Observations:
1- Kim seems to be the necessary & sufficient driver of the NKorean nuke program. Take him out & NKoreans will choose food over nukes, Facebook over saving face.
2- Nuke & missile technologies already exist, which means the US must assume zero breakout time in its threat calculus.
3- The fatally-flawed anti-hegemonic, anti-colonial policies of BClinton & BObama undermined the US as they nuclear-armed apocalyptic nutcases intent on annihilating us. The legacy-driven giveaways & deals gave the nuts nukes in a blink of an eye as they defeated the grim logic of MAD.
NB: One of the authors, Wm J. Broad, in his 1999 piece on nuclear proliferation, "Spying Isn't the Only Way to Learn About Nukes," argued that Clinton disseminated our atomic secrets proactively in order to implement his counterintuitive, postmodern, [inane] epistemological theory, i.e., contrary to currently held dogma, knowledge is not power after all. Rather, instructing a motley assortment of terrorist nations on how to build nukes would blunt their appetites for bigger & better bombs & a higher position in power food chain.
Unfortunately, Mr. Broad failed to connect the dots: Clinton wholesale release of atomic secrets, decades of Chinese cash sluicing into Clinton coffers, Clinton pushing test ban treaty, Clinton concomitant sale of supercomputers for nuke simulation, theft of legacy code, Clinton's noxious legacy, which reduce his important piece to just another Clinton apologia by the NYT.
1
The weakened position of the United States due to the Apprentice’s Presidency is decidedly unfavorable regarding our dealings with the rest of the World. Trump’s desire to be ‘unpredictable’ is not a plan but his way of life. He is an erratic irresponsible person. We cannot run our country coherently in this direction. Anyone in our government working with this incompetence that denies this, is covering up for the President. Anyone that accepts Trump’s actions as they are is blind to his glaring ineptitude.
4
The pacifist ostrich head in the sand Obama administration let Iran and North Korea’s military progress surprise us. Meanwhile they let Russia and China build up and claim vast territory with no repercussions. Bullies running rampant. Pacifism did not work, ever in history
3
yohka, Obama, with other nations have effectively stopped Iran's nuclear program for over a decade. your comment is based on false assumptions.
9
Tragedy of American politics at this time is America has only two political parties and they have extreme different view. Two parties worked well long before but not any more.
It's either red or blue color. Since it is red or blue, policy should reflect purple color which is middle. But, every time when one party takes over the power, they want to change policy either red or blue instead of slightly darker purple or lighter purple. In my opinion, that is why America can not have consistent foreign policy and makes further instability and diminished credibility in the world stage.
In my opinion, neither red nor blue represents real majority of American. In my opinion, major American is either dark purple, purple, or light purple. We need new labor parties that represent middle ground. We need new parties that will fill this extreme gap between Democratic and Republican party and make balance, harmony, and consistency.
One of reason candidates go to either party is finance. In order to run election, they need a lot of money and most of the candidates could not be self-sufficient. Now, there are GoFundMe program. I am hoping that 2016 presidential candidates from independent and 3rd party show up for government positions for this November election. I hope that there are more 3rd party or independent candidates in government position in the future.
2
The danger is not North Korea because they would care if they were destroyed. The danger is that one of the non-state actors (Taliban, ISIS, Al Queda, etc.), who don't care about life on earth but rather martyrdom in heaven, will get hold of one of these and use it.
Is there any doubt that with today's and tomorrow's enhanced technology, we will see,, within a very short time, a weapon the size of a briefcase that could do as much damage as a missile could today?
3
Has the calculus really changed all that much? North Korea without nukes still poses a grave threat to South Korean civilians. NK with nukes simply makes that threat more severe and dramatic, but it doesn't change the fact that the US and allies have the capability to utterly destroy the Kim Dynasty, if that's what it takes to stop the bleeding in the south.
1
All right. North Korea has working nuclear weapons and an almost-ready ICBM program. Obviously these pose a grave threat to the United States and allies. They make the voice of N. Korea heard loud and clear and guarantee a space at the table for any major international decisions, as well as offering protection against US imperialist actions. However, these remain a threat *only as long as they are not used*. Even someone as isolated as Kim Jong Un must realize that his country would be turned into smoking ruins if he ever launched such a rocket against a western target. Kim's path is a narrow one: he must make his weapons a creditable threat (both to give him status and to cover other N Korean ops), but at the same time, signal to the West that the system will not be used as a first strike system. A delicate balance indeed, given the fact that he is now dealing with a blatantly irrational and ignorant US leader.
4
North Korea has made explicit threats to bomb the U.S. preemptively. These are not rational players. Trump is correct in pushing them to the wall. If we cave in and let them keep their nuclear weapons and the next thing will be some kind of unholy alliance with terrorist and ultimately an attack on the U.S.. Trump has drawn the line and, unlike is predecessor, if they cross it he will take action.
2
Trump “doesn’t have the expectation of perfect intelligence about anything.”
No truer words were ever spoken.
1
What difference would perfect intelligence mean when we have the "leaders" we now have? Would they build a really high wall?
3
For 8 year Obama politicized & corrupted our entire Government, especially the DOJ, Intelligence agencies, & FBI. Obama’s priority wasn’t getting intelligence about NK, Russian, Iran, or China. Obama wanted to use them for political purposes against his political opposition & he certainly didn’t want any inconvenient intelligence about NK or Iran that would impact his appeasement of both regimes or slow him down from gutting our military. NK isn’t an intelligence failure. Obama didn’t want the truth & the corrupt incompetents he put in charge knew it. The situation w Iran will be even worse. Obama was & will always be the worst President in US history. Besides 8 years of economic misery his incompetence & appeasement has put all of us in terrible & real danger.
2
When the WWII ended, the Koreans thought that they would be able to regain control of their country, but the US government decided that it would be better for US economic interests to keep the Korean collaborators in power that had worked for the Japanese, which led to the Korean War.
The US war against North Korea killed about 30% of the population of North Korea.
North Korea has only threatened to retaliate, if they are attacked; we would retaliate too, if we were attacked.
North Korea has said it wants two things from the USA:
North Korea wants a peace treaty signed by the US. The US has refused to sign a peace treaty since the end of the Korean War.
An end to massive annual US/South Korean military exercises right off their shores. Such training exercises could be turned instantly into a real attack. Given that we almost completely destroyed their country, why wouldn't they be concerned about such exercises? They don't do military exercises right off our shores.
Given that we killed 30% of their population, destroyed all of their cities, water treatment plants, & electric power plants, & have refused to sign a peace treaty since the end of the Korean War, the above two demands are incredibly minimal.
7
President Trump inherited this problem from Obama, who ignored the North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic programs for long 8 years. Today America does not have any good options. I hope the foreign policy experts who advised Obama would shut up and let the grown ups figure out what to do.
4
North Korea will join the "nuclear missile club" in the near future.
I have watched all eight nuclear countries, declared and undeclared, develop nuclear weapons: from 1945 to about 1970 (Israel estimate). I was very young when the USA was the first to test in 1945. The other 7 are Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.
There is such power in developing those weapons, that once a country sets its mind to develop them, almost nothing will stop them. Those eight all have some capacity (or suspected ability -N.Korea) to deliver them by at least one of the triad methods; land, air or sea.
Under NATO nuclear weapons sharing, the USA provides Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey with nuclear weapons.
There are now estimates of over 10,000 total warheads in the world with about 4,000 of those called "active."
Usually attempts to deflect or prevent these countries from joining the club are attempted but always too late and as every year passes the options drop fast.
We can see this with N. Korea; very little we can do partly because these countries always have large scale non-nuclear weapons and threaten other countries with them as N. Korea is doing re: S. Korea and our military bases there. And we can never be sure of locations of their nuclear missiles and all they need to do is get one warhead to our country which could kill millions of us, thereby forcing us to accept them into the club.
This is a horrendous nightmare.
2
It really doesn't matter how good (or bad) our intelligence about North Korea is. Even if we did have perfect intelligence about their programs, we will not act on the intelligence. They know that we will never attack North Korea preemptively under any circumstances.
3
There are many options . First and foremost this is a South Korean problem. It is their responsibility to resolve it by any means necessary. Other options are sea and air blockades, covert sabotage , and hopefully the CIA is developing assets to have a stooge or plant stick a knife in little rocket mans back. mcArthur is still right "There is no substitute for Victory"
2
Bear in mind too, that Israël set the precedent on how a small country, surrounded by enemies and having only reluctant major power sponsors, could develop and deploy nuclear weapons, in violation of UN rules, to secure its continued existence. NK is both as likely to give up their bombs, or use them, as Israel is.
4
tough one to pin on Donald. Bummer.
4
How is it that NK can pay for multiple missile programs AND pay for the development of advanced nuclear weapons?
5
While the Times news coverage and others noted with barely concealed glee that another North Korean missile test had "failed," many other articles in the Times, etc. lauded and advocated the benefits of risk-taking and failure. Apple might be one such example of risk-taking, failure, learning, and success. That is one reason, I assume, they're called "tests" and not "successes." Maybe the intelligence community and the Times news reporters should read as much of the Times as I find myself reading.
As for North Korea's progress with nuclear weapons. The only real "secret" of the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb is that they can be built. I'm not saying I could build one in my backyard or that the pathway is simple or easy or cheap in terms of money, people, and the environment.
But— Every nation with a nuclear power program has the skills, knowledge, and techniques for making a nuclear weapon plus the material with which to build one. One physicist told me, a nuclear reactor is an atomic bomb in slow motion.
Every nation that has a nuclear reactor program can produce a nuclear weapon, from South Africa though Israel and on to Brazil, Germany, Japan, and Iran all of which have a history of starting nuclear weapons development and onward to such peace-loving states as Sweden and Hungary, who believe it or not could conceivably build a nuclear weapon if they wanted. The total number of countries with nuclear power plants according to Wikipedia is thirty-one.
2
In "A cask of Amontillado," Poe's classic tale of revenge (tempted to say, its "revenge's intoxication") an oblivious wine-snob is lured to his unknown enemy's wine cellar and buried alive, never before his final moments having the slightest inkling of the mortal grudge held against him.
In all great literature there are depths of meaning and prescience not recognized till quite late (as in the doomed character's final, belated recognition).
A case may be made the the US has gotten drunk on its prosperity, oblivious to the insults and assaults, real an/or merely imagined, festering in other's bitter memories. Suddenly we find others would prefer us buried, and we wonder, "why don't they just want to get along with us?" And we look in disbelief as our would-be executioners savor our gnawing desperation, just creeping into conscious awareness.
Well, are we in such a position, and is it too late to do anything about it? Does our adversary want to destroy us, or merely blackmail us? Is it wishful thinking he only wants to protect himself (deterrent), not really seeking violence? We don't know; the only thing that's for sure is we can't afford not to be careful, like Poe's doomed wine-lover.
4
Trusting intelligence sources has been a problem since the dawn of the human race. You have to wonder how many wars over the ages have been started over bad intelligence. George Tenet's "Slam Dunk" comment comes to mind. All the billions we spend on intelligence every year is probably better than not doing it, but at times you have to wonder.
1
No mention of Pakistan's A.Q. Kahn selling nuclear technology to N.K, while we pretended not to know because Pak was an ally. Kahn gave them their start
8
The glaringly obvious "should have looked" in this account isn't just the technology; it's the capacity to fabricate components, which is a pretty long logistic trail. It is highly unlikely that the sheer scale of resources required to build demanding ICBM components was invisible. Add to this the interesting ability to shift from a much lower grade class of missiles to ICBMs at very short notice, and the questions become was this information available, and was anyone looking for the logistics evidence? If the answer is no, US intelligence has missed a beat, or someone supplied those logistics pretty damn fast, and the fully functional rockets were built at great speed.
Kim Jong Un has made his point in another way, too, in the face of noisy US opposition. It's quite a coup to have gone from Little Rocket Man to a guy with ICBMs in a few months. This IS a win for the DPRK vs the US and stated US policies.
I appreciate that soul-searching is an endemic part of the American psyche, particularly after events. But if you're looking for North Korean missiles and support systems, wouldn't it be better to be focusing on how, where, when and with whom? ...And maybe checking for all the collateral information which is somehow still missing from published accounts of the DPRK missile program(s)?
We should never underestimate or overestimate the potentials of a small country run by dictators or military strong man. Our Manhattan Project was designed to destroy and defeat Japan and Germany as fast as possible. Nothing more. We did achieve our goal and purpose in Japan. President Truman made the right decision.
4
Our intelligence agencies have spent so much time working in the service of our politics that we fail to recognize threats and prioritize actions against the globe's greatest militaristic scourges.
It was politics that lead the CIA to concentrate on inventing those "exploding Cuban cigar" novelties and training ragged exiles to take down Fidel Castro. Politics lead the CIA and military intelligence to take down Chile's democratically-elected, socialist President, Salvador Allende, in what we pretended was their internal conflict. Politics prompted Bush No. 43 to scramble his intelligence officers for whiffs of Iraq's non-existent WMD's so he could invade and occupy the sovereign country.
Due to their own internal political squabbles, U.S. intelligence services let the 9/11 hijackers slip by. Obama, seeking peace over security, horribly misjudged ISIS. At some point during Bush/Obama, we even put the CIA in charge of militaristic drone strikes, which continue.
North Korea lately hasn't had much of a left or right political stink to it. It doesn't have any natural resources we seek. It's just a little backwater that daily threatens South Korea and Japan, which we pledged to protect. Now, everyone seems to be wringing their hands over lost opportunities and missed signals. Trump himself concentrates on blaming his predecessors and undermining his diplomats while no substantive alternatives seem forthcoming. Too bad the North doesn't have oil or Muslims or commies.
5
Consider the awful situation facing the US and its allies over the NK missile crisis: there is very little more that the US can do, short of all-out war, to impede or stop NK's growing nuclear missile program, or to "deter" NK from taking provocative acts or proliferating WMD to dangerous third parties.
We can wait for sanctions to further weaken the Regime, but that will take years, because NK has an extraordinary ability to endure the most catastrophic of economic conditions over long periods of time. We can try to entice NK to slow down its testing of missiles, but that will require the payment of gigantic sums of money which will be difficult to keep secret.
If the US continues with sanctions, NK will begin to throw its weight around in dangerous ways. We must expect NK to shoot down US or SK planes (even passenger planes), to attack allied shipping, to mount debilitating cyberattacks against heavy infrastructure, communications, transportation and financial institutions, to dabble in state-sponsored terrorism, and more.
How will the US respond? Militarily? Pretend nothing happened? Run to the UN for yet more meaningless condemnations? This is a contest of wills against a Mafia Regime (which means that negotiations are worthless and even counterproductive).
Ultimately, to resolve this crisis will require an acceptance of war as the most likely solution, and the horrendous consequences which such war will entail. Otherwise, there will be capitulation to NK.
1
The irony is that the most powerful nation on Earth - the USA - has retreated from a position of engagement. Idiots with no military understanding engage in fantasist thinking about "winning" wars from the comfort of their armchairs. Embassy positions go unfilled. Tillerson was brought in to wield the ax of a corporate CEO in downsizing the State Department.
The US unquestionably emerged as the "winner" of WWII. The Europeans were shorn of their colonies and major cities were left in smoking ruins. Highly cultured peoples had committed unimaginable atrocities.
With the conclusion of WWII (Hiroshima) the nature of war itself had changed. The concept of a "winnable" war was now an oxymoron.
Leaving aside matters of sanity and competency, things have gone from a high water mark in 1945 to a thought desert today. Even after the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan fools talk about winning wars. What nonsense!
