We have lately been hearing the question “Why Iraq when we know North Korea has the bomb?” The official answers we have been given so far have not been truly satisfactory. I will posit this is due to an (perhaps justified) unwillingness on the part of US officials to state the threat equation in its’ purest Machiavellian form.
North Korea is no where near the threat Iraq is. Even with nuclear weapons they are not in the same league. This may seem strange to the reader. They have nukes, they have missiles, they have half a million artillery pieces facing across the border, they have troops enough to flood across the border like a mile wide horde of cockroaches against a single can of Raid.
That is true. Next question. After they take over South Korea, what next? They are on a peninsula. Their neighbors are China, Russia and Japan. Japan is far across the water. So in the worst case, what do we lose? South Korea. That’s it.
What happens after they finish the rape, pillage and burn? After they’ve wrecked the South Korean infrastructure in pitched battles against the large and well equiped South Korean military? Is a nation that can’t feed itself going to rebuild the South Korean economy when it couldn’t build it’s own in the first place? What are they going to do with a large enemy population which has just been brutally awakened to the fact they can’t go out and shop in the trendy stores any more? That there is going to be no choice in the next election? That their future is the image of a boot heel stamping on their faces, forever?
Is North Korean going to go North and take on the Chinese Peoples Army? Are they going to build massive numbers of ships and attempt to cross the straits into the the teeth of a “Made in America” Divine Wind?? Will the three Korean soldiers who survive to wash up on the northern shores of Japan proceed to conquer it?
Not bloody likely.
You say, but they have nukes! They have missiles. This is true. But the missiles cannot yet reach the caribou herds in Alaska, and it is unlikely North Korea would retain the infrastructure for building them immediately following a very difficult victory. The entire Korean peninsula would be in ashes. By the time they rebuild with the help of fresh slave labour battalions from the South, America will have shipboard missile defense systems just outside their territorial waters ready to stop short range missiles aimed at Japan – and permanent facilities in the Aleutians to defend North America.
North Korea would find itself in a situation similar to where it started, only worse. It would take decades to fully digest the liberal South Korean society and bury the bones of it.
This is a “best case scenario” for North Korea. It is also highly unlikely and that is as apparent to the North Koreans as it is to me. A more likely result of such a miscalculation is a replay of the first Korean War… but without hordes of Chinese troops and experienced WWII Russian pilots storming across the Yalu to push back the American counter offensive.
Now compare the situation to Iraq. It is a large and strategically located asian nation. It is surrounded by far weaker neighbors. Only Iran seems capable of standing up to them. So he’d leave them for desert.
Look at a map with the jaundiced eye of an experienced Risk player. Jordan and Kuwait are obvious snacks. The Saudi’s are a pushover. The Emirates are nice people but are very small; Yemen wouldn’t last very long either. If left to his own Xerxian dreams, Saddam would very quickly reinstate most of the ancient Assyrian empire. He’d own the middle East from the Turkish border to the Indian Ocean.
Then he’d take on the nuclear powers. He’s got enough people and desert to take whatever Israel or Pakistan could mete out. He might leave Iran for Oday’s generation. Future conquests require going through Egypt, and once that is managed what is going to stop him in Northern Africa?
All the while, he’s got an economy far more effective than North Korea. There are shopping malls and consumer goods in Baghdad that would dazzle the eyes of a North Korean. He’s an old style conqueror, not an ideologue. He doesn’t have to control everything. He’ll use terror and random killings to keep the population sufficiently cowed, but beyond that they may work and create wealth.
This is why Iraq must be dealt with and North Korea may be left to moulder.
Note: Thanks to Mark G for pointing out a blooper on my part. I’ve corrected ‘Abyssinian’ to ‘Assyrian’.
The Kitty Hawk is on its way to NK. It has been rumored that some Iraqi scientists are now in NK under assumed names and a NK general took a circuitous (sp) route to Bagdad.
The SK and China are worried about refugees, a large group (for them) escaped.
And SK might also be guilty of leaving NK as it is as it paid attention to Germany’s reunification and the money it spent. It could have squealed to the Chicoms about NK defectors and those defectors were picked up and returned to NK.
Dale, I think your take on Iraq vs. North Korea is right on the money. I actually think there are at least two more reasons on why it makes sense to pursue Iraq now, but that’s not why I’m writing this.
