Abstract: Though seemingly on the “back burner,” worrisome nuclear developments in North Korea are steadily increasing. Inter alia, by ignoring diplomatic warnings and legal prohibitions, Kim Jong Un has accelerated testing shorter-range weapons that could imperil U.S. allies South Korea and Japan. Earlier, in September 2021, the “hermit kingdom” first tested a cruise missile it plans to arm with nuclear warheads. Simultaneously, Pyongyang demonstrated a new system for firing ballistic missiles from trains. Unraveling such force-multiplying complexities or “synergies,” the following article by Professor Louis René Beres recommends certain issue-specific forms of dialectical thinking for US strategic planners and policy-makers. His prescriptions include a fundamental policy shift from seeking North Korean “denuclearization” to enhancing nuclear deterrence. Potentially most problematic for the United States, says Professor Beres, is that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently ordered (March 2025) “disestablishment” of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, the DOD’s long-functioning “think tank.” This signals the first time during the past half-century that the United States wittingly elevated partisan politics over science-driven national security preparations at DOD.
“Whether we are awake or asleep, we should never let ourselves be persuaded except on the evidence of our reason.” -René Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637)
All of Pyongyang’s recent missile tests reveal far more than technical information about the unpredictable country’ military hardware. Above all, they reveal that Kim Jong Un has no plausible intentions to “denuclearize.” Accordingly, the following core questions warrant urgent and capable consideration:
What precisely should be done by the United States, short and long-term?
How should this question be re-considered or modified after the US president and secretary of defense “disestablished” the Pentagon’s vital Office of Net Assessment.?[1]
Regarding such queries, informed understandings will be needed at conceptual and theoretical levels. Before the United States could limit Pyongyang’s determined capacity to expand more aggressively with its nuclear weapons and correlative missile programs, Washington will need to reassess variously fundamental ideas about national military power.[2] To begin, it should be understood that even a tangible US superiority in delivery vehicles and nuclear firepower need not signify American safety from an expectedly “weaker” nuclear state. Though counter-intuitive, presumed US advantages could encourage (1) a false sense of national influence; and (2) a venturesome pattern of strategic risk-taking.
Prima facie, there could never be any “minor” nuclear crises. A nuclear confrontation with North Korea – any nuclear confrontation – could quickly spin out of control, leaving even the supposedly more powerful state with grievous survival impairments.[3] What then?
For the United States, the primary policy obligations are plain. Going forward, proper reactions to North Korean nuclear expansion ought to be based exclusively on Cartesian reason, not “common sense.” During the first Trump presidency, US reactions became ad hominem and incoherent (“We fell in love,” said Donald Trump about Kim Jong Un). To restore coherence during Trump II, a condition which will be indispensable to US national security, all pertinent strategic doctrine and strategy[4] should be based on a more recognizable American appreciation of nuclear decision-making complexities.
This appreciation must include multiple “synergies.” In all synergistic intersections, by definition, the “whole” of any particular outcome must be greater than the sum of its “parts.” Among military planners, the term “force multiplier” is often used to communicate the same operational principles.
There is more. For American planners, both specificity and generality[5] will be required. Comprehensive theories will be necessary.[6] Always, the prevailing world order,[7] like the myriad individual human bodies who comprise it, will need to be recognized as a system. No effects could ever be entirely discrete or singular.
Among the clarifying implications of this central metaphor, any more-or-less major conventional conflict in northeast Asia could heighten prospects of international conflicts elsewhere. This is the case whether such prospects would be immediate or incremental. And these prospects could include a regional nuclear war. Existential risks of a worst case scenario would be enlarged by American searches for no-longer plausible outcomes. An important example of such a mistaken search would be one directed toward “victory.”
There is good reason for identifying this example. Any cautionary observation about “victory” is persuasive ipso facto because all core meanings of victory and defeat have been changed.[8] Among other things, these are no longer the classical meanings offered by Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz’ On War (1832).
In most prospectively identifiable wars between states, there are no longer confirmable criteria of demarcation between victory and defeat. Even a “victory” on some actual field of battle might not in any calculable way reduce serious security threats to the American homeland or to US allies. Such grave threats, whether foreseen or unforeseen, could include assorted sub-state aggressions (terrorism).