What's required today is a paradigm shift. It's called, not the winnable war, but the winnable peace. Nuclear bombs and IED's make it the only viable alternative.
After Hitler marched into the Rhineland and the Spanish government was overthrown by Franco prospects for a winnable peace were gone. Chamberlain was the fantasist of his era.
Have we already passed similar milestones? Were these marked along the way by domino theories, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, adventures in the Middle East and other lapses? Is Trump the final "Fire and Fury" chapter?
2
There doesn't seem to be any short term solution. Even heavy tweeting doesn't seem to work - perhaps it even makes things worse.
But step back a little and take a wider long term view, and we see that the USA is not actually alone in being a potential victim of an unpredictable rogue nuclear attack - because even a small nuclear attack is likely to set off a war in which at least hundreds of millions starve to death all over the world, if not nuclear Armageddon.
If we follow domestic and foreign policy that promotes self-improvement at home and rational diplomacy abroad over one-upmanship both at home and abroad, there is more long term chance of North Korea's allies and sponsors doing by themselves exactly what what we are trying to compel them to do now, but won't because they are stuck in short term zero sum thinking.
Seriously, which is a greater risk to the US - internal dysfunction or a nuclear attack from North Korea?
1
It proves that intelligence is just darn hard. In the 1970's the CIA estimates of Soviet nuclear program were more accurate than President Ford's more hawkish Team B. On the other hand the same agencies completely miscalculated Pakistan's program. Now it appears as though the score has become 1-2. The danger is that we always choose to believe the more hawkish analysis, particularly with respect to Iran's program, because this is a recipe for preventive war.
1
Another "gift" from Obama. Disgrace!
2
NK obtained nuclear weapons capability under W.
6
The attempts started long before W. The reactor construction started in the early 1980s according to the article, Neither party has had a good idea for dealing with this. Give it a rest both of you.
Intelligence agencies have always had big failures and always will under both parties. It doesn't mean bad intent b our leaders. It means we need leaders who are good at understanding human behavior to help take into account possible intelligence failures and deceptions by our adversaries.
Our adversaries have all had their share of failures trying to figure out us. It's the environment every world leader has to deal with. There may not be a right way to handle this case. We have less control over situations like this than most people want to believe.
1
NYT - "But the last breakthroughs happened faster than they expected."
Breakthroughs or an enormous amount of help?
1
And yet.\, dispute those facts, the CIA's Pompeo is on tv today saying "gee, we know EVERYTHING...but what we don't"
Just another Tool of the White House
Where’s our counter intelligence?
Meanwhile Joe Biden was very clear a week ago that we no North Korea’s intent upon having a nuclear submarine and how terribly treacherous that is. Ok when will we know? After it’s finished and testing?
We know from the NYT that the historic design of the missiles they have and are creating 24 hours a day, come from a Russian design specifically to launch through submarine tubes. I’m not a psychic pulling this from the air. I am very keen on taking news from many sources where I can draw a picture .
We know North Korea’s nuclear technical scientific support and technology and design and uranium comes from Iran, Pakistan (though they say some known scientists but not the government of you but that ridiculous statement as if they let high level scientists do that without support), Russia, China and other bad actors. Meanwhile we are hacked by these very countries 24 7.
Billions stolen in US money on one action involving US banking and the Fed Reserve. For Gods sake in this blah blah quasi analytic NYT Comments world where’s the outrage? Where are calls to our reps? 202 224-3121 and you can be connected to their offices. Where are our corporations and financial institutions saying how on top of security they are? Equifax was a nightmare of neglect. How are the others? Our banks are so busy deregulated and making fistula of money with Wall Street but in the end from the lack of counter espionage, valuable spy information and our NSA we suffer.
2
Now that we find ourselves in this mess, how do we get out of it? SK is no longer an impoverished, backward, and weak state that it was back in 1950. SK and US interests are likely to diverge sharply if the US pushes too hard for a military solution.
In fact I predict that Korea’s long term geopolitical interests will lead the Koreans to eventually become more neutral between US and China.
The already deepening relationship between SK and China points to the long term geopolitical interests of Korea: maintain some semblance of security and independence from China while retaining a beneficial economic relationship with it. For that Korea needs to retain a close relationship with the US in order to shield itself from the negative effects of China’s power while taking full advantage of the opportunities created by its rise.
The primary stumbling block to this is the presence of US troops in SK. China cannot tolerate a unified Korea that allows American troops on its soil. This explains China’s reluctant support for NK’s continued existence. Once the US troops are withdrawn, China and SK relationship will grow even closer and China will allow NK to collapse and be absorbed into SK. This outcome is actually in US interest as well since it removes a dangerous and disruptive power from NE Asia.
Therefore the removal of US troops from SK will reduce the risks US faces from being targeted by NK ICBMs and will also increase cooperation from China toward a long term solution.
1
"The Russian government, they say, does not appear to be providing support." 'Appears' is the key word here.
How naive can they be? A nuclear N. Korea Is a burr in the United States' saddle. Russia has all to gain and nothing to lose with America's preoccupation with a serious N. Korean threat. Putin sits back and enjoys the consternation of America's foreign policy -- and military leaders --over nukes in Kim's hands. Maybe unemployed Russian scientists helped the Koreans, but their help was limited. Hardware had to come from a more sophisticated society in order to make such rapid advancement.
The argument that Russia does not want a nuclear armed nation, so close to it's Siberian boarder, isn't a concern of Putin. He knows N. Korea poses no threat to his nation. They share a short, but common boarder.
****After the collapse of the Soviet Union, waves of its impoverished missile scientists began to head for North Korea. While Russian security forces intercepted some, others made it out or assisted the North from afar. In retrospect, former American intelligence officials say they almost certainly missed significant transfers of technology.****
HOW DOES THE PRK (NOKO) AFFORD this program? WHAT DO THEY EXPORT? How is it possible that the Peoples Republic of Korea is less impoverished than even Russia at the end of the Cold War?
If we cannot completely strangle NoKo’s ability to collect foreign exchange I’d be surprised.
Until we make it a military issue, it should be taken as a CRIMINAL enterprise. North Korea is funded like a crime cartel. The transfer of all funds to NoKo must be halted: 100%. If we cannot do that we are forcing war.
1
What about the connection between North Korea and the former Soviet Union missile plant in the Ukraine, not currently under subjugation by Putin? This explains the shift from failure to success, in the N. Korean ICBM program.
4
Scary stuff. But intelligence is never as good as its gatherers think it is. We always have to make decisions based on murky views and sketchy data. Those who (like the global warming alarmists) say that we know everything or something is settled never do as well as those who realize that everything should be questioned.
Napoleon Bonaparte was a master at this. "On s'engage partout, et puis l'on voit", he (supposedly) said. That means "we engage everywhere, then we see". In other words, rather than wait until you know everything, you engage the enemy and see how it reacts. That will give you information to guide you further.
That's Donald Trump's style too. Those with the success in business that he has had usually become comfortable acting on incomplete information, and then adjusting course as they see how others react.
In the case of North Korea, that appears to be working well. Kim Jong-un has traded bellicosity for bargaining, for the nonce at least. We can see how that goes, and then react.
We can take some comfort from seeing the success that Napoleon Bonaparte had with this strategy. Until we remember that Napoleon lost his Grand Army to the winter on the steppes of Russia and lost again, and more finally, at the Battle of Waterloo, before dying in exile.
Then it gets scary again.
2
P.R.N.K. is an ideal tool against the fool.
Why would you play with fire if you have a chance to use a pair of tongs.
Dog with rabies is unpredictable but not uncontrolable.
As its also differentiation of polarization which would be needed for redisgn and redistribution of the land and resources.
Spending to prevent it would be postponing the inevitable, nothing can stop the flow of money.
Undersestimation of P.R.N.K.? No definately not.
Might be argued as, underestimation of U.S. Intelligence Services capabilities and foresight.
1
Thanks Obama for sleeping 8 long years on the job. This is a classic example of a world leader not having both common sense and the will to take the necessary risks to stop this madman from aquiring these weapons. How many more times does the world have to learn from preventable atrocities to do the right thing at the right time?
3
Dear NYT:
This is not surprising, even predictable.
Our intelligence agencies have been serving up incorrect, politically spun "assessments" on almost all the major international developments for as long as I can remember. They seem incapable of resisting the politicized group-think that taints the most rigorous fact-gathering and analysis.
Consider a few examples:
The CIA's false assessment of the strength of the Soviet military-industrial complex, which drove our huge spending during the cold war, and by accident, accelerated the fall of the at brutal regime.
Our IC's false assessment of the motives behind the leadership of North Vietnam, which led to the disastrous Vietnam war.
Our IC's false assessment (and drum-banging NYT coverage) of the "imminent threat" posed by the Iraqi WMD program, which drove our invasion, squandered thousands of lives and many billions of dollars that should have been used at home.
The classified advice of the CIA in August 1978 was that ‘Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.’
More recently, consider the Obama administration's squelching of anti-terror actions against Hezbollah, in order to appease Iran ahead of the nuclear deal; the stockpile of cash released to Iran is now used to promote terror and insurgency in the Middle East, and murder protestors at home.
These repeated failures do not suggest we should have high confidence in our CIA, and constitute a continuing threat to our democracy.
How do we know that the intelligence underestimated North Korea? Intelligence normaly don't report through the media, but mostly to the political system. Might be the politicians underestimated the situation, -;) .
1
Russia and, I suspect, Iran are the ones responsible for North Korea's missiles. As well as the fact that 'scientists' from North Korea have been educated outside the country. I should be of no surprise to anyone that they have these capabilities, especially given the fact that NK has repeatedly lied about it's military as it extorted money out of the US. What sickens me are the comments here that continue to attack the US and it's agencies as the 'evil' at the core of global issues. Do readers really believe that the world wants to live peacefully, but the US won't allow it???!
1
It was the responsibility of this president and his administration to protect Americans, i.e., detect the expedited development curve and stop it before things got out of hand.
The president, on the other hand, watches between four and eight hours of cable TV every day.
This "now ranks among America’s most significant intelligence failures." The CIA got it wrong but that doesn't excuse this administration whose job it is to make sure the CIA fixes their oversights in a timely manner.
So here we are. The worst president ever. The biggest North Korean dilemma ever. Empty desks at State. Empty suits in the White House. And the president is, according to General McMaster, "not disturbed."
Russian technology fled to North Korea. Russian parts were shipped to North Korea. That explains almost everything.
Russia like China would like nothing more than to push the United States off of the Korean Peninsula. Putin is head of an international criminal regime.
1
Of what value is underestimating a threat to the nation or the rate of development of other nations? Its baffling that we appear to lean back in comfort, rather than forward in anxiousness over what we don't know. Is the reason that we're "surprised" by developments that we are wrapped in the hubris that everyone finds America's exceptionalism and most powerful nation status as sacrosanct? If that's what we're relying on, we have found the enemy and are destined to have many more failures until we abandon that thinking, fast!
1
Negotiate? Negotiate what? Even in the 0.001% chance the regime agreed to freeze their program, they would just renege as soon as the US and South Korea fulfilled their obligation (i.e. a US troop withdrawal). Rinse and repeat with more bellicose threats and WMD tests, followed by more "negotiations" until the US is completely out of the South. Then, let the invasion begin,
The North knows that once US forces leave, they are never coming back.
How many times is the left willing to be duped in pursuit of that forever-elusive "peace in our time?"
8
OK until the last paragraph. Would Straight Furrow prefer war in our time?
'They [i e, 'senior intelligence officials'] assumed that North Korea would need about as much time to solve the rocket science as other nations did during the Cold War, underestimating its access to both advanced computer modeling and foreign expertise. They also misjudged Mr. Kim, 33, who took control of the dynastic regime in late 2011 and made the weapons program more of a priority than his father or grandfather did.'
May I suggest that the basic assumption that led these official wrong was rather that sense of innate superiority with which the US government - and alas, a no small portion of the residents of that country seem to view the rest of the world ? The notion of 'US exceptionalism' and the concomitant sense of entitlement hardly promote a sober and realistic view of the world - the ancient Greeks termed this state of mind 'hubris', which carried with it consequences familiar to all who have read the tragedies....
Henri
3
First off, whatever the current prevailing US intelligence assessments are of the rapidly emerging North Korean nuclear ICBM capability, they are almost certain to err towards underestimation — after all that has been the norm over more than a quarter century.
Secondly, it is 99% certain that short of the outright collapse of the current regime, NK will not surrender or substantively curtail its offensive nuclear weapons capability. NK is de facto the newest member of the most dangerous group of nations on the planet.
The seminal issue is defined by the question of how the US, and the nations in the East Asian region will deal with this new and dangerous reality short of war and the unimaginable conflagration it is almost certain to unleash.
All of the other machinations over this immensely threatening situation, to include a long litany of recriminations, are unneeded and distracting diversions from this core challenge.
North Korea’s rapid rocket advances were a retrospectively obvious risk for many of the same reasons there is now a private rocket industry. The hardest lessons were all learned by American and Soviet engineers many decades and billions of dollars ago. Though advanced designs are secret, the basic principles of designing a spacecraft are largely in the public domain. Rocket engine theory is taught at many technology-centric universities. Everything from advanced computers to composite materials are available off-the-shelf. A lack of imagination helped to allow the 9-11 attacks to take shape undetected. We must finally learn to shed our human propensity to disbelieve inconvenient realities.
25
Us rage and anger at other Countries is always in inverse proportion to their size. The smaller they are the angrier we get. The us is so tiring. If they are smal enough we invade. Grenada comes to mind. This behavior is embarrassing and shameful. North Korea is no threat to anyone, while the US is a threat to everyone. We are disgusting.
7
From Reagan included to up until the mid 2000, non proliferation was not a priority for the US government and its agencies. Cold War and Afghanistan provided the cover for Pakistan to acquire the technology and then disseminate it and spread it around. Then neo-conservative obsession with the axis of evil took precedence. We know now that the Bush (father) administration lied about Pakistan when it certified its compliance up until 1990, with non proliferation legislation. Read the Wikipedia on Richard Barlow or Seymour Hersch 1993 article and everything becomes clear.
1
Trump is in charge of the most effective nuclear arsenal in the world. He is as unstable as Kim. In my opinion none of the nuclear powers in the world are run by stable governments. In the european countries, they are just as likely to become fascists like the US through a racist nationalists revival, Pakistan is super unstable even internally, India and Pakistan hate each other. And the Chinese and Russians both seek world domination and probably helped N. Korea arm themselves. I am not sure that N. Korea is even in the top ten of threats to continued human existence. The madness of our Kings is embarrassing. Life is good, but they want to spread pain, and seemingly the people want them to do it. The only people that need to worry about Korea are the Koreans, because that is where the war will be, at least at first.
U.S. Military Intelligence - an oxymoron
1. Hacking the U.S. North Korea 2016 elections
2. American troops killed in South Sudan
3. Underestimating North Korea
4. Underestimating the involvement of Iran, China, or Russia in helping North Korea
5. Recent attacks (last 10 years) of American Embassies*
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_U.S._diplomatic_facilities
And now under Trump, who knows what meddling he's up to with military intelligence since his claim is that he's a genius!
1
There's nothing we can do now.
We need to massively increase our investment in our defensive capabilities. Keep all the sanctions, stop all negotiations... it's waste of time. Stop feeding Kim's narrative! Total radio silence from our top officials with North Korea and the press will do more... after all...we don't negotiate with terrorists.
2
I'm tempted to agree (but not entirely sure yet).
This comment echoes frequently aired laments (from right-winger) about our abandonment of Star Wars missile defense development.
