion of
nuclear nonproliferation efforts and increased the dangers of nuclear proliferation globally.
Yet reliance on nuclear threats in regional contexts is under-recognized as a priority for disarmament
advocates. The centrality of region-based reliance on nuclear threats as a motivation for nuclear arms
buildups, as an impediment to cooperative security development and as a corrosive influence on global
disarmament mechanisms and aspirations (such as the NPT and a potential space weapons ban)remains underappreciated.
US Nuclear Strategy
During the Cold War, the United States employed extended nuclear deterrence to protect overseasinterests and allies and to contain perceived Soviet global ambitions. In East Asia, extended nuclear
deterrence applied primarily to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.2 Throughout this period, US strategicplanners were rarely content that the United States had sufficiently established the credibility of theretaliatory threat at the heart of extended deterrence. Forward deployments of an array of tactical andbattlefield nuclear weapons, backed by a global network of bases, command and control systems, andalliance relationships, offered "limited" nuclear options while also preserving the threat of later use of2

The notion also informed other US alliances in Asia at various times, including SEATO, South Vietnam,
the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, and Pakistan.

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strategic forces – a “flexible response” posture intended to establish the credibility of deterrence at all"rungs" of the "escalation ladder."3
The end of the Cold War fundamentally changed the political and military conditions to which
extended deterrence had been the response. The disintegration of the Soviet Union eliminated thethreat Soviet conventional forces had posed in Europe and Asia, and with it the need for the UnitedStates to threaten the use of nuclear weapons to deter attacks by those forces. Accordingly, the UnitedStates made unilateral cuts in the absolute size of its nuclear arsenal and drew back most of its forward
deployed nuclear forces. In September 1991, President Bush removed US forward deployed nuclear
weapons from the Korean peninsula and, in a move particularly significant in the Asia/Pacific context,
removed all nuclear weapons from its surface naval vessels.4 Thus, the end of the Cold War
dramatically changed both the general political-security conditions and the capabilities and operational
practices associated with US extended nuclear deterrence in East Asia.
However, US nuclear planners continued to rely on Cold War era nuclear deterrence, including
extended deterrence. In East Asia particularly, this continued reliance on extended nuclear deterrence
curtailed the ability of US declaratory nuclear policy to perform its critical linking function between
transformed political-security conditions and reduced force structures in the region. This disjunction
inevitably created, in the minds of strategic planners, a new generation of concerns over regional
deterrence credibility. US strategists remained concerned about deterring attacks from other nuclear
weapons states, such as China, and also did not want to appear to be relaxing security guarantees toallies like Japan and South Korea. Ironically, although diminished Russian capabilities and interests
ostensibly increased US latitude to escalate to first use of nuclear weapons in future confrontations with
non-nuclear or newly-nuclear adversaries, US planners worried that reduced US stakes in regional
conflicts and elimination of many tactical nuclear capabilities impinged the credibility of such threats.
This disjunction also introduced new, pernicious sources of regional instability. Russia, China, andNorth Korea perceived continued US adherence to flexible response strategies in Asia, despite theevaporation of the Soviet threat, as evincing a US determination to compel and coerce them, rather thanmerely to deter them, across a wide range of conflict scenarios. These perceptions encouraged
destabilizing responses, including North Korean nuclear ambitions and more assertive Chinese nuclear
policies (as discussed below). Meanwhile, for US allies Japan and South Korea, questions as to thecredibility of US nuclear deterrence guarantees were reinforced by perceptions that, by continuing torely on Cold War era security architectures, US policy was unsympathetic to the new regionallyspecific security concerns US allies faced. These perceptions fueled restiveness in US alliances withboth Japan and South Korea, and in Japan particularly began eroding the function of the US nuclear
umbrella to discourage US allies from seeking nuclear capabilities of their own (as discussed below).
New nuclear weapons initiatives under the Bush administration can be seen, in part, as attempts toanswer these concerns. The administration’s recent Nuclear Posture Review (NPR)5 calls for3

It is useful to observe that Cold War era defenders of US “flexible response” and “first use” strategies
justified these positions strictly in terms of bolstering deterrence; see Casper W. Weinberger, “A Rational
Approach to Nuclear Disarmament,” Defense (August 1982). The Bush administration has abandoned
deterrence as a limiting justification for diversified nuclear capabilities and strategies, as noted below.
4
However, many US nuclear warheads, delivery systems, and organizational capacities to fight limited andbattlefield nuclear wars from forward deployment in the region had already been withdrawn. See D.
Lockwood, "The Status of U.S., Russian and Chinese Nuclear Forces in Northeast Asia," in P. Hayes andY. W. Kihl, Peace and Security in Northeast Asia: The Nuclear Issue and the Korean Peninsula, M.E.
Sharpe, 1997.
5
The NPR was first publicly summarized at a Department of Defense briefing on January 9, 2002. The
classified review was subsequently obtained by The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
Substantial excerpts of the review are available at:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm“Prospects for East Asian Nuclear Disarmament”

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developing a new generation of low-yield, earth-penetrating, and damage-limiting nuclear weapons
suitable for tactical, first strike missions.6 More significantly, the NPR introduces a newer vision to use
nuclear weapons threats also to deter “rogue state” attacks with biological, chemical, and radiological(as well as nuclear) weapons, and to deter even acquisition of such WMD capabilities. Although suchan expansion of the role for US nuclear threat-making emerged in the 1990s, the advent of the Bushadministration and the September 11 attacks pushed this thinking to the forefront of US strategic policy.
The vision, elaborated in the Bush administration’s subsequent Strategy to Combat WMD), essentiallydismisses nonproliferation – the conclusion of its single paragraph on the role of “active
nonproliferation diplomacy” simply states the need for “a full range of operational capabilities” ifnonproliferation efforts fail.7
Moreover, although Bush administration nuclear policy initiatives aim to stretch the scope and gird thecredibility of US extended nuclear deterrence, the rationales for the initiatives also highlight concerns
over potential deterrence failure. Hence, the NPR calls to supplement deterrence with “new concepts”(such as counterproliferation and compellance), “active defenses” (principally meaning missile defense),and “responsive infrastructure” (principally meaning a reconstituted nuclear weapons production
capability). The NPR also calls for replacing the U.S. Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) withan “adaptive planning” approach, to complement broadened tactical nuclear weapons use options withincreased non-nuclear “strategic strike” capability. Although from a nuclear disarmament point of viewplans that replace nuclear with conventional weapons appear progressive, in fact adaptive planning
blends conventional and nuclear capabilities as interchangeable options, eroding – from both sides – the“firebreak” between conventional and nuclear war long seen as a key psychological impediment tonuclear engagement.8 Such integration of planning for use of nuclear and conventional capabilities
clearly reflects how US policy has responded to the growing autonomy of regionally-based security
concerns by reinforcing and expanding reliance on nuclear weapons threats in those contexts.
The primacy given to capabilities and strategies to threaten preemptive nuclear use for purposes beyond
deterring attack, and to expanding flexibility to follow through on these threats, marks a significant new
departure of US strategy even from Cold War era “war-fighting” strategies. East Asian regional
concerns – particularly North Korea scenarios – are a principal motivation for these new initiatives,
which are intended to bolster the credibility of continued US reliance on nuclear threats among bothallies and adversaries in the region.
Unfortunately, the shortcomings and dangers of these new nuclear initiatives also exceed thosefamiliarly associated with Cold War era “war-fighting” strategies. First, it is neither empirically or
logically clear that threats of preemptive attack to deter an adversary’s acquisition of WMD are as
inherently credible as threats of retaliatory attack to deter an adversary’s use of WMD.9 Second, theacquisition deterrence credibility of counterproliferation threats is further undermined by the core
intractable questions concerning the effectiveness and usability of both nuclear and non-nuclear
counterproliferation technologies.10 Third, there is the prospect that whatever weak acquisition
6

