동아시아의 평화와 화해의 정치학 Scrapbook: North Korean missile tests could eventually trigger a Japanese response

2022-04-04

North Korean missile tests could eventually trigger a Japanese response | The Japan Times

North Korean missile tests could eventually trigger a Japanese response | The Japan Times

North Korean missile tests could eventually trigger a Japanese response
At some point Tokyo may have to adopt a missile program of its own — possibly nuclear

North Korea tests what its state media said was a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile at an undisclosed location on March 24. | KCNA / KNS / VIA AFP-JIJI

BY ROBERT E. KELLY

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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Apr 1, 2022

Since the beginning of the year, North Korea has tested many missiles of various ranges, including an intercontinental ballistic missile last week.

With nuclear weapons atop these missiles, they become a genuinely serious, if not existential, threat to South Korea, Japan and the United States.

But they most dramatically alter Japanese security. And at some point, Japan will be forced to develop a counter-strategy, likely some mix of missile defense, a substantially expanded missile force of its own — and possibly nuclear weapons.

It is widely assumed that North Korean nuclear missiles pose the most severe challenge for South Korean security. Initially, that is true. A conflict which might incur North Korean nuclear use would most likely occur between the two Koreas.

But South Korea has always been deeply, arguably existentially, threatened by North Korea. North Korea can mobilize a million soldiers to flush against the border near the South Korean capital Seoul. It also stations thousands of artillery and rocket launchers there.

In a war, North Korea would devastate Seoul with cannon and rockets and march on the city with that massive ground force. Greater Seoul accounts for over 50% of the entire South Korean population. South Korea is highly centralized too; the country’s center of gravity — political, economic, cultural — is in Seoul. And the city’s northern outskirts are just 30 kilometers from the border.

So South Korea is already massively vulnerable to North Korean conventional power. Northern nuclear weapons obviously worsen the problem, but not nearly as much as they do for Japan.

The United States is obviously threatened by North Korean nuclear missiles too. Indeed, the reason Pyongyang builds such large missiles now is to strike the U.S. homeland. North Korea is establishing direct nuclear deterrence with the U.S. Instead of just threatening American allies, North Korea is now threatening the United States itself.

A North Korean nuclear strike on the United States would bring devastating nuclear retaliation, and given America’s size and population, it could in fact absorb multiple North Korean nuclear strikes without national collapse. Such strikes would be terrible but probably not bring the collapse of the American constitutional order itself.

Japan, however, is different. Separated by water, it is not already threatened by North Korean land power as South Korea has been for decades. So North Korean “missilization” is a major new escalation for Japanese security, particularly if those missiles are coupled to weapons of mass destruction. (Besides nuclear weapons, North Korea also likely has chemical weapons.)

Unlike the United States though, Japan is too small, its population too concentrated in a few megacities, to “ride out” a nuclear strike. Even a few nuclear strikes on Japan would almost certainly bring state collapse and social anarchy. Nor does Japan have its own weapons of mass destruction to threaten massive retaliation against North Korea.

Traditionally, Japanese doctrine has not viewed this as a serious problem, because the United States provides a nuclear umbrella over the country. American extended deterrence gives Japan a shadow nuclear retaliatory capacity because the United States would likely strike North Korea hard if it struck Japan.

This is changing, however. North Korea now has the ability to strike the U.S. homeland directly. The more North Korea builds nuclear weapons and tests intercontinental ballistic missiles, the more it will be able to threaten existential devastation on the United States. This capability calls into question the U.S. nuclear guarantees to Japan and South Korea. If North Korea can strike American cities, will the United States fight North Korea on behalf of South Korea and Japan and risk a nuclear strike on its homeland?

This is the most important lesson of the Ukraine war for East Asian democracies. Russia has leveraged its nuclear weapons to block direct NATO intervention in the war. Ukraine has called for a no-fly zone, which would require NATO to shoot down Russian airplanes. Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to respond with nuclear weapons if NATO intervenes, and NATO has respected that red line and not intervened.

During the Cold War, this same logic called into question U.S. commitments to Western Europe. Would the United States sacrifice New York for Paris or London? The French and the British were skeptical that America would make such a trade and they built their own nuclear weapons.

This is the likely outcome of the accelerating missile and nuclear race in East Asia. Japan already has a powerful missile capacity, but because of North Korea’s (and China’s) relentless missilization, it is now improving the speed and range of its missile force. To avoid building its own nuclear weapons, Japan is betting heavily on missile defense. This would be ideal. A missile defense roof would obviate the need for Japan (and South Korea) to counter North Korean nukes with their own. Unfortunately, missile defense does not work very well and is extremely expensive.

Negotiating North Korea into an arms control agreement and nuclear restraint might also work; China has long limited its nuclearization to avoid sparking South Korean and Japanese counter-nuclearization. But North Korea is not a reliable negotiating counterparty, lies a lot and has a long history of supporting denuclearization statements while continuing its programs anyway.

This is an extremely discomforting outlook. Japan has an admirable postwar history of pacifism, but the North Koreans are not going to stop; they do not care about international norms or rules; and they are not going to give up enough of their nuclear weapons to end the existential threat they now pose to Japan.

Japan will have to reckon with this problem — and soon.

Robert E. Kelly is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University in South Korea.

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