A number of proposals for reducing tensions with North Korea have discussed alterations to the program of joint military exercises (JMEs) that South Korea holds. North Korea has also repeatedly called for a reduction or secession of JMEs. Would limiting or halting JMEs be a useful concession for securing a reduction of tensions on the peninsula? We argue that JMEs do not deter North Korea but, instead, provoke provocative rhetoric and actions, demonstrating that North Korea views JMEs as a serious threat to its security. In this paper, we establish a relationship between JMEs and North Korea’s actions. In response to a JME, North Korea can issue warnings or threats as well as take costly signals such as conducting missile or nuclear tests. Using new data on JMEs and North Korean behavior, we find that North Korea systematically responds with aggression to South Korean JMEs. Moreover, we find that the intensity of North Korea’s responses to JMEs is driven by the severity of the threat particular exercises pose, indicating that North Korea responds to JMEs as serious security threats.
BajpaiKanti P.ChariP. R.Iqbal CheemaPervaizStephenP.CohenGangulySumit. 1995. Brasstacks and Beyond: Perception and Management of Crisis in South Asia. Urbana: Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, & International Security, University of Illinois.
BeardStevenStrayhornJoshua A.. 2018. “When Will States Strike First? Battlefield Advantages and Rationalist War.” International Studies Quarterly62 (1): 42–53.
4.
BernhardtJordan. 2020a. “Expanding Missions, Multilateralism, and Flexibility: Explaining the Increase in Joint Military Exercise Activity Since the End of the Cold War.” Working Paper.
5.
BernhardtJordan. 2020b. “Introducing the Joint Military Exercise Dataset.” Working Paper.
6.
BlackwillRobert D.LegroJeffery W.. 1989. “Constraining Ground Force Exercises of NATO and the Warsaw Pact.” International Security114 (3): 68–98.
7.
CaravelliJohn M.1983. “Soviet and Joint Warsaw Pact Exercises: Functions and Utility.” Armed Forces & Society9 (393): 393–426.
8.
ChaVictorYoung LeeNaLimAndy. 2016. “DPRK Provocations and U.S.-ROK Military Exercises, 2005 to 2016.” CSIS Beyond Parallel, August 18. Accessed September 09, 2019. http://beyondparallel.csis.org/dprk-provocations/.
9.
CohenRaymond. 1978. “Threat Perception in International Crisis.” Political Science Quarterly93 (1): 93–107.
10.
DanilovicVesna. 2001. “The Sources of Threat Credibility in Extended Deterrence.” Journal of Conflict Resolution45 (3): 341–69.
D’OrazioVito. 2012. “War Games: North Korea’s Reaction to US and South Korean Military Exercises.” Journal of East Asian Studies12 (2): 275–94.
13.
FarrellJohn F.2009. “Team Spirit: A Case Study on the Value of Military Exercises as a Show of Force in the Aftermath of Combat Operations.” Air and Space Power Journal23 (3): 94–106.
14.
FearonJames D.1995. “Rationalist Explanations for War.” International Organization49 (3): 379–414.
GeorgeAlexander L.SmokeRichard. 1974. Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice. New York: Columbia University Press.
17.
HuthPaul. 1990. “The Extended Deterrent Value of Nuclear Weapons.” Journal of Conflict Resolution34 (2): 270–90.
18.
JacksonVan. 2018. On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
19.
JervisRobert. 1976. Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
20.
JervisRobert. 1978. “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma.” World Politics30 (2): 167–214.
21.
JervisRobert. 1986. “Deterrence, the Spiral Model, and Intentions of the Adversary.” In Psychology and the Prevention of Nuclear War, edited by WhiteRalph K., 107–30. New York: New York University Press.
McManusRoseanne W.2014. “Fighting Words: The Effectiveness of Statements of Resolve in International Conflict.” Journal of Peace Research51 (6): 726–40.
SukinLauren. 2019a. “Credible Nuclear Security Commitments Can Backfire: Explaining Domestic Support for Nuclear Weapons Acquisition in South Korea.” Journal of Conflict Resolution64 (6): 1011–42.
33.
SukinLauren. 2019b. “Experimental Evidence on Determinants of Support for Nuclear Use in Response to Threats of Nuclear Retaliation.” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology26 (3): 336–39.
34.
SukinLauren. 2020. “North Korea’s Rational Threat-making: Using Propaganda to Understand North Korean Strategic Interests and Threat Perceptions.” Working Paper. http://laurensukin.com/NK.pdf.
35.
TragerRobert F.2010. “Diplomatic Calculus in Anarchy: How Communication Matters.” American Political Science Review104 (2): 347–68.
36.
WilsonTheresaWiebeJanyceHoffmannPaul. 2005. “Recognizing Contextual Polarity in Phrase-level Sentiment Analysis.” In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Language Technology and Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, HLT’05, 347–54. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.3115/1220575.1220619
37.
WolfleyKyle. 2018. “Training Not to Fight: How Major Powers Use Multinational Military Exercises to Manage Strategic Uncertainty.” PhD diss. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