Once acknowledged as a distinct foreign-policy objective, any declared US search for “victory” over North Korea could create lethal escalatory dynamics, ones from which Washington could no longer expect derivative military advantages. Such injurious creations could take place in unanticipated increments or as an unexpected enemy aggression (a “bolt from the blue.”[9]). In the foreseeably worst case, an unwitting US forfeiture of “escalation dominance” would trigger irreversible American losses. These losses could include chaotic circumstances that create tens or even hundreds of thousands of prompt fatalities and much larger numbers of latent cancer deaths.
For US policy planners, a great deal of subject-matter specificity should soon be taken into close account. In a promisingly coherent post-Trump policy world, history and science could regain proper pride of place.[10] But such a world, of course, is now incontrovertibly distant. In any event, it is not too late for Donald J. Trump to acknowledge something long disregarded: Because nation-states no longer formally declare wars or enter binding war-termination agreements, any applications of traditional criteria of “war winning” would no longer make legal sense.[11]
Even more important, the empty political rhetoric of “victory” requires no confirmatory assessments. In essence, no one can ever really know whether a particular war has been won or lost. Moreover, if this ambiguity did not obtain , the “winning” side could still remain substantially vulnerable to enemy aggressions, whether state, sub-state or “hybrid.”
There is more. In the complicated matters at hand, ascertainable benefits might not lie in any traditional forms of military expertise. A two-part question arises:
Exactly how much applicable experience could American generals have garnered in starting, managing or ending a nuclear war?
To what extent might the president and his senior commanders see only what they would want to see, including perhaps a seemingly gainful prospect of US military preemption?[12]
In these “opaque” nuclear times, selective perceptions could sometimes be mistaken. In principle, even after sober consideration of retaliatory consequences, an American president might still anticipate tangible benefit in launching target-specific preemptive strikes against an already nuclear North Korea. This prospect would present in exceptionally residual circumstances.[13] There could exist certain definable crises where refraining from striking first would appear more costly than gainful (irrational). These are crises that would allow North Korea to implement certain severely-complicating protective measures.[14]
What’s the “bottom line” on launching US defensive first strikes against an already-nuclear North Korea? It is that even such a calculated American preemption could sometime be rational, but only in conspicuously last resort strategic circumstances.
How can America tap pertinent military expertise on such bewildering existential judgments? All things considered, it is reasonable to expect that the generals could have no adequate expectation of pertinent dialectics;[15] that is, about Pyongyang’s selected response. Still, by no means does this candid expectation necessarily represent ad hominem criticism of professional military planners. Rather, it expresses dispassionate analytic reflection on the historical uniqueness of any nuclear conflict.
As methods of science and logic, the issues are not complicated. There have been no nuclear wars. Hence, there are no experts on nuclear warfare.
This incontestable conclusion is urgently compelling in regard to the myriad complexities of any two-power nuclear competition: (1) one where there would exist substantial asymmetries in relative military power position; and (2) one where the “weaker” (North Korean) side could maintain verifiable potential to inflict unacceptably damaging first-strikes or reprisals on the “stronger” American side.
No truly reliable probability estimations can ever be undertaken in reference to unprecedented or sui generis situations. In science and mathematics, authentic probability judgments must always be based on a carefully calculated frequency of relevant past events. At the same time, in prospective conflict dyads between the United States and North Korea, Americans thinkers and planners should still prepare diligently for “best estimations.”
There are other problems in seeking ultimate “victory” over North Korea. Recalling the “good old days,” which now extend into the twenty-first century, states have generally had to defeat enemy armies before being able to wreak wished-for destruction upon an adversary’s cities and infrastructures. In those earlier times of traditional doctrinal arrangements, an individual country’s demonstrated capacity to “win” was necessarily prior to any sought-after capacity to “destroy.”
An appropriate and well-known example to US military thinkers would be the case of Persia and Greece at the 480 BCE Battle of Thermopylae. Today, unlike what was purportedly the case at Thermopylae, a state needn’t be able to defeat enemy armies in order to inflict calculably gainful harms. Even if the US were to meaningfully “win” against North Korea, that “defeated” adversary could still inflict vast harms upon American citizens, institutions and infrastructures.
For President Trump and his counselors, there does remain some “good news.” The United States needn’t be able to win a particular conflict in order to credibly deter a significant foe such as North Korea or to inflict dissuading retaliatory harms upon this enemy. What this “good news” signifies is that a state’s capacity to deter is no longer necessarily identical to its capacity to win. For the United States, the principal war-planning or war-deterring lesson of any such ongoing transformations now warrants accelerated study.
