Robert E Kelly

Political Science, International Relations, East Asia, US Politics…and, yes, the BBC Dad

Robert E Kelly

Category Archives: Nuclear Weapons

North Korea will Use Nuclear Weapons First in a Serious Contingency – and No One Really Quite Knows What to Do about That

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d-thumbnail-600x370This re-posts an article I wrote for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recently on N Korea’s likely first-use of nuclear weapons in any serious Korean contingency.

The University of Pennsylvania invited me to participate in two-day forum on nuclear weapons back in September. This is the short paper I brought. Here it is at BAS.

My core argument is that NK will go nuclear almost immediately because: 1. It faces a very intense use-it-or-lose-it dilemma. 2. It can’t hope to win conventionally. 3. Any conflict almost immediately become existential for it.

No one really quite knows what to do in response. Missile defense doesn’t work well enough to guarantee that we can shoot down all their inbounds. And sanctions can only slow NK down, not stop their nuclear march. So my suggestion is to start deconcentrating US forces on the peninsula – to more and smaller US bases – so that they are not such a juicy hostage-taking target.

But that runs directly counter to what we have been doing here for the last decade or so – concentrating US forces in a few super-bases like Camp Humphreys. That may make logistical and financial sense. But it offers huge, inviting, clustered targets of Americans for NK to threaten or strike.

And if they NKs do nukes a US base in East Asia and kill thousands of Americans, the pressure on POUTS to massively retaliate will be enormous. And if we respond by nuking NK, the potential for spiraling escalation, including possibly China is high.

Below is my original, pre-edited and more technical version of my paper:

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The US Leak about Ukraine’s Military Troubles Does Not Change Russia’s Inability to Exit the Ukrainian Quagmire with Anything like a ‘Victory’

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skynews-ukraine-pentagon_6118871Russia is bogged down in a war it can’t win. A weaker-than-expected Ukrainian spring offensive does not change that. Russia’s still lacks a path to victory which remotely justifies the costs and isolation of the war, even if it manages to hang onto some Ukrainian territory.

The leaks strongly suggest that Ukraine’s offensives this year will be last successful than last year’s. Ukraine lacks the heavy and precise weaponry its needs (shame on us for dragging our feet on that stuff), and it has suffered tremendous casualties. This is unfortunate. I always thought hopes that Ukraine would win by the end of this calendar year were too optimistic. The war will likely last into next year at least.

But this doesn’t get Russia off the hook. It is still tied down in a costly, unwinnable quagmire. Even if the lines do not change much this year, Ukraine will not give up. It will fight a protracted, defense-in-depth, semi-insurgency conflict if necessary, biting at the Russians for years, looking for opportunities to strike; not allowing the Russians to withdraw; not allowing its conquered areas to be developed, exploited, or populate; not allowing Russia to escape from sanctions and isolation. A model here is the failed Japanese invasion of China in 1937. The Imperial Japanese Army could win battles but not the war, and conflict degenerated into a long, unwinnable slog which drained Japanese resources for no clear gain compared to the growing costs, including diplomatic isolation and sanction.

I have some other recent thoughts on the Ukraine war at 1945.com:

1. Russia Probably Can’t Win without Substantial Chinese Assistance. Excerpt:

The Russian spring offensive in Ukraine already appears to be running out of steam. No less than the President of Ukraine himself recently visited the frontlines’ most contested sector – the city of Bakhmut. Volodymyr Zelensky is known for his courage – he stayed in Kiev last February as the Russians marched on it. But visiting Bakhmut, against which the Russians have thrown the weight of their forces this spring, would be remarkably risky if the chances of Russian breakthrough were genuine.

Zelensky also felt secure enough this month to receive the Japanese prime minister in Kiev, at the same time Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Russian President Putin in Moscow. And certainly the frontlines have not moved much. Russia was supposed to come off the winter refreshed and restocked, capable once again of major offensive action. This has not been the case. There have been no armored punches threatening a breakthrough, no wide-front advances threatening to overstretch Ukrainian reserves.

Instead, Russia is doing again what it has done since last summer – targeting a few small cities in the east with massive, human-wave infantry assaults, while randomly terror-shelling Ukrainian cities. The former has resulted in high casualties and small advances, while the latter continues to alienate world opinion for pointlessly killing noncombatants. This is not a winning strategy, and if this is the best Putin has after just a year of war, it is unclear how expects to win if the war drags on as it appears it will.

