place. Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il sought to develop nuclear weapons; Kim Jong Un claims he completed the program. Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il aspired to international standing; Kim Jong Un scored three meetings with a sitting U.S. president as of this writing. Kim Jong Il downplayed the prospects for economic development and exhorted people to tighten their belts; Kim Jong Un created a socialist fairyland and told his people that they can have both nuclear weapons and prosperity. Kim Jong Il worked his way through the North Korean bureaucracy; Kim Jong Un landed at the top. Kim Jong Il shied away from the spotlight and was relatively more cautious, but like his grandfather, Kim Jong Un embraced publicity and actively marketed his image as a charismatic man of the people. And luckily for Kim Jong Un, his father was able to “maintain…control of the regime as the economy recovered from the famine, demonstrated a functioning nuclear device for national security, and bequeathed an intact polity for his son,” as U.S. State Department analyst Patrick McEachern noted.
All of this indicates that Kim is highly unlikely to abandon his nuclear weapons program: precisely the intelligence community’s long-held assessment. In fact, its conclusion is probably more valid now than ever before. Kim Jong Il was more willing to negotiate over his nuclear weapons in exchange for economic aid, probably to buy time as he covertly advanced his capabilities, but this approach might also have been an acknowledgment of the relative weakness of the regime’s leverage due to its moribund economy and the fledgling nature of the strategic programs. However, to date, it is unclear if Kim Jong Un would even consider putting any part of the program on the negotiating table, given the regime’s consistent refusal to “bargain” away its weapons, Kim’s personal identification with them, their linkage to economic prosperity and national security, and the fact that they afford him a place on the international stage.
At the same time, Kim is not an irrational young dictator who is determined to start a war with the United States. Senator Lindsey Graham declared, “We’re not going to let this crazy man in North Korea have the capability to hit the homeland.” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Kim Jong Un was “begging for war” and called for the “strongest possible measures.” Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that “any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam, or our allies will be met with a massive military response.” Such language was probably an effort to warn Pyongyang about the consequences of its actions and to assure allies and reflect the tensions of that moment, but it also expresses a strain of thinking that Kim is irrational and reckless, a notion that has stubbornly clung to discussions about him since he took the reins in 2011. However, this belief conflates capabilities with intentions, and assumes a strategic intent—that Kim seeks a nuclear war with the United States—that almost certainly does not exist.
Over the years the intelligence community has reiterated that Kim is rational and that his primary purpose for nuclear weapons is deterrence and international status toward securing regime survival. Kim is most likely to use his nuclear weapons against the United States or a U.S. ally only if he assesses that an attack on the North is imminent. Kim’s personal stamp on the program, the regime’s public celebration of various technical milestones through parades, the promotion of scientists and technicians, and the photographs and media statements all suggest that nuclear weapons are a source of great domestic pride and a vital part of Kim’s brand. Moreover, the regime has consistently asserted, as it did in 2013 legislation “consolidating possession of nuclear weapons,” that its nuclear arsenal is for deterrence and that the reason for the North’s position is the United States. Kim stated at the time:
When one is firmly equipped with the capability to make precision strikes with nuclear weapons against aggressors and strongholds of aggression, no matter where they are on the face of the earth, no aggressor can dare to attack recklessly, and the greater and more powerful the nuclear strike capability, the greater the power of deterring aggression will be. Especially in the case of our country, whose opponent is the United States…it is necessary to firmly bolster the nuclear armed forces both quantitatively and qualitatively.