For the United States, the only prospective “victory” of immediate consequence is an intellectual victory. Conceptually, what matters most will be an American capacity to win bewilderingly complex struggles of “mind over mind.” Going forward, American planner must diligently work through variously dialectic forms of struggle with Pyongyang, not just enter into ad hoc or visceral contests of “mind over matter.”
There are also various points oflaw to be considered.[16] This is because jurisprudencehas its own proper place in such challenging strategic calculations. More specifically, in terms of applicable law, winning and losing may no longer mean much for successful strategic planning. This tangible devaluation of victory and defeat should also become more obvious with regard to America’s overlapping wars on terror. After Afghanistan, Syria and Gaza, pressing conflict issues will need to be examined within continuously transforming US military plans worldwide.
“Victory” now becomes even more meaningless as a criterion of conflict. The U.S. can never actually “win” any wars with jihadi terror organizations. In part, this is the case because national leaders could never know for certain whether a presumptively zero-sum conflict with virulent sub-state or “hybrid” adversaries was ascertainably “over.” On related definitional matters, a “hybrid” enemy would reference any adversary that combined state and sub-state elements in variously changing ratios of composition.
Operationally, winning and losing are now fully extraneous to America’s national security interests. In those foreseeable cases where “victory” could still be expressed as a high-priority national objective, these standards could be tangibly harmful. Ironically, a narrowly-static American orientation to “winning” against North Korea could sometime lead the United States toward huge and irreversible losses. In part, at least, such loses would ensue from certain critical American misjudgments on “escalation dominance.”
There is more. United States military planners could look usefully to ancient China. Famed Chinese strategist Sun-Tzu reasoned simply: “Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.” To meet current US national security objectives vis-à-vis North Korea and other potential nuclear adversaries, this classical military wisdom suggests that Washington always seek deterrence rather than victory. Among other things, such necessary discontinuance should remain connected to the stringent requirements of optimal control over plausible military escalations.
If, in the future, these requirements were somehow minimized or disregarded, a resultant regional conflict could have “spillover” implications for other states and for other parts of the world. Different elements of chaos notwithstanding, world politics and world military processes are always expressive of an underlying system. This elucidating characterization should lie continuously at the intellectual core of any coherent US strategic nuclear doctrine.
Before these systemic connections can be understood and assessed, US planners will need to realize that the complicated logic of strategic nuclear calculations demands a capably nuanced genre of decision-making. This would be a genre that calls for considerable analytic refinements in extremis atomicum. As an example, casually expecting an American president to convincingly leverage Chinese and/or Russian sanctions on behalf of the United States would miss at least two vital points: (1) the regime in Pyongyang will never back down on its overall plan for nuclearization; and (2) counting upon effective sanctions from Beijing and/or Moscow would become problematic for the United States. In part, this is because both China and Russia could remain substantially more worried about their traditional national enemy in Washington than any future (and materially less destructive) dangers from Pyongyang.
In world politics, as in law,[17] truth is exculpatory. Like it or not, a nuclear North Korea is a fait accompli. Soon, President Trump should more openly focus on creating stable nuclear deterrence with North Korea for the obvious benefit of the United States and of its directly vulnerable allies in South Korea and Japan. Though incorrectly ignored for geographic reasons, Washington should also be more concerned about prospects for direct North Korean military action against Israel on behalf of Iran. Generally unknown is that direct military combat between North Korean and Israeli air forces took place during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
“The existence of `system’ in the world is at once obvious to every observer of nature,” observed the 20th century French Jesuit scholar, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “no matter whom….” Nowhere is this core interrelatedness more obvious or more potentially consequential than in the continuing matter of a nuclear North Korea and US foreign policy decision-making. This urgent threat will not subside or disappear on its own. Immediately, it will be America’s sober responsibility to better understand all relevant American security obligations and their ensuing or derivative complications.
Should nuclear weapons ever be introduced into any future conflict between the United States and North Korea, actual nuclear war-fighting at various levels could occur. This would be the case as long as: (a) US conventional first-strikes against North Korea would not destroy Pyongyang’s second-strike nuclear capability; (b) US conventional retaliations for a North Korean conventional first-strike would not destroy Pyongyang’s nuclear counter-retaliatory capability; (c) US preemptive nuclear strikes would not destroy Pyongyang’s second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) US conventional retaliations for North Korean conventional first strikes would not destroy Pyongyang’s nuclear counter-retaliatory capability.