2. Russian Nukes in Belarus are just another Saber-Rattling Gimmick by Putin. There is No Remotely Cost-Beneficial Scenario for Putin to Use Nukes in Ukraine or Against NATO. Excerpt:

Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russia’s eastern neighbor. Belarus also borders Ukraine’s north, and Putin wants Minsk to participate more openly in his war against their shared neighbor. Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has acted warily with respect to Russia’s invasion, but he depends on Russian assistance to stay in power, especially after Putin helped him fight off mass protests in 2020. Lukashenko probably has little choice but to assent to the deployment of Russian nukes on his country’s territory.

Belarus also borders NATO countries. Putin’s emplacement of these weapons is likely meant as an oblique threat to the West. It fits Putin’s regular habit of talking up Russian nuclear weapons to unnerve Ukraine’s Western supporters. The tactic makes sense. Russian conventional power has embarrassed itself in Ukraine. Its army has struggled, and most of the world had expected a quick victory for Russian forces. Putin invokes Russia’s nukes to compensate. He has a long history of such bravado.

Putin’s Western sympathizers, who have talked up the possibility of World War III for over a year, will argue again that this deployment means we are sliding toward a global conflagration. But they are probably wrong. It remains unclear how invoking nukes will help Putin win a limited conventional war.

3. Russia’s Apathetic Response to Finland’s NATO Accession should End the ‘NATO-Expansion-Caused-War’ Argument.

It is widely understood now that Russian President Vladimir Putin blundered badly in his invasion of Ukraine. He planned the war as a fait accompli blitzkrieg. The whole thing would end in a week or two. Putin would re-organize post-Soviet space in one swift stroke. NATO would be caught off guard and scared about further Russian moves. China would be impressed at Putin’s audacity, helping to off-set the unbalanced economic relationship between the two countries. The world would once again be impressed by Putin the master strategist.

Instead, the war has turned into an expensive, embarrassing, debilitating calamity. Russia may still win in the minimal sense of holding onto some conquered territory. But in every other important aspect, the war has been a disaster, and it is getting worse, not better.

Economically, the sanctions placed on Russia because of the war are pummeling its GDP. Politically, Russia is mostly alone. China and India have not supported the sanctions but otherwise kept their distance. Militarily, the war has turned into a stalemate, tilting slowly toward the Ukrainians. Russia has taken no new territory in a year. Ukraine has launched two successful offensives since then, and another is expected later this spring. And now, strategically, Russia has just suffered another set-back. Finland has joined NATO.

How will NATO Respond in the Unlikely Event Russia Uses a Nuke in Ukraine? We will Not Counter-Nuke; We have Many Other Options

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Ukraine-3Russian nuclear use in Ukraine is extremely unlikely, and NATO would not hit back with a nuke even if they did.

I am fairly exhausted with the lurid alarmism that we are tumbling toward world war 3 or some kind of nuclear exchange with Russia. I have argue against this here, here, and here.

This claim mostly gets brought up my pro-Putin voices in the West whose real interest is a Russian victory in the war. They therefore stoke exaggerated fears of nuclear war to push NATO to stop aiding Ukraine. The bad faith – the manipulation of nuclear anxieties to pursue unrelated ideological goals – is transparent.

Mostly this comes from MAGA rightists, for whom Russia and Hungary are models of ‘post-liberal’ governance, plus some ‘anti-imperial’ leftists for whom US action is ipso facto bad. Both are trying to scare NATO into cutting off aid to Ukraine by threat-inflating a nuclear exchange. In fact, that event is VERY unlikely.

Further, even if Russia did use a nuke in Ukraine, there is no obvious reason for NATO to hit back in-kind. There is only a ‘slide’ toward escalation if both sides do it, and the US won’t counter-nuke, because 1) it does not want to slide toward a wider nuclear exchange, and 2) it has lots of other economic and conventional options to respond.

I cover those options in this essay for 1945.com:

Throughout his war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has obliquely hinted that he might use nuclear weapons. I have argued in these pages that this is unlikely. There is no obvious Ukrainian military or infrastructural target of a size commensurate with a nuclear weapon’s power. Russia would be badly isolated by the rest of the world if it took this step, so any target would need to be worth the huge geopolitical blowback. Ukraine does not appear to have one. Its army is spread out across a thousand-mile front. None of its important infrastructure is so massive that it needs a nuke to disable. Much of the nuke-talk in the West is overwrought.

