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Thursday, February 10, 2005
Equations
...not to mention the terminally bloodthirsty:
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea declared on Thursday for the first time it possessed nuclear weapons and pulling out indefinitely from six-party talks on its atomic ambitions, saying it needed a defense against a hostile United States.The announcement sent out shockwaves, coming when some of the world's largest military powers have been trying to coax the reclusive communist North to return to the stalled disarmament talks and posing a challenge to President Bush.
"We ... have manufactured nukes to cope with the Bush administration's evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
DPRK is short for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The statement marks the first time the North has publicly said it has nuclear weapons and is Pyongyang's first response to resuming six-party talks since Bush said in his inauguration speech on Jan. 20 that he was committed to ending tyranny.
While Bush did not specify countries, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has singled out North Korea as one of six.
"Nuclear weapons will remain (a) nuclear deterrent for self-defense under any circumstances," the ministry said.
As Ann Coulter has said, the Clinton Administration is a gift that just keeps on giving. Its 1994-1995 deal with Pyongyang, brokered by none other than that great admirer of Communist dictators Jimmy Carter, has set the United States back by ten years in its campaign to prevent weapons of mass destruction from reaching the hands of the North Korean Stalinists and those to whom they might sell their wares.
But let's not buy into the North Korean claim without some cogitation. Is it true? Have we the means to verify or falsify it?
Washington hasn't said much. CIA figures have occasionally made statements to the effect that Pyongyang's possession of nukes appears likely, but if verifiable data were available, we'd probably have heard much more. A clandestine program such as North Korea's, undertaken in violation of a treaty agreement, would undoubtedly have been concealed, but there are varieties of radiological evidence that would be very difficult to disguise.
It's worth bearing in mind that it's much harder to disprove Pyongyang's claim, in the event that it's yet another lie, than it would be to prove it if it's true. Until disproved, the claim itself has obvious negotiating power.
But there's another reason, of globe-spanning impact, for North Korea to claim possession of nukes even if it could ultimately be proved not to have them. America currently has its attention elsewhere: on Iran.
Our armed forces, though still equal to their tasks, are fairly heavily laden at this time. The ongoing counterinsurgency effort in Iraq consumes 150,000 troops and their support systems. The need to threaten Iran credibly enough to forestall that dictatorship's nuclear ambitions requires that we keep a comparable number flexed and ready to strike. A fraction of our sea power is employed in this effort as well, though it's seldom spoken of. Red China's recent rhetoric about forcibly annexing Taiwan compels Washington to keep a portion of our sea power available for a conflict in the Formosa Strait, as well.
The North Korean oligarchs are aware of all this. Given the imminent economic collapse of their entire nation, those gamblers have probably assessed this moment as the best possible time to raise the stakes to the geopolitical limit.
It would not surprise your Curmudgeon, or many other hard-headed analysts of international intrigue, to discover that Red China and Iran have been in tacit collaboration with North Korea all along. Not that dictatorships are required to like and support one another, mind you, but their ambitions put them in alignment against the United States, Japan and Taiwan, at least in the near term. And let's not forget that one of the largest foreign buyers of North Korean armaments, particularly missiles, is Iran.
What, then, must we do? What risks and rewards would attach to the various macro-strategies America might adopt at this time? Given what we know, what we suspect, and what we fear, how do the equations of diplomacy and military conflict resolve?
- Whether or not it has nukes, North Korea has a large if ill-equipped army, and a large number of artillery tubes capable of shelling population centers in South Korea, particularly Seoul.
- However, North Korea cannot sustain a protracted war; it does not have a functioning economy. Its population hovers at the edge of mass starvation.
- Red China saved North Korea in 1952, and might choose to do so again if not effectively deterred. The Chinese People's Army is enormous, fairly well equipped, and rests on a far sounder economic base than that of North Korea.
- Also, Red China is a nuclear power, and has some limited ballistic missile capability. It is possible that Beijing might threaten a nuclear assault on Hawaii or the western continental United States to deter an American strike against North Korea.
- If North Korea does have nukes, it could threaten a nuclear strike on South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan.
- If North Korea does not yet have nukes but is within a year or two of acquiring them, further delay would risk freezing the status quo in place at best, and the provision of one or more nukes to Islamic terror gangs with hard currency at worst. Of course, if it has them now, the probability that it will sell one to al Qaeda or a comparable gang rises with time. All the outcomes that branch from such an event are catastrophic.
Much depends on the credibility of the North Korean claim, and on Washington's ability to keep Red China out of any engagement in that region. But Red China can be deterred; it has a great deal to lose in the event of war with the United States. By contrast, North Korea has very little to lose; that's what makes it so dangerous.