For critical overviews, see Levi, Michael A., “Fire in the Hole: Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Options forCounterproliferation,” Carnegie Endowment Working Paper #31, November 2002; and Alexander, Brianand Alistair Millar, eds., Tactical Nuclear Weapons (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, Inc., 2003).
7
National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, White House, December 2002, pp.3-4.
8
It is worth noting that post-Cold War advocacy of these strategies also preceded the Bush Administration.
See, for example, Dowler, Thomas and Joseph Howard II, “Countering the Threat of the Well-Armed
Tyrant: A Modest Proposal for Small Nuclear Weapons,” Strategic Review 19/4 (Fall 1991), pp.34-40; andS. Cambone and P. Garrity, "The Future of US Nuclear Policy," Survival, 36(4), Winter 1994-95, p.88.
9Although this distinction is obfuscated in the most recent NPR, US Strategic Command advisories todeliberations over the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review were skeptical that nuclear weapons could deter WMD
acquisition. See “Questions for Nuclear Posture Review: Formal STRATCOM Answers as of 22 Nov 93,”
p.12, available at: www.nautilus.org/nukestrat/USA/npr/19usstratcom112293.pdf
10
See Levi, Michael A., “Fire in the Hole: Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Options for Counterproliferation.”“Prospects for East Asian Nuclear Disarmament”

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deterrence might accrue from counterproliferation threats would be more than offset by US adversaries’
increased motivations to obtain nuclear and/or other non-conventional capabilities to deter US action.
North Korea, for one, has clearly taken this point (see below).
Finally, there are the global implications of these regionally-motivated US initiatives. US threats ofnuclear retaliation against non-nuclear WMD attack contravene US legal commitments under the NPTnever to use nuclear weapons against a state not nuclear-armed itself or supported by a nuclear-armed
ally. More generally, US expansion of the breadth and depth of its reliance on nuclear weapons threats
in regional contexts, given its preeminent position at the global level, cannot help but undermine
nuclear non-use and nonproliferation norms and reinforce the motivations of other, conventionally
weaker states to seek “equalizing” nuclear capabilities.11
North Korean Nuclear Proliferation
The principal achievement of the 1994 US-North Korea Agreed Framework was to freeze and containNorth Korea’s plutonium-based nuclear program for nearly a decade. The principal shortcoming of theAgreed Framework – at least from the US point of view – is that North Korea’s spent plutonium
stockpile would remain in the country until new nuclear reactors called for in the agreement hadreached relatively advanced stages of construction – allowing North Korea to retain the threat to resume
its nuclear program on relatively short notice.
This circumstance provided the Pyongyang government with a latent nuclear threat that it utilized toconsiderable effect for much of the ensuing decade. Had the United States in the 1990s not suspected
North Korea of having diverted sufficient nuclear material to construct at least one nuclear weapon, US
policy toward North Korea in this period likely would have been very different. Whether North Korea
had actually weaponized its material mattered little to its ability to use its latent nuclear capability
coercively.
In October 2002, the United States used a visit by James Kelley to Pyongyang to charge North Korea
with developing a second, secret nuclear weapons program based on uranium enrichment (US officials
claim North Korea admitted the program at this meeting, but the North Korean government denies this).
Confrontation over these charges precipitated a sequence of actions & responses leading to a cascading
breakdown of the 1994 Agreed Framework structure, culminating at the end of the year when North
Korea expelled International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at its Yongbyon nuclear
complex, removed seals and monitoring equipment from safeguarded nuclear facilities at the site, andprepared to resume reprocessing of the spent plutonium stored there. Early the following year the
IAEA referred North Korean “chronic noncompliance” with its safeguards agreements to the UN
Security Council.12
Successful reprocessing would provide North Korea with enough weapons-grade plutonium for a half
dozen nuclear weapons, beyond the one or two weapons-worth of fissile material the regime is believed
11This factor was also recognized by the US Strategic Command in its advisories to the 1994 Nuclear
Posture Review: “As the only true superpower, the approach the U.S. takes to such issues as nuclear policy,
START I & II treaty execution, pursuit of a CTBT, and the NPT extension will have a major influence on
the action of other countries.” See “Questions for Nuclear Posture Review: Formal STRATCOM Answers
as of 22 Nov 93,” p.12; cf. Jeffrey Record, “Bounding the Global War on Terrorism,” U.S. Army War
College, December 2003, pp. 29-32 (http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/2003/bounding/bounding.htm).
12
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, “Introductory Statement to the Board of Governors,”
Highlights of IAEA Press Briefing, Vienna, 12 February 2003
(http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Statements/2003/ebsp2003n004.shtml). In the context of theimpending US-led attack on Iraq, the IAEA simultaneously reported that in Iraq it had been able tomaintain its accounting of safeguarded nuclear materials even during the 1998-2002 suspension of
inspections and had found no evidence of a revived nuclear program during resumed inspections in thepreceding months.

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to possess already. By dispersing the reprocessed plutonium to multiple hidden locations, North Korea
becomes unobserved and unimpeded in producing nuclear weapons. Pyongyang now claims that thisreprocessing is almost complete; although US officials state publicly that they cannot confirm theseclaims, reports indicate that activity at the Yongbyon facility consistent with reprocessing began last
winter.
At these very small numbers of nuclear weapons, the regime’s quadrupling of its capacity matters. It
would allow Pyongyang to consider exporting a portion of the materials to other states or non-state
actors and/or conducting an explosive device test, adding significantly to range of nuclear threats theregime can pose.13 Thus, the resumption of North Korea’s much more advanced plutonium-based
nuclear program, coupled with a potential new uranium-based nuclear program, has created a twin
proliferation danger surpassing even the apex of 1993-4 North Korean crisis that nearly triggered a US
military attack.
Despite its prior claims to have no intention to build nuclear weapons, North Korea has now explicitly
acknowledged plans to develop a “nuclear deterrent” and possibly to declare itself a “nuclear power.”
North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), becoming the first state everto do so, and has also released itself from the 1992 agreement with South Korea to keep the Korean
peninsula nuclear free. The regime has recently threatened to conduct a nuclear test as well as resumeballistic missile testing, and it has declared that imposition of UN sanctions would be considered “anact of war.”14
North Korea’s nuclear program and proliferation activities constitute perhaps the gravest threat to theintegrity and sustainability of the nuclear nonproliferation regime since the achievement of the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) itself. North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT alone would be atremendous blow to the NPT – a treaty that has successfully prevented proliferation around the world.
In the words of IAEA Director General Mohamed El Baradei, leaving North Korea’s actions
unchecked could “open the door for countries to walk away from nonproliferation and arms control
agreements.”15
North Korea’s ambition to develop nuclear weapons is partially a response to decades of being subject
to US nuclear threats, exacerbated by the loss of Soviet extended deterrence and, more recently, by theBush administration’s explicit revival and expansion of US nuclear threats aimed specifically at North
Korea. In addition to the expansion of potential nuclear weapons use evident in the public version of
the Nuclear Posture Review (noted above), a leaked version of the classified portions of the review lists
North Korea among a small number of countries specifically targeted with nuclear weapons.16 The

13

Under the recently launched the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), the United States, Japan and othercountries have undertaken measures to intercept any materials North Korea may try to export. However,few experts believe this initiative can assure that North Korea could not smuggle a soda-pop can sized
quantity of plutonium if it was determined to do so.
14
Joseph Kahn and David E. Sanger, “North Korea Says It May Test an A-Bomb,” New York Times,
August 29, 2003.
15
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, “IAEA Director General Sees Compliance as Key to North
Korea Issue,” Highlights of IAEA Press Briefing, Vienna, 12 February 2003
(http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/News/2003/02/13-663396.html). Perhaps because handicapping the
NPT would also remove the strongest legal mechanism to compel disarmament by its five nuclear weapons
signatories, the Bush administration evinces little remorse for this particular effect of North Korean nuclear
ambitions.
16
As cited earlier, the classified NPR was subsequently obtained by The Los Angeles Times and The New
York Times. Substantial excerpts of the review are available at:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm.

