The following lecture was recorded during Providence’s 2017 Christianity and National Security Conference.

Matthew Kroenig discusses the relationship between ethics and nuclear weapons. Using ethical principles, he argues that the US nuclear arsenal is one of the most important instruments for moral good on the planet.

[Music]

Well, thank you very much, Mark, for that introduction. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks to all of you for coming out. I’m here today to talk about ethics and nuclear weapons, and it’s appropriate that we’re doing this here at Georgetown University. Georgetown is famous for its School of Foreign Service, ranked by Foreign Policy magazine as the number one foreign policy school in the world. The School of Foreign Service is named after Edmund A. Walsh, and among other things, Edmund A. Walsh wrote in the 1940s about U.S. nuclear weapons and the moral importance of U.S. nuclear weapons. That’s going to be a theme of my talk today. So, I consider myself an expert on nuclear issues; I don’t really consider myself an expert on ethics, so I’m going to stretch a little bit. But I’m going to begin with just two ethical principles that I think we can all agree on.

The first ethical principle is that it’s normatively desirable to prevent large numbers of people from being slaughtered in great power war. And the second ethical principle: it’s normatively desirable for fewer countries to possess the world’s most destructive weapons. And by those two standards, U.S. nuclear weapons may be one of the most important instruments for moral good on the planet. And that’s the case I’m going to make today. First, I’ll talk about why I think U.S. nuclear weapons are a moral force for good. Second, I’ll address a counter-argument: many people argue that nuclear weapons are inherently immoral, that the threats just to use nuclear weapons are inherently immoral, and that, therefore, the solution is to disarm. And I’ll explain why I think that is an incorrect view. And then finally, I’ll wrap up.

Why are nuclear weapons moral instruments? First, why are U.S. nuclear weapons moral instruments? Well, let’s return to these first two moral principles. If we think it’s morally desirable to prevent people from being slaughtered in great power war, then nuclear weapons have contributed to that. We’ve seen what international politics was like before the nuclear revolution. Before 1945, we frequently had great power wars that resulted in large-scale death and destruction. Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II—20 million people died in World War I, by one estimate; 55 million people died in World War II. Since 1945, since World War II, we haven’t had a great power war, zero wars among the great powers, zero deaths from great power war. And there are many explanations as to why this is the case: maybe it’s globalization, maybe humanity has somehow become more enlightened. But I think it’s in part because of nuclear deterrence. The threat of nuclear war raised the cost of nuclear war so high, it’s deterred world leaders from turning to conventional warfare as a tool of foreign policy. It’s not just nuclear weapons in general, though. I think U.S. nuclear weapons are different from other countries’ nuclear weapons. And the main reason that they’re different is that unlike other countries, the United States does not just seek to deter nuclear attack or attack against itself. Rather, the United States extends nuclear deterrence to over 30 treaty allies around the world. The United States extends its nuclear umbrella to the 27 or 28 members of NATO, extends its nuclear umbrella to Japan, South Korea, Australia, arguably to other partners in Asia and the Middle East. So U.S. nuclear weapons have really been essential, I think, to keeping the peace in Europe and keeping the peace in Asia since 1945. I think it’s much more likely that Russia would have attacked other countries in Europe. Much more likely that China would have attacked other countries in Asia had it not been for the fear that this could lead to nuclear escalation with the United States. So U.S. nuclear weapons, the U.S. nuclear umbrella, is really responsible for defending and protecting much of the free world. Thirty of the best-governed, wealthiest countries on earth are protected by America’s nuclear umbrella. So I think American nuclear weapons have really contributed to this great power peace in a way that other countries’ nuclear weapons have not. 

