Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong Sup condemned the missile launches as “irresponsible” and immediately announced an extension of the joint air exercise over the Korean peninsula that sparked the North’s fire. The two men then addressed the looming threat of escalation with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “The United States remains fully committed to (South Korea’s) defense,” Austin told reporters at the Pentagon. “Our extensive commitment to deterrence is unwavering. And it includes a full range of our nuclear and conventional and missile defense capabilities.” Another day, another opportunity for a senior Biden administration official to consider the very real possibility of engaging in a nuclear war. Over the past year, global rivals have systematically threatened to break the decades-old taboo against first use of nuclear weapons. Launching a nuclear strike, once unthinkable in modern conflict, is becoming more and more normalized every day in 2022. Meanwhile, global revulsion against the use of the world’s most destructive weapons, born from the ashes of World War II, is emerging to has declined drastically. In its absence, a dangerous and unpredictable era is emerging where threats to exceed the nuclear threshold have become routine from world leaders. Russian President Vladimir Putin has frequently threatened to develop his nation’s nuclear arsenal amid his nine-month military campaign against Ukraine, a non-nuclear state. North Korea’s Kim has launched more missiles this year than any other since he took power in 2011 and has told the world his nuclear forces are fully prepared for “real war”. American officials recognize the danger. Admiral Charles Richard, commander of the US Strategic Command, which oversees the nation’s nuclear forces, warned Thursday that new threats from Russia and North Korea “brightly illuminate what nuclear coercion looks like” and the US must be prepared for it. “This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, that’s just the warm-up,” Richard said during a speech at the Naval Submarine League’s 2022 Annual Symposium and Industry Briefing. “The big one is coming. And it won’t be long before we’re tested in ways we haven’t been tested in a long time.” Read more: Inside the $100 billion drive to modernize America’s aging nuclear missiles Adapting to this new reality, government officials and nuclear experts around the world are trying to find ways to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict. The first question is whether diplomacy can be revived to help. During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union each had tens of thousands of nuclear warheads targeting each other’s major cities and military installations. A stability, however tenuous, was created through the common understanding of mutually assured destruction (MAD), an expectation that a nation’s decision to launch a nuclear strike would result in its own demise through an overwhelming counterattack. The two sides gradually reduced the number of weapons through various treaties designed to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The current agreement, called the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), limits the US and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads — strategic weapons deployed on missile silos, submarines and long-range bombers. “Russia has a long, responsible history as a nuclear-weapon state, one of the key authors of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its successor agreements, including 50 years of successful nuclear agreements with the US,” says Rose Gottemoeller, former deputy secretary-general of the North. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a retired US diplomat. “That Putin chooses to throw all that away to embrace the nuclear pariah regime alongside Kim Jong Un is a tragedy, but I don’t think it’s unprecedented.” There are now nine countries with stockpiles, and while the majority of these nations do not regularly threaten to use nuclear weapons as Russia and North Korea have recently, they do not seek reductions. However, there is no arms control treaty for smaller “non-strategic” warheads. The modern deployment of these “tactical” nuclear warheads, designed to fit short-range missiles for regional targets, is an attempt to exploit the battlefield advantage that nuclear weapons offer without triggering the global MAD calculus. The idea is that a single blast of these lower yield bombs can be devastating enough to damage and deter an opponent, but not powerful enough to start Armageddon. In practical terms, a tactical nuke wouldn’t reduce a city to rubble, but it could vaporize a command center or an advancing phalanx of tanks. However, the consequences of exceeding the nuclear threshold would nevertheless be dire and unpredictable. For starters, a single detonation of a non-strategic nuclear warhead could equal the power of the US atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 and cause thousands of casualties. And any use of a nuclear weapon would cross a strategic line for the first time in 77 years. “The development and modernization of nuclear weapons in response to this new era will not ensure or restore security, but rather will further jeopardize it,” says Shannon Bugos, senior policy analyst at the Arms Control Association, a Washington non-profit organization. Read more: Is the Biden administration’s North Korea policy working? The chances of escalation are increasing day by day. North Korea fired at least 27 missiles and more than 100 artillery rounds into the seas surrounding the peninsula starting Wednesday in response to a joint US-South Korean military exercise. The salvos set off air raid sirens on a South Korean island and also in nearby Japan. One of the launches on Thursday involved an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that sank in the Sea of Japan after the second stage failed to separate properly. Analysts suspect it was a Hwasong-17, which is North Korea’s most advanced ICBM capable of reaching the United States. The launches came amid indications that the North may soon conduct its seventh nuclear test at the underground Punggye-ri facility, where surveillance satellites have detected preparatory activities. The escalation in recent days has served as the latest indication that coercive tactics by the US and its allies are failing to force North Korea to curtail its missile and nuclear programs, raising questions about the possibility of a new approach to the isolated nation . The U.S. and South Korean defense chiefs offered no policy change toward North Korea, but Lee rejected the prospect of hosting low-yield U.S. nuclear weapons in his country again. “Right now we are not thinking of deploying tactical nukes on the Korean peninsula,” Lee told reporters at the Pentagon. A poll published by the Chicago Council on World Affairs in February found that 71% of South Koreans favored developing their own nuclear weapon, while 56% wanted to re-home US weapons, which have been based on the peninsula for decades removed in 1991. Austin, for his part, said he believes the Biden administration’s approach to North Korea is working. “I think they are being deterred from attacking South Korea,” he said. “And I also believe that they are deterred from using a nuclear mechanism, either against the peninsula or against our homeland here in the U.S.” But he also issued a stark threat in a joint statement with his counterpart, saying that any nuclear attack against the U.S. or of its allies, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, is unacceptable “and will lead to the end of the Kim regime.” On this road may lie the greatest danger of all. “These developments call attention to an underlying truth that is not new: nuclear weapons are unacceptably dangerous, and for most countries that possess them, only one person has the authority to launch them with few checks and balances,” says Lynn Rusten , vice president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and former senior White House and State Department arms control and nonproliferation official. “The idea that reliance on nuclear weapons for national and global security is sustainable in the long term is a delusion. A blunder will happen sooner or later.” More must-read stories from TIME Write to WJ Hennigan at [email protected]
