North Korea
The so-called Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea is a hellhole. It has been ruled with the proverbial iron fist by the Kim dynasty for 70 years. The regime was enabled by Josef Stalin and it emulates his system of governance–terror. Hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants are confined in slave labor camps. Punishment is collective. If you are found to be insufficiently subservient, your entire family is tossed into the camp. When the crops fail, the regime does not reach out to the international community for help, it lets its people starve, because donors might demand a change of behavior.
The grandson Kim is a real piece of work. He has killed over 100 members of his inner governing circle, some of them personally, and a few of them with an anti-aircraft gun. He has, or soon will have, a weapon capable of devastating a major American city.
What are we to do? It seems that we have two realistic choices. We can exert a sufficient level of pressure to induce him to scale back his weapons program. Or, we can learn to live under threat of a nuclear attack. Note that I did not include a negotiated agreement or preemptive strike in the alternatives.
An agreement is impossible. The assumption underlying every agreement is that the parties will abide by the agreement–either because they are trustworthy, or because there is a reliable enforcement mechanism to enforce performance. Neither of those alternatives are available in dealing with Kim. His family has a very consistent track record of violating agreements (usually within minutes of receiving whatever goodies were proffered to induce agreement), and there is no mechanism for enforcing the terms of an agreement. The UN observation of the Clinton agreement was a fiasco.
It is too late for a preemptive strike. Kim’s ICBMs are now powered by solid fuel and sit on mobile launchers. That means he does not have vulnerable fueling points to attack and long ramp-up time before missile launch. His nuclear facilities are hardened. Thorough suppression of his missile facilities would take days or weeks. During that time, the thousands of hardened artillery pieces he has just north of the DMZ would be sending off tens of thousands of rounds into Seoul, a city of 10 million. We can take the artillery out, but not before hundreds of thousands are killed.
We might be able to pressure Kim into better behavior, although it is a long shot. He does need hard currency to keep luxury goods flowing to his elite and his palace guard. If we pressured China hard enough to cut off trade and financing, and shut down enough of his gangster grade money generating activities (counterfeiting, trade in endangered species, arms sales to terrorists, smuggling, etc.) we might achieve a de facto cease fire. The effort would require a lot of cooperation from a lot of beneficiaries of trade, and would require constant effort, because both DPRK and Iran have shown a high level of creativity in evading sanctions.
The more likely scenario is that we learn to live with the threat. In that event, our best alternative is robust missile defense.
I try to avoid partisan polemic in this blog endeavor. My mission is to stir thought across the political spectrum. Partisan rant discourages thought. It creates retreat into tribal sanctuary. In this instance, I am going to make an exception. Ever since Ted Kennedy (undoubtedly reading from a Bob Shrum cue card) mocked Ronnie for proposing a “Star Wars” anti-missile system, Democrats have hindered progress on the development of missile defense. I truly do not understand why they have done so. As a result, the systems we have are not ready for prime time. That posture needs to change. Development of missile defense ought to be an issue on which we can all agree.
With help from, and prodding by, Israel, the Patriot system for short range missiles is improved to the point of decent reliability. The THAAD system for medium range vehicles is not thoroughly vetted, in my view, but may be adequate. That is the defense being used by South Korea and Japan. We have a system in Alaska designed to take down ICBMs, but it is nowhere near ready for prime time. The last few tests, in highly controlled environments, have been successful. Prior to that, the record was very spotty.
What we need is a crash program to develop boost phase capability. When the vehicle is lifting off and overcoming gravity to get above the atmosphere, it is vulnerable. The speed is relatively slow, and there is no chance to launch multiple warheads, which are very hard to intercept. The added benefit of a boost phase shoot down is that any debris, including nuclear material, generated by interception falls on the country of origin. Once a missile is above the stratosphere, it is traveling at very high speed and able to launch several warheads. Were I King of the America, I would offer a very large bounty to any organization that could develop a reliable boost phase interceptor. Kim’s hostage would then be rendered worthless.
We have kicked the DPRK can down the road since the end of the Korean War. We are now out of road. Right now, he can probably hit Seattle, San Francisco or Los Angeles. If he demonstrates a capability to hit New York City and Washington D. C., our leaders may begin to pay some real attention to the problem.
