One of the things that struck me about this article was that the author does not even mention the possibility of bombing the Yongbyon facility. Here are some quotes that suggest reasons for this omission…
In May 1994, North Korea brought matters to a head by announcing that it was removing spent fuel from its Yongbyon reactor without international monitoring.
The fuel rods apparently removed from Yongbyon could quickly yield a handful of bombs
the North Koreans have also built underground nuclear reactors, plutonium-reprocessing plants, and uranium-enrichment facilities, and who knows what else?
Since Muravchik doesn’t specifically mention the possibility of bombing Yongbyon, it is hard to say what he thinks of the idea. The quotes above, though, suggest that he thinks it would be inadequate and largely ineffectual: if the North Koreans have already removed spent fuel and built underground reprocessing plants, bombing Yongbyon would provoke conflict without seriously degrading North Korea’s nuclear capacity.
I’m inclined to agree with this assessment. The North Koreans have certainly known all along that bombing Yongbyon would be on our options list when their nuclear program came to light, and their first and most obvious response would have been to construct backup facilities in locations less susceptible to attack. Since they were, according to Muravchik, removing material from Yongbyon as early as 1994, it is quite likely that redundant facilities exist elsewhere. I seriously doubt that the North Koreans would have laid their nuclear cards on the table quite so aggressively without covering their butts first.
Since you endorse Muravchik’s piece strongly, I assume that you agree as well, so we can put that one behind us.
One comment with which I would have to disagree is this:
perhaps making an example of Saddam Hussein may take some of the wind out of their nuclear sails.
This goes back to what has become a knee-jerk response in some sectors: the notion that all of America’s problems in the world stem from lack of resolve, and can be redressed by displaying resolve. Certainly lack of resolve has been a problem, though to what extent is open to debate. It is not the only problem, though, and that kind of reductio ad absurdem easily leads to dangerous conclusions.
The sad truth is that the Iraq precedent seriously complicates our Korean problem. If we had adopted a multilateral approach in Iraq, the North Koreans might be more inclined to push on the diplomatic front if we begin applying pressure. If we started moving forces to South Korea, for example, they would be inclined to make a fuss at the UN, appeal to China and Russia, and in general adopt a delaying posture. This would, of course, rebound to our benefit, since we would need time to build up the force needed for the kind of military operation that Muravchik proposes, which is essentially a full-on invasion of the north.
As it is, though, the Iraqi precedent makes it clear to Pyongyang that diplomacy will be futile: if the administration has decided on war, it will go to war no matter what anyone says. This reduces their options pretty drastically. If the US announces additional deployments to South Korea, what can the North Koreans do? They could surrender, but that seems unlikely. They could sit back and wait for the US to build up an invasion-capable force, which would be courteous, but not very bright. They could offer to freeze their nuclear program and submit to inspections. If we adopt the Muravchik posture, though – and you can bet your last peseta that this article is circulating in Pyongyang - this would be meaningless to us, since we’d have to assume that the freeze would be broken and the inspections would probably not find what was really going on.
In short, the only viable option we would leave the North Koreans would be to stage a preemptive attack as soon as it became clear that we intend war. This would be a desperate move, and not one they’d lightly contemplate, but what other choice would they have? Once they know we’ve decided on war, what could they do but throw off a last-ditch attempt to conquer the south, declare the peninsula reunified, and threaten any invading force with nuclear retaliation?
It’s never wise to give an antagonist an incentive to adopt the policy you want them to avoid.
Muravchik fairly openly advocates “regime change” through military action, in other words war. He acknowledges that this would have “horrible” consequences:
Any war would mean the deaths of many thousands of South Korean soldiers and civilians, and many of the 37,000 American troops stationed on the front lines.
This, it must be said, is a bit of an understatement: the military projections I’ve seen place Korean casualties at closer to a million than to “many thousands”. There are reasons behind these projections: the most heavily populated area in South Korea would be the first target, and the natural avenue for a North Korean attack into the south would be along the heavily populated coastal plain. There are assumptions we have to make here, and first among them is that if the US is clearly intent on war, the North will attack before we build up our forces. They have both the capacity and the incentive; it would be foolish to assume that they would not. The South Korean military is capable, and our presence there is significant, but the North has a huge superiority in numerical terms, and the outcome of the conflict is hard to predict. One virtual certainty is that it would be fought in the most densely populated part of the South, with catastrophic consequences. That’s not even considering the reality that North Korea probably has a nuclear weapon and will probably use it in the event of all-out war.
If we propose war, then, as Muravchik does, what we essentially propose is the imposition of certain catastrophe on South Korea in order to reduce the risk of possible catastrophe to us somewhere down the line. In essence, we would be buying our own security with the lives of a million of so allies.
This is the reality that has constrained the use of military force on the peninsula in the past. Previous administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have generally resorted to the carrot, rather than the stick, in dealing with North Korea. That wasn’t because they were wimps, it’s because the price of using the stick was simply too high, and because the prospect of buying our security with somebody else’s blood was simply unacceptable to them, as it would be to most Americans.