A second moral principle: if we believe that it’s desirable for fewer countries to have the most deadly weapons on earth, again, U.S. nuclear weapons have been an important cause of that because the United States engages in a pretty explicit quid pro quo with its allies and partners. “We’ll extend our nuclear umbrella to you to protect you from attack, but in exchange, you won’t build your own nuclear weapons.” And if it hadn’t been for this extended deterrence policy, for this assurance policy to our allies, I think there are many more countries on earth that would have nuclear weapons today than currently do. So, in the 1960s, President Kennedy predicted, “Within 15 or so years, there will be 25 nuclear powers.” Here we are, 60 years later, and there are only 9 nuclear powers. So he vastly over-predicted how many countries would have nuclear weapons. And the reason so few countries have nuclear weapons today, a primary reason, I think, is because of U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy. The United States has taken a lead role in establishing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but also with its extended deterrent commitments. It’s very likely that if it weren’t for these U.S. nuclear security guarantees, Germany, Japan, South Korea, other countries would have nuclear weapons. The United States has had to work quite hard at this over the years. Taiwan had a nuclear program in the 1970s. South Korea had a program in the 1970s. The United States encouraged them to shut down those programs in part through this promise of protection with our own nuclear umbrella. In fact, one time, when Taiwanese scientists in the 1970s said, “By the time the Americans got through with us, I’m surprised we’re still allowed to teach physics here in Taiwan.” So a strong non-proliferation policy, and it’s still working today. We see it in East Asia today. Actually, a majority of the South Korean population favors South Korea building its own nuclear weapons, but you talk to political leaders in South Korea, and they say, “As long as that U.S. nuclear security guarantee is good, as long as the U.S. commitment is credible, as long as the U.S. nuclear arsenal is credible, we have no intention of building our own nuclear weapons.” So again, the U.S. nuclear umbrella has contributed to great power peace.

Counterarguments: U.S. nuclear arsenal has contributed to nuclear non-proliferation. I think both are morally desirable outcomes. So what’s the strongest counter-argument to these claims? Well, many argue that nuclear weapons are inherently evil. They’re the most powerful weapons on earth and can unleash vast death and destruction. We saw that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and there is a growing humanitarian consequences movement around the world. And the argument is essentially that nuclear weapons are so inherently destructive, the use of nuclear weapons would have such disastrous humanitarian consequences that nuclear weapons should be banned, and that we should get rid of them. Others argue that even the mere threat to use nuclear weapons may be immoral, even if they’re never used. Nuclear deterrence works, we think, again, by raising the cost of war in the mind of adversaries, and so you’re essentially threatening the possibility of massive destruction. And some argue that that’s inherently immoral, to make the threat even if you never have to follow through on it. And this humanitarian consequences movement has been gaining some steam recently. Actually, the United Nations General Assembly voted this summer; over 100 countries voted on a new nuclear weapons ban treaty. So this goes beyond really what’s in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, probably the most successful international treaty in history, signed in the late 1960s. This ban treaty would make it illegal to possess nuclear weapons, so essentially makes the U.S. nuclear arsenal illegal. Attempts to get illegal under international law. Now, it’s worth pointing out that unlike the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, none of the existing nuclear powers signed this nuclear ban treaty, and none of the 30-plus U.S. treaty allies who depend on America’s nuclear arsenal for their own security signed this ban treaty, so it’s not binding on countries that don’t sign, and I think takes us away from more practical approaches.

What does this kind of humanitarian consequences, this ban movement overlook? Well, I think it overlooks a few things. One, the point of U.S. nuclear weapons isn’t to fight a nuclear war. If the United States conducts its nuclear strategy correctly, nuclear deterrence policy correctly, it deters war without using nuclear weapons. And in fact, if it comes to the point that you have to follow through on your threats and use nuclear weapons, then your policy has failed. The entire point is not to use them. Second, this is a little-known point. I think many people learn about nuclear deterrence in their intro to international relations courses in college, this kind of simple model of mutually assured destruction that we threaten to completely destroy Russia, they threaten to completely destroy us, and so therefore neither one of us engages in warfare. But actually, U.S. nuclear strategy and targeting policy is very different from other countries. So other countries have intentionally adopted strategies that do aim in the event of a nuclear strike, in the event of a nuclear exchange, to try to inflict mass casualties. We believe China’s nuclear strategy is aimed primarily at targeting U.S. population centers, killing as many Americans as possible if it comes to the point of using nuclear weapons.

Russia and particularly the Soviet Union during the Cold War had a nuclear strategy that was essentially to launch a full-scale nuclear attack, followed by a massive biological weapons attack against the United States. The intent was to ensure that anyone who survived the nuclear attack would be killed by the biological attack. The United States, on the other hand, attempts to follow the laws of war with its nuclear targeting strategy. This is made very clear in the nuclear employment guidance, most recently from President Obama, stating that the United States does not intentionally target civilians, only legitimate military targets, such as the enemy’s nuclear weapons and military facilities.

Of course, if it comes to nuclear use, there would be serious collateral damage and other effects, but there is a difference in how the United States and its opponents think about these weapons. The United States uses them only against military targets and attempts to minimize collateral damage, while opponents use them to kill as many people as possible. So, what about the argument that these weapons are so devastating that we’d be better off without them? We should get rid of them. This is a recurring theme in U.S. policy, and there’s a tension in this stance.

