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07/03/2017

More Thoughts on North Korea

The July/August 2017 issue of The Atlantic has an extensive essay on North Korea put together by Mark Bowden.

Following are three brief excerpts....

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms-control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, wrote in Foreign Policy in March:

“North Korea’s military exercises leave little doubt that Pyongyang plans to use large numbers of nuclear weapons against U.S. forces throughout Japan and South Korea to blunt an invasion.  In fact, the word that official North Korean statements use is ‘repel.’  North Korean defectors have claimed that the country’s leaders hope that by inflicting mass casualties and destruction in the early days of a conflict, they can force the United States and South Korea to recoil from their invasion.”

---

Mark Bowden:

“For years North Korea has had extensive batteries of conventional artillery – an estimated 8,000 big guns – just north of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), which is less than 40 miles from Seoul, South Korea’s capital, a metropolitan area of more than 25 million people.  One high-ranking U.S. military officer who commanded forces in the Korean theater, now retired, told me he’d heard estimates that if a grid were laid across Seoul dividing it into three-square-foot blocks, these guns could, within hours, ‘pepper every single one.’  This ability to rain ruin on the city is a potent existential threat to South Korea’s largest population center, its government, and its economic anchor.  Shells could also deliver chemical and biological weapons. Adding nuclear ICBMs to this arsenal would put many more cities in the same position as Seoul.  Nuclear-tipped ICBMs, according to Lewis, are the final piece of a defensive strategy ‘to keep Trump from doing anything regrettable after Kim Jong Un obliterates Seoul and Tokyo.’”

---

So Mark Bowden, after various conversations with the experts, says the U.S. “has four broad strategic options for dealing with North Korea and its burgeoning nuclear program.

“1. Prevention: A crushing U.S. military strike to eliminate Pyongyang’s arsenals of mass destruction, take out its leadership, and destroy its military.  It would end North Korea’s standoff with the United States and South Korea, as well as the Kim dynasty, once and for all.

“2. Turning the screws: A limited conventional military attack – or more likely a continuing series of such attacks – using aerial and naval assets, and possibly including narrowly targeted Special Forces operations. These would have to be punishing enough to significantly damage North Korea’s capability – but small enough to avoid being perceived as the beginning of a preventive strike.  That goal would be to leave Kim Jong Un in power, but force him to abandon his pursuit of nuclear ICBMs.

“3. Decapitation: Removing Kim and his inner circle, most likely by assassination, and replacing the leadership with a more moderate regime willing to open North Korea to the rest of the world.

“4. Acceptance: The hardest pill to swallow – acquiescing to Kim’s developing the weapons he wants, while continuing efforts to contain his ambition.”

But none of these is likely to work, which leaves us with acceptance nonetheless and prayers that in the end Kim is rational.

Hot Spots will return in a few weeks.

Brian Trumbore



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Hot Spots

07/03/2017

More Thoughts on North Korea

The July/August 2017 issue of The Atlantic has an extensive essay on North Korea put together by Mark Bowden.

Following are three brief excerpts....

Jeffrey Lewis, an arms-control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, wrote in Foreign Policy in March:

“North Korea’s military exercises leave little doubt that Pyongyang plans to use large numbers of nuclear weapons against U.S. forces throughout Japan and South Korea to blunt an invasion.  In fact, the word that official North Korean statements use is ‘repel.’  North Korean defectors have claimed that the country’s leaders hope that by inflicting mass casualties and destruction in the early days of a conflict, they can force the United States and South Korea to recoil from their invasion.”

---

Mark Bowden:

“For years North Korea has had extensive batteries of conventional artillery – an estimated 8,000 big guns – just north of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), which is less than 40 miles from Seoul, South Korea’s capital, a metropolitan area of more than 25 million people.  One high-ranking U.S. military officer who commanded forces in the Korean theater, now retired, told me he’d heard estimates that if a grid were laid across Seoul dividing it into three-square-foot blocks, these guns could, within hours, ‘pepper every single one.’  This ability to rain ruin on the city is a potent existential threat to South Korea’s largest population center, its government, and its economic anchor.  Shells could also deliver chemical and biological weapons. Adding nuclear ICBMs to this arsenal would put many more cities in the same position as Seoul.  Nuclear-tipped ICBMs, according to Lewis, are the final piece of a defensive strategy ‘to keep Trump from doing anything regrettable after Kim Jong Un obliterates Seoul and Tokyo.’”

---

So Mark Bowden, after various conversations with the experts, says the U.S. “has four broad strategic options for dealing with North Korea and its burgeoning nuclear program.

“1. Prevention: A crushing U.S. military strike to eliminate Pyongyang’s arsenals of mass destruction, take out its leadership, and destroy its military.  It would end North Korea’s standoff with the United States and South Korea, as well as the Kim dynasty, once and for all.

“2. Turning the screws: A limited conventional military attack – or more likely a continuing series of such attacks – using aerial and naval assets, and possibly including narrowly targeted Special Forces operations. These would have to be punishing enough to significantly damage North Korea’s capability – but small enough to avoid being perceived as the beginning of a preventive strike.  That goal would be to leave Kim Jong Un in power, but force him to abandon his pursuit of nuclear ICBMs.

“3. Decapitation: Removing Kim and his inner circle, most likely by assassination, and replacing the leadership with a more moderate regime willing to open North Korea to the rest of the world.

“4. Acceptance: The hardest pill to swallow – acquiescing to Kim’s developing the weapons he wants, while continuing efforts to contain his ambition.”

But none of these is likely to work, which leaves us with acceptance nonetheless and prayers that in the end Kim is rational.

Hot Spots will return in a few weeks.

Brian Trumbore