Posted on 10/17/2002 6:36:10 PM PDT by Dog Gone
I've been saying it for years, and I've been saying it here at FR recently - North Korea is by far the most dangerous nation in the world right now. We won't be able to deal with them the way we have dealt with Iraq in the early 90s, and have been talking about dealing with them for the last several months. DPRK is a whole different game.
Then, BTW, there are the other troublesome nations: Libya (yes, Qadaffi is still in charge, and he's still unpredictable, and he still hates America), Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Sudan, Cuba (they still try to export the "Revolution"), China, and even Russia is disturbingly unreliable. On top of this, terrorists are numerous and everywhere. We have supported and strengthened them in Kosovo. Things are far from over (in fact never will be over) in Afghanistan. Haiti is still being Haiti.
Before we occupy any other countries, I think we need to think about pulling out of a couple. The only other alternative is to build up such a massive military that everyone in the United States is required to serve a year or two at a certain age. Can we afford that, in terms of economics or liberty? Would such a military be reliable? Would such a military be American? Will we really reduce the threat of terrorism by occupying more countries in the Middle East?
I believe we are slowly committing suicide, nationally. Theoretically, I wouldn't mind if we took over the world's oil supply, because in a lot of cases we have a strong case that the oil is ours, and does not belong to a bunch of backwards, cruel, Satan-worshipping camel jockeys who only frustrated our efforts to find it and tap it. But I'm concerned about what is best for us, in terms of the combination of security and liberty. I think our policies are minimizing both, instead of optimizing that combination.
One more thing: I don't trust anything anyone appointed or advanced by Bill Clinton says about anything (Tenet, and yes, Mueller).
And what has this woman been studying the last four decades??? North Korea, yield to international pressure, all of a sudden?
And why do supposedly trained journalists write the word we're as "were?"
Now, where did we put those plans for the peacekeeper missile, looks like its time to replace the MMIII's with nice shiny new Peacekeeper II,s? Looks like the ABM program is spot on. Some much for the dummycrats whining about the cost. Hey tommy and friends, the ABM stuff not for sadam, its for kim.
As for the danger of NK, I quite agree that it is a evil regime and I have been in favor of doing something about it for a long time. Certainly back to Clinton's capitulation and tribute-paying arrangement from the early 90s.
As for the idea that we are overextended in empire not republic terms and all of that, to me it does not sit particularly well with the realistic assessment of NK that you obviously "get". NK being a dangerous mess is not a reason to sit back and prepare to be nuked, it is a reason to clean up said mess. Such problems counsel forward engagement not isolation.
Are we as a country awake to everything such forward engagement is likely to entail, as a policy? No, there I quite agree with you. Or rather, only a minority here is. Will it require a giant conscript military? No, military technique has moved on and the giant conscript armies of the first half of the 20th century are no longer the decisive form of military power. They will not be needed to deal with the threats from the periphery. Is our current professional military living off of capital and understaffed? Yes. Because we dramatically reduced its funding over the last decade while simultaneously increasing its mission commitments, as we planned for post cold war peace and tranquility but post war disorder and chaos appeared instead.
How much are we talking here? Everyone serving in the military? No. Giant portions of the economy spent on defense? Not unless 5-6% is giant. We are spending a lower portion of our economy on defense than at any time since Pearl Harbor, 3.5%. Actually, it hit 3% before 9-11 and even the pro-military Bush administration did not plan to significantly increase defense funding, until 9-11.
A serious buildup, in terms of what it would deliver in the way of capability to deal with these sorts of threats, would be perfectly feasible as 0.5% of GDP increases per year over one presidential term. The idea that we can't possibly afford such a thing is to me obviously silly - it is a matter of 1/6th of average economic growth for a short period of time being put to that purpose instead of others. We haven't made such a decision, but it is fully within our capabilities if we do so.
Next there is the issue of what pressure can do to North Korea. I think it can do quite a lot, a lot more than you seem to imagine. You think it is ridiculous because it is such an intransigent and evil regime and has resisted outside civilizing influences for decades - which is certainly true. It is also true that the policy that has been applied to them is consistent appeasement and coddling, along with as low a profile as possible. Partly in deferrence to South Korean wishes in the matter, partly to sooth Japanese fears, partly because of Chinese or Russian interference and support, largely because no one in this country wanted to refight the Korean war.
But the craziness of the regime is a weakness, not a strength, if a far more active form of pressure is applied. That craziness makes it singularly unattractive to its citizens and would-be supporters, and change (in the obvious nationalist form of future unification with the richer south) potentially inviting. And it also should allow the formation of an international consensus against them, one that even China would be unwilling to "buck".