President Obama called for nuclear zero, a world without nuclear weapons, but he also said that in the meantime, the United States needs to maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent. Donald Trump echoed this sentiment, saying it would be great if no country had nuclear weapons, but as long as they do, the United States will be at the top of the pack. Both presidents expressed a desire for a robust nuclear deterrent while also aiming for elimination. The United States and Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty explicitly commit to pursuing negotiations in good faith toward complete nuclear disarmament and general disarmament.

There is a fair question to ask: would the elimination of nuclear weapons truly be desirable or preferable to a world with nuclear weapons? We don’t know for sure, but pre-1945, there was a lot of warfare and bloodshed. Since 1945, we haven’t seen any great power wars. It’s possible that eliminating nuclear weapons could make the world safe again for conventional aggression. Maybe conventional weapons alone would be enough to deter great power war, but they never have been sufficient in the past.

An even more difficult question is whether nuclear disarmament is feasible. The simple answer is that given current conditions, it’s not feasible. The Obama administration made a good-faith effort to bring about a world without nuclear weapons. The United States, under Obama, tried to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, reducing the size of its nuclear arsenal. In 1967, the United States had 31,255 nuclear weapons. Under the New START treaty signed with Russia, this was reduced to 1,550, about one-thirtieth of the nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War.

The Obama administration announced its intention to go further, willing to reduce to 1,000 nuclear weapons. The idea was that the United States would play a leadership role, and other countries would follow suit. However, this experiment didn’t work. Other countries expanded and modernized their arsenals. Over the past eight years, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea all expanded and modernized their nuclear forces. Several countries, including Russia, North Korea, and Pakistan, now rely more on nuclear weapons in their strategies.

Countries saw an opportunity; if the United States is not going to seriously compete in this space, they would rely more on nuclear weapons as an asymmetric advantage to coerce the U.S. and its allies. Thus, U.S. unilateral disarmament is not a solution, and it gets the cause-and-effect relationship wrong. The problem is not the weapons themselves but the security conditions that cause countries to want nuclear weapons in the first place. President Ronald Reagan understood this, saying, “We don’t fear each other because we’re armed; we’re armed because we fear each other.”

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has reduced its nuclear arsenal, focusing on the hardware, but this hasn’t led to a more peaceful world. Instead, we’ve seen more conflict and risk of great power war, such as Russia invading Ukraine and China becoming more aggressive in the South China Sea. We can still hold out hope for eventual nuclear disarmament, but the key is not the U.S. getting rid of hardware. Rather, it’s addressing the security conditions that cause countries to desire nuclear weapons. Eliminating these security threats and the reasons countries want nuclear weapons won’t be easy, but it is necessary for nuclear disarmament. In the meantime, a robust U.S. nuclear arsenal will continue to be a moral force for good, as it has been for the past 70 years.

I will end my remarks here and look forward to a question-and-answer session. Thank you.

[Applause]

This was the first hand I saw in the tan suit.

The question is from your perspective: in this era of nuclear proliferation, global terrorism, Islamic terrorism, and threats from China, Russia, and North Korea, where do you think the priority should be in the long term for the United States?

No nuclear war with Russia is still the only threat on earth that could mean the end of the United States as a functioning society. I still think that’s the greatest nuclear national security threat on earth: large-scale nuclear war with Russia. Of course, it’s unlikely, but it’s become more likely in the past few years than at any time in the past 25 years. Russia is relying more, not less, on nuclear weapons and its strategy. They have been modernizing and expanding their nuclear arsenal, even building new nuclear weapons that no one had during the Cold War, including a nuclear-armed submarine drone designed to pull into U.S. harbors undetected and detonate.

In addition, Russia’s escalate-to-de-escalate strategy means they believe that if they get into a conflict with the United States or NATO, they can use a small number of nuclear weapons early in the conflict to force us to back down and sue for peace on terms favorable to them. I see a plausible path to nuclear exchange with Russia, especially if Russia does to a NATO ally like Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania what it did to Ukraine. This time, it’s a U.S. ally, and I don’t think the United States could stay out of this fight. We’d have to come to the defense of our allies, and it could be a difficult fight, especially if Russian forces are already dug in. However, given NATO’s aggregate superiority, we would eventually win, but at this point, I think Russia would likely use a small number of nuclear weapons to try.

o deter us into backing down and to try to win the war. So then what do you do if you’re the United States president? Do you back down to avoid any further risk of nuclear war, knowing that it could mean the collapse of NATO, knowing that it could invite further Russian aggression in Europe? Or do you retaliate with nuclear weapons? Unfortunately, I think there is a real path to nuclear war with Russia.

