Diagnosing North Korean "Pathologies"
Instead of exchanging corrosive epithets with Kim Jung-un, President Trump should focus on creating a better understanding of the North Korean dictator's personal pattern of crisis decision. This would best be accomplished by more express thinking along the traditional medical science orientations of diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy. Opinion
Louis René Beres
| 26/09/2017
In medicine, it is long understood that proper therapy must be based upon prior diagnosis. Such diagnosis, moreover, must always be founded upon appropriate and verifiable science, and not merely represent the physician's own personal seat-of-the-pants intuition. Oddly enough, although precisely the same pattern of scientific analysis and "healing" should be followed in diplomatic crisis management – both by the United States and its allies – President Donald J. Trump's orientation to North Korea has been conspicuously detached from any useful sorts of assessment.
Going forward, there is nothing to be gained for the United States by publically demeaning and taunting the North Korean leader, especially if he really is as "crazy" as President Trump alleges. Even if he is not "crazy" or "deranged" (Trump's other preferred descriptor), such rhetorical belligerence can do nothing to reduce sorely palpable risks to the United States and its allies. On the contrary, mindlessly hewing to what the logicians would call an argumentum ad baculum – a fallacy based upon illogical expectations for the utility of force – can only further undermine American national security.
This is not a time for inconsequential thinking. The only way American strategic planners can help to preserve nuclear peace with North Korea is by deriving a decipherable prognosis and promising therapy from systematic diagnosis. Without a prior and sound assessment of what is actually wrong with our adversary's calculations, we can never expect to fashion any reliable prognoses or derivatively usable remedies.
It is foolish and dangerous for this president to blame Pyongyang's nuclearization on alleged eccentricities of the North Korean "rocket man." Among other things, it should be plainly apparent to a perfectly sane and rational Kim Jung-un that Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi both lost power only after first losing their indispensable nuclear leverage.
Seen in this light, one must reasonably inquire: "Is `Rocket Man' still crazy"?
There is more. In preparing for purposeful nuclear crisis bargaining with North Korea, Donald Trump (through no fault of his own) will have little meaningful precedent upon which to rely. Still, he will need to make some more-or-less predictable sense from a set of unpredictable problems. In this connection, Mr. Trump and his counselors ought never forget that a rapid-cycle deterioration of competition in risk-taking could be rendered ever more precarious as a result of certain unforeseen interactions.
At times, such perilous interactions would rise to the level of "synergies," or mutually-reinforcing debilities wherein the "whole" of formidable American risk exceeds the sum of enemy-inflicted "parts."
Mr. Trump must proceed in any still-impending North Korean crisis with exquisite prudence and an antecedent diagnosis, bearing in mind that while nuclear war avoidance is most important, maintaining "escalation dominance" and the corollary safety of US allies would also be indispensable. In essence, presidential success here will require striking a very delicate "balance" between narrowly self-assertive and broadly cooperative strategies.
For the United States, the looming North Korea crisis, whether protracted or episodic, will inevitably be one of "mind over mind," and not of "fire and fury." During this intellectual struggle, each side, as long as it remains recognizably rational, will be seeking strategic advantage without needlessly endangering its own national survival. If the American side should sometime calculate that its North Korean counterpart is not fully rational, incentives to undertake far-reaching military preemptions could quickly become overwhelming. Even then, however, these incentives would have to be compared to the expected costs – which could surely be overwhelming.
Also relevant here would be certain foreseeable prospects of North Korean plans to "preempt the preemption." President Kim's closest military counselors could sometime seek to clarify for their "great leader" ("The General") that the United States would have considerable damage-limiting advantages to striking-first, especially while North Korea's nuclear weapon and ballistic missile assets were still in early stages of development and production.
At that point, striking first against the United States could appear as the most visibly rational option, ironically, even more so if the American president had appeared "too convincing" with his own pet "madman" notions of pretended irrationality. Managing national security is substantially different from negotiating real estate transactions in Palm Beach or The Bronx. It's time for the American president to acknowledge this fundamental difference.
There is more. If President Trump should decide to launch a defensive first-strike, a "preemption," the North Korean response, whether rational or irrational, could be "disproportionate." In that very unstable case, one rife with the potential for a more continuously unfettered escalation, any contemplated introduction of nuclear weapons into the mix might no longer be preventable.
