Next War, North Korea?
The Other Imminent Danger
By Stanley Kurtz
National Review Online
March 3 & 5, 2003

(Coyner's Comment Especially for those of us living in Seoul, the following is hardly joyful reading. I hope this may give pause to those who brush aside the notion that America would not be so "crazy" to start a second Korean war. I hope the Administration does not set it sights on North Korea, but the following articulates why after Iraq North (and by extension) South Korea could be next.)

(KK's Comment As if our impending plunge into the black hole of Baghdad were not enough to keep one up nights, here's a cheery piece from the National Review Online, in which Stanford University's Stanley Kurtz ponders what he sees as the inevitability of war with North Korea, either before or after a bomb they have sold to Al Qaeda or their fellow travelers decimates New York, Washington, or another major U.S. city, possibly rendering large areas of it uninhabitable for generations. He also explains how our sole superpower status is causing fissures between us and our oldest allies, and encouraging other countries to distance themselves from us, lest they also become terrorist targets. I'd like to think he's overstating his case a bit, but it's hard to fault his assertions....)

NORTH KOREA
The Other Imminent Danger
By Stanley Kurtz
National Review Online Contributing Editor
March 3, 2003
http//www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz030303.asp

Today, the United States stands on the brink of war -- with North Korea. War with North Korea is much more likely than either the administration or the media have indicated. And our coming invasion of Iraq may trigger developments that push us still closer to conflict on the Korean peninsula.

Having been caught red-handed, the North Koreans now openly admit to operating a nuclear-weapons program in violation of the "agreed framework" negotiated by the Clinton administration in 1994. The North Koreans have compounded their incitement by kicking out inspectors and restarting plants at Yongbyon that produce and reprocess plutonium. The North Koreans are doing everything in their power (withdrawing from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, threatening to repudiate the Korean war armistice) to create a sense of crisis -- all with the object of forcing the United States into negotiations.

At the moment, the U.S. and North Korea are at stalemate. Unwilling to reward North Korea for violating its earlier pledge to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for economic assistance, the United States refuses to negotiate until the Koreans suspend their nuclear program. The Koreans, on the other hand, refuse to close down their nuclear program until the United States promises not to invade, and grants them yet more economic assistance.

This stalemate is unstable. The North Koreans are taking actions that will result in the production of enough plutonium for as many as six nuclear weapons by summer. Once North Korea processes weapons-grade plutonium and removes it from Yongbyon, that plutonium will be effectively hidden from spy satellites, inspectors, and military strikes. At that point, North Korea will be free, not only to construct more nuclear weapons, but to sell weapons-grade nuclear material to al Qaeda, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, and anyone else who will pay for it.

Continuation of this situation will be catastrophic for the United States. In the short term, North Korean sales of plutonium would lead to dirty bombs in American cities, rendering sections of Washington or New York uninhabitable for generations. In the medium term, plutonium sales will doubtless lead to full-scale nuclear blasts, set off by terrorists, in American cities. These will kill hundreds of thousands, even millions of Americans. Full-scale nuclear arms proliferation to rogue nations will also lead to yet more nuclear blackmail, of the type being practiced by Korea right now. In effect, America's conventional military might will be neutralized, and Saddam-like regional adventurers will become a constant threat. In short, if we overthrow Saddam, while still letting North Korea turn itself into a worldwide engine of nuclear proliferation, then we will have lost the war on terror.

There are four possible responses to the current situation in North Korea allow the current stalemate to continue, impose a set of sanctions designed to bring the regime to heel, negotiate, or go to war. As noted, the present standoff is unstable. In time, North Korean plutonium production will kick off a process of nuclear proliferation to every terrorist group and rogue regime in the world. It is doubtful that President Bush will allow this.

In the absence of negotiations leading to a comprehensive settlement, international sanctions will not be able to prevent the North Koreans from manufacturing and selling plutonium. Punitive sanctions could wear down the regime only gradually. In the meantime, sanctions would bring more of what we've already got -- North Korean efforts to force negotiations by precipitating a crisis of proliferation.

And the terrible truth is that negotiations, although called for by many Democrats, and by the new South Korean government, are unlikely to work. That is because the North Koreans are almost certain to do what they have already done -- take the money and security guarantees we offer them, while secretly continuing to build their nuclear arsenal.