Again, I don’t want to exaggerate it, but the probability is greater than zero. There are other threats, as you pointed out, such as the danger that terrorists could acquire nuclear weapons. I think that risk is much less now than it was in 2001 because the United States and our partners have taken a number of efforts around the world to secure nuclear material. Most people think that if a terrorist acquired nuclear weapons, it’s likely they would use them. So deterrence is probably a less effective strategy for terrorists than it is with states.

The key with nuclear terrorism is locking up the nuclear material, making it difficult for terrorists to acquire nuclear material or nuclear weapons in the first place. There still is a risk, and there are concerns about unsecured weapons in some countries, such as Pakistan and Russia. However, over the past 16 years, we have made great efforts to try to lock up nuclear material. North Korea, of course, is the threat that’s in the news today.

One of the trends we see in nuclear strategy is that conventionally weaker powers often rely on early nuclear escalation as a way to counter conventional superiority. I think North Korea also has this idea that it could use nuclear weapons early in a conflict with the United States and try to force us to back down. For 25 years, we didn’t really worry about these things; we thought they were Cold War relics. Unfortunately, I think we’ve entered a second nuclear age, and these are going to be an important part of U.S. foreign policy going forward.

We have no good options with North Korea, and so I think the art of foreign policy is often choosing the least bad option. War with North Korea is not a good option because we believe that North Korea is only the third U.S. adversary after Russia and China that has the ability to threaten nuclear war against the U.S. homeland. Many people think there are a lot of countries out there with nuclear weapons, such as India, Britain, and France, but in terms of potential adversaries that have the ability to deliver nuclear weapons to U.S. soil, North Korea is now only the third.

That’s a serious threat. They also have the ability to deliver nuclear weapons against our allies in the region and U.S. forces in the region. Even before they acquired nuclear weapons, they had a lot of conventional artillery on the Kaesong Heights that they could have used to attack U.S. forces and allies in Seoul. War is not a good option. Diplomacy hasn’t worked in the past, and the North Koreans, along with Russia and China, have dismissed diplomatic solutions out of hand.

I think our least bad option at this point is to have a strategy with two major elements. The first element is coercive diplomacy, to try to increase the economic, political, and military pressure on North Korea. I don’t think it’ll pay off in the short term, but over time, this could increase the pressure enough that they’d be willing to come to the table and discuss denuclearization. The second element needs to be a serious defensive and deterrent policy for us and our allies.

This includes strengthened missile defenses in the region and homeland missile defenses. There needs to be a defensive component and an offensive component because the United States needs credible military options. Even if we don’t want war, the enemy gets a vote. If North Korea attacks, we have to have credible options for responding. When Trump and other administration officials say there are credible military options, I don’t think they’re talking about launching a first strike.

It’s about being prepared to respond in case North Korea attacks. If North Korea uses a nuclear weapon, I think we can all agree that we would want to physically prevent them from using a second, third, or fourth. Our military options would have to be geared toward that disarming mission. For years, the United States has threatened that the Kim regime wouldn’t be allowed to survive if it used nuclear weapons. Working with our regional allies, particularly the South Koreans, we need to have serious military planning toward those scenarios.

Thank you for your talk and the clarity of it. I wonder if I might present you with an ethical dilemma and see what you think. It seems to me that Christian just war ethics historically have been committed to non-consequentialist reasoning. There are certain things we just won’t do, no matter how conducive they are to success in war. I wonder if you reject that thinking, particularly since nuclear weapons seem to violate the principle of non-combatant immunity.

Should we maintain the principle of non-combatant immunity, and is that a viable option moving forward in the nuclear landscape? If so, I wonder if you can give examples of how that might work. Can we maintain the use of nuclear weapons and the credible threat of nuclear weapons without endangering large-scale civilian populations? Or should we maintain Christian just war thinking and the non-combatant immunity principle? Therefore, were Hiroshima and Nagasaki not permissible according to Christian Just War teaching?

Great, thanks very much. As I mentioned at the beginning of my talk, I’m more of an expert on nuclear weapons than I am about ethics or Just War Theory. I look forward to further discussion on this. The first thing I would say is that the United States does try to abide by the non-combatant immunity principle and the laws of war in its nuclear targeting. This is different from the way the Russians and the Chinese think about it.

