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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (82860)	3/17/2003 5:28:36 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Since you endorse Muravchik's piece strongly, I assume that you agree as well, so we can put that one behind us. It is the best short History of what we have done there, Steve. I don't consider it a Tablet from Mt. Sinai. My original thinking, and it comes from what I have read, is to bomb the reprocessing plant. I do not know enough about how successful we could be at bombing the Yongbyon facility without a major spread of radioactivity, although I suspect we could do it with only local damage. What the article makes clear to me is that NK is in the Nuke bomb business. They are never going to get out of it. And they have been for a long time. They have been milking us for 20 years. So I suspect that we will end up kicking the can down the road and hoping for an internal regime change, as we have all along. Tom Clancy is very careful with his science, and in "Sum of all Fears," he said the only thing he changed was how to make the Nuke. So I suspect that they can tell which plant produced the Plutonium, but that's a guess. And what happens if we do catch them selling a Nuke? What can we do then that we can't do now? In fact, our position will be even worse than it is today. Iraq is a good example of where we were 25 years ago with NK. The anti-war crowd lacks the vision to see this, IMO. But, Iraq as a threat is now all over but the shouting. Our Army is still wrapped up in second generation warfare. It is obvious that we are going for a "mass and position" liberation of Iraq instead of a fourth generation "Speed and Surprise" attack. We do have excellent intel on their people, and if the Republican Guard Generals surrender, we will get away with it. But if they stick with Saddam, we will take casualties in Baghdad and Tigrit. We are set up to do "Grant takes Richmond," on the hope that "Lee" surrenders. I hope like hell he does. We cannot do a standard battle like this against NK. SK would never stand for it. They will fight only if attacked first. It is the worst Military problem I have ever seen. We obviously have very poor Intel on them. But we do know that they have a Soviet "Central Command" system. This means our best battle option is a vertical assault on the Command structure. But since we won't do this in Iraq, I have my doubts if we would do it in NK. We have the troops. Our Military just does not seem to have the vision. Steve, the thing that drives me up the wall is the knowledge that if we make them a deal, we will be faced down the road with NK possessing Nuke tipped ICBMS. There is no way this will not happen. Whatever blackmail they want now that we are willing to pay, guess what it would be with them in an ICBM situation. They are so tunneled in that we could not be sure of taking everything out. And the option of being hit by a sold Nuke was idle fantasy before 911, but not now.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (82860)	3/18/2003 5:13:36 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

bombing Yongbyon, Since I first responded to you an article has appeared in "Reason" on NK that has two points in it that bear on our discussion. >>>> "China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and the E.U. have all told North Korea that reprocessing is a red line," the official said. "I think that has caused the North Koreans some pause, because the Chinese never went in this hard before, and neither have the Japanese." The prospect of diplomatic isolation may be part of the reason the North Koreans have not taken the fateful step of firing up their reprocessing facility. "They're flailing in all directions. The important thing is that, as far as we know at this point, they have not crossed the Rubicon of reprocessing."<<<< This point has never been clear before. The second one is that we are trying to set up a multilateral setdown at China's behest: >>>> Neither America nor Japan can credibly convene a multilateral council, because U.S.-led talks would seem bilateral and because both Koreas mistrust Japan. That leaves China and South Korea -- preferably China. I did not succeed in pinning down the official as to when and how either country could be induced to stick its neck out. He preferred to emphasize gradual movement in the right direction.<<<< This article is the first one I have seen with these two points. You can read it at: reason.com