War Drums: North Korea edition

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Trump said as much a couple of months ago, and NK apparently listened and delayed the next test

They didn't listen in the slightest, they merely waited to resume testing to follow the annual US-ROK war games because that's how and when the DPRK escalates.  This is something any expert - or even avid long-term observer - could have easily warned Trump and Tillerson of before the former claimed he thinks Jong-un is "starting to respect us" at that ridiculous Phoenix rally and the latter stated:

Quote

“I am pleased to see that the regime in Pyongyang has certainly demonstrated some level of restraint that we have not seen in the past,”

Both these statements and their timing were incredibly naive and made fools out of the US and its strategic position.  The DPRK's escalation began last Saturday by launching a trio of missiles, then launched the missile over Japan.  The ROK responded with bombing exercises of their own, followed by the US joining in.  Now, this, which North Korea basically hinted at two weeks ago when the US-ROK military exercises began (two days before Trump's statement above, btw):

Quote

Joint US-South Korean military drills are underway Monday despite warnings from North Korea a day earlier that they could lead to a "uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war."

 

[Horza]

26 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It is not a given that North Korea has nuclear-armed short and medium range ballistic missiles (but it is also not a given they do not), but they certainly have conventional and possibly chemical missiles and artillery. That in itself is dangerous and may make Trump feel that he has to act now or lose the freedom of action.

I don't know why the idea of North Korea fitting a successfully tested compact nuclear device into a decades old tried and tested Soviet warhead is a leap of faith for so many.

As for their conventional and chemical artillery, they've had that for several decades longer than they've had nukes, so I don't know what freedom of action Trump had that he's about to lose.
 

Quote

For at least the third time in the last year, I think the next week or so will be very dangerous and the chances of this escalating into a military confrontation will once again start mounting.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 He started this year tweet-brawling with Kim over his "It won't happen!" ICBM, and nine months later, here we are. Also, though things have gotten tense at no point has the US made the kind of big regional manpower and materiel deployments that would accompany serious preparations for strikes, or recalled diplomatic staff, closed embassies, etc.  There was even a glimmer of mutual understanding, when after the Guam threat, the US decided not to deploy strategic assets for the Ulchi-Freedom Guardian exercises, and in return KJU didn't bracket Guam. But then Tillerson and Trump decided to make a big play about how Kim had backed down, when the Guam statement had a lot of other conditions beyond just taking out missile subs, so they then looked like idiots when North Korea fired over Hokkaido at the same time that the US and Japan were doing missile defence drills there.

Who can say what goes on in that soft cheese brain of Trump's, but I think at some level he senses that war with North Korea might be really bad for his hotels or something, and his generals are in all likelihood trying to ram that home every day. I hope it's enough.

[Horza]

Special update, from the soft cheese himself:
 

Quote

 

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States.....

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
..North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!

 

What an age we live in.

So, he still seems to think about North Korea as a bargaining chip in his sad, ungainly dance with China. The idea that NK is an 'embarrassment' to China suggests he still thinks he can bully Xi into putting more pressure on Kim, with the alternative being a military confrontation. He wants those to be the only two options, hence him shitting on Moon's diplomatic overtures. The 'embarrassment' line also works to deflect his own apparent inability to deter Kim.

This is actually bizarrely encouraging because Trump is an incredibly lazy guy, so for as long as he chooses to think of North Korea as a problem that China should solve he won't feel as compelled to take action. There's room for some kind of muddle-through path there if the adults in the region can work together but not if the US won't budge on NK suspending testing as a pre-condition to talks.

[Free Northman Reborn]

It is extraordinairy that it has come to this point, but this is actually a situation where a pre-emptive nuclear strike is a plausible course of action. Take out as much of their offensive capability in an overwhelming early strike as you can, and thereby severely reduce their ability to cause damage in response.

[Larry of the Lawn]

5 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

It is extraordinairy that it has come to this point, but this is actually a situation where a pre-emptive nuclear strike is a plausible course of action. Take out as much of their offensive capability in an overwhelming early strike as you can, and thereby severely reduce their ability to cause damage in response.

Well I'm glad you don't have the nuke codes.  

[Werthead]

Quote

 

I don't know why the idea of North Korea fitting a successfully tested compact nuclear device into a decades old tried and tested Soviet warhead is a leap of faith for so many.

 

Have they successfully tested a compact nuclear device? The consensus I've seen is that the bombs they've tested so far would require a fairly substantial truck to be moved and could not be fitted to a warhead.

Quote

 

It is extraordinairy that it has come to this point, but this is actually a situation where a pre-emptive nuclear strike is a plausible course of action. Take out as much of their offensive capability in an overwhelming early strike as you can, and thereby severely reduce their ability to cause damage in response.