At some point, I’d appreciate someone’s views on Samizdata about why the US LP (and Cato, to a certain degree) is against liberating Iraq while other (and I would say much more reasonable) libertarians support it. Why is there such a dichotomy among those of us who generally agree on practically everything else? Although the US LP is very good at shooting its own foot, I think that it’s ultra-pacifist stance hurts whatever chances it may have to pick up more votes. That’s not to say that it should change its position just to get more votes, but they’re simply wrong. As anyone who went through grade school knows, a bully must be confronted head on. I’d appreciate your and anyone else’s thoughts on why many libertarians (or at least those that lead the LP) don’t see it that way.
That’s a nice summary of why the Gulf War happened 11 years ago (although Dale seems to have overlooked the existence of Syria and Turkey).
I’m not a spokesman for the US LP or Cato, but I can offer some thoughts on Russ’s question.
As I’ve mentioned before, the US Libertarian Party has a concept called the non-agression principle which states that you will not initiate force, or advocate its initiation. Anyone who joins the LP signs a statement saying that they will abide by that.
Personally, I have no objection to Russ or other Samizdata authors liberating Iraq. Nobody has really talked about doing so, but if someone wants to give it a try, be my guest. Maybe you can post here about what it’s like to fight alongside Iraqi rebels.
What I am opposed to is the idea of a US invasion of Iraq. I’m aware it’s fashionable among “neocons” to pretend that this would be a liberation, but this is really a pretty transparent bit of propaganda. It’s like the victim disarmament advocates saying over and over that guns cause crime. Who do you think you’re kidding?
Let’s be perfectly clear here–you are not talking about liberating Iraq. You are talking about having the US government steal money from me at gunpoint to pay other people to go and conquer Iraq, and then set up a puppet government controlled by UN bureaucrats. Or, given the unexpectedly large UK troop commitment, maybe the plan is to give Iraq back to the British…
I did not feel it necessary to itemize every mid-eastern state; and I did explicitly name Turkey as a border to Saddam’s desires. They have an effective and relatively modern military, and they are a NATO member and would trigger the mutual defense clause.
Very nice analysis. I’m just wondering how you reconcile Iraq being able to break past the northern or southern no-fly zones, or the American presences in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, (Oman, Yemen, Turkey… JORDAN) and indeed everywhere besides Iran, to invade the first domino on Saddam’s path to be the modern Alexander? Other than his inner circle of “elite” Republican Guard, his draftees tend to surrender when confronted with hostile forces. As messy as containment is, we’ve kept it up now for a dozen years. Sure- we pissed off some Islamists, but we never said we wouldn’t get our hair mussed.
I suppose I accept your point that North Korea is effectively MORE contained– the sea on both sides, well-armed (though friendly) China to its north, well-armed (less friendly) South Korea to its south, 37,000 American troops on its border at any given moment to boot.
It just strikes me that in the WMD proliferation department, North Korea seems to need the cash more than Iraq does, and has the likelier wherewithal and insanity to actually DO such deals with terrorists. Further, while NOrth Korean missiles may or may not be able to vaorize Anchorage, Alaska, they can CERTAINLY re-vaproize Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Tokyo and Osaka (Dear Leader can level Seoul conventionally, right now; obviously, he can expect some pissed off South Koreans if he does); all of these scenarios would be pretty much as strategically disastrous as if he COULD hit American territory proper.
I don’t know– what concerns me is that while you have put together a well-thought real-politik analysis here, the American government’s actions are NOT guided by such considerations, but are guided by the fact that belligerance toward Iraq will be more impressive to swing voters in the Upper Ohio Valley than will belligerance toward NOrth Korea.
That’s quite a fantasy! Saddam invades another country, and the U.S. does nothing. That’s very unlikely–and Saddam knows it very well. He may be a “an old style conqueror,” but he’s too weak to withstand any kind of U.S. military onslaught that he knows would come if he moved outside his borders. I don’t see how a long list of nonsense justifies spending a lot of money and Iraqi lives on a pointless war.
I’m sorry, but several seem to have missed the point of the analysis entirely. I do not expect the US will sit back unable to twiddle its’ thumbs because one opposing digit is firmly planted.
Of course Saddam is going to be opposed; that is as certain as the US not folding in South Korea. However the end result in the case of Iraq is a long term threat that just won’t go away, not even at Saddam’s death. Oday is perhaps even worse than his father and has his own private army of the absolute faithful. They’re the ones who do the beheadings.
North Korea can either be dealt with at leisure if they become too dangerous, or can be left to rot and fall apart on their own. Given how hellish they are to their people, I would hope that were sooner rather than later.
Some disagreements. Both Iraqi and NK governments can be deterred from a direct WMD attack on respective neighbors without a preemptive attack. Saddam did not launch his WMD at Israel in Gulf War I for fear of annihilation. NK could expect the same result if it attacked the South.
