It seems like US and ROK forces have been upgraded to Alert level 2 in light of increased North Korean recon and intelligence gathering activities. China too is unhappy with DPRK and has harshly rebuked DPRK with little effect.


http://www.theage.com.au/world/north-korea...90528-boxy.html

Aiya, want to fight juz go ahad lah... Always cry wolf untill whole world sian orledi.

This is a pretty humorous take on the North Korean situation entited, "4 Reasons why North Korea won't stop being a pain in the ass."
http://www.esquire.com/the-side/war-room/n...analysis-052809

When North Korea Falls

The furor over Kim Jong Il’s missile tests and nuclear brinksmanship obscures the real threat: the prospect of North Korea’s catastrophic collapse. How the regime ends could determine the balance of power in Asia for decades. The likely winner? China

by Robert D. Kaplan (written in 2006)

The abbreviation for North Korea used by American military officers says it all: KFR, the Kim Family Regime. It is a regime whose demonization by the American media and policy makers has obscured some vital facts. North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, was not merely a dreary Stalinist tyrant. As defectors from his country will tell you, he was also a popular anti-Japanese guerrilla leader in the mold of Enver Hoxha, the Stalinist tyrant of Albania who led his countrymen in a successful insurgency against the Nazis. Nor is his son Kim Jong Il anything like the childish psychopath parodied in the film Team America: World Police. It’s true that Kim Jong Il was once a playboy. But he has evolved into a canny operator. Andrei Lankov, a professor of history at South Korea’s Kookmin University, in Seoul, says that under different circumstances Kim might have actually become the successful Hollywood film producer that regime propaganda claims he already is.

Kim Jong Il’s succession was aided by the link that his father had established in the North Korean mind between the Kim Family Regime and the Choson Dynasty, which ruled the Korean peninsula for 500 years, starting in the late fourteenth century. Expertly tutored by his father, Kim consolidated power and manipulated the Chinese, the Americans, and the South Koreans into subsidizing him throughout the 1990s. And Kim is hardly impulsive: he has the equivalent of think tanks studying how best to respond to potential attacks from the United States and South Korea—attacks that themselves would be reactions to crises cleverly instigated by the North Korean government in Pyongyang. “The regime constitutes an extremely rational bunch of killers,” Lankov says.

Yet for all Kim’s canniness, there is evidence that he may be losing his edge. And that may be reason to worry: totalitarian regimes close to demise are apt to get panicky and do rash things. The weaker North Korea gets, the more dangerous it becomes. The question that should be of greatest concern to the U.S. military in the Pacific—and the question that will likely determine the global balance of power in Asia for generations—is, What happens when North Korea collapses?

The Nightmare After Iraq

On the Korean peninsula, the Cold War has never ended. On the somber, seaweed-toned border dividing the two Koreas, amid the cries of egrets and Manchurian cranes, I observed South Korean soldiers standing frozen in tae kwon do ready positions, their fists clenched and forearms tightened, staring into the faces of their North Korean counterparts. Each side picks its tallest, most intimidating soldiers for the task (they are still short by American standards).

In the immediate aftermath of the Korean War, the South raised a 328-foot flagpole; the North responded with a 525-foot pole, then put a flag on it whose dry weight is 595 pounds. The North built a two-story building in the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom; the South built a three-story one. The North then added another story to its building. “The land of one-upmanship,” is how one U.S. Army sergeant describes the DMZ, or demilitarized zone. The two sides once held a meeting in Panmunjom that went on for eleven hours. Because there was no formal agreement about when to take a bathroom break, neither side budged. The meeting became known as the “Battle of the Bladders.”

In other divided countries of the twentieth century—Vietnam, Germany, Yemen—the forces of unity ultimately triumphed. But history suggests that unification does not happen through a calibrated political process in which the interests of all sides are respected. Rather, it tends to happen through a cataclysm of events that, piles of white papers and war-gaming exercises notwithstanding, catches experts by surprise.

Given that North Korea’s army of 1.2 million soldiers has been increasingly deployed toward the South Korean border, the Korean peninsula looms as potentially the next American military nightmare. In 1980, 40 percent of North Korean combat forces were deployed south of Pyongyang near the DMZ; by 2003, more than 70 percent were. As the saying goes among American soldiers, “There is no peacetime in the ROK.” (ROK, pronounced “rock,” is militaryspeak for the Republic of Korea.) One has merely to observe the Patriot missile batteries, the reinforced concrete hangars, and the blast barriers at the U.S. Air Force bases at Osan and Kunsan, south of Seoul—which are as heavily fortified as any bases in Iraq—to be aware of this. A marine in Okinawa told me, “North Korea is not some third-rate, Middle Eastern conventional army. These brainwashed Asians—as he crudely put it—”will stand and fight.” American soldiers in Korea refer to the fighting on the peninsula between 1950 and 1953 as “the first Korean War.” The implicit assumption is that there will be a second.

This helps explain why Korea may be the most dismal place in the world for U.S. troops to be deployed—worse, in some ways, than Iraq. While I traveled on the peninsula, numerous members of the combat-arms community, both air and infantry, told me that they would rather be in Iraq or Afghanistan than in Korea, which constitutes the worst of all military worlds. Soldiers and airmen often live on a grueling wartime schedule, with constant drills, and yet they also have to put up with the official folderol that is part of all peacetime bases—the saluting and inspections that fall by the wayside in war zones, where the only thing that matters is how well you fight. The weather on the peninsula is lousy, too: the winds charging down from Siberia make the winters unbearably frigid, and the monsoons coming off the Pacific Ocean make the summers hot and humid. The dust blowing in from the Gobi Desert doesn’t help.

The threat from north of the DMZ is formidable. North Korea boasts 100,000 well-trained special-operations forces and one of the world’s largest biological and chemical arsenals. It has stockpiles of anthrax, cholera, and plague, as well as eight industrial facilities for producing chemical agents—any of which could be launched at Seoul by the army’s conventional artillery. If the governing infrastructure in Pyongyang were to unravel, the result could be widespread lawlessness (compounded by the guerrilla mentality of the Kim Family Regime’s armed forces), as well as mass migration out of and within North Korea. In short, North Korea’s potential for anarchy is equal to that of Iraq, and the potential for the deployment of weapons of mass destruction—either during or after pre-collapse fighting—is far greater.

For a harbinger of the kind of chaos that looms on the peninsula consider Albania, which was for some years the most anarchic country in post-Communist Eastern Europe, save for war-torn Yugoslavia. On a visit to Albania before the Stalinist regime there finally collapsed, I saw vicious gangs of boys as young as eight harassing people. North Korea is reportedly plagued by the same phenomenon outside of its showcase capital. That may be an indication of what lies ahead. In fact, what terrifies South Koreans more than North Korean missiles is North Korean refugees pouring south. The Chinese, for their part, have nightmare visions of millions of North Korean refugees heading north over the Yalu River into Manchuria.

Obviously, it would be reckless not to worry about North Korea’s missile and WMD technologies. In August, there were reports yet again that Kim Jong Il was preparing an underground nuclear test. And the North test fired seven missiles in July. According to U.S. data, three of the missiles were Scud-Cs, and three were No-dong-As with ranges of 300 to 1,000 miles; all were capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. (Whether North Korea has such warheads is not definitively known, but it is widely believed to have in the neighborhood of ten—and the KFR certainly has the materials and technological know-how to build them.) The third type of missile, a Taep’o-dong-2, has a range of 2,300 to 9,300 miles, which means it could conceivably hit the continental United States. Though the Taep’o-dong-2 failed after takeoff during the recent testing, it did so at the point of maximum dynamic pressure—the same point where the space shuttle Challenger exploded, and the moment when things are most likely to go wrong. So this is likely not an insoluble problem for the KFR.

The Seven Stages of Collapse

Kim Jong Il’s compulsion to demonstrate his missile prowess is a sign of his weakness. Contrary to popular perception in the United States, Kim doesn’t stay up at night worrying about what the Americans might do to him; it’s not North Korea’s weakness relative to the United States that preoccupies him. Rather, if he does stay up late worrying, it’s about China. He knows the Chinese have always had a greater interest in North Korea’s geography—with its additional outlets to the sea close to Russia—than they have in the long-term survival of his regime. (Like us, even as they want the regime to survive, the Chinese have plans for the northern half of the Korean peninsula that do not include the “Dear Leader.”) One of Kim’s main goals in so aggressively displaying North Korea’s missile capacity is to compel the United States to deal directly with him, thereby making his otherwise weakening state seem stronger. And the stronger Pyongyang appears to be, the better off it is in its crucial dealings with Beijing, which are what really matter to Kim.

To Kim’s sure dismay, the American response to his recent missile tests was a shrug. President George W. Bush dispatched Christopher Hill, his assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, to the region rather than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I was in South Korea during the missile firings, and there were few signs of alert on any of the U.S. bases in Korea. Pilots in several fighter squadrons were told not to drink too much on their days off, in case they had to be called in, but that was about the extent of it.

What should concentrate the minds of American strategists is not Kim’s missiles per se but rather what his decision to launch them says about the stability of his regime. Middle- and upper-middle-level U.S. officers based in South Korea and Japan are planning for a meltdown of North Korea that, within days or even hours of its occurrence, could present the world—meaning, really, the American military—with the greatest stabilization operation since the end of World War II. “It could be the mother of all humanitarian relief operations,” Army Special Forces Colonel David Maxwell told me. On one day, a semi-starving population of 23 million people would be Kim Jong Il’s responsibility; on the next, it would be the U.S. military’s, which would have to work out an arrangement with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (among others) about how to manage the crisis.

Fortunately, the demise of North Korea is more likely to be drawn out. Robert Collins, a retired Army master sergeant and now a civilian area expert for the American military in South Korea, outlined for me seven phases of collapse in the North:

Phase One: resource depletion;

Phase Two: the failure to maintain infrastructure around the country because of resource depletion;

Phase Three: the rise of independent fiefs informally controlled by local party apparatchiks or warlords, along with widespread corruption to circumvent a failing central government;

Phase Four: the attempted suppression of these fiefs by the KFR once it feels that they have become powerful enough;

Phase Five: active resistance against the central government;

Phase Six: the fracture of the regime; and

Phase Seven: the formation of new national leadership.

North Korea probably reached Phase Four in the mid-1990s, but was saved by subsidies from China and South Korea, as well as by famine aid from the United States. It has now gone back to Phase Three.

Kim Jong Il learned a powerful lesson by watching the fall of the Ceausescu Family Regime, in Romania: Take utter and complete control of the military. And so he has. The KFR now rules through the army. There have been only individual defections of North Korean soldiers to the South. Even small, unit-level defections—which would indicate that soldiers are talking to one another and are no longer afraid of exposure by comrades—have not yet occurred. One defector from the North’s special-operations forces told me that soldiers in the ranks are afraid to discuss politics with one another.

The North Korean People’s Army is simply too big to be kept happy and well fed, so the regime concentrates on keeping the elite units comfortable. The defector I spoke to—a scout swimmer—told me that while the special-operations forces live well, the extreme poverty of conventional soldiers would make their loyalty to Kim Jong Il in a difficult war questionable. Would they fight to defend the KFR if there were an unforeseen rebellion? The Romanian example suggests that it depends on the circumstances: when workers revolted in 1987 in Brasov, the Romanian military crushed them; when ethnic Hungarians did so two years later in Timisoara, the military deserted the regime.

How to Prevent Another Iraq

Stephen Bradner, a civilian expert on the region and an adviser to the military in South Korea, has thought a lot about the tactical and operational problems an unraveling North Korean state would present. So has Colonel Maxwell, the chief of staff of U.S. Special Operations in South Korea. “The regime in Pyongyang could collapse without necessarily its army corps and brigades collapsing,” Maxwell says. “So we might have to mount a relief operation at the same time that we’d be conducting combat ops. If there is anybody in the UN who thinks it will just be a matter of feeding people, they’re smoking dope.”

