Arms and influence

You say uranium, I say plutonium...

Today, a lot of the national security-related news and commentary is dominated by a small but important detail about the Bush Administration's confrontation with North Korea. Here's the short version:

In 1994, the Clinton Administration very nearly took the United States to war over North Korea's nuclear weapons program, based on plutonium enrichment. Thankfully, the DPRK backed down. American and North Korean officials encapsulated their understanding in the Agreed Framework. The DPRK agreed to end its plutonium enrichment program and allow international inspectors to monitor their compliance; the United States agreed to some economic assistance (assistance with single-use nuclear power and fuel shipments). Of course, the United States didn't have to make clear the threat of future military action, if the DPRK tried to cheat on this arrangement.

In 2002, the Bush Administration was convinced that the North Koreans were cheating. Specifically, US officials accused the DPRK of carrying out a clandestine uranium enrichment program. (Note the difference--uranium, not plutonium.) How North Korean officials responded is still under dispute. The US official who delivered the accusation, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, says that his North Korean counterpart confessed to the uranium enrichment program. The North Korean official, First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, says that he only admitted to the DPRK's right to develop nuclear weapons, and muddied the waters further by claiming a "neither  confirm nor deny" stance about any nuclear program.

Whatever anyone said or meant to say doesn't change the outcome, the Bush Administration's public confrontation with North Korea over the uranium enrichment program. Until the agreement a few days ago, the United States had effectively broken off all but a few minor channels of communications with the DPRK, and the North Koreans threw out the international inspectors.

With the new agreement now announced, US officials are obliged to give Congress some account of what's been happening. During one such briefing, another Assistant Secretary of State, Christopher Hill, admitted that, in hindsight, there was very little evidence that the DPRK had a uranium program at all. Certainly, the North Koreans still had the knowledge to build plutonium-enriched warheads, which is what they were doing during the time that the international inspectors were gone.

The North Korean nuclear test may have been one of North Korea's biggest miscalculations. China, which in other circumstances has defended the DPRK, turned on Kim Jong Il. While the DPRK can survive near-total isolation, it can't suffer total isolation. At the same time, the North Koreans still have a big bargaining chip, the dismantlement of their small nuclear arsenal and production facilities, that probably would not have existed, if the events of 2002 had gone differently.

Who's to blame? The North Koreans certainly share some culpability. Their diplomatic finesse is not what it should be, for the kind of brinksmanship they like to play. In fact, the DPRK seems incapable of anything but brinksmanship, threatening to build nuclear weapons, threatening to fire missiles at Japan, threatening to flatten Seoul... However, the Bush Administration certainly bears some responsibility, too. American culpability goes beyond the sneering at international arms control regimes that was all too fashionable in 2002 and 2003.

When the Bush team took office in 2001, they largely felt that the Clinton Administration had given the DPRK too much in the Agreed Framework. The economic assistance seemed unwarranted, particularly since "rogue states" like North Korea and Iran were, in the new President's worldview, the chief cause of national and international insecurities.

Aside from having a definite perspective on world events, the Bush team also had a clearly preferred approach. The United States needed to rattle its saber more often. Force was necessary to end Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait; force (or the threat of it) was the only thing that the DPRK would understand. Economic assistance was equivalent to being conned by the trickster in charge in Pyongyang.

Clearly, the Administration measured its own success in dealing with the North Koreans by how effectively they "stood firm" against granting any concessions. With nothing to offer other than another day without an American attack on the DPRK, the two countries stood in deadlock. Meanwhile, the DPRK saw how consumed the United States was with the Iraq mess, and calculated that it would experience little or no backlash if it were to announce it had nuclear weapons.

The Bush Administration has also left itself open to criticism that, yet again, it was seeing WMD programs that weren't really there. In a sense, the US was conned twice about nuclear weapons: once, by Saddam Hussein's ambiguous statements about having them at all; and again, by the DPRK's vague statements about its uranium enrichment program.

You definitely can't say that the Administration was completely bamboozled by US intelligence agencies, who had not given a clear verdict that the DPRK was in the uranium enrichment program. At best, there was only circumstantial evidence of this program. Much of the case depended on centrifuge purchases and contacts with the A.Q. Khan "Nukes R Us" network. Doubts were big enough that, two years ago, this Foreign Affairs article argued that the North Koreans in 2002 may not have cheated on the Agreed Framework.

