U.S. Response To N.K. bomb Test

If you could send just one written recommendations to the President of the United Staes AFTER North Korea's underground nuclear test, what would it be?

What do you think would be the ideal response t othis upcoming event? Military action? Economic sanctions? Perhaps some combination of the two? Would you suggest that the Americans stay quiet, or limit their resjponse to a U.N. protest?

I don't really know what to do about North Korea. You see the problem is that it defies the laws of gravity as far as having just about every conceivable obstacle put in its way (epically after those missile tests) (such a waist of good stove fuel that the U.N was forced to do something).

The nuclear farming nation, has the worst type of economic system possible, its buildings are mostly museum pieces pre-dating the Korean war, or crumbling piles of concrete (typical of 1960's and 70's Soviet inspired architecture). It's some sort of reoccurring nightmare that won't go away (partly because somehow is actually real) although if paella dimensions do exist there must be an entry-exit route somewhere in North Korea (bloody mountains).

Frankly the best way to sort it out is to say to China sort it out. China after all helps NK round up escapee citizens from North Korea, so that they can be returned to their friends and family back in NK and ceremonially shot.
I know China thinks this is a great idea as it helps keep the regime "alive" but quite frankly with it atom bomb testing, bragging and threatening, I’m not too impressed with it being alive.
Perhaps (if NK collapses) we can offer to compensate China for all the bullets it would have to waist shooting fleeing North Korean citizens? In fact it would almost be worth promising China a reward, if this happens, though South Korea is apparently also worried about what to do all the NK citizens.

But frankly it would be better for North Koreans; and all of us if North Korean collapses and the best way to do this is to prevent anything leaving it, and to let it die of a cash attack. We are actually running out of time because the fact they haven't tested a bomb yet probably has more to do with having not properly finishing one. So as (usual) the longer we leave it the more they will have to threaten us with. I really see NK as being the first nation to put an atom bomb on the open market so as to force the Americans-U.N to buy it; this is actually where it’s coming too. Think about it, the whole thing comes down to them demanding money, trade, and Kim Chim-Great Leader “respect”.

If you could have stopped Hitler, would you have?

What really gets to me is how people say "he probably doesn't even have nukes yet". So we're just supposed to wait until he does have them?

Korea has a maximum of 10 un-tested nuclear weapons and no reliable delivery system. That's like making your own bullets not knowing if they work and not even having a gun to shoot them out of. Doesn't sound bad does it?

Then Kim Jong Il builds his military up, obtains reliable ICBM's capable of reaching most of the globe and has a nuclear force 100 warheads strong. What then? We could have stopped it back in 2006.

North Korea testing a nuke will loose 90% of Chinese support for the rogue communist state. Russia would most likley sit out of it.

This is the greatest threat to the security of Earth at the moment. Let's do something about it.

It is true that North Korea can't be embargoed any further than it already is. The Chinese are likely to see it in their best interest to keep on with minimal support for that regime so long as Beijing believes that North Korea will be a stick in the eye to the Western powers.

If the North Koreans decided to invade their southern neighbors, they could use reliable short-range nuclear-tipped missiles to neutralize Seol and Pusan. An EMP attack against Seol and other major centers would give the North a big head start. A low-altutude attack, or event a ground-burst against Pusan would cut off Western reinforcements. These objectives could be accomplished with relatively small warloads.

Perhaps an EMP attack launched against North Korea by precisely deployed U.S. or NATO weapons systems might lead to the fall of the North Korean regime? It's a known fact that U.S. firms are developing aircraft-mounted EMP systems which are of a projector-type. With current embargoes in place, such a degradation of their infrastructure might cause that regime to fall within 6-12 months. Troubles is, given current feelings toward the U.S. internationally, it's unlikely that the U.N. would sanciton such an action. America's public image world-wide would take another very big hit. Or, would it?

My question is, what exactly are U.S. interests and objectives in this situation? This is no longer the Cold War, so the Korean Peninsula doesn't have exactly the same significance it once did in 1985.

When I hear our leaders talk about the situation in Korea, I don't see a bunch of people who are aware or are open about what stake we have in Korea. If peace is truly an option, then surely our government has smart people who realize that North Korea is pretty much an "impossible" situation and cannot be pre-empted in any way. Especially if South Korea's existence is of any importance to our government. If it was, hard-line approaches and war are absolutely intolerable, as whatever fate North Korea endures will affect South Korea in ways we have not seen in history.