If President Donald Trump's defensive first strike against North Korea were recognizably less than massive, a fully rational adversary in Pyongyang might determine that his own chosen reprisal should be correspondingly "limited." But if Mr. Trump's consciously rational and systematically calibrated attack upon North Korea were wittingly or unwittingly launched against an irrational enemy leadership, the response from Kim Jung-un could then become an "all out" retaliation.
Such an unanticipated response, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, would expectedly be directed at some as yet undeterminable combination of US, South Korean, and/or Japanese targets.
Cumulatively, of course, this sort of response could inflict very tangible harms. North Korea's unconventional weapons already include advanced biological and chemical agents. Even a perfectly rational North Korean leadership could sometime calculate that all-out retaliations would make perfect strategic sense.
In facing off against each other, even under optimal assumptions of mutual capability and rationality, both President Trump and President Kim Jung-un must continuously concern themselves with possible miscalculations, errors in information, unauthorized uses of strategic weapons, mechanical or computer malfunctions, and cyber-defense/cyber-war. This means that even if President Trump and President Kim were both entirely sane and focused - a charitable assumption, to be sure - northeast Asia could still descend rapidly toward an uncontrollable nuclear war.
When Pericles delivered his famous Funeral Oration, it was to express confidence in an ultimate victory for Athens. Simultaneously, as recalled by Thucydides, the Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 BCE), Pericles had also expressed various deep apprehensions about self-imposed setbacks along the way. "What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies," lamented Pericles, "is our own mistakes."
Today, America's biggest mistake vis-à-vis North Korea would be to abandon an aptly scientific model of strategic crisis analysis, and rely instead upon the patently ineffectual grammar of tweets and personal insults. This judgment is offered not because of any overriding concern for reducing boorish US presidential behavior in world politics, but rather to best ensure that all developing American "therapies" for the Kim Jung-un "pathology" are based upon appropriate diagnoses.
***
Louis René Beres, a frequent contributor to Israel Defense, is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue University. He is the author of many books and articles dealing with national security studies and Israel's nuclear strategy.
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Instead of exchanging corrosive epithets with Kim Jung-un, President Trump should focus on creating a better understanding of the North Korean dictator's personal pattern of crisis decision. This would best be accomplished by more express thinking along the traditional medical science orientations of diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy. Opinion
In medicine, it is long understood that proper therapy must be based upon prior diagnosis. Such diagnosis, moreover, must always be founded upon appropriate and verifiable science, and not merely represent the physician's own personal seat-of-the-pants intuition. Oddly enough, although precisely the same pattern of scientific analysis and "healing" should be followed in diplomatic crisis management – both by the United States and its allies – President Donald J. Trump's orientation to North Korea has been conspicuously detached from any useful sorts of assessment.
Going forward, there is nothing to be gained for the United States by publically demeaning and taunting the North Korean leader, especially if he really is as "crazy" as President Trump alleges. Even if he is not "crazy" or "deranged" (Trump's other preferred descriptor), such rhetorical belligerence can do nothing to reduce sorely palpable risks to the United States and its allies. On the contrary, mindlessly hewing to what the logicians would call an argumentum ad baculum – a fallacy based upon illogical expectations for the utility of force – can only further undermine American national security.
This is not a time for inconsequential thinking. The only way American strategic planners can help to preserve nuclear peace with North Korea is by deriving a decipherable prognosis and promising therapy from systematic diagnosis. Without a prior and sound assessment of what is actually wrong with our adversary's calculations, we can never expect to fashion any reliable prognoses or derivatively usable remedies.
It is foolish and dangerous for this president to blame Pyongyang's nuclearization on alleged eccentricities of the North Korean "rocket man." Among other things, it should be plainly apparent to a perfectly sane and rational Kim Jung-un that Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi both lost power only after first losing their indispensable nuclear leverage.
Seen in this light, one must reasonably inquire: "Is `Rocket Man' still crazy"?
There is more. In preparing for purposeful nuclear crisis bargaining with North Korea, Donald Trump (through no fault of his own) will have little meaningful precedent upon which to rely. Still, he will need to make some more-or-less predictable sense from a set of unpredictable problems. In this connection, Mr. Trump and his counselors ought never forget that a rapid-cycle deterioration of competition in risk-taking could be rendered ever more precarious as a result of certain unforeseen interactions.
