Who Says North Korea Is Bluffing?

[third eye]

Who Says North Korea Is Bluffing? | The National Interest Blog

Why is everyone assuming that the latest supreme leader of the Hermit Kingdom is bluffing when he says he intends to settle accounts with South Korea and the United States? Apart from Victor Cha in Foreign Policy, the consensus seems to be that Kim Jong Un doesn't really mean anything he says. But maybe he does. Maybe he's spoiling for a fight. As he orders rockets to be readied for attack, the Dear Leader may be out to show that he's not so dear and that he has other things on his mind than hanging out with the eccentric basketball star Dennis Rodman.

It's not like anyone in North Korea could really stop him. The Generals would be hard-pressed to countermand an order to attack. If he lobs some short-range missiles at South Korea, how would America and its ally react? Would they stand by passively? Or would they respond and risk all-out war? In a situation like this the fruitcake has the upper hand, and Kim may just be delusional enough to go for it. The reckless gambles, the Hitlers who try to overthrow the board and dice of international relations, don't show up that often. Before Hitler it was Napoleon who tried to thwart the natural balance of power. He failed. But it didn't stop either of them from trying. Perhaps young Kim is operating on the same faulty logic, though Victor Cha suggests that it would be premature to conclude that he is insane. Though anyone who runs North Korea, which amounts to a massive concentration camp, must, by definition, have a somewhat different grasp on reality than most other leaders.

Whether or not he actually wants a conflict, the Korean imbroglio does also suggests that, like the man searching for his keys under the streetlamp because that's where it's bright, most American analysts have been focusing too much on Iran's efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon and not enough on the country that already possesses them. It's an interesting irony that Iran hasn't really made the kind of threats against America that North Korea has uttered against Washington, but it has been Iran, by and large, that has been the dominant topic of debate over the past year. Perhaps Kim is only seeking to rectify the imbalance by drawing attention to himself. Perhaps he's just in a snit because the U.S. sent several B-2 bombers over the Korean peninsula to drop dummy munitions.

But given the stakes, the U.S. is doing all the right things. Contrary to the prescriptions of some self-described realists, it would be unwholly unrealistic for Washington to abscond from the area. It would be deserting an ally. It would effectively cede a sphere of influence to China. And it would be amount to deserting Japan, which would be bound to develop, almost overnight, its own atomic weapons. This is not a prospect that Washington could contemplate with indifference.

Still, the country that probably has the most to lose isn't America. It's China. The sight of America being further drawn into the region is anathema to it. But already President Obama is beefing up American defenses against North Korea. Maybe Kim figures time is not on his side. Better to take a swipe at South Korea and the imperialist running dogs sooner rather than later. He is, after all, a running a country that doesn't have all that much to lose. The scary prospect isn't that North Korea is playing a game. It's that it might not be playing.

 

[AUz]

bullsh!t.

North Korea is bluffing. We all know that.

They don't have anything to throw at U.S (forget mainland, even in South Korea)...Even they know it...

 

[anonymus]

Retribution is coming

 

[ashok321]

Its a bluff. Because they dont have to go war to compel western society for aid funds, in fact the war would put them a decade behind. All they have to do is to sell their Beef burger strategic assets to a desperate nation like Iran who will eagerly pay them about 12 to 15 billion USDs and they know it.

Hence no war.

 

[$@rJen]

he's doing the same strategy as his father and gfather did,... full of bluffing to bring US down the table and win some prices... but before US bend down but it doesn't seem to happen, if Kim backs down it'll show his weakness to his people since he's a king of nk and very young I don't think so he would like to put his chin down.... maybe the war unlikely but issuing threat would continue until nk manages to design nukes to fit on a rocket....

 

[third eye]

The indicators coming from NK are not the kind that could be ignored or taken lightly.

This man may not have the skills and abilities of Napoleon or Hitler but the potential for serious damage is very high.

 

[Screambowl]

North Korea readying rockets to aim at U.S. targets, state media says - CNN.com
North Korea readying rockets to aim at U.S. targets, state media says

 

[Saleem]

but you need fuel to move things...no fuel and no danger to anyone.....a siege will destroy the NKs in a week or two....

 

[third eye]

but you need fuel to move things...no fuel and no danger to anyone.....a siege will destroy the NKs in a week or two....

A siege ? You mean blockade ?