Maxwell has conducted similar operations before: he was the commander of a U.S. Army Special Forces battalion that landed on Basilan Island, in the southern Philippines, in early 2002, part of a mission that combined humanitarian assistance with counterinsurgency operations against Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf Group, two terrorist organizations. But the Korean peninsula presents a far vaster and more difficult challenge. “The situation in the North could become so messy and ambiguous,” Maxwell says, “that the collapse of the chain of command of the KFR could be more dangerous than the preservation of it, particularly when one considers control over WMD.”

In order to prevent a debacle of the sort that occurred in Iraq—but with potentially deadlier consequences, because of the free-floating WMD—a successful relief operation would require making contacts with KFR generals and various factions of the former North Korean military, who would be vying for control in different regions. If the generals were not absorbed into the operational command structure of the occupying force, Maxwell says, they might form the basis of an insurgency. The Chinese, who have connections inside the North Korean military, would be best positioned to make these contacts—but the role of U.S. Army Special Forces in this effort might be substantial. Green Berets and the CIA would be among the first in, much like in Afghanistan in 2001.

Obviously, the United States could not unilaterally insert troops into a dissolved North Korea. It would likely be a four-power intervention force—the United States, China, South Korea, and Russia—officially sanctioned by the United Nations. Japan would be kept out (though all parties would gladly accept Japanese money for the endeavor).

Although Japan’s proximity to the peninsula gives it the most to fear from reunification, Korean hatred of the Japanese makes participation of Japanese troops in an intervention force unlikely. Between 1910 and 1945, Japan brutally occupied not only Korea but parts of China too, and it defeated Russia on land and at sea in the early twentieth century. Tokyo may have more reason than any other government for wanting to put boots on the ground in a collapsed North Korea, but it won’t be able to, because both China and South Korea would fight tooth and nail to prevent it from doing so.

Whereas Japan’s strategic position would be dramatically weakened by a collapsed North Korean state, China would eventually benefit. A post-KFR Korean peninsula could be more or less under Seoul’s control—and China is now South Korea’s biggest trading partner. Driving along the coast, all I saw at South Korean ports were Chinese ships.

Other factors also work in Beijing’s favor. China harbors thousands of North Korean defectors that it would send back after a collapse, in order to build a favorable political base for China’s gradual economic takeover of the Tumen River region—the northeast Asian river valley where China, Russia, and North Korea intersect, with good port facilities on the Pacific. De facto control of a future Tumen Prosperity Sphere would bolster China’s fiscal strength, helping it to do economic battle with the United States and Japan. If China’s troops could carve out a buffer zone in the part of North Korea near Manchuria—where China is now developing massive infrastructure projects, such as roads and ports—Beijing might then sanction the installation of an international coalition elsewhere in the North.

Russia’s weakness in the Far East is demonstrated by its failure to prevent the creeping demographic conquest of its eastern territories by ethnic Chinese. It will be truculent in guarding its interests on the Korean peninsula. And Russia does have a historical legacy here: North Korea was originally a Soviet creation and client state. Keeping Russian troops out of Korea would probably be more trouble for the other powers than letting some in.

Of course, South Korea would bear the brunt of the economic and social disruption in returning the peninsula to normalcy. No official will say this out loud, but South Korea—along with every other country in the region—has little interest in reunification, unless it were to happen gradually over years or decades. The best outcome would be a South Korean protectorate in much of the North, officially under an international trusteeship, that would keep the two Koreas functionally separate for a significant period of time. This would allow each country time to prepare for a unified Korean state, without the attendant chaos.

Following the Communist regime’s collapse, the early stabilization of the North could fall unofficially to the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) and U.S. Forces Korea (which is a semiautonomous subcommand of PACOM), also wearing blue UN helmets. But while the U.S. military would have operational responsibility, it would not have sole control. It would have to lead an unwieldy regional coalition that would need to deploy rapidly in order to stabilize the North and deliver humanitarian assistance. A successful relief operation in North Korea in the weeks following the regime’s collapse could mean the difference between anarchy and prosperity on the peninsula for years to come.
If North Korea Attacks

B ut what if rather than simply unraveling, the North launched a surprise attack on the South? This is probably less likely to happen now than it was, say, two decades ago, when Kim Il Sung commanded a stronger state and the South Korean armed forces were less mature. But Colonel Maxwell and others are preparing for this possibility.

Simply driving through Seoul, one of the world’s great and congested megacities, makes it clear that a conventional infantry attack on South Korea’s capital is something that not even a fool would contemplate. So if the North were to attack, it would likely resort instead to a low-grade demonstration of “shock and awe,” using its 13,000 artillery pieces and multiple-rocket launchers to fire more than 300,000 shells per hour on the South Korean capital, where close to half the nation’s 49 million people live. The widespread havoc this would cause would be amplified by North Korean special-operations forces, which would infiltrate the South to sabotage water plants and train and bus terminals. Meanwhile, the North Korean People’s Army would march on the city of Uijongbu, north of Seoul, from which it could cross over the Han River and bypass Seoul from the east.

But this strategy would fail. While American A-10 Warthogs, F-16 Vipers, and other aircraft would destroy enemy missile batteries and kill many North Korean troops inside South Korea, submarine-launched missiles and B-2 Spirit bombers sent from Guam and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri would take out strategic assets inside North Korea. In the meantime, the South Korean army would quickly occupy the transport hubs, while unleashing its own divisions and special-operations forces on the marauding People’s Army. The KFR knows this; thus any such invasion would have to be the act of a regime in the latter phases of disintegration. North Korea’s lone hope would be that the hourly carnage it could produce—in the time between the first artillery barrage on Seoul and the beginning of a robust military response by South Korea and the United States—would lead the South Korean left, abetted by the United Nations and elements of the global media, to cry out for diplomacy and a negotiated settlement as an alternative to violence.

And there is no question: the violence would be horrific. Iraq and Afghanistan would look clean by comparison. A South Korea filled with North Korean troops would be (in military parlance) a “target-rich environment,” in which the good guys and the bad guys would always be close to each other. “Gnarly chaos,” is how one F-16 Viper pilot described it to me. “The ultimate fog of war.” The battlefield would be made more confusing by the serious language barrier that exists between American pilots and South Korean JTACs, or Joint Tactical Air Controllers, who would have to guide the Americans to many of their targets. A-10 and F-16 pilots in South Korea have complained to me that this weak link in the bilateral military relationship would drive up the instances of friendly-fire and collateral civilian deaths—on which the media undoubtedly would then concentrate. As part of a deal to halt the bloodbath, members of the KFR might be able to negotiate their own post-regime survival.

What Now, Lieutenant?

But middle and upper-middle levels of the American military worry less about an indiscriminate artillery attack on the South than about a very discriminate one. My sources feared that in the aftermath of the KFR’s missile launches in July, the Bush administration might actually have been foolish enough to react militarily—which might have been exactly what Kim Jong Il was hoping for, since it would have allowed him to achieve a primary strategic goal: splitting the alliance between South Korea and the United States. How would that happen? After the United States responded in a targeted fashion to the missile launches or some other future outrage, the North would initiate an intensive five- or ten- minute-long artillery barrage on Seoul, killing some Americans and South Koreans near Yongsan Garrison (”Dragon Mountain”), the American military’s Green Zone in the heart of the city. Then the North would simply stop. And after the shell fire halted, the proverbial question among American officers in a quandary would arise: What now, Lieutenant?

Politically speaking, we would be trumped. The South Korean left—which has been made powerful by an intrusively large American troop presence and by decades of manipulation by the North—would blame the United States for the carnage in Seoul, pointing out that it had been provoked by the Americans’ targeted strike against North Korea. The United Nations and the global media would subtly blame Washington for the crisis—and call not so subtly for peace talks. With that, the KFR would get a new lease on life, with more aid forthcoming from the international community to keep it afloat.

Which is why some of the military and civilian experts I spoke with argue for economic warfare against the North. Stop helping the regime with humanitarian aid, they say. The North Korean population has been on the brink of starvation for decades. The forests are denuded. People are eating tree bark. Stop prolonging the agony. Help the KFR collapse.

Of course, one problem with this strategy is that it could end up making North Korea’s direst military options more likely; as noted, regimes like this one, in the latter stages of collapse, are apt to behave irresponsibly, possibly resorting to WMD. Another problem is that we can’t do much to squeeze the North Koreans economically; it’s China, not the United States, that is really keeping the regime alive. The Chinese are already in the process of gaining operational control over anything in North Korea that has strategic economic and military value: mines, railways, and so on. Thus, any soft landing for the KFR would more likely be orchestrated by Beijing than by Washington, even though the Chinese might not mind saddling the Americans with the short-term military responsibility of stabilizing a collapsed North Korea.

After Reunification

I f the peninsula could be stabilized after the fall of the KFR, this Greater Korea would have an instant, undisputed enemy: Japan. Any Korean politician would be able to stand up in parliament and get political mileage out of an anti-Japanese tirade. The Japanese know this, and it’s helping fuel their remilitarization. (The Japanese navy, in particular, has been emphasizing the latest diesel submarines and Aegis destroyers.) In July, there was a saber-rattling contest between Tokyo and Seoul over disputed islets that South Koreans call Tokdo and the Japanese Takeshima, in what the Koreans refer to as the East Sea and the Japanese the Sea of Japan. Harsh words were exchanged after South Korea sent a survey ship to the area. The United States has a history of underestimating historical-ethnic disputes: in the 1980s, it paid insufficient attention to ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia; more recently, it mistakenly downplayed Sunni-Shiite tensions in Iraq. It should not make the same mistake in Asia.

Here it is useful to review Korean history. In the medieval era, the Koreans fought wars against Chinese dynasties like the Sui and the Tang. But later on, following the rise to power of Korea’s own Choson Dynasty, in 1392, Japan gradually caught up with China as Korea’s principal adversary. There was a brutal Japanese violation of the peninsula at the end of the sixteenth century, culminating in an orgy of rape and murder, and a savage occupation at the beginning of the twentieth, which ended only with the Soviet and American conquests. (The Japanese effect on the peninsula has not been all negative: South Koreans may have trouble admitting it, but Japanese colonialism in the early twentieth century nearly doubled the life expectancy of the average Korean.)

Reunification would provide at least one benefit to Japan. As Park Syung Je, an analyst at the Asia Strategy Institute in Seoul, explained to me, a unified Greater Korea might serve to balance against an even more significant threat to Japan: a rising China. But this Greater Korea would still be a linchpin of China’s twenty-first-century Asian economic-prosperity sphere, a more benign version of Imperial Japan’s Co- Prosperity Sphere of the 1940s. America could be pushed to the margins. Although Korean businessmen would resist economic domination by China, lingering anti-Americanism in South Korea might outweigh that resistance—especially once the generation that still remembers the sacrifices of American servicemen during the 1950s disappears entirely. America’s large troop presence will have granted Korea a free society, just as a similar American presence helped to make Germany a free society. But younger generations of South Koreans may remember U.S. troops only negatively—and what is more indelibly inscribed in the Korean national memory is America’s support for the Japanese occupation of Korea following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905. (This was in exchange for Imperial Japan’s support of America’s occupation of the Philippines a few years earlier.)

Greater Korea’s troubled relationship with China may ultimately be determined by what America does, and specifically by the degree to which the United States can get Japan to recognize its war guilt. If Washington continues to maintain a military alliance with Tokyo without Japan’s publicly coming to terms with its past, Greater Korea will move psychologically toward China. President Bush’s recent love fest with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at Graceland may have played well in the United States, but it was seen as an insult in South Korea because of Koizumi’s earlier visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors the Japanese war dead—including war criminals. If the United States continues to treat Japan as a golden stepchild, then China and its implicit ally, Greater Korea, will have a tense relationship with Japan and its implicit allies, the United States and India. But because of its own manifold business interests in China, America could only balance against China very delicately.