The United States doesn’t purposely target civilians or non-combatants. It only targets legitimate military targets, although there would be collateral damage. There is a debate in the United States today about how to modernize our nuclear forces. How many of you have cars? Probably most of you. How many of you have cars that were built in the 1960s or 1970s? Probably none of you.

If you did, would you get in and turn the key and expect it to start every time? Probably not. The U.S. nuclear arsenal was essentially built in the 60s and 70s, and our new stuff was built in the 80s. It’s aging and needs to be modernized. President Obama won bipartisan support for plans to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next thirty years at a price tag of one trillion dollars. Over those thirty years, it sounds like a lot, but it comes to about five percent of the U.S. defense budget. Is five percent of the defense budget too much to spend on protecting the free world? I don’t think so, but reasonable people can disagree.

A

nd some of them are also saying that if the United States is unwilling to do that, maybe South Korea should build its own nuclear weapons. As I pointed out in my remarks, a majority of the South Korean population now favors building their own nuclear weapons. The Japanese are not talking like this right now, but they’ve considered nuclear weapons in the past. It’s possible they could reconsider in the future. I think this also needs to be an important part of American strategy toward North Korea, not just deterring North Korea, but assuring our allies and preventing them from taking steps like building their own nuclear arsenals that might not be in our interest.

I don’t think we need to redeploy nuclear weapons back to South Korea yet. There’s actually a lot we can do in that space that would go toward reassuring them. Obama said that we still have tactical nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe, and so the Obama Nuclear Posture Review said we’ll have forward-deployed nuclear weapons in Europe, and our nuclear weapons will be deployable to Asia. In a crisis or in a war, we’d have the ability to bring nuclear weapons back to Asia. But the Obama administration never really did anything to make that real.

I think the Trump administration could do some things to make it clear that our nuclear weapons are deployable in Asia. We can refurbish nuclear weapons storage areas in the region, exercise dual-capable nuclear-capable fighters, and do other things to show the South Koreans and the Japanese that we’re serious about this extended deterrence mission. That would be my recommendation as a first step. I think the United States, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, has an interest in preventing other countries from building the world’s most dangerous weapons.

Hi, I’m Caitlin, one of the students from the Kings College. Given that the tactical nuclear weapons in Europe are rather old and some would say possibly non-functional, can you give me an idea of what their strategic value in Europe still is? Has that value depreciated, or will it depreciate in the future? During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union both had thousands of nuclear weapons in Europe. Some of this stuff, people probably wouldn’t even believe we had: torpedoes, depth charges, shorter-range artillery, nuclear artillery.

At the end of the Cold War, George H.W. Bush and the Soviet leader at the time signed these presidential nuclear initiatives. They agreed to get rid of all these tactical nuclear weapons. The United States did so; we got rid of everything except 200 gravity bombs in Europe. We have these 200 gravity bombs in bases in Europe that can be delivered by fighter aircraft: F-15s, F-16s, and eventually the F-35. The Russians kept everything, so the Russians still have nuclear torpedoes, nuclear depth charges, nuclear short-range missiles.

They’re cheating on arms control agreements and have built a new intermediate-range nuclear-capable missile. They have surface-to-air nuclear-armed missiles for air defenses. So, when we do missile defense, we basically try to hit a bullet with a bullet. We have a conventional missile interceptor trying to hit the incoming missile. The Russians just put nuclear weapons on top of their interceptors. They send the nuclear weapon up, detonate it, and you don’t have to be as accurate if you’re detonating a nuke at an incoming missile.

They also plan to use it for air defense. If NATO aircraft come in, they’ll use surface-to-air nuclear missiles against aircraft. That’s one of the things that is leading Russia to this escalate-to-de-escalate strategy. They see that they have thousands of these battlefield nuclear weapons that they could use to great effect against NATO conventional forces, and we don’t have much of an ability to respond. We have these 200 gravity bombs which would require us to fly directly over the target and drop the bomb.

In addition, Russia has very sophisticated air defenses, so the idea that we could get a fighter aircraft directly over a target in the face of these Russian air defenses is just unrealistic. This is one of the things the Trump administration is likely considering in this Nuclear Posture Review. If we go toward a more flexible Nuclear Posture, if we go to smaller-yield weapons, are there things we could do in Europe? I’ve written on this. I think what would be best is, instead of these B61 gravity bombs, to have surface-to-air cruise missiles, nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

These could penetrate Russian air defenses. Again, the point isn’t to fight a limited nuclear war in Russia; it’s to show Putin that we have a response. He can’t use a nuclear weapon or two and win a war. It’s just going to lead to more nuclear escalation, again to deter him from going down that road in the first place.