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Bush administration’s subsequent National Security Strategy emphasized preemptive action to counterthreats from countries developing weapons of mass destruction. 17
The Bush Administration’s political policies enhanced this threatening US strategic posture. Whileeschewing any direct contacts for nearly two years, administration officials routinely characterized
North Korea as an irredeemable threat to US interests, and made clear that pre-emptive strikes andother strategic policy innovations were meant to thwart exactly the kind of proliferation that theadministration viewed North Korea as likely to undertake. President Bush’s linking of North Korea to
Iraq and Iran in the “axis of evil” in his January 2002 State of the Union speech was evidently intended
to bolster intimidation of Pyongyang by embedding US policy toward North Korea within the broader,
newly declared “war on terror,” signaling that North Korea could be subject to the same kind ofmilitary action then commenced in Afghanistan and under consideration in the Middle East.
Unfortunately, the administration’s hostility toward North Korea appears to have fueled Pyongyang’s
nuclear ambitions by challenging its confidence that its conventional threat against South Korea alone
would deter a US attack. This presumption of North Korean threat perception helps explain theregime’s willingness to “hedge” against breakdown of the Agreed Framework by resisting further
concessions on its plutonium-based program and by clandestinely accelerating the uranium-based
program, even though this hedging itself increased the risks of breakdown.
The US-led attack on Iraq appears to have exacerbated this effect: Pyongyang’s first explicit commenton the conflict stated, “The Iraqi war teaches a lesson that in order to prevent a war and defend the
security of a country and the sovereignty of a nation … it is necessary to have a powerful physicaldeterrent.”18 Although Bush officials probably anticipated that the aggressive policy to disarm Iraq
would yield the side benefit of also intimidating Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader instead appears
to have seen US preoccupation in Iraq as a “window of opportunity” to act boldly, while his
desperation to avoid Iraq’s pending fate may have convinced him of the need to seize this opportunity,
despite the risks. Whether Kim’s ultimate goal has been to enhance North Korea’s negotiating position
vis-à-vis the United States or to actually achieve a full-fledged nuclear capability, the clear logic ofnuclear threat brinkmanship is evident.
To state that North Korea’s reliance on nuclear threats for its security is responsive to the US nuclear
threats it perceives, however, does not mean such reliance is North Korea’s best or only choice. The
nuclear ambitions of the government in Pyongyang also have roots independent of US actions, somedeeply coursed through the regime’s own autocracy and xenophobia.
Contrasting the situations of North Korea and Vietnam is illustrative. Both countries experienced USled wars on their lands and were subject to US nuclear threats. Both countries were subsequently
ostracized within their regional communities and became dependent on alliance with the Soviet Union.
Yet since the Soviet collapse the countries have followed very different paths. In Vietnam, pursuit ofeconomic and political liberalization led not only to renewed US economic and political relations, butalso to membership in ASEAN and reintegration into regional and global international society. North
Korea, despite efforts from its Chinese compatriots, has proven unable and/or unwilling to follow asimilar path. Admittedly, North Korea has faced an international environment significantly different
from Vietnam’s. However, these external differences are less determinative of the two countries’
divergent courses than the differences in the characters of the ruling regimes themselves.
The North Korean ruling regime’s determination to rely on nuclear threats to insure its security dismays
and worries all of North Korea’s neighbors. The experiences of Vietnam and many other countries in
17

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, White House, September 2002,
especially section V, pp. 13-16, dealing with WMD threat.
18
Howard W. French, “North Korea Says Its Arms Will Deter U.S. Attack,” New York Times, April 7,
2003, p.13.

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the Asia-Pacific region demonstrate that other choices are equal if not superior to serve security needs.
The Pyongyang government’s choice to rely on nuclear threats thus reveals that its conception of
security entails not just protecting territorial sovereignty but also preserving the regime’s own domestic
authority and legitimacy. The regime’s failure to institute the domestic reforms needed to lift its people
out of poverty and starvation – which would also probably relieve the pressures from the international
community (especially the United States) that the regime deems threatening – stems less from thethreats to the country’s national security than from the regime’s concern that such reforms would
threaten its ability to remain in power. Thus the Pyongyang government’s nuclear ambitions are
directly linked to the regime’s shortcomings in serving the genuine human security needs of its own
people.
The point of the preceding observations is not to endorse the neoconservative call for “regime change”
in North Korea. Rather, in the context of examining prospects for reducing reliance on nuclear threats
throughout Northeast Asia, the purpose of highlighting the plain link between Pyongyang’s nuclear
ambitions and the regime’s concern for the survival of its own rule is twofold. First, this specific link isa palpable example of the more general relationship, discussed earlier, between improved domestic
political (and socio-economic) circumstances and improved prospects for progress toward nuclear
disarmament. Developing improved regional security relationships providing less threatening avenues
for political conflict resolution is a prerequisite for reducing and ending reliance on nuclear threats forsecurity purposes.
Second, this linkage reinforces the conclusion that on the Korean peninsula a peaceful nonproliferation
outcome is possible only through a negotiated settlement involving all the principal countries of theregion. Such a conclusion already follows from more immediate considerations: military action (forlimited counterproliferation or for full regime change) would risk a devastating war, and might not
produce a nonproliferation outcome anyway; while continued threat-based coercion and containment
might preserve peace, at least in the short run, but almost certainly will allow North Korea to become anuclear armed state.19 But beyond these more immediate considerations, there is the added factor that
only a negotiated settlement will create the regional preconditions for nuclear nonproliferation toendure.
Some observers have hoped that the process of negotiation itself (such as the six-party talks) might
spawn a more lasting and encompassing mechanism for security cooperation in Northeast Asia. The
importance of the linkage between prospects for nuclear disarmament and the encompassing security
environment highlights that emergence of such durable security cooperation from the present crisis
would also be a prerequisite to moving from the immediate challenges posed by North Korea’s
proliferation activities to a more encompassing agenda of reducing or eliminating the role of nuclear
weapons threats in Northeast Asia entirely.
Chinese Nuclear Modernization
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, some US observers began to anticipate that Chinamight emerge as the United States’ next global competitor. Fueled by its rising economic strength,
China appeared to some to be poised at least to emerge as the new Asian hegemon, exercising thegreatest influence over (if not posing the greatest threat to) security of the region.20
In terms of the nuclear weapons policies, the impact of the end of the Cold War on China has beensomewhat the opposite of this. Consistent with the consequential “loosening” of world politics and theincreasing salience of regional over global considerations, China has tended to view the role of its
19

Wade L. Huntley, ”Sit Down and Talk,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 2003
(http://www.thebulletin.org/).
20
For a representative example see Denny Roy, "Hegemon on the Horizon? China's Threat to East Asian
Security," International Security, 19:1 (Summer 1994).