The land route to / from China stays unaffected.

In any case , it would take a maverick no time at all to lob a nuke across to SK and / Japan before he goes down in a ball of fire or China intervenes to stop things.

The basic point is that he needs to be taken seriously.

 

[Ayush]

I think he is bluffing,unless he has a suicidal tendency

 

[canadian icehole]

bullsh!t.

North Korea is bluffing. We all know that.

They don't have anything to throw at U.S (forget mainland, even in South Korea)...Even they know it...

The US is definitely safe from NK regardless if conventional weapons are used or not. South Korea especially it's capital will be affected. However, if nukes are used, South Koreans (and maybe the Japanese depending on the weather) will be looking for a new homeland. The problem is that Washington needs to consider the well being of South Koreans and to a lesser extent, the Japanese. If North Korea won the war, Washington would have cratered that place a long time ago.

The more I think about it, neither the Americans nor the South Koreans would want a war simply for one reason. Who's going to pay for the reconstruction costs? I vaguely remember reading an article that the cost to South Korea would be greater than when Germany reunified.

On the other hand, Japan would win big if only conventional weapons are used as one economic rival would be removed from the picture for at least a decade. But Japan would lose big if nukes are used.

As for NK using nukes, I seriously doubt they have the capability to deploy via rockets. The best NK can do is detonate one near the DMZ and hope the radiation spreads to populated areas untouched by their initial artillery strikes.

In any case, the war will last about a few hours in favour of the Americans.

 

[third eye]

Commentary: The Measured Madness of North Korea | The National Interest

The Measured Madness of North Korea

You’ve got to hand it to North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un: the man is a past master at panic promotion. He learned from the master, his dad, Kim “Dear Leader” Jong-il, whose tantrums, threats, and theatrics routinely rattled South Korea, Japan, and the United States. The reactions that followed were invariably the same: the United States and its Northeast Asian allies expressed their resolve, reaffirmed their alliances, made counter-threats and took countermeasures.

Well, here we go again. The latest bout of call-and-response was sparked by two events. First, following the February 12 nuclear-weapons test by Pyongyang (its third since 2006), the UN Security Council voted to expand the sanctions already being applied against North Korea. Second, the annual U.S.-South Korean “Foal Eagle” military maneuvers began this month.

In response Kim fils, perhaps in an effort to show North Korea’s military brass that he’s plenty tough despite his youth, has outdone the Dear Leader. He declared the 1953 armistice agreement null and void, threatened the United States with a nuclear first strike that would engulf it in a “sea of fire,” warned that Japan would suffer the same fate, and scrapped the hotline system and the non-aggression agreements signed with South Korea. For variety, there was a sexist remark about South Korea’s recently elected first female president, Park Guen-hye.

North Korea’s melodrama is calculated, not crazy. Each time it engages in these apocalyptic outbursts, the results are precisely what it wants them to be. The United States and its North Pacific partners react in a semipanic, but also ratchet up the tension with warnings and moves of their own. Down the line, when the dust settles and diplomacy begins (the resumption of the on-again-off-again Six Party Talks that began in 2003 to induce the North to ditch its nuclear weapons program) memories of the last tirade linger and strengthen Pyongyang’s bargaining position. The reasoning of its interlocutors tends to be as follows: We’re dealing with a volatile regime that’s armed to the teeth, now has nuclear weapons, and could collapse under the weight of its economic problems. We need to tread gingerly and consider what carrots to offer. It’s a great self-protection racket.

So we’re in a familiar place now that North Korea is acting up again. True to the established pattern, the Obama administration has announced plans to beef up the ballistic missile systems in Alaska and California by adding another fourteen. Never mind that the price tag is $1 billion, that the success rate of this equipment is about 50 percent, and that the full deployment won’t be finished until 2017. The U.S. Navy dispatched four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to South Korea as part of “Foal Eagle,” and they may extend their stay. U.S. B-52 bombers, flying four thousand miles from their bases in Guam, have flown across South Korea.

South Korea has turned up the heat, too, warning Kim that his country “will cease to exist on the face of the earth” if it attacks. (Top that, big guy.) Some South Korean pundits have proposed that their country should develop its own stash of nukes. Polls show that over two-thirds of South Koreans think that’s a good idea.

