Nuclear weapons capabilities and doctrines in North Korea

The North Korean nuclear and missile programs have seen an accelerated development under the leadership of Kim Jong-un. We have analyzed official North Korean declarations in a nuclear weapons doctrine framework, and assessed to what degree their actual nuclear weapons capabilities support their declaratory doctrine. After six underground nuclear tests and numerous missile flight‑tests, the country can now credibly threaten military and civilian targets in Japan and South Korea with nuclear-tipped, medium-range ballistic missiles. Even US naval and air force assets on Guam seem to be within reach for one of the most modern North Korean ballistic missiles, the Hwasong-12. Furthermore, they have successfully flight-tested two types of missiles with the probable range to strike the continental US with thermonuclear warheads, the Hwasong‑14 and Hwasong-15. Central questions regarding reliability, precision, and survivability during atmospheric re-entry still linger before we deem this capability credible. Still, US leaders can no longer rule out the possibility that Pyongyang under certain circumstances may succeed in destroying at least one of their major cities with such missiles. The strategic balance has changed in the favor of North Korea. North Korea has through words and actions signaled a willingness to launch nuclear attacks on military targets on Guam, in Japan, and South Korea, if they assess that a US force buildup is underway as a prologue to an invasion or a major attack. This willingness to cross the nuclear threshold as a preemption of conventional aggression is called asymmetric escalation, and it constitutes a central part of the North Korean declaratory nuclear doctrine. The possibility that North Korea may destroy major US cities with its most far-reaching missiles makes Pyongyang hope that the US will hesitate to retaliate a regional nuclear first strike against US and allied military targets in the region, as well as coming to its allies’ assistance in other types of conflicts. This second key element of the North Korean nuclear doctrine has already started to manifest itself, even though the North Korean capability is far from proven, and its intercontinental ballistic missiles are still vulnerable to preemptive strikes. Such a deterrence through a less-than credible retaliatory capability is called first-strike uncertainty, as the adversary cannot be sure to take out all North Korean nuclear assets in a first strike. Such a force structure is strikingly similar to the one of China around 1980, although the strategic situation is quite different. The new situation means that North Korea and the US must either reach a kind of stable, mutual deterrent relation, or resolve the security challenges that are really the reason for Pyongyang wanting a nuclear deterrent in the first place.