Last week, Japan, the U.S. and the world observed the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the most cataclysmic single act of destruction in the history of warfare, followed days later by a similar bombing and obliteration of the city of Nagasaki. Together, the unprecedented detonations put an end to the most devastating war in the experience of the world.
Since those horrific events ushering in the atomic age, other nations acquired nuclear weapons, starting with the four other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. In 1970, the international community, led by the original five nuclear powers, brought into being the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty “to prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons to countries that don’t already have them.” The treaty also sought to facilitate disarmament by nuclear-weapon states, and to promote cooperation in the peaceful applications of nuclear energy.
The fundamental commitment of the declared nuclear states was that they would not transfer nuclear weapons or technology to other countries. Eventually, 191 nations signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with four notable non-signers — India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — developing or otherwise acquiring their own nuclear weapons. Pakistan and North Korea did so with the clandestine cooperation of their authoritarian big brothers, Russia and China, which exploited the advantage of having ideologically or strategically aligned junior partners serving as major distractions for the Western powers. China, in particular, used North Korea as a foil to divert U.S. attention away from its own international misdeeds. It successfully postured as an opponent of nuclear proliferation even as it fostered it through Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan network.
As Russian and Chinese ambitions have been whetted by the wishful and indulgent policies of the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden and Trump administrations, the anti-Western nuclear powers escalated their dangerous tactic of nuclear blackmail. Going beyond the illegal proliferation of nuclear technology to dangerously irresponsible partners to strike both rational and irrational fear in the West, China and Russia now resort to making explicit nuclear threats of their own.
During the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995-1996, when China fired missiles toward Taiwan to halt its progress to democracy, the Clinton administration sent aircraft carriers to the region. That prompted Beijing’s leading general to give Washington a not-so-veiled warning, “You care more about Los Angeles than Taiwan.” It was enough to keep the carriers out of the Taiwan Strait.
On several other occasions of high tension, top-ranking Chinese military officials have made similar ominous statements, one upping the explicit nuclear threat to “hundreds of U.S. cities.” Beijing also made “implied nuclear threats” to dissuade the Philippines from preparing to join Washington-led efforts against China in the event of a Taiwan Strait conflict. A Hudson Institute report earlier this year said China’s “nuclear psychological warfare” will produce strategic effects for Japan by “exacerbat[ing] the sense of insecurity for Japan and the U.S.-Japan alliance.”
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un followed his Chinese patron’s lead, brandishing his own newly minted nuclear weapons in Pyongyang’s disputes with South Korea, Japan and the United States. To make Kim’s threats credible, North Korea accelerated its development of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Russia is strengthening Pyongyang’s power of intimidation by providing technical assistance for its nuclear and missile programs. It is payback for the thousands of North Korean troops — often referred to as “cannon fodder” — sent to support Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
For its part, since its latest invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has made several nuclear threats against the U.S., usually through Vladimir Putin’s former placeholder “president” and official mouthpiece, Dmitry Medvedev. Although a Russian official tried to dismiss Medvedev’s inflammatory comments threatening a nuclear attack against the United States as mere bloviating by a non-influential lesser official, it is obvious that everything Medvedev says has either been pre-approved by Putin or will surely meet with his approval, if only behind closed doors. When he meets with Putin later this week, Trump should declare Medvedev persona non grata in the United States and demand that he be publicly admonished and even dismissed from any position of responsibility in the Russian government.
Nuclear threats, like all threats to use force except in self-defense, violate Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter. But, considering the enormity of the destructiveness nuclear war would wreak on the world, nations that recklessly and callously throw such grave threats around in diplomatic discourse as a form of nuclear terrorism should have to face some consequences from the international community, if only in terms of public opprobrium and pariah status. Nuclear threats cannot be dismissed or accepted as normal diplomatic exchanges.
As Trump said after Medvedev’s latest outrageous remarks, words have consequences — and he demonstrated the point by redeploying two attack submarines. Given Trump’s affection for economic sanctions as leverage in international relations, he should also impose special punitive tariffs on any country that makes such threats in addition to the levies imposed for purely trade reasons.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and member of the advisory board of The Vandenberg Coalition.
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