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nuclear weapons less as a means of independence from the global-level superpower competition andmore as an instrument of foreign and security policies emanating from the country’s immediate
region.21 At the top of the list of China’s regional security concerns is protection of its claims tosovereignty over Taiwan. China utilizes nuclear weapons threats as an element of its approach tosecuring this singular priority.
Many in Beijing believe that only Chinese threats to respond with force deter an overt declaration of
independence by Taiwan. At the same time, many Western analysts doubt China could successfully
invade Taiwan to suppress independence.22 However, China’s improving short-range ballistic andcruise missile force does pose a significant threat to Taiwanese military and civilian facilities and to theisland’s ability to conduct military operations.23
The 1972 U.S.-China Shanghai Communiqué, initiating normalization of relations between the twocountries, accepted the core position that China includes Taiwan.24 However, the United States was
unwilling—for both historical and strategic reasons–—to abandon its interest in the security andrelative autonomy of the Taipei government. The Taiwan Relations Act, adopted to accompany U.S.
formal recognition of the PRC in 1979, pledges US “defensive” support of the island to insure that “thefuture of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.”25 Thus, China’s priority concern to protect its
claims to sovereignty over Taiwan entails the prospect of direct military conflict with the United States.
This prospect links China’s concern over Taiwan to interest in other US military activities in East Asia.
In the 1990s, this interest burgeoned into strenuous objections to US plans for deployment of theatre
missile defenses in Japan. Although ostensibly intended to protect Japan & US assets there against
missile threats from North Korea, the envisioned sea-based deployment under joint US-Japandevelopment could be moved near Taiwan in the event of a conflict there, providing protection against
China’s short-range missile force. Chinese leaders additionally worried that such a deployment,
combined with the open-ended regional scope of the 1997 revision of the US-Japanese defense
guidelines, would open the door to Japanese direct involvement in a Taiwan conflict.26
These regional factors drive the further linkage of China’s concern over Taiwan to the US-China
strategic nuclear relationship. China currently possesses a small arsenal of intercontinental ballistic
missiles (ICBMs) capable of carrying nuclear weapons to targets in the continental United States.27
21

For a good discussion see Alistair Iain Johnston, "China's New 'Old Thinking': The Concept of Limited
Deterrence," International Security, 20:3 (Winter 1995-96).
22
Michael O’Hanlon, “Why China Cannot Conquer Taiwan,” International Security 25 (Fall 2000), pp. 5186.
23
William S. Cohen, “The Security Situation in the Taiwan Strait,” Report to Congress Pursuant to theFY1999 Appropriations Bill, Washington, DC, February 26, 1999. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency
reportedly estimates that the PLA force of CSS-6 and CSS-7 short-range ballistic missiles near Taiwan,
numbering less than 50 in 1997, will grow to as many as 650 by 2005. Bill Gertz, “Chinese Missiles
Concern Pentagon,” Washington Times, April 3, 2002.
24
Joint U.S.-China Communiqué, Shanghai, China, February 27, 1972. See also “The Taiwan Question
and Reunification of China,” Taiwan Affairs Office and Information Office, PRC State Council, August
1993 (http://English.peopledaily.com.cn/whitepaper/7.html).
25
Taiwan Relations Act, U.S. Public Law 96-8, 96th Congress, 1st session (April 10, 1979).
26
For a representative objection, see Yan, Xuetong, “TMD Rocking Regional Stability.” Korean Journal
Of Defense Analysis 11/1 (Summer 1999): 67-86. For an analysis of the role of US missile defense
planning in US-China strategic relations, see Wade L. Huntley, “Missile Defense: More May be Better –for China,” The Nonproliferation Review 9:2 (Summer 2002)(http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol09/92/abs92.htm#hunt). For a good more general discussion, see Tom J.
Christensen, “China, the US-Japan Alliance, and the Security Dilemma in East Asia.” International
Security 23, no. 4 (Spring 1999): 49-80
27
The United States considers China to have “about 20” deployed single-warhead silo-based ICBMs; see
National Intelligence Council, “Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat Through“Prospects for East Asian Nuclear Disarmament”

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China’s current strategic modernization program includes development of mobile, solid-fueled ICBMs
to improve survivability. Although US analysts expect that the total number of Chinese deployedstrategic warheads will rise, they also foresee that Chinese ICBM forces will for some time remain
considerably smaller and less capable than US forces, and the US will retain a massive retaliatory
deterrent.28
Accordingly, even in the event of direct US-Chinese military conflict, US analysts see the prospects ofChina launching nuclear missiles against the United States as slim, and so do not see these forces as animminent threat.29 However, US analysts do observe that “Chinese strategic nuclear doctrine calls for asurvivable long-range missile force that can hold a significant portion of the U.S. population at risk in a
retaliatory strike.”30 In this manner, Chinese nuclear capabilities pose a politically meaningful coercive
instrument—in the event of a conflict over Taiwan, US war planners would still have to reckon with thepossible use by China of nuclear weapons directly against the United States.
Thus, China views its strategic nuclear forces as an instrument to deter (or at least moderate) any USintervention in a Taiwan conflict (and opposes US plans for strategic missile defense precisely because
it could neutralize this deterrent instrument). In other words, China’s most enervated motivation forsustaining strategic nuclear capabilities is nevertheless regional, not global, in nature. Future
developments of Chinese nuclear forces beyond specifically Taiwan applications are also likely to be
driven more by regional rather than global developments.31
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, US-China tensions over Taiwan, missile defense andnuclear threats became muted as China moved from “strategic competitor” to anti-terrorism “partner”
in the Bush administration’s eyes. However, some Bush officials remain distrustful of Beijing’s
intentions, and the administration has in general followed advice not to make significant concessions to
China on defense issues or modify its commitment to defend Taiwan with the use of force.32 Further
dramatic events may reverse some of September 11’s positive effects on US-China relations; over time,latent concerns in some corners of Washington over the “rise of China” are likely to reemerge.
In this context, China’s role in working through the Korean peninsula nuclear crisis is especially crucial.
China shares the goal of keeping the Korean peninsula nuclear free, and at present its diplomaticpressure functions as the only serious constraint to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, as evinced by theapparent success of its temporary suspension of oil supplies in inducing North Korea into the six-party
talks. However, the Chinese leadership strongly favors a negotiated solution over “regime change,”
which at a minimum would create severe social and economic upheaval on China’s border. Thispreference militates against strong US-China concordance in pressuring North Korea to end its nuclear
weapons program. Beijing’s influence in Pyongyang is tangible but limited, and it is unlikely to expend
2015,” December 2001 (http://www.cia.gov/nic/pubs/other_products/Unclassifiedballisticmissilefinal.htm
or http://www.fas.org/irp/nic/bmthreat-2015.htm). Other estimates range from seven to twenty-four.
28
U.S. intelligence estimates for 2015 range “from about 75 to 100 warheads deployed primarily against
the United States. MIRVing and missile defense counter-measures would be factors in the ultimate size ofthe force.” National Intelligence Council, “Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat
Through 2015,” December 2001.
29
Department of Defense, “Annual Report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China,”
Pursuant to the FY2000 National Defense Authorization Act, June 2000.
30
National Intelligence Council, “Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat to theUnited States Through 2015,” September 2000 (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/nie/nie99msl.html).
31
D. Lockwood, "The Status of U.S., Russian and Chinese Nuclear Forces in Northeast Asia," in P. Hayes
and Y. W. Kihl, Peace and Security in Northeast Asia: The Nuclear Issue and the Korean Peninsula, M.E.
Sharpe, 1997, p.334.
32
See Bonnie S. Glaser, “Testimony on U.S. China Relations and the Taiwan Strait in the Aftermath of
September 11,” Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific and Committee on International Relations, U.S.
House of Representatives, November 15, 2001.