Thank you for the talk and especially the strong case against the disarmament movement and the strategic value of nuclear weapons. I’m curious if you could talk about why you don’t go as far as the late Ken Waltz with the “more maybe better” argument. He made this stability argument but went so far as to say that further proliferation leads to further stability. Can you talk about why you don’t go quite that far? Kenneth Waltz was perhaps the most influential international relations professor of the past 50 years or so, most famous for his theory of international politics published in the late 1970s.

In addition to this, he wrote about nuclear weapons proliferation. He argued that the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries was a good thing because they raised the cost of war and deterred war. He believed that the more countries with nuclear weapons, the better. In fact, if every country had nuclear weapons, we’d have world peace because the cost of war would be too high. The reason I disagree with that is I think there’s a difference between US nuclear weapons and other countries’ nuclear weapons.

I don’t think Russia’s nuclear weapons are making the world safer, as I’ve talked about. I don’t think North Korea’s nuclear weapons are making the world safer. I don’t think Pakistan’s, etc., are either. For nuclear deterrence to work, there has to be a risk of nuclear war. That’s what frightens leaders. There was a logical contradiction in Waltz’s argument. The risk of nuclear war is either zero or not zero, but he was trying to have it both ways. He said we don’t have to worry about the spread of nuclear weapons because they’ll never be used because the cost is too high.

However, they deter war because people will be so afraid of nuclear war that there won’t be wars. He was essentially saying it’s high enough to deter war, but not so high that we have to worry that they’ll be used. It’s just a contradiction. My view is that there is a real risk of nuclear war. We’re seeing that again with Russia and North Korea. Even President Kennedy, who I don’t think any of us thought was crazy, said after the Cuban Missile Crisis that the risk of nuclear war was somewhere between one-third and one-half. Kennedy was willing to run a 50% chance of nuclear war with the Soviet Union over missiles in Cuba.

If that’s the case, what risk of nuclear war is Putin or Kim Jong-un willing to run over conflicts in their regions? I think the answer is greater than zero, which means there is a real risk of nuclear use.

A lot of questions that came to my mind have been asked, but I have two. First, what is the likelihood of nuclear weapons getting into the hands of ISIS? Second, it is my perception that we went after Iran from an economic and sanctions perspective harsher than we did with our North Korean friends. Is that true, and if so, why did we do that? Well, I’ll take the second question first. The decision was made in the Obama administration. They had to decide what they were going to prioritize. They decided to prioritize Iran, and I think it was because North Korea conducted its first test in 2006.

The Obama administration calculated that that horse had already left the barn. It would be hard to put the toothpaste back in the bottle. It was better to focus on Iran, where we still had a chance of stopping them. They made the Iran nuclear issue a priority for many years. We got our first UN Security Council resolution on Iran in 2005, but it wasn’t really until 2012 or 2013 that the sanctions really started to bite. In 2015, we got the deal. Going back to North Korea and trying this pressure track makes sense. Our Asian friends said that if we had focused as much on North Korea as we had on Iran, we might not be in this situation today. They may be right.

Given the dangers of living with a nuclear North Korea, I think it’s worth a shot to replay the Iran dual-track sanctions negotiation strategy from the Iranian case to the North Korean case. I’m not confident it’ll work, but I think it’s worth a shot. The risk of ISIS acquiring nuclear weapons is actually pretty low. It’s difficult to produce weapons-grade fissile material. Iran started its uranium enrichment program in 1987, and it wasn’t until the early 2000s that it was actually enriching uranium. We don’t have to worry about terrorists building their own nuclear weapons. The real danger is if they could steal nuclear weapons or if a country could sell them nuclear weapons.

I think the risk that a country would give or sell terrorists nuclear weapons is very low. It’s never happened historically. The United States has a deterrence policy against this. Starting with National Security Advisor Steve Hadley under President Bush, the United States has consistently announced that we would hold responsible state sponsors of nuclear terror. If Pakistan or Russia or somebody gave nuclear weapons to terrorists and those nuclear weapons were used, we would hold the state sponsor accountable. We try to use our nuclear deterrence policy to deter transfer. There is some danger that a terrorist could steal or seize nuclear weapons in Pakistan or Russia or somewhere else.

But I think that risk is pretty low. My friends who really focus on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons say the good news is nuclear weapons are the safest thing in Pakistan the bad news is that nuclear weapons are the safest thing in Pakistan, so…