Doomsday Machine scenario in North Korea?

Daniel Ellsberg in his 2017 book, the Doomsday Machine, lists 24 situations, other than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in which the US implicitly or directly threatened to use nuclear weapons. Some of these instances are quite specific and others less so. I had encountered a few of these situations before in history books. There were the US nuclear threats made against China, and/or North Korea. There were various Berlin crises during the cold war, and of course, the Cuban missile crisis, which Ellsberg describes in great detail earlier in the book.

One thing I learned from Ellsberg's book, was the central importance and futility of nuclear policies revolving around the so called "decapitation attack," designed to take place in various contexts, usually considered in a cold war context by Ellsberg, against the Soviet Union as part of the strategy of nuclear war. Ellsberg generally speaking regards the decapitation strategy as the wellspring of the "doomsday machine" referred to elsewhere as the "dead hand" mechanism to make sure the nuclear counterstrike takes places place regardless of what happens to the targeted national leadership structure. The "doomsday" response mechanism involves several dangerous, and totally suicidal potential outcomes.

Ellsberg was critical of US and Soviet efforts to keep secret their "doomsday" response mechanisms to potential loss of national command centers in a nuclear war. His logic is that if the opposing side is unaware of a doomsday mechanism that survives a first strike, there is a loss of deterrence value. Why keep it a secret? The side that launches a first strike decapitation attack is going to sustain a devasting nuclear counterstrike in any event despite disabling the enemy's command and control structure. In the case of the US, he speculates that the reasoning is that it is too disturbing to the public to consider that control of nuclear weapons is decentralized with lower commanders having the authority to launch nuclear weapons without regard to the principle of commander in chief and civilian control of the military, if certain conditions appear to be present.

I hadn't previously realized that decapitation strategies were a major component of nuclear war planning. It's almost fundamental that command and control would naturally be subject to an attack during a general war, but an evaluation of the full implications of exclusive destruction of the national command authority during a nuclear conflict are more fully explored in Ellsberg's analysis than I had ever encountered. So what's the point? I'm only addressing North Korean decapitation below. There are many other ramifications addressed by Ellsberg, particularly with respect to Russia. These are my observations below, not Ellsberg's.

Decapitation strategies with conventional forces on North Korea by the US armed forces have been discussed openly in South Korean media. My reaction was that this was an inadequate tactical response to a strategic problem, North Korean military nuclearization. In other words, the strategy would in all likelihood fail and invite the very military responses one was ostensibly trying to prevent, either general war, or nuclear war with North Korea. Two sources that I knew of, Victor Cha, CSIS Korea Chair, and Thae Yong-ho (North Korean defector and current assembly member, South Korea National Assembly), separately stated their opposition to the so called "bloody nose" approach, recommended by one of Trump's military advisors. Trump had used the expression "fire and fury" at one point. I think Joseph Yun, a career diplomat leading US diplomacy efforts with North Korea, resigned not too long after the bloody nose issue was floated, so that was subject to similar speculation, that the US was contemplating or planning some military response to North Korea that he may have also opposed. Thae Yong-ho specifically mentioned in the way of a caution to US planners, that North Korea had already adopted a nuclear doomsday response or "dead hand" response to attacks on its command and control structures.

William Arkin raised the notion more recently that the new tactical warhead W-76-2 on the submarine launched Trident missile was possibly aimed at North Korea or Iran. This was the only public indication (that I know of) that the decapitation effort against North Korea might be in the form of a nuclear attack from the US, until US nuclear submarines began visiting South Korean ports in recent months. These included one Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine that docked in Busan and was visited by President Yoon.

In light of Ellsberg's detailed discussions of nuclear (first strike) decapitation scenarios, decision flow, and likely responses and outcomes, I now realize that the discussion of a conventional "decapitation attack" against North Korea, is probably intentionally misleading, and that it was likely intended to include nuclear strikes all along.

Interestingly enough, it wasn't too long ago, that North Korea announced its intention to launch a nuclear response to any US/South Korean attack on North Korean command and control elements, conventional or otherwise. Ironically, this follows Ellsberg's theory of deterrence to nuclear decapitation strikes- let your opponent know you have a "doomsday" response mechanism in place. I could easily anticipate the Pentagon arguments why this can't be true for North Korea, but if you read Ellsberg's book, one could easily do their own informed speculation on that. Highly recommend The Doomsday Machine, (the book).

In keeping with the theme, International Day of Non-violence.