A Helsinki Conference for Asia
Philip Bobbitt 

Aegis Series Paper No. 1805

On April 21, 2018, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, announced that his national
policy of pursuing economic development and military security in parallel would be
superseded by a new policy. The successes of North Korea’s nuclear program, he said,
made it possible now for the country to adopt “a new strategic line,” giving priority
to the economy. An optimistic commentator in South Korea concluded that Kim was
now “ready to bargain away nuclear weapons for the sake of economic development.”
Another said, “Whether Kim Jong-un will become the Deng Xiaoping of North
Korea will depend on whether the international community . . . can provide security
guarantees and opportunities for economic development so that it can denuclearize.”1
This was the latest twist in a series of developments that took a dramatic turn when,
on March 8, 2018, President Donald Trump learned that South Korea’s national security
adviser was in the West Wing, meeting with American officials. He invited him into
the Oval Office, and when told by the South Korean that he was bearing an invitation
from Kim Jong Un to a bilateral meeting to discuss denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula, the president accepted on the spot. The North-South Korean summit is set
to take place in Panmunjom in April. A Kim-Trump summit is expected to follow in May.
Kim’s offer to put denuclearization on the table—the objective sought by the United
States and the world community—came as a surprise to the president, who seized
the moment with alacrity. This surprise—but not the alacrity—was unwarranted.
US-North Korean agreements in 1994 and 2005 had also accepted denuclearization
as their goal. Moreover, the phrase “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” has a
broader meaning for Kim than for the Americans. In the past, this term has embraced
not only the removal of American short-range nuclear weapons—which occurred
in 1991—but also the withdrawal of US ground forces (which serve as a trip wire for
the US deterrent), the removal of US nuclear armed submarines and bombers from
their regional bases, and, above all, the revocation of the US extended deterrent that
currently guarantees South Korean security.
Does this mean that the president was mistaken in agreeing to a negotiation sought by
Kim? Not necessarily. The groundwork for such a meeting had been patiently laid by
a US ally rightfully concerned that events are spinning out of control and could even

National Security, Technology, and Law

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lead to war on the peninsula. To rebuff the offer would have been perceived as churlish
and intransigent. Moreover, President Trump’s sense of drama served him well in this
instance: US eagerness for peace should be on the front pages, not our guarded (if
understandable) sense of pessimism.
American participation, however, is not without risks. If diplomacy “succeeds” by
North Korea gaining recognition as a nuclear state, dividing US alliances in the
region, and weakening international sanctions in exchange for easily reversible North
Korean commitments, it will be a historic blunder occasioned by a lack of preparation,
experience, and comprehension on the part of the White House. If diplomacy fails, the
option of military action will gain perhaps an irreversible momentum.
In the paper to which this is an introduction, I offer a comprehensive set of proposals
to achieve the objective proffered by Kim: the dismantling of his nuclear missile
program in exchange for a guarantee of North Korean security. What is novel about
these proposals is that they recognize that a US offer of a guarantee can never be
sufficient and that the elements of such an offer that would appeal to North Korea
would be destructive of our alliances and, in the end, fruitless anyway.
It is imperative that the United States develop at once an innovative set of proposals
to bring to the negotiations. It will be tempting to avoid doing so, in the hope that—
unlike 1994 and 2005—the North Korean leader will prove more tractable even though
he is in a stronger position now than he was then. Avoiding developing such proposals
will appeal to those who want to enter the negotiation and “play it by ear,” relying on
improvisation and flexibility to make an advantageous deal. This tactic also covers over
the lack of expertise, the loss of experienced Korea experts from the US government,
and the short time available to develop a coherent strategy.
Such temptations must be overcome. Without careful planning, we will reap the worst
of both worlds: we will be held responsible by the Korean people for the breakup of the
negotiations while failing to reassure our regional allies because we appeared willing to
bargain away their security to pacify an implacable foe.
Moreover, we must carefully consider the role of China in this matter. Once again,
it is seductive to attempt to outflank China and bring home a successful agreement
without its participation. In fact, only by means of a Chinese nuclear guarantee to
North Korea can the United States perpetuate its own extended deterrent, protecting
South Korea and Japan with American nuclear weapons. Negotiating this will be a key

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element in any successful deal with North Korea. There is no time to waste and much
new thinking to be done.
The United States must have a plan for success that is something other than wishful
thinking. We must also have a plan in case the talks fail that demonstrates our
steadfastness as an ally as well as our deep reluctance to risk a new war in the region,
and this plan must lay the foundation for future US action.
•  •  •
The Helsinki Accords, signed in the summer of 1975 at the conclusion of the first
Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, were a historic diplomatic
achievement.2 They were urged on the Americans by our European allies as a way
to reduce tensions between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. Since the 1950s, the Soviet
Union had sought to formalize international acquiescence in its dominance over
Eastern Europe. The Accords, through guarantees of the inviolability of frontiers
and noninterference in the internal affairs of states, aimed to do just that. In return
for their formal recognition of this political order, the United States and its Western
European allies pressed the Soviet Union for commitments on human rights. The Final
Act, signed at a summit meeting in Helsinki, reflected both of these goals, although
at the time the human rights provisions of the Final Act were thought to be of little
realistic significance. The agreement in effect marked the formal end of World War II
by granting recognition to all the European national frontiers (including Germany’s
division into the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic)
that had arisen in the aftermath of the war.
All this is familiar territory for those who study diplomatic and strategic history. What
is not so familiar is the application of this paradigm—the multilateral conference
to end a decades-long war as a method of reducing tensions—to the Korean crisis.
The key lies in linking the recognition of national borders and a commitment to
nonintervention with denuclearization and extended deterrence.

I.
On September 3, 2017, North Korea conducted a test of a nuclear weapon.3 Seismic
tremors from this test suggest that it was almost certainly a hydrogen bomb in the
early stages of development. The test followed an August 28 intermediate-range
ballistic missile launch over Hokkaido, Japan, and this was succeeded by the launch
on November 28 of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear
warhead.4 At least fifteen missile tests and six nuclear tests have occurred since the

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current crisis began.5 The purpose of these tests is to pose a sufficient threat to
the United States such that not only would Washington be unwilling to launch a
campaign to change the North Korean regime, but it would also be unwilling to put
its homeland at risk in order to enable South Korea to resist demands for a forcible
reunification of the peninsula. Those who say that these developments do not represent
a material change in affairs could not be more wrong. This change was foreseen in
1994 by former American national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and again in 2006
by former US secretary of defense William Perry.6 Both men concluded that America
could not sit by and let this deadly threat mature. And yet, we did. Some felt that the
remote possibility of a North Korean attack on the American homeland or our forces
abroad simply did not pose a significant threat.7 As a trenchant critic of US policy put
it in a letter to me,
I find the idea of North Korea as a “threat” to America ludicrous. What are they going
to do? Invade California? The word threat, like terror, is now so abused as to be beyond
rational debate. It is fear politics. Clearly it is conceivable that Korea could, for some
demented reason (and I gather they are not demented), loose off a rocket that landed on
American soil. It would cause a lot of damage, depending on where it landed. But then
what You could kill a lot of North Koreans. And then what? It is the old fallacy of the
bomb, that it wins wars. It merely causes damage.8

A good many commentators believed that when the North Koreans achieved the
technological ability to attack the US homeland, nothing of any strategic significance
occurred. As one thoughtful and rightly respected writer put it in The Atlantic,
North Korea’s successful test earlier this week of an intercontinental ballistic missile has
triggered all of the expected alarms. . . . ​But apart from the psychological impact on
Americans, the development doesn’t fundamentally alter the military standoff that has
been in place for decades. Kim and his father before him have long had the capability
of inflicting mass casualties on South Korea and the nearly 30,000 American forces
stationed there. . . . ​So unless the lives of Americans on American soil are inherently
more significant than the lives of those serving in that part of the world, or than Korean
and Japanese lives, the game is the same. When death tolls are unthinkably high, it’s like
multiplying infinity.9

