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| U.S. Is Warning North Koreans on Nuclear Test | ||
| 2005-05-16 | ||
| WASHINGTON, May 15 - The Bush administration on Sunday warned North Korea for the first time that if it conducted a nuclear test, the United States and several Pacific powers would take punitive action, but officials stopped short of saying what kind of sanctions would result. "Action would have to be taken," Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser, said on the CNN program "Late Edition." Asked earlier on "Fox News Sunday" about recent reports that intelligence agencies have warned that North Korea could conduct its first test, Mr. Hadley added: "We've seen some evidence that says that they may be preparing for a nuclear test. We have talked to our allies about that." But he cautioned that North Korea was "a hard target" and that correctly assessing its intentions was nearly impossible. Mr. Hadley's warnings represented the first time anyone in the Bush administration had approached drawing a "red line" that North Korea could not cross without prompting a reaction. The term red line was often used during the cold war to set the boundaries in confrontations, with perhaps the most extreme example President Kennedy's action in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis to curb a nuclear risk. In the case of North Korea, the threat has risen incrementally over 15 years. Mr. Bush's aides have said in interviews over the past year that if they drew a clear line, they believed that the North Koreans would see it as a challenge and walk right up to it. On Sunday afternoon, senior administration officials said that concerns about baiting North Korea helped to explain why Mr. Hadley did not specify what kind of penalty was possible. Instead, Mr. Hadley noted that "the Japanese are out today already saying that those steps would need to include going to the Security Council and, potentially, sanctions."
"If North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons becomes definite," Mr. Abe said on Asahi TV, and North Korea "conducts nuclear testing, for instance, Japan will naturally bring the issue to the U.N. and call for sanctions against North Korea." Mr. Abe also told Asahi TV that it was "unthinkable not to impose any sanctions in case of a nuclear testing."
North Korea has repeatedly declared that it would consider any sanctions imposed through the United Nations as an act of war. Mr. Hadley, known for his caution, appeared somewhat more tentative Sunday than Mr. Abe did in discussing sanctions. He offered no specifics. Nor did he mention the extensive studies under way at the State Department, and in his own National Security Council to come up with a range of options, either in the event of a nuclear test or North Korea's continued refusal to rejoin negotiations that it has boycotted for nearly a year with South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. | ||
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #13 Here's Donald Sensing (an ex-artillery officer with a wonderful blog of his own) responding at the end of the above-linked post to an inquiry by SDB on NK's gun emplacements: 1. Can NK range Seoul with artillery from prewar prositions? Almost without a doubt. The real danger is less that they will use HE because, as you point out, it would take a huge number of HE shells to "destroy" Seoul. The worst danger is using chemical shells, especially persistent nerve or blister agents. 2. You correctly identify that the NK artillery concerned is heavily fortified, but incorrectly assume we already have located the firing positions. We have not. The NK army is known to have built their positions inside hills and mountains from the reverse (northern) slope - they were doing this the last year of the Korean War. What they have done is prepared the positions in every way except for opening the south side of the slope. The rails and armored doors are all in place and working, but the ground in front of them is entirely undisturbed. Just before firing, sappers blow the ground away, the piece is rolled forward, and firing begins. We do have ground-penetrating, airborne radar, but I'd be surprised if we have accurate locations on even half the artillery pieces, and the NKs have thousands. 3. Seoul is plenty far enough away to use nukes against the bunkers without direct detonation effects against the city; downwind hazards would the issue there. But there is no more effective defense against nukes than hardened bunkers chiseled into mountains. So nukes would not work very well unless they actually entered the fortification, and that's not a very efficient use of them. We don't have enough besides. And you are right - the other effects of nukes would be unacceptable. I think the rest of your essay is right on, and mirrors my own thoughts closely. As I pointed out near the end of my essay I cited above, "In short, the North can invade the South, but it cannot win. The ensuing war would be disastrous for the South in terms of human loss, also for the North unless the war ended with the South's suzerainty over the North. But even so, the North Korean people would suffer very greatly until then. "The problem, though, is not that the North could win such a war. It is that its isolated, self-justifying oligarchy might think it can win. And with its impending development of atomic weapons, it may think that all the more." |
| Posted by: docob 2005-05-16 23:57 |
| #12 Whoops! First time I've tried to leave a link, and it didn't work ... here's the address: http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/06/ NorthKoreansuicidepact.shtml |
| Posted by: docob 2005-05-16 23:42 |
| #11 Here ya go: |
| Posted by: docob 2005-05-16 23:40 |
| #10 Steven Den Beste had (not surprisingly) the best breakdown on the situation I've ever seen. Hopefully it's still available somewhere. |
| Posted by: docob 2005-05-16 23:26 |
| #9 Sorry about the double post. I meant to start a new paragraph to say, I'm asking these questions seriously, not rhetorically or snidely. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-05-16 23:00 |
| #8 Can those guns roll out and shoot if the mountainside has collapsed, blocking the tunnel openings? Will the common soldiers aim their guns at Seoul once the senior commanders have been killed in their fancy compounds? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-05-16 22:59 |
| #7 Can those guns roll out and shoot if the mountainside has collapsed, blocking the tunnel openings? Will the common soldiers aim their guns at Seoul once the senior commanders have been killed in their fancy compounds? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-05-16 22:59 |
| #6 The Guns of Navaronery. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-05-16 22:35 |
| #5 "...then how 'bout we strike their artillery emplacements first..." Cuz their emplacements are, as I understand it, basically in the side of a mountain of solid rock. The guns are on rails, and can roll out, shoot, and roll back in. |
| Posted by: docob 2005-05-16 22:18 |
| #4 All right, John, then how 'bout we strike their artillery emplacements first. After they have lost their hostage, then hit the nuke sites. Or do them both at once (will require a lot of redeployment probably). Or, say that if they deliberately attack the civilian target of Seoul, we will aim for their military-political leadership, regardless of collateral damage. There's no point in threatening the common people, since the leadership doesn't mind if they die (of starvation). |
| Posted by: jackal 2005-05-16 22:11 |
| #3 And when they retaliate? http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20041006-065733-1065r.htm "If North Korea's long-range artillery are fired, some 25,000 shells per hour would rain down and destroy one-third of Seoul within one hour," said opposition lawmaker Park Jin, citing a trial analysis by the state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. The communist neighbor is believed to have 12,500 artillery pieces, 1,000 of which are concealed in thousands of mountain tunnels near the border. In the first hours of a war, North Korea could rain between 300,000 and 500,000 artillery shells onto Seoul, according to defense officials. An artillery shell can reach Seoul in less than two minutes. |
| Posted by: john 2005-05-16 18:23 |
| #2 I'm all for a warning of a couple of MOABS in N.Korean military bases. |
| Posted by: mmurray821 2005-05-16 15:31 |
| #1 In the case of North Korea, the threat has risen incrementally over 15 years. But didn't this situation develop under the eeevil Chimpy McBushHitlerburton and his neoconic henchmen? Hillary said so! |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-05-16 11:23 |