Time to prepare for the worst in North Korea

Why does North Korea need ICBMs when they presumably already possess a regional nuclear deterrent?

> Why would the US/West attack when they know there will be hundreds of thousands of casualties almost immediately

Once, [President Johnson's penis] Jumbo was called upon to serve the country in a time of great need, when words – even words from the POTUS – would simply not do. In a mercifully off-the-record moment at the height of America’s entanglement in Vietnam, reporters asked Johnson to explain, simply, “Why?” Unable to conjure a suitable answer, LBJ instead produced his veiny avatar.

“This is why!” Johnson declared, presenting Jumbo to the press pool like a flaccid, useless Excalibur. Thankfully, he didn't put his sword in their stones.

https://m.ranker.com/list/lyndon-johnson-penis-obsession-sto...

That's not the right way to phrase the question. The question is:

If Kim Jong Un feels in any way trapped, helpless, or doomed; why would he not attack?

So the risk is broadened to anything that can cause these feelings in a single person: internal politics, externally-perceived (real or imaginary) threats or actions, mental illness, disease, civil unrest in the DPRK, deterioration of the relationship with China, sanctions, internal military failures or public test failures, internal sabotage to the military program, or anything else that I haven't thought of.

I think it is dangerous to assume rationality. Un may not act rationally, so his actions may not make sense from your perspective. History is full of people who didn't act rationally from the perspective of others.

The powers around North Korea might attack because of the risk of proliferation.

North Korea could sell weapons to, say, an oil rich non state actor in the Middle East that might use a missile launched from a ship to attack Israel.

Proliferation has already been a huge issue. Pakistan may well have already helped North Korea in their missile or nuclear weapons programs.

North Korea might attack if they suspect that a strike or invasion is coming. Their warning systems are not of high quality. That's probably why they worry so much when the US and South Korea do exercises.

This is not to say any of this will happen, just that there are plausible reasons why either side might try something.

North Korea will not "attack". They will do an extra-atmostpheric nuclear test, like many such tests done in the past by the US and USSR. At a high altitude, like about 400km. There will be no fall-out, no loss of life, no damages. But they will score huge point, despite the fact that their nuclear capability is far from being end-to-end. What they are missing right now is mainly the reentry vehicle, but aside from that solid-fuel rockets and submarines capable of launching SLBM's. At the pace they are advancing, the re-entry vehicle is probably within their reach in two years or so. But if they are suffocated by the sanctions, they won't be able to carry out their rocketry R&D. So it's vital for her to do the extra-atmospheric nuclear test, that is their only existential hope.

On the other hand, it's also very important for China for this not to happen. Once this happen, the US can justifiably start investing in earnest in the ABM defense, and there are several options that can be pursued: beefing up the current options, like the ground-based midcourse defense, the Aegis and the THAAD systems, but also more experimental ones, like laser based defense, or rail-gun based. China has a nuclear doctrine that is strictly deterrence based (i.e. no firs strike, including no pre-emptive strike). In the face of a much more effective US ABM defense, their deterrence can disappear and that means they either change their doctrine, or engage in an arms race which they see no good reason to do.

So it's almost as important for China not to let NK to do their extra-atmospheric test. However, my money is that NK will do that test in the next 6 months.

The problem is that, even if the players were fully rational, the game itself is foggy and obscured. Miscommunication, incorrect information, false positives, echo chambers, bellicose advisors ... These increase the chances of a catastrophic cascade of events. We know of (at least) three cases[1][2][3] during the cold war where a single person prevented such a (possible) cascade from happening (and there's undoubtedly more that were kept under the rug).

Yes, rationally speaking North Korea and the USA are not going to attack each other since the potential losses by far outweigh any potential gains. They know it, they also know that the other side knows it, and they know that the other side knows that they know that ... etc.

But at the same time, at least from the POV of North Korea, they think they're pretty close to a win-by-stalemate situation (multiple mobile ICBMs that can retaliate against the continental USA, ensuring they will never be attacked.) so it stands to 'reason' that the USA would attack right now, because it's their last chance to stop North Korea from winning.