What could be do with a more active policy agreed on by all of those countries? Plenty. We could confront the NKs not once in a blue moon but daily. We could flood propaganda into the country aggressively. We could take all defectors instead of shoveling those who cross the Chinese border back to famine and repression. We could cut off all forms of aid, and reduce the country to a desert within a few years - but won't, out of humanitarian concern for the populace. Instead we could let in food only. We could insist on inspectors and aid workers accompanying that food to distribute it, and dare the NKs to shoot them instead. We can offer large financial rewards to defectors, along with sanctuary, and promise even more for anyone who successfully changes the regime by any means, iron or poison. We can prowl off their coast line daily with warships they cannot hope to confront without immediate destruction, instead of backing away from every gunboat to avoid "incidents". We can overfly the country, spray leaflets, air drop food parcels randomly. If desired, we can support rebels within the country or insert our own or South Korean special operations teams.
We don't do such things now because our policy has been appeasement, aka try not to make the lunatics mad. An aggressive confrontational policy would instead dare them to go to war, defy them constantly, get in their face, shove levers between their rulers and their populace, and generally make their rulers' lives hell. While promising their rank and file the moon if they desert or surrender or stage a coup if ordered to march against the south, and promising them swift violent death if they instead obey any such orders. NK would not be able to withstand such pressure by merely being intransigent and evil. They might risk an attack on the south and a general military confrontation - or they might not. But they would not be able to just sit there and take it for long.
Obviously, all of the above are things we can choose to use or not. We can choose the timing, when we are particularly ready to stop appeasing and start harassing and after preparation with allies, etc. NK is not a powerful state in the grand scheme of things. Dangerous yes, but able to withstand the combined multifaceted power of the US, Japan, South Korea without superpower support of their own - not remotely.
I am sympathetic to your overall sense that the US is getting pulled into many overseas commitments and does not seem to be awake to what that will involve. I disagree with you about avoiding that burden - I don't think we really can. But you are right that it is more serious than many here understand, or than our current defense budget is prepared for in the long run, and that it ought to be faced realistically, with open eyes about how large a task it all really is. Some will undoubtedly recoil from the size of the task when they see it, and agree with you on the subject. I'm not one of those. I agree it is bigger than many respect, and think that means we should get serious about it, not run away from it.
For what it is worth...
First, I think I did unfairly categorize Rumsfield's remarks as surprise.
Second, when we talk about North Korea, China is the biggest problem. They will always be a problem in our dealings with North Korea (or the Middle East, for that matter) because they truly are our rivals, in every way.
Third, my understanding of North Korea, based on reading and a friend who is in China trying to relieve the starvation and spiritual condition of North Koreans, is that the brainwashing is so thorough that even defectors are intensely patriotic toward the regime (as crazy as that sounds). They actually have come to worship their leaders, and being converted out of that religion is very difficult. They are deeply conditioned to see all truth as lies. Their isolation and constant propaganda, and details about their culture which have made this conditioning so effective, has made the population of North Korea perhaps the most brainwashed in history. I don't believe this is the case so much with Hussein, Qaddaffi, and the ME despots. I believe a rebellion, or resistance, inside NK is completely impossible. Perhaps rigorous efforts in propaganda (for the truth, of course) is the most important action we could take now. But that will be a tough, uphill battle. Of course, the existence of South Korea makes this a more hopeful effort.
Finally, I don't think our demise as a nation, if God does not mercfully avert it, will come from the outside anyway. I think it is already happening on the inside.
Thousands of Islamic potential terrorists are already living amongst us.
Half the country can defend the snuffing out of life in the womb (even when just the head is legalistially still in the womb), and half the voters strongly support one of the most criminal enterprises in the world today - the Democratic Party. They know they're criminals, and deep down that's why they support them. The Republican Party is becoming more and more like them, and seem to be urged by their base and leadership to go that direction.
I LOVE Mexicans, and have made friends with many, but they are overtaking our culture, and do not have the historical foundation and understanding and committment to liberty that has built this nation. They have much to contribute to American culture, but if the immigration is not controlled, and they are encouraged to not assimilate, it furthers America's cultural decline, and does nothing in the long run to help the Mexicans.
If these trends in insanity, disunity, and cultural degradation continue, America cannot stand. The inevitable results will be either a chaotic civil war (with who knows what final outcome), or a brutal police state. Either one of those outcomes means the end of America. If we become a police state, we are n longer America, but a sad, nightmarish land that used to be where America was. The reason I say all this is to say that our foreign policy is a mess, but that it is only one factor in the demise of our country, just as it was with the Roman Empire.
We can only do what we can to turn things around. May God have mercy and make our efforts fruitful. Good "talking" with you.
It is not in China's interests for Japan to rearm, and in particular to deploy an independent nuclear deterrent. But NK nukes and missles strongly push Japan toward taking that step. Which they have all the technical means for, incidentally. China has in the past discouraged nukes for NK largely because of this - also because they do not want a less than predictable client to have its own "key" (any more than Kruschev wanted to leave a launch decision to Castro, who incidentally would have).
China does not want NK to have its own nukes, and threaten Japan, and prompt Japanese re-armament, or threaten to drag China into a war at a time and place not of China's choosing. China would have problems with a unified Korea. But nothing like the problems it would have with a nuclear Japan. So on this issue, NK is more isolated than on any other.
