This is the un-paywalled version of an essay I wrote for Foreign Policy on Monday.

Israel’s preventive disarming strike on Iran last month is a model of what the US and South Korea would do to North Korea – either as a ‘bloody nose’ strike, or in the opening days of a second Korean war. Deterring that from happening is why North Korea built nuclear weapons.

And now that we have helped Israel in the attack – after reneging on our 2015 deal with Iran – North Korea will never denuclearize. That is the very obvious lesson for NK to draw from Israel’s war of choice. This is the core point I make in my FP essay. In fact, NK probably won’t even negotiate arms control with us now. Instead Pyongyang will likely build up even more – convinced that if Iran, Iraq, and Libya had nukes, they never would have been attacked by Western power, which is almost certainly true.

The repeated use of Western power against non-nuclear rogue states – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Serbia, and, sort of, Cuba & Venezuela – signals to illiberal and anti-western countries that nuking up is your best defense. That we broke our word to Libya in 2011 and, especially, Iran in 2018 reinforces that signal.

Trump particularly deserves blame here. Kaddafi was already in trouble in 2011 when Obama reneged on 2003 nuclear deal, and Kaddafi was promising an enormous bloodbath in Benghazi if we did not intervene. By contrast, the Iran deal of 2015 was working when Trump pulled out of it for no substantive reason. (He did it to please the GWoT hawks and End Times-craving evangelicals in his coalition.) That sent a huge signal to anti-western countries everywhere: the US will not negotiate with you in good faith on nukes; secretly sprinting for nukes is the best way to get security.

No one learned this lesson better than NK. For decades Pyongyang disbelieved our security assurances and pushed relentlessly for nukes. Nukes, as I write in the FP essay, are a ‘unique shield.’ Nothing can replace their deterrent power – certainly not a deal with the US which MAGA will just dump when it is convenient. So now, we should prepare for a world where other nuclear-curious rogues sprint for NWs too.

The full essay follows the jump:

For decades the US and its allies have supported a robust nonproliferation regime to retard the spread of nuclear weapons. It has been remarkably successful. Eighty years after the Manhattan Project, just nine countries possess nuclear weapons, despite early Cold War predictions that dozens of states would nuclearize in the coming decades. But that regime is collapsing – ironically because of US/Western behavior.

In recent years, three incidents have dramatically demonstrated the irreplaceable value of nuclear weapons:

• US President Donald Trump’s failure to follow through on his very public ‘fire and the fury’ threat against nuclear North Korea in 2017
• Russia’s successful blunting of Western assistance to Ukraine since 2022 via nuclear threats
• Israel’s 2025 airstrikes against non-nuclear Iran.

North Korea is Now a ‘Model’ of Rogue State Nuclearization

Taken together, these three events – including the ‘non-event’ of Trump’s refusal to bomb – demonstrate that a country with nukes commands enormous deference and near-immunity from Western intervention, while those without are open to Western coercion. The obvious takeaway for illiberal and anti-western countries everywhere, especially small rogue states, is to sprint for nukes as North Korea did, or face airstrikes as Iran must.

A similar lesson applies, albeit less forcefully, to already-nuclearized, illiberal states like Russia, China, or Pakistan: do not negotiate deep nuclear arms control with the West because nuclear threats work. The West will back down in the face of nuclear threats, even when they are obviously bluffs. (Russian President Vladimir Putin’s routine nuclear threats are now so un-credible that he must literally say ‘this is not a bluff.’) Nonproliferation sanctions and punishments do not outweigh the unique shield from Western coercion which nuclear weapons provide. Both horizontal proliferation (more states nuclearizing) and vertical proliferation (already-nuclearized states building more) loom.

An underdiscussed side-effect of Israel’s recent air campaign is that it ends any hope of North Korean denuclearization. North Korea is now a model for rogue states seeking security from Western threats. Its strategy of sprinting for a nuclear weapon regardless of consequence or cost has been validated repeatedly. For years, North Korean negotiators maintained that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein or Libya’s Muammar Kaddafi would not have been overthrow had they had nuclear weapons. That is likely correct.

North Korea’s instinct – that nuclear weapons constitute uniquely effectively insulation from Western intervention – has been lately re-confirmed by the Ukraine War. Western leaders and analysts have openly worried that NATO assistance to Ukraine might spark Russian nuclear escalation. Consequently, Western help to Ukraine has likely been slower and more halting than it otherwise would have been. Even though Russian President Vladimir Putin is almost certainly bluffing after three years of unfulfilled nuclear threats, Trump is still so fearful that he upbraided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for ‘gambling with World War III.’

Israel’s recent air war confirms the North Korean, nukes-are-a-unique-shield argument yet again. As in Iraq and Libya, Iran likely would not have been struck had it already crossed the nuclear threshold. Indeed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly claimed that setting back Iran’s nuclear program was the goal of the strikes.

Iran Learns the North Korea’s Wisdom the Hard Way

Given Trump’s refusal to strike North Korea but willingness to strike Iran, North Korea’s heedless sprint for the bomb, coupled to its implacable, twenty-year refusal to negotiate it away, looks wise. By contrast, Iran, which negotiated with the West in good faith, looks foolish. In 2015, Iran agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with the US and other world powers. The JCPOA limited Iran’s nuclear industry to non-military purposes in exchange for sanctions relief. Iran abided by the deal, which included inspections – a major concession North Korea has rejected for years.