At times, such perilous interactions would rise to the level of "synergies," or mutually-reinforcing debilities wherein the "whole" of formidable American risk exceeds the sum of enemy-inflicted "parts."
Mr. Trump must proceed in any still-impending North Korean crisis with exquisite prudence and an antecedent diagnosis, bearing in mind that while nuclear war avoidance is most important, maintaining "escalation dominance" and the corollary safety of US allies would also be indispensable. In essence, presidential success here will require striking a very delicate "balance" between narrowly self-assertive and broadly cooperative strategies.
For the United States, the looming North Korea crisis, whether protracted or episodic, will inevitably be one of "mind over mind," and not of "fire and fury." During this intellectual struggle, each side, as long as it remains recognizably rational, will be seeking strategic advantage without needlessly endangering its own national survival. If the American side should sometime calculate that its North Korean counterpart is not fully rational, incentives to undertake far-reaching military preemptions could quickly become overwhelming. Even then, however, these incentives would have to be compared to the expected costs – which could surely be overwhelming.
Also relevant here would be certain foreseeable prospects of North Korean plans to "preempt the preemption." President Kim's closest military counselors could sometime seek to clarify for their "great leader" ("The General") that the United States would have considerable damage-limiting advantages to striking-first, especially while North Korea's nuclear weapon and ballistic missile assets were still in early stages of development and production.
At that point, striking first against the United States could appear as the most visibly rational option, ironically, even more so if the American president had appeared "too convincing" with his own pet "madman" notions of pretended irrationality. Managing national security is substantially different from negotiating real estate transactions in Palm Beach or The Bronx. It's time for the American president to acknowledge this fundamental difference.
There is more. If President Trump should decide to launch a defensive first-strike, a "preemption," the North Korean response, whether rational or irrational, could be "disproportionate." In that very unstable case, one rife with the potential for a more continuously unfettered escalation, any contemplated introduction of nuclear weapons into the mix might no longer be preventable.
If President Donald Trump's defensive first strike against North Korea were recognizably less than massive, a fully rational adversary in Pyongyang might determine that his own chosen reprisal should be correspondingly "limited." But if Mr. Trump's consciously rational and systematically calibrated attack upon North Korea were wittingly or unwittingly launched against an irrational enemy leadership, the response from Kim Jung-un could then become an "all out" retaliation.
Such an unanticipated response, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, would expectedly be directed at some as yet undeterminable combination of US, South Korean, and/or Japanese targets.
Cumulatively, of course, this sort of response could inflict very tangible harms. North Korea's unconventional weapons already include advanced biological and chemical agents. Even a perfectly rational North Korean leadership could sometime calculate that all-out retaliations would make perfect strategic sense.
In facing off against each other, even under optimal assumptions of mutual capability and rationality, both President Trump and President Kim Jung-un must continuously concern themselves with possible miscalculations, errors in information, unauthorized uses of strategic weapons, mechanical or computer malfunctions, and cyber-defense/cyber-war. This means that even if President Trump and President Kim were both entirely sane and focused - a charitable assumption, to be sure - northeast Asia could still descend rapidly toward an uncontrollable nuclear war.
When Pericles delivered his famous Funeral Oration, it was to express confidence in an ultimate victory for Athens. Simultaneously, as recalled by Thucydides, the Greek historian of the Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 BCE), Pericles had also expressed various deep apprehensions about self-imposed setbacks along the way. "What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies," lamented Pericles, "is our own mistakes."
Today, America's biggest mistake vis-à-vis North Korea would be to abandon an aptly scientific model of strategic crisis analysis, and rely instead upon the patently ineffectual grammar of tweets and personal insults. This judgment is offered not because of any overriding concern for reducing boorish US presidential behavior in world politics, but rather to best ensure that all developing American "therapies" for the Kim Jung-un "pathology" are based upon appropriate diagnoses.
***
Louis René Beres, a frequent contributor to Israel Defense, is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue University. He is the author of many books and articles dealing with national security studies and Israel's nuclear strategy.