Posted on 05/12/2003 3:19:58 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
U.S. sees North Korean leader's fear as asset
Thom Shanker/NYT NYT
Monday, May 12, 2003
WASHINGTON In the face of new evidence that Kim Jong Il, the leader of North Korea, has lived recently in fear of an American attack, Defense Department officials say they are contemplating ways to hold him and his inner circle at risk as a way of bolstering deterrence on the peninsula.
According to intelligence reports, Kim vanished from public view for 50 days beginning just before the war to depose Saddam Hussein, a time when the Pentagon also moved bombers into the Korean area of operations. Now, the military's ability to mount precision attacks on leadership targets in Iraq is being examined to see how it might apply in a tense standoff with North Korea, perhaps influencing North Korea's behavior without ever firing a shot.
A senior Defense Department official said that lessons from the strikes against Saddam, including short-notice air strikes on suspected hideouts in the war's opening and closing days, are shaping discussions of how best to rearrange the U.S. military presence in South Korea and nearby in the Pacific.
The goal would be to lash together in the Korean region the same kind of detailed intelligence on high-priority targets - such as the location of the adversary's leadership - and the ability to strike almost instantaneously with precision weapons should the need arise.
"Truly, if I'm Kim Jong Il, I wake up tomorrow morning and I'm thinking, 'Have the Americans arrayed themselves on the peninsula now, post-Iraq, the way they arrayed themselves in Iraq, rather than the way they were pre-Iraq?' " the senior Defense Department official said.
"And the idea is to make the North Koreans realize that we are arrayed, we are deployed, we are committed in Korea with the types of resources and types of capabilities that we brought to Iraq," he added. "And we think that doing that will make our deterrence there much more credible and much stronger."
No changes in American forces deployed to the region have been decided, the official cautioned, and the process could take two or three years or more.
Advancements in American military technology may even allow increased deterrence with fewer U.S. troops in South Korea, just as America fought this year in Iraq with a smaller force than it used in the Gulf War.
"We are committed to bringing the same improvements in military war-fighting capability to Korea that we brought to Iraq this time," the senior Defense Department official said.
The new South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun, arrived Sunday for his first visit to the United States, at a time when the two nations have been discussing a number of changes in their military relationship, from the structure of the U.S.-South Korean command framework to the proximity of American forces to South Korea's major cities to, perhaps eventually, significant decreases in U.S. forces in South Korea.
In the nearer term, the senior defense official said, potential changes could lead to increased intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems in South Korea or at bases in the region. With these increased surveillance capabilities, "whatever forces we have there are exponentially much more effective, because you can use precision targeting much more aggressively and much more quickly," the official said.
While American intelligence officials concede that it is impossible to know for certain what motivated Kim's retreat into seclusion, a consensus has emerged that it was most likely his fear of just such an attack, said administration, military and intelligence officials.
Kim vanished after welcoming a Russian delegation on Feb. 12, and reappeared only on April 3, choosing a ceremony at a military surgeons' school for his highly symbolic return to public view, according to U.S. intelligence officials. This was a remarkably long absence from public life, especially since state-run North Korean news organizations normally track Kim's activities on a daily basis, intelligence officials said.
"There was widespread speculation, both in South Korea and in the U.S., that Kim Jong Il was very concerned that he might be next," said a senior American intelligence official. "There is a good chance that there was some concern on his side, and he decided to lay low."
Kim's departure from public view coincided with the final stages of the military buildup to war with Iraq.
During that same period, 24 long-range B-1 and B-52 bombers moved from bases in the United States to Guam, within easier striking distance of North Korea, to strengthen American power in the region as large numbers of troops and weapons normally assigned to the Pacific rotated toward Iraq.
Equally significant in that period was the arrival of several F-117 Stealth fighters in South Korea from U.S. bases for a combined military exercise.
Those fighters, which American military officials confirm have remained in South Korea even though the exercise is over, are designed for quick strikes against targets ringed by heavy air defenses. They are the same kind of aircraft that opened the Iraq war by attacking a command bunker in Baghdad on a mission to kill Saddam and his sons. The New York Times
Besides, his anxiety level will go up. More paranoia. According to N. Korean defector Hwang Jang-Yop, that is a good thing.
In light of this, the thought of people like Jimmy Carter or Maddie Albright sitting across the table from the North Koreans becomes really ludicrous and frightening.
That goes for Democrat and Republican regime alike.
And restaff them with NORTH KOREAN DEFECTORS who have come over to the West, have proven their loyalty, and know keenly how the DPRK apparatus and bluff game works. Give them American citizenship, post a senior native-born American on the team who is fluent in Korean and has excellent Asian geopolitical grasp, to serve as the team overseer. Send that crack team up against North Korea and negotiate with them without interpreters, throw ashtrays, walk out, threaten them, spit, kick, punch, curse, go eyeball to eyeball, whatever. Deal with the North Koreans AS Koreans, not as hopeless pansy-ass effiminate State Department boys with Harvard sheepskins on the wall but not a lick of street sense, nor a milligram of Sun-Tzu running through their veins.
NOT doing it this way overseas is what got the naive, green Clinton team, who came from places such as the "Arkansas State Water and Power Department", out-negotiated and in Korean hot water in the first place.
Having said that, of course, the new team in D.C. is considerably better than what was going on with the youngsters under the eight years of Clinton stupidity and appeasement.
Hwang said that he was sure that N. Krorean regime would fall not long after his defection. But he did not consider Kim Dae-Jung becoming a S. Korean president and embark on Sun-Shine policy with abandon. Kim Dae-Jung messed up his plan. Of course, we won't be sure if there is any other personal reason. Who knows ? he may have been wobbly on military-first policy of Kim Jong-Il and fell out of Kim Jung-Il's favor, for all I know.
If he is a jilted lover, he does not sound too bitter about it. His prescription is to pressure N. Korea to introduce serious reforms. He does not even insist on the regime change. One thing which set him apart is that he sees that there is no way Kim Jong-Il will use his nukes. It is all for bluffs to secure conecssions from others. He basically advise us to ignore all N. Korean bluffs, deployment of nukes or not.
Of course, their nukes would unravel NPT in E. Asia and in the world. So America may have real difficulty with taking up his advice and ignoring even deployed nukes.
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