Abstract
This chapter examines the recent nuclear threats made between US President Donald Trump and leader of North Korea Kim Jong Un in 2017 and compares them with traditional strategies of deterrence that emerged in World War II and the Cold War and argues that these threats are a form of nuclear deterrence which involve threats to kill innocent civilians with nuclear weapons. First, I define deterrence and argue that the threats of Trump and Kim fit this definition. Next, I present moral arguments for deterrence and my objections to those arguments. Then, I present arguments against deterrence and answer potential objections to those arguments. Next, I examine the legality of the Trump/Kim form of deterrence. Finally, I define terrorism and point out the similarities between the Trump/Kim form of deterrence and terrorist tactics. I conclude that this kind of deterrence is not morally permissible, potentially illegal, and can be seen as a form of state terrorism.
BA (Hons Philosophy), MA (Philosophy), JD (candidate) Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba.
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Notes
- 1.
Ogilvie-White 2011, 69: ‘For Quinlan and most of his senior counterparts in Europe and the US, nuclear burden- sharing and the pursuit of a common nuclear strategy and doctrine under the auspices of NATO was the most appropriate Western response. As long as NATO members, nuclear and non-nuclear, demonstrated to the Soviet Union that they would not accept defeat, and that they were prepared as a last resort to employ the full spectrum of their shared nuclear capabilities, from tactical to strategic, to protect their vital interests, major war between East and West would be prevented.’ See Quinlan 2009, Chapter 4 ‘Nuclear Deterrence in NATO’.
- 2.
The Associated Press 2017.
- 3.
McCurry J in Tokyo, The Guardian (9 August 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/09/north-korea-us-airbase-guam-trump-fire-fury.
- 4.
Borger J in Washington, McCurry J in Tokyo (9 August 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/10/north-korea-details-guam-strike-trump-load-of-nonsense.
- 5.
Borger J in New York, ‘Donald Trump threatens to “totally destroy” North Korea in UN speech’, The Guardian (19 September 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/19/donald-trump-threatens-totally-destroy-north-korea-un-speech.
- 6.
McCurry J in Tokyo, ‘Ri Yong-ho: the North Korean diplomat who ridicules Donald Trump’, The Guardian (24 September 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/24/ri-yong-ho-north-korean-diplomat-defuse-crisis.
- 7.
Finnis 1987, 46.
- 8.
Demerly (4 Aug 2017) Fat Man and Little Boy dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were 21 and 15 kilotons respectively, see Atomic Heritage Foundation, https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/little-boy-and-fat-man.
- 9.
Hiroshima Report 2018, 155.
- 10.
Haltiwanger, 22 September 2017: ‘Pyongyang has conducted six nuclear tests in total, beginning in 2006. With each test, its nuclear weapons have grown in power. The 2006 test involved a plutonium-fueled atomic bomb with a yield equivalent to 2 kilotons of TNT. The explosion from the most recent test, carried out September 3, measured 140 kilotons—making it roughly 10 times as strong as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II’. See also: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41174689; and https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/north-korea-testing-nuclear-weapons-170504072226461.html.
- 11.
Wilner 2011, 5: ‘The concept of deterrence is an ancient one; even the Romans understood that “if you want peace, make ready for war”.’
- 12.
Wilner 2011, 5–6.
- 13.
Schelling 1982.
- 14.
Wilner 2011, 6–7.
- 15.
Finnis 1987, 3.
- 16.
Hiroshima Report 2018, 8: As of 2017, the US has an estimated 6,800 Nuclear Weapons while North Korea is believed to have between 10 and 20.
- 17.
Borger J in Washington, McCurry J in Tokyo, The Guardian (9 August 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/10/north-korea-details-guam-strike-trump-load-of-nonsense.
- 18.
McCurry J in Tokyo, The Guardian (14 September 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/north-korea-threat-sink-japan-us-ashes-darkness.
- 19.
Abrams, Time (10 August 2017), http://time.com/4895904/north-korea-guam-why-threatening-donald-trump-missiles/.
- 20.
Cohen et al. 2017.
- 21.
Phipps and Russell, North Korea: ballistic missile launched over Japan—as it happened, The Guardian (15 September 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2017/sep/15/north-korea-launches-missile-over-japan-live-updates.
- 22.
Finnis 1987, 12.
- 23.
Id., 15.
- 24.
Id., 6.
- 25.
Id., 6–7.
- 26.
Report on FY 1975 Defense Budget, 67, cited in Finnis 1987, 18.
- 27.
Ball, Targeting for Strategic Deterrence, 32, cited in Finnis 1987, 19.
- 28.
Finnis 1987, 9.
- 29.
Id., 11.
- 30.
Wacks 2014, 14: ‘The judges in these trials did not appeal explicitly to natural law theory, but their judgments represent an important recognition of the principle that the law is not necessarily the sole determinant of what is right.’
- 31.
Trindade 2010, 56.
- 32.
Trindade 2010, 65: ‘Principles of International Law are guiding principles of general content, and in that they differ from the norms or rules of positive international law, and transcend them. […] Irrespective of the distinct approaches to them, those principles stand ineluctably at a superior level than the norms or rules of positive international law. Such rules and norms are binding, but it is the principles which guide them. Without these latter, rules or techniques could serve whatever purposes. This would be wholly untenable.’
- 33.
Finnis notes that most government leaders expressed that deterrence was the only way to maintain peace, see Weinberger’s Shattuck Lecture in 1982 ‘Deterrence, thus, is and remains our best immediate hope of keeping peace’. Finnis 1987, 66.