Nevertheless, it is wise to consider how NATO and the wider world of democracies will and should respond if Putin nonetheless takes this step. If Putin is losing badly in Ukraine and his rule at home is threatened by widespread unrest over the course of the war– a somewhat credible scenario for next year – perhaps he will take this gamble to turn things around. So what will the West do?

We Won’t Counter-Nuke Russia

So long as a Russia nuclear strike was limited to Ukraine, NATO would almost certainly not respond in kind. To do so would risk a further Russian nuclear response and a spiral of nuclear exchanges. The Ukrainians might be so shocked and horrified by the extraordinary damage, that they would demand this. But the West will almost reject that request, just as it rejected Ukrainian demands for a no-fly zone back in March.

But the West also need not escalate like that. NATO is conventionally superior to Russia, and that lead has widened considerably because of Russian losses in Ukraine. If Russia cannot defeat Ukraine, then it is very vulnerable to NATO conventional retaliation. The West will almost certainly start there, if only to prevent nuclear escalation.

Read the rest here.

Russia Won’t Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine – Enough with Your Creepy Dr. Strangelove Fantasies

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Russia-Nuclear-WarThere is no obvious Ukrainian target worth the massive geopolitical blowback of a nuclear strike, so I think it is extremely unlikely.

This is a re-post of an op-ed I wrote for 1945.com.

So much of the debate around nukes is lurid apocalypticism, what Cheryl Rofer rightly calls ‘nukeporn.’ Nukes fascinate people, in a creepy strangelovian way. We get carried away with dark fantasies of mass death and Mad Max. It’s all very Freudian Thanatos weirdness. So the good news is that Putin probably won’t use them, because they won’t help him win, because:

1. There’s no military or infrastructural target in Ukraine remotely commensurate with that much force.

2. The global backlash would vastly outweigh whatever middling target was chosen.

3. The Russian army in Ukraine would likely be hit by it too.

4. Ukraine wouldn’t give up anyway.

I suppose Putin might drop a strategic nuke on a city and kill 200,000 people. But the global blowback from that nuclear genocide would be even more extreme. NATO would likely enter the war directly; even China might.

Here is the full essay at 1945:

In the last few weeks, there has been widespread speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin might use a nuclear weapon in his war against Ukraine. This has generated speculation on how the West might react, including the use of nuclear weapons in response. As Cheryl Rofer notes, much of this commentary has been irresponsible, trading on the lurid, apocalyptic possibilities of nuclear weapons to throw out alarmist scenarios. Her trenchant term for this is ‘nukeporn.’ She is almost certainly right.

Putin’s Nuclear War? Not Likely to Happen

Putin is highly unlikely to use nuclear weapons. He even had to say he is not bluffing, because he has been, with nukes, since the start of the war. And given that Putin supporters in the West have been the ones talking up this contingency, one strongly suspects bad faith. That is, Putin’s Western flunkies are hyping nuclear war to scare the West into ceasing aid to Ukraine, in order to help Russia win the war, which is their real goal.

There are at least four major reasons why Russian nuclear escalation is a huge gamble, with such a low upside probability, that use is unlikely:

Read the rest here.

And if you really want to know what NATO would do if Putin did drop a nuke, here are my thoughts on that. But it’s not gonna happen, so relax.

Russian Nuclear Scenarios in the Ukraine War: Unlikely, but if Putin is Facing Strategic Defeat and National & Personal Humiliation, Maybe

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_126834848_342d3270-42f1-445b-9b20-3a0f4c541ec2If the Russian reservist mobilization fails to stop Ukrainian counter-offensives, then Putin might consider nuclear escalation.

This is a re-post of an op-ed I wrote for Channel News Asia on possible Russian nuclear use scenarios in the Ukraine war.

I continue to be pretty skeptical of this, at least at the moment. As I argued on Twitter, it is just not clear to me what target in Ukraine is so valuable and big that it merits the huge geopolitical blowback risk of this dramatic step. For example, is the Ukrainian army so massed together that it would be justify this much force? Not that I know of. Is there an infrastructure target in Ukraine which is so large and so strategically significant that a nuke would be worth the risk? Again, I don’t think so. Most of what Ukraine has which is worth striking can be attacked with conventional weapons.

The one possible option is a ‘counter-value’ nuking of a Ukrainian city – to shock Ukraine into surrender, and even wipe out the Ukrainian leadership in one stroke if the target were Kiev. But this would kill so many people that it would look like nuclear genocide. Russia’s friends would all abandon it, and NATO might well openly enter the war.