If you want to see what a proposed negotiated solution to the Korean problem looks like, read, "How to Deal With North Korea," in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. This article, coauthored by James T. Laney (President Clinton's ambassador to North Korea [sic] during the period when the failed "agreed framework" was negotiated) strikes me as pure fantasy. Laney and his coauthor Jason Shaplen envision a comprehensive settlement of the conflict on the Korean peninsula, with security guarantees by China, Japan, Russia, and the United States. The agreement would be verified and enforced by "intrusive and regular inspections."

Given the difficulty we've had in gaining the cooperation of Russia and China in Iraq, the idea that we can rely on them to guarantee security on the Korean peninsula is ridiculous. Of late, American pundits have tried to explain to the Chinese that it is in their own interest to restrain the North Koreans. Supposedly, China's fear of a nuclear-armed Japan and South Korea, and of reduced trade with the United States, will force it to pressure the North Koreans.

So far, the Chinese give no signs of buying these arguments. They are afraid of revoking their aid from the North Koreans, thus provoking a regime collapse that floods China with refugees. And while the Chinese may not want to face a nuclear Japan or South Korea, they surely understand that these stable and sensible powers are unlikely to launch a nuclear attack. The Chinese can live with rational, capitalist nuclear neighbors a lot more easily than we can live with a nuclear armed North Korea or al Qaeda. If the Chinese are not already urgently banging on our door offering to help control North Korea, then they are unlikely to be sufficiently motivated to be trustworthy partners in the sort of enterprise envisioned by Ambassador Laney.

Worse, the Laney plan relies on exactly the sort of inspections regime that has already proven itself to be a joke in Iraq. We already know that a country that does not wish to cooperate can evade inspections, just as North Korea has already done. The Koreans, in fact, are past masters at hiding even their massive conventional military forces in underground complexes. What hope is there, then, that we can rely on international inspections to keep North Korea's nuclear weapons program in check? The North Koreans have already proven themselves to be liars. Whoever believes that an agreement will keep them from taking our money, while still selling nuclear fuel to al Qaeda, is a fool. Even if China (on whom the North is totally dependent) should place its weight on the side of an agreement, the Koreans could -- and probably would -- secretly flout it.

And so we come to the option of war. Yet war with North Korea would be a horror. True, the United States and South Korea would ultimately win. North Korea lacks fuel, and thus staying power, and would immediately cede control of the air to the United States. But in the initial stages, the North would probably kill hundreds of thousands of South Koreans. They would quickly destroy Seoul with a massive artillery barrage from hardened bunkers, and would at first overrun much of the Korean and American army with a massive land attack. The Department of Defense estimates that a million people would die in a new Korean war, perhaps as many as one hundred thousand of those being Americans (nearly twice the death toll of Vietnam). And while we cannot say for sure that they have perfected missiles that can reach California, or have successfully learned how to place a small-sized nuclear device atop a missile, the chance of one or two North Korean nuclear missiles launched against Hawaii, Alaska, or California cannot be excluded.

Were the United States to strike first, the worst-case scenario might be avoidable. We might risk an air raid against North Korea's nuclear plants, on the bet that the North would not launch an invasion of the South, or a retaliatory nuclear strike on us, knowing that it would ultimately assure its own destruction. Alternatively, we could accompany a raid on the North's nuclear processing facilities with tactical nuclear strikes against underground troop and artillery emplacements. That might enable us to win the war, while still preventing the worst-case casualty scenarios. But of course, even a tactical nuclear first strike would be an act of extraordinary boldness and controversy.

In last Friday's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof reported, based on unnamed sources, that administration hawks are advocating a preemptive strike against North Korea. For now, President Bush has put the Korean matter in the hands of a more dovish State Department. But according to Kristof, that dovish policy may not hold. The very fact that hawkish plans are being leaked to Kristof by worried administration doves is powerful evidence that, on Korea, the hawks are indeed threatening to gain an upper hand.

Meanwhile, former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who is surely a confidant of the administration's hawks, has a piece in the current issue of Forbes that all but calls for war with North Korea. Weinberger argues, persuasively, that North Korea's past lies make any future promises to destroy its nuclear program unreliable. Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein are two of a kind, says Weinberger. And who can deny it? The fact that former Secretary Weinberger is publicly making this argument is of great interest. (For a more detailed account of the case for war, see Joshua Muravchik's "Facing Up to North Korea," in the March 2003 issue of Commentary.)

