Kim or Iran?
Thursday, July 6, 2006 at 8:13AM Tom got this email from Victor Algaze of Manhattan Beach, CA:
Mr. Barnett-Tom's reply:Many times, I have heard you mention the idea that an Asian NATO (or rough equivalent) could be cemented "over Kim Jong-Il grave" if some provocative action from DPRK unified disparate groups.
With that in mind, I have a question:
I cannot imagine the frustration you must feel when "Monday-morning quarterbackin'" "armchair sitting" geo-strategic thinkers look at a map with a circular overlay of the useful range of that North Korean missile and see an opening, but humor me: what do you think? Can this "crisis", like the Chinese character, represent also an opportunity for a new security partnership?
PS. Last chapter of BFA is EXACTLY what we youngsters are hungry to read- if you can-please do more of that.
Third book will be all that.On DPRK question is one posed by Sanger in NYT today: does Bush want to work Kim more than Iran in the time remaining?
To me the choice is obvious because Kim is excuse to upgrade relations with China. The Bush problem is that this administration wants to simultaneously constrain China with countries like India, Vietnam and Japan, and China will clearly come away from a reunification process as the dominant regional kingpin (why does the U.S. keep ground troops in East Asia then with such stretching demands in the Middle East and with African demands looming in places like Sudan and Somalia and maybe even Egypt soon enough?).
Strategists keep saying China is not ready to liquidate the DPRK and that the South fears the costs involved. But honestly I think the U.S. defense community is more nervous and least prepared to see that scenario go away because then both our national missile defense rationale and our East Asia rationales are weakened. At that point we must fish or cut bait on the China threat plus explain why we still starve the Army and Marines and the Long War on assets.
That is why I consider North Korea such a positive floodgate of strategic change and opportunity. Done well we can shift a ton of resources from Core to Gap and close off the possibility of great power war in Asia while shifting resources to the SysAdmin force and function and finally accepting the strategic requirements of the Long War.
In my mind Kim is doing Bush a big favor. Big question now is whether or not Chris Hill is empowered to negotiate anything other than useless sanctions when he lands in Beijing.
Reader Comments (6)
A thin shield missile defense has an adequate rationale to keep on rolling without Kim. The truth is that private, large aircraft aviation will mean that the military will always have a few missiles on hand to shoot one down in case it goes 9/11 on us. Private sub-orbital/orbital rockets create the same need and those are coming and coming soon, see Virgin Galactic for a well financed example. When you've got a serious X-Prize competitor coming from a seam state like Romania, the number of private suborbital companies that are going to come on line in the next decade or two are going to be a legitimate soft point for hijacking/replicating 9/11 in a new form. We must have shootdown capability and BMD is it. Hijacked private missiles are probably the simplest intercept scenario so by the time those start flying (creating the risk) we might have a finished system that can address that risk. If we get a space elevator, the need for BMD grows because dropping stuff into the atmosphere is a harder challenge.
Fortunately for the "get Kim now" faction, finding an alternate justification for BMD actually makes it *easier* because the BMD junkies no longer need Kim around to justify their budgets. This would be a *good* thing.
I am not so positive about the end of the DPRK ending the possibility of great power war in Asia. The PRC's weakness in the face of corruption and its many other challenges means that breakup, civil war, and an international spillover are still on the table. I wish them the best of luck in their many serious challenges but a firewall to contain the potential chaos is just responsible until the danger has passed. When a unitary China has risen enough that fracture is not realistic, the last vestiges of those precautions can responsibly be removed. Until then we should hope and develop relationships (both inside and outside the PRC) to minimize potential disaster.
"a firewall to contain the potential chaos ... hope and develop relationships ..."
What TML said. A great power war would still be possible, though one major tripwire would have been eliminated.
I have come more and more toward the Barnettian position on China. However, I cannot choke down the last few drops of Kool Aid.
The chance that the problems within the country could become very serious, and could even lead to a dangerous and irresponsible foreign policy will continue to exist. This is particularly so as long as China has an unaccountable and insulated political leadership. This is true no matter how smart and well-intentioned they are, and they may be both. This is particularly so where the government uses nationalistic propaganda a political glue to hold the country together, since it otherwise lack the usual badges of legitimacy.
However, objectively, the Chinese Navy and Army are not as powerful as they are often painted. Certainly nothing to panic about, but to watch closely.
Trying to get China to work jointly with the USA on SysAdmin projects would be a very good idea if they would go along with it. The opportunity for the two militaries to work jointly would build trust and contacts. And it would, as Tom says, give the Chinese military a less threatening rationale and a worthwhile job to do.
I also agree that the USA should ratchet down its commitments in Korea. The SKs don't like us, and they are not poor anymore. Let them defend SK themselves. They understand their cousins up north better that we do. They and the Chinese would have to deal with the nutty Norks, who they are stuck living next to, and we'd be offshore someplace, with our ship-board BMD equipment. Simply having fewer cooks in the kitchen might help get NK resolved.
TM, you're reaching when you start coming up with Dr. No's and Goldfingers springing out of places like Romania. That's like USAF talking up the Indians in their MIGs (Yuck! Like kissing your sister!).
I can spend $150 billion (100 so far and 50 planned in next half decade) a lot better than that. That scenario is in the weeds, casualty-wise. We'd be better off tracking our livestock and food better if you're interested in preventing mega-death.
this is a funny north korea story
Oh Tom, you mistake the nature of the problem I'm presenting. It's not that a local Dr. No will spring up or a Goldfinger but rather that the guards at the launch field can be taken out with a nice bottle of homebrew along with a cock and bull story about wanting to take a tour in a seam state and a well made team can *take* a rocket from a perfectly honest company. American Airlines didn't have to be in on 9/11 for it to happen. Patchy security is going to be an issue in seam states. Remember, the guys guarding this are going to be thinking "rich tourist plaything", not "terrorist improvised weaponry".
The suborbital rocket threat is going to arise in the 'teens as Virgin Galactic et al start taking tickets. By then we'll hopefully have the radar infrastructure and the interceptors up and with the kinks out for the simple intercepts like this.
The difference between this and India is that if India truly does go bad, we'll have *some* planes, some defense. It may not be adequate to the threat on day one of some wacky government arising in India or Russia but we'll have something. This is the difference between some defense and no defense in a system that you can't bring up fast.
Bringing this back to Kim. I brought up this aside as a wedge to peel away the missile men from the perverse "preserve the threat" coalition you wrote about above. As long as funding is kept up on the basis of my scenario, the wedge did its job irrespective of whether AQ et al ever figure it out and actually try to execute an attack like that. Yes, I know, cynical as hell, but marginally less so than the original problem of a coalition of military men bent on preserving the DPRK so their budgets don't get eviscerated and their careers don't get flushed.
Those are still low-kill scenarios TM. No one can afford that military. It spends billions on low probability, low death scenarios.
Gotta update the scenarios.