 

Nukes wouldn't really help with that. The North Korean military and their artillery are dispersed over a wide region of the DMZ. The only useful concentration of forces are the nuclear test facilities, and they can be taken out with traditional bunker-busters.

The only plausible military first strike option is the 600+ sortie first strike which tries to hit the artillery and rocket systems ranged on Seoul, the nuclear sites and as much as of the first-response ground units as is feasible, not to mention NK's AA capabilities, all simultaneously. That's a big ask and the chances of a significant retaliatory strike would be high.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Have they successfully tested a compact nuclear device? The consensus I've seen is that the bombs they've tested so far would require a fairly substantial truck to be moved and could not be fitted to a warhead.

Nukes wouldn't really help with that. The North Korean military and their artillery are dispersed over a wide region of the DMZ. The only useful concentration of forces are the nuclear test facilities, and they can be taken out with traditional bunker-busters.

The only plausible military first strike option is the 600+ sortie first strike which tries to hit the artillery and rocket systems ranged on Seoul, the nuclear sites and as much as of the first-response ground units as is feasible, not to mention NK's AA capabilities, all simultaneously. That's a big ask and the chances of a significant retaliatory strike would be high.

I don't believe there is anyway to attack NK without serious casualties in South Korea and probably Japan too.

[Krishtotter]

6 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

It is extraordinairy that it has come to this point, but this is actually a situation where a pre-emptive nuclear strike is a plausible course of action. Take out as much of their offensive capability in an overwhelming early strike as you can, and thereby severely reduce their ability to cause damage in response.

 

That is a high risk gamble with the lives of potentially millions of people - particularly in Japan, Guam and South Korea - and then some. Should it fail in its execution or at least under-perform, there would be absolutely catastrophic consequences for the region. 

There are no easy answers to this crisis, I concede, but I sincerely doubt throwing everything including the kitchen sink at them, in the manner of an all-out pre-emptive strike against their weapons systems, would be feasible or desirable. 

Sanctions, repeated and widespread, have not worked. How about communicating directly with the regime, across a negotiating table, rather than always relying on indirect influence mediated through the Chinese and Russians?

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

7 hours ago, Horza said:

Special update, from the soft cheese himself:
 

What an age we live in.

So, he still seems to think about North Korea as a bargaining chip in his sad, ungainly dance with China. The idea that NK is an 'embarrassment' to China suggests he still thinks he can bully Xi into putting more pressure on Kim, with the alternative being a military confrontation. He wants those to be the only two options, hence him shitting on Moon's diplomatic overtures. The 'embarrassment' line also works to deflect his own apparent inability to deter Kim.

This is actually bizarrely encouraging because Trump is an incredibly lazy guy, so for as long as he chooses to think of North Korea as a problem that China should solve he won't feel as compelled to take action. There's room for some kind of muddle-through path there if the adults in the region can work together but not if the US won't budge on NK suspending testing as a pre-condition to talks.

He (Trump) is being outplayed by a 33 year old cult leader. This is so pathetic. Alienate your most reasonable allies in all of this. That's the way to do it, Donny.

[Werthead]

Quote

 

Sanctions, repeated and widespread, have not worked. How about communicating directly with the regime, across a negotiating table, rather than always relying on indirect influence mediated through the Chinese and Russians?

 

That was tried, for years, until it was realised that the North Koreans simply used the talks to play for time. Detonating their first couple of nukes ended those negotiations.

The question is what do the North Koreans want and what do they want with nuclear weapons? If the answer is to basically be left alone, well, that was happening anyway. The US were generally happy to let North Korea be China's ally and let China deal with them. In this case, backing off and letting the regime collapse internally is a viable solution (as long as the security of the nuclear weapons is maintained). Compared to what it was even in the 1990s, the monolithic block of North Koreans being simple patsies who swallow everything the government tells them has pretty much gone out the window now. There's a widespread black market and increasingly large numbers of North Koreans know that their government is full of utter shit. At some point there'll be a backlash, but we're probably decades away from that point.

If the answer is that the North Koreans want to reunify the Korean Peninsula under their rule, however impractical that is, (North Korea has half the population and about 4% the GDP of the South), and will use the threat of a nuclear strike on Seoul to achieve that, then the argument for a preemptive move by the United States and its allies becomes much stronger.

The fear of the US government (and this was as true under Obama as now) is that by not taking a harsher line now, they embolden the North Korean regime and may even encourage them to take a more expansionist, hostile view later on. And ultimately the United States has to be happy with living with the fact that many of its cities (and, probably in no more than five years, all of them) can be hit with nuclear weapons fired by an unstable, incoherent regime with unclear strategic goals that could shift at any time. At least during the Cold War, and even in terms of the USA's current relationship with both China and Russia, the red lines, stakes and tensions are clear and easily understood. With North Korea, not so much. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

23 minutes ago, Werthead said:

That was tried, for years, until it was realised that the North Koreans simply used the talks to play for time. Detonating their first couple of nukes ended those negotiations.