Up to now, hawks have had an answer to the charge that they apply a double standard to Iraq and North Korea. The hawks point out that we are attacking Saddam Hussein, but not North Korea, precisely because Saddam does not yet have nuclear arms, while North Korea does. We are trying to prevent Saddam from putting us into the same sort of impossible situation that the North Koreans already have. That is a fine answer. Yet it does not go far enough. The sad truth is that we do still face a terrible choice in North Korea, quite like the one we face with Saddam. And as the North Koreans begin to produce plutonium, that choice will be forced. Either we allow ourselves to lose the war on terror by subjecting ourselves to a nuclear-armed al Qaeda, or we place our faith in bogus international guarantees and inspections regimes, or we go to war with North Korea. That war, with a power capable of killing hundreds of thousands of South Koreans -- and Americans -- may force us to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Our choice will likely grow more acute with an invasion of Iraq. North Korea will probably choose the moment of invasion, when we are least able to launch a war, to begin its plutonium processing.

The nature of our oncoming choice has been hidden from view by the administration's downplaying of the Korean crisis. Our silence has seemed to ratify our powerlessness, while our refusal to negotiate has seemed to reveal our lack of policy. But if our policy is to strike when we may and must, silence makes a good deal of sense. Another reason for silence is the difference between our own interests and the interests of the South Koreans. Dare we put Seoul at risk in the present, to protect Washington and New York in the future? Perhaps not. Yet surely, by its pleas for an unreliable negotiated settlement that will save Seoul (for now), yet allow plutonium to slip into the hands of al Qaeda, Seoul is risking New York and Washington to protect itself.

It will be said that all of this is the madness of the cowboys running the Bush administration. How else could we have moved from so long a relative peace to the brink of multiple destructive wars? Our nightmare, sadly, is the result of the lethal combination of terror and proliferating weapons of mass destruction, not the actions of the Bush administration. For all our might and technology, the confluence of terror and WMDs has the power to destroy us -- if we do not destroy it first.

We are at the beginning, not the end, of a terrible new age. Our army is too small. So is our defense budget. They will get bigger. Even that, unfortunately, will not return us to our accustomed security. We stand today on the brink of a war -- with North Korea.

-- Stanley Kurtz is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

It's All About North Korea
Beyond the Iraqi sideshow
By Stanley Kurtz
National Review Online Contributing Editor
March 5, 2003
http//www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz030503.asp

Increasingly, it dawns that Iraq is a sideshow. The real problem is North Korea. Of course, it is imperative that we prevent Saddam Hussein from placing us in the sort of bind that Kim Jong Il already has. That is why we must invade Iraq. Yet with all its diplomatic, military, and long-term social-cultural implications, the international battle over Iraq will ultimately be a lesser thing than the emerging political and military struggle over North Korea.

In "The Other Imminent Danger," I reviewed our several bad options in Korea. There I argued that we are much closer to war than the media or the administration have let on. While I do believe that there is a very real possibility of war with North Korea within the next six months, the greater likelihood is war within the next six years. Sooner or later, war will probably break out -- a war that could be as terrible as any the world has seen since 1945. In the meantime, the Korean question is likely to be the focus of our national and international debates -- more so, perhaps, than the tumult in the Muslim world that follows our invasion of Iraq.

At the moment, North Korea is striving to create a crisis that will force us into another round of negotiations. Their recent interception of our reconnaissance aircraft is part of that plan. The critical moment will probably come shortly after we enter Iraq. At that point, when our military is least able to handle war on the Korean peninsula, the North Koreans will begin to reprocess spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor into weapons-grade plutonium. The plutonium will then be removed from Yongbyon, secured against the gaze of spy satellites or future inspectors, and used to produce nuclear bombs. More ominously, the plutonium, and/or finished bombs, will then be sold to al Qaeda, and to regimes like Iran, Syria, and Libya. This will force us into a choice between 1) losing the war on terror through inaction; 2) an attempt to impose -- ineffective -- sanctions; 3) negotiations with a government of proven liars; 4) a terrible war.

Is there a way out of this dilemma? In response to "The Other Imminent Danger," a few readers questioned my central premise -- that the North Koreans would sell nuclear materials to terrorists and rogue regimes. Unfortunately, the North Koreans have already used exports of Scud missiles to troublesome regimes to prop up their disastrously weak economy. They have also collaborated with Pakistan in mutual development of nuclear weapons. The North Koreans would surely use their well-established trade ties to reap the massive financial benefits of nuclear sales to every government and terrorist organization that fears an American attack.

