Yesterday's Diplomacy: The Trump Administration has dispatched a naval strike force to the seas off the Korean Peninsula. Unfortunately, the Kim family's dynastic dictatorship cannot afford to be seen to back down in the face of the President's gunboat diplomacy. Any US attack on North Korea will, likewise, force "Supreme Leader" Kim Jong Un to unleash "Total War" on its enemies. President Trump is, hopefully, being reminded that Kim doesn't necessarily require an ICBM to deliver a nuclear device to US territory - an unsuspecting container ship will do the job just as effectively.
PRESIDENT TRUMP says North Korea “will be taken care of” if
its dictator, Chairman Kim Jong Un, authorises another round of nuclear weapons
tests. A naval strike force, led by the Nimitz-class “supercarrier” the USS Carl Vinson, is positioned off the
Korean Peninsula. The American ships will soon be joined for “exercises” by an
undisclosed number of Japanese naval vessels.*
This grim show of force is intended to serve as a stark
reminder of America’s ability to project its military power wherever and
whenever if desires. In the aftermath of the recent Tomahawk Cruise Missile
strike on Syria, Kim is expected to draw the obvious lessons and stand down his
nuclear weapons testing programme.
This is not something the Supreme Leader of the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) can do. Not without sustaining a catastrophic
loss of face. Though it possesses all the trappings of a Soviet-style socialist
state, the DPRK is, in reality, a quasi-monarchical dynastic regime, whose hereditary
rulers are required to maintain an image of unassailable power and strength.
Backing down in the face of American threats would likely prove fatal to the
Kim family dynasty.
This would not be on account of the North Korean people
rising up and overthrowing their semi-sacred head of state. Such is the iron
grip of Kim’s “Workers’ Party” government that the North Koreans would never
hear a word about their leader’s back down. The threat to Kim would come from
his generals and party bosses. They chafe under the Kim family’s ruthless rule.
The international humiliation of Kim Jong Un would be a heaven-sent opportunity
to bring his family’s dynasty to an end.
A successful American strike against the DPRK’s nuclear
weapons test site at Punggye-ri would deliver a similar blow to Kim Jong Un’s
prestige. Not that the North Korean people would learn anything at all about a
US attack. Punggye-ri is located in rugged, mountainous terrain, far from large
population centres. The remoteness of the testing site could not, however, keep
the upper-echelons of the army and the party out of the information loop. How
would their Supreme Leader respond?
Much would depend of just how successful the American strike
turned out to be. Punggye-ri is a complex of deep tunnels drilled into solid
rock. An attack using the same ordnance as the Syrian strike would likely prove
ineffective.
The Americans do, of course, possess much larger bombs: like
the 10-ton “bunker-buster” dropped on an ISIS-controlled tunnel complex in Afghanistan
earlier this week. (Was that operation supposed to send a warning to the North
Koreans?) The problem with these huge weapons, however, is that they can only
be delivered by large, relatively slow, military aircraft. The Americans would,
therefore, have to destroy the fighter aircraft and surface-to-air missile
batteries with which the Punggye-ri complex is defended. This would be a major
military operation on the part of the United States.
There can be little doubt that, confronted with an American
assault of such magnitude, Kim Jong Un would order “total war” against the
United States. Thousands of 170mm Goksan artillery pieces and 240mm
multiple-tube rocket launchers, among the largest such weapons in the world,
would rain down death and destruction upon the South Korean capital, Seoul, and
devastate the US military bases adjoining the Demilitarised Zone. According to
the former US Commander in South Korea, General Thomas A Schwartz, the
28,000-strong US army in Korea “would be destroyed in less than three hours”.
Kim Jong Un’s order to unleash total war upon the United
States would set in motion something else. A nuclear device, probably not much
bigger than the bomb which devastated Hiroshima, would set out towards one of
the key ports of the United States. Concealed in the hold of a fishing trawler.
Or, perhaps, hidden in one of thousands of identical shipping containers
stacked on the deck of a container ship bound for San Diego or New York, this
device would be effectively undetectable and unstoppable until it came close
enough to inflict scores-of-thousands of civilian casualties. Such a
catastrophe would dwarf completely Al Qaeda’s attack of 11 September 2001.
And President Trump’s response? (Assuming the North Koreans
weren’t inventive enough to deliver their nuclear device to a warehouse in
Washington DC!) Who would be willing to bet against the enraged American
president ordering a retaliatory nuclear strike against North Korea? Would he
listen to those who pleaded with him not to incinerate millions of innocent
North Koreans for the crimes of their Supreme Leader? Would he care that the
radioactive fallout from such a strike would be no more a respecter of
international borders than the fallout from Chernobyl? How could America’s
Commander-in-Chief be sure that the Chinese and Russians would not respond in
kind?
Can Donald Trump really “take care” of this?
* This information was subsequently revealed to be more “fake
news” from the Trump Administration. At the time of writing (16/4/17) the USS Carl
Vinson and its strike force was nowhere near the location indicated by the
White House Communications Director, Sean Spicer. As of this morning (19/4/17) the strike force was still, apparently, en route!
This essay was
originally published in The Press of
Tuesday, 18 April 2017.