It's still too early to declare the final verdict on what really happened here. However, the information available today seems to point to an unfortunate conclusion: senior US officials confused means (confronting a rogue state) with ends (preventing the North Koreans from developing nuclear weapons).

Kimstock 2007

IN THE NEWS
Rock on, international proletariat opposed to American imperialism and adventurism! The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (better known as North Korea, or by its stage name, N-Kay) is sponsoring its own version of Woodstock. And, as you have to say after many news items out of the DPRK, "No, we are not kidding."

The good news: at least Ronny Van Zant of Lynyrd Skynyrd won't be appearing. It's not clear why. If I were organizing the concert, I wouldn't want the guy who wrote the anthem of the un-Reconstructed, anti-Civil Rights, Nixon-loving South, "Sweet Home Alabama,' on my stage, either. I can't say if Kim Jong Il felt the same way or not. Here are the official ways you'll get banned from this career-ending gig:

The lyrics should not contain admirations on war, sex, violence, murder, drug, rape, non-governmental society, imperialism, colonialism, racism, anti-DPRK, and anti-socialism.

Uhhh, OK. No "admirations on war" will probably nix Lee Greenwood's appearance. No sex? Well, that eliminates at least half of every living music act, from Jerry Lee Lewis to the joke band Tenacious D. No murder or drugs? Practically every rap or hip-hop artist is off the list. Rape shouldn't be a problem, except for the music company executives in the crowd...Non-governmental society, whatever the hell that is, check...Imperialism and colonialism eliminate anyone who has done a commercial for Walmart, and the official band for the Coldstream Guards...As for racism, it'll be a contest to see who's the most anti-racist...I can't think of anyone who has written a marching song for the destruction of North Korea...As for anti-socialism, North Korea-style, that excludes a lot of musicians from Eastern Europe, since they had first-hand experience of communism. 

I think we're left with Dolly Parton, R.E.M., Coldplay (because they're freaking everywhere), Andrea Bocelli, and the ghost of Ray Charles. I might travel to North Korea to see that show, but only if someone digs up a copy of Coldplay's early unpublished song, "I Wanna Stick It To You The Way  King Leopold Raped The Belgian Congo." I really can't stand Coldplay--they'd ruin the show.

[The great graphic for this post is from WFMU's Beware of the Blog.]

Bush supporters on North Korea

IN THE NEWS
I was curious what people who have had anything positive to say about the Bush Administration's foreign policy decisions are now saying about the North Korean nuclear test. My admittedly limited, unscientific poll included Little Green Footballs, American Thinker, Neo Con Eagles Wings, Thunder Run, The New Republic, Jim Hoagland's column at The Washington Post, Blogs for Bush, Michelle Malkin, The Jawa Report, and California Conservative. The responses seem to break down into the following categories:

• No response. Sure, Little Green Footballs is more focused on the Middle East than other regions, but it's hardly the only place where North Korea is getting practically no attention.
• Blame Clinton. Senator John McCain's accusation that the Clinton Administration is to blame for this week's DPRK nuclear test is a lightning rod among conservative opinion writers. In some cases, McCain's statement is the only thing that's missing.
• North Korea is bad. Some authors, such as Hoagland, focused exclusively on how dangerous and erratic Kim Jong Il is. That's a lot like, in the 1930s, focusing on how bad Hitler was, without really talking about whether the British or French governments could have done something to halt the annexation of Czechoslovakia.

In short, there's not any willingness to admit that the current Administration failed to deter the DPRK from testing a nuclear weapon. There's another important question that these writers are failing to address: What now?

In that sense, it's worth looking at how the defenders of Bush might mirror bad tendencies among the critics of Bush. It's not enough to scream Nyah-nyah! when people you don't like appear to have fallen on their faces. (For example, the ethics allegations directed at Senator Harry Reid are headline news on practically all the sites I polled.) You have to have some constructive alternatives to propose.

In these pages, I've had a lot of critical things to say about the Bush Administration's Iraq policies, and the way the US military has been fighting the counterinsurgency war there. However, I've also tried to delineate strategies that would work better than the ones being pursued today. My goal is not to say, "I don't like so-and-so, and here's why he's an idiot." Instead, it's to say, "Here are the mistakes our government has made, and how we should rectify them."