The way I see it, this needs to become China's problem more than it is America's problem, just like Liberal1984 said. Should North Korea indeed fall, the burden of the aftermath needs to be placed squarely on China, not on a country that's an entire ocean away and one that also doesn't know or is being ambiguous about what it intends to get out of the situation.

As for the American public, most people just don't know enough about the situation to make an educated response. I don't blame them, we get most of our information from the media anyway, a media that propogates the myth that North Korea is some unprecedented threat, when keeping it in perspective, it really is not as much of a threat to world security.

There's no doubt North Korea has been brainwashed to hate the USA.

Support for a preemptive strike on the USA would be widely supported by the North Korean public.

With that kind of power, Kim Jong could do anything.

China needs to give them a slap in the face, tell them to wake up or face the consequences.

There is another interesting question; even if China cuts of North Korean support could they still survive?
In any other country the answer would be a certain no. What would probably happen is that people living around Kim Jong would get tired of living of rations; and would think “what is the point of this stupid leader who holds us back from wealth and prosperity?”
However with the DPRK being what it is, the first question you have to ask is “how aware are the smart people around Kim Jong aware of the alternatives?”. North Korea does of course practice a sort of “first class” total information control e.g. according to North Korean TV the leaders of the world are frequently visiting Pyongyang to seek The Great Leaders advice-wisdom for solving terribly difficult worldly problems. Of course in reality hardly any heads of State visit North Korea, Chinas president did it recently but it was more or less a one of (and after all the countries are neighbours). But hay its North Korean TV; they can say whatever they like.

And in North Korea the penalty for almost anyone being caught listening to a foreign radio, or adapting their radio-TV so it can pick up foreign channels is a minimum of ten years in a Re-Education Centre (many of these are just slave labour camps where people starve to death).

But it’s worse…The North Korean Political Class System
Here is a description: www.brookings.edu...
Basically…
1. The North has been gathering information from its citizens since 1956
2. Using information obtained between 1967-70 the Fifth Korean Workers' Party Congress divided the population into three groups: a loyal "core class," a suspect "wavering class," and a politically unreliable "hostile class."
3. Family information (like political arrests or if they are descendant from landowners) is used to class people, as well as put them in up to 51 sub classes.
4. North Koreans do not know which class they are in; but it affects things like the size of rations (very important given the recent famine in which a few millions starved to death).

This is amazing because it basically involves genetically wiping out the ATS user sort of class. Even though ATS is a really big internet site, has lots of interesting subjects, it isn’t actually that big (in comparison to say myspace.com) because many people aren’t that interested in politics.
If you annualised the ATS users you would probably find we are more likely to come from wealthy, upper middle class backgrounds, (my family are land owners) or even you’re poor you would probably find things like more arrests for things like demo activity.

Of course any description of the NK’s Political Class System will tell you that the North Koreans themselves know it doesn’t fully work. But in a country where you know so many people are going to starve to death because your economy is c**p, or one where cloths, jobs, are going to be in short supply; it’s at least an effective way of breading out the resistance; poverty after all (when inevitable) is free in all ways possible.
Some sociologists say its genetics that makes intelligent children from intelligent families to be more intelligent on average, (and the same applies to politics just look at Bush the son of a president).
Many other sociologists say it’s mostly things like social background, wealth, values ect. Well the North Korean class system tackles these things (genetics and social heritage) in equal measure.

You can’t win can’t you; even if you’ve never done anything wrong against the regime, it’s as if the system is reading your mind. And (as it isn’t literally doing that) if you improve your attitudes towards the regime, was even and had always been the most loyal citizen possible, it wouldn’t make any difference. The past and distant history of your family would keep you in a lower category and if a famine comes along you would be along with the first to starve. But if you’re really loyal, and also in the wrong class category; you don’t know what class you’re in; because north Koreans don’t know much about the class system (or certainly where you’re in it).

So how do you rebel against that?

So with long existing state of near total information control, childhood plus screening, family history discrimination, and intellectual extermination I find it hard to see how the right leaders will come along from within.
Even if your one of the few North Koreans who knows the reality of the world you live in, the chances are that a few bits and bobs taken away from the countries millions will keep in relative (if not literal) luxury. Would you really be the right sort of person with a conscience? How does the right sort of conscience at the higher level of government evolve in the NK regime? Especially when it starts to involve treachery against the regime?

Frankly I actually wonder if all the information agents-defectors have been sending North Koreans is a waist of time. As in George Orwell’s 1984 the Party had a false forbidden opposition. By providing North Koreans with information of the outside world I kind of wonder if we’ve just been providing NK with the information needed to get good people killed; and the regime with a sort of false forbidden opposition it can easily manipulate and infiltrate.

