Kim Shoots Wad

by Charles

Of missiles, that is.  Earlier today, the pint-sized, pot-bellied dictator initiated the successful launching of six medium-range Nodong* missiles and a failed launch of a seventh long-range missile, the Washington Post reported.  Our own response was predictable.  The response that really matters, which is from the communist Chinese, was muted.  Let's face it.  China is the only nation that can truly influence Kim Jong Il. 

No word from the Post on the cost of the missiles and their firing, funds which he could have used to feed his own people.  Seems to me like our best policy toward North Korea is regime change.  By all means, let's have six-way talks, but there's no assurance Kim will even show up, let alone get to a trust-but-verify agreement if he does appear.

* An apt description of his own personal apparatus, perhaps?

Update:  Strategy Page remarks on the North Korean economy and explains why China has halted shipments of food and fuel.  The reason?  The North Koreans refuse to return Chinese trains:

For example, food and fuel supplies sent to North Korea have been halted, not to force North Korea to stop missile tests or participate in peace talks, but to return the Chinese trains the aid was carried in on. In the last few weeks, the North Koreans have just kept the trains, sending the Chinese crews back across the border. North Korea just ignores Chinese demands that the trains be returned, and insists that the trains are part of the aid program. It's no secret that North Korean railroad stock is falling apart, after decades of poor maintenance and not much new equipment. Stealing Chinese trains is a typical loony-tune North Korean solution to the problem. If the North Koreans appear to make no sense, that's because they don't. Put simply, when their unworkable economic policies don't work, the North Koreans just conjure up new, and equally unworkable, plans. The Chinese have tried to talk the North Koreans out of these pointless fantasies, and for their trouble they have their trains stolen.

Bizarre.

Another update:  There's plenty of speculation as to Kim's motivations, and here's one more.  We know North Korea needs cash, and as it happens, a cash-laden democratically-elected dictator is coming to Pyongyang next month:

The missile launch came ahead of a visit to Pyongyang by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, possibly late this month.

Chavez has announced that he will travel to North Korea, which is at odds with Washington over its nuclear program, at a time when Chavez is seeking to distance Venezuela from the United States.

The Venezuelan leader is most likely to fly to Pyongyang at the end of July on the occasion of his planned trip to Russia on July 25. Chavez told reporters that he will be going to the North to discuss science and technology cooperation.

But Chavez and Kim Jong Il are expected to seek an oil-for-arms deal. During the summit, Venezuela, the world`s fifth-largest oil-rich country, is expected to offer energy resources to North Korea, which is suffering from energy shortages after the United States halted its supply of heavy oil.

In return, North Korea can offer conventional weapons and missiles to Venezuela, which is looking to fortify its military power.

Recently, a senior North Korean official made clear that it would continue missile exports, dismissing international concerns about proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

But with a dictator as insular as Kim, who knows really.

Comments

[cleek]

You seem to be implying something here (especially with the italics) but I honestly can't figure out what it might be.

why not just answer the question i asked ?

[Tully]

NK is thought to have a large stock of WMD's, chemical artillery shells. That's why the high casualty estimates--it is assumed they'll be lobbing gas shells, not HE, and lobbing them all directly into Seoul. Of course, if they're doing that, those big guns aren't helping much at the DMZ. It's also not just the distance from the border, but the distance from the artillery itself. Set it on the border and it gets dusted as soon as they move it into the open to fire. It's dug in farther back.

The point remains that SK is not keen on military action, though.

No argument at all there. SK is in no hurry to push the issue. Especially when Kim is busy starving NK to death and pissing off the Chinese. They likely figure it's a problem that will work itself out in the long run, and in the meantime they've got a buffer between themselves and the Dragon. Trying to cross the DMZ with an invasion force would be really foolhardy (from either direction) even if the troops were blind Cub Scouts. They're dug in well. Both sides have great defensive positions. Neither side really wants to spend the blood to try it--a cross-border excursion going either way is a guaranteed bloodbath.

OTOH, Pyongyang isn't all that far from the coast either. 80% of the NK military is in 20% of the country, and much of the rest is trying to keep people from fleeing to China.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"why not just answer the question i asked ?"

