Are we ready for another war?
One of the reasons the Iraq War is such a dismaying conflict is that it has left us unprepared — emotionally and culturally, if not in practical terms — for a war of actual necessity.
Last week, North Korea shelled an island owned by one of our allies, South Korea, killing civilians without provocation. In the same week, a scientist was given a surprise tour of an elaborate new North Korean nuclear facility.
No one — not the most dovish American — has any doubts that Kim Jong-Il, the dictator of North Korea, is a megalomaniacal sociopath.
His treatment of his own people makes the Sudan and Iraq look like amateur-hour. Imagine if Cambodia’s Pol Pot had managed to secure permanent power and you have some idea of just how wretched this man is.
And he’s developing a sizable nuclear arsenal. Super.
If you’re like me, the prospect of taking on another power-mad lunatic, putting our young men and women in harm’s way, is about as appetizing as chewing glass.
And most non-partisan experts on the conflict say military brinksmanship here is not a viable option. This from the New York Times.
“Anyone would conclude that the peaceful approach is best to reverse the situation,” said Moon Jung-in, a politics professor at Yonsei University in Seoul and a former adviser in the Roh administration. “A hard-line approach is not a real option.”
But while South Koreans and the vast majority of Americans (myself included) prefer to back away from the nightmare of another full-scale war on the peninsula, North Korea may have a very different agenda.
Last March, North Korea sank a South Korean warship. As Kim Jong-Il’s Mad-Hatter Stalinist society slouches into another brutal, starvation-wracked winter, the potential for irrational behavior will only grow.
We’ve learned how horrific a single suicide bomber can be.
What if that suicide bomber were governing an entire country, with a sizable, nuclear-armed military?
Tags: military
This time around I would be looking toward equal commitments from Japan and of course South Korea. We are not fighting a global cold war right now; this is a regional conflict and we need to support our allies in this area, but support is different from leading.
North Korea is testing the resolve of this president.
If Obama responds with weakness, North Korea will become more emboldened.
Its show time for this president.
Sure am glad ol Slick Willie sold all those defense secrets to China. No doubt N Korea benefited too. But he did get an assurance of an end to their nuclear pursuits….oh wait, that didn’t work out so good. Well, never mind, he was still a wonderful, effective President.
We could send Jimmy Carter over to try and solve it.
Okay, seriously, Mervel is right and so is JDM. SK/Japan need to step forward and lead here and China could certainly help out if they cared to. And JDM’s assessment that The King needs to show some backbone is right too. NK has been employing this scheme for decades to get what they want. I don’t see it stopping any time soon unless someone stands up to them.
I wouldn’t play the cards up my sleeve with North Korea.
I would not go to war with North Korea but I would take out Pyongyang if they were to try anything and be done with their nonsense.
Quick dispatch from the real world: Japan doesn’t really have any military. We made sure of that after WWII. China is the best hope to squash this.
Japan has a self defense force of about 1/4 million people. They have another nearly 50 million people fit for military service. What’s more important in my view is that Japan could certainly step up and lead with SK to determine if diplomacy will have any hope of working. If not, then Japan would need to make the decision on just hat they should do, if anything, in the military line. There was talk a few months back of Japan taking a more active military role in the area, but I don’t know what became of it.
My personal experience in Japan leads me to believe the Japanese have decidedly mixed feelings about any military action whatsoever. They, as a group at that time, had spent 50 + years trying to live down the atrocities of WW2, their Chinese expeditions and occupation, the Burma Theater, etc. However, if NK threatens nuclear action they will defend themselves.
Military action, is really not an option here. Of any player, the Chinese have the best chance of keeping a leash on this regime. The instant the first missile, shell or bomb lands in North Korea, Seoul will cease to exist. Recent estimates put SOuth Korean casualties of North Korea’s initial response, in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps as high one million people. Keep in mind, North Korea has been getting prepared for 60 years. They have literally starved whole generations of their population to finance their war machine. The best hope is that the Chinese, who as a rule don’t like confrontation or a mess in their own front yard and being North Korea’s greatest benefactor, has the best chance to keep this whole incident from escalating. So long as North Korea exists, nothing is going to stop them form playing this game of chicken that they play. Defying and kicking the US in the shins is how they maintain their credibility. It’s precisely this apocalyptic narrative that gives them their sole reason to survive. It’s how they differentiate themselves from South Korea. Without this differentiation, they have no reason to exist.
Dealing with NK is a choice of least worst options. It is virtually certain that open conflict would result in hundreds of thousands of SK lives and the devastation of their economy, and may or may not eliminate the NK nuclear threat. It would also surely result in substantial casualties among US service personnel. If past is prologue, continuing down the road of negotiation and incentives to have NK behave in a civilized manner is likely to get the same result we’ve seen the last 10 or so years. The third option is to rely on the ability of the sane interested parties to persuade the Chinese to exert meaningful pressure on NK. Even then, the same erratic militaristic ruling class would remain in power. So, there it is. Take your choice.
As an aside, Japanese involvement presents some interesting challenges. The history of Japanese/Korean relations makes the Japanese a very unattractive partner to SK. I’m not sure what kind of overt military role Japan could play in the event of an open conflict anyway, but it would require winning over both Japanese and SK popular support — certainly not a slam dunk.
It is a cruel and expensive joke for the US to maintain its nuclear weapons if there is no circumstance we would use them.
We used a preemptive strike against Iraq because we were worried they had weapons of mass destruction which they did not.
We know North Korea has weapons of mass destruction but we pussy foot around these idiots.
We should strike North Korea with nuclear weapons at their slightest provocation.
Some think that North Korea’s latest action may actually be a way for China to tell the US to stand down on our high pressure conversations (rhetoric) about China’s fiscal policies…that the two Koreas are the front line in a low level proxy war between the two superpowers. Hmmmmm.
Yeah combine that with the recent Chinese weapons launch of our coast and you may have a point. I noticed today that China was subtly condemning our joint military exercise with South Korea.
There may be much more here than meets the eye.
Right now Japan probably could not play an overt military role in that as stated above they don’t have a strong military. They need to get one and they need to start fast. A Japanese military buildup would keep China and N Korea off balance. The world needs to realize that we are not always going to be around to take care of them against the crazies.
The fact is outside of massive bombing or a nuclear response we probably could not defend South Korea from an invasion right now.
I don’t know that Japan would rebuild it’s military. They have a real aversion to the idea from what I’ve seen. But, they certainly could play a much more active role in the area diplomatically. Of course diplomacy only works with reasonable, sane people. That lets NK out.
I don’t see China as any threat to us if we just take North Korea out. They need our money too much to do much of anything. They might even quietly thank us.
Pretty sure North Korea = China in the different names of one country, or a military branch & a lapdog.
I think there may be an illusion that we have the ability to protect Japan or South Korea without Nuclear weapons and I don’t believe that we do have that ability.
So, in the end, what’s to be done? Give in every time NK rattles is saber? If it works for NK, it will work or other countries too. Eventually we give in to every one and then what? One world gov’t? Someone is going to want to be top dog and what happens to those he doesn’t like?