For the reasons I will express below, I am convinced that these critics are mistaken
and that something of historic importance is happening in North Asia. Our present
enervation, the sense of inertia in US policy, arises in part because we lack the imaginative
ideas commensurate with the radical change in the strategic situation. We are, in the

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famous words of Churchill, “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute,
adamant for drift [and] solid for fluidity.”10

II.
At present, the United States appears to have only three options: (1) the continued
diplomatic pursuit of phased negotiations with North Korea, by which it is hoped
that the imposition of economic sanctions—and the ultimate promise to lift those
sanctions—will induce the North Koreans to freeze the development of their nuclear
weapons program, halt further missile testing, and eventually roll back their nuclear
weapons program; (2) the use of military force either as a demonstration to dissuade
the North Koreans from pursuing their nuclear weapons ambitions or to actually
destroy the weapons facilities and launchers that are the embodiment of those
ambitions; and (3) the tacit acceptance of a North Korean nuclear arsenal capable of
delivering nuclear weapons to US soil, coupled with threats to retaliate against North
Korea were those weapons ever to be used to attack the United States.11
China has an important role to play, as the United States recognizes, in all of these
scenarios. What is less well recognized is that each of them would be a misfortune not
only for America but also for China. Moreover, the endgame for North Korea, as we
shall see, is no less fraught. But the North Koreans, unlike the United States and China,
have less room to maneuver off the fatal track on which they have set themselves.
The very raison d’être of the regime, as it has tirelessly insisted to its people, is to resist
the United States. The North Korean regime must persist in its confrontation with
Washington if it is to maintain its despotic grip on power. A dynasty does not commit
suicide out of a fear of death.
Yet there is one further possibility, which I will describe in a moment, though it
will not be realistically evaluated and pursued so long as these three options are
encapsulated by their advocates, as they are, in a chrysalis of self-deception and
intoxicating but ultimately deadly illusions of hope. So, first, let’s see what’s wrong
with each of these options and how costly their pursuit would be to America and
China, but also to North Korea.

III.
The first option depends on the international community aggressively pursuing
economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea.12 Since 2006, at the urging
of the United States, the UN Security Council has adopted numerous resolutions
imposing increasingly costly sanctions on North Korea, including severe limits on its

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weapons trade, banking, and various financial transactions.13 China is the key player
here because approximately 90 percent of North Korea’s international trade is with
China.14 It is doubtful, however, that there is any decisive influence the international
community generally and China specifically can gain from the imposition of sanctions
that will result in the Kim regime abandoning its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile
programs. That is because the regime sees these programs as the ultimate guarantor of
its security and has shown itself willing to impose enormous suffering on its people
and incur the hostility of many states—including China—to assure its hold on power.
Privately, many people who urge this option recognize this. But they say that if
negotiations could at least slow down North Korea’s programs, eventually the people
of North Korea—either in a general uprising or acting through alienated members of
the leadership—will overthrow the regime. It will be increasingly difficult for North
Korea to keep its citizens from being exposed to the world outside and, it is said,
this will increase pressure on Kim Jong Un to find ways to strengthen the economy,
increase international trade, and pursue economic growth.15 The fact that the regime
has thus far decisively rejected a policy of opening itself to the world, the possibility of
which it had earlier entertained with Chinese interlocutors, makes it clear, however,
that nothing short of a coup d’état or a revolution could alter North Korea’s commitment
to be a nuclear weapons power. I am not aware of any reporting that such events
are imminent or even likely.16 While I have the deepest respect for those who have
endorsed this posture, I do not believe that negotiating a combination of incentives to
slow down the North Korean nuclear project can be justified on the grounds that
it will provide us with the time to ensure we are ready for the collapse of the current
political structure in Pyongyang that, in light of current trends, these critics believe
will eventually happen.17 On the contrary, time is not on our side, and we have wasted
a good deal of it already by engaging in such optimistic thinking.
The second option—the use of kinetic attacks on the North Korean military—is, in my
view, totally unrealistic at this time. Those who suggest it seem to have lost track of the
reason why we are opposing North Korea’s nuclear programs in the first place. We are
in Korea to protect an ally, the Republic of South Korea, and to reassure another ally,
Japan, which is largely disarmed. The consequence of a US preemptive strike against
North Korea would leave Seoul in ruins. It would be an act for which America would
not be forgiven and one that could well unravel both the system of US alliances and
US nonproliferation efforts in the region for which our deterrent and our military
presence have been responsible. It would also impose enormous costs on China. An
American military attack on North Korea would trigger the Chinese military alliance
with North Korea.18 China would be compelled to deploy military force in North Korea

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with the objective, at a minimum, of creating a buffer zone to prevent millions of
North Koreans from pouring into China. The North Korean regime might well collapse
under such attacks, but the consequences for China, including a South Korean military
presence on its border, are quite unacceptable. Moreover, we must contemplate that
potentially uncontrolled factions of the North Korean military would take possession
of those conventional and nuclear weapons the Americans did not destroy and that
this could lead to a lengthy and horrific conflict.
The third option, which might be called a version of “containment,” is no more
realistic than the first two. This would mean the acceptance of the development of a
North Korean nuclear weapons capability that threatens the American homeland. But,
it is urged, the United States was willing to accept just such hostile capabilities in the
case of the Soviet Union and China. By credibly threatening to destroy those countries
by means of nuclear retaliation should they attack the American homeland, US
forces kept that homeland safe. That was the rationale, at any rate, responsible for the
Kennedy administration’s decision not to preempt the nascent and vulnerable Chinese
nuclear program, as many in that administration urged.19
The problem is that North Korea’s strategic objectives are very different from those
of either China or the Soviet Union. North Korea’s paramount goal is to unite the
Korean Peninsula.20 There is no geostrategic ambition so compelling as the unification
of societies that have been rent asunder by war. And while the US deterrent would
doubtless protect the US homeland, striking the US homeland is not the North Korean
objective. Rather, its objective is to put South Korea in the position of asking the
United States to leave the peninsula so as to avoid a conflict that would destroy both
North and South Korea. This would not be an unrealistic choice by South Koreans
who could well calculate that the American defense of their government would mean
the destruction of their society. Such a scenario might be superficially appealing to
China. After all, isn’t it Chinese policy to see the United States leave the region and
abandon its local alliances?21 In fact, this may be the most dangerous option of all for
China because it leads directly to the proliferation of nuclear weapons to both South
Korea and Japan and the formation of a South Korean-Japanese condominium against
China. It is the US extended deterrent protecting these countries that has kept them
from acquiring their own nuclear arsenals (and that has allowed them to nurse historic
enmities). Remove this deterrent, and both states have the technology, technocracy,
wealth, and face threats that would impel them to acquire their own nuclear weapons.22
Our current approach to the North Korea problem is a combination of both kinetic and
diplomatic threats, occasionally alternating with the offer of incentives. This approach

