North Korea represents the world’s most time-urgent nuclear threat, especially for the United States and some of America’s Asian allies. Assorted dangers of a North Korea-related nuclear war also lie latent in the Middle East. These perils are generally ignored or overlooked, and pertain most ominously to Israel.
What are the relevant scenarios and specific issues? Though Israel has no direct adversarial connections to North Korea, this already-nuclear Asian state does have variously tangible ties to Syria and remains a close ally of not-yet-nuclear Iran.
Jihadist Iran is also the primary patron of anti-Israel terrorism, both Sunni (Hamas) and Shi’ite (Hezbollah, Houthis). This means, inter alia, that Israel’s ongoing struggles against Iran-supported terrorism could soon bring the Jewish state into direct and protracted conflict with the Islamic Republic.
If that should happen, both Israel and Iran would strive for “escalation dominance,” an unstable and unpredictable competition in which a still pre-nuclear Iran would struggle for supremacy at evident strategic disadvantage. Ironically, such an Iranian disadvantage could worsen Israel’s security situation.
There are multiple and bewildering details. Depending on Iran’s intra-war willingness to accept existential risks, Jerusalem could sometime find itself in “active belligerent status” with Pyongyang. In turn, that unprecedented and worrisome status (a sui generis status in the rarefied language of logic) could take the form of direct military engagement with Iran’s designated nuclear proxy; or with North Korea’s nuclear and/or non-nuclear assets previously placed in the decision-making ambit of Tehran.
Two wicked kids trying to play with fire
Whatever North Korea’s policy disposition on nuclear surrogacy for Iran, prospects for a widening conflict would be “high.” To be sure, because all pertinent scenarios would lack historical precedent, there could exist no science-based method of assigning numerical or statistical probabilities.
At the same time, in axiomatic principles of logic and mathematics, there would still remain certain reliable ways of conflict estimation. Here, prima facie, the outbreak of a direct nuclear belligerency between Israel and North Korea could involve the United States, Russia, and/or China; and the precise forms of any such superpower involvement would be indeterminable.
For Israel, the threats from Iran/North Korea are existential and palpable. What should Israel do now? Not much could be gained via direct diplomacy with Iran or North Korea, but there could still be more-or-less calculable benefits in gaining supportive policy guarantees from Washington.
In the final analysis, even such seemingly persuasive guarantees could fail altogether; Jerusalem would then have to plan urgently for a uniquely complex set of decisional options. In these scenarios, even decipherable success in keeping Iran non-nuclear could provide Israel no assurances of national safety; and presumptively, complete Israeli success would be sorely problematic.
Further clarifications will be needed. By definition, an accidental nuclear war between Israel and North Korea would be unintentional, but an unintentional nuclear war need not be the result of an accident. To wit, an unintentional nuclear war between Jerusalem and Pyongyang could represent the outcome of decision-making miscalculation or irrationality by one or both adversaries. Such a distressing understanding is realistic and potentially probable.
What is being done about all this in Israel? Though unverifiable, the likelihood is that neither Jerusalem nor Pyongyang are likely paying sufficient attention to the intersecting risks of an unintentional nuclear war. In theory, at least, each side would expectedly assume the other side’s decision-making rationality. After all, if there were no such mutual assumption, it could make no sense for one or the other competitor to seek “escalation dominance” during an actual crisis or war.
There is more. At some point, Israel’s survival could come to depend on viable combinations of ballistic missile defense and defensive first strikes. However, settling upon such untested combinations would necessarily lack critical input from any material or quantifiable historical evidence and would present at the highest imaginable levels of existential risk. In a worst-case scenario, the offensive military threat to Israel would warrant some form of situational preemption. At that late stage, however, there would remain no “ordinary” circumstances wherein a defensive strike against a nuclear North Korea could still be presumed rational.
There are additional nuances. For the moment, it seems likely that Kim Jong Un would value his own life and the lives of his family above any other conceivable preference or combination of preferences. In all corresponding scenarios, Kim could be presumed rational and would remain subject to Israel/US nuclear deterrence. Still, it could be important for a negotiating Israeli leadership team to distinguish between authentic instances of enemy irrationality and ones of feigned or pretended irrationality on the part of the enemy. Also worth noting is that actual negotiations or bargaining with North Korea would likely be led by the United States and/or actual diplomacy would be conducted with Iran.
On a cyber knife edge
There is more to assess concerning an inadvertent nuclear war between Jerusalem and Pyongyang. Such a dizzying conflict could take place not only as the result of misunderstandings or miscalculations between fully rational national leaders (Israeli, North Korean, Iranian, and/or American), but as the unintended consequence (single or synergistic) of mechanical, electrical, and computer malfunctions (hacking). These last interventions could include substantially perplexing intrusions of cyber mercenaries.
Always, regarding Iranian nuclear surrogate North Korea, Israel’s strategic policies should emphasize maintenance of stable intra-war nuclear thresholds. Among other things, this would mean a refined focus on the expected rationality or irrationality of key decision-makers in North Korea; the cumulative requirements of escalation dominance; the always-important distinctions between intentional, unintentional, and accidental nuclear war; and Israel’s animating or core conflict with Iran.
This last focus should serve as a reminder that Israel’s actual war would be against Iran, and that North Korea would be operating against Israel solely as an Iranian nuclear surrogate. Accordingly, Israel’s best path to nuclear war avoidance/limitation with North Korea should always involve prior strategic understandings with – or military actions against – Iran.
Although the above-examined connections may, at first, seem implausible or “absurd” (What could possibly cause rational Israeli decision-makers to wage war against an already-nuclear North Korea?), they are plausibly credible.
Jerusalem ought to take immediate note of the Roman philosopher Tertullian’s ironic but still-galvanizing declaration: “Credo quia absurdum,” (“I believe because it is absurd.”) In this context, the declaration fits perfectly. For Israel to argue against certain existential security threats because they first appear illogical or preposterous would reveal a lethal error in strategic reasoning. In its rapidly escalating struggle against Iran and terrorist proxies, Israel could ultimately have to face a nuclear North Korea as Iran’s state proxy. While the outcome of such a confrontation might be “absurd,” it could still prove injurious beyond any historical measure.
The writer is an emeritus professor of international law at Purdue University and the author of many books and scholarly articles on international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; second edition, 2018).