Date: 2009-06-10 20:21 Subject: Heartbeats from armageddon Security: Public Location: In my chair Tags: north korea, nuclear weapons, war

Earlier this evening, I wrote a letter to a friend in Japan.  I haven't written to him in a while, and it is a pity that we had grown apart - that came more from geographical distance than anything else.  I asked him to take a vacation and to get out of Tokyo for a bit as soon as the UN announced they had passed their sanctions against North Korea.

I am afraid that we may be as little as two months away from a nuclear war, if that.  I have a couple of reasons for thinking this.  The first is that in 1914 Germany looked around and decided that if it was going to go to war, this would have to be the time to do it - and so it committed itself to an invasion of France.  Similarly, in 1941 Japan faced a crisis as well, and the Japanese cabinet made the decision that if they were to go to war against the United States, it was now or not at all.  The withdrawal from the Korean Armistice suggests that Kim Jong-Il has come to the decision that if he is going to go to war, this is the time he's going to do it.  That means that he is committed, and there is no stopping him.

The second is that while a sane and rational leader would look at the situation and conclude, quite rightly, that firing off nukes in sight of the United States, Russia, and China - while on the border of Russia and China - is suicide by atom bomb, North Korea does not have a sane and rational leader.  Between the withdrawal from the Armistice and the threat on Tuesday to use nukes in a "merciless offensive" if provoked, there is very little sign that the opening of this war will be conventional.  And here we come to nuclear theory and deterrence - a nuclear deterrent is only successful so long as it is not a bluff.  At most, what gets bluffed is the number of nukes in the stockpile.  The United States will retaliate against a nuclear strike against its allies.  If North Korea launches, regardless of whether the missiles get shot down or not, the Americans will launch back.

I really hope that I'm wrong.  I don't want to see North Korea turned into a parking lot, or Tokyo or Seoul disappear from the map.  But I'm afraid that this is what we are facing.  We have had the luxury in the past few decades of fighting wars that are easy wars against an easy opponent - we measure losses in dozens per day instead of hundreds, and our allies are not at any real risk.  This means that we have the luxury of being kind and fighting a limited war.  This war that is coming is not that sort of war.  It is the kind of war where millions of people are at risk, and our allies are facing massive loss, regardless of if they are combatants or not.  And the hard thing - the nuclear strike against North Korea - may very likely be the only right alternative the world has.

I really pray that I'm wrong.  But time will tell.