Any US nuclear preemption would be implausible and potentially catastrophic. Reciprocally, and assuming rationality, any North Korean nuclear preemption against the United States or its allies would be implausible or even inconceivable.
What happens next? Can we reasonably and continuously assume North Korean rationality? Kim Jong Un has steadily accelerated his testing of advanced nuclear missiles and supporting infrastructures. There is no persuasive basis to doubt that his commitment to nuclear weapons is in any manner reversible.
Back in early January 2021, after describing the United States as “our biggest enemy,” Kim Jong Un called openly for more advanced nuclear weapons and infrastructures. Then, during fully nine hours of blistering remarks at a January party conference in Pyongyang, Kim summarized his country’s basic strategic posture: “Our foreign political activities should be focused and redirected on subduing the United States, our biggest enemy…No matter who is in power in the US, the true nature of the US and its fundamental policies towards North Korea never change.”
Capable strategic analysts guiding US President Donald Trump should enhance their nuclear investigations by carefully identifying the basic distinctions between (a) intentional or deliberate nuclear war and (b) unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war. The risks resulting from these at least four different types of possible nuclear conflict are apt to vary considerably. Those American analysts who might remain too completely focused upon a deliberate nuclear war scenario could too-casually underestimate a more serious nuclear threat to the United States.
This would mean the increasingly credible threat of an unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war.
An additional conceptual distinction must be inserted into any US analytic scenario “mix.” This is the subtle but still important difference between an inadvertent nuclear war and an accidental nuclear war.
To this point, any accidental nuclear war would have to be inadvertent; conversely, however, there could be identifiable forms of inadvertent nuclear war that would not be accidental. Most critical, in this connection, are certain significant errors in calculation committed by one or both sides – that is, more-or-less reciprocal mistakes that lead directly and/of inexorably to nuclear conflict. The most blatant example of such a mistake would concern assorted misjudgments of enemy intent or capacity that emerge during the course of some ongoing crisis escalation.
Regarding chaos, whether described in the Old Testament, or in other evident sources of Western philosophy, chaos can be as much a source of large-scale human improvement as a source of decline.[18] Interestingly, it is this prospectively positive side of chaos that is intended by Friedrich Nietzsche’s curious remark in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883): “I tell you, ye have still chaos in you.”
When expressed in neutral tones, chaos is that condition which prepares the world for all things, whether sacred or profane. It represents that yawning gulf of “emptiness” where nothing is as yet, but where still-remaining civilizational opportunity can still originate. The 18th century German poet Friedrich Hölderlin observes: “There is a desert sacred and chaotic, which stands at the roots of the things, and which prepares all things.”
Insightfully, in the ancient pagan world, Greek philosophers thought of this particular “desert” as logos, a primal concept which indicates that chaos is anything but starkly random or without merit.
The only rational use for American nuclear weapons during any forthcoming US-North Korea negotiation should be strategic dissuasion. Barring any sudden crisis initiated by North Korean nuclear strike – a crisis placing the American president in extremis atomicum – there could be no justifiable use for such weapons in combat. If ever there would arise a rational and legal justification for nuclear war-waging – one in which the expected benefits of nuclear weapons use would exceed expected costs – the entire planet would be imperiled ipso facto.
For the United States, because the North Korean nuclear problem should always be regarded as an intellectual problem, Donald Trump’s short-sighted “disestablishment” of the Pentagon’s long-operating think-tank (Office of Net Assessment) should be reversed. Recalling seventeenth-century philosopher and mathematician René Descartes’ examinations of scientific method, US decisions on North Korean nuclear dangers ought always to be based on “reason,” not politics or intuition. This is the case even where adversarial calculations could seemingly be made according to spasmodic eruptions of doctrinal anti-reason. Moreover, the US imperative to implement only reason-based military calculations applies to presumptively rational and non-rational enemies.
[1] This official “think tank” was first set up in 1973 by President Richard M. Nixon “to assess US military capabilities and readiness and clarify potential threat scenarios.”
[2] “What is the good of passing from one untenable position to another,” asks Samuel Beckett philosophically in Endgame, “of seeking justification always on the same plane?” Thought the celebrated Irish playwright was certainly not thinking specifically about world politics or national security, his generalized query remains well-suited to this strategic inquiry. As competitive power-politics has never worked, why keep insisting upon it as a presumptively viable doctrine?