If the art of forethought/prescience is projecting into the future lessons of the past, we must look to the paradigm changes that set in when 9/11 jolted us out of the illusion of security & relative immunity to terrorism, & apply that terrifying "slap" to where we are now.
Bad as 9/11 was, it was a halcyon golden age (as was the Cold War & Cuban Missile Crisis before *it*, because some kind of rationality & concern for self-preservation among the parties could be presupposed, creating a reasonably reliable stable, and ultimately very salutary stalemate) when nuclear weapons were monopolized by reasonably rational & stable regimes, We underwent a national security revolution entailing 24 hour ubiquitous security measures/vigilance & massive resources & institutions wholly dedicated to preventing terrorist infiltration & targeting cells in their havens here & abroad.
This is our 9/11, a generation later. The new threat/paradigm is the broadly nuclearized world, the nuclear pandora's box fully unsealed. That's the increasing reality.
The only rational response could be thorough revision of security, even (in the extreme) de-centering of population centers in anticipation of eventual atomic warfare/attacks, but for now vast transfer of national resources to protection against such attacks.
2
Now we see how pathetic the "agreements" made by Carter, Clinton and Obama were with North Korea. The "highlight" of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy career.
6
funny how I remember Obama giving a graduation address where he said that the greatest threat to the United States was global warming
8
Correct. Nuclear war is moot on an uninhabitable planet.
1
As Nora Neale Hurston wrote - "Our Eyes Were Watching God"... and with this right-wing GOP, we will continue to do so as the dangers swarm.
Remember Trump said, "...I'm LIKE a smart guy..."
"...genius..." is a stretcher...
1
Although the article included the bogus, good for the press concept of "nuclear deterrent," it did not mention some other more relevant ones, such as "stooge," "proxy," or "false flag."
This seems straightforward: North Korea bought nuclear and ballistics technology from some country(ies) and used it to accelerate their program -- they didn't suddenly get lucky and smart. The vendors were probably Russia and/or Pakistan, the latter being the biggest known proliferator in the world. And what happened this week between the US and Pakistan? Trump threatened to cut off their military aid because Pakistan is playing a "double game." So my money is on Pakistan for nuclear technology, but Russia for missile technology. Aren't they the world's only source for solid fuel?
And we all know there will be no retaliation against Russia...
3
"The only way to win is not to play."
-War Games, 1983
That was the only sane advice to the insane US-Soviet standoff, but only because there were somewhat sane leaders. Even today, there are somewhat sane leaders in most countries in the insane nuclear club. But it takes only one mentally unbalanced person in power to unbalance the equation of terror.
We now have TWO mentally challenged "leaders" who cannot grasp the reality of the only way to win. Worse, both of them are surrounded by feeble-minded people who will not restrain them. MAD means nothing to those who would actually prefer mutually assured destruction over affronts to their tiny, bloated egos. These mentally and spiritually compromised alpha males are willing to to train their own version of the Death Star upon their own planet in order to die as martyrs for their great cause: their insatiable pride. Better to die and take everyone with them than to be humiliated.
So human civilization finds itself between the rock of MAD and the hard place of nuclear arsenals; between the unthinkable and two men who are thinking about it. And the skilled and seasoned negotiators are jumping ship because the trickle-down insanity from the top makes their jobs moot.
Yet, there is still hope. The people of planet Earth can still bypass the frightened and impotent
government officials who no longer represent our interests (#1:survival). It is now only We The People who can restrain the madmen with their big red buttons.
2
They always go back to using the intelligence community as a scapegoat. There has been overwhelming evidence and warnings provided to at least four different presidents who did little or nothing over two decades. Here is a report to Congress from 2010 stating "In the next decade it is reasonable to assume North Korea will successfully flight test ... and be able to mate a nuclear warhead to a proven delivery system." http://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2010-DOD-GM...
2
"the newly installed president began repeating, publicly and privately, that he inherited “a mess” in North Korea because his predecessors did not do enough.
Former officials in the Obama administration dispute that." Let them dispute that all they wantl The "policy" of Strategic Patience was little more than "let's hope the North Korean regime collapses sometime during the Obama presidency." No talks, no hope of talks, no engagement, no feelers, no attempt at anything other than "patience." This entire scenario could have been avoided back in the 1990's with the acceptance of the Agreed Framework, negotiated by the Clinton Administration. But our peculiar political gamesmanship prevented that agreement from even being seriously considered. There was no way that the newly empowered GOP Congress was going to hand the Clinton administration a foreign policy victory--especially on North Korea. Why do something good for the country, for the world, when you can "stick it" to the opposition? That's US politics over the past 30 years, and it is sickening. Now we are getting ready to do the same thing in Iran. Meanwhile, the threat of a nuclear confrontation, or even a miscalculation by one side, is greatly enhanced. You get what you pay for, and man, are ever getting what we deserve.
6
I remember clearly when North Korea first tested their nuclear weapon in 2006. The Bush and Obama administrations did nothing to hold them in check. Worse yet, the Seoul government provided billions to North Korea in a joint industrial manufacturing complex for years. The train has left the station. They got us.
3
Another policy that seems to have backfired was to discourage the immigration of Russian scientists and engineers to the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent financial depression of the 90s. So working for the Koreans, south and north, was more lucrative than driving cabs in Moscow for many senior aerospace and weapons designers
3
I didn't beat my dead horse today yet, so let me rant away, & I mean this seriously: we're in this predicament largely because of the antiintellectual, neocon human capital movement (UofC economics & their votaries, cohorts), which true to its money-idolizing ways, turned our educational system, starting in the 80's, into a mere "national personnel agency" (see N. Lemann, "The Big Test").
Generations of students were quietly indoctrinated into "human capital"-'s religion of money, thinking the only role of their intellect is private financial success, deemed a public service by human capital priests through the Mandeville-Smith bromide about "private vices, public virtues" competition for wealth in itself promoting the common good by efficiently distributing resources, & the rest of the neocon social Darwinist shtick.
Go to the top colleges, with unprecedented, unrivaled resources, & where were all of the *ostensibly* (based on their meticulously, assiduously polished records/GPA's) high achieving students flocking? Finance and computers.
There's been a brain drain in public service because human capital/neocon said business and getting rich were the ultimate public service. Yeah, a lot of them went into law, and within that group many entered government, but across the board, EVISCERATION of intellect in civic life, government, and defense policy & planning.
Guys Iike Tom Friedman (Lexus and the Olive Tree) telling us having McDonald's everywhere will fix everything.
2
Let me clarify for skeptics:
Just when the New Right was gaining ascendancy with the election of Reagan and the final knockout blows were being delivered at Soviet communism, and yuppies were running around in their power ties, and Ivan Boesky was telling UC Berkeley grads to go east and get rich on Wall Street (cheating, if you have to), young man you, the education establishment was putting together neocon reports like "A Nation At Risk," which for all their accuracy about shortcomings in American education, construed the matter as being entirely about training workers for the rigors of global capitalism, success or failure (individually and collectively) supposedly turning on the marketable skills gleaned in school. Whereas the Sputnik Era saw intensified science education. so we wouldn't lose the space race, education in the post-Cold War was for dominance in global capitalism, pure and simple. We had to out-work and out-entrepreneur the competition, and education was the key.
Lo and behold, to the neocons'/human capital folks' (bewilderment), adversaries emerged who didn't care that much about money, wave after wave. Al Caida, ISIS, Timothy McVeigh, Kim Jung Un, who simply hated us because we threaten their self-respect, not wanting our Lexus OR our McDonald's. Neocons and neocon education, being purely materialistic and $-focused, would have no answer. Nor would citizens trained in learning-for-grades-for-money.
Let me clarify for skeptics:
Just when the New Right was gaining ascendancy with the election of Reagan & the final knockout blows were being delivered at Soviet communism, & yuppies were running around in their power ties, & Ivan Boesky was telling UC Berkeley grads to "go east, get rich on Wall Street (cheating if you have to), young man," the education establishment was putting together neocon reports like "A Nation At Risk," which for all their accuracy about shortcomings in American education, construed the matter as being entirely about training workers for the rigors of global capitalism, success or failure (individually & collectively) supposedly turning on the marketable skills gleaned in school. Whereas the Sputnik Era saw intensified science education so we wouldn't lose the space race, education in the post-Cold War was for dominance in global capitalism, pure & simple. We had to out-work, & out-entrepreneur the competition, & education was the key. This view was ratified, & never challenged by, neocon, fake-dem Bill Clinton.
Lo & behold, to the neocons'/human capital folks' (bewilderment), adversaries emerged who didn't care that much about money, wave after wave. Al Caida, ISIS, Timothy McVeigh, Kim Jung Un, who simply hated us because we threaten their self-respect, not wanting our Lexus OR our McDonald's. Neocons and neocon education, being purely materialistic and $-focused, would have no answer. Nor would citizens trained in learning-for-grades-for-money.
The intelligence community has repeatedly warned four presidents over two decades. How is this declassified assessment wrong? "in the next decade, it is reasonable to assume North Korea will successfully flight test ... and be able to mate a nuclear warhead to a proven delivery system." July 2010, 2010-DOD-GMD-Report.pdf.
1
Nuclear proliferation is one of our country’s greatest threats. It’s clear Trump’s untested national security team is failing.
Obama and Hillary did nothing for 8 years negotiating meaningless treaties for show and drawing imaginary lines in the sand. President Trump and all Americans now have to deal with a much more serious problem.
8
Kim sought security from the existential threat that America, World's Police (when it suits us), has posed toward dictators such as Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.
Now, Kim not only has the "nuclear" card to keep invasion away, but he gained great Face by staring down and defeating the most powerful man in the world, the POTUS, on the international stage.
In the air, he shot missiles that Trump had no power to stop, failing on his empty threats to do so.
At sea, Trump looked entirely incompetent, misplacing submarines and even losing sailors in rushing to look mas macho.
On land, Trump's cohorts suggested N Korea posed such a threat that Americans in S Korea should flee.
In the media, Kim took the name of Rocket Man and The Donald was called out as The Dotard, which Americans now see is the general consensus among much of Trump's staff.
Kim knows he is too poor and weak to attack anyone. Trump, however, treated him like he can, and gave Kim all the power he needs.
Trump is so thin-skinned that even now the only concern in this scenario is that he hasn't learned to stop fueling Kim's virtual power and decides to keep provoking him, leading to further decline of the international political capital of the office of the POTUS.
4
If we accept North Korea as a sovereign nation, they we must allow them to develop as they see fit. During our blustery protestations and severe sanctions, we have accomplished little but to starve the population, suppress development and give the government arguments to use against cooperation and compromise with the rest of the world.
Perhaps if, instead of threats, we offered food and farm equipment and medical help...?
4
When dealing with countries that enter agreements to obtain benefits from the rest of the world without keeping the agreement, we need concrete verification associated with each benefit.
With regard to N. Korea this would mean things like the number of allowed missile launches and detected nuclear blasts. For sanctions this would require Monitoring the non-North Korean side each the land and sea borders with N. Korean. U. N. country ships entering N. Korean water should be inspected. Ideally U. S. inspectors would be inspecting any shipping or pipelines at the N. Korean borders. Trade and banking with the U. S. could be contingent on such inspections.
If the reality is that some countries fully intend to enable N. Korea, then the above will never be put into practice. However, if that is that case, I suspect any Sanctions are destined to be minimally effective anyway.
How could N. Korea survive as a country without international support particularly in the area of oil?
John
1
I recall this problem was beginning to boil in the early George Bush administration, but that both the President, the congress and all the media including the Times, seemed be sleepwalking into the Clone Wars in Iraq and Adghanistan.(Clones of Vietnam-and of each other.). The Bush administration had no interest or time,, left over to show a paticle of concern in the North Korean Problem.
Wasn't Raines running the Times into the ground then? A real southern fried screwup!
With an intelligence community that would lie up "Russian interference" in our elections, why would anyone think these cowboys would necessarily predict hard to know military detail from NK? Then we are handed this tabloid hash of a story, basically a gossip column that uses clickbait terms (Russian uranium!) to agitate the reader.
Consider the stupidity of this alarmist rhetoric: "... technological advances that seemed highly threatening but not worth the risk of a war that could kill millions in South Korea and Japan." Well massive DUH! No kidding!
Report on how the media uses agitation to keep flames on stories that are much more tepid, would you please? NK is going to protect itself, that's all. The lame irony that the US would crow about NK while keeping over 50 bases in SK is not lost on me. Friends who serve our military welfare system in SK talk about the food & the girls and the speed of the Internet, war not so much.
3
"the newly installed president began repeating, publicly and privately, that he inherited “a mess” in North Korea because his predecessors did not do enough.
Former officials in the Obama administration dispute that." Let them dispute that all they want! The "policy" of Strategic Patience was little more than "let's hope the North Korean regime collapses sometime during the Obama presidency." No talks, no hope of talks, no engagement, no feelers, no attempt at anything other than "patience." This entire scenario could have been avoided back in the 1990's with the acceptance of the Agreed Framework, negotiated by the Clinton Administration. But our peculiar political gamesmanship prevented that agreement from even being seriously considered. There was no way that the newly empowered GOP Congress was going to hand the Clinton administration a foreign policy victory--especially on North Korea. Why do something good for the country, for the world, when you can "stick it" to the opposition? That's US politics over the past 30 years, and it is sickening. Now we are getting ready to do the same thing in Iran. Meanwhile, the threat of a nuclear confrontation, or even a miscalculation by one side, is greatly enhanced. You get what you pay for, and man, are we ever getting what we deserve.
2
The U.S. and the UN should just recognize the obvious, that North Korea is a nuclear and long range missile armed state, remove the prohibitions and the sanctions, and attempt to bring it back as an active participant in the non-proliferation treaty and the IAEA. Allow it to join the little club of countries with the nuclear pistol pointed at each others forehead, which has been remarkably effective at keeping the nuclear peace. This would have the unfortunate side effect of ensuring for the short term the subjugation of the people of the North to a brutal regime, but would certainly be better than the death of millions of Koreans that would result from a restart of the Korean war.
1
Well at least we have a very stable genius with a big red button on his desk.
Here is how two agreements with North Korea were sabotaged by then-VP Dick Cheney. Read it and weep. (And weep that this was not covered in this article! Why not???)
“North Korea reached agreements with both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations that could have averted [this] threat, had they been completed…Instead, a group of Bush administration officials led by then-Vice President Dick Cheney sabotaged both agreements…”
From: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43048-how-cheney-and-his-allies-creat...
4
1 million South Koreans dead, means the end of American interests in Asia.? If North Korea did a nuclear attack, would China and Russia not become players in an overwhelming counter attack without regard? Not hearing these hard questions.
Kim Jong-un has proven more aggressive than his father after he succeeded him in late 2011. Kim Jong-il acquired nuclear know-how from the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau after the fall of the Soviet Union. Russian scientists helped him build the nuclear programme. But North Korea had long lacked the sophisticated materials, engineering expertise and computer-driven machine tools for the kinds of advanced missiles it has recently tested, and it took years of slow, patient acquisition efforts to get its act together, according to experts.
It's only under Kim Jong-un that the regime could capitalise on the knowledge it had been sitting on for decades and speed up the missile test programme. There are even blueprints available to build missiles that launch heavy warheads into space from sea. And scientists believe North Korea could also have ready-made missile engines imported from Russia or Ukraine. While diplomacy should be prioritised, it's imperative to prevent North Kroea from leading a nulcear proliferation.
