| 摘要 | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis insist that the United States will seek to stop North Korea’s nuclear-missile program through economic pressure “backed by military options.”
There is a middle ground, however — and it might be the most effective way to stop North Korea.
The administration has good reasons for military caution. North Korean rockets and artillery can easily reach the more-than-20 million South Koreans who live in the environs of Seoul, which lies just 35 miles from the demilitarized zone. A surgical military strike on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal or ICBM launchers could well trigger hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties and enormous economic destruction. As outgoing White House adviser Steve Bannon said this week, “There’s no military solution here; they got us.”
But even if the first part of that is true, the second doesn’t necessarily follow.
A North Korea that continues its nuclear-weapons programs without restraint will set an example for other rogue states. Worse yet, the Kim regime could also supply weapons to others. Its sale of missile and nuclear technology to Iran has provided a sizable source of revenue for the cash-strapped regime in Pyongyang. If Iran advances to the ranks of nuclear powers, we have to expect other states in its neighborhood will eventually match it.
Mere words cannot deter states from seeking nuclear arms. Postponing a response doesn’t make it easier to act down the road. And if the latest economic sanctions prove to have real bite, we should remember that it has taken a quarter-century to persuade China and others to implement them.
In the meantime, however, the range of weapons we can use will continue to grow.
Most recently, the Stuxnet cyber-attack on the Iranian nuclear program, developed under the Bush administration and continued by President Barack Obama, did not stir serious international condemnation.
Cyber weapons aren’t the only new technology that can strike against proliferators in the coming years. Advances in robotics may allow drones to disable electricity grids or arms factories without physical destruction. Undersea devices could enforce blockades more precisely than minefields. Satellites can disrupt an opponent’s communication networks. New technologies will allow us to impose harm equivalent to economic sanctions, but without waiting for the rest of the world to join us in restricting trade.
Robotics, cyber and space weapons may yet help the United States to contain a nuclear-armed North Korea, but they will prove especially valuable in responding to countries that don’t have tens of millions hostage to its rockets and artillery. (We should assist Israel to counter the rockets in Lebanon, stockpiled by Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces.)
Some critics worry that using new weapons will provoke responses in kind. They suggest the United States might spark a spiral of cyber-provocations and disruptions.
But we are already quite a ways down that road. North Korea and Iran have already unloosed highly destructive cyber-attacks on US companies (Sony Pictures and Sands Casino), while China and Russia have stolen vast amounts of US government data and corporate intellectual property. Russia, of course, went so far as to try to interfere in the 2016 presidential elections. The most obvious means of deterring even more such intrusions is to show our capacity to respond with cyber-retaliation.
Others worry about threats to international law. But surely the rule that attacks must not hit “civilian” targets will lose its moral urgency if new weapons can damage property without injuring human beings. Without that moral force, there is not much to inhibit us since the United States is not even a party to the 1977 treaty that imposes such historically unprecedented protection for mere property.
A reasonable, immediate response to North Korea’s nuclear advances is accelerating the development and deployment of defensive technologies that can intercept ICBMs in flight. But it may be equally important and worthwhile to speed deployment of new offensive capabilities and to adopt new ways of thinking about their use.
President Trump has derided his predecessors for talking without acting. He must at least demonstrate a greater capacity to act.
John Yoo and Jeremy Rabkin are the authors of “Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules of War,” to be published in September. |
