Rethinking Arms Control with a Nuclear North Korea

Abstract

Three decades of efforts to secure North Korea’s denuclearisation failed to arrest Pyongyang’s development of a nuclear arsenal. With growing dangers of conflict escalation and nuclear use, it is time to consider alternative policies that address the reality of North Korea as a nuclear possessor state. Comprehensive arms control is worth exploring as one potential approach to managing nuclear dangers on the Korean Peninsula. Previously, conventional arms-control and denuclearisation negotiations with North Korea proceeded in parallel. However, the increasing complexity of deterrence resulting from changes in military capabilities, especially in South Korea, now necessitates a comprehensive process that creates linkages across conventional and strategic domains to address not just North Korean and South Korean, but also US, capabilities. Though comprehensive arms control promises to be politically fraught and technically complex, policymakers and experts should debate whether it could yield a more secure Korean Peninsula than existing policies that have long since failed.