China Versus America

With so many complex and subtle interests to weigh here, what should the American strategy be over the long term? South Korean army Colonel Chung Kyung Yung, a professor at Seoul’s National Defense University, says that after the KFR collapses and the North is stabilized, the wisest thing for the United States to do would be to keep 10,000 troops or so on the peninsula. Such a contingent, he told me, would serve as a statement that the United States is not abandoning Korea to a militarily resurgent Japan. The best way to stabilize Asia, Chung emphasizes, would be to prevent Greater Korea—which would be fragile in the period after the North’s collapse—from becoming a source of contention between China and Japan. Peter Beck, the director of the International Crisis Group’s North East Asia Project, agrees. “Because the United States is the furthest away of all these powers,” he told me, “it should be perceived as the least dangerous—the one power without territorial ambitions.”

Unfortunately, South Korean politics might make it more difficult to keep American troops on the peninsula long term. Yes, it’s true that of the few prominent statues of foreigners in the country, two are of Americans (General Douglas MacArthur and General James Van Fleet, the father of the South Korean armed forces). And it is also true that, because of late-nineteenth-century missionary activity, American-style Protestantism is practically the dominant religion in South Korea. (If North Korea collapses, expect Christian evangelism to quickly replace the Communist regime’s Juche ethos of self-reliance: Pyongyang was once the “Jerusalem of Asia” for missionaries.) And yet despite all this, the South Koreans have largely convinced themselves that they need to be as worried about the Americans as they are about the Chinese—just as they have convinced themselves that they should be as afraid of the Japanese as they are of the North Koreans. The fact is that South Koreans may not want any American troops in their country.

Already the American air and ground troops who would defend the South if the KFR were to attack are facing increasing restrictions on their training, because of South Korean political pressures. The A-10 squadron that would be flying nonstop sorties near the DMZ in the event of a war had to train in Thailand this past winter, because of limitations Seoul placed on its flight patterns. This is all part of yet another frustration that U.S. troops in South Korea must endure: having to be on a war footing in order to defend a government that wants to be defended but publicly pretends otherwise.

The truth is, many South Koreans have an interest in the perpetuation of the Kim Family Regime, or something like it, since the KFR’s demise would usher in a period of economic sacrifice that nobody in South Korea is prepared for. A long-standing commitment by the American military has allowed the country to evolve into a materialistic society. Few South Koreans have any interest in the disruption the collapse of the KFR would produce.

Meanwhile, China’s infrastructure investments are already laying the groundwork for a Tibet-like buffer state in much of North Korea, to be ruled indirectly through Beijing’s Korean cronies once the KFR unravels. This buffer state will be less oppressive than the morbid, crushing tyranny it will replace. So from the point of view of the average South Korean, the Chinese look to be offering a better deal than the Americans, whose plan for a free and democratic unified peninsula would require South Korean taxpayers to pay much of the cost. The more that Washington thinks narrowly in terms of a democratic Korean peninsula, the more Beijing has the potential to lock the United States out of it. For there is a yawning distance between the Stalinist KFR tyranny and a stable, Western-style democracy: in between these extremes lie several categories of mixed regimes and benign dictatorships, any of which might offer the North Koreans far more stability as a transition mechanism than anything the United States might be able to provide. No one should forget that South Korea’s prosperity and state cohesion were achieved not under a purely democratic government but under Park Chung Hee’s benign dictatorship of the 1960s and ’70s. Furthermore, North Koreans, who were never ruled by the British, have even less historical experience with democracy than Iraqis. Ultimately, victory on the Korean peninsula will go to the side with the most indirect and nuanced strategy.

The long-term success of America’s basic policy on the peninsula hinges on the willingness of South Koreans to make a significant sacrifice, at some point, for the sake of freedom in the North. But sacrifice is not a word that voters in free and prosperous societies tend to like. If voters in Western-style democracies are good at anything, it’s rationalizing their own selfishness—and it may turn out that the authoritarian Chinese understand the voters of South Korea’s free and democratic society better than we do. If that’s the case, there may never actually be a Greater Korea in the way that we imagine it. Rather, the North’s demise will be carefully managed by Beijing in such a way that the country will go from being a rogue nation to a de facto satellite of the Middle Kingdom—but one with sufficient contact with the South that the Korean yearning for a measure of reunification will be satisfied.

Keep in mind that Asia—largely because it is so economically dynamic—is politically and militarily volatile. Its alliance structures are not nearly as developed as those in Europe, which has NATO and the European Union. Conflicting nationalisms are expressed in Asia through more than just soccer games. Thus, the question of whether it’s to be the American or the Chinese vision of North Korea’s future that gets realized may hinge on political-military decisions made in the midst of an opaque and confusing crisis.
North Korea and the Future of Asia

Before I left Seoul, I met with a local military legend. Retired General Paik Sun Yup, now eighty-six years old, was the 1st Infantry Division commander during the Korean War and worked hand in hand with General MacArthur. When we spoke, Paik insisted that crisis-driven political-military decisions here will ultimately determine the balance of power throughout Asia, the most important region for the world’s economy. “This peninsula is the pivot,” he said.

When I reflected on Paik’s words later, it occurred to me that while the United States is in its fourth year of a war in Iraq, it has been on a war footing in Korea for fifty-six years now. More than ten times as many Americans have been killed on the Korean peninsula as in Mesopotamia. Most Americans hope and expect that we will withdraw from Iraq within a few years—yet we still have 32,000 troops in South Korea, more than half a century after the armistice. Korea provides a sense of America’s daunting, imperial-like burdens.

But South Korea also provides a lesson in what can be accomplished with patience and dogged persistence. The drive from the airport at Inchon to downtown Seoul goes through the heart of a former urban war zone. South Korea’s capital was taken and retaken four times in some of the most intense fighting of the Korean War. Korean men and women who lived through that time will always be grateful for what retired U.S. Army Colonel Robert Killebrew has called American “stick-to-itiveness,” without which we would have little hope of remaining a great power.

In the heart of Seoul lies Yongsan Garrison, a leafy, fortified Little America, guarded and surrounded by high walls. Inside these 630 acres, which closely resemble the Panama Canal Zone before the Americans gave it up, are 8,000 American military and diplomatic personnel in manicured suburban homes surrounded by neatly clipped hedges and backyard barbecue grills. I drove by a high school, baseball and football fields, a driving range, a hospital, a massive commissary, a bowling alley, and restaurants. U.S. Forces Korea and its attendant bureaucracies are located in redbrick buildings that the Americans inherited in 1945 from the Japanese occupiers. Korea is so substantial a military commitment for us that it merits its own, semiautonomous subcommand of PACOM—just as Iraq, unofficially anyway, merits its own four-star subcommand of CENTCOM.

The United States hopes to complete a troop drawdown in South Korea in 2008. Having moved into Yongsan Garrison when Korea’s future seemed highly uncertain, American troops plan to give up this prime downtown real estate and relocate to Camp Humphreys, in Pyongtaek, thirty miles to the south. The number of ground troops will drop to 25,000, and will essentially comprise a skeleton of logistical support shops, which would be able to acquire muscles and tendons in the form of a large invasion force in the event of a war or a regime collapse that necessitated a military intervention.

Patience and dogged persistence are heroic attributes. But while military units can be expected to be heroic, one should not expect a home front to be forever so. And while in the fullness of time patience and dogged persistence can breed success, it is the kind of success that does not necessarily reward the victor but, rather, the player best able to take advantage of the new situation. It is far too early to tell who ultimately will benefit from a stable and prosperous Mesopotamia, if one should ever emerge. But in the case of Korea, it looks like it will be the Chinese.

Why North Korea Conducted a Second Nuclear Test
by Richardson ~ May 25th, 2009

http://www.dprkstudies.org/

The title assumes North Korea did test a nuclear device, which I think likely, and not an equivalent amount of TNT, initially thought a possibility in 2006 until radioactive isotopes of krypton and xenon were detected.

There are several reasons for a North Korea to conduct a nuclear test and it’s difficult if not impossible to rank them by importance as Kim Jong-il might. The lines also blur for some stated here, and no doubt some could be broken down further.

Proof of concept: Perhaps the simplest reason, and in light of the failure of the 2006 nuclear test – to prove to themselves (regime elite) and the rest of the world they in fact do have a no kidding nuclear weapons capability. Since this is something North Korea intends to keep, it’s important to know the design functions as intended. Look for another Taepo Dong-2 (TD-2) to prove a delivery capability.

Domestic audiences: Two sides to this one; the population as a whole, the regime elite. Whatever the outcome of the test, all would be told it was a spectacular success that boosted the prestige and security of the regime, etc. But elites would find out sooner in and greater detail of any failure. In the case of elites, especially the military, a success gives them a bit of confidence in being able to maintain the status quo and their positions of power.

Succession – North Korea after the Dear Leader: There have been several adjustments to North Korea’s political system since Kim Jong-il’s stroke last August, for example changes to the National Defense Commission and many other changes of personnel in regime leadership. These changes appear to be geared towards leaving whomever succeeds Kim Jong-il (my pick is still Kim Jong-un) in a better position, both domestically and when it comes to dealing with outside powers. For more see, “What if Kim Jong-il Died… Today? (Part 1),” and “What if Kim Jong-il Died… Today? (Part 2).”

Setting the stage for negotiations: Whenever returns to the negotiating table, be it Six-Party Talks or some other forum, they want to there as a nuclear power. Perhaps with Kim Jong-il heading the regime, or his successor (assuming the regime survives Kim’s death). The first test was a failure and Washington could easily ignore that status for Pyongyang, but with a likely successful test North Korea is moving towards de facto nuclear power status. Just getting the U.S. to admit North Korea is a nuclear state would be seen as a wild victory in Pyongyang, and would also feed domestic propaganda.

Wheeling and dealing, someday: Not right away, but eventually (the test was not about near-term concessions). At some point someone in Washington may make North Korea another offer they can’t refuse (to renege on) in exchange for selling off or allowing the monitoring of some part of their nuclear program. But North Korea won’t give up its nuclear program as long as it a sovereign country.

No good reason not to: The U.S. and UN have demonstrated to North Korea that neither has the current capacity or willpower to respond in a way North Korea finds unacceptable. The 2006 missile and nuke tests, the April TD-2 test, and now this; the U.S. talked big but in reality there are no consequences for North Korea, and Kim Jong-il knows it. What could/should be done? See OFK’s “Plan B” (no, it’s not a pill).

What it’s not about: Finally, Pyongyang did not conduct this second nuclear test because it felt ignored or wanted more attention from the Obama administration. It’s a reason that gets attached to many North Korean actions as sometimes North Korean acts of brinkmanship are indeed meant to get America’s attention, but not this time I think. After the April TD-2 test, North Korea threatened to escalate – what we’re seeing now – if the UN even discussed the TD-2 issue. A ridiculous and absurd demand, since the UN Security Council was practically guaranteed to make some sort of watered down statement. North Korea likely had a nuclear test planned before April and only the most unrealistic of responses from the U.S. would have prevented it.

Probably I missed something obvious, but those are the main reasons as I see them.

Not sure if this effect was intentional or not, but there seems to be markedly less interest in this likely successful nuclear test than there was for the unsuccessful one in 2006. Perhaps this is due to it following the TD-2 test so closely and getting sort of numbed to North Korean antics – how many times can we go to the brink of brinkmanship? – but I detect a “so what” factor. There is indeed a reason to care about this, but that’s the topic for another post…

Thanks for the link. Really enjoyed reading the Esquire article and in return, I contribute 2 other articles for your reading pleasure. :)

IMHO, North Korea has not respected the 1953 Military Armistice Agreement (1953 MAA) long before the 1st or 2nd nuclear test (in 2006 and 2009 respectively) - so the North Korean declaration that they will not respect the 1953 MAA, does not in effect change the actual position of the North Koreans. See Wiki for a list of N. Korean incursions across the DMZ. Therefore, the Esquire article is slightly misleading on the North Korean declaration, which I quote below:

Notes:
(1) Technically a state of war currently exists between South Korea, its allies and North Korea.

