Page 28 - Trilateral Korea Japan U.S. Cooperation

Introduction

Someone argued that had Ukraine possessed nuclear weapons,
the conflict might never have broken out. On the other hand,
if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, it might have escalated the
1
conflict even more. Having nuclear weapons does not solely
determine the nature of war; rather, the complex geopolitical
factors that Ukraine faces have a greater impact. A similar
situation is playing out on the Korean Peninsula, where North
Korea’s reliance on its nuclear capabilities allows it to be more
assertive. North Korea believes that its nuclear arsenal will
eventually draw China into any Korean Peninsula contingency
2
and allow it to accomplish its goals with China’s backing.

There is an additional question that is raised here. Are we
making an accurate assessment of North Korea? Is China’s
deliberate or inadvertent protection of North Korea rational?
The same questions apply to Ukraine: Was Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of that country rational? Up until
January 2022, many analysts projected that Russia would
not invade Ukraine. We trusted in the rationality of our
adversaries, but we have always been proven wrong. Some

1 On this debate, Mariana Budjeryn, “Should Ukraine Have Kept Nuclear Weapons?: Deconstructing the
Decision to Disarm,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Seminar (February 15, 2024); Mariana
Budjeryn, Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine (Washinton
DC: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022).
2 Gian Gentile, Yvonne K. Crane, Dan Madden, Timothy M. Bonds, Bruce W. Bennett, Michael J. Mazarr, and
Andrew Scobell, Four Problems on the Korean Peninsula: North Korea’s Expanding Nuclear Capabilities
Drive a Complex Set of Problems (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2019), https://www.rand.org/pubs/
tools/TL271.html.

Chapter Two : North Korea’s Nuclear Threat and China’s Backing for North Korea 27