North Korea and the risks of miscalculation

On the other hand, where coercive diplomacy is concerned, there are clear advantages to a posture of: “Don’t try it. You have no idea what I’m capable of.” From Cold War deterrence resting on the guarantee of “mutual assured destruction”—you hit me with nukes, I will strike back, even if we incinerate the world—to Barack Obama’s vow to take unspecified measures against Russian hacking “at a time and place of our own choosing,” presidents routinely court risks and instrumentalize uncertainty as a negotiating tactic. If you extract a concession because an enemy fears an attack you had no real intention of carrying out anyway, so much the better. At the very least, there’s the practical advantage that comes with not telegraphing your intentions to an enemy trying to prepare for your next move.

Yet it’s also the case that uncertainty raises the risks of miscalculation on either side—and, in a tense confrontation between two nuclear powers, the potential costs. Threats of preventive strikes, or even leaks that such strikes could be under consideration, can prompt the other side to want to strike first. There’s a reason that, when NBC reported Thursday based on intelligence sources that the U.S. was prepared to implement exactly such an option, senior officials from the Pentagon quickly disavowed the story and declared it “extremely dangerous.” There’s a reason that the Chinese foreign minister is urging “all sides to no longer engage in mutual provocation and threats, whether through words or deeds, and [not to] push the situation to the point where it can’t be turned around and gets out of hand.” Even the most predictable of leaders must make decisions about each other’s likely actions, and have imperfect information even with the best intelligence, and act on those educated guesses. When two leaders each habitually bluster and exaggerate, there’s a higher likelihood of making a catastrophic mistake based on a bad guess.