“I am saying that if the North Koreans came streaming accross the DMZ supported by armor and the missile barrage and artillery all the experts anticipate, the US would be well within long-standing principles of first use (over decades) to nuke the enemy troop concentrations and military instillations”
I don’t think this is the scenario that Kim is worried about. He is worried about the US launching an attack on North Korea to achieve regime change like in Iraq. From his pov. nukes are the best way to prevent this. By explicitly linking Iraq with North Korea the administration has increased the North Korean incentives to keep their nukes.
exactly, you have to know the details before engaging in risky situations. You have to know the details militarily, and politically, and you have to think about EVERYTHING in order to have a CHANCE of not having everything turn into chaos.
For instance: lets size up the situation in Iraq and NK:
In terms of danger:
Iraq has: Maybe Bioweapons, probably a few chems, and no nuke. The US only suspected that Iraq had weapons because they couldn’t account for them. That is a logical assumption. However, they had no delivery method to attack the US, at least not for a while. You may say that Iraq is a danger to its neighbors, but NK is even more so, for reasons I’ll explain later.
Why did we attack Iraq, because it was easy, NK would have been too hard. If GWB wanted to show the force of the US unilaterially, and against the wishes of the world, he knew he would have to sell an easy war. There’s no way he can sell a war agains NK until they start dropping nukes on San Francisco.
How is NK a greater threat than Iraq? First they are working on nuclear weapons. Okay, they are creating weapons grade fissile material, that is certain. They are testing missiles. They CAN hit Japan, and their other neighbors, and are believed to have the ability to attack the west coast of the US.
Considering the threat to the US, I’d say NK is a big number one, and Iraq is a much further second. Actually Al Queda would be a second, but we don’t talk about them anymore. Condi Rice thinks Hezbolla is more dangerous to Americans now.
Iraq is severely degraded, and we have massive amounts of intelligence on them, plus Air Superiority.
NK, has 15,000 artillery pieces aimed at Seoul, and is working on developing its nuclear weapons, and could possibly have one or two.
We can’t attack NK without any percieved threat. NK would demolish Seoul at the first sign of anything. There’s no way we could gather enough strenght to destroy all of that artillery without going nuclear. A nuclear first strike? No way.
See, Kim is actually pretty smart, although paranoid. I don’t think he plans on attacking anyone. He is known to be a security freak. He has all triplets seperated, because of a superstition that a triplet would be the one to destroy him. That’s nuts. but the idea of putting artillery pieces aimed at Seol isn’t.
GWB would have attacked NK first if he knew that he wouldn’t get his hands bloody. NK knows that America won’t fight unless they attack first, and nobody will attack first, because if NK isn’t hurting its neighbors, then the losses will make it impossible to start the war.
And for those of us that have been saying that invading Iraq would send a strong signal to other despots and make the world safer, and not more dangerous:
Gee, maybe the administration isn’t as dumb as you all think.
I’m basing my conclusions on statements I’ve read on the internet from the North Korean spokespeople. They have been saying for some time basically what some people have said here: that the only way North Korea can prevent an attack is by producing nuclear weapons as fast as possible. They argue that since Iraq agreed to inspections, for them to do so would be to invite war.
Which is probably true, since they would have no intention of following any inspections regime in good faith either.
There have been no offers that I’ve heard where North Korea will consider ending their nuclear program until I noticed Sam’s last post. If that is the case, what is it we have to negotiate with them? We don’t want to build a canal through North Korea or anything.
Yes I read the report about North Korea possibly agreeing to multilateral negotiations. The problem is that it has made a concession about about process but hardened its position on substance as the Globe and Mail article indicates. That doesn’t strikes me as a good bargain. They are taking two steps forward and three steps back.
Evacuate Seoul? Where to, California? Decapitation strikes didn’t work on Saddam, real life’s not like a Tom Clancy novel!
It also should be taken into any account what China’s reaction to any attack would be. The yanks have already been taought one lesson this century that China is not happy about the prospect of thousands of idealogically hostile troops pounding towards Manchuria on their historically most vulnerable border. Surely they wouldn’t make the same mistake again?
Let me just be clear on this, though–does anyone disagree that such a conclusion is completely insane and will only hasten NK’s demise?
If NK speeds up its nuke production, there’s NO WAY we can let them slide. If they didn’t have any nukes, Kim could sit in his opulent compound, surrounded by, millions of starving citizens, and watch all the movies he wanted to. History has shown that, ultimately, we could care less what he’s doing to his own people, as long as he doesn’t threaten us or his neighbors (or esp. our troops stationed in S. Korea). The ONLY REASON we’re in this diplomatic fix to begin with was because Kim was ALREADY pursuing nukes! We just shamed him in public by forcing him to admit it.
I know Kim’s not the most clear-thinking individual, but does anyone here agree with his cockamamie conclusion?
How do you reach that conclusion?
True, a nuclear North Korea is not a pleasant prospect in the least… in point of fact, it’s downright scary. However, the fact of the matter is, the world has been and will continue to be downright scary, despite our discomfort in that reality. Put plain and simple, the appropriately named MAD logic applies. You don’t willingly go to war with a country unless you are willing to pay the price (or if you estimate it incorrectly). If we could be certain that it would be possible to take out the missiles preemptively, it might be an option, but not a particularly good one, and not necessarily any better than simply living with the fact that North Korea is a nuclear state.
