O Brave New World!
US will hold N. Korea responsible if it arms terrorists: " President Bush said Wednesday the United States would stop North Korea from transferring nuclear weapons to Iran or al-Qaida and that the communist regime would then face 'a grave consequence.'" Bush refused to spell out how the United States would retaliate. "They'd be held to account," the president said in an ABC News interview.
Commentary
This sounds like a new doctrine of deterrence. If not, it's a least a first cousin. Here's a threat to retaliate not against a proxy, but a state sponsor. This subject was discussed in the Belmont Club about a dozen posts back. Discussion centered around whether it was possible to assign a one-to-one correspondence between the source of a nuclear weapon and its use by a proxy. Apparently the President feels it is possible -- not to say easy -- but at least theoretically possible.
We're not in Kansas anymore.
posted by wretchardthecat at 10/18/2006 06:44:00 PM
31 Comments:
If "being held to account" has as much teeth as the prior "we will not accept a nuclear North Korea" then Li'l Kim has no worries at all.
The mantle of protection that China has thrown over North Korea effectively meant that it has approved, by omission and at several removes, a breakout from the nonproliferation treaty. Of course the same argument can be made about the West and Israel. But not even China thinks Israel is crazy like North Korea is.
But having been ultimately responsible, China must also accept the deterioration of the neighborhood. Baradei now says there may be 30 new nuclear powers. Not his fault of course. Nothing ever is. But with every country with a flag spoting a nuke, how long until Japan and Germany get theirs? What would be the point of not getting theirs?
Now if North Korea is fixing to deniably strike at America, why does it not bear thinking about deniably striking North Korea? In fact, if Iran is figuring on teaching some masked men about nukes why can't it happen that some "settlers" on the West Bank just happen to brew some mischief of their own.
If terrorism is an arm, then there can be a terrorist arms race too. No military advantage, including an asymmetrical one, is every inherently permanent.
Teresita said...
"If "being held to account" has as much teeth as the prior "we will not accept a nuclear North Korea" then Li'l Kim has no worries at all."
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Agreed!
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I don't consider the NORKO's to represent a *Nuclear* Threat at present, but they DO have all those mortars and such north of Seoul, so it seems that those in charge are choosing to accept a FUTURE Nuclear Armed No Korea because of that risk, and the general fecklessness of our sensitive and compassionate selves.
We allow the New World to bloom
BY CHOICE.
Our children will have to live with the results of our cowardice.
"Live or Die"
Precisely, Wretchard.
I was wondering when I would hear or read someone advocating this sort of jitsu.
Question is, does the West have the balls or -- more diplomatically -- the will to 'adapt'?
teresita:
Where the HELL did you get that thumbnail of HRH-HRC? Looks like something Trey Parker and Matt Stone would come up with.
What the Palestinians, Hamas, the Arab League, Iran, NoKor and the rioting islamic masses dont understand is that they in fact are in MUCH greater risk then those they seek to terrorize.
They isolate themselves and live in ghettos, their countries are mostly ethnically cleansed, as I like to say, target rich.
The West, Israel CHOOSE not to be genocidal, whereas if the bad guys could they would (have). If it comes down to Tel Aviv vrs Gaza, Gaza will lose.
Hezbollah claims to have won, and yet they shot their wad shot 4200 rockets and killed 44 civilians (some arabs) & 120 soldiers, whereas Israel did not even break 3% of her potential killed more and spent time warning people to flee and still killed 600 fighters (& 300-400 civilians). If Israel acted LIKE hezbollah and shelled a populated beirut they COULD HAVE KILLED 10,000
The bad guys are forcing us to take the gloves off, up to now they banked on our soft human rights POV. They will cry wolf and beg for hunda's or ceasefire all the while planning the next attack. Sooner or later the west will get fed up and it will make stalin and hitler look childish.
Will we need to hit NOKOR? Or will they do something stupid 1st to cause us to hit them.
I personally think all of these issues: palestinians, hamas, hezbollah, iran & nokor are related. We might have to teach the koreans about japanese history in asia to wake them up again.
If nokor want to be an upstart, let's re-introduce him to a Nationaliztic/militant Japan and sit back and enjoy the show
Nuclear Armed Israel on one side,
Nuclear Armed Japan on the other.
...but so far Japan is still on the kinder and gentler sensitive and compassionate side w/us.
Candidate Bush had some very interesting views regarding Nation Building. Also about our military's duties and its declining capabilities. This post of mine deals not only with those problems but his misidentifying of the enemy.
Candidate Bush on Nation Building and Can Islam and Freedom survive one another?
"Even then, if the French wished to blow up NYC and have it blamed on China instead, they have the means of modifying a thermonuclear device to make it look "less French" and "more Chinese"."