Neither Iran nor North Korea can be permitted to have weapons of mass destruction. The two nations are aligned in several ways, and these past years have followed the same strategy for averting and delaying international scrutiny of their doings: a repeating pattern of seeming acquiescence followed by angry accusations -- "imperialism," "bad faith," "intolerable interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state" -- followed by the cessation of even apparent cooperation and the rejection of all overtures for a period. Particularly during the Clinton and Carter years, the strategy has worked quite well.
But the equation contained an X factor on which both Tehran and Pyongyang seem to have failed to reckon: Black Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That day of horror convinced large numbers of previously peaceable Americans that outright war would be preferable to another atrocity of that kind, let alone a nuclear version thereof.
An enduring sea blockade of North Korea is feasible, but such a cordon would not guarantee that no nuke would ever leave for other shores. We cannot police the land border with Red China. It's worse if Beijing is helping Pyongyang along, a possibility we cannot rule out on any basis.
Today, Americans might well be willing to see a nation completely obliterated to prevent another Black Tuesday.
If our three Marine divisions could be marshaled into place behind the cover of an existing blockade, tactical nuclear strikes with cruise missiles could neutralize most of North Korea's military, most especially the prompt threats to South Korea, as an amphibious invasion of the North was put in motion. There would be no need to fight northward out of the South, once the artillery batteries and military emplacements behind the DMZ had been destroyed; an Inchon-like assault would be preferable. Logically, the assault would drive straight for Pyongyang, intern the North Korean Politburo and its inner support structures, and impose American control on communications and transportation. If it went well, it could avert the need to destroy North Korea root and branch...but to give it a really good chance, the early use of tactical nukes to shatter Pyongyang's sword of Damocles over Seoul is mandatory. Were that to fail, or if Pyongyang really does possess nukes and were to succeed in launching one against an American or American-allied target, a saturation attack with strategic weapons might be forced upon us.
The capacity for genocide is an unpleasant thing to ponder. Yet it lies dormant within us. Sixty years ago, we demonstrated to the Germans and Japanese that we could and would annihilate them, efface their nations and cultures entirely from the Earth, if it would serve our purposes. Whatever else one might say about it, it got their attention -- and at that time, both nations had been reduced to local resistance only. No one could credibly claim that either of them seriously threatened the well being of the United States.
How do your equations resolve, Gentle Reader? Would you be willing to see a million North Koreans incinerated to prevent a nuclear terrorist act on these shores? On what evidence, and what prospect of success? If not, how far would you be willing to go?
Comments
I wrote some time ago that we need to re-state (and re-formulate) our standing policy of nuclear deterrence. Iran and North Korea should know that neither will survive a terrorist attack with nuclear weapons on us unless they can give us solid proof that it didn’t come from either of them. The best proof, of course, would be not having nuclear weapons at all.
Posted by Dave Schuler on 02/10/2005 at 12:23 PMIf we continue to keep our head in the sand (especially those on the left side of the aisle), we risk becoming “a former superpower”. China will have ascended to that throne. Taiwan will be but a memory. Japan will shift is economic might and political ties toward the country with the most potential buying power. And the two Koreas will become one (one way or the other) as China will either *annex* them as a colony or allow the north to over take the south (I don’t think so as they know which side is a better long term economic partner) or *remove* Kim and allow for the reunification of that state....while building ties with them to secure their (China’s)southern flank.
As for Iran...I think Israel is an even larger part of the equation then we are...If she allows for the *continued* build up of the nuclear threat...it will only be because we have guaranteed Israel they will not be hit first. If Israel feels we are weakening in our resolve to remove the nuclear threat from the Mid-East, then look to them to take out Iran in very short order.
Posted by GuyS on 02/10/2005 at 02:50 PMI believe that Kim Il Jong is just crazy enough to think he could survive a nuke retaliatory attck by us if he was so foolish as to launch one on us. I spent 20 years in the USN and know exactly the extent to which we could make N. Korea resemble a glass parking lot. I would NOT wish that to happen to millions of innocent people, but when it comes right down to it, the old adage of “better them than us” serves to demonstrate my feelings and resolve in the matter!
Posted by on 02/10/2005 at 08:34 PMIn keeping with a promise I recently made to myself, I’ve posted my comments on my own blog, at http://politics.lel-hosting.com/archives/5-Korean-nightmares.html. But my blog’s software doesn’t like your trackback system for some reason, so I’m mentioning it in a comment instead.
FYI the error is
• Checking http://www.eternityroad.info/index.php/weblog/equations/ for possible trackbacks…
• Trackback failed: The autodiscovered trackback URI does not match our target URI.Posted by Matt on 02/11/2005 at 03:43 AM
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