Conventional wisdom tells us that because North Korea’s elites are rational actors, they will conclude that the benefits of employing nuclear weapons will be outweighed by the costs. Regime extinction is identified as the most compelling cost, and Kim Jong-un’s instinct for self-preservation is said to override all other considerations.

But the prospects of North Korea using nuclear weapons during crises, or in the initial stages of a conventional (that is, non-nuclear) conflict, are greater than generally acknowledged. This is not based on any assumption about the rationality or otherwise of the Kim Jong-un regime; rather, that nuclear first use may itself be seen as a rational option if a US first-strike is regarded as inevitable.

History shows that states in the process of building up their nuclear forces see themselves as vulnerable to preventive or pre-emptive first strikes because of the incipient nature of their command and control systems, coupled with the small size of their nuclear inventories. Yet instead of inducing caution, this vulnerability can encourage risk taking. Notably, the Soviet Union’s propensity to take risks during crises was strongest in the 1950s and 1960s when it was most susceptible to a disarming US first strike.

The notion of ‘crisis stability’ broadly refers to the range of incentives protagonists have not to pre-empt in a crisis by striking the other side first. Crisis instability occurs when one side has an incentive to strike first. This can also pertain to intra-war conditions where one side has an incentive to escalate from conventional forces to nuclear use.

The risks of crisis instability at both levels – pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons before a shot is fired or pre-emptive first-use of nuclear weapons as a conventional conflict unfolds – are real, and relate directly to the vulnerabilities North Korean authorities confront in commanding and controlling nuclear forces during periods of high tension and/or conventional conflict. These vulnerabilities will only increase as the size of the DPRK’s arsenal expands.

Please click here to read the full “North Korea’s dangerously rudimentary nuclear command-and-control systems” article in The Interpreter by Griffith Asia Institute member, Professor Andrew O’Neil.