(2) The 1953 MAA is unique in that it is purely a military document and no nation is a signatory to the agreement. On 27 July 1953, at Panmunjom, the military commanders of the North Korean People's Army, the Chinese People's Volunteers, and the UNC signed an armistice agreement. Neither the United States nor South Korea is a signatory to the armistice per se, although both adhere to it through the UNC. The commander of the UNC signed the MAA on behalf of the unified command, consisting of the military forces from 16 UN nations and the Republic of Korea.

(3) The UNC Military Armistice Commission (UNCMAC), which is headquartered in Seoul and Panmunjom, is responsible for supervising the MAA between North and South Korea along the 151 mile long Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).

Hope that the US will start taking actions instead of only talking.

They've taken action in Iraq and Afghanistan, next stop is North Korea.

During the Korean War, nearly 37,000 American servicemen lost their lives in three years. This is a significantly higher figure per year than the 58,000 American casualties spread over ten years in Vietnam.

If war breaks out, some Korean analysts estimate that a 2nd Korean war will cost the Americans much more than Iraq and Afghanistan combined (without taking into account the cost to S. Korea too). For some background info, please read Danger Room's article called "Inside America’s (Mock) Attack on North Korea". Much of the terrain in N. Korea is unsuited for armoured warfare and there are extensive prepared field fortifications. Further, all N. Koreans have been brain washed since childhood - so the Americans would have to fight the people. It's kind of hard to tell who is not brainwashed by looks alone.

The 6 party talks may have failed to prevent the N. Koreans from testing their nuclear weapons but it has enabled the US, Japan and China to understand the concerns of the other parties - to the detriment of N. Korean interests. Further, S. Korea learning from the German reunification experience (and having seen the cost) are not keen to prop. up N. Korea in the event of a N. Korean regime collapse.

In reality there is no will in the US to change the status quo (nor can the Americans really do anything to significantly change the status quo, as China holds all the cards). However, there is some American concern that the N. Koreans will try to sell their nuclear/missile technology.

It shouldn't take a genius to guess that NK will go for nuke technology once Bush jnr invaded Iraq. Citing Iran, Iraq and NK as the axis of evil, meant that NK and Iran was on top of the "to do next" list and common thinking is that only nukes can stop an American juggernaut. Unfortunately, genius is not exactly something people will call Bush jnr and his inept handling of the Korean issue is really what I think precipitated the current situation.

I'd avoid using "crisis" to look at the situation cos its really not. Whilst US press will always assume that NK's leadership are generally crazy (which applies to anything "communist" in general), NK is anything but. MAD ensures NK's non-use of nukes and the current military balance ensures that conventional warfare isn't an option either.

Game theory could predict NK's actions. There's no other option for NK and no US administration thus far has been able to change the payoff matrix successfully for NK (though B Clinton to his credit, tried.).

My interactions with SKs on a personal level shows an interesting attitude of younger koreans to the whole issue. Its more of the "embarrassing cousins" attitude.

The export of nuke tech shouldn't be surprising either. There's no negative payout, only positive. You can't isolate the regime any further.

What I find interesting is that SK's airforce structure is very similar to SG, just ~3+ times larger. But when it comes to attack helos, there's a requirement for 270. Possibly if one views ATK helos as counter-arty assets, that may explain the difference in requirement.

Close proximity arty bombardment of civilian/military areas is a potential issue for both SK and SG though far larger for SK. SK's counter-arty efforts and strategies eg OPLAN 5027 is expected to be a source of SG study.

^^^ IMHO, because of climate, terrain, scale and the lack of intelligence issues, OPLAN 5027 should bear little resemblance to any S.E. Asia drawer plan. However, it does not mean we should not study it for insights.

While not many in mainstream American press were keen on Bush Jnr (as a Republican), I'm of the view that the various Democrat presidential administrations have equally bad track records in their management of foreign policy matters in the time they were in office. Carter had his failed policies towards Iran. Clinton had his pull out of American troops in Somalia after the Blackhawk down incident. After 9-11, IMHO, US entry into Afghanistan was inevitable. In convergence with your view expressed above, I feel that Bush Jnr's mistake was to go into Iraq - which took resources away from the fight in Afghanistan.

Yup, in many ways, a storm in a tea cup. The initial Russian estimates on the size of the N. Korean nuclear bomb as reported in mainstream press are likely to be wrong (ie. they over estimated the yield). If the October 2006 results and the initial May 2009 estimates are correct, the N. Korean plutonium fission device was initiated but not all of the plutonium went critical.

(i) Sources have suggested that the October 2006 N. Korean nuclear test was a failure as it had a yield of 0.2 kiloton (ie. it fizzled or failed).

(ii) Further, some initial reports suggest that this May 2009 nuclear test also did not work as expected for the N. Koreans and it had a yield of between 1.39 - 2.84 kilotons which is hardly a success. This recent N. Korean nuclear test falls far short of an expected 12-20 kiloton yield of a crude Hiroshima-style device.

(iii) For comparison's sake, the first nuclear tests of all other nations that are self-announced members of the nuclear club had larger yields* than this latest North Korean test. Sources suggest that the smallest a plutonium fission device that can go critical is 8 kgs (which is the nuclear material used in the N. Korean test) and a nuclear bomb this size would produce 12-20 kilotons.

* Notes on Yields of the Nuclear Club tests (h/t to kato for the yield):
1. "Trinity", 1945 : 21 kt (USA)
2. "First Lightning", 1949 : 22 kt (USSR)
3. "Hurricane", 1952 : 25 kt (UK)
4. "Gerboise Bleue", 1960 : 65 kt (France)
5. "596", 1964 : 22 kt (PRC)
6. Indian Device, 1974 : claimed 12-15 kt, estimated 4-6 kt
7. Pakistani Device, 1998 : claimed 37-48 kt (2 bombs), estimated 9-12 kt (total)

To quote Timothy Savage, who offers some interesting insights:

"...When South Korea and China first normalized relations in 1992, it was widely seen as a diplomatic coup for Seoul. Gaining official recognition from North Korea’s most staunch supporter and Korean War ally signaled that, for all intents and purposes, Seoul had won the ongoing battle for legitimacy on the Korean Peninsula. Coming so soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, few doubted that a reunified Korea under the Southern system was on the horizon, with at least tacit acceptance from Beijing...

...In many respects, China has played a positive role in the attempts to promote dialogue and reconciliation between the two Koreas. China has willingly served as the host of the six-party talks on reversing North Korea’s nuclear development, as they did with the earlier four-party talks on replacing the Korean War Armistice with a peace agreement. It has even been willing to twist the screws a bit, as it did by briefly shutting off oil shipments to signal its displeasure with Pyongyang’s nuclear test. China has also sought to gently nudge its ally down the road of economic opening and reform, but with little success to show for its efforts. Both China and South Korea would prefer to see gradual change and development in North Korea over a sudden, East German-style collapse, which would put a major strain on both countries’ economies..."

It seems that this Korean drama is indeed part of an internal shift in political power.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8078562.stm

Kim Jong-Un aka Idiot Son, may become the next "Great Leader" of North Korea.

Great Leader > Dear Leader > Esteemed Leader?

Things are starting to heat up...

while I believe this act may not be against any particular state, any idea if Japan has started deploying thier Patriot batteries/Aegis ships?

was in japan until 27th last month. didnt see any major mobilizations on the TV. mostly coverage of the swine flu in kobe, osaka (kansai region) and worrying reports about the spread of it to tokyo. no major military movements in tokyo that i observed. (i was in tokyo from 21st to 26th)

not too sure about now. was driving around central hokkaido (to be precisce, kami-furano/biei) on the 17th and 18th, JGSDF personnel didnt seem to be on too high on alert status, found quite a few of them at the local hypermarket buying stuff. (about 2- 3 mins drive, just outside their camp)

side track abit: their camps look non-descript, dosent exactly proclaim "gun-tai" or military or anything. saw the occasional tonner and jeep driving around central hokkaido. noticed that the JGSDF has a digitized camo print uniforms too. im not familiar with MARPATS and such but its definitely a pretty unique shade of green too.

The canaries are falling..

Boats leave Yellow Sea

(Exactly what happened before last 2002 clash)

here

Nah... I think: Great Leader > Dear Leader > Beloved Leader :lol:

How can he assume a title that is greater than his grand papa? Esteemed is greater than Great IMO. :D

A good insight on the policy options available to deal with NK..

CFR : The North Korean Policy Puzzle

the Aegis should still be able to track whilst in the dock right? assuming there is no glitch...

Haha maybe it's a glitch due to using counterfeit Chinese electronics? It's a problem thats plaguing the US military so it might be the case here as well. Either way, if its a flaw with the radar system, they won't be able to track the missile. Maybe this will spur them to buy more Aegis systems.

Game of chicken begins..

North Korean naval boat briefly enters South Korean waters

SEOUL - A North Korean navy patrol Thursday crossed the disputed sea border into South Korean waters before returning to its own side after a warning, Seoul's military said... Read more here

just curious bro, not that i mean to discredit your source or your intention in citing this article, its a fascinating read. just pointing something out

dosent the CFR tend to be very conservative in their outlook and policy recommendations ?

4 June 2009, Korean Times - South Korean authorities have failed to confirm the authenticity of North Korea's May 25 nuclear test as no radioactive material has been found over the East Sea... Normally, radioactive materials such as krypton-85 and xenon-135 are released after a nuclear test ― krypton-85 remains in the air for several decades as clear evidence of a test...

In that context, some experts question if the North really did conduct a test. Other military officials and experts say radioactive materials may have spread rapidly and been dispersed after the test due to strong winds. There is also the hypothesis that North Korea might have revamped its underground test facility to prevent radioactive leaks...

S.Korea draws up N.Korea counter-attack plans

The SK is serious enough to deploy their destroyers (Sejong, probably) and F-15Ks near the conflict area.

It seems that the tension has raised to another level.

Compare with the Sunshine policy practiced by the pass administrations I think Lee Myung-Bak administration is tired of the NK political brinkmanship and that policy has changed to meet the north head-on, face-to-face. A hardline stance is adopted I see.

dont mean to contradict you in any way but i'd like to add another point of view.

have been reading Chalmers Johnson's blowback. he has a very interesting point of view. in his analysis of "imperial america", he basically argues in a chapter long portion about korea of how essentially the US calls whatsoever military action undertaken by the south.

summary, in peacetime, SK forces are under nominal SK control and under a broad US-SK joint command, but under wartime operations, control revert back to US command. this means that all military deployments by SK or US troops are effectively determined by US command. and US command may not always act in the interest of SK stability or SK security. US military command may be too hawkish in this aspect, let me explain.

the armstice agreement that NK broke, was actually not signed between SK and NK but the signatories present were china , NK and the US (who's UN mandate to intervene in korea was all but charade given the soviet security council vote abstenion). North Korea can provoke, but south korea cannot act without US consent and approval. point here im making is that, when NK broke the armstice, its not so much as to send SK a message, but an unequivocal clear signal to the US that NK is willing to return to a state of hostilities with the US.

so here the situation in korean peninsular is this

all the military cards are held by the US. not SK, not Nkorea. the key actor is the US here. how it responds and how it reacts to NK is paramount. other actors such as Japan and china play important but secondary roles. what is the key thing here is how to restrain US military elements/leaders and who can restrain them.

chalmers johnson goes on to describe of how US military personnel dictate american foreign policy on the korean peninsular, giving two examples of the american military thought on korea

the US military command's professed intention to stay on in korea EVEN if korean unification occurs. this is indicative of a long term imperial basing policy and not for korean stability per say. he agues that the 1950 jeju massacre and the 1979 gwangju student rebellions are evidence of the US military policy is not necessarily the best policy for the korean peninsular or SK.

the jeju massacre was in response to elements of korean socialist party, with US high command replacing a SK officer who was trying to win over members of the korean socialist party with a SK officer that conducted a brutal suppression with nearly 3,000 dead.

the gwangju student rebellions were in response to a coup by general park that was implicitly condoned and encouraged by US command.US military high command tacitly approved and allowed the redeployment of SK forces to repress civllians. in gwangju, complicit US actions revealed by comminques between the US ambassador and the head of US forces command korea reveal a calculated, weighed and cautious approval by US military elements to allow SK troops to be withdrawn from the frontlines of the DMZ. special forces brigades (i think the 7th) were used to infiltrate student groups, manipulate them to agigtate against regular infantry and special forces were then brought in to suppress south korean students. this action was done in spite of a wave of democritization in SK with a budding civil society and social movements. US military command saw that general park and his coup partner were able to guarantee and better serve US interests rather than a potentially non-compliant civilian administration.

chalmers Johnson argues that both these incidents and the long term basing policy even if SK and NK unify, indicate a US military that is in charge of korean peninsular policy. he also argues that the failure of clinton's 1994 efforts to get NK to give up nukes for light water reactors was due to bureaucratic and military hubris that NK was a spent and broken threat. another factor in the light water reactor fracas, was the US promising the delivery of the reactors but not paying a cent for them, arm twisting Japan and SK to pay for the light water reactors (which SK was unable to due to the 1997 financial crisis and resulted in delays for delivery and nearly scuppering the deal). Johnson argues that by errecting a TMD and labelling NK a rogue state, the US military has actually forced NK into the position where it is today by welshing on its promises and "destabilizing" NK's nuke MAD policy by neutering its potential capabilities.

another interesting thing is why the US tolerates NK's rogue state/bad boy antics is what Johnson attributes to partisan politics in the US political system. in a nutshell, Johnson postulates that having a scapegoat to blame or a bogeyman to hang, is far more useful and convenient for partisan american politicians to have rather than actually make headway in resolving the NK nuke problem.