[3] For informed assessments of plausible consequences of nuclear war fighting, see, by this author: Louis René Beres, SURVIVING AMID CHAOS: ISRAEL’S NUCLEAR STRATEGY (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016/2018); Louis René Beres, APOCALYPSE: NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE IN WORLD POLITICS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis René Beres, MIMICKING SISYPHUS: AMERICA’S COUNTERVAILING NUCLEAR STRATEGY (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1983); Louis René Beres, REASON AND REALPOLITIK: U S FOREIGN POLICY AND WORLD ORDER (Lexington MA; Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis René Beres, ed., SECURITY OR ARMAGEDDON: ISRAEL’S NUCLEAR STRATEGY (Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1986).
[4] “Military doctrine” is not the same as “military strategy.” Doctrine “sets the stage” for strategy. It identifies various central beliefs that must subsequently animate any actual “order of battle.” Among other things, military doctrine describes underlying general principles on how a particular war ought to be waged. The reciprocal task for military strategy is to adapt as required in order to best support previously-fashioned military doctrine. doctrine is the required framework from which proper strategic goals should be suitably extrapolated. Generically, in “standard” or orthodox military thinking, such doctrine describes the tactical manner in which national forces ought to fight in various combat situations, the prescribed “order of battle,” and variously assorted corollary operations. The literal definition of “doctrine” derives from Middle English, from the Latin doctrina, meaning teaching, learning, and instruction. Always, a central importance of codified military doctrine lies not only in the way it can animate, unify and optimize pertinent military forces, but also in the way it can transmit certain desired “messages” to an enemy.
[5] The need for generality notwithstanding, strategic thinkers should always seek not to lose sight of the human consequences of their abstractions. By definition, theory is a simplification, one purposely excluding from consideration those factors deemed unessential to analytic explanation. This indispensable exclusion comes at a cost, however, because it involves the palpable sacrifice of espirit de finesse or the individual human element of any catastrophe. Recalling the poet Goethe’s observation in Urfaust, the original Faust fragment: “All theory, dear friend, is gray, and the golden tree of life is green.” (Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, Und grűn des Lebens goldner Baum.”)
[6] “Theory is a net,” observes German poet Novalis,” and only those who cast, can catch.” This apt metaphor was embraced by philosopher of science Karl Popper as the epigraph to his classic work on philosophy of science: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934).
[7] The term “world order” has its contemporary origins in a scholarly movement begun at the Yale Law School in the mid- and late 1960s, and later “adopted” by the Politics Department at Princeton University in 1967-68. The present author was an early member of the Princeton-based World Order Models Project, and wrote several of the early books and articles in this once still-emergent academic genre.
[8]See by this writer, at The Hill: Louis René Beres: https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-military/347395-opinion-victory-in-afghanistan-has-no-serious-meaning
[9] See especially: RESOLUTION ON THE DEFINITION OF AGGRESSION, Dec. 14, 1974, U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 U.N. GAOR, Supp. (No. 31) 142, U.N. Doc. A/9631, 1975, reprinted in 13 I.L.M. 710, 1974; and CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, Art. 51… Done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945, 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. No. 993, Bevans 1153, 1976, Y.B.U.N. 1043.
[10] “Intellect rots the brain” shrieked Joseph Goebbels at a Nuremberg Germany rally in 1935. “I love the poorly educated” echoed American presidential candidate Donald Trump at a 2016 rally in the United States. Perhaps to authenticate his anti-intellectualism, Trump went on to propose household bleach as a Covid 19 treatment, urge the use of nuclear weapons against hurricanes and praise American revolutionary armies in the 18th century for “gaining control of all national airports.”
[11] Under authoritative international law, which is generally a part of US law, the question of whether or not a “state of war” exists between states is ordinarily ambiguous. Traditionally, it was held that a formal declaration of war was necessary before any true state of war could be said to exist. Hugo Grotius divided wars into declared wars, which were legal, and undeclared wars, which were not. (See Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, Bk. III, Chs. III, IV, and XI.) By the start of the twentieth century, the position that war can obtain only after a conclusive declaration of war by one of the parties was codified by Hague Convention III. This treaty stipulated, inter alia, that hostilities must never commence without a “previous and explicit warning” in the form of a declaration of war or an ultimatum. (See Hague Convention III Relative to the Opening of Hostilities, 1907, 3 NRGT, 3 series, 437, article 1.) Currently, formal declarations of war could be tantamount to admissions of international criminality because of the express criminalization of aggression by authoritative international law. It could, therefore, represent a clear jurisprudential absurdity to tie any true state of war to prior declarations of belligerency. It follows, further, that a state of war may exist without any formal declarations, but only if there should exist an actual armed conflict between two or more states, and/or at least one of these affected states considers itself “at war.”