I don’t know enough, but I half think things have gone too far in North Korea for a rebellion within to really work. There are only three ways to destroy the regime…
1. Offer it the chance to destroy itself by giving it the trade and contact with the outside world it needs.
2. Directly appease it: Offer to buy the nuclear weapons when it puts them on the market, or to give it the aid it wants-needs before it comes to that.
3. Destroy it militarily.

Personally I like the first option best; if the international community will let it be done-work. I despise the second (it spits in the face of every North Korean who has ever died ether resisting, or just as an “accidental-inevitable” victim of the regime, and I'm half open to the third option.

A war with North Korea would of course be a nightmare. Our technology isn’t much of a great advantage against a country which has spent decades (in fact about half a century) building concrete barriers, devising and digging secret tunnels, its one with ample amounts of nerve agents, and biological weapons, along with just about every small arm possible, (along with literally thousands of dated; yet still functional short range missiles and rockets)

The humanitarian argument is somewhat diluted by the fact the war would kill millions; then again the North Korean regime has already killed millions through decades of oppression, and even more people through various famines.
However I think the regime would make a point of killing its own people (before they can be murdered by the evil capitalists) (of course in truth liberated to a new life). On the face of it a liberated North Korea would be great for the global economy; then again much if not almost all the soil would be covered in anthrax (a germ which can stay in the ground for over 50 years). South Korea would probably also be wrecked (chemical weapons too). Of course it would be nice if South Korea could stay out of the war altogether (life Israel in the 1991 Persian Gulf War) (in exchange for if) North Korea would respect that. And that’s a big question for a dying regime with leaders who already filled to the brim with crimes pre-existing crimes against humanity.

To defeat North Korea you need…
1. A massive and mostly certain knowledge of their communication structures.
2. Take out their communication structures and it might not actually be possible to inform the other side of the country that the war has started.
To do this (in real time) you need when hell of blitzkrieg of missiles, you want in the first few attacks just about every plane and naval carrier carrying their maximum permitted cargo of missiles, and as many of these things possible (the whole arsenal of air and naval carriers would not be unwisely used).
3. Everyone of these missiles will need an individual target; a length of copper wire, the military and civilian power stations able to deliver electricity to that wire, the fuel pipes that can deliver emergency oil supplies to emergency generators. You need almost every radio mast, and nearly every bridge in the whole country taken out all at almost once (certainly mostly by day one). (The invading allies can build new bridges-crossing lines where needed as they are relatively well equipped.
4. Anywhere that is known to contain chemical or biological weapons must be destroyed or blocked up in the mountains (but it’s hard to block given NK’s tunnels).
5. Most biological weapons need to be stockpiled a few weeks in advance of an attack. If you can destroy the places where they might be made, the facilities where they might be stored then obviously this is a great advantage.
6. By about two days after hostilities have commenced you need to fly in paratroopers and get in their vehicles so that they can search and destroy on the ground, and clear the way for a greater land invasion.
7. It’s not just because NK is nuclear power that strategic nuclear weapons might have to be used. The real reason is that it is a mountainous country with a network of tunnels, and only nuclear bombs can cause rock to properly melt; and tunnels like that to collapse. I would have no problem using strategic, or the most mega powerful conventional weapons against their bio, and nuclear facilities. The biggest worries; and first major targets after NK most significant communication lines (although I see no reason why it can’t be done all at one.
8. It should be possible to use North Koreas own major concrete barrier defences against them. Once down these concrete blocks will block the road so bad you may as well build a new one. However we have modern helicopters which can do just about everything a modern fighter plane can do (so be it with a smaller range and somewhat lighter payload). However if we can fly behind NK’s concrete barrier defences and fire missile and cannon fire at the troops behind these defences; then North Koreans are pretty stuck. If the barriers aren’t used by the North Koreans to block the roads (very unlikely given their psychology) then we can obviously simply capture them.
9. Cutting communication of from north Koreas major cities, and using helicopters to destroy moving vehicles within them; should be the best way of bringing about starvation or surrender (just give them someone to surrender to otherwise they’ll hold out longer and you’ll just have an extended humanitarian crisis).

Basically the more intense the fighting can be; the greater you will curb your losses and actually win.