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Well, at least THAT Scenario won't keep me awake at night!
Would that the French would be "less French" wrt their Muzzie Guests.
10-4 C-4
From Pierre's Post:
"The people of the Middle East are not children nor are they stupid, they have merely chosen another way to live. They have seen our world and apparently rejected it.
We need to get over the shock of such a revelation. We must realize that we are in a race for our very lives. This foolish attempt to moderate a religion that has not moderated in its history before a band of fanatics from that very religion gain access to nuclear weapons, which should they gain only 5, would change our world into a nightmare, is pure folly. Stating the problem so plainly leaves me wondering exactly what sort of nonsense our nation is engaged in right now.
Some say that it is only a small minority who actively seek our destruction and yes that may be true in the sense that any Army is smaller than the population that supports it. But polls around the Muslim world show a level of support for those who would murder us in our sleep that might shock you if you bothered to look. For instance in Indonesia a supposedly moderate Islamic State Bin Laden received a 58% vote of confidence in 2003 and yes it went down to 36% in 2005. Hitler gained power in Germany with right around 37% of the vote.
So instead of Nation Building perhaps our time would be better spent waging fear instead of freedom.
We are no longer men instead we have become exactly what Bin Laden and Saddam told their troops we are, Paper Tigers who flinch at shadows and thrust at allies.
Perhaps we are at a point where our very softness will encourage Iran or Syria or North Korea to give terrorists the tools to bring down the obstacle to their collective dreams. Maybe instead of trying to moderate fanatics we should be instilling fear into the hearts of the old men who run those governments. We could accomplish this in part by increasing our defense spending to the point that no country or group of countries in the world would imagine that we are overextended. By spending above 6% of our GDP on the Military we would be sending unmistakable signals to the world that we are serious about defending ourselves."
Cedarford,
Less assume arguendo that there is no way in principle that the origin of a nuclear device can be traced. In that case traceable retaliation doesn't make any sense either. Suppose France blew up NYC with a China-like bomb. What sense would it make to openly strike back at China?
Since one will never be certain who ordered the hit, then openly retaliating only creates the danger you may revenge yourself on the wrong party and gain an enemy. The correct strategy then would be to anonymously incinerate Paris and Beijing and all the other suspects into the bargain with a Russia-like bomb in retaliation for a hit on NYC.
Then what would Russia do?
Of course nuclear blasts would spread around the world like a chain letter. But, absent any way of fixing the blame what alternatives do we have?
This sounds like a new doctrine of deterrence. If not, it's a least a first cousin. Here's a threat to retaliate not against a proxy, but a state sponsor.
Third: It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.
—John F. Kennedy, Address on the Cuban Crisis, 10/22/62
Figuring out what country is the origin of a nuke that goes off in say, San Fransico, is a little after the fact don't you think? Massive and punitive retalation might "feel good" after 100,000+ dead and an entire city laid waste, but it won't bring back the city now will it? Strike first and strike hard is probably our only defense.
WRETCHARD, I mentioned before and agree, there is no way to retaliate against a terrorist nuke strike unless the state sponsor is really stupid, and there is no way a US prez would strike Russia because some Moscow skin heads detonated a nuke here. I for one think that giving the N-bomb out is a plus more then a negative, the fallacy that we (US) can protect our allies from the one shot nuke is over, Prez Bush needs to quite putting lines in the sand and take action!
the truth be known, this is all bluster. unless the south koreans give their blessing or have it from god's lips that the north won't attack them, there's very little--actually nothing that the US can really do militarily vs the north. the Seoul blackmail card has been played some 50 years now and it is very effective and will continue to be. china and the south control all the moving parts.
i think japan making waves will get the chinese to re-think their pet bull on a leash strategy. i just bush and company would do a little more "walking silently and carrying a big stick"........
No fellas and gals, it'll just take one nuke, going off in the canary cage of Israel, for US to react.
That is the "Master Plan", if there is one. The enemy's last raise, before we go "all in"
To goad the enemy into a large enough provocation to justify the required response, that's the US's requirement.
Preemption, as in Iraq, has gotten a black eye.
Nuclear strikes as preemption, you've got to be joking, if you try to put that proposition forward.
Post modern War, it's a
Tit for Tat Affair
cathrine,
They'd hit Israel well before they'd hit US.
Easier to do, closer to their base of support, done with smaller and proven, in the 34 day war, to be unstoppable missles.
If the Enemy will not use those nuclears against Israel, then MAD works. The threat can be contained by deterence.
Peace in our time.