The question is what do the North Koreans want and what do they want with nuclear weapons? If the answer is to basically be left alone, well, that was happening anyway. The US were generally happy to let North Korea be China's ally and let China deal with them. In this case, backing off and letting the regime collapse internally is a viable solution (as long as the security of the nuclear weapons is maintained). Compared to what it was even in the 1990s, the monolithic block of North Koreans being simple patsies who swallow everything the government tells them has pretty much gone out the window now. There's a widespread black market and increasingly large numbers of North Koreans know that their government is full of utter shit. At some point there'll be a backlash, but we're probably decades away from that point.

If the answer is that the North Koreans want to reunify the Korean Peninsula under their rule, however impractical that is, (North Korea has half the population and about 4% the GDP of the South), and will use the threat of a nuclear strike on Seoul to achieve that, then the argument for a preemptive move by the United States and its allies becomes much stronger.

The fear of the US government (and this was as true under Obama as now) is that by not taking a harsher line now, they embolden the North Korean regime and may even encourage them to take a more expansionist, hostile view later on. And ultimately the United States has to be happy with living with the fact that many of its cities (and, probably in no more than five years, all of them) can be hit with nuclear weapons fired by an unstable, incoherent regime with unclear strategic goals that could shift at any time. At least during the Cold War, and even in terms of the USA's current relationship with both China and Russia, the red lines, stakes and tensions are clear and easily understood. With North Korea, not so much. 

Given what you sketch there, with Korean nuclear missiles aimed at every major US city in a few years time, how can pre-emptive military action not be urgently required? I can only imagine the situation 10 years from now when a future US administration looks helplessly at the North Korean military threat and thinks, "Why did the  decision makers 10 years ago NOT act when it was still possible, to avoid this situation at all costs?"

[Werthead]

53 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Given what you sketch there, with Korean nuclear missiles aimed at every major US city in a few years time, how can pre-emptive military action not be urgently required? I can only imagine the situation 10 years from now when a future US administration looks helplessly at the North Korean military threat and thinks, "Why did the  decision makers 10 years ago NOT act when it was still possible, to avoid this situation at all costs?"

The equation will be if it's better to be sitting in that position in ten years time without having incurred hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths, or if having "resolved" the North Korean problem will be worth the loss of life involved.

Best-case scenario would be a successful preemptive SK/US strike which destroys most of the artillery on the ground before it can fire and knocks out any WMDs before launch, as well as eliminating the two main nuclear sites (that we know of). That's still likely thousands to tens of thousands dead in North Korean civilian and military casualties and potentially hundreds to thousands of South Korean civilian casualties, not to mention potential nuclear contamination from the test sites. You then have a massive destabilisation effect in North Korea proper: either a massive NK conventional attack which the US and SK halts with catastrophic casualty levels (if mostly restricted to the North), and a refugee crisis which may well be unprecedented.

North Korea cannot feed itself and is reliant on external food shipments from China. During the chaos of a conflict, especially if China seals the border to stop millions of North Koreans flooding into their territory, those food shipments stop and people start dying. Between 1 and 2 million North Koreans died during the 1990s famine, which North Korea has never really recovered from, and any kind of conflict could trigger a situation comparable or worse.

This is not to mention the mind-boggling cost of rebuilding NK after any conflict (which could beggar South Korea for generations to come, and inflict serious economic damage on China, Japan and the USA) and the dangers incurred by bringing China and the United States into a possible confrontation over the fate of any post-conflict North Korean state.

When confronted by the combination of all of these factors, the US hesitating before opening that Pandora's box becomes a lot more understandable. The problem, of course, is that by continuing to hesitate the US increases the level or risk and casualties if the only way to resolve the North Korean problem is ultimately through military force, and if so it is better to use that force now rather than later. That ultimately comes down to a value judgement which I don't think anyone can make with absolute certainty.

[ljkeane]

59 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Given what you sketch there, with Korean nuclear missiles aimed at every major US city in a few years time, how can pre-emptive military action not be urgently required? I can only imagine the situation 10 years from now when a future US administration looks helplessly at the North Korean military threat and thinks, "Why did the  decision makers 10 years ago NOT act when it was still possible, to avoid this situation at all costs?"

I'm pretty sure most major US cities have had nuclear missiles aimed at them for 50 or 60 years. I'm sure South Korea and Japan are totally ok with getting half a dozen or so of their cities nuked so you can avoid there being a few more ICBMs aimed at them though.

[Horza]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

Have they successfully tested a compact nuclear device? The consensus I've seen is that the bombs they've tested so far would require a fairly substantial truck to be moved and could not be fitted to a warhead.

