(Page 3 of 32) - Has North Korea Achieved 'Security Juche'?: How Evolving Trends in Pyongyang's WMD Capabilities Will Constrain U.S. Foreign Policy and Military Options on the Korean Peninsula authored by Preston, Thomas.

In this paper, I will first lay out a basic analytical framework for assessing the nature and

implications of changing nuclear capabilities by states on their security relationships with others. This
framework will then be applied to North Korea’s current and future nuclear capabilities over the coming
ten to fifteen years to illustrate how the current security relationship will likely evolve over time unless
resolved in the present. Finally, I will discuss the current security and political contexts that U.S. policy
makers find themselves in and make recommendations for changes in the existing policy approach. This
analytical framework, confined in this paper to North Korea, is applied more broadly to other nuclear
states (and expanded to include biological weapon proliferation) in my forthcoming book, From Lambs to
Lions: Nuclear and Biological Weapons Proliferation and Their Impact Upon Interstate Security
Relationships.

A Framework for Analysis

The analytical framework presented below assumes that the impact of nuclear proliferation upon

crisis stability and the nature of interstate security relationships is contingent upon three basic factors.
These three factors combine to define a state's security relationships with others and involves: 1) the
nuclear capabilities of states (i.e., the size, differentiation, range, and interceptability characteristics of
their force structures); 2) the survivability of state nuclear arsenals (i.e., the redundancy, mobility, site
defense, subterfuge characteristics of forces); and 3) the credibility of a state’s deterrent threats to
opposing decision makers (i.e., the psychological perceptions of policy makers regarding their situations,
their opponent's capabilities, their control over the situation, and the nature of the threat posed by various
actions to the central or peripheral security interests of both sides). The new framework also highlights
the evolving and highly contingent nature of state security relationships across several distinct phases,
ranging from non-nuclear security up to nascent, regional, or great power nuclear status. These differing
phases in the security relationships between states will be shown to have significant ramifications for
interstate deterrence, crisis stability, and the military options available to both challengers and defenders
across a wide range of contexts. Finally, this approach seeks to bridge the existing gap between security
scholars over the impact of proliferation by illustrating that both optimist and pessimist assumptions are
correct, but only under certain conditions.

I.) The Nuclear Capabilities of States

The first dimension of interstate security relationships - the nuclear capabilities of the state -

provide the analyst with both a characterization of the objective nuclear capabilities possessed by the state
and the potential scope of its nuclear targeting strategies. Important elements comprising a nation's
nuclear capabilities include: the size of its nuclear force structure, the range of its delivery systems, the
degree of differentiation within that force structure, and the interceptability by opponents of its delivery
systems (see Table 1 below).

(Table 1 – Breakdown of Indicators of State Nuclear Capability)

By delineating the nuclear capabilities of states by this basic set of indicators affecting potential

usage/employment only, one avoids the common trap of Cold War security studies of engaging in
irrelevant ‘bean-counting’ of missile numbers to define the power or likely strategies of nations. Further,
one avoids using only the numerical size of forces to define terms such as ‘Great Power’ or ‘Small
Power’, when a more useful definition involves considering a more complex mixture of capabilities along
with the requirements for accomplishing certain deterrence tasks for these states – a measure which
obviously varies greatly across differing country contexts. Indeed, as Table 1 illustrates, differences in
the size, differentiation, range and accuracy of delivery systems, and the interceptability of a state’s
delivery systems by opponents defenses greatly shape the nature and scope of the deterrent abilities a
state will possess (i.e., that of only nascent or local power, a regional power, or a great power).