- 34.
Finnis 1987, 67–73.
- 35.
Id., 75.
- 36.
Id.
- 37.
Id.
- 38.
Quinlan 2009, xv–xvi. Quinlan was called by one scholar the ‘High Priest of Deterrence and a significant thinker on nuclear strategy and international security’ who remained ‘a potent elucidator of the logic of nuclear weapons as it related to British national interests throughout his tenure as permanent secretary, the highest civil servant rank, at the Ministry of Defence under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’: Jones 2013, at 15.
- 39.
Quinlan 2009, 47.
- 40.
Id., 46.
- 41.
Id., 48.
- 42.
Id., 48.
- 43.
Id., 49.
- 44.
Id., 50.
- 45.
Id., 50.
- 46.
Id., 51.
- 47.
Id., 51.
- 48.
Id., 52.
- 49.
Id., 53.
- 50.
Id., 53.
- 51.
Id., 53.
- 52.
Id., 54. See also Meyer and Sauer 2018, 64–65: ‘Critics have pointed out, however, that these claims are impossible to prove. Other factors, such as the memory of the two world wars with their tens of millions of casualties, European integration and global economic interdependence could be cited as reasons why there has not been a global war since 1945. Moreover, nuclear deterrence has sometimes blatantly failed, as in the case of the Yom Kippur War (1973), the Gulf War (1991)—in which Israel’s nuclear arsenal failed to deter Iraq from launching missile attacks against it—and Pakistan’s Kargil incursion (1999). Nuclear abolitionists emphasise the dangers and high material costs of having nuclear weapons on high alert, ready to be launched on a moment’s notice.’
- 53.
Id., 54.
- 54.
Nye 1986, 20.
- 55.
Finnis 1987, 282, 277.
- 56.
Id., 277.
- 57.
Nielsen 1987, 59.
- 58.
Fisher 2007, 16.
- 59.
Finnis 1987, 79–80.
- 60.
Id., 80.
- 61.
Id., 86: ‘whoever chooses to make the deterrent threat intends, conditionally but really, what is threatened. If what is threatened includes the killing of innocent persons, the threat includes an intention prohibited by common morality’.
- 62.
Id., 77–78.
- 63.
Id., 178.
- 64.
Id., 178.
- 65.
Medina 2015, 68.
- 66.
Criminal Code of Canada, Sections 231(2), 232(1) R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46.
- 67.
Finnis 1987, at 80.
- 68.
Id., at 81.
- 69.
Id., at 86.
- 70.
Id., at 86.
- 71.
Id., at 83.
- 72.
Id., 312.
- 73.
Id., 314.
- 74.
Id., 315.
- 75.
ICJ, Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1996.
- 76.
Id., para 95.
- 77.
Id., para 96.
- 78.
Id., para 95.
- 79.
Id., 105 (2) E.
- 80.
Id., para 48.
- 81.
Grimal 2016, 346.
- 82.
Id., 347.
- 83.
Id., 348.
- 84.
Stürchler 2007, 88.
- 85.
Id., 88.
- 86.
Id., 89.
- 87.
Burroughs 2016, 4: ‘The court’s reference to the policy of deterrence in justifying the finding suggests that the finding is as much or more about threat than it is about use. It appears to reflect the stark realities of threat and counterthreat at least implicitly faced by states when other potentially adverse states possess nuclear weapons. All of this points toward the comprehensive prohibition and elimination of nuclear arms as the only real solution to the dilemmas posed by their existence, a subject addressed by the court in the final section of the opinion.’
- 88.
Id.
- 89.
Id.
- 90.
Black-Branch 2017.
- 91.
This argument is based on the assumption that the threats uttered by Trump and Kim Jong Un are clearly aimed at military and civilian targets and that they contain specific references to destroy the people of each state. To this author’s knowledge there has been no clear distinction made by either leader, between civilian and military targets in their threats.
- 92.
Medina 2015, 24.
- 93.
Id., 32,190: ‘It is evident however, that states have used indiscriminate political violence that could be conceived of as terrorism because they like non-state agents, have targeted innocent civilians and peaceful opponents domestically and internationally’.
- 94.
UN Doc A/RES/60/288 (20 September 2006).
- 95.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11(1) adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly Resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948. Article 11(1) reads: ‘Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence’.
- 96.
GA/L/3276 7 OCTOBER 2005, https://www.un.org/press/en/2005/gal3276.doc.htm.
- 97.
GA/L/3276 (7 October 2005).
- 98.
Id.
- 99.
The Associated Press 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000005346140/north-korea-trump-threat-fire-fury.html.
- 100.
Borger and McCurry, The Guardian (9 August 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/10/north-korea-details-guam-strike-trump-load-of-nonsense.
- 101.
The Guardian (9 August 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/09/north-korea-us-airbase-guam-trump-fire-fur.y.
- 102.
McCurry in Tokyo, The Guardian (24 September 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/24/ri-yong-ho-north-korean-diplomat-defuse-crisis.
- 103.
Holms, The Guardian (9 August 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/09/what-is-the-us-militarys-presence-in-south-east-asia.
- 104.
Medina 2015, 47.
- 105.
- 106.
Schelling 1982, at 66–68.
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Poettcker, J. (2019). Is Deterrence Morally and Legally Permissible and Is It a Form of State Terrorism?. In: Black-Branch, J., Fleck, D. (eds) Nuclear Non-Proliferation in International Law - Volume IV. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-267-5_14
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