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invasion by striking targets in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, North
Korea presumably plans to defend itself, should war erupt on the
peninsula, by threatening U.S. regional allies and targets in the United
States.

North Korea's mission requires small, lightweight warheads, and missiles
that work -- and the only way to know that they work is to test them. So
far, the weapons have proved unspectacular. The country's first nuclear
test, conducted in 2006, was an embarrassment. Pyongyang had told the
Chinese that the device would generate four kilotons of explosive power,
but it ended up producing less than one. The second test in 2009 fared
slightly better, producing between one and eight kilotons, although it is
not known what size of a blast the North Koreans had sought. Moreover,
Pyongyang has much more work to do before it can boast weapons that
will actually fit on its missiles (which have been, themselves, a series of
humiliating failures).

Observers in the West who presume that North Korea's behavior must be
about signaling should remember NATO and the United States' own
experience during the Cold War. The United States understood then that
the ability to conduct nuclear operations was the very foundation of a
credible deterrence strategy. Today, a sound strategy for dealing with
North Korea should not ascribe ulterior motives to acts that the United
States once considered rational and routine.

The view that nuclear weapons are merely political instruments -- suitable
for sending signals, but not waging wars -- is now so common in
Washington, London, and Berlin that it is hard to find anyone who
disagrees. Yet those comforting assumptions are not shared by leaders
everywhere. Beyond North Korea, Russia is cutting down its arsenal,
modernizing the nuclear forces it plans to keep, and increasing its reliance
on nuclear weapons in national defense strategy. China is slowly
expanding its own arsenal, while substantially improving its weapons.
And Iran seems so committed to going nuclear that it has been ready to
endure crippling sanctions and risk foreign attack.

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