The North Korea dilemma
John Stokes 6:24pm
As North Korea continues to ratchet up the nuclear rhetoric, the US and its allies have publicly determined that ‘something must be done’. Barack Obama, in what is the first and most serious test of his Presidency, announced that the world must ‘stand up’ to North Korea.
But behind the bluster from Pyongyang and Washington is a recognition on both sides that the opportunities for real action are very limited. For decades, as the North Koreans have developed their own nuclear weapon and then exported their technology to countries like Syria and Iran, the west has stood idly by, not least because they find out about new developments after they have happened.
With North Korea’s nuclear test earlier this week followed by a series of missile tests, there was foreknowledge but only because the North Koreans had let the South Koreans know that a test was imminent and the information had been passed to Washington. Usually, though, the North is not so accommodating and the lack of accurate intelligence about anything inside North Korea is going to provide a rude awakening for President Obama who will understand for the first time the real limitations of America’s intelligence apparatus.
The lack of insight into North Korea can be blamed on fear and South Korea. On the one hand, there is an extraordinary aversion to risk inside both the CIA and the NSA, a problem that has got much worse in recent years. This is matched by South Korea’s willingness to supply reams of data to their American allies and by so doing draw them into an ever closer embrace. For Washington, it is a seductive and easy solution that avoids all risk but it also means that the tail is constantly wagging the American dog with often false and self-serving intelligence.
The sad truth is that aside from what can be gleaned from satellites – and Pyongyang has a very good understanding of US capability in that area – America gets virtually no intelligence of value out of North Korea. The real state of the country’s nuclear program is a mystery – even the location of all their nuclear facilities is not known. The biggest mystery of all is who is currently running the country and whether or not there is a struggle to succeed President Kim Jong Il which has provoked the current round of sabre rattling.
The diplomatic and military challenge of North Korea and the lack of accurate intelligence available to Obama illustrate a much deeper malaise that has struck US intelligence in the last decade. While every bureaucracy has a natural aversion to risk, the US intelligence community has been broadly paralyzed by fear – not of death or injury but of exposure in the press. Starting with the debacle over the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, followed by the scandals of torture, rendition and illegal eavesdropping, covert operations have almost become a thing of the past.
Every proposal for new covert actions overseas are measured not so much by a cost benefit analysis for the nation’s security but by the risk of any part of the chain of command being written up in the Washington Post or the New York Times. As a result, nothing is being done, not least in North Korea.
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Bob.India
May 27th, 2009 7:05pm Report this commentBarack Obama announced that the world must ‘stand up’ to North Korea.
Really, is he not the person to be doing the "standing up" and the rest of the world to be doing the following of his lead?
Max Kaye
May 27th, 2009 8:02pm Report this commentThe real danger from North Korea is that the mad man (men) in charge will transfer nuclear material/devices/know-how to similarly barmy states and radical groups - just to spite the West.
The only effective option is a total cordon sanitaire on all outward-bound movements from North Korea.
The result will be war, of course. But better now than later, i.e. after the North Koreans have militarised their nuclear weapons capability.
In any even we'll find out whether or not Obama has a spine.
Disorganised1
May 27th, 2009 8:33pm Report this commentNorth Korea will be decided by China, and China alone.
I expect a UN mandate and China to go in and take over the country and install a puppet ruler.
North Korea has become increasingly unstable, and China is the country with the most vested interest.
Bob.India
May 27th, 2009 9:48pm Report this commentDisorganised1: Not sure that your prognosis is entirely correct. Firstly the UN is merely a factionalised, third-world orientated, rubber-stamping, corrupt bureaucracy (I know this is terribly non-PC) and, hence, will never take a lead on something as important as this (or indeed anything). Secondly, China would (in my humble opinion) never open the pandora's box of occupation of any part of the Korean peninsular (too much raw, remembered history) and, thirdly. China uses DPRK to finely calibrate pressure or accommodation in its dealings with USA but would ultimately follow that nation's lead if the DPRK chips looked like being flung down in a last desperate gamble.
Old Spook
May 27th, 2009 9:54pm Report this comment"Risk aversion" may be a factor, but the fact remains that countries like North Korea are bloody hard intelligence targets. Anyone who airily implies otherwise doesn't know what they are talking about.
JohnAnt
May 27th, 2009 10:34pm Report this commentIsn't it obvious why this is happening? N Korea sees Obama gladhanding and placating his enemies (Chavez, Ahamdinejad) and sees him criticise and even threaten his predecessors in office, sees him question the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, and draws the conclusion that Barry is a Wuss who can be challenged.
Luckily, the Chinese will be far tougher and more peaceable than the North Koreans - not having got out much recently - have bargained for.
TrevorsDen
May 27th, 2009 10:36pm Report this commentNorth Korea has just renounced the ceasefire which ended the Korean War and I'm expected to be more concerned with some claim for an extra £136 a week in mortgage allowance.
Has Britain gone daft?
