Military Options

The analysts at Strategic Forecasting seem to think there aren't any:

It comes down to this: If the United States strikes at North Korea's nuclear capabilities, it does so placing a bet. And that bet is that North Korea will not respond. That might be true, but if it is not true, it poses a battlefield problem to which neither South Korea nor the United States will be able to respond. In one scenario, the North Koreans bombard Seoul and the United States makes a doomed attempt at shutting down the massive artillery barrage. By the time the guns are silenced - even in the best-case scenarios - Seoul will be a mess. In another scenario, the North Korean army executes an offensive of even minimal competence, which costs South Korea its capital and industrial heartland. The third is a guerrilla onslaught from the elite of the North Korean Army, deployed by mini-subs and tunnels under the DMZ. The guerrillas pour into the south and wreak havoc on U.S. military installations.

Let us not forget the possibility of history fully repeating itself, with Red China and perhaps also Russia intervening militarily against us on the NoKos' behalf. Even their passive support via re-supplying the Kim regime indefinitely would create what rabidly outraged Democrats would instantly denounce as "another Iraq" - a second long, drawn out military stalemate that, unlike the first time around fifty-plus years ago, we wouldn't necessarily lack the will to finish, but rather the means with significant military resources already deployed in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. The likelihood of NoKo missile bombardment of Japan would also have to be taken into account.

But as always, one also has to weigh the consequences of inaction as well as action. And here is where I think the StratFor guys go awry:

There are two advantages the United States has. The first is time. There is a huge difference between a nuclear device and a deployable nuclear weapon. The latter has to be shaped into a small, rugged package able to be launched on a missile or dropped from a plane. Causing atomic fission is not the same as having a weapon.

This optimistically assumes that the NoKos do not have larger, functional warheads already. Maybe they do and maybe they don't, but the same "optimists" had heretofore considered the Kim regime to be bluffing about having any nuclear devices at all.

Either way, the very fact that North Korea HAS proved that they have nuclear devices indicates that time is NOT on our side because the proverbial genie is out of the bottle, and we can't put it back in again. It is only a matter of time before Kim DOES have nuclear warheads - again, assuming he doesn't already - and the ICBMs to use them against not just his neighbors, but American territory as well, as last July's Taepodong-II test demonstrated

The second advantage is distance. The United States is safe and far away from North Korea. Four other powers - Russia, China, South Korea and Japan - have much more to fear from North Korea than the United States does. The United States will always act unilaterally if it feels that it has no other way to protect its national interest. As it is, however, U.S. national interest is not at stake.

Distance is not an advantage because the NoKos have proven they can bridge that distance with the Taepodong-II. Russia and Red China do not fear North Korea because (1) Kim wouldn't dare nuke the hands that feed him and (2) all they have to do is threaten nuclear war against the United States to deter any retaliation we might contemplate even after a NoKo attack against one or more of our cities. And our national interest IS at stake precisely because Kim has long threatened it and now has (or is nearing) the means to carry out his threats.

South Korea faces nothing less than national destruction in an all-out war. South Korea knows this and it will vigorously oppose any overt military action. Nor does China profit from a destabilized North Korea and a heavy-handed U.S. military move in its backyard. Nevertheless, if North Korea is a threat, it is first a threat to its immediate neighbors, one or more of whom can deal with North Korea.

None of those neighbors have any incentive to "deal" with North Korea for the very same reasons that they would oppose a U.S. pre-emptive strike. And, just as with their mullahgarchic allies in Southwest Asia, nothing short of punitive, regime-changing military action will stop North Korea from gaining nuclear weapons and using them against its neighbors and the United States.

This, then, is the choice facing George W. Bush: strike first, even at the staggering risk to South Korea and Japan that doing so would run, before the North Koreans strike can strike us; or wait, sit on our hands, continue the diplomatic five-knuckle-shuffling, and take the equally foolhardy risk that allowing the Kim regime to gain a full nuclear arsenal will not lead to strategic disaster - one quite likely remotely directed by our good friends in Moscow and Beijing.

And to think the Democrats will be interrupting their peeping-Tom-ism into GOP congressmen's bedrooms and harddrives to rip Bush for not appeasing the NoKos enough to "prevent" this crisis.

Kinda makes you wonder whether, had he had it to do all over again only knowing what he does now, GDub would have ever bothered running for president at all.