Johnson makes a policy recommendation and observation at the end of the chapter, arguing that it is time to take back north korean policy from the military and not use the US military to make North korean Policy. he argues that using the military is a blunt force and is actually creating more potential korean "blowback" for the US in the long run. he advocates a return to diplomacy and withdrawal of american forces from korean bases.

i feel that his whole chapter argues that the presence of the US military, US military assets, basing and open hostility to the North Koreans is placing the US on a inevitable confrontational path with North Korea and china, which may lead to imperial overstretch. his insights about china are refreshing and equally enjoyable to read.

i'm trying to find a open source edition of the chapter for you guys to read. its really interesting. coming from a north asian expert. i apologize for this poorly written chunk (written in a hurry) and hope ya guys can derive more from the source. its really an interesting insight.

are we looking at this NK incident as a incident in itself ? or given the long context of US military "policy", blowback for consequences of the US military's actions ? and if so, what will the US military do ? will it be the first to blink and compromise under its overstretch due to commitments in the M.E ? can obama reign in the US military ? what will obama's policy be ? is being hawkish the right signal to send to North Korea ? or is US foreign policy locked into a inescapable cycle of deadlock over North Korea ?

Outdated and severely flawed. The US military doesn't dictate policy on North Korea. Here's an interesting PoV, which also addresses some of the points above.

http://www.upiasia.com/Security/2009/03/04..._alliance/3491/

thanks for the interesting piece.

nah, i didnt mean it that way. maybe i should make it clearer. the US military determines korean policy in absence of any state department / Washington initiative.

i think that was chalmers johnson's main argument. how much of washington's posturing and position to pyongyang, is military dominated ?

and not that i want to pick a fight with you but quoting from a source thats close to the SK defence establishment (SK thinktank ?) that argues from a defense/SK military insider POV isnt exactly very free from bias. how do the average korean joe feel about this or do analysts/independent thinktanks agree on this division/seperation of sovereignty ?

is the article bordering onto constitutional legalities (coming from someone who is a legal counsel) , and not the real divison of military power between the US and SK ? the US still calls the shots on korea and it is the main actor in this drama that NK has concocted.

is SK going to act against US interests on this ? is SK going to challenge US military position on this ? will they dare disagree ? point being, will seoul take its own independent military position and foreign policy stance away from washington ?
will seoul act independently ? im sure even you would agree with me that that is an affirmative no.

its the power relations between the US, SK and NK. the position here as i understand it, is that SK carries little weight in whatever decision to go to war/fight. it essentially lies within the US military .

and the UN command ? it only managed to be passed by UN security council when the soviet union abstained from it. chalmers johnson also mentions that the UN command consisted of US and 14 other allied countries. immediately following the korean war armstice, the 14 other allied countries withdrew from that UN command, only effectively leaving the US in the UN command.

so when your de-facto UN command is effectively US command over south korea, dosent that whole bit about deferring to UN command, effectively meaning , deferring to US command ?

im not saying SK dosent need the US. but rather, through the lens of one event, the NK breaking of the armstice, effectively targets not south korea, but the US. and from what chalmers johnson suggests in the blowback chapter, given that now that NK has played its hand, launching missiles and conducting a 2nd "nuke test", the ball is in the court of the US. SK will not undertake unilateral military action or undertake any action without prior consultation with the US. this means that it effectively surrenders any policy control to the US, which in this context, is likely to be a military dominated policy given the historical context of it.

how will the US military react (given that so much of american posturing, no giving in, F22s at kadena, sales of F22 to Japan, TMD in japan and SK, aegis ships in japan and korea), is essentially US military initiated ? is there a danger of escalation and confrontation with the US military in charge ?

i can agree with u that the US military dosent dictate policy on North Korea. but here's a POV thats suggesting that it does. and the years under Bush & Rumsfeld with the extreme, axis of evil and rogue state rhethoric and military posturing dosent exactly convince people that the US is intending to use soft power or diplomacy to engage North korea. i mean, invading iraq to get rid of saddam is not exactly going to leave Kim with a good sense of security right ?

i mean, look at what the 6 nations talks have done ? bribe north korea not to launch nukes or give up its nukes ? it hasnt resolved the situation , because it hasnt addressed the core problem, how can the world/US assure north korea of its non-belligerency towards it ?

in the absence of it, im inclined more to lean towards chalmers johnson's point of view

One point. The US military holds no sway over whether the US, or S.Korea goes to war or not. It is a big stretch of imagination to say that the US military can make the decision to go to war just because it holds wartime command authority, which is already outdated. They don't decide policy, the US govt does. Jeez.

If you think it is in the US interest to see it's neighbour's capital bombarded to bits, the region destabilised because of a conflict, then I have no idea what to say. The US is allowed to base troops in S.Korea because it can keep the peace S.Korea desires. If the US intends to provoke war for no agreeable purpose, then S.Korea has every reason and right to evict the US. So this whole convoluted logic about the US military having full reign to incite instability is laughably ridiculous.

If you believe the US military initiated the war, then you're seriously 'out there'. It is highly debatable whether N.Korea's desire for nuclear weapons started due to the Iraq war. In fact, it is likely that they had an interest in nuclear weapons prior to the iraq war, and their reasons for the nuclear weapons are not merely for self defense, but as a leverage for concessions. In fact, given that there are suspicions that the latest nuclear test is a fake, that seems to support that assumption. In any case, the US would not have been able to invade N.Korea without S.Korean consent and support, and S.Korea has no reason to just go on to war simply for no purpose.

The core problem is not that of non-belligerency. It is already enjoying that. Short of exporting nukes to terrorist groups or invading S.Korea, it should be safe from an invasion. The solution is not appeasement. Sunshine policy got nobody anywhere. The problem is a lack of credible disincentive to discourage N.Korea towards further nuclear arms development. What is known is that they don't want a war because they know they will lose in the end. That should be the leverage the West, S.Korea and Japan should make use of.

yeah. the US government does. what policy initiative has the US government undertaken towards the DPRK that does not have an overbearing military tone to it ?

thats my point and you are missing it.

the extent of which the US military DOMINATES but not DICTATES US policy towards the DPRK is what we should be considering. they dont make US policy for SK ? but they do shape almost every aspect of it.

maybe i am wrong about the US military having wartime command = it holds the major cards. you are right to say that seoul has its own weight and is not a captive actor in the korean peninsular. afterall, seoul is a sovereign state and operates with the US military in a relationship of convenience. but the biggest actor/agency that wields the most influence and is likely to have a direct impact on the consequence of this crisis, would undoubtedly be the US military ?

thats the point, the key actor isnt Nkorea, is the danger of letting the US military dominate US foreign policy options towards the DPRK. american military imperialism is likely to have blowback in future. its american military imperialist behavior thats the dangerous thing here.

i dont believe that the US military started the war. if you look closely at the individuals involved in iraq 2003, it is the military and political elites that condoned the war, planned the war and constructed the alibi for the war. it is this very military elite that could be replicating the same thing here in the DPRK today. it is the danger of allowing the military to socially construct the DPRK as a threat complex and justify its aggressive posturing and position in relation to the DPRK. self-fulfilling prophecy ? but i concede that this may be an outdated point. chalmers johnson wrote blowback in 1999. its 10 years outdated and may not be relevant but the fact that letting the US military dominate policy discourse and options, is still a kernel of truth and personally, what i feel is alarming.

sure, NK has always wanted nukes even before iraq, but think about the absolute failure of US foreign policy towards the DPRK. the failure of the light water reactor deal, failure of the six party talks, US refusal to honor its end of the bargain and provide heavy fuel oil for the DPRK, US escalation by introducing TMD in Japan and Korea, repeated arms sales to Japan and SK that maintain and guarantee and virtually assure no chance of a DPRK survival in a short conflict.

dont you see where im coming to ? DPRK has been painted into a corner by US military dominated foreign policy. as long as the US military presence remains in korea or is allowed to dominate foreign policy options over NK, there will never be a lasting solution to the problem.

i dont see why u keep bringing SK into the picture. SK will not act independently of the US. SK will not contradict the US. SK has no desire or the will to see the US leave. SK has no leverage over the US in this case. its dependent on the US and long term US interests and the US is not dependent on it. its an relationship of dependancy and not an relationship of allies.

and there is still the issue of basing. why maintain a basing policy even if a unified korea were to emerge ? chalmers Johnson argues this is symptomatic of the US military's desire to maintain a long term military presence (i.e imperial presence on the korean peninsular) A drawdown is not the same as a withdrawal.

no contest, you are probably right on this. but what i meant by non-belligerency is that, from a DPRK perspective, the US military presence and its initiatives like the F22 sales to Japan, TMD in SK and Japan, 7th fleet basing at yokohoma. USAF airbases at yokosaka (major logistics hub) is not exactly doing anything to alleviate the DPRK's sense of security right ?

would you trust your neighbour to negotiate when u see him packing a big stick in his car ? and when u see your neighbor frequently practicing with that stick ?

and i wanna make this clear, no offense intended or anything alright ? just offering an alternative opinion which i find very interesting.

Ships banned from coast


TOKYO - NORTH Korea is warning ships to stay out of waters off its eastern port of Wonsan for three weeks from Wednesday, the Japan Coast Guard said, raising concerns Pyongyang is planning more missile tests.

North Korea is alerting vessels by radio not to enter an area that measures 100 by 263 kilometres at its widest points from June 10 to 30 between 8am and 8pm, a coast guard spokesman said on Monday.

'We have acknowledged the information and soon afterward issued the same warning to those who may travel in this region,' the spokesman said.

The news came amid increasing speculation that North Korea is preparing to test-fire several medium-range missiles from its southeast coast.

At least three missiles are apparently being prepared for launch from a missile base in Anbyon County, near Wonsan, a port city about 100 kilometres northeast of Seoul, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday.

The report said that several vehicles mounted with mobile launch pads were spotted at the base.

The Japan Coast Guard picked up a similar warning in May, only days before Pyongyang tested a nuclear bomb for the second time and then also launched a series of short-range missiles.

South Korean and US forces on the peninsula are on heightened alert after the North threatened a possible attack in response to Seoul's decision to join a US-led initiative to halt the trade in weapons of mass destruction.

The North has also warned of 'self-defence measures' in response to any tougher international sanctions. -- AFP

That's very different from what your initial words seem to me, which is that because the (assumed) hawkish US military has wartime command authority it thus has influence over how the situation evolves there. Ok, so you are saying that US responses to Norks have a military undertone. (Very different from the idea that the US military is the insidious hand influencing the situation. I wonder how much the Hollywood stereotype of rougue/Hawkish US general starting/advocating wars helped with this perception?) Looking at this incident, do you think the response should be anything otherwise? It is the Norks who unilateraly escalated the situation, and it was in fact quite deliberate, looking at how they have even acquired hostages before hand.

