Was It Really a False Alarm?

On Saturday morning, January 13th, a Hawaii state cell phone alert texted a warning of an incoming ballistic missile across the entire state. It took the state 38 minutes to recall that notice as a false alarm. People had abandoned their cars, parents rushed to find their children, plans were cancelled and a mild panic ensued. It was a black eye for the governor, David Ige, oddly an engineer by training… and for the entire state. What that false alarm did do is remind us what we face in a very-much nuclearized North Korea that may well have nuclear warheads, no matter how much doubt Trump administration officials may cast, that are now capable of being delivered by existing-capacity ICBMs to virtually any part of the United States.

For those experts most familiar with North Korean politics in general, and Kim Jong-Un in particular, there is little doubt that absent force – which could trigger a nuclear war – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the official name for North Korea) will neither denuclearize nor stop its missile/nuclear weapons development program no matter the level of global sanctions imposed. As shown on CBS 60 Minutes on January 14th, the DPRK actually invited a high-ranking American scientist, Sig Hecker, the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory (the birthplace of the American atomic bomb), on numerous occasions to visit their most sensitive nuclear weapons development sites to insure that the US was fully aware of their capabilities.

Even if millions of North Koreans starve to death, Kim Jong-Un has equated being torn from power by the United States if he were to abandon his nuclear program. Kim and his top generals passionately believe that stopping these weapon systems would be their death sentence, so if lots of people must die to keep them alive, they are more than prepared to let that happen. What’s even worse, because of the tight rein that the DPRK maintains over its people and what they are allowed to see and hear, the overwhelming population in the North believes it is already at war with the United States and is prepared to make the necessary sacrifice for their motherland… this, notwithstanding the widespread belief in the United States that the North can be brought to heel.

While people in South Korea and Japan, ostensible US allies, fear nuclear assault from the North, there is little doubt that the North’s main focus is the territory of the United States itself. And the Trump administration has been anything but subtle in their belief that hard American bully-tactics, replete with belittling name-calling for Kim Jong-Un, are the proper response to the DPRK’s nuclear weapons programs. And while Kim has hardly convinced the world he is a decent leader, he has managed to cast most of the blame for escalating tensions on an erratic and wildly unpredictable tweet-meister, Donald Trump.

“In perhaps the most incendiary exchange, in a September speech at the United Nations, Mr. Trump vowed to ‘totally destroy North Korea’ if it threatened the United States, and derided the rogue nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un, as ‘Rocket Man.’ In response, Mr. Kim said he would deploy the ‘highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history’ against the United States, and described Mr. Trump as a ‘mentally deranged U.S. dotard.’ New York Times, January 14th. Mr. Trump’s unrestrained need to tweet, to apply pejoratives and exaggerate play well to his base, but to the rest of the world, these habits are considered totally inappropriate and diplomatically destructive, baiting Kim Jong-Un to accelerate his weapons programs accordingly. That South Korea could open a dialog with the North over the Olympics only makes Trump’s provocations that much more inappropriate.

For the US military, however, this escalating war of words, followed by new testing by the North, is nothing more than a cautionary mandate to prepare for the worst: an all-out shooting war with the nuclear North. “Next month, at Army posts across the United States, more than 1,000 reserve soldiers will practice how to set up so-called mobilization centers that move military forces overseas in a hurry. And beginning next month with the Winter Olympics in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang, the Pentagon plans to send more Special Operations troops to the Korean Peninsula, an initial step toward what some officials said ultimately could be the formation of a Korea-based task force similar to the types that are fighting in Iraq and Syria. Others said the plan was strictly related to counterterrorism efforts.

“In the world of the American military, where contingency planning is a mantra drummed into the psyche of every officer, the moves are ostensibly part of standard Defense Department training and troop rotations. But the scope and timing of the exercises suggest a renewed focus on getting the country’s military prepared for what could be on the horizon with North Korea.

“Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both argue forcefully for using diplomacy to address Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. A war with North Korea, Mr. Mattis said in August, would be ‘catastrophic.’ Still, about two dozen current and former Pentagon officials and senior commanders said in interviews that the exercises largely reflected the military’s response to orders from Mr. Mattis and service chiefs to be ready for any possible military action on the Korean Peninsula.” NY Times. The possibility of a Trump-ordered strike on the North is very real, probably more real than a preemptive strike by the North on US soil; Kim knows what the consequences of a Northern nuke against the US or her allies will produce.

For the record, and largely because of Chinese intervention, the United States and her UN allies did not fare so well in the Korean War (1950-53). The parties withdrew to their pre-war boundaries, there was no victor and while hostilities ceased, the only result was an armistice. Technically, a state of war still exists. The series of DPRK dictators who followed maintained a strong anti-US rhetoric over the years.

The United States has had similar Cold War confrontations when both the USSR (now focused on modern Russia) and the People’s Republic of China developed their own nuclear weapons/ICBM programs. Various treaties with these deeply anti-American enemies, combined with the concept of mutually assured destruction, created a modus vivendi with these nations and reduced the threat of a real nuclear war accordingly. Many other nations joined the nuclear family, from India and Pakistan to Israel, and the potential for a nuclear holocaust has so far been averted. We know that with each new nation having nukes, the risks increase, but do we actually want to begin a military confrontation to find out if we can successfully stop another nation that is well into a nuclear program… with rather rapidly moveable missile launching platforms?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am particularly concerned for the possible missteps that a self-proclaimed “mentally stable genius” might provoke in a military confrontation with North Korea.