Conflict on the Korean Peninsula: Lessons from Discussions at ISA 2019
About the author: Lauren Sukin is a Stanford PhD candidate in political science and recipient of an FSI Conference Grant, which she used in support of her travel to present her research at the 2019 International Studies Association conference in Toronto.
This past March, I had the opportunity to travel to the 2019 International Studies Association conference in Toronto, Canada, where I was able to have two papers about tensions on the Korean Peninsula discussed on panels. This travel was made possible by generous support from the FSI (Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies) conference funding; in fact, the research I presented would also not have been possible without the support of FSI, as it provided funding for the survey whose results compose the first paper, entitled “Do Nuclear States Create Nuclear Allies or Prevent Proliferation?” and motivated the second, entitled “Joint Military Exercises and Crisis Dynamics on the Korean Peninsula.”
The first paper, “Do Nuclear States Create Nuclear Allies or Prevent Proliferation?,” examines how the relationship between the United States and South Korea influences support for South Korean proliferation among its citizens. In particular, this paper answers the question: How does the alliance between a client state and its nuclear ally influence support for proliferation in the client? Conventional wisdom suggests that when nuclear security guarantees are not credible, support for proliferation will be high, since a domestic nuclear capability offers an alternative source of deterrence. I introduce a new theory, which posits that highly credible security guarantees can backfire by causing some individuals to fear their ally might miscalculate — either by using nuclear weapons in an unnecessary preventative attack or by precipitous escalation of a crisis or conflict. I conduct a survey experiment among a representative sample of South Korean citizens, and the findings support my theory. Highly credible nuclear security guarantees increase support for proliferation by between 5 and 8 percent. I find that the mechanisms of both my theory and the conventional wisdom are simultaneously at play, causing two-sided pressure on the South Korean government to proliferate.
While this first paper focuses on nuclear capabilities, its underlying survey also included an experiment about conventional capabilities. In this experiment, respondents were given one of three scenarios about a generic U.S.-South Korea joint military exercise. All respondents were told that, “The United States and South Korea have an upcoming joint military exercise.” Approximately one-third of respondents were assigned to the control condition of the experiment. In the control condition, respondents were then told, “In the past, North Korea has called for such exercises to be cancelled,” and they were asked, “Should the exercise be cancelled?”
The same question was asked of respondents in the two treatment conditions, which each received approximately one-third of the total respondents. The first treatment condition is the “promise” condition, in which respondents were told that, “North Korea has promised to cease nuclear and missile testing if the exercise is cancelled.” The second treatment condition is the “threat” condition. In this condition, respondents were told, “North Korea has threatened to resume nuclear and missile testing if the exercise is not cancelled.”
This experiment allows me to gauge how South Koreans respond to different types of North Korean rhetoric. In particular, how do South Koreans respond to positive messages (the promise condition) versus neutral (control condition) or negative (threat condition) messages? I find that the proportion of respondents that favor cancelling the joint military exercise increases from the baseline of 13.83 percent in the control condition to 37.47 percent in the threat condition and 25.97 percent in the promise condition. Two-sided t-tests demonstrate that the distribution of preferences varies significantly between each condition.
There are two key implications from this finding. First, in all conditions, the majority of South Koreans prefer to continue the joint military exercise. Respondents who chose to continue joint military exercises tended to explain their reasoning as wanting to maintain military preparedness and to deter North Korea. Respondents were also concerned about maintaining non-military aspects of the relationship with the United States, such as diplomatic and economic ties.
Second, although a minority of respondents prefer to cancel the joint military exercise in each experimental condition, both the threat of resuming missile and nuclear tests if the exercise is not cancelled and the promise to refrain from testing if the exercise is cancelled resulted in increases in support for exercise cancellation. This suggests that South Koreans take both positive and negative messages from North Korea seriously; they are concerned about deterrent threats and responsive to potential carrots. The survey shows that nearly one-third of respondents who wished to cancel the exercise did so to avoid nuclear testing, and one-quarter of respondents wanted to improve diplomatic relations with North Korea.
Overall, these findings suggest that shifting North Korean rhetoric from negative to neutral, as well as from neutral to positive, could have important implications for the overall reduction of tensions on the North Korean peninsula. But how can we change North Korea rhetoric?
My second paper that was discussed at ISA focuses on this question. This paper was presented by my co-author, Jordan Berhardt on a panel about cross-national security cooperation.
A number of proposals on how to reduce threats by North Korea have discussed alterations to the program of joint military exercises that the United States holds with South Korea. North Korea has also repeatedly called for a reduction or secession of the joint exercises. Yet there is little academic work illuminating whether limiting or halting United States-South Korea joint military exercises would actually be a useful concession for securing a reduction of tensions on the peninsula. In this paper, my co-author and I establish a relationship between joint military exercises and North Korea’s rhetoric as well as its actions. In response to a provocation, North Korea can issue warnings or threats as well as take costly signals such as engaging in cross-border incidents and conducting missile or nuclear tests. Using new data on joint military exercises and North Korean behavior, we find that the intensity of North Korea’s responses to joint military exercises is driven by the severity of the threat those exercises pose. These findings indicate that North Korea does view joint military exercises as a serious threat.
Together, the two papers paint a picture of the problems that U.S. military presence on the Korean peninsula can pose for regional tensions. Not only does U.S. participation in joint military exercises contribute to North Korean using threatening rhetoric and taking threatening actions, but also, the U.S. nuclear security guarantee may be encouraging South Korean citizens to support seeking nuclear weapons of their own. This suggests that the United States ought to be careful and intentional in striking a balance between assuring its peacekeeping role on the Korean Peninsula and reassuring both South and North Korea that it will not act rashly or unnecessarily escalate tensions.