1. I haven't read much about any US refusal to honor its side of the bargain. Questions I would have to first find out is under what circumstances did that occur, was the N.Korean side the first to renegade on an agreement which lead to the suspension of heavy water provision? The US certainly wouldn't have promised to provide heavy water without strings attached.

2. How is a TMD escalatory? I'm sorry, but telling me that Tokyo and Seoul should leave themselves open to NorK bombardment in order to be conciliatory just won't illicit more than a derisive laugh.

No, I totally don't. DPRK painted itself into what it is today. It chose not to be a responsible member of the global community, and so it pays the price.

6 party talks. That alone totally debunks your talk about US dominating foreign policy options over NK.

SK has no desire to see the US leave since they are a stabilising force. If US wasnted to go to war witht he NorKs without SK approval see whether they want the US to leave?

You believe that NorK will be more cooperative without US presence?

If I
1. had a button to blow his house up,
2. kept threatening to blow his house up,
3. was sure that if I did so he would kill me with his big stick he was proficient with
4. valued my life
then yes, you can trust that I won't blow his house up. But without his big stick, well, that button looks very alluring. Maybe I could just put my finger on it ever more often to push my neighbour's buttons. well, I don't have to press it... .just look like maybe I might decide to press it. And that will probably get him to give me more of his tasty kimchi. Mmm. Yummy. Too bad there's that damn stick. Why couldn't he just listen to Arthur Neville Chamberlain? Appeasement is good... for me.

firstly its an overtone. the US military presence and meddling has shaped korean policy. not undertone. its barely implicit and discreet.

im not sure about the cause for this round of escalation. but what im pretty certain is that the current policy, not rewarding Norks (as u put it) for their behavior is not going to have results. running late for something, get back to u on this later.

the US refused to provide funding for the Light water nuke reactors and welshed on the heavy fuel oil it was supposed to have provided Nkorea in exchange for dismantling its nuke program in 1994.

a TMD is not a purely defensive weapons system. think of it this way. if a potential country has a nuke and a ballistic system to launch that nuke at a target, there is a certain balance of power/power relation. no one is prepared to use force or hostilities against the other, especially when that power relation is that of severe unequals (great power vs 3rd world communist country)

but when u have a TMD. it upsets that balance. things literally change in the sense that the great power's actions or plans or thinking is no longer constrained by retaliatory action undertaken by the other. aggressive behavior is potentially possible. it is destabilizing. what leverage the Norks may have over Japan and Skorea to make the US think twice about any potential military strike is gone.

think about it. a Nkorea with nukes but unlikely to use it, is likely to result in a far more stable status quo than a Nkorea without nukes, without hard currency and with every reason to fear aggression from the US. this perspective operates on the assumption that a status quo perspective is best.

thats why its an alternative perspective. DPRK has always been a shrewd operator in ensuring its survival. most personalist dictatorial regimes dont last even 20 years. the fact that DPRK has lasted that long, is pure testament to the skill of its leadership.

6 party talks ? what results have they yielded ? does it represent a policy mechanism to deal with nkorea, or does it solely exist to bargain away Nkorea's nuclear arms ?

nkorea's nukes or supposed nuke capabilities are its trump bargaining card. it will never give them away or surrender them completely unless something drastic happens. and that will never happen with a US military presence in Korea. as long as the US military stays there, with its overwhelming club, the nukes will always stay in Nkorea. (and ironically, the US military presence there is only partially aimed at stabilizing SK, its more aimed towards containing china)

SK has no desire to see the US leave since they are a stabilising force. If US wasnted to go to war witht he NorKs without SK approval see whether they want the US to leave?

i personally dont. i think the US military umbrella will always be needed there. especially with a personalist dictatorial regime. unstable.

like i said, its chalmer Johnson's perspective, not mine. i can see where he's getting at and i think its an interesting thing. dont let the generals dominate NorK policy, try personalist diplomacy (chalmers johnson goes on abit about how carter's personalist diplomacy with Kim il Sung, the great leader's dad, was pretty successful. He also supports what Bill Clinton did)

Obama is a very different Political creature from Bush and i hope he wont make the same mistakes as bush.

Not rewarding NorKs for their behaviour doesn't give desired results, so resorting to rewarding them for their behaviour would? Every time they test a device the world should give them more aid so that they won't test another device? Ahh. That sounds so familiar.

They did provide heavy water until 2002 when it was found that the NorK has a "secret uranium-enrichment program that could produce weapons, in violation of the 1994 U.S.-North Korean accord and of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which North Korea signed in 1985. " But according to you this behaviour should be rewarded?

TMD only solves the problem for Japan, keeping it safe from NorK rockets. It doesn't solve the problem for S.Korea and Seoul specifically. Which is unfortunate, because if N.Korea didn't have that leverage, it might be far more subdued. Of course, if one stands from the position of hoping for a prolonged N.Korean communist government regime, then any attempt to reduce their leverage or even eliminate them should be discouraged.

Get past the theory books and lok at the multi-faceted reality. S.Korea has gained much from peace, unlike N.Korea. It would not sacrifice all its gains for a war with N.Korea initiated by US for reasons not agreeable with S.Korea. Unless you actually believe US can fight a war with NorK without S.Korea cooperation. Japan and S.Korea do have leverage over US with regard to the handling of NorK.

The existence of N.Korea is due to nobody willing to accept the consequences of destroying the NorK regime. America sees no immediate need to destroy it, S.Korea sees no reason to jeopardise its achievements and suffer a bloody conflict to take over N.Korea and pay for rebuilding it once done, Japan doesn't want war, and China doesn't want an influx of refugees as well as a united Korea allied with US off its border. Russia, I don't know, probably just like one more avenue where it can trip up US efforts. :lol:

Has the sunshine policy or albright's meeting with Kim jong il yielded anything, other than further renegading of promises? Carter? maybe if they sent him as a substitute for the 2 hostages, he'd be useful for something, at least. The 6 party haven't been particularly successful, since they've been appeasing North Korea everytime NorK comes up with something. Appease NorK to get it to stop, and you'll see NorK come up with something all the time.

Wow... just the conspiracy theory about 'political and military elites' already throws me off the argument-- Even in the 2003 Iraq war, there was public disagreement between the SecDef and the Army COS, Gen Shinseki about the invasion. And considering that there has been a drastic political change in the US, and 2 'generations' of Joint Chiefs since the decision about the Iraq war, arguing that some 'behind the scenes' group of elites is responsible is like arguing about the Illuminati or the Freemasons-- or maybe the 'Skull and Bones' Society? Oops-- President Obama is a Yalie, the arch enemies of Harvard University so that can't be true right? :rolleyes:

While I am sure that the US Military Command in SK is very closely integrated with the SK Military, I don't think you can make the leap to saying that the US Military is dictating US Government policy for the country. At the very least, the US Ambassador to SK and the intelligence apparatus (CIA, NSA etc) will provide alternative sources of information which are independent of military intelligence-- and President Obama seems much less inclined towards unilateral policies as compared to ex-President Bush so I'm pretty sure that he would at least talk to the President Lee before taking any action.

I'm much more inclined to believe that this entire incident (including the nuclear(?) test and the reporters) is orchestrated by the North Koreans rather than lay the blame on long term US policy (which is incoherent at best, due to their frequent political swings)

P.S. The whole 'Missile Defence is Destabilising!' issue, while seemingly reasonable, is actually pretty fallacious, IMO. The whole point to a military is the retain the country's sovereign status. A nuclear weapon threatens that status. Isn't it reasonable then, to procure a defence to nuclear weapons? It is certainly far less destabilising than developing your own nuclear weapons for a MAD scenario, wouldn't you agree, stars? The way I see it, if conventional weapons or methods can neutralise a nuclear weapon or any other weapon of mass destruction, that can only be a stabilising force in the global scheme of things.

wrong perspective.

try considering something alternative for once ? like for the fact that Nkorea is acting out of its own desire for security. review the contextual history of Nork and US 1994 clinton agreement.

the US sat on it for 7 years. 7 years before the foundation for the LWR was poured. 7 years when concrete action could have been taken to reassure and show genuine US commitment to a nuclear free korean peninsular ?

the Norks unilaterally froze their nuke development in 1995 to 2002 waiting for promises of a LWR that came late, waiting for heavy fuel oil that was tied via issue linkage to missile verification deal.

is this a pattern of extortion or rewarding bad behavior ? or is this a pattern of mistrust which was instituted after Clinton's tenure ?

are u sure its heavy water ? im familiar with heavy fuel oil shipments (550,000 tons out of 1 million tonnes promised as of 2008 when US ended fuel oil shipments unless pyongyang acquiesced to missile verification demands)

afaik, the US has never shipped heavy water to DPRK . some congressional thing or legality inability.

its unfortunate that you totally missed my point. TMD destabilizes the power balance here. even in the case of Japan, or SK (when TMD matures in future), TMD does little to deter aggression.

without TMD. a lesser power can threaten a great power with nukes and bring that great power to an understanding that using force is mutually suicidal. everyone loses. MAD. completely insane. it effectively neuters the option of military force. military power or hard power, cannot be seriouslly considered as an option. i.e, if force is not an option, wars are prevented, the act of war itself becomes taboo. lives are saved and violence is averted.

TMD encourages the great power to think that its superior military prowess can dictate the terms of the negotiating table and constitute a realistic policy option. is TMD a possible reason why Japan's politicians recently considered the legality of conducting a pre-emptive strike ? coming from a strongly pacifist country, this is a really massive issue.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/id...E5351KP20090406
http://www.topix.com/world-political-parti...-emptive-strike

TMD at one level offers security and protection, but at another level, offers a completely new policy dimension. consider the options that TMD offers. you can choose to ignore this and continue with the mindset that TMD is a purely military weapon, with no other implications.

and here we are again, back at the issue of who is the actor.

sure, SK and japan have leverage over the US. plenty of leverage. but will they dare split their alliance with the US. will they sacrifice the US security umbrella that has underpinned their security planning and spending ? will they oppose or stop the US if elements in the US military wanted to act ?

answer is still no.

you can look at it from a cost-benefits or who stands to gain or lose in a war. bottomline is still not going to change the fact that both SK and Japan are more dependent on the US military than vice-versa. the US military is still the dominant actor in any security problem / relationship within the region.

its like looking back at the 2003 invasion of iraq again. will britain waiver in its commitment to the US invasion ? this is a non-issue. i dont understand why you would keep reverting to this issue. whatsoever policy the US decides, irregardless of whether it is in their best interests or not, SK and Japan will not contest or challenge US interests. sure, they may try to get it watered down or oppose it in limited aspects but risk alienating their alliance partner ? flushing down 50 years of alliance and military cooperation and a security umbrella that stabilizes the entire region over North Korea ?

the US cannot attack north korea without pissing china off. has been the situation since 1953, will be the situation till the day NK and SK unify.

