Strike and Destroy?

Here's a follow-up on the North Korean ICBM situation that is remarkable only for the fact that it comes from two Clintonoids:

Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil? We believe not. The Bush Administration has unwisely ballyhooed the doctrine of "preemption," which all previous presidents have sustained as an option rather than a dogma. It has applied the doctrine to Iraq, where the intelligence pointed to a threat from weapons of mass destruction that was much smaller than the risk North Korea poses. (The actual threat from Saddam Hussein was, we now know, even smaller than believed at the time of the invasion.) But intervening before mortal threats to U.S. security can develop is surely a prudent policy.

Therefore, if North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched. This could be accomplished, for example, by a cruise missile launched from a submarine carrying a high-explosive warhead. The blast would be similar to the one that killed terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. But the effect on the Taepodong would be devastating. The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive - the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed, and its attempt to retrogress to Cold War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside the immediate vicinity of the missile gantry. [emphasis added]

These guys worked for Bill Clinton? It was only a few days ago that one of their foreign policy-botching colleagues, Aunt Madeleine, blamed the latest NoKo missile crisis on Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now Perry and Carter are calling for a Tomahawk strike? That's an order of magnitude beyond NRO's call to just shoot the Taepodong-2 down once it's in flight. The latter would be an indisputably defensive measure, whereas destroying the ICBM on its launching pad in North Korean territory, and without any internationalist fig leaves (for which George Bush wasted six months before finally invading Iraq anyway), would be an act of war before the NoKos could commit one by launching it.

I point this out not out of any squeamishness at the prospect - maybe Kim jong-iL, being an orthodox Marxist, is rationalist enough to not want to risk what Bill Clinton once called "the extinction of [his] country," and more to the point, himself, but his collaboration with Iran, led by apocalyptic religious fanatics with a deathwish to match, makes stopping both rogue powers mandatory for American national security - but to contrast the most likely consequences with the seeming wishful thinking Perry and Carter put forth:

We should not conceal our determination to strike the Taepodong if North Korea refuses to drain the fuel out and take it back to the warehouse. When they learn of it, our South Korean allies will surely not support this ultimatum - indeed they will vigorously oppose it. The United States should accordingly make clear to the North that the South will play no role in the attack, which can be carried out entirely with U.S. forces and without use of South Korean territory. South Korea has worked hard to counter North Korea's 50-year menacing of its own country, through both military defense and negotiations, and the United States has stood with the South throughout. South Koreans should understand that U.S. territory is now also being threatened, and we must respond. Japan is likely to welcome the action but will also not lend open support or assistance. China and Russia will be shocked that North Korea's recklessness and the failure of the six-party talks have brought things to such a pass, but they will not defend North Korea....

North Korea could respond to U.S. resolve by taking the drastic step of threatening all-out war on the Korean Peninsula. But it is unlikely to act on that threat. Why attack South Korea, which has been working to improve North-South relations (sometimes at odds with the United States) and which was openly opposing the U.S. action? An invasion of South Korea would bring about the certain end of Kim Jong Il's regime within a few bloody weeks of war, as surely he knows. Though war is unlikely, it would be prudent for the United States to enhance deterrence by introducing U.S. air and naval forces into the region at the same time it made its threat to strike the Taepodong. If North Korea opted for such a suicidal course, these extra forces would make its defeat swifter and less costly in lives - American, South Korean and North Korean.

There are a lot of assumptions in the above analysis. Some are sound - like our allies in the region bailing on us publicly while rooting for us in secret, a chronic two-facedness that I'm frankly getting more than a little tired of - and it may be possible that Red China and Russia wouldn't push a global showdown with us for which neither is yet prepared. Why else would they be making such cynically promiscuous use of the UN?

But seems to me that Kim's reaction is a lot harder to predict. How do we know that he'd calmly assess the situation and opt to save his own ass and fight again another day? Is it "calm" or "rational" to wheel out this ICBM - which isn't designed to launch satellites or send monkeys into orbit, after all - and defiantly declare an intention to "test" it? What is there to suggest that he would see his ass as being in Uncle Sam's sling? He's learned from the past decade's relentless U.S. appeasement that he can get anything he wants out of us by simply rattling a sabre or two. This is just a bigger sabre, and presumably that means he wants even bigger concessions - and thinks he's going to get them.

And then there is the possibility that "Dear Leader" has territorial designs on South Korea and Japan, quite apart from any assurances Seoul OR Washington have sent Pyongyang, and wants to give the U.S. "other matters to attend to." His pop did, after all, and acted upon them. I doubt the son has forgotten that. Remember as well that Seoul is within range of the NoKos' massive conventional artillery even from the DMZ; all it would take for Kim to force a showdown is the dual expedient of surrounding Seoul and threatening to incinerate Tokyo if we didn't finish withdrawing from the South as well as evacuating our forces from Japan. Nuclear blackmail. And checkmate, as he doubtlessly believes that we would retreat rather than risk millions of Japanese and South Korean lives.

Again, this is not an argument against the Perry/Carter proposition. Just the caveat that it is a half measure that may, and probably would, escalate despite its clinical intentions. What they seem to be missing in their almost casual dismissal of the chances of war is that destroying the Taepodong-II would itself be an act of war. And if we're going to cross that Rubicon, we should be prepared not to tip-toe back across it, but go all the way, no-holds barred, and finish the Kim regime once and for all.

Let the one-rattled-sabre-too-many be the straw that broke the potbellied tyrant's back. Because if we break his sabre without breaking him along with it, the next time he's a lot more likely to dispense with rattling and go straight for what "sabres" are designed to do.

UPDATE: Cap'n Ed suggests as an alternative the threat of a nuclear-armed Japan in order to "persuade" the ChiComms - to whom Kim jong-Il is, after all, still effectively subordinate - to pull up on his reins and get that ICBM re-holstered. Guess Ed doesn't read many Tom Clancy novels.

UPDATE II: You can scratch this idea, alas. As I think Perry and Carter knew very well would be the case. Talk about sabre-rattling....