Nuclear Power Play in Pyongyang

Ankit Panda explains here why Kim Jong Un is bent on survival and how North Korea’s leader sees “strategic deterrence” as the best, if not only, way to ensure it. Panda, senior editor at The Diplomat, puts it succinctly: “The first, last, and longest-standing raison d’etre of Kim’s nuclear program is survival.” More a biography of the bomb than of Kim, it tells the story of Pyongyang’s strategic weapons with meticulous detail and analytical clarity.

Borrowing from Vipin Narang’s work, Panda classifies North Korea’s deterrence as based upon “asymmetric escalation,” an especially dangerous strategy by threatening to use nukes early in a conflict or even in the run-up. Kim faces a dilemma, too, in ensuring a monopoly on the command and control of his own bombs, while ensuring their survivability and defending against attacks on his communications.

Kim famously declared his nuclear deterrent “complete” before pivoting to summitry in 2018, but Panda’s timely volume reminds us there are manifold ways in which Kim might want to sharpen his “treasured sword.” The incoming Biden administration would do well to study Panda’s list — testing lowyield nuclear weapons, deploying a nuclear-equipped submarine, testing ICBM accuracy and re-entry capabilities — as yet another US president grapples with how to handle Kim and his bombs.

Panda outlines manifold ways in which Kim might want to sharpen his ‘treasured sword.’