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what influence it does have to back US policy goals whose ultimate effects China would not welcome,
especially when doing so would likely undermine that influence as well.33
Thus, the experience that the United States and China garner working toward a multilateral negotiatedsolution to North Korea’s nuclear challenges will likely have a much more enduring impact thanSeptember 11 on the future course of US-China relations. In particular, success in moderating nuclear
weapons threats on the Korean peninsula could ease China’s own reliance on nuclear weapons threats,
especially if it leads to reduced US reliance on nuclear threats in the region as well.
Japanese Nuclear Latency
Although Japan does not possess nuclear weapons, the country’s security policies rely fundamentallyon nuclear weapons threats. This reliance takes essentially two forms. The first form is acceptancethrough the US-Japan alliance of the role of US threats to respond with nuclear weapons to any attack
on Japan. The second form is the international coercive resource flowing from Japan’s latent capacity
to develop nuclear weapons of its own.
US policy threatening potential nuclear responses to attacks on Japan – the “nuclear umbrella” – hasconstituted the central pillar of the US-Japan relationship since end of World War II. During the Cold
War this nuclear guarantee is generally understood to have been designed mainly to prevent the Soviet
Union or China from coercing Japan by threatening the use of nuclear weapons. Thus, US extended
deterrence had both a military function – deterring attacks on Japan – and a political function –preventing coercion of Japan through threat of nuclear attacks.
However, Japan’s implication in US nuclear weapons policies has been much deeper than simply its
acceptance of a US nuclear promise as the premise of its security posture. Throughout the tenure of thealliance, Japanese governments have knowingly abided the routine presence of US nuclear weapons inJapanese territory– particularly the presence of nuclear weapons on US warships in Japanese ports – aswell as the involvement of US facilities in Japan in US nuclear war planning and the participation ofJapanese Self Defense Forces in nuclear strike operations training. Indications that the US andJapanese governments collaborated to hide from public view (or at least refuse publicacknowledgement of) the extent to which Japan was helping to sustain the US nuclear posture in East
Asia lend credence to suspicions that the two countries concluded one or more “secret agreements”
allowing nuclear weapons to enter Japan despite its violation of Japan’s three non-nuclear principles.34
The end of the Cold War and the subsequent US decision to remove all nuclear weapons from surface
naval vessels and overseas deployments eliminated tensions over US naval presence in Japanese ports.
However, Japan’s reliance upon US nuclear deterrence is as deep as ever. One principal reason for thiscontinued reliance has been to avoid appearing to be relaxing security guarantees to allies like Japanand South Korea. US strategists also remain concerned about deterring attacks from other nuclear
weapons states, most recently North Korea. Many of the new Bush administration nuclear initiatives(discussed above) are being developed specifically with North Korean contingencies in mind, and areintended both to bolster deterrence of any North Korean attack upon Japan and to neutralize thecoercive power of North Korean threats to Japan – as well as to be utilized in the event that deterrence
fails and a North Korean attack on Japanese territory transpires.
North Korean nuclear ambitions are also having wider implications for Japan, reshaping security
perceptions and fueling desires in some quarters to increase Japan’s autonomous military capabilities
33

For a good discussion of these issues, see Evan S. Medeiros and M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s New
Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs (November/December 2003).
34
See Hans M. Kristensen, “Japan Under the Nuclear Umbrella: U.S. Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear War
Planning in Japan During the Cold War,” Nautilus Institute (July 1999)(http://www.nautilus.org/library/security/papers/Japan.pdf).

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and expand the range of permissible military operations. Under these auspices, US-Japan militarycollaboration is deepening. North Korean activities have served to legitimize Japanese participation in
US sponsored missile defense research and planning by helping validate concerns among defense
policy makers in both countries over the threat of missile attacks from North Korea. Among somedefense planners in both countries, missile defense is seen as restoring credibility to continuing US
extended deterrence guarantees following withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons and other operational
deployments that had previously served that role.35
The North Korean nuclear crisis has also figured into Japan’s adjustment to US reactions to the
September 11 attacks. Anxious to sustain US engagement with Northeast Asian security issues, Tokyo
has found that its support of the “war on terrorism” has increased opportunities to further strengthen
security ties. Such support for post-September 11 US actions has facilitated the Japanese
government’s desire to cross new thresholds in overseas military involvement (although deployment of
SDF troops for Iraq engendered a distinct level of domestic disquietude).
Most notoriously, the prospect of North Korea gaining overt nuclear weapons capability has spawned
renewed speculation that Japan would feel compelled to develop nuclear weapons of its own in
response. Many advocates of deepening US-Japan military ties observe that without this US
commitment— including missile defense—Japan would be left to develop independent security
capabilities, which could entail a considerable missile program as well as a nuclear weapons option.36
Reflecting this thinking, Japanese governments have developed the capacity to build a nuclear weapons
arsenal and sophisticated missile delivery systems should a consensus emerge in Japan that this needed
to be done. Japan has a peaceful nuclear power program that generates enriched plutonium, it has aspace exploration program, and it has the technical expertise to reorient these activities into a nuclear
weapons development effort.37 If Japan were to withdraw from the NPT, it could become not just a
nuclear weapons state, but one of the world’s most powerful. The only questions are what kind of
nuclear force Japan would want to develop and how much time it would take. A submarine-based
intercontinental ballistic missile force, providing a secure second-strike capability, is within Japan’s
technical and financial capabilities.
The prospect of Japan developing its own independent nuclear weapons has long been a source ofconcern among Japan’s neighbors, raising the specter of reawakened Japanese regional ambitions andof a regional nuclear arms race also involving Russia, China, and perhaps South Korea. In response,
US and Japanese policy-makers have long argued that, because the US “nuclear umbrella” represses
35

For a discussion see U. Tetsuya, “Missile Defense and Extended Deterrence in the Japan-US Alliance.”
Korean Journal Of Defense Analysis 12/2 (Winter 2000): 135-52; Patrick M. Cronin, et.al., “The AllianceImplications of Theater Missile Defense,” in Michael J. Green, & Patrick M. Cronin, eds., The US-Japan
Alliance: Past, Present, and Future, (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1999).
36
For a representative example, see Ralph Cossa, "Nuclear forces in the Far East: Status and Implications
for Proliferation," in P. Hayes and Y. W. Kihl, Peace and Security in Northeast Asia: The Nuclear Issue
and the Korean Peninsula, pp.370, 382[41]. For more sanguine views, see P. Katzenstein & N. Okawara,"Japan's National Security: Structures, Norms, and Policies," International Security, 17:4 (Spring 1993) and
T. Berger, "From Sword to Chrysanthemum: Japan's Culture of Anti-Militarism," International Security,
17:4 (Spring 1993).
37
For contrasting views on this potential, see Selig S. Harrison, ed., Japan's Nuclear Future: The
Plutonium Debate and East Asian Security (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), 1996; cf.
Burnie, S, Smith. “Japan’s Nuclear Twilight Zone.” Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists 57/3 (May-June
2001): 58-62, Katahara, Eiichi, “Japan's Plutonium Policy: Consequences for Nonproliferation”, The
Nonproliferation Review 5/1 (Fall 1997); Philips, Rosemarie, Selig S. Harrison (Editors), The UnitedStates, Japan, and the Future of Nuclear Weapons: Report of the United States-Japan Study Group on
Arms Control and Non-Proliferation After the Cold War, The Brookings Institution; (August 1995); John
E. Endicott, Japan's Nuclear Option: Political, Technical, and Strategic Factors (New York: Praeger
Publishers, 1975).

