EXPERT Q&A — On a day when Ukraine felt the pain of a pause in intelligence sharing from the U.S. in the form of deadly Russian drone and missile attacks, there is concern about another global threat, as North Korea for the first time unveiled a nuclear-powered submarine under construction. The Cipher Brief spoke with Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.), about what both developments mean for U.S. national security. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
The Cipher Brief: What is top of mind for you right now, as you’re looking at what’s a pretty chaotic world?
Admiral Stavridis: Two things: one is immediate and one is longer term, but worth keeping an eye on.
The immediate one involves Ukraine. A week or so ago, we had this awful blowup in the White House [between Presidents Trump and Zelensky] and the U.S. and Ukraine appeared to be kind of splitting. The U.S. turned off the taps of immediate weapons delivery and then, more ominously, the intelligence-sharing pause – and I don’t need to tell a Cipher Brief audience how dangerous it is to cut off intelligence and imagery in the middle of a war.
So everything looked really dark a week ago, and it’s still worth worrying about. And you’re kind of seeing Putin grinding away on land [in Kursk and Eastern Ukraine] and continuing with massive air strikes. That’s all the bad news.
Here is the good news since the blowup. The two sides, the U.S. and Ukraine, are now going to go back to a discussion that’s going to occur in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this week. Our Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who I find very sensible and relatively centrist, is going over there. So we’re back in a conversation, and I think the chances are two in three, so 65%, that we do get to a deal with Ukraine. That we get to a minerals deal, we sign it, and the taps reopen, probably a little more modestly than they were before.
I think the Trump administration will continue, appropriately in my view, to pressure the Europeans to pick up on the spending side. But the key, again, is to get the intelligence going back quickly. So a two out of three chance, I think, that this will occur over the next few weeks. I’m watching that. That’s tactical, that’s real time.
The other thing, and it was one of the top stories in The Cipher Brief today, is the news about the North Korean nuclear submarine. It’s an example of payback from Russia for the 12,000 [North Korean] foot soldiers – and there’s plenty more where those came from – that are being thrown at the front lines [in Russia’s Kursk region] on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin. What has Putin given back to North Korea? He’s given intelligence, he’s given nuclear technology for weapons, and now it appears he’s going to help advise the North Koreans on building a nuclear-powered submarine. It’s unclear at this moment whether it will also have ballistic missiles. Certainly it’ll have cruise missiles of some kind.
As we all know, nuclear submarines are the apex predators of the ocean. One of those in the hands of Kim Jong Un ought to give us all pause.
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The Cipher Brief: How would this change the dynamic between the United States and North Korea?
Admiral Stavridis: If Kim were able to carry out an ongoing build program, and he was able to put to sea four to six nuclear-powered attack boats with decent sensor systems, hypothetically – if he could do that over the next decade, that would put him in a very strong position in undersea warfare. For example, this could prevent us from attacking Chinese forces blockading Taiwan. Our ace card is our nuclear powered attack boats. Could Kim counter those?
And then secondly, even more worrisome, if this nuclear-powered submarine had at a minimum cruise missiles, those can be driven across the Pacific, parked outside of Pearl Harbor, outside of LA, outside of Washington State. We would see his ballistic missiles coming. But a submarine, nuclear-powered, can stay underwater indefinitely, essentially. If it then adds cruise missiles to the repertoire, it holds major American cities and military targets at risk. That ought to worry us a lot.
The Cipher Brief: They’re much harder to detect, right?
Admiral Stavridis: Correct.
The Cipher Brief: Do you see any reason for China to not want North Korea to have this technology?
Admiral Stavridis: Nope. For China, North Korea obtaining nuclear attack submarines is exactly like the United States having Australia obtain nuclear powered submarines, which they’re doing right now. This is part of the AUKUS alliance and program – Australia, the U.S., and the United Kingdom. If both Russia and China are providing submarine technology to Kim Jong-un, that becomes the Asian version on the authoritarian side of AUKUS.
By the way, I am a proponent of bringing Japan into that AUKUS agreement. There are pros and cons to doing that, and the Japanese are not lit up about nuclear power, given their own experience at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think they’ll get much more interested if Kim starts to build nuclear submarines. It’s not just about China and Taiwan, it’s also about Japan. That could be the catalyst to bring Japan into AUKUS, which would be a very good thing.
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