2
War on NK does not have to be overt. Moreover it should be following the same tack NK takes to evade sanctions. NK is not a country but a very large crime syndicate. Quiet disruption of all of it's efforts to survive will eventually starve it into oblivion if we are constant in pressure and action. Everything else including peace negotiation is just a facade they use to improve their position and gain time and concessions. That's the way they have always been.
1
Bunk. Get your facts straight. The U.S. was not "caught off guard". The Clinton administration, and later the Obama administration, decided purposely to provide North Korea with the means and methods and funds to develop nuclear power. Then North Korea broke the one sided deal and turned that technology towards nuclear weapons development. Clinton, and then Obama trusted Kim Jong-un's father, and then the little dictator himself. They were played big time, and now we are faced with a fully nuclear weaponized North Korea, which will soon sell these weapons to the highest bidder.
3
There have never been good options for North Korea; not during the Korean war, not at the time of the Armistice, not after the armistice, not when they didn't have nuclear weapons, not now that they do. The issues of the Korean Peninsula are artifacts of the Post-WW II world order, artifacts of the Cold War, and actually continue to be artifacts of the Cold War. Fortunately or unfortunately, Cold War solutions continue to be the best solutions now, as they have been for decades. Strategic Patience doesn't just characterize the Foreign Policy of the Obama administration, it was arguably the core strategy of the entire Cold War. It is the only hopeful strategic component found in MAD, i.e. the hope that Diplomacy and "war by other means" eventually changes conditions over time. It requires the long view. The Chinese get this, as do the Russians to some degree. The U.S. vacillates from reasoned perspectives, to impulses characterized by impatience arising from profound structural problems that enable habits of short attention span. Trump is the current embodiment of the latter. There are no good options. Let's hope he's gone before the worst options are chosen.
5
The North Korean problem is the result of the failed intelligence, the failed policy, and the deliberate ignorance and obfuscation of the Obama administration.
2
The thing about humans and technology, whether it’s an arrow, a printing press or a bomb, is that eventually we all have access. And some of us are suicidal.
1
The American intelligence community has been a failure for decades. Before 9/11, going through cubic feet of intelligence files was pretty much an amusing endeavor, it apparent these agencies were bloated bureaucracies, often inventing enemies to justify increasing budgets and power. Simultaneously, they had become highly politicized, trying to please Presidents, not one of whom has ever held the agencies accountable. After 9/11, this was no longer funny.
The purpose of intelligence is to gather and analyze data, giving the results to the President and other policy-making officials. Instead, the agencies have tried to please Presidents, presenting "evidence" they believe he wanted to hear. Meanwhile, Presidents have given them legitimate military functions, such as the targeting drone program. Through all this, genuine intelligence gathering and analysis has deteriorated badly. Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Korea.
If we had really wanted to prevent North Korea's development of nuclear weapons, ICBMs, and cyber attacks, we would have gone after those countries and corporations -- even if American or allied -- that supplied the know-how and material for these programs. Neither the Bush, Obama, nor Trump administrations choked off the intellectual, financial, and material resources necessary to build these weapons. It's not like Pyongyang University is known for its outstanding physics department, nor is North Korea awash in foreign capital and domestic uranium.
2
The failure of the US to stop NK from developing nuclear-tipped ICBMs (and shorter-range nuclear missiles) will have extraordinarily severe consequences over the next decade.
Notwithstanding some success in increasing sanctions against NK, it should be evident that the US has virtually zero ability to "control" and even to "contain" NK's actions. NK acts when it wants to, according to its timetable. We may see a short period of relative calm, as the Olympic Games take place in a few weeks, but we can anticipate a return to crisis mode soon afterwards.
Even when NK is not testing missiles, its nuclear program continues to advance. The arsenal of nukes and missiles continues to increase. Progress is being made in the nuclear warhead design.
NK will resume its provocations once it becomes dissatisfied with the level of concessions it is able to extort from SK and the US. The nuclear program has become the means by which NK can blackmail the world in perpetuity, and if sufficient concessions are not forthcoming, NK will use asymmetrical warfare to put pressure on SK/Japan/US. There is always the threat of proliferation.
In the short term, continuing to endure nuclear blackmail in order to avoid war may be effective, but in the long run, war may be impossible to avert. NK will achieve a level of destructiveness which will cause it to miscalculate. It will make demands impossible for the US to meet, or it will take steps which require a military response.
1
So now North Korea has Nuclea weapons, they will never dismantle their weapons. More and More countries are dveloping Nuclea weapons. India and Pakistan where there is no Love loss towards each other hve Nuclea weapons for decades. ResponsibleLeaders have always known you don't talk about using Nuclea weapons, That seems to have changed in todays world. I have Never been scared of Countries having Nuclea Weapons as Sacred as I am of Kim and Trump Talking like two kids about to have for a snowball fight.
Mr. Sanger and Broad: thank you for the picture you painted regarding our security agencies' failure to ascertain how quickly the N. Koreans were progressing in the development of their WMD program. Whether it took the N. Korean's another year or three, it was inevitable that they would eventually succeed. Once again our leaders dilly dally and frown on how quickly the N. Korean's developed, manufactured and tested these weapons rather than facing the fact that a military action is the only way they will be stopped. What dumbfounds me it that the USA is willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe trillions, on its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, it won't confront a much more pressing problem, N. Korea and its nukes. We need a leader with a Gulf War mentality. Go in with overwhelming power and let's take out the N. Korean leadership and end their WMD program.
Until now I was not aware that Obama waged cyber-war against N. Korea. This seems riskier than Trump's threats and insults. The cyber actions had real consequences to N. Korea and we risked retaliation. Was the Sony hack possible retaliation? What if Kim decides that a cyber attack deserves a nuclear response?
1
Why did a private sector open source intelligence department predict this far in advance of the national intelligence community? See Middlebury institute center for non-proliferation studies.
This really is no surprise as American intelligence agencies have failed us in the most recent modern times. US intelligence failed to detect and thwart the 9/11 terror attacks. US intelligence failed us by falsely claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). And now US intelligence has failed us by not recognizing the seriousness of advances in the DPRK's ICBM missile program. American intelligence agencies rely far too much on technology and not enough on good old cold war cloak & dagger tactics. Of course the DPRK got its hands on Soviet rocket technology. That is why it's missile program has progressed so rapidly recently. The DPRK will attain a nuclear ICBM program whether we like it or not. We had better figure out how to navigate a world where North Korea has nuclear weapons because it will have them whether we like it or not.
1
If the U.S. hadn't attacked Iraq, hadn't dug Saddam from his spider-hole, hadn't allowed the trial by the (America friendly...) government to go ahead or _had_ intervened in the final execution order all of this might not be happening.
Same goes for Qadhafi. He too was killed after the U.S. meddled in another country and tried to promote "regime change". And we see the same thing with Iran today, just read Trump's tweets.
If Kim Jong-Un has _one iota_ of intelligence and common sense he knows that "the bomb" is his only savior. Showing Mar-a-Lago being destroyed in a recent propaganda video was a clear message: "You hurt me, I hurt you, and where it really hurts".
I don't know if it will work - Trump may be to thick to fully understand this, or too confident in the U.S. missile defense systems. But if I were Kim this is exactly what I would have done.
He's not a madman, he may be the sanest person on earth, dealing with an insane U.S. president and a country that thinks it rules the world!
8
Does the U.S. actually have a functioning intelligence service? Tim Weiner's excellent A Legacy of Ashes recounts the history of the CIA going back to the end of WWII. If he is correct, we never have had one well into the recent past. Our people were always working clandestine operations to mess with people we thought were too left leaning (e. g. see our current difficulties with Iran), rather than doing intelligence work. We went into all our post WWII crises flying blind. Botching N. Korea appears just part of a long term problem.
15
Part of the Soviet missile manufacturing was done in Ukraine. The NYTs reported that a Ukrainian billionaire who took over control of the operation sold missile technology to N. Korea.
The NoK’s do not have the gumption. They can only threaten. It is a game only.
2
So the reason Obama did not do anything about the Rocket Man was because nobody warned him.
I see.
7
He approve cyber attacks. Pretty powerful if you understand that kind of stuff. But, you had to read the article first.
A robust cyberattacke against accessible military infrastructure followed by several targeted EMP blasts in and around leadership, stockpile, and launch sites would be the best way to limit launch and retaliatory capabilities. Then leet SOCOM send in our finest SPEC-OPS for a decapitation strike against Kim Jong Pajama-boy and his top henchmen. No worries about too much collateral damage to civilian electronic infrastructure, since most of the country doesn't have electricity or the money to buy consumer electronics anyway. Just begin leaflet dropping and loudspeaker and AM broadcasts 14 days prior telling NOKO regulars to not launch retaliatory strikes and that they will soon be a free people and other countries are coming to help them. Pretty sure 90% of the country is, figuratively and literally, starving for change.
Give.The.Order.
If we ever get out of this crisis without a nuclear conflagration, I propose a modest revolution that might help prevent similar crises in the future: Establish real, & very stringent, but unofficial intellectual standards for the presidency, by the following process:
Assign a panel of university historians, political scientists, economists, & ethicists to pose oral exam questions to candidates on national television, perhaps as an extended segment (presumably, each candidate examed for at least 20 minutes) of each debate.
A typical question might be: Please provide a deontological & consequentialist analysis of the causes & various parties' involvement in & responses to the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the Versailles Treaty, & the Marshall Plan, or: Please compare the dynamics of Sunni-Shia conflict in Iraq, Iran, & the Arabian peninsula, with detailed reference to historical developments since the conflict's 7th c. origin, & some attention to the political histories of these regions going back to Persia, Mesopotamia, etc. Or: Compare the Whig, Federalist, & Democratic-Republican views of Constitutional interpretation, Rule of Law, etc.
Have the scholarly panel score performance, indeed incorporate "American Idol" format. There is NO reason whatsoever not to adopt contemporary pop culture (intellectualizing it) into the process, indeed there's a duty to do so.
Antiintellectualism (see Hofstadter) has taken such deep root, the pendulum must swing the other way.
2
Great concept, but this sort of public inquisition is more suited to a proposed Secretary of State or head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff than to a figurehead President. More to the point, it would alienate the 98% of the electorate who haven't a clue what you're talking about -- and more significantly, couldn't care less.
A vibrant democracy requires public involvement; pummeling them about the intellect and humiliating their standard-bearers on national television can only foster further resentment of the "egghead" elite behind the scenes, and lead to the sort of fiasco we're trying to mitigate at present.
2
Obviously, the "exam" should cover workings of political institutions, legislative & judicial process, presumably some basic science, some legal history & other relevant knowledge.
Almost as important as (tempted to say "more important than," but in the midst of such crises, one should be "realistic") ensuring the president is intellectually equipped for the job would be the broad *educational benefits* of incorporating intellectual screening into the election: viewers would be exposed to the knowledge itself, & the process would convey & teach a respect for learning.
We've experimented with opening up the presidency to non-scholars, based on the American traditions of anti-elitism (especially as to intellectual elites; money & entertainment elites usually pretty welcome) & antiintellectualism.
The greatest presidents, from founding fathers to Lincoln & beyond have been men of great scholarly attainment. Intellectual depth certainly doesn't guarantee anything, but it's more strongly linked with presidential achievement than any other strength or qualification.
Yes, we'd lose a lot of great/potentially great leaders, & educationally non-privileged citizens of great capacity & virtue would be hampered, or excluded altogether.
But the "noble savage" mythology about superiority of untutored instinct, or suffiency of unrefined raw brainpower or business prowess (often the successful businessman-candidate's selling point), has done irreparable harm. Swing the pendulum back.
1
Capital accumulation is not ruled by reason or historical or scientific knowledge.
Plato's Republic did not even work in Ancient Greece.
Clinton and Obama underestimated North Korea as their payoffs prove. The president will not pay $ so good for him.
5
The price may be blood in this case.
One can only wonder why the "Liberals"
did their best, or was it their worst given the perspective of time,
to de-fund Reagan's "Star Wars".
Spend every penny you can on Missile Defense and
Satellites that can track North Korea's every move.
Develop neutron bombs and highly accurate/quick firing
missiles that can take out every missile North Korea has.
Work as if your life depends on it
for surely your life and your children's
depend on it.
5
So we are back to the belittling of the intelligence community again? The same one the Times and Post whimsically spent years crippling during the pre-2016 election interference by Putin so named Wikileaks/Assange, Snowden, Manning, etc...? I am no one and I have correctly surmised NorK's trajectory the last 15 years by listening to NPR. How is that? What does the Times and Post think intelligence is? All sources should be headed, some are classified and most are not classified. Most are plainly collectable and actionable.
3
I believe that Russia is maneuvering to destabilize American power around the world. And it seems plausible that Russian "freelancers" are involved in the rapid advance of North Korea's technology.
However, with Vladistock being 50 miles from the North Korean border, it seems unlikely the Russian state would actively aid the North Koreans or want to risk a nuclear war in their neighborhood. Same goes for China.
They were too busy spying on the Trump campaign.
1
Yes, the entirety of the US' intelligence apparatus was spying on the Trump campaign. That must be it.
2
It's a form of racism to assume that Asians can't master physics and chemistry. Koreans have been working with their own explosives and rockets for centuries.
4
Not a word in this article regarding what happned to the agreement signed with Clinton. That it was torn up by the arrogant George W. Bush isn't mentioned.
Why is that?
2
Maybe because the North was caught violating it in 1998?
Clearly, they got help.
Secret support of several countries who have the advanced missile technology may have helped the North Koreans to achieve their objectives.US should understand the the double role many countries play on the face of this world.It is all business and tit for tat strategy. We just have to be careful and not create too many enemies in business and dealing with others and not poke over nose in their internal affairs.. However,history has proven again and again that non violence and good will prevail in the end. Threat to others in UN or world forums win us nothing
2
The authors make no comment about the fact that a CIA agent became aware, during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, that Pakistan was facilitating technology to North Korea for the fabrication of its nuclear arsenal. This agent was a hindrance to the then effort to arm Osama Bin Ladem to fight the Russians. Pakistan permited the use of its country to ship arms there and forward these to Osama. Thus this took priority and the US looked the other way regarding the aid to N Korea...the agent was eventually fired...has sued the US govt and failed.
Unfortunate miopic policy and a great blunder which now comes to bite us in the proverbial behind!
3
Two facts stand out from a reading of this excellent article on the North Korean nuclear program:
1) The arrogance of the American intelligence community is long-standing and outrageous, and
2) Regardless of which version one accepts of how the faulty intelligence occurred, there is absolutely no place for the childish taunting by Donald Trump of the North Korean leader.
4
The very rapid success of NK with a new ICBM design without a previous testing program suggests that the US is possibly bring gamed by Russia and China in the wake of the post-Crimean annexation breakdown of relations. No country has ever fielded an advanced missile on such a slender indigenous industrial basis without foreign aid.
That may be the true failure of US intelligence: underestimating the role of Russia:
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/aussenansicht-raketen-fuer-kim-1.3801299
2
Not one member of our 17 or more "intelligence agencies" were fired at 9-11. In fact, a new one was created and everyone got a promotion. Something to ponder....
5
Intelligence gathering is a cloak & dagger process. Being behind the intelligence curve is, and will always be part of the equation. The current North Korea matter merely demonstrates the U.S. cannot be the world's police service. We have capable partners who must always be part of the intelligence component: A perpetual dance with angles and devils- otherwise known as foreign diplomacy.
4
"Mr. Trump’s untested national security team..."? Are the reporters stupid, or are they intentionally attempting to portray this administration in a bad light once again?