Humans are not rational, we can only build control systems and hope they catch and filter out any irrationality.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/jfk-vs-...

I don't want to see war. But I am surprised it hasn't already started. NK will soon have nukes that can reliably reach the USA on mobile launchers. If NK was like the Soviet Union or China, this wouldn't necessarily be a problem as those countries do not want to start WW3. But NK does not act rationally and NK is literally threatening to use these missiles against the USA. So the USA faces a choice:

Either act now, take out NKs nuclear threat before they have the potential for launching multiple strikes. Or wait, and and hope they are bluffing about attacking the USA and that the political situation doesn't worsen there.

The USA has a good chance, provided it plans well, of taking out NKs nuclear threat before it can launch using coordinated strikes with a lot of redundancy. The cost would be the artillery bombardment of Seoul, which could take anywhere up to 100k lives depending on how long it takes to knock out NK artillery, so the USA and SK would need to quickly dispense with that. After which NK would pose no threat to SK, and USA/SK can decapitate the leadership while keeping the power structures and NK military in place, then hopefully have a plan for rebuilding NK as an independent nation.

And to that, I would add http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/podcast/

Archive: http://archive.is/Oh6Vq

> “If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so.”

Maybe I am reading too much into it, but if this is their real words, it sounds like an invitation (probably lost on the Trump administration) to find ways to overthrow the NK regime without changing the pattern of the Korean peninsula, i.e. by keeping NK in the Chinese sphere of influence.

It's only a stalemate if the US doesn't try to call a potential bluff on China's behalf.

It is a profoundly difficult situation to manage, because of course if the DPRK is utterly destroyed then they lose their border which currently has over 15 million ethnic North Koreans living it. To say the Chinese central authorities are primarily concerned with central governmental control would be an understatement. If the DPRK isn’t destroyed, but occupied by South Korea/United States that would be almost as bad or maybe even worse. Pretty much the last thing they want is to be completely surrounded by us. They feel they have to play this very specific game in which the DPRK is maintained as a credible threat, but not so immidiate a threat that anyone just crushes them including the Chinese themselves. All of this in the context in which the North Koreans don’t particularly like or respect the Chinese and vice versa. I can’t believe that this balancing act will work forever.

I really think that the humanitarian problem is not a real problem for China. A country this size could easily swallow 10 million Koreans (let's be real, surely not more than half of population would flee), allow them to work and assimilate and not even notice it really. I think the issue is that China is afraid that united Korea will become a US ally and allow US forces to station there. Also it could expose China to the world as a weak player that could not handle Korea by itself.

Both sides would be smart to delay any diplomatic actions before the National Congress in China is over.

Now is the "election season" in the middle kingdom.

It has never been about a concern over a humanitarian crisis on their border. In regards to North Korea, that's trivial for China. They have 300+ million people living on just a few dollars per day. They could absorb 5-10 million more and not notice in the least.

It's about preventing the unification of Korea and allowing the US military to get closer to China's territory. That's a double loss as far as China is concerned strategically.

The situation has an easy solution. China collapses North Korea as it exists today and pays off all the military leadership (which actually runs the country); said military cabal gets to live in China, and doesn't get prosecuted for war crimes (all obvious requirements from their perspective). The US, South Korea and China put together an initial trillion dollar, 20 year, package for economic recovery. The US & South Korea agree to cede between 1/3 and 1/2 of North Korea to China, to be used as a form of territory buffer between the US / S.Korea and China. The US agrees not to position its troops any closer to Chinese territory (ie not to occupy any of the territory South Korea acquires), various rules could be put into place that everyone agrees upon to ease China's concerns.

This is a trivial problem to solve as far as the big problems of the past century go.

What's not trivial, is that North Korea's nuclear & missile technology is going to keep pushing forward, which will eventually spur the US / Russia / China to begin aggressively pushing their nuclear technology forward again. Further, North Korea will attempt to hand their nuclear technology to other nations, as there are no real consequences for them doing so (oh no, more sanctions), only the benefit of spreading nukes around further which lessens the spotlight on them.