We lived for years with an often hostile Soviet Union. Currently we grudgingly accept China, India, and Pakistan as nuclear powers, despite the pause they give us. We may just have to suck it up and deal with the Koreans, if for no other reason than that the possibility of a worse, unknown future war that may never happen is not perceived as bad as an obviously ugly war now. Of course, that doesn’t mean we should resume oil shipments any time soon…
I hear you toadspittle.
If, as many critics claim, GWB has become somewhat enamored of the military solution, or the hammer-works-great-it’s-a-world-of-nails-now philosophy, WTF is KJI thinking? It’s possible if he laid low for another couple years GWB might just be gone.
I’m afraid that GWB’s international popularity, or lack thereof, has every dictator in the world thinking he can win a propaganda battle with him.
I think KJI miscalculated Japan as much as he miscalculated GWB. The Japanese are talking (just talking so far) about increased defense spending and nuclear weapons. Which, if you follow Japanese opinion about nuclear weapons, is astounding.
I remember seeing recently that North Korea has lost over 2 million people recently to starvation- since you’re talking about a country that has a population of 22+ million, that’s a very substantial figure, and I believe most of that was prior to the US suspending aid. Add to that recent reports (can’t find a cite now) that China shut off the oil pipeline to North Korea for a few days in order to get them to start negotiating (which may account for their recent change in tone) and I think that you’re looking at a government that’s in death throes. They’re acting belligerent because threats are the only commodity that they can bargain with, since we know that we can’t negotiate with them in good faith.
I don’t think MAD applies … yet. Yes, if we get into a major scuffle with NK, and they use nukes, lots of people will die (esp. in SK, Japan), there’s even a chance that LA might get toasted (if we’ve underestimated their missile capability). Once NK shoots off its nukes–even a half dozen, as hideous as that would be–they’re done. We will turn them to ash, but the US will exit comparatively unscathed.
But the US vs. USSR thing was of a totally diff. scale. If either side used a nuke, you could expect the entire arsenal to be unloaded, and virtually the whole world to end (at least, every major miltary target and population center in the two nations + allied nations).
Of course, if we let this go on any longer, they’ll get more nukes, and they’ll eventually improve their missile technology to the point where they can hit the Western US at will–making them a serious threat to the US mainland. At that point, MAD comes into play. But it’s not there, yet.
Kim is a crazy bastard. He is not an idiot, or he would be former dictator Kim. Bush should open relations, then deny anything NK asks for, that way they don’t look weak while actually doing something besides changing the discussion to the war on terror.
Kim desperately needs money.
A Kim with nukes might be awfully tempted to sell one.
That is a very big problem.
Let us not forget the one person who most got us into this mess: Bill Clinton.
Clinton’s foreign policy was this- During his 1st term: Do absolutely whatever it takes to not cause trouble and still get me re-elected. 2nd term: Do absolutely whatever it takes to not cause trouble and still make me look good for the history books. Another words, it was totally short-term in the extreme!
Much as Perry and Albright and the rest of his administration kept trying to deny it Clinton’s NK policy was to keep paying them extortion until he was safely out of office. It was a global ‘midnight basketball’ program. Here’s millions of tons of free food and oil, please, please, PLEASE don’t make trouble. And if you still have to try and make nukes just do it out of view of our spy satellites. Which is what they did.
Given this I think it is correct of GWB to make it absolutely clear that the Clinton administration’s policy is dead.
Well, I agree that this is on a definitely different scale than U.S./Soviet relations; the nuclear deterrance element is an X-factor depending on where precisely North Korean technology is. Perhaps I worded my thoughts poorly, but I think the fundamental logic on which MAD rests does indeed come into play if we carefully look at what we call the “Destruction” part of “MAD”.
No, we don’t really risk outright destruction. But if we’re at the point where we establish a certain nuclear capability (AFAIK, there have been no NK atomic tests as yet) then there is a larger potential human cost for any given conflict. Such casualty calculations are, of course, impossible to predict with any degree of accuracy, but I’d maintain that a reasonable likelihood of a nuclear strike on a major American population center should in most cases preclude a preemptive strike. In point of fact, I’d say that at minimum the South Koreans should approve of any potentially provocative action, as they have just as much to lose as anyone in all this.
Clinton’s policy seems to have been incorrect, but at the same time I don’t think pushing NK too hard at this point would be particularly wise, even if they seem to be pressing the issue. If we go to the brink without really wanting war, they just might call our bluff. While we aren’t likely to lose a second Korean War, at minimum the potential over-extension of American forces would be less than ideal. And while the risk may be worth it, that our military should be able to handle it, there are serious issues in Afghanistan and Iraq that also need to be dealt with. We risk spreading ourselves too thin diplomatically and losing whatever gains we’ve thus far achieved.
[sub]Of course, in my opinion, we’re very likely to do that anyway regardless of what happens in NK.[/sub] 