Kieran Healy

In Other News, II

What’s a few miles between friends? asks David Adesnik over at OxBlog, complaining about the discovery that Iraq has missiles with a range of 114 miles, rather than the permitted 90 miles.

He might also ask, what’s a few miles between enemies? As we found out yesterday, North Korea has a ballistic missile capable of hitting the West Coast, which means it can travel approximately 5,900 nautical miles by my rough reckoning. (I’m pretty sure it’s more than 114, anyway.) They also, in case you’ve forgotten, have a fully reactivated nuclear weapons program that will be able to pop a warhead on top of that baby in short order.

Clearly the U.S. response to each case is entirely proportionate, for two reasons. First, Saddam Hussein gassed his own people and now has a missile that can travel almost twenty five miles further than before. To put this in perspective, it would take a fast runner more than two hours to travel that far. Second, no-one would really miss Los Angeles. Come to think of it, Kim Jong-il quite likes movies, so he might target San Francisco instead. Still no great loss. By the time this happens, ordinary Americans will in any event be fully focused on Year Five of the Great Democratization Of Iraq.

Not to worry. As Christopher Hitchens points out, a sudden movement of a very large number of U.S. troops across the Iraqi border, accompanied by a targeted bombing campaign and whatever military engagement with local troops is necessary to subdue the populace “would not be an invasion by most definitions”. In fact, it would not even be a war. Instead, it would merely be “a forcible removal of a hostile regime.”

In much the same way, when a tyrannical loony builds a nuke and has a rocket to deliver it to you with, this would not be something to worry about by most definitions. In fact, it would not even be a problem. Instead, it would merely be a forcible move by a hostile regime.

Coming soon from a hard-headed IR realist near you: a clever explanation of why Kim Jong-il can be deterred from attacking the U.S. even though he’s able to, whereas Saddam Hussein cannot be deterred from attacking the U.S. even though he isn’t able to.

He didn’t just say that the war would be “a forcible removal of a hostile regime.” He said “it might not be a euphemism to describe the impending event as a forcible removal of a hostile regime.”

Christopher, why does Orwell matter again?

By these linguistic standards, “the closing case for why this war, if it is to be so-called, would deserve to be called ‘just’” should be a walkover.

I searched your site but have not come across any strategy for dealing with Korea. Perhaps you’d like to propose one?

As far as I can tell, what we’ve got in Korea now is a mess that Bush inherited from six years of blather and neglect by Clinton. It would have been hard, but not impossible, for Clinton to deal with North Korea the way that Bush is dealing with Iraq now; but because Clinton instead chose to focus on domestic affairs, we now have a situation where Iraq remains remediable but North Korea will be expunged only with truly high losses of (probably mostly Korean) lives. I thus find it difficult to see the sense of your criticisms of Bush’s current policy—could you kindly explain what I’m missing here?

Thanks.

I thus find it difficult to see the sense of your criticisms of Bush’s current policy—could you kindly explain what I’m missing here?

You’re missing the fact that the Bush administration doesn’t seem to have a policy on North Korea. Read Josh Marshall (also here) and Seymour Hersh on this topic. Both also speak to the ‘Blame Clinton’ reflex.

I searched your site but have not come across any strategy for dealing with Korea. Perhaps you’d like to propose one?

I’d be happy to, but I also feel this is something that , say, democratically elected officials at the head of a large organization staffed by foreign policy experts able to gather intelligence information about this topic might be in a better position to accomplish. I know Bush wants the Federal Govt to be smaller, but I don’t think farming this out to bloggers is a good idea. Right now, though, that’s how it’s looking.

Erich—During Clinton’s presidency, N. Korea didn’t process any plutonium for nuclear warheads. (Uranium processing is much less worrisome.)

Now that Bush is in charge, the monitoring of N. Korea’s plutonium has been shut down, and they seem to be processing away.

Please, can we go back to the blather and neglect? My policy, by the way, is start appeasing North Korea RIGHT NOW. It may not taste good, but it’ll taste better than a nuclear-tipped missile.