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incentives for Japan to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems of its own, US extended
deterrence in Northeast Asia actually serves the interests of the states against whom that deterrence isdirected by helping to sustain regional nonproliferation and non-nuclear stability. On the basis of thisargument, Japan’s latent threat to become a nuclear weapons power provides Japan with a certain
coercive leverage to mollify its neighbors to Japan’s facilitation of the US forward presence in theregion – and to increase US interests in sustaining the alliance as well.
However, many Japanese strategists debating Japan’s nuclear option express little concern overwhether US extended deterrence guarantees are credible and sufficient. Rather, a prime motivation has
been desire for Japan to adopt an independent security posture and a more assertive international role.
Many advocates of Japan acquiring its own nuclear weapons have long chaffed under security
dependence upon the United States and coveted reestablishing Japan as an independent “normal” great
power (although some others envision Japan acquiring nuclear capabilities in collaboration with theUnited States and becoming something of an Asian Great Britain38).
Most Japanese leaders still recognize that initiatives in this direction would face other overwhelming
obstacles, including widespread Japanese public commitment to the country’s non-nuclear status, thecertain and strong negative reactions from Japan’s neighbors that any Japanese move toward an
independent nuclear capability would elicit, and an absence of strategic logic.39 Additionally, US
encouragement of Japan to exercise more autonomy within the auspices of the alliance has served tosatisfy some Japanese desires for greater international activism, undercutting ambitions for more
independence that are prominent features of pro-nuclear arguments. The 1997 revisions of the USJapan guidelines for security cooperation exemplify this collaboration.40
At the same time, if Japan wanted to demonstrably limit its capacity to someday develop nuclear
weapons, it could make its nuclear power and missile programs more transparent and take steps tomake it harder to channel them into a nuclear weapons program.41 Japan could also restructure its
peaceful nuclear power program so that it does not produce weapons-grade plutonium. Most
forthrightly, Japan could take the lead in negotiating a nuclear weapons free zone in Northeast Asia totransform the unilateral non-nuclear commitment by Japanese governments to the Japanese people intoa binding treaty obligation.42 Japan refrains from taking these steps, in part, because they would entail
surrendering the immediate diplomatic coercive capacity that Japan’s current latent threat to become anuclear power provides.
While it remains difficult to imagine near-term circumstances under which any Japanese government
would pursue nuclear armament, over time Japan would likely perceive the development of an overt
38

For an expression of this latter view, see Morimoto, Satoshi, “---,” Shokun (2003).
For a good concise discussion of why Japan should not go nuclear, see Kamiya, Matake. “Nuclear Japan:
Oxymoron or Coming Soon?” Washington Quarterly 26, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 63-75; cf. Thompson, Jeff,“Why nukes aren't on Japan's agenda”, Asia Times Online, Jul 19, 2003
(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/EG19Dh02.html).
40
T. Akaha, “Beyond Self-Defense: Japan’s Elusive Security Role Under the New Guidelines for US-Japan
Defense Cooperation.” Pacific Review 11, no. 4 (1998): 461-83.
41
For an argument that US denuclearization of its alliance relationship with Japan, rather than impellingJapan to exercise an independent nuclear option, instead could generate momentum to denuclearize theregion and thereby impede Japan from developing nuclear weapons of its own, see Morton Halperin, “The
Nuclear Dimension of the U.S.-Japan Alliance,” Paper prepared for the Nautilus Institute, Berkeley, CA,
July 9, 1999, <http://www.nautilus.org/nukepolicy/Halperin/index.html>. For a conception of Japan’s
potential role in promoting a nuclear-free East Asia, see Kumao Kaneko, “Japan Needs No Umbrella,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 52 (March/April 1996), pp.46-51,<http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1996/ma96/ma96kaneko.html>.
42
For a discussion see A. DiFilippo, “Can Japan Craft an International Nuclear Disarmament Policy?”
Asian Survey 40, no. 4 (July-August 2000): 571-98.
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North Korean nuclear weapons capability (or the emergence of a unified Korea with nuclear weapons)
as specifically threatening to Japan. If North Korea also developed reliable capabilities to threaten
North American targets and planned missile defense deployments turned out to be unreliable “whiteelephants,” Japanese planners might begin doubting US security guarantees. In that event, longrepressed advocates of a more independent Japanese security policy would be likely to present a
Japanese nuclear weapons capability as the only feasible alternative to insure Japanese security.
If such fundamental transition of Japan’s security conditions is still a prerequisite to a Japanese decision
to become a nuclear power, the recently emerging “thinkability” of this prospect nevertheless hasconsequences of its own.43 For one, regional perceptions of an increased possibility of this moveincrease concerns about Japan’s future role in the region and of the future course of US-Japan
collaborative regional policies, inducing uncertainty and instability. For another, recent suggestions bysome US analysts – a few close to the Bush administration – that Japan’s acquisition of nuclear
weapons might be not only inevitable, but desirable, has added an additional source of potential
misperception and tension to the US-Japan security relationship at a time when its future directions arevery much in flux.
Beyond its political and strategic relationship with the United States, Japan’s Northeast Asian role isalso at an important junction point. The many developments in Asia-Pacific security conditions overthe past decade – some positive and others negative – have created both the opportunity and the need
for Japan to revisit the premises of its security posture, and especially to critically examine whether aCold War-level reliance upon US nuclear deterrence remains an effective means of achieving its
security goals.44 If the prospect of Japan obtaining its own nuclear weapons represents the dark side ofthis potential, there exists also an equally promising bright side, in which Japan seizes new possibilities
to take a leadership role in solving regional security problems and building non-nuclear cooperative
security mechanisms. In particular, if the current Korean crisis is contributing to Japanese nuclear
ambitions, its collaborative resolution could both strengthen the non-nuclear status of Japan and Korea
and promote a regional security framework establishing Japan’s positive role in the region andundercutting concerns about being overshadowed by nuclear-armed neighbors.

Thinking Globally, Acting Regionally
The increased reliance on nuclear weapons threats by Northeast Asian states (and in US policy toward
the region) has direct repercussions for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament globally. However, thisincreasing reliance within the region, combined with the post-Cold War increased autonomy ofregional relations, is also reshaping the basic nature of regional international dynamics in ways thatfurther influence prospects for global arms control and nonproliferation.
Pan-Asian Strategic Multipolarity
The increased salience of regional over global dynamics in an age still overshadowed by nuclear (andother non-conventional) weapons capabilities has introduced a relatively new phenomenon to
43

Marc Erikson, “Japan could 'go nuclear' in months,” Asia Times Online, January 13, 2003. Some
representative examples in Japanese language media include: Fukuda, Kazuya, “If nuclear armament is the
only option for Japan?” Bungei-shunju, 6/1/2003; Akashi, Kazuyasu, “Japan is okay to arm with nuclear
weapons,” World Affairs Weekly, 2/4/2003; Ishihara, Shintaro and Kazuya Fukuda, “Conversation,”
Shokun, 2/1/2003; Sakurai, Yoshiko, Tadae Takubo and Nagao Hyodo, “We have an option for nuclear
weapons,” Shokun, 1/1/2003.
44
For some recent discussions see P. Midford, “The Logic of Reassurance and Japan’s Grand Strategy.”
Security Studies 11/3 (Spring 2002) pp.1-43; Y. Okamoto, “Japan and the United States: The Essential
Alliance.” Washington Quarterly 25/2 (Spring 2002) pp.59-72; and N. Okawara & P. Katzenstein, “Japanand Asian-Pacific Security: Regionalization, Entrenched Bilateralism and Incipient Multilateralism.”
Pacific Review 14/2 (2001) pp.165-94.