Trump's top national security officials have more than 100 years' worth of experience, combined, in the top echelons of the military/national security sphere. To somehow suggest they're not 'up to the task' of dealing with North Korea is the height of ignorance...or partisanship. Not sure which.
1
Why don't we ever see an article about the number of deaths in NK due to starvation, execution and sickness compared to the number that would die in a blitzkrieg war to remove Kim?
2
Not only children play kick the can! Sadly those who denigrated/attack Donald Trump are the ones who bare responsibility for The Nuclear Can, The lousy road and the world tension surrounding nuclear terror threat. Thank you Bill, George and Barack.
1
Past presidents, especially weak-kneed lead from behind Obama, allowed this disaster to accelerate. The problem is, that NK will most certainly keep improving capabilities and strike first! That is a certainty that even our incompetent intelligence agencies surely can't miss! Trump's hand will be forced.
2
I can’t help but feel we will be reading this same news story in 10 years when Obama’s Iran nuclear gift comes due.
2
Does the US or other Western nations truly believe that North Korea or any other nation wants nuclear annihilation. What North Korea does want is status on the world stage and the kind of economic status that their brethren in South Korea have achieved. If Mr Kim achieves this his saber rattling will stop and his narcissistic needs will be fulfilled. We are not going to disarm North Korea, this is a pipe dream. What is needed is diplomacy and patience and the the trust of the North Koreans. In this way our mini Cold War with North Korea can be resolved. War is not an option.
1
Is there any thing that our expensive "intelligence" establishment has gotten right in recent memory? During the Cold War, they outrageously over-stated and over hyped the capabilities of the Soviet Union, then its collapse was entirely missed. 9/11 was another massive failure for which no one was held accountable. The N.Y. Times reported last week that these agencies spend much more time talking about terrorism than doing anything about it. So, that they under-estimated North Korea's capabilities should come as no surprise. If there were a lot more attention to intelligence gathering and analysis rather than covert operations, which usually end in disaster, we might be getting more value for money.
1
The rise of North Korea as a nuclear power is just the latest example of the eight years of failed Obama foreign policy. Instead of meeting the problem head on and resolving it, he nibbled around the edges effectively doing nothing. The failed rocket launches were attributed to Obama's sabotage efforts but what did that really accomplish? Nothing. Obama refused to put pressure on China to reign in North Korea or be vocal about Korea's nuclear buildup on the world stage. Sad.
1
Would anyone care to re-examine their support for Edward Snowden's revelations of US security and technology in light of this rapid "progress" of North Korea? Re-reading the many comments from 2014 on the alleged moral imperatives and "heroism" of Snowden's acts, in light of the rapid progress of the North Korean regime, I wonder how much of this progress was escalated by his revelations. Well, he may write a book to tell us, as he enjoys his isolated celebrity, but then, the Russians will not allow it to be published. I wonder how much "hands on" help he is giving from his current location...
1
Who will be secure with Kim running a WMD blackmail racket and a WMD arms bazaar for the world's abundant supply of Kim wannabes and terrorists eager to buy and use WMDs? Addressing and solving exactly these threats will ultimately determine whether ongoing diplomatic efforts succeed or fail to resolve the Korean crisis.
We need to be very very humble when it comes to predicting global events and understanding what happens inside foreign countries.
Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the rise of ISIS, the Arab Spring, etc, etc, etc.
4
Kim Jong-Un will never ditch his nuclear-tipped missile program, because it is his fame, the greatest achievement of his life. Can the Americans put up with a possibility that their several cities might be deleted by NK’s nuclear strike? Why not? Americans very well know that all their country can be deleted by Russia’s nuclear attack and they live with that because the US can do nothing. The US cannot not attack Russia first without retribution. The same is with NK today. The chance has been missed.
1
If the American government were not led by a bullying ignoramus, perhaps Kim would not be accelerating his weapons program. This is of course, speculative.
1
The obvious reason behind this failure is that you don't dare tell the King of Fools information he doesn't want to hear, and you definitely don't present him with facts that contradict what he wants to believe.
It begs the question as to why the word 'intelligence" is used here at all.
Perhaps it is not appreciated that the technological provenance is the US itself. Our own effective missiles are pointed back at us: former president Bill Clinton and his administration, sold key missile guidance and related know-how to China. North Korea is a China client state. Nuclear science and technology, whether for energy or weaponry, was let out of the bag decades ago. It has become utterly fungible around the world. No one owns it per se, but some states will steal it, buy it and sell it: they include China, Pakistan, the US, India, Russia, Iran and Israel. The Clinton administration sale to China--a quid pro quo for campaign donations, among other considerations--was reported by the NYT: www.nytimes.com/1999/05/11/.../clinton-approves-technology-transfer-to-c... by the UKs Independent:
www.independent.co.uk/news/chinese-stole-all-nuclear-secrets-1096016.html; and by the Washington Post, which discussed Clintons cooperation and favoritism toward Loral Space CEO and Clinton campaign donor, Bernie Schwartz by facilitating his ability to sell export-controlled technology: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/missile/keystories.htm
1
so are you trying some kind of reverse psychology now, after the saddam hussain debacle when they so clearly overestimated his capabilities, are you going the other way to whip up support for a war?
1
So this acceleration happened under Donald Trump, not the 8 years of Obama, and Obama is actually the good guy who implemented the sabotage that helped blow up some tests...okay, got it...I'll take these talking points forward guys...
It’s depressing that all our agencies and the military didn’t have a clear picture and that many administrations ignored the things we knew about. How can the CIA, Pentagon, military special units and others we don’t know the names of simply not know? What the heck.
Now we have crazy in North Korea and crazy Trump at home. Americans suffer.
If we had attacked N.Korea last summer, using our overwhelming conventional forces to obliterate their nuclear, military, and leadership facilities, the N.Korean nuclear effort would be no more, and our forces would be presently busying themselves rooting out the remaining nuclear assets and criminal leadership. Meanwhile, the S.Koreans could be liberating the N.Korean death camps and reincorporating the North’s population into the global community.
So let me get this straight... North Korea has demonstrated (much to our surprise) that he is ready, willing and probably nearly able to blow up NYC and Chicago in an instant. Why exactly is Trump being accused of raising the stakes? What options are left to us except to be clear that any attack on us or our allies would result in the complete obliteration of North Korea? Seems to be that Trump is exactly the kind of person we need in office to deal with this maniac!!!
North Korea had the U.S. snookered way back in the late 1990s when its ability to quickly devastate Seoul in retaliation for any attack on the North emerged -and when US unwillingness to sacrifice hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in South Korea to avert the risks of a North Korean nuclear power became evident. US impotence in face of the increasing threat to the US homeland has grown more and more complete as North Korean ability to inflict massive costs for any military action against her extended to Japan (and thus the world economy, not to speak of the PRC). Of course, the possibility of US preemptive action against North Korean strategic nuclear capacity long was non-trivial if US rhetoric against allowing that capacity was lent any credence. However, as North Korean ability to immediately devastate the US moves well beyond remote possibility the preemption game especially to an end.
In light of this, talk of an intelligence lag does not seem very interesting unless one thinks that the preemption rhetoric was ever voiced in good faith by capable an resolutec persons. Even then. talk of an intelligence lag that neglects the possibility of direct reception of ICBM prototypes from Ukranian missile plant -and thus massive failure during Trump's first year in office- is defective.
Has the U.S. done well or did we grow feckless by losing the Cold War ability to "think the unthinkable?"
2
It is inaccurate to allege that North Korea made a "breakthrough". Their sudden "progress" apparently derived from buying rocket engines from a firm in Ukraine, which use to supply the old USSR, and which no longer had an established customer. It is likely these engines were smuggled to North Korea.
1
How come the US Intelligence agencies did not see it coming particularly when the whole world knew how we destabilized Africa after Qaddafi let go of his nuclear program. He was killed by European and American agents. MI6 was already in Libya prior to our talking about helping the so called democratic forces in Libya – the same forces we went to help in Syria, Iraq, and now Iran. With our track records how could anyone blame DPRK to expedite their plans to ensure survival and defense of their people?
The only way DPRK thought they could protect their country was to ensure that a price would be extracted from us if we attack them. It was never South Korea or Japan that made them shiver, it was always the US. They perceived us as their mortal enemy.
The Republicans are too engrossed in their own survival issues and Mr. Trump is too busy telling people that he is a genius and went to many good colleges to pay any attention to this serious matter. He is busy issuing foreign policy pronouncement on his 3 o clock twitter feed. I wonder if we have any adult in the White House any more.
3
Clara,
One of the problem with our administrations stem from the fact that we all tend to believe (strongly) that our intelligence agencies are superior, capable of detect problems in advanced, and to guide an administration. This has been proven wrong many of times, e.g., the Iraq nuclear capability that brought a disastrous war in the region. IMHO the world we're living today is vastly different from say the cold war world. Merely from cultural, and language point-of-view. We cannot develop the level of expertise requires to handle this level of complexity. We need to be much more vigilant when accepting the DI recommendation.
BTW we all remember the 17 agencies that have told us about the Russian intervention in our election. It changed later on to 3 I believe.
4
So much for that other "all 16 Intelligence agencies agree.." talking point about Trump-Russia collusion.
4
Let's understand this: The underestimation of North Korean progress and commitment occurred primarily under one administration and its intelligence community. This is not a surprise.
4
As pointed out, the tech for re-entry is 1950s vintage. Nuclear weapons are 40's vintage. The mind boggles at the FUD claiming these developments are technically difficult; the hard part is actually creating the infrastructure to do everything at one time.
As a mind exercise: using currently available public information and technology, one can build a personal nuclear weapon (mainly needing the fissile material) in 50 to 100 years. The primary obstacles are only determination and paying for the electricity. A 15yo starting now could be a brownstone basement nuclear power by age 65.
In 2002, President George W. Bush announced that the world had an "Axis of Evil" consisting of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. In 2003, he invaded Iraq, with disastrous consequences.
Put yourself in the shoes of Iran and North Korea at that time and try to decide what you would do about that. Are you going to be next? If so, what are you going to do about it.
The answer is pretty obvious, and we are all feeling the result of that "Axis of Evil" proclamation right now.
2
A parallel system rapidly developed over the last year...sounds like Russia just decided to arm them.
I am no big fan of the so-called American intelligence “community” for reasons which have nothing to do with its capabilities.
But let’s be honest, even if they had been dead-on accurate in their assessment of the timeline for North Korean nuclear bomb and ballistic missile development, it wouldn’t have changed anything in terms of stopping the course of such development. We were never willing to risk a full-scale conventional war with North Korea. Our leaders, including Clinton, “W” and Obama knew this day was coming.
2
Most of our intelligence about threats in recent years have been virtually useless:
Let me re-count the ways -
1. 911 - yep, our intelligence agencies totally failed us. 3000 died initially and how many more hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions have died as a result since?
2. Iraq WMD's - Either bad intelligence or deliberate lies about a country that wanted to get rid of it's post Gulf 1 chemical weapons as fast as they could in order for the UN Sanctions, of the day, to be lifted. Several respectable intelligence analysts said, "Iraq has gotten rid of all their wmd's" but that didn't stop Cheney from relying on the one group of analysts who would back up his misguided beliefs, pushing for a total destruction of a country that is now, some 15 years later still a horrible wreck. And Bush believed Cheney's pitch. And Powell . . .etc.
3. North Korea Nukes - well, you know the story as well as I.
4. Russian Electoral Warfare with possible/probable collusion by the Trump team who now happen to be in the top leadership role of these United States.
We might have the most useless intelligence community in the history of intelligence. And that uselessness has not come cheap. It has taken away for Healthcare, Education, Public Safety, Law Enforcement and lives, countless lives.
Failure has been unbelievably expensive.
5
All I will say is there are hundreds (or more) of intelligence assessments being made all the time, many of which may well be right on the mark.
Many of our military's weapon systems and their upgrades, as well as new and improved tactics, are brought about by intelligence community assessments. They just aren't known or publicized as such.
2
“[Trump] doesn’t have the expectation of perfect intelligence about anything." You can say that again. We feel the same way about Trump.
1
I see growth in the underground bunker business. Time to start digging.
Intelligence gathering, like profiling, is notoriously unreliable without a sound factual basis for drawing conclusions. This is particularly true when the intelligence is being strongly influenced by political concerns. It's mostly guesswork with many false positives and negatives.
First WMDs, now this. Time for a name change of the intelligence Agency. For all we know Trump’s gut is just as accurate.
Misjudgement and lack of adequate planning are almost always lacking in American government. Planning. Ask yourself: what's the worst thing that could happen? Then prepare for it. It's not rocket science.
"Within months, those comforting assessments looked wildly out of date."
Could it be that those "comforting assessments" were their assignment?
Is our intelligence and analysts that bad? No I do not think so. We have known for some time that North Korea was a threat from the Korean conflict. Why have not done anything? If North Korea was on it's own we have done so when the threat of nuclear weapons became known. Past presidents and administration did not want to take on Russia or China who are backing North Korea with raw materials and technology. How can an impoverished nation develop modern missiles and nuclear technology in such a short time? North Korea had to have help and again we hesitate to antagonize North Korea's backers. What does Russia and China gain? If North Korea starts a war with the US or vice versa then Russia and China can pick up the pieces and look good to the rest of the world. Presently, our choices are limited to two basic choices. We either accept North Korea as a nuclear power or engage them militarily. The latter now is probably at too high of a price to pay.
Besides being able to develope a nuclear missile program capable of hitting any where in the world, could they be developing disruptive software that could disable our nuclear missle capabilities, as we have tried to do with them? I recall an article by the Times describing the competence of the North Korea programmer and their skill at hacking. It would seem possible that they might attempt to do this.
It seems to me that what North Korea needs to do now, to perfect its position as an international threat, is to demonstrate that it can target precisely. That is, if you're trying to hit Washington, but are likely to just hit Podunk, that's not a credibly huge national threat. North Korea should deploy a conspicuous target in the Pacific Ocean, far from the country, and do a bulls-eye exercise on that. I suspect this is coming. Hey, could even hit the target with a nuclear weapon, but I suspect that North Korea doesn't want to waste them.
Yes, maybe so, but the Obama administration's policy of "strategic patience" contributed much to the rise of North Korea's development of a formidable nuclear arsenal and long range missiles. Much of the advances made by North Korea came under the Obama administration. The six-party talks between North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, and the United States, since August 2003, over NK's nuclear weapons program came to an abrupt end on April 14, 2009. Obama made no attempt to revive them, instead proclaiming "strategic patience," which is another way of saying do nothing and hope for the best. So, that raises the question what in the world was the Obama administration doing in terms of foreign policy overall? When historians look back upon the Obama administration's foreign policy they will obviously conclude it failed, miserably failed. Thank you.
4
This account of official miscalculation contains two assumptions of its own.
It says that "rather suddenly, [US] urgency seemed to recede" (par. 47). It attributes this to complacency about the new leader; who it counters, "made the development of a nuclear arsenal one of the state's top priorities, on equal footing with economic development" (par. 51).
Jong-un is in fact reaping the seed-work of his father, Il-jong, who gave nuclear development higher priority than anything else, with a "military first" policy allowing millions of North Koreans to die from starvation. Success is now accelerating through end-stage resolution.
The possibility of any other reason for the (inevitably suspicious) sudden US relaxation is passed over in silence.
Yet, while the narrative of underestimation focuses on what was said, in 2017, about NK not achieving readiness till 2021 (par. 1), it is acknowledged (par. 33-4) that, in 2000, the National Intelligence Council predicted readiness by 2015; and, in 2005, by 2019.