I worked on radiographic spectral-analysis devices a decade or more ago and it was definitely possible to use in “fingerprinting” applications. Though, as C4 pointed out, it would be impossible to spoof such a signature. The Russians have infamously made it clear that they may or may not have had control of all their nuclear material during the break up of the Soviet Union, but if rogue sh!t holes like Iran and North Korea can acquire nuclear weapons then imagine what industrialized nations with the ability to keep secrets might be able to produce. South Africa developed a nuclear weapons capability which it supposedly dismantled in the early nineties after helping Israel with theirs.
In the end it is clear that the mullahs and Kim Jong the Ill plan on getting payback with theirs… they are already making overt threats. The nuclear club is not a gentlemen’s club anymore; it is the kind of club that you use to make threats.
It would be possible to spoof such devices... and the idea of terror proxies pretty much screws the pooch on decisive retaliation. The ability to trust but verify terror organizations like Hezbollah seems unlikely. Diplomatically the best solution is to close the nuclear club and defang those not openly in it with arms reduction and verifications programs. The idea of a world wide interlocking system of mutual deterrence seems untenable.
In 1993 there was a mild furor because the North Koreans sent a ship loaded with Scuds to Iran. The USN complained that they did not even track the ship - implying that their capabilities were inadequate to stop it even if they had been directed to do so.
I think that Pres Bush statement says that such an event will not be accepted any longer. It will not be a complete blockade but there will be a selective one.
What was he thinking?
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"Of course nuclear blasts would spread around the world like a *chain letter.*"
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Talk about going out of your way to avoid the obvious!
On an interesting parallel, there has been an international effort to embed “micro taggants” in explosive materials. Much of the commercially produced explosives already have taggants that can lead to the manufacture and possibly the buyer. This keeps the home grown terrorists at bay but will not help in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
"No military advantage, including an asymmetrical one, is every inherently permanent."
wretchard
Just a small reminder but nothing,zero,nada is permanent.
So with all this nuke mak'n by evil nations any ya'll reckon Israel just gonna hunker down and wait for a strike on their golf course size country?
The way I figure it is that they won't. Now Mr. Bush, well let's just leave that there.
Nope don't reckon fer a minute that Israel's gonna let Iran develop the bomb.
Yep, tough assignment but not impossible by any measure. it doesn't even have to be 5% effective and we'll be in it up to our eyeballs ...
Tonight's movie, Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner in Neville Shute's "On the Beach" ..you'll go a waltzing Mathilda with me ....
The pisser with that scenario Paul is the possibility of a false flag operation. Does Russia, NorK, or Pakistani militants want to see the US hit ME and Asian countries to start the end of all battles? Maybe so maybe not but that would ensure level the playing field for many marginalized economies and could build a new alignment of nations that edges out the US. Nuke the US and then issue such a statement through some shadowy ME web site. There are certainly those crazy enough to try.
If Tehran has a rational side to it’s brinksmanship it may force Israel to divest itself of atomic weapons. But special friend or no, the Israeli’s have been both an ally and a thorn in the side of US interests and foreign policy. To this date, Israel is denied much of sensitive US technology and both the DOD and the State Department recognized that Israel cannot be trusted or controlled. That said, maybe the US should convince the Israeli’s to dismantle their nuclear weapons capability in return for the kind of mutual assistance pacts that we have with Japan and Taiwan.
"Trust Us"
(With your very existence.)
epictetus,
my point is as you first described it. we have no first strike possibilities with north korea that we can morally and ethically live with. the several hundred thousand dead in Seoul preclude it. however there is a footnote. if south korea, for whatever reasons, gave its approval then a modern WW II could proceed--not the restrained type of warfare currently in iraq/afghanistan.
in fact the constraining factors are such, that even if a small nuclear device is exploded in a US city and we know who is responsible, we will not retaliate with the same. we will however reduce said country to ruins, conventionally. while the results may be the same the methods employed are vastly different. we will never, ever use nuclear weapons unless our complete existence is at stake.
with that as background i wish bush and company would tone it down a bit unless of course south korea has given the nod behind closed doors.
i'm in the camp that believes north korea and iran will get the bomb and we will react with a total devastating war that does not spare civilians if one ever, anywhere goes off. but we will not act preemptively, no matter how much sense it makes. israel, however, probably will because their entire existence is/maybe at stake.
Will the Bush deterence doctrine matter as the American electorate moves to the pacifist/left and elects a Democrat majority Congress in 2006 and President Hillary Clinton in 2008?
Russia and China will wait to use their proxies (Iran, DPRK, Venezuela), who will use their plausibly deniable proxy terrorist groups to sow chaos in the West.
Threats alone will force compliance from a weakened West. Actual use of WMD will only be for demonstration of power and amusement for the barbarian masses.
The effeminant West is quickly sliding into irrelevance. The 21st century will be dominated by ruthless men from other cultures.
Ponder why billions of dollars of Western capital is flowing into China. Does the market believe that their assets are better protected by ruthless men than fem Westerners?
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