But can China, on whom the North is totally dependent, be made to force the Koreans to give up their nuclear game? In "The Other Imminent Danger," I argued that the Chinese could live with a nuclear South Korea and Japan, if that meant seeing America tied down in a protracted struggle with al Qaeda and the North Koreans. Yet a number of readers, and many pundits, argue that the Chinese will recognize that their true long-term interests lie with the United States on this matter. Beyond fears of a nuclear Japan, the Chinese economy depends on trade with the United States. The threat of restrictions on that trade might force the Chinese to act.

The Chinese may indeed reverse course on Korea. Perhaps they are moving behind the scenes to pressure the North Koreans right now. Yet the Chinese give no sign of a change. They fear that sanctions will destabilize Korea and lead to chaos, regime collapse, and millions of refugees. A Chinese turnaround in the next few months, before plutonium reprocessing has begun, or gone very far, might work. But once the reprocessing has played out for six months to a year, even Chinese sanctions will not be able to guarantee against secret North Korean sales. And I doubt that Chinese pressure, if simply forced by America trade sanctions, will be consistently or effectively applied.

So then, if plutonium reprocessing begins during our invasion of Iraq, and if the Chinese do not come around, what will happen? At that point, President Bush may receive a recommendation from Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and hawkish members of the National Security Counsel, to launch a preemptive strike against North Korea. On the other hand, Secretary of State Powell, along with Deputy Secretary of State, and Korea expert, Richard Armitage, will argue for negotiations. The doves will be informally joined by Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, and other influential advisers to the first President Bush. Although the hawks have carried the day on Iraq, there is good reason to believe that, at first, the administration's doves will prevail on Korea.

True, a reasonably successful preemptive military strike against North Korea is not entirely out of the question. Such a strike could take two forms 1) a raid on Yongbyon and other Korean nuclear facilities, followed by the threat of a massive nuclear strike if the North Koreans do not stand down; 2) raids against North Korea's nuclear facilities, and simultaneous nuclear strikes against its ground forces and artillery emplacements, to preclude the possibility that the North could destroy Seoul in retaliation for our attack.

Recently, Jack Wheeler* laid out a proposal for a secret first strike against Yongbyon, followed by a nuclear ultimatum to the North Koreans. The great danger here is that, sensing an imminent American attack on their nuclear programs, or following such an attack, the North Koreans would simply launch an artillery blizzard that would kill hundreds of thousands, or millions, in Seoul. That tells in favor of a full-blown preemptive strike with tactical nuclear weapons against North Korea's total military capability. The most interesting thing about Wheeler's proposal is his claim that, by using neutron bombs, an American first strike could effectively wipe out North Korea's army and artillery, with negligible radiation blowback onto the South. (I cannot, at present, assess the plausibility of Wheeler's nuclear scenario.)

The first scenario here (destruction of Korea's nuclear capability, followed by a successful nuclear ultimatum) still includes a substantial risk of failure, in which case Seoul will be wiped out and perhaps millions killed. The bolder plan of an across the board nuclear first strike at both nuclear and conventional Korean forces, would at minimum break the nuclear taboo, thus bringing the wrath of the world down upon the United States. Nonetheless, total success might in the end be accepted, given the obvious threat posed by Korean nuclear sales, and the notorious character of the North Korean regime.

The true disaster for the United States would be a strike against North Korea that does anything less than successfully intimidate the regime into passivity, or rapidly and totally eliminate its military capacity. Short of rapid and total success, we face the deaths of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of South Koreans.

It can certainly be argued that we must take that terrible risk, in order to forestall the horrific prospect of eventual terrorist nuclear strikes against American cities. But the truth is, too small a portion of the public understands the imperatives involved. For many, sacrificing Seoul in the present, on the theory that someday North Korean plutonium will enable terrorists to destroy New York and Washington, will not make sense. This would be true even for many Americans, much less the rest of the world.

This points to a dangerous and emerging dynamic in the war on terror. America's historically unprecedented military hegemony is working to isolate us from our allies. Advancing technology (in combination with America's economic strength) has made our disproportionate power possible. Yet advancing technology has also enabled otherwise undeveloped societies to gain control of weapons of mass destruction. As a result, terrorists and rogue regimes can threaten us on our own soil. That means that our erstwhile allies now have an interest in at least partially dissociating themselves from us, so as not to become targets of terror or war.