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international politics: regional strategic multipolarity. The core element of this condition is theincreasing security “self-reliance” of states in a given regional setting given by capacities to threaten
neighbors with nuclear or other non-conventional weapons.
In the greater pan-Asian region today, five countries—Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and North
Korea—now make use to some extent of threats to use nuclear weapons for purposes of coercive
diplomacy. That in the case of North Korea the nuclear threats are largely latent, relying on capabilities
yet to be demonstrated, makes them no less salient to near-term security interactions (as discussed
earlier). A sixth country—the United States—relies heavily on nuclear threats to pursue its interests in
the region. (In the Asian regional context, the dominance of the US position globally is neutralized tosome extent by the burdens of power projection over geographic distance and by competing security
priorities elsewhere in the world. Hence, recognizing the increasing salience of regional over global
dynamics also suggests viewing the United States, in terms of the Asia region, somewhat less as theoverarching dominant power it is globally and more as another relatively equivalent state in the regional
system.)In addition, Japan and South Korea incorporate strategic deterrence into their security approaches
through reliance on the US nuclear deterrent threat (ambiguously, Taiwan does so as well). While this“nuclear umbrella” does not leave Japan or South Korea fully “self-reliant,” it does provide them withmore regional autonomy than they might otherwise possess. In Japan’s case, its much-debated ability
to fairly quickly develop a sizable nuclear arsenal offers an additional latent nuclear coercive capacity(as discussed earlier).
The shift in security reliance in these states from conventional to nuclear capabilities has been gradualand incremental, and for many of them strategic deterrence is still not the dominant aspect of theirdefense and security posture. Nevertheless, for each, strategic deterrence in some form now has a corerole. Taking root in a multipolar regional context, this increased reliance on strategic nuclear deterrence
alters the interactions of these states in some important, fundamental ways that did not characterize
superpower relations during the Cold War and which therefore are somewhat novel:
Deterrence versus defense. Some of the strategic implications of relying primarily on deterrence rather
than defense became apparent during the Cold War. In the pan-Asian context, these implications arealso salient, and are additionally preconditions to more regionally-specific strategic interaction effects.
Nuclear weapons are sometimes referred to as the “great equalizer,” because relative differences innuclear capabilities tend to be less important than relative differences in conventional capabilities (tohave an army twice the size of the adversary is very meaningful; to have twice as many nuclear
weapons is irrelevant if the adversary has enough retaliatory capacity for credible deterrence).
The “equalizing” effect of nuclear deterrence is becoming increasingly apparent in the pan-Asian
context, which is still characterized by wide asymmetries of nuclear capabilities. As noted above,
China’s minimal ICBM threat to the United States is a latent coercive capability with respect to Taiwan.
North Korea’s capabilities, yet even to be manifest, also exercise coercive influence over other states in
the region. The insufficiency (or even irrelevance) of numerical nuclear superiority with respect tonuclear deterrence is the principal strategic logic driving US ambitions to deploy new types of nuclear
weapons, missile defenses and other new non-traditional capabilities.
Self-reliance. Prior to the nuclear age, the importance of relative capabilities induced states to combine
into rival alliances. Alliances came at a cost – an ally’s behavior could prove problematic, or the ally
could prove fickle and unreliable – but the costs were worth the benefits of combining conventional
capabilities to common purpose.
Because numerical differences in nuclear weapons matter less, combining nuclear capabilities throughalliance provides fewer such benefits. A state already possessing a credible retaliatory deterrent threat
can feel relatively secure on its own, and has few incentives to take on the costs of forming alliances“Prospects for East Asian Nuclear Disarmament”

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when they would add little to the state’s security. Multipolar strategic deterrence, because it both
reduces the incentives for and decreases confidences in alliances, yields an international relations
system that does not self-organize into alliance structures, but rather remains a more fluid environmentof self-reliant states. Mutually beneficial relationships form, but are more tactical and transient.
Unexpected relationships will also emerge, crossing more established lines, if they are tactically useful,particularly to help a state sustain its strategic self-reliance (e.g. Pakistan-North Korea nuclear
cooperation). Thus, strategic multipolarity is less characterized by alliance formation than by loose andshifting short-term linkages of opportunity. Such a regional international relations system, while still
essentially anarchic, can be thought of more as a network than as a structure.
Across pan-Asia, although some enduring traditional links (e.g. China-Pakistan, Russia-India, USJapan and US-South Korea) reflect nascent alliance building in classic power-balancing fashion, otheremerging cooperative links (e.g. US-Russia, China-South Korea, China-India and most recently IndiaPakistan) cut across these lines. Although none of the significant Asian states depend exclusively on
strategic self-reliance, its growing role, and consequent declining incentives to establish firm alliancerelationships, accounts for the lack of coalescence of regional relationships into firmer alliances in thewake of the end of the Cold War. The principal regional alliance relationship that does exist – among
the United States, Japan and South Korea – is a Cold War artifact under increasing strain.
The problem of collateral nuclear threat. Strategic multipolarity entails a significant unstable featureless evident in strategic bipolarity: in general, it is difficult to specify against whom one’s strategic
deterrence is targeted. Conventional forces are (to varying degrees) differentially threatening topotential adversaries depending upon various factors of their design and deployment. In contrast, amissile of a given range generally can be fired in any direction, and can be retargeted quite easily(although this distinction is not absolute—for example, targeting and hence threat perception of
nuclear-capable short-range missile are more deployment-specific).
In bipolar conditions (e.g. the US-Soviet rivalry), the adversary against which a state seeks to enhance
its strategic deterrence is clear. In multipolar conditions, however, the difficulty of targeting deterrence
effects becomes problematic. Thus, for example, intermediate-range missiles in China could equallytarget Russia, Korea, Japan, India, Pakistan, Iran, or Iraq. Any neighbor may feel threatened by them –enhanced strategic capabilities intended to deter one state may inadvertently threaten others as well.
Although strategic capabilities are not especially combinable through alliances, and the “absolute”
nature of nuclear weapons tends to insulate a state’s confidence in its deterrent capabilities from theeffects of new unintended threats, in practice states are rarely one-hundred percent satisfied in theirdeterrent capacities. Thus, in a multipolar context, any state’s improvement of its strategic capabilities
would tend to induce responses from all neighbors. This effect creates the potential for explosive
nuclear arms racing.
The incentives for and dynamics of nuclear arms races are well understood from the US-Soviet
experience. In a multipolar context, the same “action-reaction” dynamic familiar in the Cold War
nuclear competition once again emerges, but multiplied in scope due to the multiplicity of potential
unintended effects and reactions among states in the system. For heuristic purposes, if one imaginesthat the potential number of reactions to one state’s arms increases is in proportion to the number ofrelationships in the system, then as the number of states in the system rises, the arms race escalation
potential increases geometrically45:

