- While the White House continues its public war of words
with North Korea, a battle plan is already being laid in secret by military
strategists at the Pentagon.
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- Until now leader Kim Jong Il's increasingly flamboyant
and frightening game of international brinkmanship has only attracted condemnation
from the Bush administration.
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- But behind the scenes, American strategists are now weighing
up the option of a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea as the
rogue Stalinist state forges ahead with its plans to build a nuclear arsenal
- threatening not only a "domino effect" of nuclear proliferation
in east Asia but also a strike against the very heart of America.
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- It is a terrifying scenario, with likely casualties running
to one million during the first day of an attack on North Korea - most
falling victim to the long-range artillery trained on its southern neighbour.
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- Last week, in its most defiant act yet, a North Korean
fighter jet crossed the border and played cat-and-mouse with a South Korean
aircraft. When the US condemned the incursion, North Korea declared that
there could be nuclear war on the Korean peninsula "at any time".
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- The US responded by placing on alert its long-range bombers
based on Guam and ordering the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and its battle
group to sail to waters off the Korean Peninsula, fuelling talk of a possible
US pre-emptive strike against North Korea's nuclear facilities.
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- Military analysts predict North Korea's next move will
be a provocative missile test similar to the one carried out in 1998 which
demonstrated that it could hit Japan. Only these days, North Korea has
an as yet untested missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to California
and, according to the CIA, "one or two plutonium-based devices".
-
- As Victor Cha, a Korea expert at Washington's Georgetown
University, points out: "North Korea is not just a peninsula security
problem for the US anymore. It is a homeland security issue."
-
- And one member of the Capitol Hill staff warned: "They
[the North Koreans] are the masters of brinkmanship, until they get to
the point where they have crossed as yet undeclared lines."
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- Japan has already drawn a line in the sand, saying it
would have the legal right to strike first if it were to receive intelligence
of a planned missile attack by North Korea.
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- The threat immediately drew condemnation from China and
claims that Japan was "using the North Korean crisis to create an
atmosphere to rearm".
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- China is resisting pressure from the Americans to exploit
its position as North Korea's leading trading partner and aid donor to
persuade Kim to abandon his nuclear weapons programme.
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- China's main concern is that a collapse of the North
Korean economy would have a devastatingly destabilising impact on the region.
It also fears a powerful re-unified neighbour.
-
- The North Korean threat will dominate meetings this week
that US Secretary of State Colin Powell is due to hold in Japan, China
and South Korea. He is expected to announce the resumption of some food
aid shipments to North Korea. But the gesture will do little to temper
Kim's nuclear ambitions. Rather than being a means to an end, his nuclear
arsenal increasingly appears to be an end in itself.
-
- Ironically, Powell, the reconstructed dove, had urged
a continuation of Bill Clinton's policy of engagement with Pyongyang when
the Bush administration came to power. He was quickly slapped down by the
president.
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- Powell was directly involved in the contingency plans
drawn up by the US for a war in the Korean peninsula after Pyongyang threatened
in 1993 to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. These are
now having to be drastically revised to take account of its military commitments
in the Gulf.
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- The US military assets now being sent to the region could
stage air and missile strikes against the nuclear plant at Yongbyon and
other sites where the North may have concealed production facilities for,
and stockpiles of, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
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- Strikes would also target the production and launching
sites of North Korea's growing ballistic missile programme.
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- But the odds are not good for the US. According to its
own estimates, one million casualties could be expected in the first 24
hours of a war.
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- Even though much of North Korea's hardware is old, its
army is nearly a million strong and more than half of its soldiers are
deployed within 100 miles of the demilitarised zone with 8,000 artillery
pieces. It is estimated that North Korea could fire 300,000 shells an hour
on to targets in the south.
-
- In addition, it is believed to have about 5,000 tons
of chemical and biological agents, including sarin, anthrax, smallpox and
the plague.
-
- John Pike, executive director of GlobalSecurity.org,
a group that tracks military developments, said: "The problem is that
you just don't know what fraction of North Korea's capabilities would be
destroyed in those attacks. "
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- Kim has pledged to respond in kind to any US military
move. On Friday, North Korea condemned next month's joint US-South Korean
military exercises as a "nuclear test war" and prelude to military
attack.
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- Andrew Kennedy, head of Asia programmes at the Royal
United Services Institute in London, said: " There are few good military
options available to the Bush administration. North Korea has spent the
last 50 years planning for this. The missiles are already in place, and
the tunnels are already dug. All they have to do is pull the trigger."
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- Kennedy added: "You have two countries, North Korea
and Iraq, one with nuclear weapons and one without, one that is contained
and one that is not. Yet you invade the one that has no nuclear weapons
and is already contained, and you do a deal and send aid to the other."
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- As Powell arrives in Seoul tomorrow he will have good
reason to rue his political master's decision not to heed the advice he
offered two years ago.
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- BRIEFING
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- THE current stand-off with North Korea began in October
last year when the US announced the communist state had admitted to a secret
nuclear arms programme.
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- In December, Pyongyang ordered the removal of monitoring
devices from its nuclear plant at Yongbyon. In January said it was withdrawing
from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And last week it threatened
to withdraw from the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War, and
a North Korean MiG-19 fighter flew into South Korean airspace.
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- http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/international.cfm?id=227612003
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