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cannot succeed. There is nothing the United States can do to North Korea that will
lead to its renunciation of its nuclear weapons program. North Korea—even before
it developed the capability to strike the American homeland with nuclear weapons,
North Korea already posed an unacceptable risk of retaliation against our allies in
response to an American military intervention. Moreover, there is nothing the US can
do for North Korea that might induce it to denuclearize because the Kim regime is
convinced that, for domestic reasons, the leadership can only be assured of remaining
in power by keeping its country on a war footing against the United States. Finally,
there is nothing the international community, including China, can do to North Korea
in the way of greater sanctions or for North Korea by abating sanctions. Neither action
could possibly persuade the Kim regime to give up its nuclear weapons because the
regime has concluded that only its threats to others have preserved it thus far.
The failure to achieve a denuclearized Korean Peninsula would be a serious defeat for US
policy. North Korean nuclear capability would deter the United States from protecting
its regional allies were they threatened, extorted, or attacked by North Korea. This result
would risk dissolution of the American northern Pacific alliance and the unraveling
of our strategic position in Asia. This is emphatically not the situation we faced in
Europe when two superpowers confronted each other at the head of multistate alliance
systems—NATO and the Warsaw Pact. North Korea is not the Soviet Union, and its
history of risk-taking and bizarre regional predations is unique among contemporary
states. Moreover, our current policy of pressuring China to pressure North Korea not
only minimizes our influence in the region, it would not—even were it successful—
really compel China, which has every incentive to prolong our role as supplicant.
It is true that containment worked to resolve the Cold War in our favor, and without
the horrors of a nuclear conflict. But our situation in Europe had two salient features:
the presence of the US extended deterrent for NATO that prevented the possibility
of aggression in Central Europe to reunify Germany and the Helsinki Accords that
ultimately settled the issue of borders and opened up the Warsaw Pact states. My
proposal has elements that are analogous to both these strategic and legal foundations.
Chinese nuclear deterrence is a crucial element in my proposal but, as we shall see, not
the only important initiative. Rather, it sits inside a much larger diplomatic and legal
framework.

IV.
Leonid Brezhnev, according to Anatoly Dobrynin, relished the “publicity he would
gain . . . ​when the Soviet public learned of the final settlement of the postwar boundaries
for which they had sacrificed so much.”23 It is noteworthy that the North Koreans have,

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for many decades, called for an international conference to end the Korean War, and
they have now apparently been joined in this call by South Korea (which unfortunately
could sacrifice an important bargaining chip if the United States fails to incorporate
this concession to North Korea within a more comprehensive plan).24
To appreciate the importance of the North Korean position, we must step back a
bit from the immediate political crisis and review the historic strategic and legal
circumstances that brought us here. In July 1950, American and other allied troops
under UN command entered the conflict that began on June 25, 1950, when
North Korea crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. In July 1951, peace
negotiations began at Panmunjom between the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army
(which had intervened in the war in October 1950) and the Korean People’s Army of
North Korea on one side, and the United Nations Command, headed by the United
States, on the other.25 These negotiations lasted more than two years during which,
despite some UN successes, there was a military stalemate. The final agreement,
signed on July 27, 1953, merely provided for an armistice and created a two-mile-wide
demilitarized zone roughly along the 38th parallel. That cease-fire agreement still
provides the governing arrangement as the UN resolutions remain in place. Legally,
the Korean War is in abatement, but it has not terminated because no final peace
settlement has been agreed to. Indeed, both North and South Korea claim to be the
sole legitimate government of the peninsula.26
For China, this situation is similar, in some significant aspects, to that faced by the
Soviet Union in the mid-1970s. Then, too, the national boundaries of its allies were
not finalized because these frontiers had been forged in the aftermath of World War II
and there was no peace agreement between the USSR and the other states that fought
the war. In that sense, the Helsinki Accords of 1975—though not a binding treaty—
finally ended World War II and recognized the inviolability of the postwar borders.27
Although we think of Helsinki as important in the context of human rights, the
promises offered by the USSR to uphold basic rights were purchased at the price of the
states of NATO conceding the national borders of the Warsaw Pact states.
I propose a similar conference, convened by the United Nations, to include North
Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, and the United States, with the goal of finally
ending the Korean War and recognizing the borders of both Koreas as inviolate.28
Roughly speaking, America and China would be in the positions of the United States
and the USSR at Helsinki—a role that China has long coveted. The crucial predicate
for the success of the conference will depend on the Chinese guarantee of extended
deterrence to North Korea linked to North Korean denuclearization and intrusive

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inspections by the United Nations of the kind negotiated with Iran. I do not see
that any option other than a Chinese nuclear guarantee has the realistic potential
to compel Pyongyang to come to an agreement that denuclearizes the peninsula.
(Washington has already given such a guarantee to South Korea. It is this guarantee
that has kept South Korea nonnuclear.29)
A nuclear guarantee from China for the inviolability of the North Korean regime is
the basis for this option, although it sits inside a larger complex of initiatives. If China
were to give a credible nuclear guarantee to North Korea in the case of a US invasion or
preemptive strike against the regime, there would be little point in North Korea risking
the survival of its regime by developing long-range nuclear weapons. This policy is
not to be confused with the current mutual defense pact between North Korea and
China, one cornerstone of which is China’s no-first-use policy. Getting under China’s
nuclear umbrella, however, could provide Kim a greater chance of long-term survival
than a nuclear arsenal vulnerable to US first strike and antimissile technologies. In
fact, I think it can be shown that without the protection of Chinese nuclear extended
deterrence, Kim’s allegedly defensive strategy will almost certainly lead to his eventual
destruction, with enormous human costs to the peoples of the peninsula.
From Kim’s point of view, there is much security to be gained by such a guarantee
of deterrence against the United States and much security to be lost if North Korea
continues its present course when further technological advances in the United States
render the North Korean arsenal ever more vulnerable. Our aim must be to reorient
Kim Jong Un’s paranoia, making him more afraid of losing a unique opportunity for
security in the eyes of his own people than he is afraid of dependence on China.
We must stop kidding ourselves about the incentives we can realistically employ to
force or induce compliance from North Korea. Nothing short of a credible guarantee
of the regime’s preservation will modify its behavior. Kim will starve his own people
and run incalculable risks because he believes he has no other credible choice. No
guarantee that the United States gives is credible to the North Korean leadership. The
course of action I am proposing is not without its own risks. It could increase the
chance of a Chinese-American confrontation and would link Chinese nuclear strategy
to a surrogate that is unpredictable and appears to relish conflict. Nevertheless, it is
a more promising option than those currently being canvassed. At present, we are
dangerously drifting, in part because almost everyone in the United States thinks that
every avenue has been explored.

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V.
In various recent venues, I have argued that a Chinese guarantee of extended
deterrence to North Korea, analogous to those the United States gives to Japan and
South Korea, is the best path—perhaps the only realistic path—to a denuclearized
Korean Peninsula.30 But even if I am right, why would China want to assert its
leadership in this way? Why in the world would China, which has a fraught
relationship with the North Korean regime, want to extend its nuclear deterrent to
protect that regime and thus assume additional risks of retaliation against the Chinese
homeland should it ever have to make good on that guarantee? And if it did, why
would the North Koreans—who at present are so wary of China—accept the offer?
(There have been rumors that just such a proposal may have been on the agenda of the
Kim-Xi meeting in March 2018, but I have been unable to confirm this.)
As I’ve indicated, the alternatives for China are bleak. The continuation of the
current diplomatic strategy by which the international community has made China
responsible for pressuring North Korea is a strategy that makes both China and the
United States look helpless in the region and makes China responsible for the failure of
an impossible diplomatic task. The outcomes of the three scenarios I described earlier
all have incalculable and potentially deadly consequences for China. On the other
hand, accepting the leadership role I have described as a co-convener of a conference
that finally ends the Korean War and that takes these catastrophic options off the
table is very much in China’s interest. It would secure for China a diplomatic role
as a great power that its economic growth alone cannot achieve. It would defuse a
regional conflict with the United States. And it offers the only realistic means of
restraining a troublesome ally whose ultimate ambitions do not coincide with those
of China.
At present, the People’s Republic of China has a “central deterrence” relationship
with the United States. That is, the Chinese nuclear arsenal, which includes nuclear
warheads that can be launched by missiles from submarines, threatens the United
States with retaliatory attacks on the American homeland as a way of preventing a
US strike on the Chinese homeland. “Extended deterrence,” by contrast, describes the
protection Washington gives to allies like South Korea and Japan: we undertake to
retaliate on their behalf against any state that attacks them, and this includes a nuclear
threat against nuclear-armed states like China, Russia, and North Korea.

