North Korea Was Right About Nuclear Weapons

It's interesting that this article is funded by Francis Fukuyama, who famously wrote the "The End of History" [1] in 1992, which argued that the rules-based liberal democratic world order had won and there was no more need for geopolitical realism. This article represents a complete repudiation of his past beliefs, and basically an admission that he was wrong.

Anyway, just as how Fukuyama was right for ~20 years and then very, very wrong, I suspect this essay is too. The U.S. mapped out all the game theory around nuclear war in the 50s and 60s. If you have too many states with nuclear weapons, nuclear war becomes inevitable, just like if you have too many firms in a market a price war becomes inevitable. That's why the U.S. and other nuclear powers have put so much effort into nuclear non-proliferation. North Korea may have been right in the short-term national interest sense to pursue and continue its nuclear weapons program, but the end result here is that most of humanity is going to die in a nuclear war, and we won't have such things as states and nations afterwards.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...

What this type of analysis is missing is that it is extraordinarily hard to build the bomb.

North Korea could get the bomb because they had qualms about letting hundreds of thousands or millions of people literally starve to death [1].

But let's say another country, country X, wants to acquire the bomb now. Then what? First thing: the IAEA inspectors discover that. Building a bomb is too massive an operation to be done completely in hiding. Once the IAEA inspectors find you, you either withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty, or you don't, but people know you are lying (just like they knew about Iran). Sooner or later sanctions will follow. You are cut off from all the Western nuclear supply chain. If the unnamed country X is actually Sweden, or some other Nordic country, or Poland, or any country that's part of the "West", you do care if all the nuclear supply chain is legally banned from trading with you. What are you going to do? Go to Russia, or China? Are they going to help you build a bomb that you will then use to deter them? Are you sure they are that stupid?

But let's say you are a country that's not part of the "West". Then you have bigger problems. After what just happened, you know that sooner or later you might have some bunker busters rain down on you. North Korea was lucky, but now the precedent was set. The next nuclear aspirant won't be able to hope that the West will play nice and refrain from bombing you while you are busy enriching uranium.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_North_Korean_famine

This is my analogy: If you are a fisherman, and you try to catch big beautiful fish and release small ugly fish back into the water, then eventually the pond will be full of small ugly fish because that is what you are selecting for.

If we want a world in which nuclear weapons are not the primary tools of war (which advantages these smaller players like NK that use it defensively when their means of conventional warfare would be insufficient) then we must work feverishly to undermine nuclear regimes like NK and cooperate with non-nuclear regimes like Iran above all else.

Even within the context of the middle east, we are attacking a state in the process of armament to the benefit of a presumably-already-armed Israel. The message to these minor countries is clear. We are making the political climate inhospitable to non-proliferation.

This article misses a major point: even without nuclear weapons, NK has always had the option to shell Seoul with conventional artillery and completely destroy it.

That, above all else, is likely why no one tried to topple them before they were able to develop nuclear weapons.

North Korea is protected and bordered by China. Big difference with Iran.

Yes they were, but the key difference is that North Korea is not actually a threat and its nuclear weapons program is obviously purely a deterrent.

The track record of Iran is very different. Even if nuclear weapons were only a deterrent they would likely embolden them to be more aggressive abroad.

You can't compare Iran with north Korea. Iran funds and supports terrorism all over the middle east. They regularly call for the destruction of Israel. If Iran wasn't ruled by aggressive violent religious fanatics it wouldn't be in danger.

North Korea didn't fund terrorism. North Korea isn't an aggressor. You cannot compare them at all.

Israel and the US were monitoring Iran nuclear development and Iran knew that. They wouldn't allow Iran to rush to nuclear without striking them first, like it had happened.

If you're a dictator and you want to learn the lesson from Iran, it isn't to get nuclear weapons. It's too not call for the destruction of Israel and the US and to not fund terrorism.