This, of course, raises a problem with military intervention that Muravchik skips over completely. Muravchik may feel that the purchase of American security at the cost of the lives of a million or so Koreans, or even for that matter "many thousands" as quite a reasonable bargain. It is quite unlikely, though, that the Koreans in question would see it the same way.
Planning for a war on Korea would be constrained by the acceptance of allies to a far greater extent than planning for Iraq was. North Korea has land boundaries with only two countries: South Korea and China. The Chinese are not going to allow their territory to use as a staging area. The South Koreans probably won’t either: why should they allow themselves to be a base for a conflict that will almost certainly devastate them. There’s a very simple equation here: no South Korean consent for a buildup = no war. We could, of course, threaten to pull our troops out if the South doesn’t consent to being a platform for an attack. There’s no doubt that the South Koreans want the US force to stay, but the primary reason for the presence of that force, to South Koreans, is as a deterrent to war. If their choice was between certain war and an American pullout, does anybody doubt that they’d take the latter option? It can of course be argued that delay only makes the prospect more daunting, but that applies to us much more than it does to the South Koreans, and I don’t think very many in that country would want to submit to certain massive destruction now to avoid the possibility of greater destruction down the line.
That, of course, points to one of the more amusing bits of Muravchik’s article:
Meanwhile, South Korea, its habitual toughness vitiated by America's string of concessions, had launched its own policy of conciliation.
This suggests that the South Korean change of policy was a consequence of American concessions. In reality, of course, the South’s adoption of a more diplomacy-oriented approach to the North was a consequence of the South’s move out of military dictatorship and into democracy. Put simply, the South adopted a less aggressive posture because its new government was accountable to its people, and that’s what its people wanted.
Once again we see that democracy is not always convenient.
There’s an issue here that I would really like to see resolved, because it highlights the critical question of whether deterrence has value in preventing the release of WMD to terrorists. The question is the degree to which the source of a nuclear device can be tracked. I recall a serious discussion some time back, not on SI, that revolved around a Tom Clancy scenario in which the chemical signature of a nuclear blast was used to track the source of the fissile material. The discussion centered on the extent to which this is possible in the real world, and the technically adept in the discussion seemed to believe that it was very much feasible. That’s obviously not a credible citation, and I wouldn’t want anybody to believe it, but I would love to know more about it, if anybody has further information. Obviously this has great significance to the question of applying deterrence to rogue states.
My own preferred short-term option would be immediate negotiations trading a limited-duration verifiable freeze at Yongbyon for a limited-duration non-aggression agreement and a start to bilateral negotiations, maybe with a straight bribe of food or oil thrown in. That wouldn’t deal with activities outside Yongbyon, but we have no way to deal with such activities in any event. The non-aggression agreement is no giveaway at all: the idea would be to freeze the status quo until the Iraq thing is done, and until that’s done we can’t attack anyway. If you can get a concession in return for promising not to do something you can’t do, you win.
I’ve seen it written that we should not negotiate because negotiation means you give things away. That’s stupid beyond belief. Negotiation means that you talk. You only give something away if you choose to give it away, and you only make that choice if you think you’re getting a reasonable deal. The act of negotiating is not, in itself, a concession.
My own preferred targets for negotiation would revolve around getting an agreement to halt nuclear activities, with maximum possible verification (and we know that this would be imperfect), in return for a non-aggression pact and an aid package valuable enough that withdrawing it would cause real pain. The pact would be invalidated by any further nuclear weapons development or by certain categories of arms sales, so it wouldn’t be a giveaway at all: any circumstance that would lead us to attack would invalidate the pact anyway, so we wouldn’t give anything up.
There would have to be several levels of sanction: evidence of continuing nuclear weapons development would mean loss of all aid, and whatever harsher sanctions we can impose. Any evidence of sale of nuclear weapons materials could be met with loss of aid, full blockade, and an open-ended threat of “greater consequences”, possibly, for example, limited strikes on military targets and known nuclear installations. We would also have to make it clear to potential buyers that any such purchase would be met by military action. In this case, we have more military options available in dealing with potential buyers than we do in dealing with the potential seller, so it makes sense to lean harder on the demand side. Use by a third party of a nuclear device traceable to North Korea would be met with immediate annihilation.
It’s obviously true that there can be sales or transfers that we cannot trace. It may be true that our ability to trace the source of a nuclear device may be limited. The reverse also holds true: the North Koreans would know, going into the deal, that they cannot be sure the deal would not be traced or discovered. They weigh risk and reward as thoroughly as we do, we just have to be sure that the potential risks outweigh the potential rewards.
This is not a detailed proposal, nor is it meant to be. It’s just an attempt to point in the direction that an interim solution might take. This would not, of course, be a perfect solution, nor would it be devoid of risk. Unfortunately, this is true of all alternative solutions as well. We cannot eliminate risk in this situation. All we can do is try to devise a solution that minimizes risk to all parties. The Muravchik solution, which virtually guarantees carnage on a monumental scale, does not, I think, achieve this objective. |