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VI.
Why would North Korea accept such a Chinese offer? As best we can surmise, North
Korea’s logic rests on the rationale that fully tested and deployed nuclear capabilities
will ensure the safety of the regime.
North Korea’s reasoning appears to run like this: no guarantee by the United States
or by the international community (which North Korea believes is being led by the
United States) can be trusted. Only the capability to deploy hydrogen fusion warheads
launched by long-range ballistic missiles that could destroy American cities can provide
an ironclad guarantee for the regime. North Korea believes that there is nothing of
such value to the Americans on the peninsula that would lead the United States to
risk—or suffer—the deaths of millions of Americans. They are not alone in believing
this. Many commentators have remarked that if Libya and Iraq had developed
deliverable nuclear weapons, their totalitarian regimes would be in power today.31
Kim Jong Un, looking at Libya and Iraq, might conclude that Muammar Gaddhafi
and Saddam Hussein should have developed deliverable nuclear weapons. That’s
because there would have been nothing of such value to the Americans in a regime
change for Libya and Iraq that could have possibly persuaded Washington to risk—or
suffer—the deaths of millions of people: not oil, not imperial hubris, and certainly
not a desire to vindicate human rights or develop democracy. In North Korea’s eyes,
once testing confirms its capabilities, the regime will be safe and its dynasty can rest
easy.
It’s true that even without nuclear warheads and long-range ballistic missiles, North
Korea could still threaten millions of people in Japan and South Korea, two of
America’s closest allies. But that threat might not deter the United States from seeking
regime change in North Korea owing to the notorious problem that bedeviled our
alliances in the Cold War—the possibility that the mere threat to damage US allies
would be insufficient to deter Washington from a surprise first strike against the
Soviet Union or China. Therefore, Pyongyang has developed the capability to deploy
hydrogen fusion warheads launched with long-range ballistic missiles that could,
without anything like pinpoint accuracy, destroy a number of US cities.
There is an error embedded in this reasoning, however, that—unless urgent steps
are taken by North Korea to defuse the situation—will almost certainly lead to the
destruction of the regime. That catastrophic error is the result of precisely the move
that Kim thought would render his regime invulnerable. As long as only American
allies, like South Korea and Japan, were threatened by North Korea, there was no
urgent need for the United States to act to remove the Kim regime. It was thought

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that if we simply played for time, eventually the sort of internal contradictions that
resulted in the collapse of the regimes that governed the Warsaw Pact states would
bring about a similar transformation in North Korea. Washington could afford to wait.
Many things might occur: a revolution in North Korea, a coup by internal dissidents
(perhaps in league with Chinese sympathizers), the rise of a Kim descendant who gave
priority to economic growth and international trade. All of these were not unrealistic
hopes. Nothing much was lost by this wishful thinking, it was believed, and much
catastrophe was avoided.
But now, whether by design or miscalculation—whether by the regime or by some
faction thereof, by the North Korean state or by nonstate actors who buy or barter for
North Korean weapons—the US homeland has been placed in a jeopardy that will
definitely concentrate the American mind. As a consequence, there is an immense and
compelling incentive for Washington to surge the development of its nuclear damage
limitation capabilities: the ability to limit North Korea’s capacity to inflict retaliatory
damage on the United States. Changes in technology derived from the revolution in
rapid computation and communications that is still accelerating will decisively erode
North Korea’s retaliatory capabilities.32 Techniques like hardening and concealment
that currently protect the North Korean arsenal are being made obsolete by advances
in accuracy, the timing of detonation, and remote sensing devices.33 New guidance
systems, data processing and telecommunications, artificial intelligence, and many
of the other by-products of the computer revolution are driving this development.34
Absent the new North Korean threat to the American homeland, the United States
might well forgo the pursuit of such damage-limiting capabilities because the
acquisition of this capacity brings with it other risks, like launch-on-warning protocols.
But North Korea’s maneuvers to secure its future have made it now so deadly to
America that—unless some decisive step away from this fate is taken—the removal of
the regime is sealed.
At present, North Korea’s policy rests on a total acceptance of the “deterrence
assumption.”35 This is the assumption that a state’s possession of even a modest
number of deliverable nuclear weapons renders credible the threat to destroy another
state, such that any other state contemplating an attack will be wholly dissuaded from
destroying the state possessing such weapons. Already, however, the developments
in technology and tactics just mentioned promise to fatally undermine the premise
of survivability that underlies this assumption.
As a result, at present the future of the North Korean regime is deeply problematic.
In the short run, Pyongyang will arm as quickly as possible and make threats as dire

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as it can conceive. But even without war in the immediate time frame, which would
certainly destroy the Kim dynasty, North Korea is living on borrowed time. Two bits
of jargon are helpful here: decoupling and uncoupling. “Decoupling” is the refusal to
use US weapons on behalf of US allies out of fear of retaliation against the American
homeland, e.g., the fear during the Cold War that the US deterrent would become
detached (“decoupled”) from the extended, non-homeland theaters in Europe and Asia
it protected.36 “Uncoupling” reflects the fear that the United States would in an actual
war lower the risk to the American homeland by confining its nuclear retaliation to
the extended theater in a tacit bargain to spare the homelands of the nuclear armed
combatants.37 (“Fighting to the last German,” it was sometimes said, in case of Soviet
invasion of West Germany if the use of US nuclear weapons was limited to attacking
the invading force.38) Eventually, the United States will strike North Korea’s warmaking machine because the nuclear scenario will have shifted from “decoupling”
to “uncoupling.” That is, North Korea’s threat to the US homeland will drive the
American will to accept considerable risks to her allies to neutralize that threat.
Despite South Korean statements that no US strikes on North Korea should take place
without South Korea’s consent, a more accurate description of US policy was given
by John Bolton just prior to his being named national security advisor: “No foreign
government, even a close ally, can veto action to protect Americans from Kim Jong-un’s
nuclear weapons.”39
Only one maneuver can save North Korea—the acquisition of a credible nuclear
guarantee by Russia or, much more likely, China. Their arsenals are of very different
sizes—China’s being much smaller and more vulnerable. But in any case, it is scarcely
conceivable that Washington would risk nuclear retaliation just to rid the world of
the Kim regime. Given recent Russian behavior, there is little reason to think that it
would play a constructive role in the conference I am proposing. A Chinese nuclear
guarantee, negotiated as a necessary predicate to convening the conference—which
both China and North Korea have long sought—is the key.
The difficulties are threefold. The first lies in persuading North Korea that its negotiating
strength is at its apogee now—for the reasons I have given—and that its peril will
only grow in the absence of such a guarantee. The second is persuading China, which
has a no-first-use policy regarding nuclear weapons, to adopt a program of extended
deterrence to protect its fractious and unpredictable neighbor. Nor is it obvious that the
US leadership has the will to press for such an imaginative but counterintuitive policy.
But in fact, not only is this a way out of the current crisis—it is the only option that,
with the adoption of other policies like the mutual renunciation of reunification by

Philip Bobbitt  •  A Helsinki Conference for Asia 

 15

force of the Koreas, can eventually lead to a denuclearization of the peninsula. That
is because the extension of nuclear deterrence by China would depend on North
Korean compliance with intrusive inspections. Should North Korea be found cheating,
the Chinese guarantee would evaporate. This is a far more powerful check on North
Korean duplicity than any other realistic threat.
This approach is far preferable to the policies we are currently pursuing. Those policies
are weak and ineffectual, dangerous and self-destructive, or both. (This is why the
North Korean propaganda machine trumpeted, rather than suppressed, President
Trump’s threats to unleash “fire and fury . . . ​the likes of which this world has never
seen” and to “totally destroy North Korea.”40) Moreover, such threats unnerve the
publics of our allies in the region and discredit those political elements that support
an alliance with the United States.41 Finally, it is always possible that in such an
atmosphere, a stray airliner or North Korean missile launch that goes awry might
trigger a regional holocaust. Our strategic objective in the region is not to weaken
North Korea or China but to strengthen our alliances with South Korea and Japan.
The current policy has just the opposite impact, making Washington look feckless and
menacing at the same time.
On the other hand, as one British military historian has observed, once the DMZ is
internationally recognized as a border, North Korea will enjoy the protection of the
United Nations—which in the medium term should be attractive to Kim.42 In the
longer run, however, we may hope that this very stability may tend toward unification
on South Korean terms—like German reunification, which ultimately proceeded from
Helsinki.