45

Number of states

2

3

4

5

6

Number of relationships (arms race potential)

1

3

6

10

15

The applicable equation, where “N” is the number of states, is: (N * (N-1)) / 2“Prospects for East Asian Nuclear Disarmament”

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In practice, such a nuclear arms race has not yet broken out in Asia, despite lost shackles of theovershadowing Cold War dynamic and the increase in the number of territorially contiguous nucleararmed neighbors. A number of explanations for the absence thus far of a dramatic nuclear arms race inAsia present themselves: the regions states have relatively reduced ideological animosities and politicalcompetition compared to the United States and Soviet Union, and relatively higher domestic
competition for precious economic and social resources. Arguably, these factors are strong enough at
the moment that a regional nuclear arms race appears unlikely.
However, this conclusion underscores the observation raised earlier in this paper: the political-security
environment, not abstract strategic theory, is more determinative of states’ incentives for obtaining
nuclear capabilities. Recalling the increasingly important linking function that reliance on nuclear
threats for security purposes plays between nuclear arms acquisition and the political-security
environment, a further vital observation emerges: so long as Asia’s principal states continue to rely on
explicit or latent nuclear threats for security purposes, any erosion of the currently benign politicalsecurity environment would, through that reliance, quickly incite dramatic escalations in nuclear
acquisitions.
Thus, the interest to prevent an Asian regional nuclear arms race compels reducing reliance on nuclear
threats by all states in the region, as a bulwark against potential future increases in regional security
tensions. More fundamentally, the interest to prevent such an arms race, and instead move toward
nuclear disarmament in the region, compels the creation of durable cooperative security structures
lifting the region out of the competitive dynamics of strategic multipolarity and eliminating the security
incentives to rely on nuclear threats at all.
The Disarmament Uplink
In Northeast Asia, increasing reliance on nuclear threats (actual or latent) is a singular impediment toeither stemming new nuclear acquisitions or enhancing cooperative security capacities. The
combination of these developments has contributed to the devastating erosion in the global network oftreaties and other international obligations that make up the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
In particular, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is under intensifying pressure from two
directions. The first is the continued lack of progress by the five stipulated nuclear weapons states inmoving toward the goal of nuclear disarmament, driven by the new US nuclear strategy initiatives
which are themselves in large measure driven by Northeast Asia circumstances (as discussed above).
The second is the burgeoning number and gravity of horizontal proliferation concerns, of which North
Korea’s flouting of its NPT obligations is but the most extreme. The repercussions of the nuclear
weapons tests by India and Pakistan in 1998 and other developments have raised both incentives andopportunities for proliferation around the entire eastern and southern periphery of Asia. If North Korea
becomes the first NPT signatory to withdraw and become an explicit nuclear power, other states may
quickly follow this lead, creating a dramatically weakened regime by the time of the 2005 NPT Review
Conference.
Other treaty regimes are also imperiled:•

Within a year of the Bush administration’s taking office, US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) treaty has become a reality. Despite critics’ charges that even aggressive missile
defense planning need not break the ABM’s restrictions, the Bush administration’s fervent desire toescape the shackles of bilateral and multilateral arms control overcame concerns for tossing aside a
cornerstone of arms control.

•

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), one of the singular arms control achievements of the
1990s, now lies in limbo. The defeat of US Senate ratification of the treaty under the Clinton
administration stymied adoption by other key countries, raising doubts that the treaty would ever“Prospects for East Asian Nuclear Disarmament”

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attain formal legal status. Under the Bush administration, prospects instead are moving toward an
eventual resumption of US nuclear testing, in order to insure the reliability of the “new generation”
nuclear weapons necessary to implement the new flexible low-yield nuclear options policies.
Focusing Disarmament Efforts
Because regionally-oriented nuclear policy developments (especially in Northeast Asia) have been aprincipal catalyst for the recent deterioration of the global nonproliferation regime, reinvigorating
global nuclear disarmament efforts now requires policy-based and regionally-based foundations.
Progress toward regional nuclear disarmament has become a prerequisite to progress toward ultimate
global disarmament.
Such regional progress presupposes solving the proximate security dilemmas that induce reliance on
nuclear weapons threats for security policy purposes. Thus, with the Cold War’s rigid ideologicalconfrontation now history, resolving regional security dilemmas has become a necessary (albeit
insufficient) condition for global nuclear disarmament.
In Northeast Asia, a genuine collective security structure that satisfies the security concerns of all thestates in the region could not only forestall a regional nuclear arms race, but also create a more stablesecurity environment than the region has seen for over a century. Such a structure could credibly aspire
to minimize or even eliminate nuclear weapons threats as an instrument of security policy in theregion.46
Resolving Korean peninsula security conflicts – not just North Korean nuclear issues – tops the agenda
for establishing such a regional security regime. Minimizing the role of nuclear deterrence in the USJapan security alliance, developing a cooperative Sino-Japanese security relationship and engaging
Russia as a security partner in the region are also priorities. Last but not least is retraction of US
regionally-applicable nuclear weapons threats to conform to its withdrawal of deployed nuclear
capabilities (as opposed to introduction of new nuclear capabilities to reestablish reliance on nuclear
threats). Such retraction would also constitute a significant US step toward fulfilling its NPT
disarmament obligations.
Implementing this agenda would also require regional arrangements to constrain pending massive
increases in latent and actual conventional military capabilities, modernization and arms trade.47 Such amultilateral security system would surpass the scope of security cooperation envisaged under the rubricof the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).48 Yet, certain preconditions of such a structure already exist.
Political relations in the region between its historically most adversarial states have improved, over thelast decade particularly, exemplified by the burgeoning relations between China and South Korea.
Most of the states of the region, on both sides of the old Cold War divides, have made progress inpolitical and economic liberalization.
The issue is not whether or not a collective security structure is a practical alternative to the existing
security system in Northeast Asia. The existing security system is an artifact of the Cold War eroding
under the pressure of changing times. The question is thus how inevitable change can best be managed,
46

See J. Endicott, "Great-Power Nuclear Forces Deployment and a Limited Nuclear-Free Zone in Northeast
Asia," in P. Hayes and Young Whan Kihl, Peace and Security in Northeast Asia: The Nuclear Issue and the
Korean Peninsula, M.E. Sharpe, 1997.
47
See D. Ball, "Arms and Affluence: Military Acquisitions in the Asia-Pacific Region," International
Security, 18:3 (Winter 1993-94).
48
R. Betts, "Wealth, Power, and Instability: East Asia and the United States after the Cold War,"International Security, 18:3 (Winter 1993-94), relates the view that the prospects for building andsustaining such collective security structures will be affected by the progress of domestic liberalization in
the region, particularly in China. On this point see also the conclusion of W. Huntley, "Kant's Third Image:
Systemic Sources of the Liberal Peace." International Studies Quarterly 40:1 (March, 1996).

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and in particular how the ongoing transition can be guided away from increasingly naked balance ofpower machinations with incumbent arms races and increases in the risks of war, and toward theconstruction of viable regional security networks capable of improving the prospects for progress andpeace. Continued reliance by all the states in Northeast Asia on some form of nuclear weapons threats
obscures the new conditions in post-Cold War Northeast Asia and obstructs resolution of regionallyspecific security conundrums remaining in the Cold War’s wake. Construction of a genuinely
multilateral regional security system thus requires steps at the outset to wean the states of the region
from their nuclear reliance, and solve the security dilemmas that that reliance merely suppresses.

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