I don't think anyone really knows what official NK policy is from moment to moment because it is a dictatorship ruled by a crazy man.

But I think we all knew that. Right?

[cleek]

I don't think anyone really knows what official NK policy is from moment to moment because it is a dictatorship ruled by a crazy man.

and yet everyone is confident that NK's response to all military aggression is to level Seoul ... ? is there any actual evidence (statements, plans, etc) to support this conclusion ?

[Slartibartfast]

After looking a bit more at the NK artillery situation, I see a couple of things. First, howitzers and rocket launchers tend to get swirled together as "artillery", when they're not anywhere near the same. Second, a great deal of the analysis is, as far as I can see, stacked worst-case that can never be physically realized. By this I mean that the largest of the "artillery" listed for NK is 240mm rockets, which are roughly the same size as our MLRS rockets. The problem with these systems, though, is that it's time-consuming to reload, because you basically replace the whole tube-and-missile box with a new one when it's empty, which occurs after a dozen or so missiles have been launched. Given that these things are supposed to be a threat because they can "shoot and scoot", it's probably going to be several minutes before they can reload.

Howitzers, of course, are another thing. NK has 170mm self-propelled howitzers which can shoot, as far as is documented, over 30 miles. I have my doubts about this, because our own best mobile land artillery have a great deal of difficulty shooting this far. The 16"/50 caliber weapons carried on the USS Iowa shoot about 23 miles, max. Spruance-class ships carry a 5"/62 caliber gun that shoots unassisted projectiles about 15 miles. So the range is in doubt, but others are probably better-informed. A bigger problem is rate of fire with this weapon; it only seems to be able to shoot a couple of rounds every five minutes. I'm guessing that if there is in fact a gun that can shoot this far, it's either VERY difficult to keep emplaced, or it has to be in a semi-permanent emplacement, which sort of rules out mobility.

Regardless, there's also a thread of chem/bio weapons implied, and there's no doubt that NK has on the order of several hundred Scud rockets at its disposal.

In any event, I think the rate of continuous munitions delivery is way overstated, unless everything I've read about NK's capabilities is incorrect. This is not to say they are disregardable, just that there are some scary numbers floating around out there with, in my opinion, not much to support them. I'd be more worried about the big rockets like the Scuds, particularly if they're tipped with chem/bio warheads.

[Ugh]

is there any actual evidence (statements, plans, etc) to support this conclusion ?

Well if there's even a one percent chance that this might happen then we have to act as if...

I think, cleek, that the general feeling is that a regime which is willing to do all the things this regime has done (mass starvation, kidnap Japanese and South Korean nationals, infiltrate south korea, etc.), that leveling Seoul in response to a military attack isn't outside the realm of reasonable possibility.

Not that I have anything to link to, mind you.

[Tully]

Kim has nothing to trade, and only one real tool in his toolbox. The rusty rattle-sabre. But it can still cut you up and give you tetanus, and the guy IS nuts. And it's worked for him before.

Kinda like a street person who holds his coin cup out to you, glaring, while tapping on it with a jackknife.

[liberal japonicus]

There are points to both sides, but I don't think that the artillery/howitzers/etc. arrayed against Seoul should be discounted because of maintenance problems, age, NK incompetence. Recall that a

[liberal japonicus]

There are points to both sides, but I don't think that the artillery/howitzers/etc. arrayed against Seoul should be discounted because of maintenance problems, age, NK incompetence. Recall that a

[liberal japonicus]

Somehow, the link I had broke the comment off. One more try sorry for the repeat

There are points to both sides, but I don't think that the artillery/howitzers/etc. arrayed against Seoul should be discounted because of maintenance problems, age, NK incompetence. Recall that the train explosion a while back. This report has it as two fuel trains colliding, but other reports had it as armaments while still others suggested it was an assasination attempt. It's clear that regardless of the state of the munitions, there is a much greater chance of massive death and destruction than 1%, which is now our admin's threshold.