During the Cold War, we put our own troops at risk to protect states that were themselves the frontline of defense against a mutual enemy. In that sense, America showed the worth of its friendship by sharing risk with its less powerful friends. But now, the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction means that we alone can be targeted. America is now the front line, and other countries can at least hope to escape attack by disentangling themselves from association with America. Our power and wealth may ensure that other countries try not to alienate us over much. Yet simultaneously, other countries' fears of becoming targets of terrorism and war works to weaken or break our alliances. (For a perceptive discussion of this, see Noah Millman's response to "The Other Imminent Danger" on Gideon's Blog).

Consider a war that succeeds in destroying the regime in the North, while leaving hundreds of thousands, or millions, dead in the South. After such a war, who would want to be our ally? Our problem with the South Koreans is not so much their newfound tendency to appeasement (although they have indeed been flirting with appeasement), as the fact that there is now a genuine divergence of interest between the South Koreans and ourselves. The policy that best saves Washington and New York most risks Seoul. And this is because South Korea (like Europe) is gradually being transformed from a frontline Cold War tripwire into potential collateral damage in a direct battle between the United States and terrorists and rogue regimes armed with weapons of mass destruction. After a Korean conflict in which both the North and the South are devastated, the world would shun America as a dangerous pariah -- and from the perspective of the world's interests, this would not be entirely without justification.

Understanding this dynamic (and, given the size of their Muslim population, directly fearing the price of association with America), the French have set themselves up as a leader for all nations who fear being targeted by terrorists as allies of the United States. And perhaps some sense of America's inherently more isolated position is what prevents the Chinese and Russians from casting their lot with the United States in the matter of North Korea. Indeed, the South Koreans themselves oppose a preemptive strike on the North, and it will be almost impossible to initiate a war without their cooperation.

In light of all this, the president is likely, if with great reluctance, to choose negotiations with the North Koreans over war. But that is not the end of the matter. While I can envision the prospect of a disastrous war forcing the president to negotiate with the North Koreans, I cannot envision a scenario in which an agreement actually results. Having been dragged into negotiations with a regime he doesn't trust, the president will insist on the most stringent security guarantees and inspections regime, to insure against repetition of the fiasco with President Clinton's "agreed framework." The North Koreans will never agree to what the president will insist upon. Negotiations will break down, and the manufacture and sale of nuclear materials by the North Koreans will continue.

Presented with intelligence confirming plutonium sales to al Qaeda and/or rogue regimes, the president may then be forced into war. At minimum, in the wake of the Iraqi invasion, the unresolved Korean issue will become a center of domestic and international debate. The pattern will resemble the debate over Iraq, but the imperatives and dilemmas will be far more acute.

In the absence of war in Korea, the next big event will be a dirty bomb, or a full-blown terrorist nuclear strike, in an American city. After that, if there has not already been a war in Korea, there will be.

It seems to me that the only things likely to block this scenario are the collapse of the North Korean regime or the destruction of al Qaeda. In light of the capture of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the end of al Qaeda now seems at least possible. Yet, given the deep problems in the Muslim world, and the interests of rogue regimes, it is difficult to believe that some sort of terrorist force will not be able to reconstitute itself indefinitely.

Someday, the North Korean regime itself may collapse. Yet that is what President Clinton's negotiators told themselves when they signed the agreed framework. The collapse never came. And the current crisis, if "resolved" through negotiations or stalemate, will quite conceivably only strengthen Kim Jong Il's position.

So, sooner or later, a war with North Korea looms, even if only after a horrific terrorist nuclear attack on the United States. In the meantime, it becomes increasingly evident that the Korean situation is an even more acute problem than our problem in Iraq. Most disturbingly, the two crises together point to a dangerous new dynamic, in which our newfound power and vulnerability combine to isolate us from our erstwhile allies, seriously complicating our prospects for success in the global war against terror.

-- Stanley Kurtz is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

* KK Note Dr. Jack Wheeler is a pundit on NewsMax.com, and founder and president of the Freedom Research Foundation. Also an adventurer and explorer, he has been called "the real Indiana Jones" by The Wall Street Journal, and the "creator of the Reagan doctrine" by the Washington Post.