When Clinton was in office, I often disagreed with his positions. For example, I thought the "don't ask, don't tell" policy was doomed to failure. I also had my doubts about the long-term effects of NAFTA. During the Nineties, the US also seemed to have lost an opportunity to make more aggressive steps to cut dependence on oil imports, a topic that usually only gets addressed during a crisis in the Middle East (or, recently, confrontations with the Venezuelan government.) I would have been glad to discuss these problems while he was in office. If the person for whom I had voted in 2004 were in office (hint: it wasn't Bush), I'd be glad to dissect what went wrong with his Korean policies, if in 2006 the North Koreans had tested a nuclear weapon.

In other words, I'm a bit disgusted with a collection of Bush supporters who, at a key moment in US history after the Cold War, are not willing to even discuss what went wrong. (Except, of course, to try to deflect blame on someone who hasn't been President for more than five years.) It's also a chastening moment, a reminder of what sort of pitfalls bloggers like Atrios and the many opinion writers at Smirking Chimp can find themselves just as easily as the Little Green Footballs.

Mahan redux, sort of

IN THE NEWS
Traditional naval strategy is a lot like traditional doctrine for ground warfare: the focus is on the equivalent enemy force. For navies, that means anti-ship capability, which in modern times has extended to anti-submarine capability. A tertiary concern, though not far behind the other two, is how to eliminate the threat from land-based aircraft.

Ever since Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote his classic treatise on naval strategy, naval professionals have framed their concern in Mahan-esque terms. In a nutshell, navies either sought to control the seas, permitting complete "freedom of action." Fleets could decide where to go and what to do—protect shipping lanes, support amphibious operations, strike at targets within an ever-increasing radius of attack.

Navies that couldn't win control of the seas weren't necessarily out of the game. They could still pursue a sea denial strategy, in which the enemy's navy never had complete freedom of action. Submarines, aircraft, and surface raiders could attack convoys. Ships moving to strike at ground targets might be vulnerable to attack. Amphibious units were at risk of being sunk before they landed. Sea denial might raise the cost of naval operations high enough where the stronger enemy might not succeed at every operation that it needed to ultimately win the war. In that case, sea denial might force the enemy to reconsider the war effort altogether.

While this Mahanesque worldview might make better sense of past conflicts, such as the WWI naval struggle between Great Britain (sea control) and Germany (sea denial), it seems to have little to do with the world today. Given the US Navy's overwhelming superiority in aircraft carriers, attack submarines, land-based air, anti-submarine assets (destroyers, aircraft, and other submarines), cruise missile-armed surface ships, and sea lift capability, it appears capable of going wherever it wants, and doing whatever it wants. Most adversaries, such as Iran during its brief effort to stop oil tankers from safely moving through the Persian Gulf in the 1980s, seem doomed from the start to lose what few naval and air forces they have, to pursue even the most humble sea denial strategies.

The most obvious exception is China, whose recent naval expansion could seriously complicate US efforts to defend Taiwan in a crisis. China's larger, more modern submarines and frigates certainly raise the risk that the US Navy might actually lose ships in defense of Taiwan—without even factoring the Chinese air force into the equation.

The Chinese sea denial threat is not the only one, however. A conflict with Russia is far less likely, so the concern has less to do with the capabilities of the Russian navy than the political status quo between Russia and the United States. While military planners have to take into account what might happen if international relations were to take drastic, unexpected turns, the Russian navy seems like a very distant threat right now.

There is a far more imminent threat to the US Navy, however, that just increased dramatically in the last few days. Even if the North Koreans fail to develop a short-range or medium-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, they could "deliver" a nuclear weapon in more mundane ways. A nuclear weapon hidden on a boat, or smuggled into South Korea by land, threatens not only targets on the ground, but targets at sea. A nuclear detonation close to an American carrier battle group might spell a catastrophic loss—exactly the kind of "sea denial" scenario that Mahan described.

How could the United States and its allies respond? The logic of this situation inevitably leads to a blockade of North Korean ports. Nothing could exit without being searched—or, perhaps, exit at all. Either way, the US Navy would station what it deems its most valuable assets, the carrier battle groups, far away from where North Korean shipping would be searched or sunk. The "littoral navy," therefore, would be the most important component of the blockade.

Even if North Korea were not thinking in these terms—and it would be amazing if they weren't—Iran certainly is. Faced with a similar risk of a nuke on a boat, the problem of blockading Iranian ports would be even more challenging. The Persian Gulf is more constrained, and more potential targets—oil tankers, other countries, American warships—would be a lot closer at hand. There are a lot more ships moving in and out of Gulf ports, and the sustaining the cooperation of every country along that narrow waterway would be much harder.

