Regards, Ivan
Posted on 08/06/2004 3:06:28 PM PDT by MadIvan
THE DAY that North Korea sends ships or submarines equipped with ballistic missiles into the Pacific, the United States will come within range of nuclear attack by a militaristic dictatorship headed by a ruthless and paranoid near-recluse. That moment, according to research published this week in Jane’s Defence Weekly, is imminent.
Both contenders for the White House must hope that it does not happen before the first Tuesday in November, because neither has a particularly reassuring strategy for dealing with a dramatically altered threat from this singularly awkward quarter. Ever since North Korea was first caught trying to build bombs in 1994, successive Democrat and Republican administrations have been trying to bribe North Korea into relinquishing its nuclear ambitions. They have tried differing methods, with similar lack of success. The Bush Administration has just seen its most serious, detailed aid-for-disarmament proposal to date dismissed by Pyongyang as “a sham”. John Kerry, who believes that a “more sincere” attitude would have North Korea eating out of America’s hand, brings the haplessly credulous Jimmy Carter to mind.
North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is limited — it probably has between one and eight bombs — but its missile technology is impressive. In addition to the Scuds that it sells to nasty customers from the Khyber Pass to the Mediterranean, North Korea has the 1,250-mile Taepodong 1 (flown over Japan in 1998). It could soon test the 5,000-mile Taepodong 2, which could theoretically reach the western United States. It is this missile capacity that makes its nuclear programmes so dangerous.
The two new systems it is reported to have developed resemble, with good reason, the ballistic missiles carried on Cold War-vintage Soviet R27 submarines. A land-based version with a range of 2,500 miles could reach all of East Asia and US military bases in the Pacific; the seaborne model’s range is 1,500 miles. Scant comfort though it is to nearby non-nuclear Japan, missiles launched from land are relatively easy to detect. But sea-launched missiles are another matter; in the vastness of the Pacific, they are the maritime equivalent of stealth weapons.
North Korea has several times gone through the motions of trading in its nuclear weapons programmes for substantial bribes, while clandestinely accelerating their development. Confronted with US evidence in October 2002, the regime admitted to working on uranium enrichment. That activity began in 1997, at a time when North Korea had promised the Clinton Administration to dismantle its plutonium-based programme in return for two free civilian nuclear reactors, quantities of free oil and massive economic aid.
The Bush Administration then tried “more for more”; bigger incentives, modelled on the offers made to post-nuclear Libya, but no upfront payments without a verifiable start on nuclear disarmament. It has also tried hard to unite North Korea’s neighbours, involving China, Russia and Japan, along with South Korea, in six-nation talks. Yet, embarrassingly, if North Korea succeeds in threatening the US directly with these new missile systems, it will be courtesy of technology from Russia and a middleman in Japan.
Russia’s lax supervision of surplus Soviet hardware has long been a headache. It figures prominently in the International Atomic Energy Agency register of black market traffic in nuclear and radioactive material. Pyongyang’s active quest for submarine-based missiles can be traced back to 1992, when the Russians detained scientists from Chelyabinsk, the developers of the R27, as they stepped on a plane to Pyongyang. Some of their colleagues, Jane’s reports, made the journey later.
But it was a military fire sale in 1993 that gave Pyongyang its big break. That was when Russia sold 12 R27 submarines, ostensibly as “scrap metal”, to a Japanese dealer — who then flogged them to the North Korean Navy. Some of them had been equipped to fire ballistic missiles. The missiles and firing systems had been removed, but the vessels retained their launch tubes and stabilisation systems — enough for the production of copycat seagoing ballistic missile systems.
The threat, the Pentagon insists, remains theoretical, because North Korea has no submarines capable of carrying missiles within range of the US. Yet who knows to what uses those Russian “scrap” vessels might have been put? The bottom line for most Western analysts is that, since it would be patently suicidal for North Korea to attack US forces, let alone US territory, it will not happen. Crazy this failed state may be, the logic runs, but not so crazy as to court annihilation.
Yet Pyongyang’s policy is still to “liberate” the South by force, and it has enough missiles trained on Seoul to flatten most of the South Korean capital in minutes. Kim Jong Il may believe that the US would not intervene at the risk of nuclear attack on its territory. This militarised dictatorship, presiding over a horribly malfunctioning state, could take the risk.
Kim Jong Il is an unknown quantity; so is the extent of the authority he wields. Cults of personality can deceive. The Dear Leader has the military always at his shoulder, if not wrapped round his throat. They want the money that nuclear blackmail buys; but even more, they are out to defend the warped “military first” culture that sustains their privileges.
North Korea gets away with nuclear blackmail because the alternative is “too difficult” to contemplate, and because, at bottom, it is thought to be weak enough to be bribed. The outside world’s best strategists have no other strategy for dealing with this threat except the still unthinkable: direct military attack to overwhelm the regime. Perhaps, however, not before it had loosed nuclear missiles on Japan, if not the US itself. It is irrational to rule out the irrational. This regime can survive only in the permafrost of isolation. If its elite came to fear penetration, rationality cannot be assumed.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
What is "Yes?"
Let's have some harder questions, Alex.
Strategy? I always though South Korea would make for a lovely island vacation destination.
I think one good ass kicking out in the pacific will end it.
Ping. We don't need to get tunnel vision.
At least until if and when another democrat becomes President.
Oh, I don't know about that. LA would be one of the first places to go and the democrats couldn't have a big source of cash and propaganda go up in smoke, now could they?
;-)
So9
I take Crazy Little leaders with live journal.com site for 1,000 Alex
Who is Kim Jong 11
Of course Ivan he is crazy enough risk smackdown on his country it is Little Kim we dealing with
L.A. Native
"neither has a particularly reassuring strategy for dealing with a dramatically altered threat from this singularly awkward quarter."
If we have a strategery, I would assume it's classified, so Bush would be constrained from disclosing it. The only thing constraining Kerry is his IQ.
Despite Jimmy (khomeni is a saint) Carter being president at the time, the commander of the task force off of the Iranian coast at the time of the hostage crisis said that if the hostages were harmed "there will be a second sunrise in Tehran."
I like that thinking.
The government installs televisions inside of every household, and the government broadcasts propaganda into every household. This is by law, and the televisions do not have "off" switches, so everyone gets their daily dose of government propaganda.
The average citizen blames American for every little problem. For example, everytime the electricity goes out, the citizens cuss out America for the blackouts.
Their hatred comes from the fact that we bombed the daylights out of them after they invaded South Korea in the 1950s.
The North Korean government must have intended to allows PBS access to show how wonderful North Korea is. North Korea instead came off looking like a whacko country.
Anyone have any opinions on what China would do if we had to take military action against North Korea?
Do the math...
Kerry + N. Korea ÷ by appeasement = Armagedon
What a bunch of BS. We can continue to wring our hands and worry about what "Dear Leader" might do. Or we can just kill the pot bellied pig that sits atop the affront to humanity that is the DPRK and be done with it.
Cheer?
he he
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