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06/30/2005

War Games: North Korea

Scott Stossel of The Atlantic Monthly has a piece in the July /
August 2005 issue on a recent war game that looked into how to
deal with North Korea. The participants included Colonel Sam
Gardiner, who runs war games at the Army War College; former
chief-weapons inspector David Kay; Robert Gallucci, a former
chief negotiator with the North Koreans during the Clinton
administration; Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney; Jessica
Mathews, former National Security Council member; and
Kenneth Adelman, current member of the Defense Policy Board
and former assistant secretary of defense. Following are a few of
the conclusions, as well as problems we face in a real-life
conflict should Pyongyang not back down with regards to current
negotiations on the nuclear weapons front.

---

“(Aside from North Korea’s reported nuclear missiles), and
whereas Iraq did not, after all, have weapons of mass destruction,
North Korea is believed to have large stockpiles of chemical
weapons and biological weapons. An actual war on the Korean
peninsula would almost certainly be the bloodiest America has
fought since Vietnam – possibly since World War II. In recent
years Pentagon experts have estimated that the first ninety days
of such a conflict might produce 300,000 to 500,000 South
Korean and American military casualties, along with hundreds of
thousands of civilian deaths. The damage to South Korea alone
would rock the global economy.” [Scott Stossel]

“(Trying to take out) the regime’s nuclear sites with surgical
strikes – an iffy proposition at best, since we don’t know where
some of the sites are – might provoke a horrific war. And trying
to create regional nuclear deterrence by allowing South Korea,
Japan, and even Taiwan to become nuclear powers would
undermine the global nonproliferation system that has been in
place for more than forty years. The North Korean regime may
be fundamentally undeterrable anyway: President Kim Jong Il
has reportedly said he would ‘destroy the world’ or ‘take the
world with me’ before accepting defeat on the battlefield. And
as bad as Kim is, what comes after him could be worse. A
complete collapse of the regime might lead not only to enormous
refugee problems for China and South Korea but also, in effect,
to a weapons-of-mass-destruction yard sale for smugglers.

“There are still other dangers. If we did successfully invade, our
troops would be likely to eventually find themselves near North
Korea’s Chinese border. The last time that happened, in 1950,
the Chinese counterinvaded. [A 1961 treaty obliges China to do
so again in the event of an attack on North Korea.]” [Scott
Stossel]

Following are the comments of the participants in the war game
at various stages.

David Kay, on how little we know. “We believe a lot. We
actually know very little.”

Robert Gallucci: “This is a country that has exported ballistic
missiles when no other country on earth is exporting ballistic
missiles – a country that has threatened explicitly to export
nuclear material .If there’s an incident, the worst we can
imagine, the detonation of a weapon in an American city, will we
have attribution? Will we be able to track it back to North
Korea?”

Thomas McInerney: North Korea could use Seoul, just thirty-five
miles from the DMZ, as a “hostage” – to threaten to turn it into a
“sea of fire.” But McInerney says that “If threatened with the
transfer of nuclear weapons from North Korea to terrorists, we
have to do something.”

Colonel Gardiner said that one thing that could keep the U.S.
from gaining rapid control was chemical weapons. They could
be a “showstopper.” “The chemical-weapon thing is big. We
have reason to believe that the chemical weapons are with the
forward artillery units that are targeting Seoul. If we don’t get
those early, we end up with chemicals on Seoul.”

Gardiner later talked about timing. As time passes and North
Korea develops more nuclear weapons, “the targeting challenges
for the U.S. military grow considerably. It’s hard enough to take
out one or two – or eight or ten – nuclear devices if we don’t
know exactly where they are. The task of destroying fifteen or
twenty, or eighty or a hundred, before any of them can be
launched becomes substantially harder. And the threat that one
of them will be sold to a terrorist greatly increases.” [Scott
Stossel]

Kay commented on the results of a collapse in the regime. “The
collapse of a nuclear, chemical, and biologically armed state is a
serious national-security threat not just for us but for the whole
world. We ought to have a contingency plan for what happens if
that regime collapses. Because if you don’t, Iraq is going to look
like child’s play.”

Everyone agreed the U.S. military could not afford the troop
numbers required to effectively wage war in North Korea, let
alone the aftermath.

Army Major Donald Vandergriff worried the U.S. would be
caught off guard by a surprise attack on the South. [Think Pearl
Harbor and 9/11, as well as the invasion by North Korea in
1950.] And, he observed, “What if North Korea doesn’t even try
to fight a conventional war but resorts instead to ‘fourth-
generation war,’ relying heavily on commandoes, assassins, and
sleeper cells in the South?”

In the end, reporter Stossel asked the participants of the war
game what other conclusions could be reached. David Kay told
him, “Anyone who walks through the North Korea crisis comes
through absolutely convinced that it is only going to get worse.”
Stossel writes Kay “came away from the exercise convinced of
the situation’s urgency – and convinced that the United States
has wasted several years, effectively dong nothing while it hoped
the regime would collapse. Kay believes that the
administration’s reluctance to engage the matter diplomatically is
dangerous.” At least two other principals agreed we need to
negotiate directly. Colonel Gardiner said “The military situation
on the peninsula is not under control.”

Hott Spotts will return July 14. More thoughts on North Korea.

