International investigators have declared that the S. Korean ship that suddenly sank in March was almost certainly torpedoed by the N. Koreans. The White House said that they backed these conclusions.
“President Lee Myung-bak called an emergency meeting of his National Security Council for Friday. His government has already made clear it has no plans for a retaliatory strike of its own but will be pressing the international community to take action against the reclusive North.”
Is this just more chest thumping by the Koreans, or is there a real chance this could lead to something scarier and more significant?
I think there’s pretty much always a real chance of something scary and significant happening over there. NK has the ability to do massive damage in a short period of time. If they shell Seoul, even an all out effort by all the conventional air power we have in the area isn’t going to knock out the artillery in time.
On the other hand, there’s always the chance that if Kim orders an attack, one of his generals or possibly a Chinese advisor will shoot him in the head. A rational man would realize that such an attack is the beginning of the end of the current government.
If the south really decides to some after the north will the Chinese step up and protect them? Are the North Koreans bad ass enough to repel the South Koreans?
I suspect that SK could take over the country but not without taking massive damage themselves since there’s probably a whole slew of missiles all ready and set to take out chunks of the South, and all they’d get in the end for their effort is a supply of poor, uneducated people to take care of.
In any case, this would be a rational analysis of a rational country, but the PDRK or has committed so many acts that are so nuts, and authorized at the highest level, that we have to assume Lil Kim ordered this.
Why? We cannot know for certain. The boy is just nuts. He lost face a few months ago in an exchange of naval gunfire. But basically he just nutty as a fruitcake and has raisins for eyes.
A renegade submarine commander ordering this attack seems unlikely, particularly since a mini-sub, which has a very limited range and compliment of weapons has been determined to be the likely attacker.
This, taken into the context of all the other North Korean attacks and raids just on land, not even counting the naval skirmishes, paints a clearer picture. Either nearly every company grade and field grade officer has much more authority than they should and can act as renegades (extremely unlikely in a cult of personality dictatorship) or these attacks are ordered from higher up.
When I heard about the explosion, my first thought was that the ROK corvette hit a mine, either one of their own or one of the Nork’s. Evidently bits of torpedo have been found which, along with the explosion site on the ship, pretty conclusively pin it on North Korea. I’d go along with the mini-sub thing, except that I thought the corvette or a sister ship fired on a surface contact for about 15 minutes around or after the time of the explosion. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7079820.eceCite. (Yeah, I know, they were shooting at a flock of birds for 15 minutes…)
Also, target acquisition, engagement and platform egress with a mini-sub seems a whole lot harder than from a MTB. Maybe robby will be by soon to share his thoughts?
I doubt that it actually was a renegade sub commander. I wouldn’t be much surprised if a renegade sub commander is nonetheless found, and (a) executed or (b) handed over to S. Korea.
The south Koreans have already stated as per the bolded quote above, that they want international resolution to this situation.
Had they blamed the norks and sent in their version of navy seals and sank a comparable frigate, that would be different. Dear leader is batshit insane and quite likely to order the final götterdämmerung if something like that were to occur.
Crystal ball gazing, I’d say that South Koreaand China , with American approval will arrange for something proportional to happen.
I don’t see the evidence for Kim being crazy. Egomaniacal and insecure, sure, but not unpredictable. It all makes sense in terms of him wanting to be thought of as a major leader of a major power. Without the military and the nukes and the implicit threat to use them and letting people think he’s crazy, his country would be just another impoverished third-world shithole. With them, he can make the industrialized world jump at his every word and action. He knows that, and so do the others in the NK government.
So, in that light, would this move, if ordered by Pyongyang, make sense as just another chain-yank?
Why do you think he is batshit insane? If he were that unhinged and suicidal he’s had 13 years to do something and he hasn’t. What he’s done instead is determine exactly where the line is that he cannot cross, and tiptoed right up to that line over and over without ever crossing it, with the usual result being that he gets some kind of concessions for backing off. That doesn’t sound like an insane person to me.
I saw a talking head interviewing an expert on N.K. and he said that there are about 300 people in N.K. that really matter. Generals, heads of prominent families, etc… Kim Jung Il must keep all of these people happy to stay in power, and all of these people want different things. What looks like batshit insanity to us is actually a very deft tightrope walk between all of these competing interests. Perhaps he’s been getting a lot of heat from some of the more hawkish generals, and this incident was designed to appease them.
Well, the killing millions of his own citizens due to starvation and ‘other’ would be my guess wrt the whole ‘batshit insane’ thingy. The thing is, there are many manifestations of insanity, only some of which concern suicidal tendencies. I’m no expert, mind, but I think that a good case could be made that lil’ Kimmy is certifiable.
No, I don’t think so. The NK’s really did seem to sink that ship and kill all those crew members. That’s some fairly serious shit…it’s not chest thumpin’ when you get to the actually killing part. The situation could easily spin out of control, since I doubt the SK’s are really amused by having one of their ships sunk (plus it wasn’t as if the international community, including the US, leaped to their defense when they made this claim initially), and, as noted earlier, lil’ Kimmy and his merry men are, well, batshit crazy.
North Korea is what happens when cult leaders gain access to the corridors of power.
Kim Jong Il and his Deitific Dad rule as Gods among the people. They are said to have the power of controlling the weather, and are the focus of almost all art and culture in that country. The whole country is batshit insane. The kind of insanity driven into you by poverty, hunger, and the constant terror of living in that hellhole. Allowing North Korea to obtain nuclear weapons was the dumbest thing this planet has managed in a long time.
We make a serious mistake when we assume that the North Korean government shares our motives and rules of logic. We can’t begin to understand what kind of pressures build up in a regime trying to maintain that bullshit cult of personality in the face of poverty and stagnation. What does Kim Jong iL have to do to maintain his grip on power? Does he need a war? Does he need to push his weight around to show his people he’s in charge? Are there factions within that government struggling for power now that Dear Leader is ill, and this saber rattling is internal one-upsmanship?
Don’t assume you understand the enemy’s motives. Be prepared for the possibility that you’re wrong. The stakes are too high here to just hope for the best.
It seems pretty clear to me that any country in the world that really wants a nuclear weapon can build one. The principles are not secret, the raw materials are not common but aren’t impossible. Any country that has an industrial base somewhere in the neighborhood of 1940s America can fairly easily duplicate what America did in the 1940s. And besides, it’s not even clear that North Korea even has a functional nuclear weapon, or if the “test” they did last year was really a nuclear test. But even if they’re bluffing, it’s pretty clear that even a desperately poor country like North Korea can build a nuclear weapon if they don’t give a shit about the consequences.
So we try to prevent this by sanctions and so on. Except a country like North Korea is already almost completely isolated. How are sanctions against a country going to work if you already have no trade with them?
The only options are waiting for the regime to implode, or to start the bombing. Except the South Koreans aren’t anxious for the regime to implode, because nobody knows what the consequences of that would be, but the minimum would be mass starvation in the North. And that’s the same reason a military solution is off the table. Yes, South Korea and the US would win, except Seoul, a city of 20 million people, is within artillery range of North Korea. Raining artillery shells onto a city-sized target is a pretty easy task.
It’s simple to talk about how we should be tougher on North Korea, except it’s useless to talk about “getting tough” without specifying exactly what that means, and what the consequences of those actions are likely to be.