Certainly, there's a chance that neither the Iranian nor the North Korean regime would be crazy enough to detonate a nuclear weapon close enough to its own territory that it would suffer some of the damage inflicted. As generations of nuclear strategists can tell you, that's the essence of brinksmanship: convincing the other side that you're just crazy enough to use nuclear weapons, knowing the likely consequences to yourself. Kim Jong Il has successfully built that kind of erratic, dangerous persona. Here's where the DPRK's inability to create a large nuclear weapon isn't necessarily a problem. A smaller bomb would still give naval planners fits, while lowering the risk that North Korean population centers would suffer the shockwaves and radiation from the blast. In other words, a smaller nuclear bomb might make the "nuke on a boat" threat more credible, not less.

We've definitely entered a new era of international relations with the North Korean nuclear test. The Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests, while frightening, raised the risk of war between those two countries reaching catastrophic proportions. The ripple effects of the North Korean test—for example, a potential nuclear arms race among North Korea, China, and Japan, with consequences for the nuclear calculations of India, Russia, and the United States—are more far-reaching. We're back to Mahan's problem of sea denial—but not with the tools Mahan had envisioned to solve it.

Missile envy

IN THE NEWS
The defense experts quoted in this New York Times article believe that a North Korean nuclear arsenal is supposed to compensate for the deficiencies of the DPRK's army. If that analysis is correct, it will be even harder to stop North Korea from taking further steps in its nuclear program, especially given the public confrontation Kim Jong Il has manufactured with the rest of the world. In a way, you have to want this analysis to be wrong--particularly since it could just as easily be applied to Iran.

Kaplan on Korea

IN THE NEWS
Fred Kaplan provides this excellent summary of the events leading up to the North Korean nuclear test. In a different article, he lays out four possible outcomes. I'll add a fifth likely consequence: other countries, primarily from the European Union, try to take the lead on non-proliferation, where the United States has failed to effectively deter North Korea and Iran. If the Bush Administration doesn't change its strategy for dealing with nuclear aspirants like North Korea, we'll see a growing division between the US government and its allies on this question.

Benefit of accountability

IN THE NEWS
Suppose you have a neighbor whom everyone on your block has good reason to believe is dangerous. He drinks heavily, then gets into nearly-incomprehensible shouting matches with his neighbors over imagined slights. He talks in vague terms about how he's going to get the respect he deserves. You've become a particular target for this person, ever since the day you called the police when you heard him smashing every breakable object in his house. You now get threatening messages pushed into your mailbox, written anonymously, but obviously from him.

The police are supposed to be keeping an eye on your neighbor. Unfortunately, that didn't stop him from trying to shoot you when you were unloading the groceries from your car earlier today. When the police showed up, they shrugged, saying there was little they could have done to prevent the incident. Now, the situation really gets ugly: they can't find the gun he used, and no one else was a witness. The confrontation with you neighbor will have to escalate. You don't exactly feel safe--particularly since, before today, you haven't seen one patrol car go by his house, or one police officer stop by to check up on things.

You call the police department to complain about their lax approach to this threat. If the desk sergeant on the other end of the line were to say, "Gosh, you have to give us the benefit of the doubt on police matters," I can bet what your reaction might be.

Unfortunately, that's exactly the line that Tony Snow, White House press secretary, took during today's questions about North Korea. Snow went even further, claiming that any question of whether the Bush Administration could have done a better job at deterring the North Koreans was "silly."

Let's compare this incident to how another President handled a clear foreign policy failure. John F. Kennedy had to face the music on the Bay of Pigs invasion. Not only did the Cuban army crush the small force of anti-Castro exiles, at a time when Cold War tensions about Communist penetration into the Western hemisphere was at an all-time high, but the public would soon learn that the Kennedy Administration had lied about the US government's backing of this misconceived operation.

Kennedy's first response was a speech to the American Association of Newspaper Editors (click here for the audio, and here for a transcript). Barely three months in office, the new president hardly tucked his tail between his legs. He did, however, admit that the US government could and would endure failures during the Cold War:

We intend to profit from this lesson. We intend to re-examine and reorient our forces of all kinds-cur tactics and our institutions here in this community. We intend to intensify our efforts for a struggle in many ways more difficult than war, where disappointment will often accompany us.

The next day, during a press conference, Kennedy was more forthright into taking responsibility for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. "There's an old saying,'" Kennedy said, "that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. . . . I am the responsible officer of the government and that is quite obvious."