I also recall an anecdote, during the buildup to the Iraq invasion, Scott Ritter spoke in Tokyo and the question was 'what is a WMD' and Ritter said 'well, under certain circumstances, a platoon of Marines is a weapon of mass destruction'. If you've seen some of the films of North Korean martial displays, it seems relatively clear that there is a cadre of highly trained soldiers who would probably make an even better WMD than a platoon of US marines because there would be even fewer compunctions.

The last point is that there are still very strong crossborder ties, perhaps made even stronger by the absence of contact. A large number of South Korean's have their ancestral homes in North Korea, and reunions that occur are covered extensively. Because of the nature of the Korean conflict, many people were pushed down into South Korea, so I believe there is an asymmetry between South Koreans longing for some imagined home in the North than there are North Koreans having ties to the South. This, coupled with the Confucian nature of Korean society, makes the South Koreans much more cautious that people like John Bolton and others.

[Tully]

The SK troops are not exactly poorly trained either--there is no "clean" war. Not in Asia. NK could do some damage with that artillery--they just couldn't "level" Seoul. Seoul's a large city. It would take weeks of unopposed artillery to do that.

The question is not which side could be nastier. Any nation can be nasty. The question is, will Mr. Ronery go off his rocker entirely? Because barring either that or a Chinese "visit," there won't be any invasion. Just sabre-rattling, and that tin cup held out. With the knife tapping on it.

[cleek]

ok, good enough. i'll take the lack of affirmative responses to mean nobody here has any evidence whatsoever that NK sould attack Seoul, if we (or anyone) attacked NK. it's just some conventional wisdom that gets passed around with no basis other than KJI is a crazy guy, and that's the craziest thing we can think of him doing.

[Gary Farber]

"i'll take the lack of affirmative responses to mean nobody here has any evidence whatsoever that NK sould attack Seoul, if we (or anyone) attacked NK."

Assuming that's a "would," what sort of "evidence" do you expect people could reasonably provide? A sworn promise by Kim Jong Il? Copies of Sekrit plans?

Since when is there ever "evidence" that an enemy that constantly issues threats against the "rest of its own country" would carry out its threats, or that a given militaristic country, which has previously invaded its neighbor, which has a history of an endless stream of incidents in which it launches submarine missions, soldiers into the DMZ, secret agents, kidnaps people, and captures naval vessels in its neighborhood, provide further "evidence"?

I'm trying to understand how your query isn't kinda kooky, cleek. Help me out here. One does military response planning based on capability, and threat. The North Koreans have both. This isn't crazed paranoia, or war-mongering on the part of the U.S. to take note of that. Take a look at the history of North Korean action and rhetoric, I suggest.

[liberal japonicus]

Cleek,
what would constitute evidence of a future event taking place? I think the following points are meaningful
-Any number of excursions into SK territory as well as Japan for the purposes of kidnapping and murder.
-several discovered tunnels under the DMZ, designed to facilitate easy movement of both men and weapons in the event of a war
-reports of hardened facilities for artillery, etc. by defectors which would markedly reduce the success of a preliminary strike.

I don't think it is a given that Kim would order an attack, but a lot would depend on any number of variables that could not be controlled.

[Gary Farber]

"Kooky" was unnecessary; sorry about that. But it does, at first glance, seem like an unreasonable request to me.

[Slartibartfast]

I also recall an anecdote, during the buildup to the Iraq invasion, Scott Ritter spoke in Tokyo and the question was 'what is a WMD' and Ritter said 'well, under certain circumstances, a platoon of Marines is a weapon of mass destruction'.

I think I've said things that stupid before, but regretted it later. Maybe someday Ritter will rethink this.

