Recently, Foreign Policy magazine published an article that advocates bombing North Korea’s nuclear facilities. Aside from deafening readers with the sound of war drums, the article leaves many holes in its proposition, holes that undoubtedly would equate to massive civilian casualties on both sides of the DMZ, not to mention in the United States and Japan. Below, a series of excerpts from the article with rebuttals to each.
Each test would have been an excellent occasion for the United States to finally decide to do to North Korea what Israel did to Iraq in 1981, and to Syria in 2007 — namely, use well-aimed conventional weapons to deny nuclear weapons to regimes that shouldn’t have firearms, let alone weapons of mass destruction.
Israeli F-16s taking on their final fuel load before embarking on the raid on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor
While it is true that Israel successfully halted both Syria and Iraq’s nuclear programs with conventional air strikes, what the author seems to leave out here is the fact that, at the time of the strikes, neither state actually had nuclear weapons, much less weapons mated to missiles with a range that put US allies in direct danger, if not US cities themselves. The differences outweigh the similarities.
One mistaken reason to avoid attacking North Korea is the fear of direct retaliation. The U.S. intelligence community has reportedly claimed that North Korea already has ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads that can reach as far as the United States. But this is almost certainly an exaggeration, or rather an anticipation of a future that could still be averted by prompt action. The first North Korean nuclear device that could potentially be miniaturized into a warhead for a long-range ballistic missile was tested on September 3, 2017, while its first full-scale ICBM was only tested on November 28, 2017.
North Korean hydrogen bomb with missile nose cone in the background, clearly with plenty of space for a larger weapon
North Korea has made great strides in the past few years in the realm of nuclear weapons and rocket research. While it is true that North Korea has yet to demonstrate their nuclear missile capabilities with a live warhead, the reasons for that lack of a show is pretty simple; If North Korea fired a missile with a live warhead into the Pacific, it would have to travel over Japan. Not only would this be a massive risk of triggering an accidental war, but it would almost certainly elicit a US or Japanese military response, setting off a wider war. Furthermore, while American cities may not be in the author’s danger zone, the cities of allied states absolutely are.
It’s true that North Korea could retaliate for any attack by using its conventional rocket artillery against the South Korean capital of Seoul and its surroundings, where almost 20 million inhabitants live within 35 miles of the armistice line. U.S. military officers have cited the fear of a “sea of fire” to justify inaction. But this vulnerability should not paralyze U.S. policy for one simple reason: It is very largely self-inflicted.
North Korean artillery on parade
North Korea possesses hundreds of thousands of conventional rockets, not to mention at least 8,000 conventional artillery pieces. Many of these have range on Seoul and/or its suburbs. Simply writing off the lives of 20 million people because “they should have known better than to live there” is an abhorrent argument. Furthermore, asking the South Korean people to abandon a historical Korean capital and cultural center is a pretty weak talking point.
In recent years, moreover, South Korea has had the option of importing, at moderate cost, Iron Dome batteries, which are produced by both Israel and the United States, that would be capable of intercepting 95 percent of North Korean rockets headed to inhabited structures.
Israeli Iron Dome system
Israel’s main purpose for deploying Iron Dome has been to intercept missiles fired from Gaza. While Hamas does possess at least 12,000 rockets (the vast majority of them primitive), North Korea has a stockpile of about 150,000 rockets, plus about 10,000 ballistic missiles. With each Iron Dome battery coming with a price tag of $5 million, and each missile having a cost of $40,000, it is easy to see why this proposition is a failing one. Even if Iron Dome had a 100% kill rate, and even if it only fired one missile per incoming round, the cost to protect South Korea against North Korea’s conventional artillery threat would be about $6,400,000,000. This is clearly not realistic.
But over these past four decades, South Korean governments have done practically nothing along these lines. The 3,257 officially listed “shelters” in the Seoul area are nothing more than underground shopping malls, subway stations, and hotel parking lots without any stocks of food or water, medical kits or gas masks. As for importing Iron Dome batteries, the South Koreans have preferred to spend their money on developing a bomber aimed at Japan.
Sorry to say it, but fallout shelters are sort of a scam. Especially when the enemy is on the same peninsula as you and the flight times of said enemy’s rockets would hardly allow for government officials to seek shelter, much less civilians (with the delay in issuing a warning). If shelters were an effective antidote to nuclear war, the United States would have heavily invested in them. As would have the Soviet Union. While both states did see some limited bunker construction, the ease with which an adversary can increase the power of a nuclear weapon to negate the protective effects of a bunker means that this, too, is a losing proposition.