It wasn't a perfect admission of failure, and it was a while before Americans heard the complete, ugly story about the Bay of Pigs. It was, however, a critical moment, when Kennedy took responsibility from that point forward. (Later, some of the top officials behind the secret planning and support for the Bay of Pigs operation, such as CIA Director Allen Dulles, lost their jobs because of this fiasco.)

Rather than lambasting him for his failure, many Americans--including some likely critics--respected Kennedy for taking immediate responsibility. His willingness to be accountable made it easier to give him the benefit of the doubt in future foreign policy crises, such as the Berlin confrontation and the Cuban Missile Crisis. However frightening or uncertain events looked at the moment, someone nominally in charge accepted that he was really in charge.

Kim Jong Il is just as reprehensible as Stalin or Khrushchev. The presidents who oppose him have to be just as willing to be held accountable as their predecessors. As Kennedy showed, American presidents receive the benefit of the doubt after they have appeared to accept the mantle of responsibility.

The Google spy satellite

IN THE NEWS
If you want to see the exact location of the North Korean nuclear test, click here. You can switch easily to the satellite view from this map.

Thanks to Defensetech.org for the latitute and longitude information. It's worth following the link to read some arguments why the North Korean test may have been a dud.

Transformationist non sequiturs

IN THE NEWS
Wretchard at The Belmont Club is stretching the "military transformationist" logic a bit far in this posting. It's tough to argue with the prospect of giving US ground forces greater mobiity, and their weapons greater precision. It's a lot like saying, Gosh, it'd be nice if my car got better mileage.

There's a world of difference between (1) designing cars to be more fuel efficient, and (2) starting a road trip with the fuel tank only a quarter full, and no gas money. That's also the difference between the military transformationist proposals and their half-cocked application in Iraq.

[Thanks to Lawyers, Guns, and Money for noticing Wretchard's post.]

Diplomacy takes time

IN THE NEWS
When you have a minute, I'd be grateful if you looked at this clip from a July press conference, where Bush is asked a pointed question about North Korea.

Go on, I can wait.

Dum-de-dum...

Now that you're back, I wonder if you had the same reaction I did.

The first reaction I'm sure many of us had was, "Wow, what a dick." The ad hominem attack on the reporter ("What do you, Ms. Smarty-Pants Reporter, know about North Korea's weapons program that I don't?") displayed more than even the usual sensitivity to criticism, however.

Perhaps Bush is just prickly when Orth-Nay Orea-Kay is mentioned. After all, the Admnistration has alternately tried to ignore the DPRK, intimidate it when it couldn't be ignored, or quietly assent to its demands for food aid or a particular negotiation framework. The Administration's priorities have been elsewhere, so North Korea was always an inconvenient distraction. Bush's "dick-itude" to a reporter in July may just have been the usual impatience with anything related to North Korea.

Or, perhaps, at the time the reporter asked the question, Bush actually did know more than the reporter did. Maybe American and foreign intelligence agencies were providing evidence that the North Korean government was progressing towards a nuclear test, undeterred by anything the United States had said or done. In this very hypothetical scenario, his "dick-esque" handling in July of the North Korean question had a more immediate inspiration: the knowledge that the US overnment would soon appear powerless to stop North Korea from testing ballistic missiles or nuclear warheads.

That's just speculation, but we'll certainly hear a lot of questions in the next few weeks about how much of a surprise the North Korean nuclear test really was.

Head 'em off at the No Spin Zone

IN THE NEWS
Since we can guess that the Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans are going to aggressively push the claim that, "Now is not the time to question the people in charge—just think of the troops, our enemies, blah blah blah," it should be possible to bury this canard quickly.

• The United States did not have to invade Iraq.
• The United States did not have to prepare as poorly as it did for the occupation.
• The US government did not have to continue to watch its strategic reserve of ground forces evaporate, just to avoid the political cost of admitting the occupation was fundamentally misconceived.
• The US government did not have to pursue strategies for dealing with Iran and North Korea that provided practically no incentives for these regimes to abandon their nuclear programs.
• The US government did not have to stop paying serious attention to the problems of locking down nuclear technology and materials in the countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union.
• The Bush Administration should not have asked for immunity from criticism, and no one—journalists, elected officials, and voters—should have granted it.

Therefore, there is every reason to question what President Bush and company do next. The troops will not be demoralized; they've already demonsrated their commitment. Our enemies will not take encouragement from dissent; they've already aggressively pursued nuclear weapons programs for their own reaons that have nothing to do with the amount or quality of debate in the United States. Our allies will not abandon us; they've shown real willingness to continue working with the United States, even as its government pursued aggressively ad hoc, unilateralist policies.