[cleek]

lj and Gary, all that stuff tells me NK is paranoid, criminal, and worried about a war. it doesn't tell me anything about their specific plans w.r.t. SK in the event of an attack by the US (or any other 3rd party).

and Gary, what's unreasonable about wanting to see evidence of intent ? has Kim ever threatened Seoul with artillery bombardment if the US should attack (for example) ? it seems odd that we should assume Kim's response to an invasion or attack by the US would be to use his ammo and weapons to attack his neighbor, instead of using them in defense - it'd be like us getting attacked by Canada, then bombing Mexico in retaliation.

now, if all the war-games assume SK will be part of any attack, then i guess it would be reasonable to assume he'd attack Seoul in retaliation. is that the part i'm not getting ? if so, wouldn't the obvious plan be to just leave SK out of any invasion ?

i'm not trying to defend NK, or say anyone is wrong or war-mongering. i've just never personally seen the evidence that forms the basis for the conclusion.

[Tully]

it seems odd that we should assume Kim's response to an invasion or attack by the US would be to use his ammo and weapons to attack his neighbor, instead of using them in defense

Just two observations. [1] Kim's nuts. Assuredly paranoid, at minimum. [2] Seventy to eighty percent of NK's military forces are stationed at the DMZ, and the percentage of NK's total artillery at the DMZ is likely even higher than that. It can't be rushed across the country.

When trying to figure out what Kim might do, refer back to [1].

[cleek]

Seventy to eighty percent of NK's military forces are stationed at the DMZ

but that's because the DMZ is the obvious place for an invasion to come from, right? it's not necessarily because he's trying to target Seoul..

When trying to figure out what Kim might do, refer back to [1]

mind reading is hard enough with sane people. i'm not up to trying it on crazy people.

[spartikus]

Kim's nuts. Assuredly paranoid, at minimum.

Okay...I don't think the constant barrage of "Kim's nuts/crazy/insane" is helpful, and it simply provides an excuse not to look at the underlying issues. Based on past behaviour, it's likely Kim Jong Il is what psychiatrists would call sociopathic. There may even be a few other conditions that would apply.

But nuts/crazy/insane conjures up images of inexplicable behaviour, and the North Korean regime operates logically. That logic is it's own, yes, but it's consistent: Survival of the regime. If people must starve for that goal, then that's a (surely short-term in their minds) price that must be paid.

Kim does not, for example, wake up one bright blue morning and insist on things like the NK army dress in chiffon or tell his aides that today he is a basset hound.

[BroD]

Two Points:

1. Regime change is of course the best solution but that doesn't mean we can make it happen. There are probably things we can do to make it more likely but it will require a soft touch and patience--something for which this administration is, to say the least, ill-suited.

2. Great. We've successfully defined Chavez an enemy (and given the rest of the world reason to sympathize with our enemies) so he
returns our spite by forging a partnership with NK.

[Gary Farber]

"has Kim ever threatened Seoul with artillery bombardment if the US should attack (for example) ?"

Yes. About a bazillion times.

I gather you aren't familiar with North Korean rhetoric. You might check it out; it's, ah, unique.

Random item.

Here is their official homepage. Enjoy.

[piotr]

I do not see any benefit in 6-lateral talks other than it is an excellant way of making the thing drag forever.

In particular, there is no evidence that China has any misgivings about NK weapons program. They care about things like returning the railroad cars back. "Destabilizing the region"? Who says that China wants a stable region? They want Taiwan back, which is not what we call "stable".

I also think that China would react militarily if we attacked NK, namely by sending the troops as they did in the previous Korean War. We think that Kim Il-Jong is unstable, what do Chinese think about Rummy and Bush show? Say, the latest idea of Rummy to nuke Iran?

Chinese probably want our forces to be as far from their border as they can help it, and it can be worth it to send some coal and grain, and even loosing an occasional railroad car (but not a complete train, there is a limit).

Next, if anyone can prove that Russia is not totally indifferent, I am all ears.

Next, it so happens that Japan has rotten relationship with China, Russia and Korea. Korean and Chinese are miffed about shrines and history textbooks etc, Chinese basically encouraged anti-Japanese riots. Russia has two islands that Japan thinks are Japanese. Japan and Russia do bussiness all right, but it does Russia no harm if Japan is pre-occupied with something different than Kuril islands.

China likes to test its missiles over Taiwan at occasion.

It seems that 6-lateral talks are the only occasion when you can photo all these folks smiling together. Perhaps they could be used to negotiate about other problems in the region that "destabilize" it?