What scares me about both countries is the distinct possibility that both nations would transfer their WMD to third parties. The same holds true with Pakistan. Frankly, I fear that NK and Pakistan are more likely culprits in such a scenario… NK having its food supplies depend in large part on weapons exports, and Pakistan having a sizable Islamist element.
Be that as it may, the whole point of going to Iraq is to prevent them from turning into Pakistan or North Korea. Believe me, I’d be happy to rid the world of the threat from all three. The question remains though, at what price? While I am annoyed at the South Korean anti-Americanism that has popped up as of late, the fact remains that I won’t be in the cross-hares of a North Korean retalliatory strike on Seoul, nor is it likely that I’d be one of the few thousand GI casualties at the DMZ (unless the draft is reinstituted).
I will concede that a unique fear from Iraq is that they’ll engage in a future war of conquest at a time when Western resolve is at a low. (Actually, if you can find it at the video store, I recommend an interesting movie on this exact scenario called Deterrence starring Kevin Pollack).
I believe the upcoming strike on Iraq is absolutely necessary. Let’s nip that problem in the bud, while the price is relatively cheap. It’s just important not to lose sight of the other dangers that still stare us in the face.
Dale,
You have some good points.
I took my shot at the same topic from a different perspective over at Winds of Change at this link:
http://www.windsofchange.net/2003_01_19_woc.html#87836425
Ack!
I forgot to mention the title of my post:
“North Korea’s Tony Sopranos”
One glaring error: the Israeli military could pretty much quash the entire region with no help from the US. If it were necessary, the Israelis could field more troops and planes faster than the US (without the current buildup, of course).
With their large reserve military they may not be able to hold positions over large geographical areas for long periods, but I have no doubt that, if they chose, they would crush Iraq in a matter of weeks, if not days.
A very well written blog.
The thing is that the policy of containing S.H. was cracking up – every day (before the recent build up to war) we heard in Britain (and in other nations) more demands for the end of sanctions (which had murdered X million children in Iraq and other B.S. – even though there were no sanctions on food or medical care).
The pressure from “the left” was getting stronger and stronger, it was only a matter of time before the whole policy collapsed.
After all (as the American Libertarian party would agree with the left) “sactions” and “no fly zones” are also evil American imperialism and must be stopped. We should go out as individuals and do battle with the forces of the dictator of Iraq – and our fate would be the same as if we had gone out (without state backing) to do battle with the forces of the German dicator in the early 1940’s.
One last point, I can not help at least partly wanting the half of the population of South Korea who voted for reaching out to the Communists in love and for more welfare at home to experience a Communist invasion in the way their parents-grandparents did (they might not deserve it – but then again……)
The trouble is that the decent half of the South Korean population would suffer also.
Thanks for the info Trent. I was not aware the Korean military had corrupted to quite that level.
A good analysis. Also supporting the relative weakness of North Korea is the fact that the South has more than double the population, much more modern weaponry, more money, and connections to the outside world. The North couldn’t conquer the South without nuking it, and it’s pretty close quarters for that. Pyongyang’s only about 120 miles from Seoul.
I think the point Dale missed, and which is far more important than any scenarios of Saddam menacing his neighbors with his military as it is today, is: What happens when (not “if”…it’s only a matter of time) Saddam gets the bomb? And by that, I mean few of them.
As Dale posited, Kuwait will again be Saddam’s 19th province within the week. Saudi will be cowed, placing their oil fields under Saddam’s control, if not outright sovereignty. The rest of the Gulf states…gone, absorbed into the Saddamite State. Saddam will be able to drive modern economies into depression at the turn of a valve…he doen’t care about the money, folks. And here’s where it gets really bad.
Jordan, full of Palestinians that adore Saddam, falls and the Hashemites flee. Suddenly a nuclear-armed megalomaniac with visions of a pan-Arab megastate is massing his troops on Israel’s eastern border. What do you think would be the one act that would unite them under Saddam’s flag? If you said a strike, possibly even nuclear, on Israel proper, go to the head of the class.
Tens of millions would perish in the conflagration. Oil fields would be rendered untouchable for the foreseeable future. Cities would be devastated. All in the various and sundry names of “peace.” “Never again” would slide into “just one more time…”
You might say (allow me to set up a straw man here) that Saddam would be deterred just as the Soviets, Chinese, etc. were deterred by our weapons. Possibly. But the history of Saddam’s thought process indicates he would believe that we, not he, would be deterred. The Anglo world would not have the political will to stand in the face of a mushroom cloud, maybe over the oil fields, maybe over Tel Aviv.
