Realism and the Nuclear Standoff

Our recent discussions in class on the theoretical approach of realism has been fascinating to me. Our classes have made me think about world events and test them against the framework of realism. The recent nuclear standoffs with Iran and North Korea are controversial both domestically and globally and present a good case to test realism on.

The issue of Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons did not capture such a market of the national and global interest until after President Bush’s notorious “Axis of Evil” speech. But what was President Bush’s motivation for making such a provocative claim about Iran, Iraq, and North Korea? Realism would explain that President Bush saw these states as a threat to the survival and military power of the United States. Iraq and Iran did pose a conventional military threat to the US but their placement in the middle of the oil rich Middle East did make them a threat to US access to oil. Oil is arguably the ‘blood’ of the US therefore vital to our survival, and any non amicable state in a position to threaten our access to it will be dealt with strongly according to realism. North Korea on the other hand does pose a conventional military threat to the US by controlling the largest military on earth on the other side of the most heavily militarized border in the world where the US maintains active duty ready-response forces. A war with North Korea would be enormously costly and would weaken the United States military drastically unless nuclear weapons were used, but the use of nukes would hurt the US image in the world and would weaken the US in that way, both situations that realism would suggest that the US will try to avoid. So President Bush saw these states as a threat and started a process of trying to amass global support for cracking down on these states with his “Axis of Evil” speech.

But Iran, and North Korea were largely unaffected by the speech until Iraq was invaded. This made both Iran and North Korea heavily accelerate their nuclear programs. Realism can help us understand their logic for doing this. Iran and North Korea were labeled as “evil” by the US president along with Iraq. Iraq was invaded and its government destroyed. This constituted a huge threat to survival in the eyes of Iran and North Korea as they were still on the list. What is to stop them from being next, they might ask. So the question they asked themselves is how can we deter the massively superior military might of the US? Nuclear weapons! North Korea and Iran stepped up their nuclear programs and are now using them in different ways. North Korea is using its nuclear weapons program as leverage in negotiations with the US in order to gain economic concessions and maybe come out of this crisis a little better off and alive. Iran is using its program to develop nuclear weapons as it has no interest in dropping the program in return for reasonable concessions from the US. Iran knows that with the reality of the war in Iraq coupled with its development of heavy water enrichment, there is nothing the US can do to stop Iran from going nuclear. So Iran must be planning to use those weapons to deter the US not negotiate them away. But both Iran and North Korea are pursuing the same goal of not being wiped out by the United States as the government of Iraq was. Realism can be used to analyze the nuclear standoff between the US and Iran & North Korea because all three are approaching the issue as a realism would predict because all three are trying to preserve both their survival and relative power (the US in relation to Iran and Korea and Iran and Korea in relation to the US).