[12] As a legally permissible form of such a preemption, “anticipatory self-defense” is rooted in customary international law (see note immediately below), Customary international law is identified as an authoritative source of world legal norms at Art. 38 of the UN’s Statute of the International Court of Justice. International law, an integral part of the legal system of all states in world politics, assumes a general obligation of states to supply benefits to one another and to avoid war wherever possible. This core assumption of jurisprudential solidarity is known formally as a “peremptory” or jus cogens expectation, that is, one that is not subject to any reasonable question. It can be found, inter alia, in Justinian, Corpus Juris Civilis, Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace (1625) and Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations or Principles of Natural Law (1758).
[13] In law, any such defensive first-strikes, if permissible, could be considered “anticipatory self-defense.” The normative origins of such defense liein customary international law, more precisely, in The Caroline, a case that concerned the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada against British rule. Following this case, the serious threat of armed attack has generally justified certain militarily defensive actions. In an exchange of diplomatic notes between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, then U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster outlined a framework for self-defense that did not require an antecedent attack. Here, the jurisprudential framework permitted a military response to a threat so long as the danger posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” See: Beth M. Polebaum, “National Self-defense in International Law: An Emerging Standard for a Nuclear Age,” 59 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 187, 190-91 (1984) (noting that the Caroline case had transformed the right of self-defense from an excuse for armed intervention into a legal doctrine). Still earlier, see: Hugo Grotius, Of the Causes of War, and First of Self-Defense, and Defense of Our Property, reprinted in 2 Classics of International Law, 168-75 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1925) (1625); and Emmerich de Vattel, The Right of Self-Protection and the Effects of the Sovereignty and Independence of Nations, reprinted in 3 Classics of International Law, 130 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1916) (1758). Also, Samuel Pufendorf, The Two Books on the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law, 32 (Frank Gardner Moore., tr., 1927 (1682).
[14]Designed to guard against any US preemption, these measures could involve the attachment of “hair trigger” launch mechanisms to nuclear weapon systems and/or the adoption of “launch on warning” policies, possibly coupled with pre-delegations of launch authority. This means, incrementally, that the US could find itself endangered by certain steps taken by Pyongyang to prevent a belligerent preemption. Optimally, the United States would do everything possible to prevent such steps, especially because of expanded risks of accidental or unauthorized attacks launched against its own or allied armaments/ populations. But if such steps were to become a fait accompli, Washington could still calculate correctly that a preemptive strike would be legal and cost-effective. This is because the expected enemy retaliation, however damaging, could still appear more tolerable than the expected consequences of enemy first-strikes – strikes likely occasioned by the antecedent failure of “anti-preemption” protocols.
[15] “Dialectic” is Plato’s term for what science and philosophy “do.” It is rooted in the Greek word for conversation, and stipulates that only through conversation can one genuinely discover “what each thing is” (Republic 533b).
[16] Under international law, every use of forcemust be judged twice: once with regard to the underlying right to wage war (jus ad bellum) and once to the means used in conducting a war (jus in bello). Following the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 and the United Nations Charter, there can be absolutely no right to aggressive war. However, the long-standing customary right of post-attack self-defense remains codified at Article 51 of the UN Charter. Similarly, subject to conformance, inter alia, with jus in bello criteria, certain instances of humanitarian intervention and collective security operations may also be consistent with jus ad bellum. The law of war, the rules of jus in bello, comprise: (1) laws on weapons; (2) laws on warfare; and (3) humanitarian rules. Codified primarily at The Hague and Geneva Conventions, these rules attempt to bring “distinction,” “proportionality” and “military necessity” into belligerent calculations.
[17] International law is always part of the law of the United States. For early decisions on the US “incorporation” of authoritative international law by Chief Justice John Marshall, see: The Antelope, 23 U.S. (10 Wheat.) 66, 120 (1825); The Nereide, 13 U.S. (9 Cranch) 388, 423 (1815); Rose v. Himely, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 241, 277 (1808) and Murray v. The Schooner Charming Betsy, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 64, 118 (1804).
[18] “Is it an end that draws near,” inquires Karl Jaspers in Man in the Modern Age (1951) “or a beginning.”