Most importantly, the North Korean announcement must be an election issue. Candidates must have the opportunity to mount a convincing defense or critique of the decisions that failed to deter the North Korean government from testing a nuclear weapon. Democratic debate must be about important questions, such as American grand strategy in the vexing, post-Cold War world. Otherwise, we're guilty of embracing a nihilist's view of democracy, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Let's beat North Korea, not be North Korea.

Something's gotta give

IN THE NEWS
Let's assume that the track of history leads from North Korea's test of a nuclear warhead to a military confrontation with the United States. However difficult to avoid that outcome may be, once we have arrived, American foreign policy must change fundamentally.

The US Army brigade in South Korea is a classic remnant of the Cold War, with two important functions. First, American troops act as a "tripwire" that is supposed to deter an attack. Just as the Soviets were supposed to worry about the American response to an attack on West Berlin, the North Korean government is supposed to be deterred from attacking South Korea.

If deterrence fails, American troops are expected to repeat the script of the Korean War: fight a delaying action with their South Korean allies until the United States can airlift or sealift the forces needed for a counteroffensive. During the Cold War the challenge of mobilizing that counter-punch was a constant source of anxiety. What if the US military was already fighting another war elsewhere? While a major war in Europe definitely would have made it hard to move forces into Korea (the "one-and-a-half war" problem), even a smaller-scale war in the Middle East or Asia (the "half and half war" problem?) could have put the Korean counter-offensive at risk.

Since Iraq has bled the US reserve of ground forces dry, it's hard to see where the troops rallied to South Korea's defense would come from. The US government now faces several hard choices, all of which would re-define the Bush Administration's strategy of the last few years:

• Abandon Iraq. The US forces in Iraq might be shifted to South Korea—but not quickly, and certainly not at a great political cost. The Bush Administration has staked the prestige of the United States in Iraq. Even if everyone understood that, regrettably, the US had to sacrifice the Iraqi war effort for defensive or offensive operations in Korea, the Bush team will have inflicted substantial harm on American interests in the Middle East, particularly with American allies.
• Institute the draft. The US government might try to increase its "strategic depth" by expanding the armed forces. Since volunteer recruitment has already plummeted to alarming rates, the only alternative is compulsory recruitment—the draft. However, the draft won't expand American military power immediately. Troops need to be inducted, trained, equipped, and deployed. Equipment stores and facilities would need to be expanded. It's important to remember that, after the Pearl Harbor raid, American draftees did not see combat until 1942, and then only in small numbers compared to the bigger operations in the Mediterranean, France, and the Pacific. American success also depends on the quality of the troops deployed. Unfortunately, quality does not come quickly.
• Let someone else handle North Korea. The United States can contribute its naval and air assets to any military operations, but someone else—presumably, China, Japan, or a UN-organized coalition—would need to handle the ground any ground component. Ceding this role to China would accelerate an already alarming trend, in which US distraction elsewhere has eroded US power and influence in East Asia. Even if you ignore many of the silly, alarmist predictions about growing Chinese power, having China fill that vacuum may not be in the interests of the United States. For obvious historical reasons, Koreans would reject having Japanese troops return to the peninsula, Without a strong US commitment, the UN may not be able to build a coalition force strong enough to handle repel North Korean attacks, occupy North Korea if the Communist regime collapses, or handle large numbers of refuees. Certainly, the half-hearted UN deployment to Lebanon has not set an encouraging example.

At some point, the status quo in Iraq would prove to be unsustainable. Just as someone running a dangerously high fever must, after a certain number of days, either recover or die, the situation in Iraq could not continue forever. Americans might have grown sufficiently disgusted with the lack of progress to demand an end to the war. The US and Iraqi governments might have decisively won, or (increasingly likely) the internecine violence would have escalated beyond the point where anyone in Washington or Baghdad could determine the war's outcome. Now, we see another way the situation in Iraq could not be sustained: key regions, like the Korean peninsula, would not remain calm forever. If Iraq had been making a slow recovery—gradually dealing with violence directed against the regime, or among segments of the Iraqi population—an expensive investment in extraordinary measures might be justifiable. However, urgent priorities elsewhere may make the American endgame in Iraq a messy, bloody exercise in triage.