I cover a lot of this in the CNA essay. Here is the original, pre-edited version:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in a tight spot. His invasion of Ukraine is flailing. He expected a quick victory when he launched his February attack. A blitzkrieg would allow him to replace Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with a Russian stooge. This puppet would block Ukraine’s drift toward the West and allow the Russian army to withdraw. Similar to Putin’s rapid absorption of Crimea in 2014, the Ukraine war would be over before the West had a chance to respond.

Instead, the war degenerated into an expensive stalemate. The Russian army took territory in the south and east early on but has been unable to make major gains since then. Putin’s best units have already been committed to the war and are degraded after months of combat. Ukraine has fought back ferociously and launched a counter-offensive earlier this month which retrieved about 20% of Putin’s initial gains.

Putin has panicked, declaring a massive mobilization of Russian reservists. But there is widespread suspicion in the analyst community that these forces will not win the war, just drag it out. Russia does not have the logistical capability to deploy, train, or kit these new forces properly. Stories are already emerging of these newly impressed reservists being sent to Ukraine with no training. The sheer size of Russia’s mobilized army may slow down Ukraine, but it is unlikely to change the long-term outcome – Russian exhaustion and withdrawal.

Please read the rest here.

My Extended Comments on Potential South Korean/Japanese Nuclearization for the Asian Leadership Conference and Foreign Policy Magazine

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imageI spoke at the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul a few weeks ago on S Korean/Japanese indigenous nuclearization and then published my basic thinking with Foreign Policy magazine on the topic a few days later.

Both of the venues required a more abbreviated presentation for time/space constraints, so I thought I would put up my full remarks here, at my own site. Here is the 2022 ALC site, and here is my original article for FP.

In brief, my argument is that the US should get out of the way to let Seoul and Tokyo make up their own mind. The US has long opposed ROK/Jpn nuclearization, but increasingly that strikes me as inappropriately hegemonic or strong-arming of them. There is a pretty strong case for SK and Japan to counter-nuclearize against China, Russia, and especially NK. I sketch that in detail after the jump, but the short version is:

1. The US is not going to exchange LA for Seoul/Tokyo. In 1961, de Gaulle asked JFK would he exchange NY for Paris. JFK waffled; de Gaulle was no idiot; he built French nukes shortly afterwards. The logic is the same here. The US is not going to fight a nuclear war solely for non-Americans. This will raise endless, irresolvable credibility debates between the US and its Asian allies. The best way to resolve that is to do what our European allies did – self-insure through indigenous nuclearization.

2. Trump will likely get elected – or ‘elected’ – in 2024, and he will ‘blow up’ the ROK alliance as he promised he would. So ROK nuclearization may happen no matter what we think. And a US retrenchment from SK would probably scare Japan so much that the whole nuclear debate there would shift substantially to the right.

There is a lot of anxiety about this step, and I share it too. So I don’t endorse SK/J nuclearization. But there is SK polling showing high interest in this, and SK is terribly exposed to NK nuclear devastation with few good options as the NKs continue to build relentlessly. (All this I cover below.) So the least we Americans can do is get out of the way and let them debate it themselves.

The original, pre-edited FP essay on this follows below the jump:

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The Ukraine War is Teaching N Korea that Nukes Can Keep the Americans Out of Your Conflicts

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  North Korea ICBMRussia’s success at blocking NATO intervention in the Ukraine war via its nuclear weapons is a huge learning moment for North Korea. This is a re-post of an essay I wrote at 1945.com after the recent missile test.

Usually we say that NK wants nukes on missiles for:

1) Deterrence and Defense: to keep the Americans from ever striking NK, as they threatened in 1994 and 2017

2) Level the Military Playing Field: NK is too poor and technological backward to compete conventionally with SK or the US anymore. So nukes are a great equalizer.

This is true, but as we are all seeing in Ukraine, nukes are also a great way to keep the Americans at bay, to keep them from intervening in your conflict with an American ally. If Russia weren’t nuked up, it’s safe to say that NATO would be more heavily involved. And pundits have been very honest about admitting that we can’t do more, such as a no-fly zone, because we fear escalation with nuclear-armed Russia. I have argued this too.

So if you are NK, nuclear ICBMs, which give you direct deterrence with the US, are a possible way to prevent the Americans from helping SK in a conflict, just as Russian nukes are keeping us out of the Ukraine war. This is to drive wedge between the US and SK. At some point, we are going to have to reckon with this threat, and missile defense is not an answer, because it does not work well enough.