And who’s to say he’s wrong? Is anyone who is defiantly opposing the war today likely to turn into a screeching hawk when the prospect turns from sending in our troops against VX to sending then in against U235? The question answers itself…no. In fact, the urge to appease will be overwhelming, leaving the Israeli-Iraqi confrontation quite likely and most likely obscenely deadly.
Saddam has to go and soon. A crawl-down now would be a catastrophe.
There is nothing in what I wrote that doesn’t assume what you’ve written. The post was getting rather lengthy and I did indicate your scenario when I noted Sadddam has enough desert to absorb whatever Israel can fire off. This gets into what another correspondent mentioned. I agree that the Israeli military is very, very good. But are they good enough to hold off the power of a military state with control of a large part of the world’s fuel and a ready made army of kamikazi’s? It would be to Saddam’s interests to use up the Palestinians against Israel. Better for him to kill them off doing something useful to him than expending resources keeping them under thumb later.
The detail of such a confrontation is a bit difficult to guess given you don’t even know the detail of how the preceding conflicts would play out.
If Saddam played it dumb, he’d try to conquer Israel immediately. If he played it smart, he’d build up his wealth and military and do it later.
None of which can happen so long as the US stands firm; but as Paul noted above, that is not a foregone conclusion. Imagine a victory scenario for Saddam:
Does anyone believe Saddam wouldn’t try to engineer this outcome?
What happens when (not “if”…it’s only a matter of time) Saddam gets the bomb?
Thats the crux of the matter, at the moment he doesn’t (as far as we know) and that means he can be dealt with in the most obvious way – enforced regime change. The internal opposition is not strong enough to do it on its own so it needs assistance from those with the gumption to help them out.
If he did have the bomb and a delivery mechanism then the whole balance of power in the Middle East would change from one of enforced stalemate to one where SH could use nuclear blackmail to get what he wants.
NK has the bomb and it is fairly obvious that this complicates everything – otherwise I am sure the regime would have been changed a long time ago.
Lets deal with those despots who want to go Nuclear while we still have the chance – those that already do require a different approach.
The USSR collapsed eventually under the weight of its own internal onefficiencies, NK would have done so a long time ago if the west had not kept it going as a tarde-off for its placing the nuclear program on hold – perhaps its time to finally pull the plug and isolate NK until it finally collapses.
The cold war was about collectivism versus liberty and the new world dynamic is about militant fundamentalism versus tolerance.
I expect Iraq and Afghanistan to become stable allies of the west within the next 10 years. Once that happens the populations of the more despotic neighbours will see the benefits and the rest will follow.
Very plausible analysis, clearly laid out.
‘Abyssinian’ empire? Should that read ‘Assyrian’?
Probably yes.
Not bad analysis.
But, In fact US actions vis a vis NK are based on the old saying that, ‘The Art of Diplomacy largely consists of saying “Nice Doggy, Nice Doggy” while one looks around for a stick. ‘
As Ross Perot used to say “It’s just that simple.”
Spacer
Mike,
The North Korea has more weapons than the South. Especially in terms of artillery tubes and multiple rocket launchers. That is why Seoul is literally “under the gun”
The real issue is that the North has lost its ability to launch an armored blitz on the South due to corruption. They lack the POL for their tanks, infsantry transporters, SP artillery and trucks, plus prolonged malnutrition (10+ years) has ravaged their fighting age male population.
It has reached the point where the North Korean family structure has broken down and it is everyone for him or her self.
The increased population flow into China is a symptom of the on-going collapse of the NK regime. Anyone who can get sufficient dollars via the black market or prostitution can escape to Manchuria.
America’s concern with the North Koreans isn’t with collapsing their regime. That is going to happen in any case. It is engineering a “soft-landing” where America gets to capture North Korean WMD and prevents a mass starvation humanitarian disaster.
One factor that most people aren’t considering is that North Korea couldn’t take the South in a military strike unless they co-opted half of the ROK military and caught the other half asleep. The actual correlation of forces is now just the opposite of what it was in June, 1950: Back then there were no obstacles to stop the North, which had a first-rate, combat experienced (led by Soviet officers) military force with the newest tanks and aircraft. The ROK had a half-assed constabulary force with no antitank weapons and little artillery, with no natural or artifical obstacles and virtually no training or experience.
Nowadays, it is the North who is using obsolete, probably unworkable equipment, with woefully trained and ill-equipped units of questionable loyalty, against the ROKs who have the most modern artillery, tanks and jet aircraft in the world, second only to the US. Furthermore, there are at least two complete obstacle belts across the peninsula that, if properly employed, would stop the DPRK troops in their tracks and leave them to wither on the vine as the ROK called up reserves and the US pounded them from the air.
