Military Officer - July 2007 - (Page 60)

realists remind us that Pyongyang made — and subsequently broke — similar promises in 1994 and 2005. Of course, with or without nukes, Kim has biological and chemical weapons to deploy. With 1.2 million men With his modified missiles and an army of special forces trained in terror, Kim would try to strike U.S. soil and would hit Japan. under arms, he has the fourth-largest army in the world, spending a third of North Korea’s GDP to prepare for a war he fully expects. Defectors report that Kim is committed to “complete liberation of the peninsula” and that war preparation is the priority for all government agencies. To many observers, North Korea’s actions in 2006 — its gamesmanship at regional talks aimed at defusing the ongoing crisis, spasm of missile tests in July, and nuclear tests in October — are evidence of war preparation. We can add to that list Pyongyang’s drive for long-range missiles, collaboration with Iran, and forward-leaning military posture. According to the U.S. State Department, Pyongyang in recent years has “moved more of its rear-echelon troops to hardened bunkers closer to the DMZ.” Of course, sometimes words speak just as loudly as actions. In the past four years, perhaps prepping its subjects for war, Pyongyang has blustered that “a war in Korea is almost unavoidable,” warned that the peninsula was “at the brink of a nuclear war,” and claimed the U.S. had “openly declar[ed] a war against the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea].” If North Korea ﬁnally explodes, Seoul, South Korea, will bear the brunt of the blow. With its 10 million citizens, Seoul sits just 25 miles from the DMZ, the northern edge of which is bristling with North Korean weaponry. As former Defense Secretary William Perry explained in 2002, “North Korea deploys more than 1 million soldiers near the DMZ, and its 11,000 long-range artillery pieces hidden nearby could rain destruction on the South Korean capital.” Gen. Leon LaPorte, the former commander of Army forces in Korea, added a chilling footnote in 2005: Every third round ﬁred by North Korean artillery would be a chemical weapon. In short, no matter how antiquated North Korea’s equipment, no matter how sophisticated the U.S.-Republic of Korea arsenal, Kim has the capacity to ﬂatten Seoul and kill millions of South Koreans, thousands of American troops, and perhaps thousands of American and Japanese civilians. With his modiﬁed missiles and an army of special forces trained in terror, Kim would not limit his wrath to the peninsula; he also would try to strike U.S. soil and certainly would hit Japan. In their book The Next War (Regnery Publishing, 1996), the late Caspar Weinberger and Peter Schweizer sketched a sobering scenario in which Kim lashes out across the DMZ, uses nuclear weapons, and claims almost 19,000 American casualties — all in fewer than 90 days of war. T Endgame he fact that Korean War II would mark the end of Kim’s beastly regime is of little comfort. Were the Kim dynasty to end this way, the costs of uniﬁcation would be compounded by the costs of replenishing or even reconstituting elements of the American military, repairing Tokyo, rebuilding South Korea, and occupying North Korea. Imagine such an undertaking: All the economic costs of the occupation of Japan, Germany, or Iraq; all the human costs of the 2004 tsunami; all the military costs of combat and counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan; and perhaps all the psychological and infrastructure costs of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, this time on America’s West Coast. It would give new meaning to the term “pyrrhic victory.” So maybe it makes sense to relocate U.S. forces away from the DMZ, a process that should be complete in 2008; to squeeze Pyongyang by engaging Beijing; and to deploy a layered missile defense. We can hope for the best — for a miraculous replay of 1989 in Berlin or 1991 in Moscow, for Kim or one of his sons to become a born-again capitalist, for North Korea to fall like a rotten tree rather than explode like a time bomb. But Korea’s history and Kim’s behavior remind us that hope is not enough. We should prepare for the worst. MO WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU How do you think the collapse of the Kim dynasty will play out? To voice your opinion, visit www .moaa.org/discussion, and scroll down to After the Kim Dynasty. 60 MILITARY OFFICER J U LY 2 0 0 7 http://www.moaa.org/discussion http://www.moaa.org/discussion

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Military Officer - July 2007 Contents From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities Cover Story: In Focus After the Kim Dynasty Animal House Paying Tribute MOAA Member Services Pages of History Faces of MOAA Information Exchange Advertising Index MOAA Scholarship Donors MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - July 2007

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