VII.
Let me anticipate a few objections.
As I acknowledge below that it takes more to reassure an ally than to deter an enemy,
why would a Chinese guarantee be sufficient to convince Kim “to go naked,” as one of
my correspondents asked? Some have also noted that the precedent of Saddam in 1993
and 2003 suggests otherwise. It should be pointed out, however, that there was no great
power guarantee to Saddam to ensure his regime’s survival in the event that he truly
abandoned his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and was seen to have done so.
Game theory suggests that Washington might be averse to acting, and this prediction
gives grounds for Kim simply taking his chances.43 Moreover, perhaps my argument
proves too much: If Kim were really in such trouble in light of developing US

Hoover Institution  •  Stanford University

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capabilities, then why would he even need a guarantee? He should, rationally,
denuclearize on his own.
There is a certain logic to this, but politics is more a matter of history and path
dependence than of rigorous rationality. Given where Kim is now—not perhaps
where he should be had he really thought things through—he could not unilaterally
denuclearize and remain in power. Too much of his regime’s hold on its people is
premised on the American threat and his resistance to that threat. It may be that this
is a stupendous example of the fallacy of sunk costs. But if so, it wouldn’t be the first
time that world events turned on such agates, viz., the US tragedy in Vietnam.
What of the risks to China of being tethered to such an ally? How then does China
handle the entrapment problem of a North Korea emboldened to challenge South
Korea in the hopes that South Korea and America will be deterred by the possibility
of a Chinese retaliation? One might argue that the Chinese could play the strategic
ambiguity game as we do vis-à-vis Taiwan. But such an ambiguity would make it even
less likely that Kim would see the assurance as reliable enough to abandon his nuclear
weapons.
I have earlier briefly referred to the risks China might run with any alliance linking it
to North Korea. China, however, already has such an alliance. In any case, the nuclear
guarantee, as I emphasized, is a defensive one. Kim could hardly be confident that
China would join him in extraterritorial adventures—indeed, quite the contrary.
The potential withdrawal of the Chinese guarantee would be a powerful deterrent to
North Korean adventurism. Finally, strategic ambiguity is not what I am suggesting,
but rather an explicit extended deterrent. That guarantee promises to secure the
borders of North Korea and its right to run its internal affairs without intervention—
that is the Helsinki point.

VIII.
It is a familiar quotation of Nietzsche’s that “forgetting our objectives is the most
frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.” What is less well known is his
explanation: “Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation
is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a
final purpose in itself.”44
In this essay I have devoted some time to arguing that despite the difficulties each
party might perceive in exploring my proposal, North Korea and China both have
good reasons to pursue it. While I have adverted to the costs to the United States

Philip Bobbitt  •  A Helsinki Conference for Asia 

 17

of continuing on the paths we are currently traveling, I have not spent much time
on why we ought to be able to get the US government on board. Indeed, I hope it
won’t sound captious to say that the US government may be the most difficult party
to persuade. That’s because there are considerable psychological and cultural costs
whenever a policy of decades is abandoned. Bureaucratic veterans and participants in
the national security conversation have to rethink their conclusions and entertain the
possibility that they have been consistently wrong.45
Indeed, with conventional wisdom so tightly wound around certain premises—China
would never make the offer, North Korea would never accept—there is little incentive
to go back to fundamentals, especially the fundamental point of why we are in the
region to begin with and what risks there are to the security of South Korea and
Japan in continuing our current drift, whether it is a drift to war, or acquiescence,
or humiliating and dangerous retreat. It seems that Nietzsche’s observation has not
spared the United States.
Confronting North Korea is a means to a purpose; have we forgotten that purpose
in the process of almost seven decades of confrontation? As my correspondent wrote,
it can’t really be that we are afraid of North Korea invading California.
We are concerned about North Korea’s threats to America because we are committed
to the security and peace of South Korea. We fought a difficult war there to preserve
South Korea’s independence the first time North Korea invaded. Our objective then
was to stabilize a world order committed to the rule of law, the peaceful settlement
of international disputes, and—above all—the freedom of peoples to pursue their
own national destinies without intimidation from their neighbors. Institutions were
created and supported that encouraged free markets and open trading arrangements,
government by representation, and security cooperation because we believed these were
means to achieve our ends. Indeed, to secure these freedoms in Asia and in Europe, the
United States ran really dreadful risks to its homeland. Now a new threat to America is
poised to become a reality. Do we really understand why we have to repel it?
If the danger is nuclear proliferation to South Korea and Japan, what’s wrong with
that? France and the United Kingdom have independent nuclear deterrents. If that is
the only way that South Koreans can remain a free society, then why shouldn’t they
protect themselves, should they care to? If they do, and feel they need nuclear weapons
to do so, why should we discourage them? And if they don’t—if they are coerced into
a unified state that reverses the prosperity and representative democracy they now
enjoy—what business is it of ours?

Hoover Institution  •  Stanford University

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One answer is that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is going in the wrong
direction. It is our objective to reduce the number of weapons worldwide because
we fear that the likelihood of their being used would increase, which would be a
catastrophe for civilian populations. Another answer lies in how this proliferation
would have come about: here it would have been as a consequence of the collapse of
the US nuclear guarantee, which means that it carries with it the destruction of our
most important alliances in the region. Another answer is that democratic solidarity
is threatened by warfare, and strong alliances have—thus far—prevented the return of
great power armed conflict.
Moreover, preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons to South Korea and Japan
is an important goal of China, with whom we wish to have cooperative and peaceful
relations. Making China feel less safe may be satisfying to those who regard conflict
between America and China as inevitable, but this may simply make conflict more
likely. For those who think China is certain to be our ultimate adversary, it should be
pointed out that China’s greatest geostrategic weakness is a lack of allies. Strengthening
North Korea, one of its few allies, can’t be a positive step. A unified Korea under
Pyongyang would be a formidable partner for Beijing.
But perhaps the most salient reason why we should be concerned about proliferation
is that it would amount to a reversal of what has been, up to now, an astonishingly
successful international strategy by the United States to use alliances to transform
states ruined by war and to link them to our own security. We pursued this strategy
because we faced a potentially mortal threat to our constitutional way of life and
because it was congruent with our most hallowed values of respect for the individual
conscience and hostility to state coercion.
Does anyone believe that abandoning South Korea and Japan will improve the lives
of their peoples, strengthen their solidarity with the lives of our people, and diminish
the strength of those parties who would dearly love to remove the American example
from the possibilities available to the future? Or have we, along the way, forgotten the
objectives of US strategy?
Let’s remember precisely what this crisis is really about. It does not concern a threat
against the United States per se, but rather a campaign to unify the peninsula by
persuading South Koreans that we will either not risk our own homeland to protect them
or, if pressed to intervene, will allow South Korea to become a cemetery by confining
the battlefield to their homeland in order to spare ours. How America responds to this
crisis will influence the expectations of states all across the world, for decades to come.