SK is kinda a pitiful player in this great game of power politics. the korean war was essentially a struggle between america and china on the korean peninsular.( to paraphrase chalmers johnson). SK is the unfortunate consequence of this clash of great powers. south korean foreign policy with regards to North Korea, treads not the matter of international relations or domestic politics. it is great power politics.

and in this game of great power politics, Japan and South Korea are merely supporting actors. they cant unilaterally change the terms of the game unless either of the great power agrees with them. think about it.

frankly about russia, im not sure. i think they are included because the soviet union used to be the north korean regime's premier patron and that they continue to harbour aspirations of being a great power but dont see what influence do they wield here.

check this
http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/agreedframework

and this

http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron

carter's policy with Kim Il sung was effective, just so happened that Kim Il Sung died before any concrete agreement could have been signed.

kim jong il then took the throne. notice that clinton's 1994 plan was actually based on carter's good work. u cant argue there that carter didnt do anything constructive or groundbreaking.

do note that clinton and albright presided over a unilateral Nkorean 7 year ceasure of nuke activity. (unilateral because the US/japan/SK side didnt meet their end of the bargain until 2002, when the light water reactor construction began)

Bush policy was a complete disaster, antagonise, divide and probably further convince the DPRK / NORKS that the US were hell bent on instituting regime change and overthrowing them. it is probably under the bush administration that the US-NORK relationship festered.

see why the 6 party talks are a dismal failure ? you have to look back at when kim yong il took over. US foreign policy towards DPRK has ranged from sweet-talk with empty promises to hard threats and explicit warmongering to empty sweet talk again.

appeasement never failed. the problem is a complete breakdown of trust somewhere very early in the NORK-US relationship.

hmm, i suggest u go borrow blowback and read it first.

chalmers johnson is quite critcal of the american imperial ovvereach and how the US military's is the prime mover behind this imperial ovvereach.

you can agree, disagree, accept or reject. it makes little difference to me. but please, have a little respect for the man. in case you havent read or are not familiar with his work, he is regarded as one of the finest North Asian Academic there is. dont write off his work and insight with a casual and callous dismissal.

he was one of the first few american IPE scholars that worked and studied within Japan and understood how Japan INC functioned as a social construct and worked. he was writing about MITI in the late 70s and early 80s, even way before mainstream western academics were interested in the boom 80s and Japan's miracle economy. his perspective has always been insightful, incisive and what i personally feel, ahead of his time.

if obama fails to reign it in or reconstruct america's economic foundations in his tenure, maybe you'd understand why in 20 years time. the collapse and implosion of pax americana. chalmers Johnson is trying to look at this from his perspective of an imperial america and how it has overstretched itself in many areas, which may trigger blowback and consequences. areas like korea for instance.

ive yet to actually bring it up to date and actually mention current US policy. i dont think im qualified in this aspect to comment on that. im referring to more of the historical basis for US military policy dominating political events on the Korean peninsular.

but the hydra-headed approach in the US system, pluralistic elements and bureaucratic infighting do mean that there will always be a plethora of views and interests on most issues. what im borrowing from chalmers johnson here is, that US foreign policy has been dominated by the US military.

quite different from saying that DPRK foreign policy is solely the domain of the US military. yes im sure that there will always be alternative intelligence, but do note that under the bush administration, how much of bush's DPRK /NORK policy hinged around regime change ? there is an antecedent military overtone to US foreign policy relations right now and will likely be unless obama does something drastic.

from a longer contextual perspective (i.e since 1953) US foreign policy on korean peninsular has always been determined to some degree by the foreign basing of US troops on Korea. force has always been an option on the table. Bush made it clear that force was a card that could be used. i think that is the dynamic of the current US-DPRK relationship. military force used to be something of a passive threat, Bush made it an active threat that was far more likely to be deployed.

i agree with you on the score that Obama is likely to adopt a more concillatory round table approach rather than Bush's cowboy, axis of evil unilateral actions, but it still does not take away the fact that military force will always be a table option for POTUS.

clarification here: issue here is about military force as a option, how DPRK/NORK views military force post-bush and why even if it is a different POTUS, the focus is on how military force is still an option.

the perspective i think im presenting here is how US military force is influencing US foreign policy direction, not how the POTUS makes a decision. that i do not contest. it is how the US military basing and presence, shapes and dominates discourse of how DPRK /NORK is to be perceived as a threat. (which eventually mutates its way into US foreign policy and more importantly, policy implications and executions)

im quite puzzled by the current incident too. what is exactly the motivating factor or cause for NK to launch so many missiles and have a 2nd nuke test when it is getting what it wants already (6 party nuclear talks and concessions)

what was the trigger or context that built up to this ?

but it takes two hands to clap. im looking at the US hand that claps and presenting chalmers johnson's view that its the US military thinking thats dominating how the US hand moves/acts.

perfectly reasonable. i agree.

but the thing is that, from a DPRK viewpoint, nukes are the only thing that can guarantee its sovereign status in the event of a open military contest. it knows its military will be soundly squashed in any shooting war. nukes buy security.

this isnt just a DPRK/NORK point of view too. strategypage IIRC had something that really got me thinking. remember the russian oppsition to the US TMD interceptor in poland ? russia wanted and threatened to deploy its newest manuverable / decoyable nuke batteries if poland got that interceptor station.

its the same principle there. TMD neuters and denies great power aggression. Russia is worried in the event of a open power contest between itself and the US, the interceptor station would compromise Russia's Nukes.

another implicit assumption in your point is that, a nuclear weapon threatens the sovereignty of another state if there exists a state of non-proliferation and getting nukes will severely upset / compromise the balance of power between the nations.

the thing is, left on its own, DPRK/NORK is unlikely to develop the technical capabilities to build a nuke. but Japan/SK can easily develop that. the US already has nukes. china has plenty.

so in that situation, a TMD among nuke posessing countries/countries that are able to produce nuclear weapons capability, is far more destabilizing than a DPRK nuke capability. Japan and SK could on the quiet, build and arm themselves with a retaliatory strike capability that, when coupled with TMD, negate DPRK's nuclear edge ? that would be horrifying, a nuclearized north asia and a increasingly desperate DPRK with no means of leverage.

i know this part above sounds really convulted and im not really convinced myself (especially the last bit) perhaps a more reasonable explanation for NORK behavior would be the overwhelming array of military power pointed against it.

SK and the US alone could easily repulse and drive up to pyongyang. Japan can/may legalize or equip itself for a limited expeditionary role in future with its Hyugas, potential MV-22 and F-22 purchases. in this context, a nuke virtually guarantees NORK security with its regards to power balances in the next few decades or so until TMD technology matures.

what happens then when u have an outdated NORK military that possess nukes, who fears regime change or external force (please delve into the chinese/Korean psyche, having suffered colonialization and foreign imperialism multiple occasions in the 20th C) and facing superior enemy conventional forces who possess the means to disarm and destroy your only means of deterrence ?

seems like a recipe for instability. even today, TMD provides SK and Japan (lets remove the US from the equation for the moment) with the policy option of undertaking a surgical strike to remove DPRK nukes and with the potential capability of effectively neutring whatever threat the North can counterbalance to them via nukes. i think the real danger of TMD is that it changes the dimension of being a passive responder to Nkorea's theatrics and allows the deployer nation to actually have the means to not only deter, but become proactive in the sense that it provides it a window of opportunity to surgically threaten NORK / DPRK without fearing the consequences.

i.e grabbing the tigers balls and squeezing it, giving you time to really incapacitate the tiger before it can bite you (to use a really crude analogy)

The U.S.-funded deliveries of fuel oil were halted in 2002 after North Korea acknowledged that it also had a secret uranium-enrichment program that could produce weapons, in violation of the 1994 U.S.-North Korean accord and of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which North Korea signed in 1985.

So much for freezing nuke development?

Yes, you're right. Mixed up heavy fuel for heavy water.

Utterly simplistic, and again, demonstrates the limits of just looking at theory without considering reality. In reality there are far more factors weighing on the all parties. So it isn't necessarily so that the stronger side will resort to force just because it is stronger. Sure, force might be a be more presentable option to the stronger side, but that doesn't mean the stronger side will be the one precipitating the events leading to war, or that war will necessarily be the option chosen by the stronger side. To give an analogy of what you are saying, it's like saying that criminals should be given arms with the same firepower as cops, and that its justified because it is what they require to do what they do, so that cops cannot coerce them. Yes, TMD sure has lots of policy implications, but pacifists like to distort its implications by bringing in 'power balance' reasons. The problem is this:
1. They are assuming 100% effectiveness of the missile defense. (On the other hand, they also like to accuse the missile defense system as ineffective in order to get it cancelled.)
2. Just because one side is vastly stronger doesn't mean it would simply resort to war as a conflict resolution tool. Or else we would have seen many more instances of war.

Lleverage is what is required to coerce NorK into good behaviour. And superior military prowess that guarantees the end of Kim's regime should they carry out something unacceptable helps to keep them from invasion of S.Korea or any other unacceptable antics. Letting North Korea have the same leverage does no one any good. That is the whole reason why countries are trying to prevent NorK from acquiring nukes. Or do you believe that NorK should get nukes, and not only that, the same number of nukes and delivery options as the US just so that your favourite concept of 'power balance' is achieved? To me that's some seriously unbalanced thinking.

If you believe that S.K will go along and sacrifice Seoul just because the US wants to go to war (for a reason that S.K doesn't accept), then you're nuts. Bottomline is that the US serves as a security guarantee to S.K, safeguarding peace for S.K by their presence which is a blood pledge that US will fight by S.K if NorK tries anything funny. If US tries to upset the situation by declaring war unilaterally, then the US has just become a liability and a threat to the peace that the US is supposed to protect.

Yes, yes, US military is the insidious actor behind the US govt and manipulates the world at its fingertips. Not even hollywood can take credit for this.

But but but, that goes against your stand that the US will be more likely to consider force just because it is stronger than NorK, doesn't it? Since you say US cannot attack NorK since it is afraid of China, then why is it that you justify NorK acquiring nukes for self defense? You are contradicting yourself.

Yeah, unilaterally ceasing nuke activity by setting up a secret uranium enrichment program. Very unilateral indeed.

:lol: I'm wondering if Arthur Neville Chamberlain's gravestone has those words on it.

Yes, it is the US fault. How could the US not trust the NorK? The secret uranium enrichment program must have been part of some eternal life elixer manufacturing process. No way it could have been for some nuke program, yes?

you are familiar that this "ceasure of heavy fuel oil shipment" coincided with washington's refusal to

1) fund the LWR
2) loan funds to SK to continue the construction of the LWR even when SK was badly hit by the 1997 financial crisis
3) demonstrate no intent to follow through or honor the tenets of the LWR program after the clinton administration in exchange for no nukes ?

its a scam fostered by washington that lasted for 7 years.

and you missed the punchline. guess who declared that Nkorea had secret uranium enrichment programs ? the US first accused the DPRK of secret uranium processing, labelling it a rogue nation and an axis of evil candidate before North Korean admission.

and the thing here that should really be asked is, when did Nkorea precisely restart its nuclear enrinchment programs ? when president bush declared the LWR program dead ? or when the LWR were delayed by nearly 2 years when they should have been handed in 2003 in turnkey condition (LWR construction began only in 2002)

its easy to bash North Korea. but sometimes, u have to look at the context. Nkorea is not this random crackpot nation that does these random acts of confronting the world. they are shrewd operators who are working for their own right of continued self-existence.

so, is NORK (as you like it) inherently the way it is (or how it behaves) or is it a creature of circumstance ?

you ignore the context of my previous postings. it is not unrealistic when u consider how the TMD was promoted, pushed under the FMS program in the form of patriot batteries to SK and Japan.