Does the author think the American state forgets its previous conclusions? Do readers understand that, the closer the time to an offensive, the more misinformative anything officials (reportedly) say?
Which brings us to the second assumption. After 73 paragraphs emphasizing the necessity of correct timing logic, the last paragraph reports "There is still time 'to start a dialogue' ... to ... head off ... war". What logic, pray, is that based on? The logic of the media circus?
You know, a lot of people think Kim Jong Un is insane, and young, but he is neither. He is some 34 years old and was educated in Switzerland, and travelled around Europe. He is quite an intelligent man.
Which makes him all the more dangerous, because he is educated, and raised in a family where he was completely and totally groomed to be a dictator, in a country where the people of North Korea believe that he is descended from the gods, along with his father and grandfather.
Trump does not understand that dynasty or the history of the country.
It is really important to understand the culture of the Asian countries before you start tweeting with ignorance.
Off guard? Clinton gave them the tech years ago and conservatives were screaming. Obama appeased them for 8 years. Now Trump is left to clean up yet another democrat mess.
2
The current administration is not MAKING AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN, they are providing a gap for those countries who want to move into and take advantage of becoming the most powerful. Meanwhile America is showing daily, a weak -child like president and a congress so diverted by greed and power, they are letting the state Department (also headed by a inexperienced businessman only interest in profit and loss and cutting diplomats ), be destroyed.
If the answer is negotiable, America is in big trouble.Which will it be who comes out on top, Russia or China?
The USA has been developing defensive missles for 25 years to destroy icbm’s when launched. Hopefully our investments will work when needed.
1
It's time to sign a peace treaty and give NK the security they want.
1
Conducting "simulated bombing runs" against a nation you bombed to dust only 60 years ago seems less than promising way to make it abandon developing a nuclear deterrent.
Decent article on recent history, but why such a long article that doesn't even begin to discuss what to do about it ie implement a robust missile defense that can shoot down the missiles and eliminate the threat,
The so-called" U.S. Intelligence Agencies"managed to miss the fact that North Korea has the 4th largest military on Earth with the highest per capita number of citizens in a military uniform.
While these "intelligent" U.S. agencies also failed to notice that there is only one ethnic sectarian historical Korean reality divided by socioeconomic political educational civil war backed up by foreign nations bent on benefiting their own national values and interests at the costs of Korean lives. Kim Jong Un inherited his wealth and power. Kim rationally and reasonably wants to remain in power by any means necessary including nukes and missiles so that he does not end up like the leaders of Iraq and Libya.
America's intelligence agencies missed Israeli, Indian and Pakistani nukes. America's intelligence agencies missed Saddam invading Kuwait and imagined Saddam's WMD's and connection to 9/11/01. U.S. intelligence agencies missed 9/11/01 and Russian hacking in 2015/16. America's intelligence agencies missed the rise of ISIS and the fall of the Soviet Union. America's intelligence agencies missed Jonathan Pollard, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.
While the cost benefit to the American people of our intelligence agencies is carefully and cleverly hidden in Donald Trump's personal and family income tax returns and business records aided and abetted by KGB/FSB intelligent master Vladimir Putin attacking the quality and integrity of American intelligence agencies.
1
“These are designs you can put on a thumb drive,” - The big mistake is always assuming that, because one is more technologically "advanced", the other side will always be stupid, ignorant, or incapable of thinking about using old technology, if it worked well in the past. I drive a year 2000 model car. It still takes me from point A to point B. I don't NEED a NEW one for that. Also, as experience proves, there will ALWAYS be mercenaries willing, for a price, to provide assistance in the form of so often poo-pooed "old technology", never mind the recipient. I would not discount that Kim's calculations would include a CRIPPLING EMP attack.
Trump is in office less than a year.
Obama messed this up with his blatant pacifism, plane and simple. He could have addressed this but he preferred to kick the can down the road.
Now Trump will have to deal with it.
2
You either did not read the article, or you did not understand it.
2
Is anyone actually surprised that the US Intelligence agencies were caught "off guard"?? They've been the gang that couldn't shoot straight for decades.
The obsession with ballistic missiles is a pathological legacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis. By 1960, the Soviets had developed nuclear subs armed with ballistic missiles. In 1962 we went to the brink of nuclear war over the prospect of missiles being deployed 90 miles from Florida when there was probably a Soviet sub patrolling the waters 90 miles off the coast of Washington, D.C. throughout the crisis. Our nation's capital was a sitting duck, and yet war was averted. The Soviets weren't crazy then, and Kim isn't crazy now.
We are now in the age of nuclear warhead miniaturization. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima weighed thousands of pounds. Today, a warhead with even greater destructive force weighs 80 lbs. The ugly truth is that Kim already has the capability to destroy Washington, D.C.--or any other American city--with a nuclear bomb. But he doesn't need a missile. A pleasure boat cruising up the Potomac, a cargo container, Chevy van, a low flying twin engine Cessna or even a hiker wearing a backpack would all do the job just fine. Even with all of Trump's deliberate goading, Kim has chosen not to exercise this option. Why? Because--unlike our own president--he's not crazy.
Kim is begging for international recognition of the fact that North Korea is now a "player" on the world stage. Let's give it to him and avoid a nuclear conflagration that would have already occurred if that's what Kim really wanted.
10
He deserves no recognition while staring his people.
John, I assume you meant to write "starving"--and you're right, Kim doesn't deserve one iota of admiration for that. But if we don't want to see North AND South Korea obliterated by nuclear war, perhaps it would behoove us to show him some grudging respect.
Genius trump and his dummies miss the point. it's not who has the bigger button. given the size of north korea and its proximity to south Korea, China, Russia, Japan, etc., US options are very limited. The US cannot take nuclear action against North Korea, though there is little doubt that the unstable president may issue the order, and hopefully military leaders will stand down. The point is that the US cannot take any military action to take out Kim because taking out Kim means nuclear disaster in the US.
2
No, it doesn't. Why are we successful with drone attacks in the Mid East? And don't you think it's Obama and Susan Rice that should be called dummies? This didn't just happen, you know.
The point behind the point is that Trump is a thin-skinned schoolyard bully and Kim is taking what seems to him reasonable steps to protect himself. If Trump is succeeded by a reasonable human being, tensions may lessen along with the bluster.
Of course, we missed it. We spent about a trillion dollars on pork to catch the non-existent terrorist threat and let Russia and N. Korea have a free rein. The pandering politicians could care less.
7
Amen. We spent billions on concrete barriers, metal detectors, and 24-hour guards, to protect such vital government offices such as the Rural Electrification Administration. Meanwhile, MS-13 was recruiting gang members in our elementary schools and burying murder victims in shallow graves in our parks.
1
"Intelligence Agency" is simply the sign on the door - not a description of their capability to perform.
While they might have some very smart people working for them, you don't succeed in military matters simply because you have an excess of intellect. The metric that determines success, is the total absence of stupidity.
1
Again the "Russians" = Putin did it meme shining through. Pakistan got mentioned barely, despite AQ Khan. China: doesn't exist suddenly. Disappointing.
1
It only goes to show the arrogance of some governments and their intelligence services.
Soviet designs for nuclear weapons are available on the internet, including the physics groundwork required for the designs, if one only looks hard enough.
The same goes for the ICBM designs which are, funnily enough, something you can get as a detailed technical report from the very same agency that is administrating the START, SALT treaties as well as the Lisbon Protocol.
These days the technical details are pretty much open domain.
Have the intelligence communities never looked up open sources on the Internet?
It is also old news that Pakistan and North Korea have a joint weapons, that is nuclear bombs and carrier systems, development project which is funded by a "great" ally of the US, Saudi Arabia.
This project has also produced things like the carrier systems like the CSS missiles based on Soviet and Chinese designs.
So all that North Korea needed to do is to get the plans and build the weapons.
That certainly took a while but the result was obvious.
And whatever you may say about Kim Jong Un, he is neither stupid nor does he lack ambition.
He needed to survive his unplanned and way too early ascend to power so he needed a foreign enemy more than his father to keep his own military at bay.
And he is right, once you go nuclear even the US cannot really touch you.
Also not a very novel idea but a proven one.
Which logically led to more weapons - nuclear at that.
Quelle surprise?
5
North korea only a small piece of international relations. They have nothing beside that. their only power to tell the world that they are still exist is the nuclear drama. So dont get too serious on this issue. they will never launch the missile. trust me!
1
It was Pakistan which gave them technology. What are we doing about it?
2
Our "sane genius" boy-President Bone Spur is withholding aid from Pakistan. Pure "genius."
1
We're cutting off aid.
1
Adversaries may look and talk differently, but this does not mean they are incapable. Human nature and adaptability remain common denominators.
South Korea and Japan need the international community now more than ever (excluding the Korean War and following the Second World War).
www.thewaryouknow.com
2
Another way to put this is: How American Establishment Politicians and their Political Appointees underestimated NK.
Clinton, Bush and Obama and the hacks that worked for them. Not some vague “intelligence community”. Real people with names did this.
10
China built Pakistan's nuclear weapons for that country to have leverage in South Asia. The two then had the great AQ Khan spreading the gifts world over, Iran, North Korea etc. NK is making a big public show, while many more may be secretly strengthening.
Satellites in the sky missing underground labs may not be too fictitious. After all, amid all the high tech aerial bombing of Afghanistan, the bad guys simply move on low tech donkeys through ancient cave networks.
2
If they are to have any credibility, analysts and policy-makers feigning surprise over North Korea’s "unanticipated, rapid breakout" should be leading the call to fix or nix America's participation in the nuclear agreement with Iran.
It never ceases to amaze me how this backward regime managed to, despite almost non-stop sanctions and no real auto industry, develop not only the missiles and the complex controls for them, but also the vehicles that carry them. Those carriers are clearly Russian, since no one else makes anything of the sort.
The enablers (China and Russia) need to be brought task.
3
no mention of Iran in this article. For analysis of Iran's nuclear program should we expect the same mistakes that intelligence agencies made with respect to North Korea?
3
Will the Trump era push the US to go for a 'Button-Button Diplomacy' with
North Korea as the 'Ping-Pong Diplomacy' opened the gate with China in the era of Nixon?.
I am surprised that we are surprised at failures of our intelligence.
Heck, going back in history, we failed when the Russians exploded the bomb.
We failed with China, India and Pakistan.
And if it were not for the incompetence of Saddam and Gaddafi - we would have failed there too.
Our intelligence has scored best when we have defectors armed with documents, materials come across - then again may be, as we cannot trust our intelligence to debrief them.
With North Korea - my one visit confirmed that this is a regime ripe for a fall - if we just showed determination and right leadership.
But no, we kept making these Korean soldiers 10 foot men - who will send us hack in body bags.
Let's remember it is these same intelligence folks who warned both Bush's about the Republican Guards of Saddam.
And on the battlefield, these Guards could not shed their uniforms fast enough and flee.
The old man Bush halted war because it had become a killing field.
The recently defected Korean soldier with his foot long worms in his stomach show that they are also their Republican Guards - who will drop their weapons to beg or ask for food.
What do they say that the first casualty of a war is the war plans - I dare say that our intelligence is not that far behind.
Who makes the launch truck? Where are most of the parts that make up the missile manufactured? Who makes the tires for the launch truck? Who helped them with the math (rocket science)? What's going on there.
1
Launch trucks are Chinese made.
The whole N. Korean situation is a result of the feckless actions (or inaction) by previous administrations that followed advice from the liberal wizards in the state dept. Collectively, they have marched us into this cul de sac.
Thankfully Trump has taken us off this path to confront the reality of the threat we have faced for years.
6
We now have a very serious situation whereby a rogue nation has developed nuclear capabilities, right under the noses of the elites who believed that their elitist views on diplomacy had supernatural powers over reality.
The world is a very dangerous place, filled with dangerous actors such as Iran, Russia and China. North Korea is their proxy to destroy the United States. If only one nuclear bomb hits the United States, the confidence in the dollar will drop significantly. The result will be higher interest rates and a severe recession. Not to mention the loss of millions of lives.
1
The DPRK has joined the club of nuclear-armed nations. There is precisely nothing anyone can do turn the clock back without putting the entire region in existential peril. A fait accompli, as they say.
Now what?
Containment and deterrence are really the only viable options. Both are old-school and un-sexy, but both seem to work.
It's largely the Kennen doctrine as he argued in the Long Telegram and later in Foreign Affairs -- and it does not simply mean the application of military pressure, but also of political and economic pressure.
In short, and assuming the DPRK regime is not suicidal, simply box them in -- militarily, politically, economically -- and move on. Economic sanctions and political isolation will continue to chip away at the regime's ability to sustain itself. Let them spend significant percentages of their precious GNP on weapons that can never be used without inviting retaliation that will surely end their existence. It's a fool's errand.
And then wait for 1989 to happen again. Because it will.
It is an inaccurate statement that American underestimation of North Korea's ability to make progress with nuclear weapons is the major culprit of the nuclear crisis.
The more accurate description is that China's geopolitically-motivated opposition to American muscular approach has given North Korea wiggling room in secrecy to advance on its nuclear capacity.
Even If intelligence agencies made starker estimates to alert leaders in power in the United States on perils about putting the Stainlist country's nuclear programs on the back burner, few changes would occur to nuclear-armed North Korea.
Ascendant China set sights on the status of a dominant power in the region in replacement of the United States, which, for its part, has hardly budged an inch in keeping its clout, proclaiming its williness to remain a Pacific power in advocacy of open regional order.
In short, the fully-blown nuclear state of North Korea is a byproduct of a Sino-American power shift in the region and Pyongyang's shrewd opportunism to cash in on the rivary of two behemoths.
I think more conservative estimates interspersed warnings to policy makers would not have had make any significant changes on North Korean nuclear issue.
The path to resolving the nuclear crisis should go through Beijing.
3
come on it's an open secret that North Korea was allowed to develop nuclear technology Either the world didn't care or or there was fear of antagonising the Chinese.The ME countries were easy target because of the divide between the various factions fostered no doubt by the West.
In 2003, I told some friends that I was opposed to the Iraq War, but believed we should be taking military action against North Korea instead. I recall them looking at me with dismay. It was so clear to me, way back then, that North Korea, not Iraq, was the real threat to our national security. I didn’t need an intelligence report. What we should be asking is why past presidents failed to take appropriate action. We had no trouble coming up with justification for the Iraq War. What was the problem here?
3
If we had really wanted to prevent North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ICBMs, long ago we would have gone after those countries and corporations -- even if American or allied -- that supplied the know-how and material for these programs. No administration has choked off the intellectual, financial, and material resources necessary to build these weapons. It's not like Pyongyang University is known for its outstanding physics department, nor is North Korea awash in foreign capital and domestic uranium.
The American intelligence community has been a failure for decades. Before 9/11, going through cubic feet of intelligence files as I did was pretty much an amusing endeavor, it apparent these agencies were bloated bureaucracies, often inventing enemies to justify increasing budgets and power. Simultaneously, they had become highly politicized, trying to please Presidents, not one of whom had ever held the agencies accountable for their incompetence or overreach. After 9/11, this was no longer funny.
The purpose of intelligence is to gather and analyze data, giving the results to the President and other officials. Instead, the agencies have tried to please Presidents, presenting "evidence" they believe he wanted to hear. Meanwhile, Presidents have handed over legitimate military functions, such as the targeting drone program. Through all this, genuine intelligence gathering and analysis has deteriorated badly.
Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Korea.
2
great cover story.
I hope the possibility of Armageddon isn't real. Having Trump as the Commander in Chief is just so wrong at this time.