10. The other big decision is to work out whether you want the war during summer time or winter time. In summer time most North Koreans are sent out by the state to do work within the fields. This means they will easily be in the reach of military basis and facilities no matter how bad the bridges and communications are destroyed. Ironically it probably also means a higher rate of survival; as (in the right kind of war) the probability of North Korean civilians being somewhere where they can surrender and avoid the fighting will greatly increase. Do the war in the winter and most North Koreans can be trapped inside the major cities; however this will risk turning them into huge starvation camps, in which only the men with guns having just about enough food to keep things going. However it will probably also be easier to get them to surrender as no officer is going to like to be in a city where their fellow human beings die, where they are constantly having to kill individual people who keep playing up because there isn’t enough food. So overall (at a guess) I would say winter time would be a better time (even though North Koreans can’t really escape to the countryside as the winter countryside weather conditions are pretty harsh at the best of times (never mind with fighting, and crazy officers calling fleeing civilians traitors-defectors).
Which leads to the conclusion: Best time for a war is: Spring (just before the harvest has officially begins, and citizens are kicked out of the cities). This means that civilians escaping-fleeing from the cities can only have a better survival rate as the good weather increases. Meanwhile because of the fighting, and communication problems the crop can’t actually be collected by the regime, however fleeing civilians can probably sort of do that, and our troops who will have to partly feed them we certainly can wherever the fighting has ceased-territory made ours.
Autumn is the second best option as like spring the civilians are back in the cities, only this time the crop has been collected (big, big regime advantage) and the weather is getting worse. Winter itself is the third best option with (as said) “a civilians out in the country” summer being the worst.
So what do you think ATS? Anything I’ve missed?

Perhaps now that Abe and Chinese diplomats have met and "see eye-to-eye" there may be some pressure brought to the fore against DPRK's threatened "test".

I would not be at all surprised for China to become more rather than less involved. It will be interesting to see how this "meeting-of-minds" might change alignments in response? Is there a rhreat of a "Pax-Asiana". The sudden improvement of Japanese-Chinese relations are noteworthy in international affairs.

Victor K.

41'

Okay, it's time for you perspicatious prognosticators to put on your best razzle dazzle. The North Koreans have conducted a successful underground nuclear test. Precise yield is not yet known.

News Report

Here's what I think should be bone:

I would suggest to the President of the United States that a best effort be made to place North Korea under fullest navel blockade and tightest trade embargo. Thre's a danger that this may be a unilateral action, but I'd hope for international support.

I would also suggest that the U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense would meet with the Japanese as soon as possible. The test detonation was conducted in a remote coastal location 'visible' to the Japanese. They might become agitated and decide to activate their own nuclear program. The danger is that that the DPRK might trigger a new arms race in the region.

What says you?

So is this it then?

USGS Quakes Map

Maybe this is one that the US should let the rest of the world handle for a change. Personally, I wonder how much this has to do with China trying to goad the US into a military confrontation in their local area, behind closed doors and while trying to keep world opinion on its side. We have all seen that China has been gearing up for some type of war for the last few years, and I think we all know what happened the last time we did this dance with North Korea.

[edit on 10/9/2006 by defcon5]

Justin Oldhan Putting North Korea under total naval blockade is a good idea unless (in desperation) the regime is crazy enough to nuke us.
Then its Korea war 2 (which depending on peoples point of view might still not be such a bad thing after all).

1. Fortunately (for everyone else) North Korea hasn’t (yet) tried to force us to buy their nuclear weapons from them (as a form of aid). Therefore the total naval-air blockade thing can wait (for now at least).
Far better instead to get China to totally close its borders with North Korea until the North returns to disbarment talks.

China might like to do that anyway as just days ago it said it “will not tolerate” a North Korean nuclear test. Well let’s hope it sticks to its word otherwise we might want to actively encourage Japan to increase its “self-defence-force” spending (in response to the NK threat). This might actually be good for our economy, and will really p*** China off.

Of course any nuclear talks are just talks; but the change of “Pyongyang heart” would help carm everyone (notably) Japan down. It might also help Pyongyang see that disarmament-proliferation limitation is the best way to get money.

2. Dividing North Korea Up…
Really good advice defcon5. However I would agree with China that North Korea should be part of China. But to counter the possibility China could somehow be trying to get us involved in a war, we should make it clear to that if China does the war; then it will get to keep North Korea. However if we get involved then it will have to become a democracy, or reunited with South Korea.
Of course once China closes its borders with NK it will be very easy for China to provoke a war without breaking international law. This is because North Korea is bound to do something stupid like fire missile tests over Chinese airspace. China can then launch a war saying it is enforcing whatever anti NK missile U.N mandate we had last time (or perhaps it will be enforcing a future mandate?). Either way North Korea is stuffed until it returns to negotiates.