The JCPOA was probably the best deal that America and Israel could have gotten, barring the use of force against Iran with all its inherent risks. And importantly, it signaled to other illiberal but nonnuclear states that they need not do as North Korea did. The US would negotiate with them in good faith, rather than attack them. So, the unique nuclear shield would not be necessary.  But Trump pulled the US out of the JCPOA. Sanctions were re-imposed. Iran, under pressure, drifted into Russia and China’s orbit. In time, it violated nonproliferation obligations under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Israel then attacked. Iran now likely wishes it had followed North Korea’s path.

Hawks will insist that the JCPOA was not tough enough and that Iran was violating IAEA protocols (which is true, but only after Trump withdrew from the deal). And certainly Iran has repeatedly declared its desire to annihilate Israel. An Iranian nuclear weapon would be an existential threat to Israel. So Israel’s strikes may be justified by current circumstances.

But Iran was open to negotiation – specifically, to nuclear restraint in exchange for Western assurances – a decade ago. Iran did seem dissuadable from full nuclearization. Most experts concur that Iran was in compliance with the JCPOA and was not actively developing a nuclear weapon. By rejecting a negotiated outcome and insisting on the complete abolition of any Iranian nuclear program – even civilian, and by force if necessary – the US and its partners are powerfully signaling to other illiberal regimes: if they do not yet have nuclear weapons, they should dash for them; if they do already have them, they should resist arms control. Iran itself will almost certainly recommit to nuclearization once the current conflict ends.

Some Good News

Trump has sent all the wrong signals to illiberal states regarding nuclear weapons. He is encouraging both horizontal proliferation – illiberal, nonnuclear states will consider nuclearization – and vertical proliferation – illiberal, already-nuclearized states will reject arms control. The only good news is that the number of countries this immediately impacts is low.

The most obvious candidate for future nuclearization is Iran itself. It appears that the US-Israeli air campaign only set back the Iranian program by a few months. Trumpian bad faith in negotiations in the past will almost certainly empower Iranian hardliners to push for full nuclearization in the future. This could conceivably pull the US and Israel into a ‘mowing the grass’ relationship with Iran, whereby they must airstrike it every few years to pull it back from the nuclearization threshold.

But luckily, beyond Iran, there is no immediate rogue state candidate to follow the North Korean path. Myanmar and Venezuela seem unlikely to take the risk, and several previous Middle East nuclear aspirants – Syria, Iraq, and Libya – experienced regime change and are unlikely to try now.

The bad news, however, is that all sorts of rickety states uncomfortable with the Western power could reconsider nuclear weapons if their regimes decayed or radicalized. Besides Syria, Iraq, and Libya – all of which are tenuously governed at the moment – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or even Turkey might be candidates should their politics backslide. Similarly, as the Sino-US cold war worsens, China may protect clients who nuclearize – as it did North Korea – as part of that competition. China’s inroads in Africa and Southeast Asia raise this possibility.

The other bad news is that illiberal proliferators with nuclear weapons already – Pakistan and North Korea – will likely reject denuclearization and arms control now. To be sure, this was unlikely anyway, but aggressively prosecuting nonnuclear Iran, while giving nuclear North Korea a pass, tells them both to build more and reject any deals with limits or inspectors.

Finally, as Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan double-down, they will also push nearby democracies to either nuke-up if they are non-nuclear (South Korea), or build-up if they are nuclear already (India).

Counterproliferation, Not Nonproliferation

The nonproliferation regime is attractive to nonnuclear weapons states – especially illiberal and antiwestern ones – if their rejection of nuclearization vouchsafes them against the Western use of force. US (and Israeli) behavior in the last two decades, but especially under Trump, undermines that implicit bargain. This incentivizes rogue proliferation.

Luckily, there is only one obvious candidate for horizontal proliferation at the moment – Iran – and two for vertical proliferation – North Korea and Pakistan. The problem is limited for now. But by abjuring nonproliferation – deals – for counterproliferation – strikes – the US has put itself in semi-permanent nuclear policing relationship – ‘mowing the grass’ – with much of the global South. Should any of a long list of mid-sized nonwestern economies in the world take a decidedly illiberal governance turn, perhaps in coordination with China in a new cold war, the West could face a new ‘sprinter’ for nukes along North Korean lines because the new regime would not trust the West to negotiate security guarantees. Consider, for example, if the islamist radicals who have tried to overthrow the Saudi monarchy for decades finally succeeded and sought a ‘Sunni bomb.’

As nuclear experts Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi argue, a new wave of nuclear proliferation seems likely. Ironically, it is motivated by Western action. Slow assistance to Ukraine because of Putin’s empty nuclear threats, plus Trump’s refusal to act on his widely broadcast threat against North Korea, illustrate the enormous deterrent power of nuclear weapons, especially for small, vulnerable rogue states. Conversely, Israel’s airstrikes – like Hussein and Kaddafi’s violent deaths – illustrate the great risks of not nuclearizing to countries in contest with the West. We should expect illiberal and anti-Western regimes everywhere to draw the obvious lesson.