Even now, casualties could still be drastically reduced by a crash resilience program. This should involve clearing out and hardening with jacks, props, and steel beams the basements of buildings of all sizes; promptly stocking necessities in the 3,257 official shelters and sign-posting them more visibly; and, of course, evacuating as many as possible beforehand (most of the 20 million or so at risk would be quite safe even just 20 miles further to the south).
Hurricane Irma evacuation traffic
An evacuation on short notice of 20 million people would be a disaster. Americans proved the difficulty of rapid evacuation from a major metro area during Hurricane Rita and more recently during Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. A longer-term evacuation would not only be a major red flag to the DPRK that war may be coming, but would also serve to strangle the South Korean economy. Thus, long-term it is not feasible to evacuate Seoul.
Another frequently cited reason for the United States to abstain from an attack — that it would be very difficult to pull off — is even less convincing. The claim is that destroying North Korean nuclear facilities would require many thousands of bombing sorties. But all North Korean nuclear facilities — the known, the probable, and the possible — almost certainly add up to less than three dozen installations, most of them quite small. Under no reasonable military plan would destroying those facilities demand thousands of airstrikes.
Remains of an Iraqi Scud missile that was shot down by an American Patriot missile battery
During the Gulf War, American aircraft tried, mostly in vain, to locate Saddam Hussein’s Scud missile launchers in the western deserts of Iraq. While technology has certainly advanced since 1991, the difficulties involved in successfully striking all of North Korea’s launch locations, simultaneously (striking them in succession would give time to alert other batteries to fire their charges), would be immense. Furthermore, these strikes would do nothing to prevent the North Koreans from firing their remaining conventional and chemical weapons at both Japan and South Korea. Again the author waves away the deaths of tens of millions of innocent people as if it were nothing.
Unfortunately, this would not be the first time that U.S. military planning proved unreasonable. The United States Air Force habitually rejects one-time strikes, insisting instead on the total “Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses.” This is a peculiar conceit whereby every single air-defense radar, surface-to-air missile, airstrip, and combat aircraft in a given country must be bombed to destruction to safeguard U.S. pilots from any danger, instead of just bombing the targets that actually matter. Given that North Korea’s radars, missiles, and aircraft are badly outdated, with their antique electronics long since countermeasured, the Air Force’s requirements are nothing but an excuse for inaction. Yes, a more limited air attack might miss a wheelbarrow or two, but North Korea has no nuclear-warhead mobile missile launchers to miss — not yet.
This particular section stinks of somebody who has no real background knowledge in military affairs. According to a 2015 Defense Technical Information Center report titled Confronting Emergent Nuclear Armed Regional Adversaries, a SEAD campaign would be problematic.
From DTIC’s Report:
U.S. forces are capable of suppressing enemy air defenses, but
doing so takes time. A SEAD campaign would signal enemy leaders that U.S. forces are preparing to attack their nuclear forces and other targets upon which they and the regime depend
for survival. This would create a use-or-lose dilemma for regime leaders, with strong incentives for them to employ one or more weapons in efforts to compel the United States to stop the
campaign and cancel any further plans to disarm them.
Furthermore, the point regarding North Korea’s road-mobile launchers is weak at best; North Korea has demonstrated their capabilities and may very well have developed technology to mate nuclear weapons to road-mobile launchers. Again, unless the certainty of 100% victory is 100% assured, the US would be gambling with innocent lives.
The article completely fails to account for the massive international financial upset that a war would cause, to say nothing of the massive civilian casualties. Not only that, but considering many North Koreans are already on diminished diets, any disruption in the meager food supply chain would almost immediately result in deaths from starvation and a massive wave of refugees heading both north, into China, and south, across the most heavily-mined portion of the world, the Demilitarized Zone. Again, countless civilians would pay the price.
North Korea demonstrates its simultaneous launch capabilities
North Korea is a nuclear state. As much as it may pain US policy makers, North Korea must be dealt with in a way that acknowledges this fact. North Korea’s leadership isn’t suicidal or crazy; they’re paranoid and afraid of the United States. Any American who was alive in 2001 and old enough to develop memories is probably still haunted by the specter of September 11th. Now imagine if, only 68 years ago, 2.5 million Americans had been killed in a tremendously destructive war with a much more powerful adversary. It is easy to understand the cultural trauma inflicted by such an event, and especially with the rhetoric US leaders have been spewing lately, along with the memories of Iraq and Libya, one may see why North Korea’s leaders have chosen to take the path that they are current embarked on.