As for the level of propaganda and brainwashing, I know NK is a deified state. But I notice that such things have fallen apart rather more easily than often predicted, when defeat punctured the illusion of invincibility around the ruler. I agree there is no prospect of a popular uprising in NK on their own. Palace coups are, however, always possible in tyrannies, especially when defeat in foreign war threatens if a given tyrant's course is maintained. We have not been putting much pressure on, or sending in much truthful propaganda - as you say, that is probably the first order of business if we choose to stop appeasing and start confronting the NK regime. I for one think we should - think we should have quite some time ago, in fact.
As for the general declinism and cultural rot stuff, I am not so pessimistic as you, but I agree about a number of the problems you mention. To me, though, "declinism" is itself a "foreign import" and symptom - I might even say a pagan idea. Chesterton speaking of the vitality of the west says somewhere that it has died many times, but that Christian things have this uncanny way of not staying dead. It is a good line lol. His point more simply stated is that we have come through much bleaker passages before, many times.
By the evidence of mere history, sure one would expect the present drift of things to lead toward a more centralized US state, combined with a professional military involved in holding actions across the world. That need not be any violently repressive tyranny, but there is certainly a danger in that direction (a more likely one than civil war, incidentally - the US left does not have it in its belly, as presently constituted anyway). The age of the Antonines was not the reign of Caligula. Also, by any objective measure, the sins of late Rome were far beyond anything that ails us yet.
But I am not even that pessimistic. I do believe in American exceptionalism, whether one sees it on something like Chesterton's basis or simply on a "whig" one, Madison's "trial" of whether mankind is capable of self-government, or Lincoln's "last best hope". We may confound the pessimistic historians and combine republicanism - of perhaps only attenuated virtue, to be sure - with a relatively soft world dominance and a measure of sophisticated rottenness.
In the end, though, it is not a matter of fortune telling, but a matter of action by us.
"I tell you naught for your comfort
Yea, naught for your desire
Save that the sky grows darker yet
and the sea rises higher"
GK Chesterton, the Ballad of the White Horse
http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/white-horse2.html
Officials said the administration is talking with allies about shutting down a program under which the United States provides North Korea with 500,000 tons of heating oil annually.
COMMISSION TO ASSESS THE BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES
--- Snip ---
a. North KoreaCommission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United StatesThere is evidence that North Korea is working hard on the Taepo Dong 2 (TD-2) ballistic missile. The status of the system's development cannot be determined precisely. Nevertheless, the ballistic missile test infrastructure in North Korea is well developed. Once the system is assessed to be ready, a test flight could be conducted within six months of a decision to do so. If North Korea judged the test to be a success, the TD-2 could be deployed rapidly. It is unlikely the U.S. would know of such a decision much before the missile was launched. This missile could reach major cities and military bases in Alaska and the smaller, westernmost islands in the Hawaiian chain. Light-weight variations of the TD-2 could fly as far as 10,000 km, placing at risk western U.S. territory in an arc extending northwest from Phoenix, Arizona, to Madison, Wisconsin. These variants of the TD-2 would require additional time to develop and would likely require an additional flight test.
North Korea has developed and deployed the No Dong, a medium-range ballistic missile 3 (MRBM) using a scaled-up Scud engine, which is capable of flying 1,300 km. With this missile, North Korea can threaten Japan, South Korea and U.S. bases in the vicinity of North Korea. North Korea has reportedly tested the No Dong only once, in 1993. The Commission judges that the No Dong was operationally deployed long before the U.S. Government recognized that fact. There is ample evidence that North Korea has created a sizable missile production infrastructure, and therefore it is highly likely that considerable numbers of No Dongs have been produced.
In light of the considerable difficulties the Intelligence Community encountered in assessing the pace and scope of the No Dong missile program, the U.S. may have very little warning prior to the deployment of the Taepo Dong 2.
North Korea maintains an active WMD program, including a nuclear weapon program. It is known that North Korea diverted material in the late 1980s for at least one or possibly two weapons. North Korea's ongoing nuclear program activity raises the possibility that it could produce additional nuclear weapons. North Korea also possesses biological weapons production and dispensing technology, including the capability to deploy chemical or biological warheads on missiles.
North Korea also poses a major threat to American interests, and potentially to the United States itself, because it is a major proliferator of the ballistic missile capabilities it possesses--missiles, technology, technicians, transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) and underground facility expertise--to other countries of missile proliferation concern. These countries include Iran, Pakistan and others.
Talk about enablers. Always they appeared extraordinarily unsatisfied with America's status as a superpower sovereign nation inhabited by a free people governed by our Constitution, with the world's greatest industrial capitalistic opportunity and economy.
Perhaps they thought to remedy this imbalance by working to level the playing field.
Unfortunately, that is a true statement. They made that statement several times, however the press never made a big deal out of it.
I'll nominate this for the quote of the century.
Agreed, we have not fought with this mentallity since WWII.
While the Clintons did all that they could do to denigrate, demean, and diminish America's superpower status the press spent more time impressed and marveling at how Clinton got away with all of his scandals.
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