I’m a little late to this discussion, but what th hell, here goes some thoughts:

1. First, I don’t think blaming the Clinton administration is productive. The fault of the North Korea situation is North Korea—entirely. Bill Clinton tried to create a deal. It didn’t work. The U.S. negotiated a deal in good faith and the other side lied. OK, the next administration learns from that and move on. Assigning blame is a waste of time.

2. Ditto the plutonium situation with Dubya. It’s not Bush’s fault that North Korea is ruled by a madman. If this was Clinton’s third term, he’d have to deal with the same situation now. And it wouldn’t be his fault. But right now it’s Bush’s responsibility to deal with the problem.

3. Matt—Appeasing North Korea seems to me to be very bad idea. It will increase the pressure for small states to purchase nuclear weapons, encourage nuclear blackmail, and increase the odds of nuclear war—especially with each other. North Korea can be deterred for the moment. But after Iraq, we’ll need to deal.

4. Kieran—of course bloggers should be figuring out policy. That’s half the fun. Besides, people on the outside can often see certain things clearly that insiders can’t.

IBB—OK, I’m going to get real tendentious here.

I blame for (as far as I can tell) doing nothing to deal with a serious problem. Once it became clear that N. Korea was thinking of removing the monitors on its plutonium supply—certainly once they were threatening to do so—we should’ve been taking some sort of action, quickly. And by “action,” I mean “negotiation”—it seems like the only plausible course, given how horrible a war would be.

Instead—well, take it away, Josh Marshall:
“The Bush administration has ruled out force as a means of solving the problem and pretty much ruled out talking too. And that leaves you pretty much with nothing. And that’s what we’re doing.”

We’re being faced with a long climbdown from our “we won’t negotiate” position, which is wasting time, and time is not on our side.

As for the incentives created by appeasing North Korea—my idea is to appease countries before they go nuclear (at least, in a big way). Not-appeasing by doesn’t itself take away the incentive to build nuclear weapons. Imagine this dialogue:
Two-bit country: “Give us some money or we’ll start trying to build nukes.”
US: (yawn)
[later]
Two-bit country: “OK, we’ve got nukes. We’re selling them to the highest bidder. I have a very nice offer from one Al Qaeda. What are you going to do to stop us selling them to who we want to? Invade? Remember, we’ve got nukes.”
US: “How much did you say you wanted again?”
Now, you could take away the incentive by invading any country that was about to go nuclear. (And that’s not Iraq, OK?) I think there would be serious problems with this policy; but it’s moot, because it’s not what we’re doing with N. Korea. Our policy right now seems to be (yawn).

The lesson other states should be learning is that, if you start building nuclear weapons when the Bush Administration doesn’t feel like worrying about you, you will have us over a barrel by the time we wake up. And I really don’t want us to be playing chicken with states that actually have nuclear weapons. At that point, any effect that appeasement may have on incentives is outweighed by the effect of having a nuclear bomb set off over one of our cities.

And now, as Atrios would say, I need a drink….

Also, with respect to N. Korea’s cheating: As I understand, their cheating had to do with uranium refining. As I also understand, this is not so big a deal, because it takes a long time to do and doesn’t get you many weapons. (I’m more concerned about N. Korea having spare weapons to sell than about them having a couple weapons for deterrence, though I’m plenty concerned about that too.)

So the biggest risk is them reprocessing the plutonium from spent fuel rods. And as I also understand, the spent rods were under TV monitoring, so it was easy to make sure they weren’t being reprocessed. So the fact that N. Korea will cheat on agreements doesn’t mean that the agreeements wouldn’t stop them from reprocessing plutonium.

Or at least, it didn’t before they disconnected the monitors. You know, refusing to negotiate with them doesn’t seem to have lined up the incentives in the right way…. (Search the Hersh article for “James A. Kelly.”)

Bill,
I’m sorry if my comments seem like I’m being snotty to you. I don’t think you’re very far wrong, and the idea of giving in to N. Korea makes me unhappier than anything but all the alternatives. It’s just, the Bush administration gets me so panicked I lash out in all directions.

cheers,
Matt

Why Hitchens natters

There are those who like to blame Christopher Hitchens’ scarpa to the dark side on a loss of sanity due