Everything I've read about the NK program suggests it recieved intensive assistance from the AQ Khan network in the 1990s, which in all likelihood included acquiring compact designs (Pakistan's first test was a simultaneous detonation of five compact sophisticated devices). This would also account for their first couple of tests being sub-par. It's hard to screw up a simple fission test, but this program looks like it was a race to compact warheads from the start.

I would be really interested in reading this consensus view that believes NK started building warheads from scratch and is still on 40s Fat Man designs. Just off the bat, NK has tested six times now, and none of the original nuclear powers was still on honking big designs by its sixth test. They were all well on their way to compact, thermonuclear designs, and this is despite in most cases starting from the ground up. NK didn't start from scratch and benefits from access to more advanced manufacturing techniques and a wealth of open source nuclear information (it's even a wealthier country than China and India were at the time of their first tests).

[Rippounet]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

And ultimately the United States has to be happy with living with the fact that many of its cities (and, probably in no more than five years, all of them) can be hit with nuclear weapons fired by an unstable, incoherent regime with unclear strategic goals that could shift at any time.

Which is pretty much what most of the world has experienced for about sixty years anyway. What's new?

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

At least during the Cold War, and even in terms of the USA's current relationship with both China and Russia, the red lines, stakes and tensions are clear and easily understood. With North Korea, not so much. 

I think that's really the type of thing you say in hindsight. The history of the Cold War is long and complex, and there were several near-misses. Red lines were established over time, and not infrequently redrawn. It seems possible to say things were "stable" today if you dismiss all the intricate details. Not to mention the numerous what-ifs that history always brings with it.

What Americans find so hateful about the situation today is that they might have to do it all over again, with a country whose GDP is a joke (well, even more of a joke than the USSR's). And yet, that is the very nature of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence. The strength of such deterrence rests on the apparent willingness to use it ; paradoxically, the weaker a country, and the stronger its nuclear deterrence becomes. North Korea thus seems scary today... but it isn't that much scarier than the Soviet Union back in the day, or even the United States at times.

The problem with such weapons is that it's all fine and dandy as long as you're the one with the red button and no real enemy threatening mutually assured destruction. Ultimately the only way to justify the obliteration of countries which may be a threat to stability would be to be willing to do away with them yourself. But as long as none of the nuclear-armed nations seems ready to do that, it's pretty damn hard to blame any other nation to want to be part of the club, however despicable their regime. Thus the world has to hold its breath every once in a while to see what the new member's objectives are, and whether the US will tolerate it... or not. There were alternatives, at times, but opportunities (real or imagined) were dismissed. Perhaps that was the folly: by not trying to get rid of such weapons when there was a chance (however small), the nuclear club effectively signaled other nations that the existence of nuclear weapons itself was tolerable -after all. Until now? That's a truckload of hypocrisy in my book.

4 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Given what you sketch there, with Korean nuclear missiles aimed at every major US city in a few years time, how can pre-emptive military action not be urgently required?

Yeah, but why stop there? Wouldn't "urgent action" be "required" against Iran? Against Russia or China as well? And why not India or Pakistan?
In fact, can you really trust allies like France? What if the UK elects a socialist leader? Heck, even Israel might go crazy some day!
I say the US should nuke half the globe just in case.

[James Arryn]

It's literally like people have zero understanding of the history of nuclear diplomacy. The Soviets/China were more dependable enemies, huh? I guarantee you that's not what was being said at the time. This literally happens every time a new nation gets nukes. 

But, reminder: Trump Playboy interview from years ago, where he complains about the US 'wasting' it's nuclear superiority...you think it's just a coincidence that we have this escalation within months of that guy getting the codes? How do you suppose he'd have handled the Iran situation? 

[DMC]

46 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

It's literally like people have zero understanding of the history of nuclear diplomacy. The Soviets/China were more dependable enemies, huh? I guarantee you that's not what was being said at the time. This literally happens every time a new nation gets nukes. 

Yup.  Khrushchev and Brezhnev were leaders of "irrational and unstable" regimes.  Until they weren't.

[Altherion]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

This is not to mention the mind-boggling cost of rebuilding NK after any conflict (which could beggar South Korea for generations to come, and inflict serious economic damage on China, Japan and the USA) and the dangers incurred by bringing China and the United States into a possible confrontation over the fate of any post-conflict North Korean state.

I don't think rebuilding is that massive an enterprise -- take a look at what was done after WWII. This would be more resource intensive than, say, the reunification of Germany, but not impossible. That said, there does exist another option which was recently mentioned by the US Secretary of Defense:

Quote

"We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so," Mattis said.

 

[James Arryn]

Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

I don't think rebuilding is that massive an enterprise -- take a look at what was done after WWII.

You don't think that was a massive enterprise? Really?