Japan, as always, has been calmer. But it has a forty-five-ton plutonium stockpile (and a large reprocessing plant in the testing stage at Rokkasho), notwithstanding the plans to phase out its fifty nuclear power plants by 2040. It also has the technical know-how to build nuclear weapons if a political decision were taken to do so. There’s been speculation in the past that Tokyo might exercise this option were it to lose faith in Washington’s nuclear umbrella. That scenario has resurfaced following this latest Kim-tantrum and the North’s development of ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. west coast.

How should the administration handle these stop-and-start crises on the Korean peninsula? Do nothing and say little. The alternative is to (again) give North Korea the satisfaction of seeing a superpower and two major powers, South Korea and Japan, whipped into a frenzy following its fulminations. That reaction merely increases the North’s leverage to bargain for aid, whether from the South (once the dust settles), or from China, its sugar daddy. Both Beijing and Seoul worry about war on the peninsula but also about the North’s economic collapse, which could send millions of North Korean refugees streaming into their countries.

“No Drama” Obama should live up to the label. North Korea’s leaders know that attacking the South, let alone the United States, would spell the end of their regime. Kim pere was never one to risk that result, his intermittent fits of rage notwithstanding. There’s no reason to believe that Kim fils is different. North Korea’s rhetoric is unrestrained, but its actions are generally well calibrated. That’s because it knows that the North-South balance of power is tilted decisively against it.

South Korea has a world-class economy, a GDP thirty times the size of the North’s, and per-capita income almost twenty times larger. This foundation and the U.S. arms pipeline have enabled it to build a military machine that, qualitatively, is in a different league than the North’s. South Korea spends three times the amount the North does on defense (and with far less strain on its economy). Pyongyang’s arsenal consists largely of outdated Chinese and Russian weaponry from the 1960s or earlier. These realities are often obscured in the standard discussions that dwell on the North’s numerical advantages in manpower and important categories of armaments to reach the predictable, though debatable, conclusion that Seoul can’t defend itself without Washington’s protection.

Moreover, South Korea and Japan have alliances with the United States. There’s no way that the North could wage war without killing American soldiers stationed in the South (about twenty-eight thousand at present, backed by a panoply of advanced armaments) and, very likely, those based in Japan. So Kim can’t harbor the illusion that an attack on South Korea would remain a bilateral spat. That makes his military position even weaker.

The notion that the North Korean regime is unhinged and hence immune to the logic of deterrence is commonplace, but it’s a canard. This is not the 1950s. The North is in a much weaker position. Back then, its economic resources were comparable to the South’s. But it has long since become an economic basket case plagued horrific famines (which are estimated to have killed as many as three million people) and hobbled by a Dickensian industrial system. South Korea, meanwhile, has become a first-rank economic power with a formidable industrial base, cutting-edge technology and booming exports.

What about China? Beijing surely has a stake in preventing North Korea from imploding, but none in getting sucked into a war of Kim’s making. The Chinese are growing weary of the saber rattling of a government that they prop up economically—but that won’t listen when it’s urged to eschew brinksmanship.

None of this means that what’s happening on the Korean peninsula now is trivial. This is, per square mile, the planet’s most militarized place. A war there would be calamity. But that’s the point. Rising to Pyongyang’s bait simply aggravates the periodic crises. That in turn increases the odds that one party might do something rash—accidentally, or deliberately, to show its mettle—that then spirals into a war that nobody wanted. So when Beijing tells Washington that the American decision to bolster missile defenses will merely add to the tension, it has a point.

The best reaction to Kim is no reaction. Continuing the old tit-for-tat pattern simply perpetuates it. Note to Seoul and Washington: Don’t just do something, stand there.

 

[Kompromat]

Oh boy, only if the DPRK had oil

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

The new Fat Kim is bluffing when it comes to the USA. Maybe the intention is there, but he has no capability to achieve it (which would require advanced ICBM's with MIRV warheads).

But when it comes to South Korea it is completely feasible.

Over half of South Korea's population lives in the Seoul Capital Area, which is right next to the North Korean border. If the new Fat Kim wanted to wipe out the South Korean population, he actually does have the capability to achieve that.

If he did that, then there would be a new UN intervention in North Korea and this time we will not enter it, since nuking Seoul would be too much for anyone to explain. If North Korea wants this suicidal approach, then they'll have to handle it on their own.

 

[kawaraj]

I wish they had this fight. We can't stand such a pest bluffing and grunting all the time.