Please understand, I’m not saying the North Koreans would be pushovers – in a defensive battle they’d be every bit as tough to defeat as the ROK. But as an aggressor, they’d get their butts kicked in a heartbeat and they know it.
Martin
I’ve no doubts you are correct. I was not trying to show the actual flow of such a war; only stating the argument that under the best imaginable conditions, North Korea ends up in a state equal or worse than where it sits presently. They are in a cul-de-sac with no escape, whereas Iraq has wide options, if and only if it were ignored. Iraq is also not an economic disaster area (outside of rhetoric) and is quite capable of being productive and relatively creative.
If you read Trent’s comments above, you can NK has an even worse hand to play than I (or you) assumed.
To back what A Non said about Iraqi internal opposition not being strong enought to oust Hussein:
I just found this over at Raed’s Iraq blog. Interesting b/c it comes from an Iraqi:
http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/
“…We [Iraq] need change desperately. The few attempts and people who would have had a chance to do something about the way the government is have been ruthlessly eliminated since the late seventies, by the late eighties Iraq was Saddam-land no real challenger was anywhere in site. After the Gulf War there were a couple of uprisings here and there, none were organized properly. All were quickly and brutally wiped out, not only the people involved but all their families. Change is not going to come from inside, unless the government somehow implodes, for example, saddam’s death creating a rush and fight amongst possible successors to take his place and giving other parties/people space to act. I am not holding my breath.”
STRATFOR has a different take on purpose of Iraq war. A simplified summary, we need bases in the area.
One, so we can get out of Saudi Arabia — removing a major irritant. Second, to project force — leaning on nations providing bases and support to Al Qaeda.
Unfortunately, too realpolitic for the US and Western public. So we trump up a more appealing story.
OK, but now you can never, NEVER justify any war on humanitarian grounds after basically reading South Koreans out of the human race. Replace nuking Seoul with nuking Jerusalem in your position and decide if you’d condemn the person holding it as an anti-semetic bigot. Leave Saddam in power? Why not, he’s only hurting Iraquis, and do they count for more than Koreans?
Iraqi missles won’t hit us any more than NK missles will. If Iraq can deliver a nuke via terrorist, so can NK.
The Federation of American Scientists reports that a three-stage variant of the Taep’o-dong 1 has a range of 5,600 km, far enough to reach much of Alaska, and that the two-stage Taep’o-dong 2 reported to be under developmet can travel 6,000 km – see map. The map also shows that a hypothetical three-stage TD-2 would have almost all of the Euroweeniesphere and Anglosphere in it sights. (The Deep South is safe, though.)
I share Daniel’s concern about technology transfer to third parties. There’s yet another thing that worries me. Many will assess the situation in terms of what harm North Korea can inflict on its own. But let’s ask the “Missiles of October” question: what damage can North Korea inflict as part of an alliance with China, or some other nation?
I’m aware of what they are developing; however I would not consider the developmental rocket much of a threat yet to much more than tundra. Japan is the one most at risk presently. As to the paper rocket; the crisis is now and that rocket does not yet exist. I have my doubts NK will last long enough to complete it.
China is hardly going to throw in with them. In worst case China has limited extraterritorial ambitions and they have got most of what they want (Tibet, Hong Kong). Only Formosa remains as an irritant. 25 years ago I’d have said they were eyeing a big chunk of Siberia, but I do not believe that to be the case today. When China went in to Korea against us, they left; when they went into North Vietnam against Ho Chi Minh in that brief war some 25 years ago, they also left. China is not high on my worry list; as a future competitor on the world stage yes; as a partner to a collapsing nutstate, no.
NK is surrounded by sane, stable government who have much to lose if NK continues on its’ current path.
Compare that with the situation in the Middle East.
NK is judged by what they can do to us today, Iraq is judged by what they might be able to do to us tommorow.
That statement is incorrect. Iraq has had chemical weapons for at least 15 years; they also have bio weapons. I am unconvinced as yet by the US government statements that Iraq does not have any nukes. Be that as it may, what they have they are willing to use rather than wave from the back of a peninsular cul-de-sac.
Second point: I expect NK to implode on its’ own. The place is a total basket case. I expect Iraq to grow, particularly if sanctions were lifted.
This is not to say NK does not bear watching: only that they are a less significant threat, both short and long term, than Iraq.
I like the colors on this page. They look good together.