Since North Korea never had homegrown expertise in developing nuclear weapons, it obviously had outside help, whether from China, Russia, Pakistan or a combination of all three. In China's case one can assume it was state-sponsored. Russian and Pakistani scientists could have been hired as private agents, working for Kim without the knowledge of their governments. Whatever, it is now too late to think about "denuclearizing" North Korea. All we can do is talk them into some kind of detente as we have with other nuclear-armed nations -- and Trump's tweets are not the way to do it.
1
I don't believe NK was underestimated more than it was deliberately ignored and allowed to mature into a viable nuclear threat. During the Dubya era, NK loudly proclaimed, even demonstrated, its possession of WMD's while the US et al murderously assaulted Iraq on the pretext of the existence of a dire arsenal which later proved to be an utter fabrication. The West derided the developing situation on the Korean peninsula, disregarded regional security, and, essentially, denigrated the North as a joke. These interceding years, where Kim & co have been ignored, have permitted NK to evolve into a minor nuclear state with a vitriolic vocabulary that allows the US administration to invoke the spectre of new, expedient, WMD haven worthy of a fine distraction from home news. It all reads like a well worn script.
Unfortunately, intelligence agencies are, wanly, the dogs of state, obedient and patiently serving their masters with nary a whimper. They were whipped for intelligence failures during the Iraq era when they hadn't failed at anything except dutiful production of fictitious evidence at the behest of their political handlers. Today, they are lambasted as Deep State mechanisms of intrigue as Trump hammers them for suggesting Russian involvement in electoral process. North Korea is not an intelligence failure; it is a new Trojan horse designed to distract and derail the democratic train and to ruthlessly threaten the survival of millions.
Hilarious. All of it. Here's what's going to happen.
China, having given N. Korea the necessary tech, will soon be asked to mediate (at the very least) in efforts to "contain" N. Korea. The current leader of N. Korea will be removed, and a more manageable one will be inserted. N, Korea will become a Chinese satellite/puppet state, run from Beijing and the N. Koreans will actually get enough food to eat. (That will satisfy the N. Koreans in the short term at least, and possibly for the forseeable future as well.)
Conclusion? The U.S. got played. China gamed the system, and did it so well that we'll soon be asking them to fix the mess they started in the first place. They will, and they will get to control N. Korea (in fact if not in name) as a result. Oddly enough, I don't think it's a bad outcome. The Chinese aren't going to suddenly go invade S. Korea, for the same reason the U.S. isn't going to invade Mexico or Canada.
The U.S. won't do anything because the optics of the situation allow Trump and all the rest of Washington to claim the outcome is "good." (I fully expect Hillary Clinton to take credit for it.)
"There's still time to start a dialogue" is the most sensible thing anyone quoted in this article has said.
If not now, when? And to what end? The longer we wait to talk - spinning fantasies in the White House that the NORKs will denuclearize just to be able to reach what Trump appears to think is the holy grail, jawbone with senior U.S. representatives,-- the less likely we can negotiate a freeze, which seems to have been on the table.
Beginning talks without preconditions is a way to get to real negotiations, not some sort of favor we or the NORKS do for one another.
This is an American point of view. North Korea was a menacing enemy for South Korea from the beginning and for Japan for decades. Their animosity wasn't so strong to entice suicidal impulse and will not be. (Lucky they don't believe in heaven.) If they have nuclear-tipped missiles they cannot use them to attack us unless we corner them to derangement. So why not leave them alone and ease the grip on them so that they won't try to sell these missiles?
The world acknowledges the power of the United States of America intelligence agencies, but the agencies have often been complacent or slow to find out the hidden plots of North Korea regime. Why? So far it is the life or death issue for North Korea to have nuclear weapons and ICBMs at any cost. It is not so to the United States. Now the siutation has changed. But any concession on one side to North Korea, in order to solve the problem hastily, could lead to be submitted to Kim Jung Un. Keep more sanctions, and then attempt dialogue under the initiative of the United States government. And no abuse words or swears, only in action.
I have to admit that its nice to finally see an American institution put politics on the back-burner for the moment and to actually take some time to write a good article on an important global dilemma.
1
What frustrates me the most is the press, and it's coverage of the situation. It treats North Korean ambition as a big question mark. I do not understand why.
The technology has existed since the 1950's and 1960's, yet the 'assumption' was that in 2010's it is going to take in as long to develop the technology as it did in 1950's? That aside, and the fact that the intelligence community seems to drop the ball on semi-regular basis, the real question to me is not how you stop North Korea from obtaining a Nuclear weapon, rather, how do we live in a world when obtaining such device it is going to become easier and easier as time goes by.
The issue of North Korea more then anything else to me shows the repercussions US's inability to have consistent policy from one administration to the next. This is not an issue pertaining just to dealing with North Korea, in the Middle East too, we change policies like its fashion. Having a ridiculous buffoon as President does not help the situation.
1
The Kim dynasty in NK has always feared a renewal of hostilities with the US, and they have maintained a war footing and a totally obedient populace since the end of hostilities in the 1950's.
For its part, the US has not been above flexing its military muscle in other parts of the world, and not always wisely. American wars in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq (twice), invasions of Grenada and Panama, and multiple efforts to topple or destabilize unfriendly regimes in Cuba, Iran, Central and South America, Africa, and elsewhere are evidence of our power, our ongoing threat, and some would say our righteousness.
Regardless, the Kim family has always acted in the ways they felt best protected their dynasty, their decadent lifestyle, and their godlike status at home. Repeated lessons have driven their nuclear and missile programs, and events of the 21st century (plus KJU's need to solidify power) probably accelerated the process to a predictable end.
Short of war or the spontaneous collapse of the regime, our current predicament was destined to match predictions. Unfortunately, SK has always been a hostage limiting our options. Successful negotiations solely on our terms have been unlikely from the beginning.
But we can count on KJU's desire for survival and China's desire for regional stability. Delicate negotiations and some painful concessions may preserve a reasonable peace and avoid a terrible war. However, our current leadership is probably not up to the task.
My guess is that the Soviets helped them along and that our intelligence agencies missed this one as well. And they may not have been the only foreign player or state supported the Korean effort, through the normal cutouts of course. I believe for instance the massive tractor trailer carrying the missile in the photo was made in China. Korea used whatever help could be found and the fact that we are not saying that Russia or China helped the program, does not mean that such state players were not involved.
The USA is on the top of the pile, and when we are not tripping over our own fee to fall off of it, our enemies are helping us to...
Fact of life now, the world is growing more dangerous as nuclear weapons proliferate again and countries pour more important resources into designing newer and faster versions and then the defenses against them. Maybe a nuclear war will just get global warming over with in one short week... Good luck to us all...
2
President Obama kicked every can he could down the road. His foreign policies were just bizarre. Although he was president he was never a leader. Whether it was not dealing with the North Korea problem or telling border guards to stand down it was truly a time of lawlessness.
2
It would seem to me that Kim's main motivation for his nuclear/missile program is to stay in power. I just don't see where it's to his benefit to strike the U.S. or its allies first, as it most-certainly would end in destruction,
Our government and media are doing their best to characterize Kim as a "crazy man", to me they are "paving the way" for the U.S. to take military action.
It seems to me that, having the capabilities to strike the U.S. with extremely lethal weapons is the card Kim needs to have to stay in power, most effective if not used in combat.
1
East and West Germany reunited, solving many problems inherited from WW2. If North and South Korea reunite, it will resolve the long term hostility between the two Koreas and the need for US involvement in the Korean peninsula. What will it take to do so? Kim may not be willing to give up his absolute power. He may be amenable to incentives or concessions that South Korea and the U.S. propose.
Acquisitions of nuclear weapons, even if never used, have a credible deterrent effect on potential enemies and threats. Kim has achieved this goal and he has clearly won. Even if his nuclear weapons cannot reach North America, he can destroy South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons within a few minutes. Threats from Trump with his "bigger nuclear button" are, therefore, quite hollow. The British subdued several Indian Nawabs and Maharajas with large "purses" in order to impose their colonial rule. Would Kim like such a purse for the rest of his life?
The best step the US can take to try to dismantle (or at least stop) NK's nuclear development is to persuade China to cease to do so much trade with them. They are NK's main suppliers of oil and other basic stuff. If China keeps looking the other way and does not take resolute action soon, I am afraid the consequences might be devastating. By now the US has its hands tied and depends on the diplomatic and commercial leverage that the Chinese can exert.
I don't see any intelligence "failure" here. It sounds like the intelligence community stayed as abreast of North Korea's technological advances as we can reasonably expect. The success or failure of the IC vis-a-vis North Korea will hinge on whether the analysts can accurately surmise what would cause Kim to launch his missiles and whether they can formulate good options for coexistence--or war.
The mind of North Korea's leadership is hard to understand.
Are there historical precedents? As cause of WWI has been mentioned Germany's deeply resented superior attitude with respect to other countries such as Russia. There may be a similar resentment in North Korea and Russia to America's exceptionalism.
In a biography of Japan's wartime admiral Yamamoto I read that he personally opposed war with the US, because Japan lacked the economic power. But the 'warmongers' thought that the US could be intimidated and was soft; their perception may have been based on groupthink, and information gained from American consumer products such as the movies.
America's culture seems all about money and the associated power. Trump mainly talks to other billionaires. One might think that America, and certainly America's politics, is all sleaze.
This overlooks, however, America's successful businesses, an aspect that does not get much attention as the media do. In contrast, I once heard that ten years ago, it was difficult to run even a simple business such as a restaurant in Russia because of constant govt interference.
Of course, North Korea, just as Russia in the past, can focus all its resources on the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. It may hope to use them for intimidation, just as Krushev tried during the Cuba crisis. This is a dangerous gamble.
So it may all boil down to resentment, groupthink, incapability of running businesses, and love of gambling. If so, what to do?
I think it's time that the U.S. acknowledge the new reality that North Korea is a nuclear power and conduct itself accordingly. We cannot correct whatever regrettable mistakes were made in the past, and so we must now deal with current realities. Instead of continuing with a policy that at its core, states that it is unacceptable for North Korea to possess nuclear weapons, we must now proceed with a different strategy toward North Korea. I believe that a strategy of containment is now needed in order to avoid a nuclear showdown.
Hubris has always crippled U.S. efforts to predict the actions and capabilities of third-world countries. Some simple rules escape us because we do not see them often in our own government; these include results-oriented dedication and effort, Wounded, but undefeated, enemies are stronger the second time around because they learn a lot more from their painful failures than we learn from our partial successes.
Good article , with that said, hopefully we have top secret covert plans to act. The US under Obama, and a wounded George W Bush for his tragic foray into Iraq, has undoubtedly led our adversaries to conclude, we are simply unable to quell major problem area's of the world. China and Russia have stable leadership, and their progress has gone unfettered. This little country of North Korea has simply been allowed to get where their at. So , do we know, under what circumstances we will have to co-exist with NK? Can Japan and South Korea maneuver their own course with China, if we remain as we are ?. The term Paper Tiger, never was extinguished . Post WW 2 we obviously decided we would not pursue the course of an empire.
13
Au contraire, Monsieur Dan Green, after WWII we, through the robust Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex decided to become just such an empire. That was our downfall.
China never signed a nuclear test ban treaty. If it wants to test some new nuke designs, it can do that. It would create less of a problem for China to do that than to hide testing in North Korea as North Korean tests.
Guessing that this is China doing secret tests is indulging in hostile fantasy play.
Along the same lines, if Russia wanted to give the North a bomb and missile, it could. It needn't go through a charade.
Both nations should fear a nuclear war nearby, since they would get massive problems of fallout, and of destabilizing climate crippling national agriculture that is already troubled.
Guessing games to blame them is both fact free and nonsense.
9
I think your answer was an answer to another comment advancing that NK explosion tests were a proxy for China's self tests on warhead miniaturization efforts on their own warheads which was pretty preposterous if I express my opinion (also those Chinese warheads would be quite rubbish to provoke the doubt of the international community about being H-bombs really).
Nevertheless two questions come to mind when talking about the giant strides NK took in just year on its nuclear program :
1 - the procurement of old soviet design engine components and designs which were tracked from Ukraine (sadly the sources were not publicly designating the governmental or Russian (backed forces) area of control factory origins).
2- the procurement of missile carrier trucks from China itself.
Now those items are clearly sensitive state controlled/monitored items and this raises questions about what happened on these matters in China or Ukraine/Russia. Clearly something failed here.
1
@Mark Thomason
That’s a new twist China using North Korea as a surrogate. Problem is it fails to note the lack of comradely relations between the two, and the historical reasons for Pyongyang’s hatred for America resulting from the Hamburg type genocidal bombing in Korean War killing over 20% of the population often with the new weapon napalm. Kim does not need foreign encouragement for wanting The Weapon.
1
Eric -- Yes. That comment bothered me, but after Id stewed on it and used Google a bit, I could not find it again.
Ukraine was the location of many silos and other weapons not easily transported out of it when the Soviets collapsed. However, it had only a limited design or industrial input into those nuclear weapons systems.
I think the leakage from the old USSR came from individuals, refugees from the program seeking to do something with the only thing they had. It was an artifact of the years of collapse, not of some plotting by Putin.
Though China-North Korea-Pakistan collaboration on nuclear capability development was already known to the world; so was the role of North Korea and Pakistan in clandestine transfer of nuclear and missile technology to the other countries like Iran through nuclear black market channels; and the Saudi Arabia's financial assistance to Pakistan to see the dream of the first Islamic nuclear bomb in the world come true, yet given the cold war power balance combined with the US’s special ties with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia neither the US nor the world could do anything to rectify the situation let alone preventing it from being a global menace that the Pyongyang nuclear/missile programme has really become today.
9
American intelligence has been a failure for decades. Before 9/11, intelligence files were somewhat amusing, as it became apparent these agencies were bureaucracies often inventing enemies to justify increasing budgets and power. Simultaneously, they had become highly politicized, trying to please Presidents, not one of whom has ever held the agencies accountable. After 9/11, it's no longer funny.
The purpose of intelligence is to gather and analyze data, giving the results to the President and other officials. Instead, the agencies have largely presented "evidence" they believe Presidents want to hear. Meanwhile, they have been given legitimate military functions, such as the targeting drone program. Through all this, genuine intelligence gathering and analysis has deteriorated badly. Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Korea.
We could have prevented North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ICBMs by going after those countries and corporations -- even if American or allied -- that supplied the know-how and material for these programs. No administration has choked off the intellectual, financial, and material resources necessary to build these weapons. It's not like Pyongyang University is known for its outstanding physics department, nor is North Korea awash in foreign capital and domestic uranium.
That said, no need to worry, as we have a President who is a "stable genius" up there with other stable geniuses such as Secretariat, Citation, and Seattle Slew.
24
"From as early as 2000, the National Intelligence Council was remarkably prescient about North Korea’s overall direction, predicting in an unclassified report that it would “most likely” have a nuclear missile that could hit American cities by 2015.
Four years later, when the United States was mired in the first year of the Iraq war, the council refined its prediction, saying a “crisis over North Korea is likely to come to a head sometime over the next 15 years,” that is, no later than 2019." The intelligence was there. Now the only answer is smart quick steady DIPLOMACY!
All the Hollywood image aside, our CIA has a long record of missing things like the overthrow of the Shah, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. There are plenty of others.
They are good at overthrowing democratically elected governments and installing puppet dictators like Chile and Iran.
Jack Ryan is Hollywood, the truth is uglier and far less impressive.