TMD is a calculated military initiative and push by the US military to lighten its developmental costs (think Japan and the half bill footing for SM-3 tests) and achieve its operating capabilities.

thats a flawed analogy. and ive never suggested that giving Nkorea nukes is the right thing to do. (see my signature and portrait picture for a anecdotal glimpse of my personal perspectives on this)

repeatedly, ive introduced and clarified my purpose in presenting an alternative explanation for US foreign policy that appears to be so military dominated and military based, that it is a danger to continued stability and american interests in Korea.

should you choose to isolate one component/facet of this broader alternative perspective and single it out for how flawed it is, i think my contribution has been grossly misunderstood and misinterpreted. it has always been about the US military and its continued viewing of the DPRK in strictly military power terms, affects, influences and shapes US policy. even the TMD, which was introduced into the region and pushed for by US military elements has potentially destabilizing effects, which you conveniently ignore and reject.

if you still dont realize it, pax americana exists because the American military and American imperial ambitions dominate the world and in this specific instance, the korean peninsular. what america wants for the korean peninsular, it gets. see iraq for a case example in how in a single bold stroke, the US validated the faith of all the believers in hegemonic stability theory and deal a mortal blow to liberalism as a IR school of thought.

i used chalmer johnson's perspective of a DPRK/NORK policy so dominated by the US military locked and engaged in an enduring cold war warrior mentality to present an alternative perspective that the key agent/actor in this crisis, could be the US military and how it percieve the DPRK. i have not for one moment insinuated or implied in any means that giving the DPRK nukes is a good policy option.

what i do mean is that continued perceptions like yours, where DPRK is demarcated and socially constructed as a "NORK" or as a rogue nation or nation that behaves unpredictably and is a general danger to every other nation and should be regarded as a threat, is an obsolete, western dominated and biased perspective. this denies you objectivity from viewing Nkorea as it is. you entertain and nourish a stereotype of North Korea that may be so hawkish in its outlook that you blind yourself to realistic factors like Washington's repeated screw ups in the 1994 nuke disarmament treaty, the barely implicit bush administration's threat of war and the barely restrained American explicit gestures, language and threats of hostilities with North korea.

in this sense, a TMD is the perfect analogy of the cold war warrior mentality. escalation and mode of thinking that requires a response to a threat perception, not a response to the cause of the threat. It is this cold war warrior mentality that persists in korea today, persists in the US military today and as far as i can see, persists in you today. i agree with chalmers johnson in that this mentality and its presence in the US military elements in korea today is the single most likely danger to stability on the korean peninsular today.

its not the nukes NK holds. it is how the actors react to the nuke that is the most disturbing issue here. ive not yet questioned the effectiveness of TMD nor insinuate anything about its ability to completely prevent or deny war. why TMD is significant is because TMD possess not only an active defense function but a latent offensive function that cannot be denied or misconstrued in any manner.

bottomline: a TMD does nothing to limit the perceptions of the US military in korea and its cold-war warrior mentality. in fact, it has the danger of misleading or giving the US military a misplaced sense of confidence in thinking in may act. it masquerades itself as the ability to act with impunity when it isnt. it may not necessarily represent the capacity and desire for offensive action but it greatly increases the potential for miscalculation and missteps in military action/posturing and consquently foreign policy

to borrow your analogy and answer you on your terms. i dont insist on the criminal or cop getting swords or improved weaponary or that they must maintain an essential balance in power.

what i worry is the introduction of additional elements in the balance of power that may incur miscalculation or missteps.

say a cop has a gun, the robber a knife.

escalation occurs and the robber gets a gun. the cops get issued with bullet proof vests.

do bullet proof vests ensure immunity and complete protection from criminal weapons ? it does not. it will not.

but does it affect the way cops operate and the behavior and potential action that a cop will undertake now that he has ballistic protection ? undoubtedly and affirmatively yes. the cop is likely to undertake far greater risks and experience less hesistation to expose himself to hostile fire/ dangerous situations as there is foreknowledge of a greater chance of survival.

finally something reasonable i can understand. ive never been pro nuke or have never been advocating that NORK should get nukes. what i dont agree with is that the approach (influenced by the US military) is wrong. it shouldnt be about leveraging NK to give up its nukes but to go back to where it really matters. removing the root issue, NK insecurity against potential US aggression and military action. Nk will use its nukes to extract every last drop of leverage it can, but it isnt about that. its about resolving NK and its fear of being invaded (yet again)

this isnt a exercise about balance of power. its about the US military and how it is the single most powerful agent/agency (in terms of capability) on the korean peninsular, how it has shaped foreign policy and how it may continue to shape future korean policy.

i think we are looking at this in very different perspectives.

you are coming from the perspective that the US and SK are in a relationship of equal sovereign nation-states, which are mutually bound and allied in a security relationship.

im coming from the angle that the US presence in Korea is for its own interest and imperial ambitions (basing in korea even after unification ? thats pretty clear and obvious to me). do note i have never said that sacrificing seoul was on the agenda nor have i asserted that the US will declare war unilaterally.

the US military is the single most powerful actor and dangerous agency in this situation because of its

1) mentality (cold war warrior)
2) assets in theater
3) means and ability to present its threat perceptions to washington, entrench its ideas and position with regards to the DPRK
4) the most clear and visible policy option available to POTUS/ the US and the DPRK

and if you have a agency/actor , with a track record (jeju/gwangju) of maintaining US interests/hegemony within korea and willing to sacrifice lives, democracy and construct enemies for it to justify its continued presence, existence and its raison de etre in SK, there is reason to believe that this agency will likely act to promulgate the current status quo rather than act to rectify the DPRK problem.

maybe you are right in saying that the central assumption of a US with imperial ambitions and the US military as their new generation of proconsuls and warrior-diplomats is far-fetched (i somewhat doubt this)

but this is central to understanding of chalmer johnson's perspective of the US military's role in korea.

no.

i said " the us cannot attack NK without pissing china off"

it is not equivalent to saying "the US will not attack NK as it does not want to piss china off"

they look and appear similar, but are very different in implications. granted with china controlling over 1 trillion in treasury securities and debt, it is an unlikely proposition. but not an impossible proposition.

and given that it is NOT an imposible proposition, how does that run contrary to my earlier statements or contradict myself ?

even if china does not like the US attacking North korea, China may allow it to happen if it were justifiable under a certain level of provocation and occur under a limited extent of territory.

most people forget that china responded to the korean war only when general douglas macarthur allowed his troops to cross the Yalu river in pursuit of North korean remnant forces. of course, china today is different from china under mao and things may yet turn out differently. i cite only the historical precedent.

:D how can appeasement fail when it wasnt completed in the first place ?

remember, incomplete deliveries of heavy fuel oil. no LWR for north korea, no demonstration of firm cooperation and adherence to 1994 treaty.

appeasement cannot possibly fail when it hasnt begun. you completely missed this


Neville chamberlain offered appeasement under very different circumstances. did hitler have a nuke ? did hitler run the longest-lived personalist dictatorship spanning 3 generations, more than 50 years of rule, survive a great power clash on german soil ? ( i thought he expired in that one) did hitler face rhethoric such as an axis of evil or rogue state or becoming a pariah state ? (that i think he did) did hitler live every day in fear of the 7th fleet launching air raids on him ? was hitler ever colonised ? was germany surrounded by two staunchly american allies with strong economies and far superior conventional forces ? did hitler live in a place that is less than 4 hours away from guam and nukes ?

hitler had it so good in comparison to the kim clan.

lets try to understand North Korea from its position and not insisting and freely transplanting our perceptions on it ?

the best thing you've said all night :D its actually mildly entertaining.

So it's US fault for selling Japan and S.Korea what they needed and wanted?

That is exactly what your whole 'power balance' fallacy is. You cannot hope to support it when the consequences suit you and deny it when the consequences don't. According to your argument, the world should be a safer place when the power balance is at equilibrium between NorK and US. So according to your theory, not only should the NorK have nukes, but the same number and delivery options as the US.

Again, deliberate ignoring of other factors the US has to consider, and the fact that the still TMD system won't prevent severe loss of life and property in Seoul. On the otehr hand, it does prevent rockets as a delivery option against Japan and reduces severely the incentive for Japan to go nuclear and in turn dangerously destabilise the situation in E.Asia. That is stability for you.

So now you disassociate yourself from your balance of power theory? Now it's disapproval of additional weapons, when I clearly recall you calling the presence of superior American firepower in the region a threat to peace and stability? Make up your mind. And to reply to your variation of the analogy, here's how it goes.

The cop will be more free to act when equipped with avest in the case where a firefight breaks out, but the possibility of getting hurt is still there. SO while he is more free to act, there is no reason why he would be any more interested in turning the situation into a firefight. Unless one thinks that cops are filled with bloodlust. Then nothing one says matters. Say the bulletproof vest (TMD) is called an escalation, and causes the robber to try to get a gun (I did note your purposefully ambigious 'escalation' but to better conform with reality it was the robber who already displayed intentions towards acquiring a gun and the cop then responding by getting vests. Unfortunately that seems so provocative to you), then the solution is not to remove the vests but to try to prevent him from getting a gun, and to get bullet proof vests to reduce the advantage he would get from acquiring the gun so that the incentive of having a gun is reduced. That is optimal. Unless one shares and agrees with the perspective of the robber and feels that the aims of the robber should be encouraged.

Yes, I'm sure the whole reason why robbers are robbing is our fault and the cops fault. The cops are there and are a threat preventing the robbers from doing what they are doing. If they weren't there, then they won't fear for their safety and so they won't rob. They are robbing because we refuse to give them what they want. If we gave robbers what they wanted then they won't need to rob. So it's our fault. It must be. See, I know the pacifist's mentality.

Sorry, you're going to have to explain how stability in the Korean peninsula is against US interests. The US clearly isn't in S.K purely for S.K's interest, but there is no reason why its interest doesn't coincide with S.K's, and no reason why S.K cannot evict the US in the case where US tries to escalate the situation and cause war without S.K's understanding. You are intentionally clouding your judgement by refusing to acknowledge that S.K is a sovereign entity with its own interests.

By the way, do you believe doctors are the ones causing diseases so that they can get business, cops are encouraging crooks so they have a job? Maybe that doctor gave you a jab full of viruses? :P

So you believe that just because of its current superiority and TMD all such external considerations are thrown out of the window thus the US will be far more likely to resort to war? The simple thing is that you acknowledge that there are many factors other than pure military 'power balance' which affects the decision to go to war - which essentially undermines your 'US has superior firepower so is far more likely to go to war'. You refuse to acknowledge that the military power arrayed against NorK can only be used if it does something drastically unacceptable, to which war is the only option and which would require the agreement of S.K.

NorK's position is that it's not being given enough. So it is trying to acquire nukes to get that leverage. If still no concessions come, at least it'll still have a nuke and be that much harder to destroy. Which, according to you, is a good outcome. Balance of power, yeah? ::2 thumbs up:: ;) Evil yankee no power to coerce or start war against godly Kim. Good day for all pacifists.

I think YF can argue his points far better than I can argue mine, but the point we are trying to make is the same-- putting the blame on the US Military (and by extension the South Koreans/Japanese) is wrong for two reasons 1)The US Military does not have as much influence as you think it does 2)The SK/Japanese are not the US patsies that you think they are. Mr Johnson may be a pre-eminent analyst in this field, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't challenge his assertions. Issac Newton was wrong about alchemy, for example.

What good can come from Mr Johnson's proposals to limit or remove US military presence from the Korean peninsula? The North Korean's demonstrated nuclear capabilities would be enough to push both the South Koreans and Japanese to develop their own weapons. Would a fully nuclear East Asia benefit anybody?

In fact, while Tactical Missile Defences grew out of Cold War technology, I believe that they are antithetical to the Cold War mentality-- by removing the MAD scenario and reducing the benefits of having nuclear weapons. Your analogy to policemen/theives is flawed as well-- given bulletproof vests/blast shields, I can argue that policemen no longer have to rely on firing their weapons to counter an immediate threat and can take the time to make a considered response.

Also, the idea that appeasement rarely works can be found in two instances in WWII: Both Chamberlain and Stalin initially tried to appease Hitler, and in both cases appeasement failed in the face of an enemy determined to achieve his goals, whether it is be Lebensraum or the genocide of minorities. The North Korean dictatorship is similar determined to achieve it's end state, which is the perpetuation of the Kim dynasty at all costs. The means by which either Hitler or Kim Jong Il are trying to acheive their ends is irrelevant. How then can appeasement work? Can you raise an instance in history where appeasement bought lasting peace, stars?

Coming back to the main problem I have with Mr Johnson's assumptions, and the fallacy upon which his entire argument is based, the US military has never had, and does not have, the kind of political influence that he thinks it does. He forgets that the Korean War was started by the North Koreans, and that South Korea almost fell before Gen. MacArthur got permission to counterattack. Does this sound like US military control of the situation? The US military in general has always been under civilian political control, and at times chafed under it, but stars, can you name me one instance where a US General has, in disobedience of his orders from the President, started a war?

Mr Johnson has made bold and incredible assertions in the course of his argument, and the onus is on him (or on you, if you want to defend his commentary), to prove that his assumptions are valid--even before you try to defend his conclusions. Otherwise there would be no point to this discussion.