Hardware isn't everything

IN THE NEWS
One likely effect of the North Korean announcement is to shift attention away from American ground forces to the rest of the US military. While it's the natural course of the discussion, an exclusive focus on the Navy and Air Force—the "big hardware" portion of the armed forces—will not provide a solution to the North Korean problem.

Most immediately, American air units in South Korea, Japan, and the United States, plus the US Third and Seventh Fleets, are available to blockade North Korea and strike at targets of opportunity. However, it remains to be seen what opportunities for punitive and disarming strikes exist, or what the North Korean response would be. American military planners have already admitted that the odds are poor that the United States could disarm the Iranian or North Korean nuclear program through air and missile strikes alone  The facilities are too dispersed, often in the worst kind of geography for precision bombing, mountainous terrain. Even if the US were able to hit every North Korean nuclear and production facility, the obvious question would be, What's next?

We can predict at least one immediate consequence: a North Korean attack on South Korea. Whether the North Korean army tries to seize control of the South, or merely retaliate with conventional and chemical artillery attacks on Seoul and other population centers, the US would need ground forces to take the next step: eliminate the North Korean government. Even with its nuclear fangs removed, the North Korean government would remain a menace to the South, and perhaps would have reasons to try for one last gamble to end the decades-long stalemate on the Korean peninsula.

At this point, we might wish for the North Korean government to expire. Hunger, poverty, disgust with the "Kim Family Regime," and the example of a better life across the border in South Korea, represent a risk to the regime's survival, even without a military confrontation with the United States. If North Korean generals begin to defect, or the regime loses control over a riotous population, political collapse will create new problems that can only be resolved with ground forces. Refugees will begin moving south, in numbers beyond the South Korean government's ability to manage. The territory of North Korea will need to be occupied, particularly since nuclear weapons, manufacturing facilities, materials, and expertise need to be secured. While the risk of a civil war is lower in a hypothetical occupation of North Korea than it was in Iraq, not every North Korean general or party official may surrender quietly—particularly if a poorly-executed occupation makes "warlordism" an attractive option in many regions.

The United States has an impressive array of carrier battle groups, attack submarines, tactical air assets, and strategic bombers that it can hurl at North Korea. However, the last several years have taught Americans an important lesson about warfare: your own strength matters far less than what you actually do with it.

Undeterred

IN THE NEWS
The favorite sport of talking heads, op-ed columnists, and bloggers for the next several days will be Spot the Motive. Why did the North Korean government decide to test a nuclear warhead, knowing the likely response from South Korea, China, Japan, and the United States? The more important question is, Why did deterrence fail?

Kim Jong Il and his subordinates may have seen several benefits in the nuclear test. At the very least, confirming that North Korea's nuclear capability is more than theoretical gives that government leverage it didn't have before. Before the nuclear test, observers worried what would happen if the North Korean government faced collapse; now, foreign governments have an even stronger argument for swallowing their discomfort with the "Kim Family Regime" (KFR) and helping keep that government alive. A desperate, unpredictable government, armed with even a meager nuclear capability, is what Kim no doubt is guessing the rest of the world would rather not face. All public bluster aside, the governments of the United States, South korea, Japan, and other nations have very sober reasons to keep the North Korean government from the brink of collapse.

At worst, the North Korean government means what it says: it is in a de facto state of war with the United States and its South Korean ally. As soon as the North Koreans develop a delivery mechanism—which may be as simple as a fishing boat—it may execute a nuclear strike.

The North Korean's real motives are undoubtedly somewhere between these two extremes. The KFR wants more than just extra food aid; the regime also knows that any first strike would mean their own annihilation. The North Korean government, therefore, is likely building a greater deterrence against any conventional nuclear attack. Kim probably believes that, once the current sense of crisis subsides, his government's long-term prospects for survival and its bargaining power are greatly improved.

However, we're just engaging in the modern version of Kremlinology, the attempt to penetrate the thinking of top leaders in a secretive, totalitarian regime. Right now, the US government and its allies have a bigger problem: is there anything deterring regimes like North Korea from developing nuclear arsenals?

The answer is, sadly, the deterrent is not as powerful as it should be. There hasn't been much dialogue between the US and Iran, or the US and North Korea. Combined with the all-carrot, no-sticks public position that the Bush Administration has taken, these regimes see their own survival at stake. Meanwhile, the US military is bogged down in Iraq, while its overall readiness continues to erode. The Bush Administration is also eager to overlook the misdeeds of its allies, such as human rights abuses in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. American inability to prevent India and Pakistan from going nuclear—not to mention the nuclear cooperation deal the Bush Administration recently made with India's government—may lead other allies to see opportunities to start quiet nuclear programs of their own. Certainly, what happens next in Japan—a country with new incentives to expand its military and develop its own nuclear arsenal—will be an important barometer of nuclear proliferation among American allies.

