Krauthammer: The Japan Card

Washington Post ^ | 01/03/03 | Charles Krauthammer

[Pokey78]

When the secretary of state goes on five Sunday morning talk shows to deny that something is a crisis, it is a crisis. The administration has been playing down the gravity of North Korea's nuclear breakout, and for good reason. For now, there is little the administration can do. No point, therefore, in advertising our helplessness.

But there is no overestimating the seriousness of the problem. If we did not have so many of our military assets tied up in the Persian Gulf, we would today have carriers off the coast of Korea and be mobilizing reinforcements for our garrison there.

North Korea is about to go from a rogue state that may have one or two nuclear bombs hidden somewhere to one that is in the nuclear manufacturing business. And North Korea sells everything it gets its hands on.

[Pokey78]

Pinging the Kraut list.

[MissAmericanPie]

It is very simple, do what Israel did to Iraq, send a bomber and destroy their plutonium reprocessing plant, then deny any involvment in the event.

It must be done now, tomorrow, before they fire up that plant. If we wait until they do fire it up and then bomb it, plutonium will be scattered far and wide, contaminating the local environment for 30,000 years.

This is the time for a leader with brass to gut up and do what needs doing instantly. Events are moving far too fast for faltering, second guessing, hindsight, diplomacy, or the stupid international opinion, U.N. mandates, or committee meetings.

[canuck_conservative]

If you don't want to register with the Post, you can read the article here:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/charleskrauthammer/ck20030103.shtml

China's fingerprints are all over the Korean mess.

[Brett66]

Endorsing Japans development of a nuclear arsenal, it could work, but we're going to have to get our carriers over there as soon as we're done in Iraq- if it's not too late.

[holdonnow]

This is excellent. Sean Hannity suggested the same thing on his show today.

[Timesink]

The problem is that we have few cards to play. Militarily we are not even in position to bluff. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was duty-bound to affirm America's capacity to fight two wars at once. Unfortunately, that capacity went by the boards at least a decade ago, and the North Koreans know it. It is precisely because they know it that they are using this window of opportunity, this moment of Iraqi distraction, to brazenly go nuclear.

Of course, all this means is that if the NKs try anything while we're dealing with Iraq, they will probably get a nuclear response.

I agree with Krauthammer. Give Japan the bomb. Lots of them, in fact. And do it now.

[Bobibutu]

I want you on my side in a street fight,,,

B

[The Great Satan]

If our nightmare is a nuclear North Korea, China's is a nuclear Japan. It's time to share the nightmares.

Bump for the 'Hammer.

[MonroeDNA]

He's wrong on this one.

NK is doing what it does to all US Presidents: blackmail at the first opportunity.

This time they will fail.

So far, I've never seen the Bush administration go back on thier word, and they won't this time.

Iraq will be gone in two months, and the NK tribe will fall shortly after that, because we will cut off their food.

We won't do it now, but time is on our side.

We will liberate Iraq, Iran will do it themselves, the Saudis will have a coupe, and go fundamentalist on us, we will drill ANWR, and NK will implode on thier own.

Dodd will go, and we'll once again have a latin american policy that quickly dispatches the marxists down there.

My predictions for '03.

[wretchard]

"But there is no overestimating the seriousness of the problem. If we did not have so many of our military assets tied up in the Persian Gulf, we would today have carriers off the coast of Korea and be mobilizing reinforcements for our garrison there."

There would be no point sending carriers to the coast of North Korea. The US deployments on the Korean peninsula are designed to protect South Korean not to invade a North. That's why 2nd Infantry is stuck in a glorified Maginot line a short distance form the DMZ, right under the muzzles of thousands of artillery tubes. There is no offensive option in Korea; hasn't been since Macarthur was dismissed by Truman.

The true shield of North Korea is that possibility that China might come in on their side if the US goes north of the DMZ. That's why the US hasn't seriously developed an offensive option.

Defensively, there's no danger that South Korea will be overrun by the Nokors. Seoul alone, even if half-heartedly defended, would be an insuperable obstacle to the Nokors -- and the South Korean Army is much more capable than the antique and half-starved North Korean force.

Krauthammer correctly says that a nuclear armed North Korea means a nuclear armed Japan. But so what? The destruction of Pyongyang for Tokyo is hardly a fair trade in a nuclear exchange. And since Kim needs money, he'll probably sell any spare nukes anyway, a problem that playing the Japan card doesn't solve.