Philip Bobbitt  •  A Helsinki Conference for Asia 

 19

I would like to conclude by quoting a letter to me from Rolf Ekeus, the distinguished
diplomat who as much as anyone is familiar with the history and politics of nuclear
deterrence and proliferation. He writes,
The situation on the peninsula is gradually and systematically worsening and I doubt that
the confirmation and continuation of policies with no new thinking will lead to anything
else than a catastrophe.46

NOTES
1 ​Lee Jong-seok, former unification minister of South Korea, and Cheong Seong-chang, North Korea expert
at Sejong Institute, quoted in Choe Sang-Hun, “Will Kim Jong-un Trade His Nuclear Arsenal to Rebuild
Economy?” New York Times, April 21, 2018, accessed April 24, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21​
/­world/asia/north-korea-kim-jong-un-nuclear-tests.html.
2 ​Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: Final Act, August 1, 1975, 14 I.L.M. 1292, reprinted in
73 State Department Bulletin 323 (1975).
3 ​Elise Hu, “North Korea Claims Successful Hydrogen Bomb Test,” National Public Radio, September 3,
2017, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­npr​.­org​/­sections​/­thetwo​-­way​/­2017​/­09​/­03​/­523913820​/­north​
-­korea​-­possibly​-­conducts​-­sixth​-­nuclear​-­test​-­south​-­korea​-­says.
4 ​Choe Sang-Hun and David E. Sanger, “North Korea Fires Missile over Japan,” New York Times, August 28,
2017, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2017​/­08​/­28​/­world​/­asia​/­north​-­korea​-­missile​
.­html; Mark Landler, Choe Sang-Hun, and Helene Cooper, “North Korea Fires a Ballistic Missile, in a Further
Challenge to Trump,” New York Times, November 28, 2017, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​
.­com​/­2017​/­11​/­28​/­world​/­asia​/­north​-­korea​-­missile​-­test​.­html.
5 ​See “North Korea Missile Tests: A Timeline,” CBS News, September 6, 2017, accessed April 12, 2018,
https://­w ww​.­cbsnews​.­com​/­news​/­north​-­korea​-­missile​-­tests​-­a​-­timeline​­; and “A Timeline of North Korea’s
Nuclear Tests,” CBS News, September 3, 2017, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­cbsnews​.­com​/­news​
/­north​-­koreas​-­nuclear​-­tests​-­timeline​.­
6 ​See Brent Scowcroft and Arnold Kanter, “Korea: Time for Action,” Washington Post, June 15, 1994,
accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­washingtonpost​.­com​/­archive​/­opinions​/­1994​/­06​/­15​/­korea​-­time​-­for​
-­action​/­73e7cb5b​-­73e9​- ­4503​-­916f​-­9b601b67087d​/­​?­utm​_­term​=­​.­b97409622cfb; and Ash Carter and William
Perry, “If Necessary, Strike and Destroy,” Washington Post, June 22, 2006, accessed April 12, 2018, http://­
www​.­washingtonpost​.­com​/­wp​-­dyn​/­content​/­article​/­2006​/­06​/­21​/­AR2006062101518​.­html.
7 ​See, e.g., Demetrios Caraley, September 11, Terrorist Attacks, and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Academy
of Political Science, 2002), 73–74, discussing how the North Korean nuclear program acted largely as a
deterrent to ensure regime survival, not for “war-fighting purposes.”
8 ​Simon Jenkins, email to author, copy on file with Hoover Institution.
9 ​Mark Bowden, “What Did North Korea’s Missile Test Really Change?” The Atlantic, July 5, 2017, accessed
April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­international​/­archive​/­2017​/­07​/­north​-­korea​-­icbm​/­532692.
10 ​Winston Churchill, “The Locust Years,” speech before the House of Commons, November 12, 1936,
accessed April 12, 2018, http://­w ww​.­churchill​-­society​-­london​.­org​.­uk​/­Locusts​.­html.

Hoover Institution  •  Stanford University

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11 ​I have not described the so-called bloody nose option, of which one variant is an attack on a North
Korean ICBM test or on testing facilities. I simply do not see this as a true option so much as one more
example—and a particularly reckless one—of postponing rather than preventing North Korean
acquisition of a nuclear threat against the American homeland without regard to the political impact of
such US behavior on our regional allies.
12 ​Avril Haines, “North Korea—A Path Forward,” speech at the Brookings Institution, October 10, 2017,
accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­brookings​.­edu​/­wp​- ­content​/­uploads​/­2017​/­09​/­fp​_ ­20171010​_­north​
_­korea​_­keynote​.­pdf.
13 ​See UN resolutions as follows: S/RES/1695; S/RES/1718; S/RES/1874; S/RES/2087; S/RES/2094; S/
RES/2270; S/RES/2321; S/RES/2356; S/RES/2371; S/RES/2375; S/RES/2397.
14 ​See Eleanor Albert, “The China–North Korea Relationship,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 28,
2018, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­www​.­cfr​.­org​/­backgrounder​/­china​-­north​-­korea​-­relationship​.­ See also
Anne Gearan, “U.S. Wants More U.N. Sanctions over North Korea’s Nuclear Arms, Warns Time Is Short,”
Washington Post, April 28, 2017 (statement by then US secretary of state Rex Tillerson to UN Security Council),
accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­washingtonpost​.­com​/­world​/­national​-­security​/­in​-­an​-­apparent​
-­shift​-­tillerson​-­says​-­us​-­willing​-­to​-­hold​- ­direct​-­talks​-­with​-­n​-­korea​/­2017​/­0 4​/­27​/­a2093a0e​-­2bac​-­11e7​-­b605​
-­33413c691853​_ ­story​.­html​?­utm​_­term​=­​.­1dd5e1ca006c.
15 ​See, e.g., “A New Breed of Conglomerates Is Helping to Prop Up North Korea,” The Economist,
January 25, 2018, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­economist​.­com​/­news​/­asia​/­21735631​-­want​-­flight​
-­pyongyang​-­cigarettes​-­potted​-­pheasant​-­petrol​-­new​-­breed​-­conglomerates; and “North Korea’s Economy:
Spring Release,” The Economist, February 26, 2015, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­www​.­economist​.­com​/­news​
/­asia​/­21645252​-­tantalising​-­signs​-­change ​-­are​-­emerging​-­whether​-­they​-­signal​-­more ​-­profound​-­shifts​-­less.
16 ​But see “Donald Trump May Be Bluffing over a Pre-emptive Strike on North Korea,” The Economist,
January 27, 2018, analyzing emergent capitalism in North Korea as the seeds of pluralism.
17 ​For the most eloquent of the advocates for this option, see Haines, “North Korea—A Path Forward.”
18 ​Ankit Panda, “China and North Korea Have a Mutual Defense Treaty, but When Would It Apply?” The
Diplomat, August 14, 2017, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­thediplomat​.­com​/­2017​/­08​/­china​-­and​-­north​
-­korea​-­have​-­a​-­mutual​-­defense​-­treaty​-­but​-­when​-­would​-­it​-­apply​.­
19 ​See Franz-Stefan Gady, “How a State Department Study Prevented Nuclear War with China,” The
Diplomat, October 25, 2017, discussing how the State Department understood that the status quo would
still be maintained even with Chinese nuclear missiles because they would be cautious in using them,
accessed April 12, 2018, https://­thediplomat​.­com​/­2017​/­10​/­how​-­a​-­state​- ­department​-­study​-­prevented​
-­nuclear​-­war​-­with​-­china​.­
20 ​See Alex Lockie, “North Korea Doesn’t Just Want Nuclear Weapons for Defense—It Wants Them to
Retake South Korea,” Business Insider, August 7, 2017, accessed April 12, 2018, http://­w ww​.­businessinsider​
.­com​/­north​-­korea​-­nuclear​-­weapons​-­to​-­reunite​-­korean​-­peninsula​-­2017​-­8; and Tom O’Connor, “North Korea
Wants to Reunite with South, But Only If U.S. Stays Out,” Newsweek, January 17, 2018, accessed April 12,
2018, http://­w ww​.­newsweek​.­com​/­north​-­korea​-­wants​-­reunite​-­south​-­only​-­if​-­us​-­stays​-­out​-­783963.
21 ​See, e.g., Todd Rosenblum, “How to Persuade China to Abandon North Korea,” Politico, July 18, 2017,
accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­politico​.­com​/­agenda​/­story​/­2017​/­07​/­18​/­china​-­north​-­korea​-­american​
-­troops​-­removal​- ­000476.
22 ​See Richard C. Bush, “The Real Reason a North Korean Nuclear Weapon Is So Terrifying—and It’s Not
What You Think,” Brookings Institution, August 9, 2017, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­brookings​.­edu​
/­blog ​/­order​-­from​-­chaos​/­2017​/­08​/­09​/­the​-­real​-­reason​-­a​-­north​-­korean​-­nuclear​-­weapon​-­is​-­so​-­terrifying​-­and​
-­its​-­not​-­what​-­you​-­think​.­