Of course, the United States is not the only major power interested in non-proliferation. The Europeans have played the leading role in trying to deflect Iran's nuclear plans. China had hoped to keep North Korea from going nuclear, and may continue to pressure the KFR about further nuclear or missile development. Russia has often run interference for nuclear wannabes, but the North Korean test may change Russia's position. The United Nations, of course, represents the opportunity for global and regional powers to pursue non-proliferation through less confrontational, more neutral avenues. The United States, therefore, has good reasons at the moment for using the UN Security Council in its traditional role as a forum for organizing and channeling international opposition in a crisis. At the same time, the UN can provide the private, mediated channels for bargaining and threatening that the United States will need to deal with the North Koreans. If the US and Libya hadn't already been negotiating in secret for several years, any "demonstration effect" the Iraq invasion had on Qadaffi would have been wasted.

The Bush Administration has had five years to test its own theory of deterrence. That strategy has clearly failed. Iran and North Korea have marched deliberately towards gaining nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them. The priority now is re-establishing deterrence, not insisting that the ultra-hawks were right all along.

A lack of options

IN THE NEWS
Since there's very little the United States can do to respond to the North Korean missile tests, other governments are driving events. Japan wants immediate sanctions against the North Koreans, but it's unclear who's ready to impose them. South Korea, fearing how the paranoid North Korean regime might lash out if faced with economic or military collapse, isn't willing to endorse harsh measures. China is happy to broker any negotiations, since it accrues more prestige and influence in Asia in the process. Other major powers are notably silent. The North Koreans lose nothing by threatening further missile tests.

It shouldn't be surprising, therefore, that the United States has agreed to bilateral talks with North Korea. The fig leaf of respectability is the six-nation talks that are supposed to happen simultaneously; for the North Koreans, the real goal is one-on-one talks with the United States. By proving that they can force the US government into bilateral negotiations, Kim Jong Il gains leverage with everyone else. Unless American leaders can figure out how to change the situation, the North Koreans will maintain the diplomatic initiative.

Is lack of US diplomatic leadership necessarily bad? Perhaps the South Koreans are right in thinking that the North Koreans will eventually re-integrate with the South. From this perspective, patience  is more important than immediately responding to North Korean provocations. Maybe the Japanese need this opportunity to assert their national security interests, without having to look to the United States for approval. Or, maybe, the future of East Asia still depends on an external superpower capable of playing balancer.

We're in the thick of a volatile time for the Korean Peninsula, so it's hard to say where the current road leads. Whatever happens in the two Koreas, there is one bad outcome that is hard to deny: the global campaign to curb the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies has suffered its most serious blow since the end of the Cold War.

Missile envy

IN THE NEWS
Without rehashing the history of the last few years, it's clear that the United States has few options for responding to North Korea's planned missile test:

• The United States is clearly in no position to make military threats against North Korea. Attacks launched purely from air or naval forces have little chance of wiping out the North Korean missile program (or nuclear weapons facilities, for that matter).
• With its military overstretched, the United States is in no position to contemplate an invasion of North Korea.
• Even if the US were to abandon Iraq to free up its conventional military strength for an invasion of North Korea or Iran, it is not clear that the Bush Administration would wage war against North Korea any better than it did against Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Building an international coalition against North Korea for either military or economic action will be difficult. Aside from a few countries, such as Japan, with a obvious stake in curbing North Korean military power, most potential allies are highly suspicious and skeptical of the United States (as the ineffectiveness of  rallying a coalition against Iran and Syria show).
• North Korea still cares about economic sanctions, which might block access to hard currency and revive food and energy shortages.
• On the other hand, South Korea—the chief conduit through which the North achieves any economic gains—is disinclined to end the recent thaw in relations between the two Koreas. South Korean public opinion has been very forgiving of North Korean military policies, which makes it difficult to imagine the US government rushing forward, even if it had a freer hand.
• North Korea has already seen how it can whip up a crisis, and get a distracted United States to make concessions.

The North Korean government certainly knew the likely American response—which says a lot about the predicament in which the United States finds itself. Russia and China are likely to have more effect on Kim Jong Il's plans than the United States.