[Column] The dangers of Seoul adopting “preemptive strike” rhetoric

Posted on : 2022-01-13 17:13 KST Modified on : 2022-01-13 17:13 KST
The task of leaders is to prevent wars, not start them
North Korea has carried out two tests of what they call hypersonic missiles in January so far, one on Jan. 5 and one on Tuesday. (KCNA/Yonhap News)
North Korea has carried out two tests of what they call hypersonic missiles in January so far, one on Jan. 5 and one on Tuesday. (KCNA/Yonhap News)
Kim Sung-bae
Kim Sung-bae
By Kim Sung-bae, senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategy

Talk of a preemptive strike on North Korea — a phantom that periodically haunts the Korean Peninsula — is back. Surprisingly enough, the idea came up this time not in Washington, but in Seoul. There are even signs that it may be a hot topic in Korea’s 2022 presidential election.

The first time a preemptive strike was discussed was in 1994, during the first North Korean nuclear crisis. At the time, the Clinton administration in the US considered launching a surgical strike on North Korea’s nuclear facilities and even pushed for evacuating Americans from the country. But it’s also well known that the US abandoned the idea after it was estimated that such a strike would result in millions of deaths.

The second time was when US President George W. Bush adopted a preemptive strike doctrine and designated North Korea as part of an “axis of evil” in 2002. The clouds of war gathered over the Korean Peninsula, but the US shelved those plans once again, and for the same reasons.

A preemptive strike was mooted for the third time after North Korea carried out a series of nuclear tests and ICBM test launches early in the Trump administration. But those military tensions were dramatically resolved with a thaw on the Korean Peninsula in the spring of 2018.

As this suggests, talk of a preemptive strike on North Korea has always originated in Washington. That’s not so surprising, considering that the US holds operational control of coalition forces in the event of a war on the Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, the South Korean government has been strongly opposed to such a strike, since Koreans would suffer incomparably more damage than Americans, and the US has respected Seoul’s position.

But if a preemptive strike becomes part of the public discourse in South Korea, that’s a completely different story. The idea will gain much more traction in Washington as an option for its North Korea policy. Even if it’s never put into practice, it will be openly discussed as part of psychological warfare against the North, ratcheting up tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

The idea of launching a preemptive strike basically assumes that North Korea wouldn’t launch a retaliatory strike on the South for fear that it would escalate into an all-out war and lead to the toppling of the Pyongyang regime. But it would be impossible to eliminate all of North Korea’s nuclear assets through a preemptive strike — not to mention the possibility of the North retaliating with the upwards of a thousand ballistic missiles deployed near the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, along with long-range artillery that can fire over 10,000 rounds an hour.

To be sure, the South Korean military has developed the concept of a preemptive strike. While the military doesn’t use that provocative term anymore, the “Kill Chain” — part of South Korea’s three-pronged response strategy — means launching a preliminary attack on the North if there are signs of an impending nuclear attack.

The problem is that it’s impossible to be completely certain in advance that the North actually means to launch a nuclear attack. A mistaken judgment about an impending nuclear attack could precipitate the catastrophe of all-out war. Even when there are definite indications of a nuclear attack, our priority ought to be deterring such a move by giving advance warning of massive retaliation before launching a preemptive strike.

Even the US, with the world’s most powerful military, has rarely resorted to preemptive strikes. Some of the only preemptive strikes launched by the country that has fought the most wars are the bombing of Libya in 1986 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Other examples are Israel’s bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 and its strike on a Syrian nuclear facility in 2007. But those aren’t comparable with North Korea, either geopolitically or in terms of capacity for retaliation.

A preemptive strike against North Korea would be an unprecedented operation against a de facto nuclear state. That’s not easy to countenance, since it would be a first in the history of warfare.

Such a strike is something that should be considered strictly as a military issue; it’s not something we ought to debate on a political level. Drawing up military plans is a completely different matter from sending a message as a political leader. The task of leaders is to prevent wars, not start them.

A preemptive strike is something that can be contemplated as a last resort, when all other options have been exhausted. It’s extremely dangerous to say that a preemptive strike is the only option available to us.

On a military level, our basic strategy should be deterring North Korea from even using nuclear weapons through extended deterrence and our capacity for massive retaliation. More fundamentally, we need to move toward eliminating the nuclear threat altogether by promoting denuclearization talks.

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