Philip Bobbitt  •  A Helsinki Conference for Asia 

 21

23 ​John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2005), 190.
24 ​See James Dobbins and Jeffrey Hornung, “End the Korean War, Finally,” New York Times, June 8, 2017,
accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2017​/­06​/­08​/­opinion​/­end​-­the​-­korean​-­war​-­f inally​.­html.
See also Choe Sang-Hun and Jane Perlez, “Treaty to Formally End Korean War Is Being Discussed, South
Confirms,” New York Times, April 18, 2018, accessed April 24, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18​
/­world/asia/north-korea-south-treaty.html.
25 ​See Thomas Paterson, et al., American Foreign Relations, vol. 2: Since 1895 (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publishing, 2014), https://­books​.­google​.­com​/­books​?­id​=­hkjAAgAAQBAJ&pg​=­PA288&lpg​=­PA288&dq​=­Feb​.­+
1951+peace+negotiations+began+at+Panmunjom&source​=­bl&ots​=­stnBlaFcnK&sig​=­gm​_­eW9DcGwlsBBI2F​
l7bVqkLEqQ&hl​=­en&sa​=­X&ved​=­0ahUKEwjAo47Xu7DZAhUGk1kKHXjUAMUQ6AEIjQEwCQ#v​=­onepage&q​
=­Feb​.­%201951%20peace%20negotiations%20began%20at%20Panmunjom&f​=­false.
26 ​For the South Korean claim, see Chapter 1, Article 3, Constitution of the Republic of Korea, accessed
April 12, 2018, http://­w ww​.­ilo​.­org ​/­wcmsp5​/­groups​/­public​/­@ed​_­protect​/­@protrav​/­@ilo​_­aids​/­documents​
/­legaldocument​/­wcms​_­117333​.­pdf​.­ See also Scott W. Harold, “Countering North Korea’s Political Warfare,”
The Diplomat, February 10, 2018, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­thediplomat​.­com​/­2018​/­02​/­countering​
-­north​-­koreas​-­political​-­warfare​.­ For the North Korean claim, see Thomas Fingar, Uneasy Partnerships:
China’s Engagement with Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2017), 126.
27 ​See Helsinki Final Act, Section 1(a)(IV).
28 ​I have not included Russia in the group, despite the fact that it has been one of the participants in the
Six Party group talks. Russia was not overtly involved in the Korean War and has no necessary role in a
peace conference to legally terminate that war. Moreover, Russia’s recent behavior suggests that it has little
interest in supporting the international security order.
29 ​For commentary on this issue, see Adam Taylor, “Why Doesn’t South Korea Have Nuclear Weapons?
For a Time, It Pursued Them,” Washington Post, July 31, 2017, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​
.­washingtonpost​.­com​/­news​/­worldviews​/­wp​/­2017​/­07​/­31​/­why​-­doesnt​-­south​-­korea​-­have​-­nuclear​-­weapons​
-­for​-­a​-­time​-­it​-­pursued​-­them​/­​?­utm​_­term​=­​.­d9194d76ee58.
30 ​
Time magazine published two essays of mine on North Korea in late September and early October. See
“A Way Forward in the North Korea Crisis,” September 21, 2017, accessed April 12, 2018, http://­time​.­com​
/­4950248​/­a​-­way​-­forward​-­in​-­the​-­north​-­korea​- ­crisis​.­ These essays suggested interlocking diplomatic and
military proposals for resolving the current crisis in the peninsula. One common reaction to these essays
was that it was a fine idea but the Chinese would never participate, and if they did, the North Koreans
would reject their participation. To answer these objections, I wrote three short essays posted on Lawfare.
These, interestingly, prompted interest from various quarters in Europe and elsewhere. On January 20,
2018, Bloomberg did an extensive interview with me on the subject. See “A North Korea Solution: Take
Kim Out of the Loop,” accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­bloomberg​.­com​/­view​/­articles​/­2018​- ­01​-­20​/­a​
-­north​-­korea​-­solution​-­take​-­kim​- ­out​- ­of​-­the​-­loop​.­ Then in late January, the BBC China solicited, translated,
broadcast and then posted an essay summarizing my proposal—it was their lead story, accessed April 12,
2018, http://­w ww​.­bbc​.­com​/­zhongwen​/­simp​/­world​- ­42861585​.­ That, in turn, prompted interest in various
quarters in China. This was followed by a Forbes piece commenting on the proposal: Jay Ogilvy, “Unraveling
the Mess in North Korea,” Forbes, February 1, 2018, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­forbes​.­com​/­sites​
/­stratfor​/­2018​/­02​/­01​/­unraveling​-­the​-­mess​-­in​-­north​-­korea​/­#7061e4119c45.
31 ​See, e.g., Andrew J. Pierre, “If Gaddafi Had the Bomb,” Huffington Post, August 4, 2011, accessed April 12,
2018, https://­w ww​.­huffingtonpost​.­com​/­andrew​-­j​-­pierre​/­if​-­gaddafi​-­had​-­the​-­bomb​_­b​_ ­8 46820​.­html; and
Kenneth N. Waltz and Mira Rapp Hopper, “What Kim Jong Il Learned from Qaddafi’s Fall: Never Disarm,”