Here is my essay from 1945:

North Korea just tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile. It appears that this is Pyongyang’s longest-range missile yet. The goal, obviously, is to strike the United States if necessary. North Korea has sought, and now likely achieved, the ability to directly threaten the US mainland with substantial nuclear force.

ICBMs normally are designed to deliver a nuclear payload. North Korea first detonated a nuclear weapon in 2006. It is widely assumed that it now has several dozen nuclear warheads. North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un has also hinted that he wishes to develop MIRVs (multiple, independently-targetable re-entry vehicles). This would permit each ICBM to carry multiple warheads. So even if only one North Korean ICBM were to survive American missile defense, it could then still devastate multiple American cities.

Read the rest here.

The Ukraine War is a Stalemate. What if Putin Escalates to Try to Win?

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Russia Su-34Russia is not going to win unless it escalates. So what do we do if it uses a really horrific weapon?

This is a re-post of a column I wrote recently for 1945.com. When I wrote it, it still looked like Russia would win by sheer weight. As we come up on April, a Russian victory is increasingly unlikely. The Russian military, as structured, is too heavy, too poorly supplied, too corrupt, and too reliant of sheer firepower to win.

By winning, I mean something like Russia’s original war aims – replacing the Ukrainian leadership, annihilating its military, or taking territory (Donbas, the Black Sea coast). If you define down ‘winning’ to mean just blowing the place to hell, I guess Russia is ‘winning.’

But Putin has tied his legacy to this war; he’s macho, self-possessed, and desperate for Russia to be ranked as a great, consequential power in world politics. He is likely to escalate to try to win rather than withdraw, even as this war reduces Russia’s claim to great power status even more.

So what do we do if Russia uses a chemical or even tactical nuclear weapon to break the battlefield stalemate? The pressure from the Western public to do something in response would be overwhelming. At minimum, I think much of the objection to a no-fly zone would dissipate. That, in turn, would become a low-intensity NATO-Russian shooting war with the ever-present possibility of it spiraling out of control.

We need to start thinking, now, what we would do if Russia uses non-conventional weapons in a desperate bid to win. Naturally, all our options are bad. Here’s that 1945 essay:

The war in Ukraine is devolving into a grind of limited, costly Russian advances and ferocious Ukrainian counterattacks. It still looks as if Russia will win – if only because it will relentlessly pound Ukrainian cities with artillery – but there is now a reasonable chance Ukraine will fight Russia to a stalemate.

It is now painfully clear that Russia expected a blitzkrieg victory, a quick, in-and-out invasion similar to its ten-day war in Georgia in 2008. A modernized, high-tech Russian military was to roll over a poorly-armed and -trained Ukrainian army fighting for a weak state with low public legitimacy. The plan was, apparently, to impose a Russian stooge in the place of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and then go home before the West could organize a response.

Read the rest here.

North Korea’s 2021 Nuclear Modernization Announcements

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Kim Jong-un examines ties with S. Korea at party congress - The Korea Herald

This is a re-post of an essay I just wrote for The National Interest. I discuss the recent announcement at the 8th Workers Party to Congress to significantly modernize and expand the North’s nuclear and missile arsenal.

A lot was announced, but my inclination is to agree with Ankit Panda that the development of battlefield nuclear weapons is the most important announcement. I noted this in my comments to Ankit on Twitter: “These strike me as a battlefield leveler for NK’s military which is technologically far behind. Also South Korea is really dense in just a few places/cities, and it has a few highly vulnerable critical junctures, like the highway Route 1 running through the mountains or Busan port. Battlefield nukes would be ideal for disrupting these junctures.”

The full essay follows the jump:

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70th Anniversary of the Korean War: North Korea isn’t Going Anywhere; It’s Pretty Stable (Unfortunately)

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This is a re-post of my contribution to The National Interest’s recent essay round-up on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War. (My essay here; the full symposium here.)

My argument, in brief, is that North Korea is actually quite stable. Hence the answer to the symposium question – would Korea be re-unified by 2025 – is a resounding ‘no.’ Here is a brief Twitter thread which summarizes my argument.

North Korea faces little pressure internally – Kim has consolidated power quite nicely; elites are quiescent; there’s never been a popular revolt – and externally – China is unwilling to cut NK off; nukes give NK deterrence against regime change. The sanctions are tough, but Northern elites have been pushing the costs of them onto their population for decades. They won’t bring down or substantially change the DRPK system.

So we are stuck. We can try to negotiate, and we should, but the last few years’ flailing shows how hard that is. The stalemate is quite persistent.

The full essay follows the jump:

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