Brian Trumbore


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Hot Spots

06/30/2005

War Games: North Korea

Scott Stossel of The Atlantic Monthly has a piece in the July /
August 2005 issue on a recent war game that looked into how to
deal with North Korea. The participants included Colonel Sam
Gardiner, who runs war games at the Army War College; former
chief-weapons inspector David Kay; Robert Gallucci, a former
chief negotiator with the North Koreans during the Clinton
administration; Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney; Jessica
Mathews, former National Security Council member; and
Kenneth Adelman, current member of the Defense Policy Board
and former assistant secretary of defense. Following are a few of
the conclusions, as well as problems we face in a real-life
conflict should Pyongyang not back down with regards to current
negotiations on the nuclear weapons front.

---

“(Aside from North Korea’s reported nuclear missiles), and
whereas Iraq did not, after all, have weapons of mass destruction,
North Korea is believed to have large stockpiles of chemical
weapons and biological weapons. An actual war on the Korean
peninsula would almost certainly be the bloodiest America has
fought since Vietnam – possibly since World War II. In recent
years Pentagon experts have estimated that the first ninety days
of such a conflict might produce 300,000 to 500,000 South
Korean and American military casualties, along with hundreds of
thousands of civilian deaths. The damage to South Korea alone
would rock the global economy.” [Scott Stossel]

“(Trying to take out) the regime’s nuclear sites with surgical
strikes – an iffy proposition at best, since we don’t know where
some of the sites are – might provoke a horrific war. And trying
to create regional nuclear deterrence by allowing South Korea,
Japan, and even Taiwan to become nuclear powers would
undermine the global nonproliferation system that has been in
place for more than forty years. The North Korean regime may
be fundamentally undeterrable anyway: President Kim Jong Il
has reportedly said he would ‘destroy the world’ or ‘take the
world with me’ before accepting defeat on the battlefield. And
as bad as Kim is, what comes after him could be worse. A
complete collapse of the regime might lead not only to enormous
refugee problems for China and South Korea but also, in effect,
to a weapons-of-mass-destruction yard sale for smugglers.

“There are still other dangers. If we did successfully invade, our
troops would be likely to eventually find themselves near North
Korea’s Chinese border. The last time that happened, in 1950,
the Chinese counterinvaded. [A 1961 treaty obliges China to do
so again in the event of an attack on North Korea.]” [Scott
Stossel]

Following are the comments of the participants in the war game
at various stages.

David Kay, on how little we know. “We believe a lot. We
actually know very little.”

Robert Gallucci: “This is a country that has exported ballistic
missiles when no other country on earth is exporting ballistic
missiles – a country that has threatened explicitly to export
nuclear material .If there’s an incident, the worst we can
imagine, the detonation of a weapon in an American city, will we
have attribution? Will we be able to track it back to North
Korea?”

Thomas McInerney: North Korea could use Seoul, just thirty-five
miles from the DMZ, as a “hostage” – to threaten to turn it into a
“sea of fire.” But McInerney says that “If threatened with the
transfer of nuclear weapons from North Korea to terrorists, we
have to do something.”

Colonel Gardiner said that one thing that could keep the U.S.
from gaining rapid control was chemical weapons. They could
be a “showstopper.” “The chemical-weapon thing is big. We
have reason to believe that the chemical weapons are with the
forward artillery units that are targeting Seoul. If we don’t get
those early, we end up with chemicals on Seoul.”

Gardiner later talked about timing. As time passes and North
Korea develops more nuclear weapons, “the targeting challenges
for the U.S. military grow considerably. It’s hard enough to take
out one or two – or eight or ten – nuclear devices if we don’t
know exactly where they are. The task of destroying fifteen or
twenty, or eighty or a hundred, before any of them can be
launched becomes substantially harder. And the threat that one
of them will be sold to a terrorist greatly increases.” [Scott
Stossel]

Kay commented on the results of a collapse in the regime. “The
collapse of a nuclear, chemical, and biologically armed state is a
serious national-security threat not just for us but for the whole
world. We ought to have a contingency plan for what happens if
that regime collapses. Because if you don’t, Iraq is going to look
like child’s play.”

Everyone agreed the U.S. military could not afford the troop
numbers required to effectively wage war in North Korea, let
alone the aftermath.

Army Major Donald Vandergriff worried the U.S. would be
caught off guard by a surprise attack on the South. [Think Pearl
Harbor and 9/11, as well as the invasion by North Korea in
1950.] And, he observed, “What if North Korea doesn’t even try
to fight a conventional war but resorts instead to ‘fourth-
generation war,’ relying heavily on commandoes, assassins, and
sleeper cells in the South?”

In the end, reporter Stossel asked the participants of the war
game what other conclusions could be reached. David Kay told
him, “Anyone who walks through the North Korea crisis comes
through absolutely convinced that it is only going to get worse.”
Stossel writes Kay “came away from the exercise convinced of
the situation’s urgency – and convinced that the United States
has wasted several years, effectively dong nothing while it hoped
the regime would collapse. Kay believes that the
administration’s reluctance to engage the matter diplomatically is
dangerous.” At least two other principals agreed we need to
negotiate directly. Colonel Gardiner said “The military situation
on the peninsula is not under control.”

Hott Spotts will return July 14. More thoughts on North Korea.

Brian Trumbore