Unfortunately, the only way to deal with the Nokors is to tear up the old "defense only" strategy; to redeploy the US forces away from their insane positions; and to undertake an immediate campaign to destroy Kim Jong Il's regime by subversion. That won't solve everything, but it's a start.

[Crossbow Eel]

"Endorsing Japans development of a nuclear arsenal, it could work, but we're going to have to get our carriers over there as soon as we're done in Iraq- if it's not too late. "

The south pacific isn't quite like Iraq because we have over 1000 planes within a days flight to get there and many bases to base them. We have the 7th fleet hundred of miles away plus a few more carrier groups a week out. We also have thousands and thousands of bombs in the area and resupply is already forword based. We have several hundred tactical nukes already in country. We've been ready for a Korean war for many years people so think it through.

BTW for the loose lips crew this isn't anything secret the anyone over there so I say Chuck missfired on this one a bit!

[optimistically_conservative]

Even more ominously, Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reports that the Chinese have just shipped 20 tons of highly specialized chemicals used in extracting plutonium from spent reactor fuel.

What to do when your hand is so poor? Play the trump. We do have one, but we dare not speak its name: a nuclear Japan. Japan cannot long tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea. Having once lobbed a missile over Japan, North Korea could easily hit any city in Japan with a nuclear-tipped weapon. Japan does not want to live under that threat.

We should go to the Chinese and tell them plainly that if they do not join us in squeezing North Korea and thus stopping its march to go nuclear, we will endorse any Japanese attempt to create a nuclear deterrent of its own. Even better, we would sympathetically regard any request by Japan to acquire American nuclear missiles as an immediate and interim deterrent. If our nightmare is a nuclear North Korea, China's is a nuclear Japan. It's time to share the nightmares.

The US unilaterally removed their nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991.*

Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it?

[Crossbow Eel]

" Iraq will be gone in two months, and the NK tribe will fall shortly after that, because we will cut off their food"

Add in the fact that their window for war with the south ends in a few weeks - WHY you ask?

The ground is frozen now on the DMZ and will be a huge mud pit the end of next month.

Why does this matter? Because if they didn't take Seoul within a few days it would be a total turkey shoot for us !

[canuck_conservative]

I'd love for NK to get a healthy dose of their own poison (i.e., nuclear threats from a neighboring country), but giving away nuclear bombs is a pretty risky move, no matter what country you give them to.

[Elkiejg]

Just the other day, a retired Navy brass told me that a simple solution to the Korean mess would be to put 25,000 Japanese in military uniforms in place on the north-south border. There would be no more problems with either north or south Korea. Seems we don't know the half of what the Japanese did to the Koreans. He claims they are petrified of them. I wonder tho' - he's of the WWII era. Are we so sure the younger Korean generation still have that same fear.

[PhilDragoo]

Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, The Coming Conflict With China, Vintage, 1997, suggest we cannot successfully counter China without Japan.

We should be doing all possible to strengthen our alliance with Japan, and improve its defense capabilities.

This would be a natural outgrowth of North Korea's 1998 Taepodong flight over Japan.

China and North Korea are "as lips and teeth", and South Korea is too weak and stupid to be strong.

A strong countervailing force in the form of a certain Japanese retaliation would give even the insane Kim Jong Il pause.

Who can doubt that Beijing looks to Pyongyang for a deniable strike on the U.S. forces at an opportune time?

Gore's visit to China was perhaps a pathetic attempt at fundraising, but would not traitor-rapist42 or the Butch of Buchenvald encourage such a nuclear attack to insure their 2004 victory?

China's number one strategic goal is U.S. out of Asia.

[Wallace T.]

What Krauthammer advocates is sensible. Japan's industrial and human capital, even after over a decade of recession, would easily enable that nation to assume the position of a leading military power. China's increasing industrial and technological prowess makes that nation the dominant power in East Asia. It is not unreasonable to assume that China may one day challenge the United States as a superpower. The United States cannot, at least now, project enough military force in any Far Eastern theater without depriving another area of the world. Additionally, our hemisphere is less than secure, even forgetting for a moment our border problems. Marxist regimes now rule in Venesuela and Brazil, as well as Cuba. Argentina and Columbia are less than stable.

It is past time we strongly encourage the Japanese to reassume her role as a major military power.

[Republic of Texas]

This guy knows his stuff.

[Republic of Texas]

As long as they have an open border with China, we cannot starve them out.