John Moss
May 27th, 2009 10:50pm Report this commentLast year, or was it actually 2007? - I cannot recall, but NK detonated something underground, which "commentators" decided must have been a nuclear bomb, but it was at a load level which was about half of Hiroshima.
Now, they detonate another "nuclear bomb", about equivalent to Nagasaki.
How long ago was their last blast? Could they simply have loaded the requisite mega tonnes of TNT in a large underground hole? They certainly could have done that first time round. After all, they have had plenty of time?!?
Kim Yong Ill, or what ever he is called is delusional. Go in, blast the "Presidential" palace to kingdom come. this guy has nothing, but everything he has left he owes to us!
Austin Barry
May 27th, 2009 11:14pm Report this commentObama will do nothing about NK or Iran. He may do something about Cayman that dangerous tax haven. He is a swaggering naive narcisist transfixed by his reflection and rotund, cue card oratory ("I'm gifted"). He wants to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony and it is, after all, a small world. The Woodstock President. God help us.
Herbert Thornton
May 28th, 2009 3:52am Report this commentTo my mind, North Korea's implacable ambition is to take over South Korea. Kim Il Sung tried to do it in the 1950s and although he miscalculated, he lost only by a hair's breadth.
Kim Jong Il has the same ambition. My guess is that he is preparing to attempt to achieve what his father failed to do - and will announce that if his invasion is opposed, he will use nuclear weapons - and will actually do so. I think that he calculates that China will oppose any U.S intervention and that this time the U.S. will shrink from intervening.
The Great Question is -what will China do? On the one hand, China values it's trade with South Korea. On the other, the Chinese are as dedicated to incorporating Taiwan back into China as Kim Jong Il is dedicated to incorporating South Korea into his kingdom.
Will the Chinese use the situation as an opportunity to re-take Taiwan? Will they make it clear that they are willing to strike a hard bargain - i.e. that while they are willing to do as Disorganised forecasts, their price for doing it is to be that the U.S. will not oppose them annexing Taiwan?
Whether there will be time for any such bargaining is yet another question - once Kim has detonated a nuclear bomb over somewhere in South Korea, there will be very little time left for the U.S. and China to do any bargaining.....
Perhaps these are what the Chinese call Interesting Times?
TomTom
May 28th, 2009 7:27am Report this comment"The real danger from North Korea is that the mad man (men) in charge will transfer nuclear material/devices/know-how to similarly barmy states and radical groups - just to spite the West."
Funny that. Europe supplied the know-how to A Q Khan of Pakistan from URENCO and he passed it on to Iran, N Korea, Libya and Syria.
THX1138
May 28th, 2009 10:12am Report this commentInteresting that the S Korean Stock market didn't miss a beat with this week’s barrage of North Korean nuclear test and missile launches.
Old Spook
May 28th, 2009 10:25am Report this commentJohn Moss:
The yield of 1996 test was so low that it was initially speculated that it might be a fake (just a very large conventional explosion), but radioactive isotopes detected in due course confirmed that it was nuclear (either deliberately low yield, or more probably a fizzle).
The present test is just too large to be conventional. No doubt we will soon have confirmation from isotope analysis.
Roy
May 28th, 2009 10:29am Report this commentJust when the west is in need of strong leadership it is electing wimps, when there is a need for conserving strength it wastes away it's accumulated fat on welfare excess, pies in the sky like EU, UN, global warming, multiculturalism, and the import of Islamic extremists, immigrants of all descriptions feeding off the taxpayer, plus many many more silly sweeping leftist actions. The sleeping tired, worn out from doing nothing western democracies. Reminiscent of pre-WW 2 the world divided between the obvious evils and the obvious lovers of freedom. Unable to face up to strong action needed before it is/could have been too late. All the good work America has done, almost alone in combating communism during the cold war. Trying perhaps dumbly to fight a war on terror with no sympathy what-so-ever from the world at large, the war against Iraq should have been welcomed by all and America assisted to bring a decent end to it all. The world is thoroughly corrupted by misinformation through some of the media. America has been incorrectly vilified . . . and now the world will pay . . . and is paying.
Herbert Thornton
May 28th, 2009 5:12pm Report this commentI think we should consider whether Kim Jong Il is going to repeat his father's sudden invasion of South Korea in 1950 - which we should remember, very nearly succeeded. The North occupied the whole of the South except for a small enclave in the south-east (around Pusan as I recall) where the U.S. was able to build up enough force to repel the invader.
If Kim Jong Il can repeat that - then if there is such an enclave still unconquered, he has nuclear bombs to use on it. That would put the entire Korean peninsula in his hands. What can the rest of the world do then, other than stage a full-scale nuclear attack on the North? Can we imagine that President Obama would authorise it?
Herbert Thornton
May 29th, 2009 8:22pm Report this commentThere's an interesting news report touching on this topic here -
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/28/army-chief-fight-north-korea-necessary/
The 90-day build-up time that he mentions seems (to me) to be rather less than reassuring.
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