I have to say that the set of scenarios in this opinion piece sound very optimistic- China taking over the north, followed by general peace and cessation of hostilities, sounds close to the best case scenario. The reality is likely to be far uglier- wars have a tendency to expand, spread, and escalate, and we would be extremely lucky if China and the US didn't come to blows, followed quickly by all their respective allies. Every war ever fought was supposed to be short, limited, and without a lot of casualties. That just never turns out to be the case.

> and I find it hard to believe that they haven't even considered the possibility of this happening.

The Chinese fell for the same trap many non-ultra-right-wing Trump supporters did: they believed that Trump would be made presidential by the office.

Even many on the left side would not have thought Trumps tweets in regard to NK possible in any way.

What do you mean by an "oops" moment? Some small criticality event, like the US's demon core, would not be detectable from far away. They aren't pursuing nuclear power either, which would be the most likely path towards meltdowns.

Interesting question. Biography:

Jia Qingguo is Professor and Associate Dean of the School of International Studies of Peking University. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1988. He has taught in University of Vermont, Cornell University, University of California at San Diego, University of Sydney in Australia as well as Peking University. He was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution between 1985 and 1986, a visiting professor at the University of Vienna in 1997 and a fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in 2001 and 2002. He is Vice President of the Chinese American Studies Association. He is also a member of Standing Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the China Democratic League. He is serving on the editorial board of several international academic journals. He has published extensively on U.S.-China relations, relations between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, Chinese foreign policy and Chinese politics.

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/jia-qingguo

The CPPCC seems to fill a border role between quasi-goverenmental and the Real Deal:

The role that CPPCC plays in the Chinese government is stated in the preamble of the PRC Constitution. In practice, its role and powers are somewhat analogous to an advisory legislative upper house and there have been occasional proposals to formalise this role in the PRC Constitution.

The Communist Party of China and the aligned "democratic parties" participate in the CPPCC. Besides political parties, CPPCC also invites of representatives from various sectors of society.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_People's_Political_C...

Isn't that what it already is?

It could go a lot further than that.

Glowing concentration camps, in NK, and elsewhere.

> You realize North Korea can't take a dump without China saying so, right?

Do you have any backup for that statement?

I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted. I also agree that it’s hard to see what China’s angle is with NK. It makes sense that Kim is a useful idiot for them and for Putin to rattle the US cage, but at some point it’s just too risky and both those countries share a border with NK.

At what point does Kim become a liability for China or possibly Putin? These seem like the wrong people to be on the wrong side of and unless those guys are OK with his current actions Trump’s “suicide mission” assessment actually sounds accurate.

All of this points to the fizzle you speak of... surely Kim’s masters are going to rein him in.

I suspect you overstate Chinese control over North Korea. Certainly they have influence and going against their wishes may have repercussions, but don't think that possible repercussions are the only thing that matters and don't assume that what is obvious and appropriate in your mind is the same for Kim Jong Un or Donald Trump.

Heck, for a lot of the folks Trump has surrounded himself with these two statements have identical connotations: "North Korea may kill thousands of South Koreans with artillery," and "Brown Asians may kill thousands of other brown Asians with artillery." I'm 100% positive that there are people in this administration whose private response to statements like that is "you say that as if it's a bad thing?"

>This is going to fizzle just like all the previous scary saber-rattling (Iran, Ukraine, etc etc)

Criminal prosecution over Russia's slaughter of civilians on MH17 is coming along nicely.

Talking about it isn't saber-rattling. Talking about it is discussing how Russia invaded Crimea and started a war in Ukraine violently overthrowing local authorities, leading to the downing of a civilian airliner.

Kim Jong Nam, Un's half brother, was assassinated with VX nerve agent. He was exiled to Macau where he was protected by the Chinese government, and speculated to be kept around by the Chinese as a potential puppet leader if they decided to remove Kim Jong Un. Because he was Kim Jong Il's eldest son, he might be an acceptable leader- the juche ideology claims blood descent from gods or something, and he is in the royal lineage.

How likely is it that China approved the assassination, really?