North Korea celebrated its 74th birthday on September 9 with a new nuclear policy law. North Korea’s new law explains the general role of nuclear weapons in North Korea’s defense strategy, lays out the conditions under which it would use nuclear weapons, and establishes other broad policies, making it analogous to a U.S. nuclear posture review. North Korea’s nuclear policy law does not contain any unexpected revelations, but it highlights several worrying trends in the country’s nuclear strategy that could make future crises more dangerous.

The new nuclear policy law underscores the importance of first use, including preemptive attack, in North Korea’s nuclear strategy. The overarching objective of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, according to the new legislation, is to preserve the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. To achieve this goal, North Korea will have a flexible strategy for employing nuclear weapons, including retaliation and preemption. Nuclear preemption means using nuclear offensively to eliminate the danger of a looming attack by beating the other side to the punch.

A nuclear preemption strategy is intended to prevent enemy action by making it too dangerous for the other side to consider attacking in the first place. The target of the preemption strategy, in this case the United States and South Korea, needs to tread very carefully because it is not certain what actions will cross the other state’s threshold for nuclear use. The safest course of action, therefore, is for the target of the preemption strategy to always err on the side of caution and not make threats or maneuver its forces in ways that could trigger a nuclear attack.

Nuclear preemption is especially attractive for North Korea because of its overall weakness vis‐​à‐​vis the United States and South Korea. Once a war starts, be it conventional or nuclear, North Korea will likely not survive because its armed forces, while large, are at an immense qualitative disadvantage. Nuclear weapons give Kim Jong‐​un the ability to inflict immense pain on the United States and South Korea even if he would ultimately be defeated. While Seoul and Washington would ultimately prevail, the high costs stemming from North Korean nuclear use should be enough to stop them from attacking Pyongyang.

North Korea hopes that its preemption strategy will create such high risks of a conflict going nuclear that South Korea and the United States will always act cautiously. However, there is another way to respond to preemption: attack even faster. South Korea has leaned into this option with its “Kill Chain” system, which uses precise conventional weapons such as cruise and ballistic missiles to rapidly target North Korea’s leadership before it can give a launch order to nuclear forces. Kill Chain has been in development for several years, but the relatively new Yoon Suk‐​yeol administration has been particularly vocal about the system in recent months.

North Korea’s nuclear policy law does not mention Kill Chain by name, but it does contain provisions designed to undermine Kill Chain’s effectiveness. The law clearly states that Kim Jong‐​un has “all decisive powers concerning nuclear weapons” with assistance from other officials in carrying out attack orders. However, in the event of a Kill Chain‐​like attack against North Korea’s command and control, the new law states “a nuclear strike shall be launched automatically and immediately.” In other words, even if Kill Chain decapitates North Korea’s leadership, it will not be able to fully disable North Korea’s ability to use its nuclear weapons.

It is not clear how North Korea will turn this rhetoric into reality. One approach could involve delegating launch authority to military commanders in the field at some point during a crisis or early in a conflict so that they can fire their weapons if they are cut off from central command. Delegating launch authority would improve survivability against decapitation attacks, but it could also increase the likelihood of units going rogue and using their weapons to threaten North Korea’s leadership.

Taken together, North Korea’s nuclear policy law and South Korea’s Kill Chain system paint a worrying picture for nuclear stability on the Korean peninsula. In a crisis or conflict, both sides would face an incentive to escalate quickly and decisively to preempt the other’s preemption strategy. A nuclear crisis like the one in 2017 does not appear imminent. Hopefully things will stay calm on the Korean peninsula because the next crisis could be even more prone to escalation than the last one.