3. Just in Case…
If NK can survive no trade China for long enough; then we’ll simply need to put a thick (multinational) protective ring of naval boats armed with patriot missiles around it. Once hardly anything can leave the North Korea, then we can forget about the stupid country, and the sanctions it forced us to put around it (well till whenever nuclear negotiations can re-start).

Summary
So you are right Justin Oldhan we just want low cost Chinese sanctions first, then a blockade, plus an agreement with China that it can (basically) keep NK territory if we can stay out of any war.

personally, let the rest of the world worry about it for a change since they have such a big mouth and love to criticise the US over perceived threats anyway.

what more can be said?

Originally posted by Justin Oldham
I would suggest to the President of the United States that a best effort be made to place North Korea under fullest navel blockade and tightest trade embargo. Thre's a danger that this may be a unilateral action, but I'd hope for international support.
What says you?

Justin Oldham your pretty much on spot on the money.
Military action isnt required against North Korea instead a full air and sea blockade needs to be imposed and all aid needs to be cut off. Trade incentives could be given to Russia in order for there to be incentive for the Russia government to stop giving aid to North Korea.

China would be more diffcult to deal with due to the amount of goods that the likes of the USA imports from China. There arent any bargaining chips.
Can you imagn if the mayhem if the likes of the USA cut off trade ties with China ?

International sanctions are not likely to be embraced by the U.N. The security council will be divided on this issue, and we should expect them to dead-lock. It's not in China's best interest to agree on sanctions that would actually collapse the North Korean regime. They'd be left to clean up the mess, and they don't want to deal with the refugees.

If there is any success with economic sanctions against North Korea, they will only inconvenience that regime. It's most likely that the U.S. will foot the bill for any naval blockade of that country. The goal of any such embargo will be to sting the regime and to prevent the transfer of nuclear and missile technology components to other countries that are hostile to the United States.

While these may be seen as necessary measures to many in the Western world, we should expect many nations to view it as just one more truth about what they think of as a rogue USA. Kim Jong Il himself is likely to see the embargo as yet more proof that he was right to follow through on his nuclear ambitions.

Originally posted by Justin Oldham. It's not in China's best interest to agree on sanctions that would actually collapse the North Korean regime. They'd be left to clean up the mess, and they don't want to deal with the refugees.

I doubt that China would have trouble dealing with North Korean refugees. Due to the nature of the Chinese government and the security measures that could be taken. I dont doubt that there would be problems but I think that the Chinese government would be able to deal with the problems at hand. Perhaps a few reconstruction contracts could go the way of Chinese firms as sweetner.

It's been a while3 since North Korea lit their candle, and we've seen more of the usuaul out of the United Natons. U.S. diplomats and political pundits are talking about a nuclear Japan to counter this thieat, and the Japanese themselves re engaged in this debate.

Would a re-militarized Japan be wha the doctor ordered in this case? It now seems obvious that it'll be a while before North Korea feels the deprivations of any sort of embargo. The mainstream media reports that the Eisenhower carrier strike group has left the East Coast on it's way for the Arabian sea. It's possible that Ike could be re-directed, but that's not likely at this point.

Have the North Koreans managed to call our bluff...again?

Heres an update.

AUSTRALIAN warships are likely to join any internationally sanctioned blockade of North Korea, says the Prime Minister, John Howard.

Speaking yesterday after an overnight phone call from the US President, George Bush, Mr Howard told Melbourne radio that if the United Nations Security Council placed sanctions on North Korea, then Australia would help out.

"It there were, for example, some kind of trade embargo sanctioned by the Security Council under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, then it would be reasonable for Australia to participate along with a lot of other countries in enforcing those sanctions," he said.

link

Even if the UN dosnt impose sanctions I think that the US and its allies should still impose an econmic blockade on North Korea. As for China opposing the likes of sanctions I guess the government of China faces a choice bewteen standing by a cold war relic or becoming a mature part of the global community.

Hey, that's good news. On my way home tonight, I heard on the radiothat the Prime Minister of South Korea is likely to be named as the new U.N. Secretary General to replace the out-going Kofi Annan. I've got to do some homework before I know what to think about the new guy. Even so, I must admit that it sounds like smart politics to me.

I'm glad to see the Australians involved in a possible blockade and embargo of North Korea. The Aussies have shown a high degree of clarity and purpose in their own politics which I hope we can benefit from.

Well, now that we've seen what sort of response will come from the United Nations in regards to North Korea, has your opinion changed? What do you think needs to be done now?