About Dr. Morton Halperin

Morton H. Halperin is a longterm expert on U.S. foreign policy, arms control, civil liberties, and how government bureaucracies operate. He is currently a senior advisor to the Open Society Foundations, and has previously served in the Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, and Obama administrations. He is the Former Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. Halperin has taught at Harvard University and as a visitor at other universities including Columbia, George Washington, and Yale, as well as having served in a number of roles with think tanks, including the Center for American Progress, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Twentieth Century Fund.

The first joint APLN/EAF Webinar, funded in part by the Asia Research Fund, titled “Preemptive Nuclear Attacks on the Korean Peninsula: Fact or Fiction?” was live-streamed on October 7th from 9:30-11:00 A.M. KST.

Moderated by Dr. Chung-in Moon, the webinar featured Dr. Morton H. Halperin (Senior Advisor to the Open Society Foundation and the Open Society Policy Center), Dr. Peter Hayes (Co-director at the Nautilus Institute), Dr. Siegfried Hecker (Professor and Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Center for International Security and Cooperation), and Dr. Eunjung Lim (Associate Professor at Kongju National University).

The panelists discussed military and nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula, with special attention paid to claims made in Bob Woodward’s latest book, Rage. The panel outlined the history of the U.S.’s nuclear doctrine and the DPRK’s nuclear capabilities, ultimately concluding that discussion of the use of “eighty nuclear weapons” on the Korean peninsula as the worst case scenario, albeit highly unlikely.

Finally, they warned of the risks of misunderstanding and mistakes that could escalate into a nuclear exchange. To prevent such a catastrophe, the panelists agreed that diplomacy needs to embrace a step-by-step confidence-building process, to make nuclear threats less necessary for deterrence or compellence on both sides.