Hoover Institution  •  Stanford University

 22

The Atlantic, October 24, 2011, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­theatlantic​.­com​/­international​/­archive​
/­2011​/­10​/­what​-­kim​-­jong​-­il​-­learned​-­from​- ­qaddafis​-­fall​-­never​- ­disarm​/­247192​.­
32 ​See Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the
Future of Nuclear Deterrence,” International Security 41, no. 4 (Spring 2017): 9, accessed April 12, 2018,
https://­w ww​.­belfercenter​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­f iles​/­f iles​/­publication​/­isec​_­a​_­00273​_­LieberPress​.­pdf.
33 ​Max Singer, “The New Threat of Very Accurate Missiles,” Hudson Institute, August 9, 2016, accessed
April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­hudson​.­org​/­research​/­12727​-­the​-­new​-­threat​- ­of​-­very​-­accurate​-­missiles; Oriana
Pawlyk, “Air Force’s Bunker-Busting MOP Receives an Upgrade,” Military​.­com, January 29, 2018, accessed
April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­military​.­com​/­dodbuzz​/­2018​/­01​/­29​/­air​-­forces​-­bunker​-­busting​-­mop​-­receives​
-­upgrade​.­html; “The Nuke Detectives,” The Economist, September 5, 2015, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­
www​.­economist​.­com​/­news​/­technology​-­quarterly​/­21662652​-­clandestine​-­weapons​-­new​-­ways​-­detect​
-­covert​-­nuclear​-­weapons​-­are​-­being​-­developed.
34 ​“U​.­S. Defense against North Korea Missiles Improved, Pentagon Testing Agency Finds,” Bloomberg via
The Japan Times, January 24, 2018, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­japantimes​.­co​.­jp​/­news​/­2018​/­01​/­24​
/­asia​-­pacific​/­u​-­s​- ­defense ​-­north​-­korea​-­missiles​-­improved​-­pentagon​-­testing​-­agency​-­f inds​/­#​.­Wpb3zPmnHIU;
Esther Hutcheson, “Artificial Intelligence Can Improve Radioactive Particles’ Detection,” Phys​.­org, July 8, 2015,
accessed April 12, 2018, https://­phys​.­org​/­news​/­2015​- ­07​-­artificial​-­intelligence​-­radioactive​-­particles​.­html.
35 ​See Bobbitt, Democracy and Deterrence, 200; “Under Trump, a Looming North Korean ICBM Threat Brings
Alliance ‘Decoupling’ Fears Back to East Asia,” The Diplomat, May 9, 2017, https://­thediplomat​.­com​/­2017​/­05​
/­under​-­trump​-­a​-­looming​-­north​-­korean​-­icbm​-­threat​-­brings​-­alliance​-­decoupling​-­fears​-­back​-­to​-­east​-­asia​.­
36 ​Bobbitt, Democracy and Deterrence, 105 (Henry Kissinger’s famous description of decoupling).
37 ​Bobbitt, Democracy and Deterrence, 107 (definition of “uncoupling” derived).
38 ​Jeffrey Lewis, “A Boy and His Toys,” Foreign Policy, September 6, 2014, accessed April 12, 2018, http://­
foreignpolicy​.­com​/­2014​/­09​/­06​/­a​-­boy​-­and​-­his​-­toys​.­
39 ​Ankit Panda, “John Bolton Enters the Trump Administration: What to Expect,” The Diplomat, March
23, 2018, accessed April 24, 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/03/john-bolton-enters-the-trump​
-administration-what-to-expect.
40 ​Peter Baker and Choe Sang-Hun, “Trump Threatens ‘Fire and Fury’ against North Korea If It Endangers
U.S.,” New York Times, August 8, 2017, accessed April 12, 2018, https://­w ww​.­nytimes​.­com​/­2017​/­08​/­08​/­world​
/­asia​/­north​-­korea​-­un​-­sanctions​-­nuclear​-­missile​-­united​-­nations​.­html; Ali Vitali, “Trump Threatens to
‘Totally Destroy’ North Korea in First U.N. Speech,” NBC News, September 21, 2017, accessed April 12, 2018,
https://­w ww​.­nbcnews​.­com​/­politics​/­white​-­house​/­trump​-­un​-­north​-­korean​-­leader​-­suicide​-­mission​-­n802596.
41 ​Brad Dennett, “Here in South Korea, People Fear Donald Trump More Than Kim Jong-un,” Independent,
September 7, 2017, http://­w ww​.­independent​.­co​.­uk​/­voices​/­north​-­korea​-­kim​-­jong​-­un​- ­donald​-­trump​-­nuclear​
-­war​-­threats​-­south​-­korea​-­gangnam​-­what​-­its​-­like​-­a7934036​.­html.
42 ​Alan Mallinson, email to author, on file with Hoover Institution.
43 ​On the other hand, game theory has other implications for my proposal. Shortly after publication,
I received a note from the game theorist Horace W. Brock pointing out that two important results in game
theory strongly reinforced my proposal. First, in 1968, the German Nobel Prize winner Reinhard Selten
published a path-breaking paper entitled “A Simple Model of Imperfect Competition, Where 4 Are Few and
6 Are Many,” International Journal of Game Theory 2, no. 1 (December 1973), accessed April 12, 2018, https://­
link​.­springer​.­com​/­article​/­10​.­1007​/­BF01737566​.­ Selten analyzed cartel behavior, in particular the impact
of the number of players on cartel stability. He proved that the probability of the players agreeing to the
terms of a cartel was 100 percent if there were up to four players. Then, if there were five, the probability of

Philip Bobbitt  •  A Helsinki Conference for Asia 

 23

each player’s joining fell to 22 percent. Finally, for six or more members, the probability of cartel creation
plummeted to zero. Think of airlines: we have seen that, when there are three carriers, all three implicitly
collude, and airfares and profits are strong. Then, if one or two new airlines enter (recall Freddie Laker),
price wars break out and airfares drop sharply.
The second development in game theory was due to Selten’s co-Nobel prize winner, John Harsanyi (a third
co-winner was John Nash). Until Harsanyi’s work in the late 1960s, game theory had assumed that each
player knew almost everything about his antagonists, i.e., their level of risk aversion, their preferences, and
their resources. Harsanyi extended game theory to deal with cases where players knew much less, that
is, to cases of “incomplete information.” The solutions to incomplete information games are much more
unstable and prone to “mistakes” and miscalculations than are those of complete information. See John C.
Harsanyi, “Games with Incomplete Information Played by “Bayesian” Players, I-III. Part I. The Basic Model,”
Management Science, 14, no. 3 (November 1967): 159–82, accessed April 12, 2018, http://­w ww2​.­c s​.­siu​.­edu​
/­~hexmoor​/­classes​/­CS491​-­F10​/­Harasyani​.­pdf.
When the insights of these two theoretical results are applied to international relations, we now know that
the greater the number of players, and the more incomplete the information, the greater the instability
and the chance of war. To begin with, when there are five nations involved (think of the five empires at the
outbreak of World War I or the five players in the Korean crisis), there are more than thirty coalitions that can
form and complicate matters as they did in 1913. We know from Selten’s result that the probability of a stable
agreement in such a game is negligible. With only two players, however, there are no coalitions at all. In this
latter case, game theory predicts the kind of stability we witnessed between the USSR and the United States
between 1950 and 1990. Now factor in incomplete information and the fact that the magnitude of incomplete
information explodes with the number of coalitions. The result: an even greater degree of instability.
Brock’s main point was that my strategy transforms today’s unstable game of five players (Japan, the
United States, China, North Korea, and South Korea) into a stable two-player game of relatively complete
information: the United States and China.
44 ​Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” reprinted in Sämtliche Werke: Kritische
Studienausgabe, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari ed. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980), 642.
45 ​I was disappointed to read this reaction from a former senior official who had himself labored on this
subject while in office. He began by observing, “Unlike many who write about this, I am humble about how
much we know about North Korean intentions,” but then he quickly concluded, “I think your suggestion is a
non-starter for the DPRK.” It may well be, but for many US government officials a more accurate answer is,
“Your suggestion is a non-starter for me.” North Korea’s intentions are best determined by approaching it.
46 ​Rolf Ekeus, email to author, on file with the Hoover Institution.

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The preferred citation for this publication is:
Philip Bobbitt, A Helsinki Conference for Asia, Hoover Working Group on National Security, Technology, and Law,
Aegis Series Paper No. 1805 (April 26, 2018), available at https://lawfareblog.com/helsinki-conference-asia.

Hoover Institution  •  Stanford University

 Working Group on National Security,
Technology, and Law

About the Author

Philip Bobbitt
Philip Bobbitt is Herbert Wechsler
Professor of Federal Jurisprudence
and director of the Center for
National Security at Columbia.
He is the former senior director
for strategic planning at the US
National Security Council and
is the author of Democracy and
Deterrence: The History and Future
of Nuclear Strategy and of US Nuclear
Strategy (with Gregory Treverton
and Lawrence Freedman).

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