The Korean Peninsula has been a beehive of activity over the past two weeks — and I’m not just talking about the strange case of a U.S. soldier crossing the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea in a desperate bid to escape punishment in the United States.
On July 12, North Korea conducted a second test of its Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile, which if flown on a normal trajectory could reach the continental U.S. with relative ease. (Pyongyang has launched well over 100 missiles of various types since the beginning of 2022.) Six days later, the USS Kentucky docked at the South Korean port of Busan, the first time a nuclear-armed submarine has made a trip to South Korea in four decades. Unsurprisingly, the North Koreans were defiant; a day later, two more ballistic missiles were launched, traveling about 340 miles. North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sun Nam even stated that the deployment of a nuclear-capable asset by the U.S. could be grounds for North Korean nuclear weapon use.
This wasn’t all. Pyongyang sent two cruise missiles into the Yellow Sea on Saturday. Another U.S. submarine, the USS Annapolis, arrived in South Korean waters on Monday, followed hours later by, you guessed it, another North Korean ballistic missile test. All of this is taking place as officials from the U.S., South Korea and Japan prepare for a trilateral meeting at the Camp David presidential retreat in August.
All of this begs the question: Are we destined for more confrontations in one of the most heavily militarized regions of the world? Or have the last few weeks just been an abnormal stretch of tit for tat that will eventually dissipate?
The truth is that it could be both. While it’s important not to sensationalize every single event on the Korean Peninsula — the North Koreans fly missiles into the air every few weeks, and the U.S. and South Korean militaries have so many scheduled training exercises with each other that you would need a calendar to track them all — it’s also important to recognize how these actions could, over time, spiral into the “fire and fury” drama we’d all like to avoid. War isn’t on the horizon, but calm and stability aren’t exactly on the horizon either.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has a mountain of gripes against Washington and Seoul, all of them predictable to even the most casual watcher of the reclusive country. He regards any joint U.S.-South Korea drills, regardless of the size, scope and regularity, as preparations for a possible invasion of North Korea. His views of U.S. and United Nations Security Council sanctions are in much the same vein — as a U.S.-driven plot to destroy Pyongyang’s revenue sources, worsen its energy needs and squeeze the North Korean economy to the point in which the country comes to the table and gives away its nuclear weapons.
The U.S. and South Korea have as many gripes as the North Koreans do. U.S. and South Korean officials recite canned talking points practically every week about North Korea’s repeated violation of Security Council resolutions, whether those violations concern the possession of nuclear warheads, missile tests or human rights abuses. The U.S., specifically, denounces North Korea as an obstacle to the resumption of nuclear talks and paints Kim as the intransigent party. As far as the regular military exercises on and near the Korean Peninsula are concerned, those are purely defensive in nature and proportionate to the threat North Korea poses to the South. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at the Aspen Security Forum last week, these exercises will only continue, and indeed strengthen, as long as North Korea stays away from the negotiating table.
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It’s those mutual grievances, combined with different interpretations of the security environment in East Asia, that are largely responsible for the ongoing escalatory cycle we see today. What the U.S. and South Korea perceive to be justifiable defensive measures, North Korea perceives as reckless and belligerent. The same can be said in reverse: What the North labels as defensive, the U.S. and South Korea label as offensive and necessitating the deployment of additional, high-visible military assets.
There is a political science term for this situation: “the security dilemma.” Coined by the late international relations theorist John H. Herz in 1950 and studied extensively by the late Robert Jervis, one of America’s foremost scholars in security studies, the security dilemma describes a development in which a state makes itself more secure but does so in a way that decreases the security of others. This sense of insecurity, in turn, leads the other state to boost its own defenses in response. It doesn’t take a degree in international relations theory to understand that this cycle of reaction and counteraction can potentially lead to some very destabilizing outcomes.
Unfortunately, it’s even more destabilizing with respect to Washington and Pyongyang, whose bilateral relationship includes a highly destructive war in the early 1950s, occasional incidents of violence in the Demilitarized Zone and very little communication between the two. It’s one thing to go through the security dilemma and be able to explain your policy actions in real time; it’s another thing entirely to go through it without the slightest dialogue whatsoever, when the two sides have to surmise motives and base their own policies on an incomplete understanding of how they may be perceived.
The obvious antidote would be to establish clear and durable channels of communication between the U.S. and North Korea. But it doesn’t look like this obvious recommendation is possible right now. The security dilemma will therefore continue to churn on the Korean Peninsula until the two countries show the will or urgency to stop it.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the baiduhai.
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