49
The CIA & NSA are too busy scanning 'haystacks" all over the globe, therefore they cannot focus on nuclear rogue nests like North Korea or Pakistan. Building a huge data base with all American citizen's digital comms takes a lot of money, time and (il)legal gusto, but it pays off to keep tabs on anyone back home that could your disturb funding or power reach. Observant US Senate or Congress members are much more of a treat that any Kims or Musharrafs in that reality.
Like others said, this is a move by Russia to make the USA spend a couple trillion dollars whacking NK. Sure, NK will take the intelligence from the Russians and risk the ire of the US, but NK is gonna get it one way or the other, so if it gets it from Russia, meh to them.
Russia knows the US has made quite a big deal about NK getting this technology and becoming a nuclear power, so it knows the US will lose credibility in the world if it let's Lil Kim get his toy.
Russia and the US played tug of war over the Korean peninsula at the end of WWII just like they did with Germany, with the Russians getting control over the north. Of course the NK's are going to appreciate and relate more closely to the Russians than the US.
Prediction: Russia and China will unite and tell the US to back off if the US unilaterally appears to go after or actually attacks NK -- they don't want a war in their backyard, and if NK and SK can have some level of agreement with each other, then all of a sudden the USA is the isolated nation. Just imagine if SK, China and Russia told the US to back off, what could the US do? Nothing but lose face and respect.
19
That is definitely the direction it is going. But I thought the preference was to destroy satellites and disable online communications, then they wait as US attempts to survive without internet and access to goods and services, like meds. Then they invade and take over America's infrastructure. The isolationist America Trump has been at the forefront of creating helps no one, certainly not Americans. Our Europen (former) allies are still peace-seeking. However, others (including the current Administration) are chomping at the bit to "play" wargames. No one is clear on the "grooming" methods Putin has utilized on Trump since, at least 2012. He could be operating against US interest with no conscious knowledge and that is not science fiction. He is the perfect target for manipulation and mind control, very easily done with a narcissitic personality type combined with his other mental deficits.
This prediction is the closest I've read yet to what I've suspected all along.
I still believe that the PRC and Russia are playing a dangerous game that can likely backfire upon them though. The DPRK does not trust either one very much though they get what they can from them.
It is clear now that Don gets to see the picture of Un's buttons. All of a sudden he is not trumpeting anymore.
3
I think that the U.S. should always be cautious of what is going on in our country in relation to other nations. We do, but we should not completely rely on the assumptions that we make. We got punished for underestimating North Korea and now it's biting us back. Our intelligence organizations have failed to predict what is going to happen next with North Korea's nuclear weapons and how we are going to use them.
I think that we should make sure that we are going in depth with our research and make sure we are aware of all of the possible circumstances considering this a serious matter that is a life or death situation for many of the citizens living in the U.S. These nuclear weapons are a huge threat to our country's safety and well-being.
2
I agree with. With that said, can you just imagine what other nations that matter, think about what is going on, with our new coined, wave of populism. All we do is wrangle among ourselves, with all effort being directed to impeach our President, or have him committed to a mental institution . Point is, both Russia and China have crystal clear models, and stable leadership. Both are making headway. We have no idea what our so called foreign policy is. I am convinced major countries are just waiting until we have another conflicted election and enter into continued dysfunction in Congress masked as Democracy.
We are spending way too much on intelligence gathering and getting way too little in return. The only country that should fear intrusive data gathering is us.
8
An enormous amount of ink has been spilled over the reasons why there are no viable military options to solve the NK nuclear missile crisis. Yet precious little has been written to explain the consequences of not stopping NK's goal of obtaining a credible ICBM nuclear missile inventory capably of striking US cities with hydrogen bombs.
In short, the consequences are unambiguous and simple: the US will have very little ability to control the destiny of the Korean Peninsula and even of northeastern Asia, because NK will checkmate the US and force a decoupling of the military alliance with SK.
The US has for 60 years deterred NK from invading SK because of the US nuclear umbrella. Once NK proves that it can destroy US cities with its ICBMs, this nuclear umbrella disappears, and the odds of new aggression from NK increases significantly. "Aggression" does not necessarily mean a land invasion. More likely, it means debilitating cyber attacks, state sponsored terrorism, and the proliferation of WMD to dangerous third parties.
NK will blackmail the US/SK into relaxing sanctions, postponing/reducing military exercises, and extending massive "financial aid", aka "protection money." Failure to give NK what it wants will mean serious trouble, and NK is willing to sacrifice its entire population to achieve its goals. Negotiations will either end in failure or in capitulation to NK's demands.
2018 will determine the fate of the Korean Peninsula, and NK may win the contest.
12
While Kim may care little about the fate of his people, the DPRK cannot use a nuclear weapon w/o guaranteeing its own obliteration, and will be in no better position to "blackmail" the ROK or US than it is now. Currently, it has a weaposns program to use as a bargaining chip. If it weaponizes a missile, ir will become an even greater pariah state. The result will be a replay of MAD, or a tense detente like that between the US and Russia in the 60's and 70's.
America has been here before, the Soviet development of an ‘A bomb’ came as a surprise with Truman holding the opinion ‘never.’ Pyongyang is a nuclear power now without capable hardened head because it can rain destructive retaliation on neighbors South Korea and Japan and Guam that will end the world policy makers would hope for -- forever. And its defensive alliance – seldom mentioned – is with Xi’s China.
Intelligence’s failures should signal, as well, ‘preemptive strike’ is a fantasy.
Kim Jong-un has achieved what he wishes ‘terms for negotiations’ all wise men should hope.
Now the learning process of how that might proceed with the leadership America currently possesses. That is the frightening part, little room for ego enhancement.
5
It’s too late to stop North Korea’s nuclear country program. It may be time to assure North Korea that US will not attack it which is their main fear. Unfortunately our policy of accepting nuclear capable nations is selective. We allow Israel, Pakistan, India to have nuclear weapons.
68
We never gone to war to stop a country from getting the bomb and we never will.
3
This attitude of "We allow" is probably the root cause... The hubris! When one country unilaterally appoints itself as gatekeeper to everyone else's ambitions, that too on the basis of past military and money might, they are bound to fail eventually. And demanding disarmament from others while keeping one's own gunpowder dry is certainly not going to get acceptance.
2
After our support of getting rid of Saddam and Gaddafi, this young leader of NK knows what fate awaits him, if he gets involved with the US. Our strong suit has never been international diplomacy we change course too often for anyone to partner with us. If Merkel as example loses her authority over the EU it is common knowledge Europeans are not looking to us for guidance . Russia has now a firm footing with the Iranian counterpart in the middle east. Obama's line in the sand was blown away in an early dust storm. It is clear we now have proclaimed were on Israel's side no matter what they do to protect themselves.
America needs to learn to be humble. It’s the only thing that makes all that brawn worth anything.
9
Iver, what a nice politically correct sentiment!.
3
Mr Kims new rockets have exhaust streams look just like those of advanced Ukrainian rockets produced at Yuzhmash. Since Russians no longer buy their rockets and desperate for income,this is the likely source for Kim.
The Russians probably had no hand in Kim getting advanced rocket engines.
2
I have a theory on why US intelligence community missed and it is based on 2010 piece by McKinsey entitled, Behavioral Bias Leads to Poor Decision Making. 1. Action-Oriented Bias leads to excessive optimism, overconfidence and competitor neglect. 2. Pattern Recognition Biases leading to confirmation biases, and false analogies and champion bias. 3. Social Bias’s leads to groupthink and sunflower management (tendency to align with views of their leaders whether expressed or assumed.
I believe there is something to this article and how the US intelligence community missed, IMHO @uberconsultant
9
Our intelligence community might be spending a bit too much time in trying to influence domestic policies. One solution is to make an example of a particularly egregious law breaker in the community.
6
It is time for us to ask ourselves if US intelligence is as great as it is cracked up to be. Not to be unkind or ungrateful to the folks who actually risk their lives on a regular basis to do the extraordinary work required in intelligence gathering and countermeasures, but results have to be paramount, or we are simply risking the lives of so many patriots and all of the hundreds of billions for what?
The space program has revealed that our folks have a tendency to spend a billion dollars where a few thousand would suffice. We ended up in a situation where we had to use Russian rockets, which we pooh-poohed as primitive, to help complete the Space Station and to supply it. The old story of the Americans inventing a fancy zero-gravity pen for NASA vs the Russians simply using a pencil also come to mind. The Russians are in no way extraordinarily better than Americans in any respect, but they do seem to get more bang for their fairly humble bucks in their foreign policy interventions. We need to have the sense and, quite frankly, the decency to ask ourselves how come we are not as successful. Is it politics or culture or wealth? We need to address this honestly so the next generation does not suffer from our persistent egoism and vanity in the face of challenge after challenge, setback after setback.
9
NK’s ICBMs threaten the US more than any other nation ONLY because of American military commitments to SK.
Considering that SK’s GDP is the 10th largest in the world and its defense budget is nearly the size of NK’s GDP, does it still make strategic sense for the US to continue to provide security guarantees to SK? Is it time to let SK stand on its own feet?
NK’s ICBMs provide them with the ability to hold hostage millions of American lives in order to deter the US from fulfilling its security commitments to SK in case of any new war in Korea. This means the cost and risk of providing the security commitments to SK has gone way up. When weighed against the risks of causing a terrible war that could result in the death of millions in order to solve this problem militarily, would it be cheaper and safer to consider withdrawing US troops from SK?
US could continue to provide security guarantees to deter outside parties such as China from intervening in any new conflict and provide material and technological support to SK in such an event. But would otherwise let SK defend itself against NK without direct US involvement. This would be similar to the arrangement that the US has with Israel.
While there is a risk that a withdrawal of US security commitments to SK could encourage NK to renew its conflict with SK, but that risk is far lower now than in the past, and the consequences are far less dangerous for the world than any possible military solution to NK’s ICBMs.
3
If the US withdraws its security guarantees in favor of SK, that country will not be able to withstand the geostrategic coercion applied by NK, and SK will become a vassal state of NK, providing NK massive "protection money" in perpetuity.
Even more seriously, the US CANNOT AFFORD to abandon its military alliance with SK (this point is not explained by the US media and completely misunderstood by the public at large), because to do so would mean the effective end to ALL US MILITARY ALLIANCES WORLDWIDE, starting with NATO.
Indeed, the single greatest reason why the US may go to war with NK is to salvage US alliances worldwide.
The issue is FAR greater than just SK.
11
Alliances almost always benefit the lesser power far more than the greater power. They often do not discourage war but expand a war when it does break out. Frequently, a lesser power takes advantage of the alliance and ends up dragging the larger power into a war that they would not consider otherwise.
How about just re-unifying the so-called North and South Koreas, unify families, remove all trouble makers (USA), and peace will reign.
US Intelligence agencies were hibernating during the Bush and Obama years while North Korea was busy acquiring missile and nuclear technology from countries which were providing generous military aid which we now know was estimated to be 33 billion dollars in just the past 15 years. Our intelligence agencies in the past two years very busy wasting US tax payer monies on spying on a presidential nominee of the Republican party while underestimating N. Korea. Some of our press and media was napping too and were busy with trivial news also called fake news. The world is a dangerous place with rogue nations loaded with nuclear weapons that can be delivered without warning. We can only hope that our self proclaimed genius president will not underestimate the serious threats to our existence.
12
No one gave the US the right to be the world arbiter of who can and cannot have nuclear weapons- only might makes right. As soon as other countries have the same might, or even a fraction of it, we need to get down and learn how to make friends. Irreconcilable differences will arise and then what? I am not optimistic.
The same thing applies to human relations- No matter how much you despise someone, you should be nice to them. If you ever get them in a state so desperate (thinking of disgruntled employees or jilted lovers here) that their own life seems like a reasonable price to pay for the pleasure of getting back at you, there is nothing to stop them from buying an automatic rifle and laying waste to you and those around you.
9
very foolish. i dont like that we are the world's policeman, but a world w/o us as policeman is much, much worse. sentiments like yours are great...until our enemies become increasingly powerful and threaten world order and peace, and then we wish the usa had policed the world and taken pre-emptive action. kinda like when germany violated the treaty of versailles and no one bothered to stop them. your proposition has no practical value. none. pure wishful thinking. we should be very grateful that we are the world's policemen, and trust me-the rest of the world is also quietly relieved.
7
What's the alternative? China is waiting in the wings for the current US government - which is giving away the store - to lose bigly, while gaining influence in Asia and Africa each day the "stable genius" remains in power. While I have grave reservations myself about US hegemony and its 800-odd military/security outposts worldwide, I tremble more to think of a world in which China or Russia held that sort of military sway. Neither of these countries is a product of the Enlightenment, and are even now essentially peasant societies ruled by fiat by governments without the least use for the concepts of democracy, civil rights or individual liberties. China, the DPRK, the ROK and Russia are pretty much equidistant from my home, so I tend to pay fairly close attention to political and military affairs here in NE Asia.
If we had minded our own business in 1917 (earlier actually since we were never neutral), there would not have been a Hitler or a 1939. Don’t forget that when we entered WW2 in 1941, we allied with the very nation (USSR) that helped Germany evade the Versailles Treaty and joined them in the invasion of Poland.
What an extraordinary blunder by the US intelligence community. This is comparable to the “weapons of mass destruction” blunder that launched a tragic war that caused millions of meaningless deaths among the Iraqi people and launched Isis. Something is seriously wrong with our intelligence community and a major restructuring is needed like what happened after another intelligence disaster called 911. Even that restructuring didn’t seem to get the job done. If we combine a “sick” president with a “sick” intelligence service either the two will cancel each other out and something good will happen or they will synergize and result in a global conflagration. If I were a betting person, I would place my bet on the latter but in that event I would probably not be around to pay tax on my winnings.
7
The "blunder" can only be compared to that of Britain and France in underestimating the rise of Nazi Germany.
The consequences of this new "blunder" may lead to the deaths of 10-20 million people in the near future.
The human race is stupid, and does not learn from History.
3
Would we have invaded NK even if we had known how rapidly they were acquiring nuclear capability. No.
Would China or Russia have protected NK? Probably.
Would an invasion of NK have been WW3? Very likely.
The NK solution goes through Beijing and Moscow. And bolstering SK's intention to cut off oil to NK.
1
We are underestimating the disadvantage of complacency, fighting the last wars, taking insufficient defense against information theft and hacking, and operating a manufacturing dependent, downsized, risk averse technology-driven defense industry in a society that has exported its assets to the lowest bidder for the sake of corporate profits.
North Korea is Russia and China’s pawn, up against our backline in a game of international chess, and we have been playing checkers.
Blame it on the intel won’t do. Too easy an out for Clinton/W/O. Once the Kim dynasty fixed its sights on nukes, and flagrantly hoodwinked Clinton to do so, this was plainly not going to end well. Not unless someone on the US side took decisive action. But everyone was too skittish to do anything. The tacit US position was to slide towards accepting NK as a nuclear state, rationalizing that Pakistan has nukes, and more recently we agreed to let Iran have nukes in a short time, so why not NK? The counter to that view is unlike Pakistan, or (to a lesser extent) Iran, NK is run by a homicidal crime family. And because of the cautious passivity and wishful thinking of several US administrations (not intel failures), now we have to deal with an overtly hostile criminal cartel that has nukes pointed at LA or NYC. This was a leadership failure on our side, not an Intel failure.
5
It may turn out to have been the costliest leadership failure in human history, if the crisis ends in the detonation of a few dozen nuclear missiles over Japan and SK.
8
Destroying those countries is not the target of NK. Us, maybe. NK and its current and future state nuclear allies will be a greater threat to America than any terror cell plot. The Pax Americana favored us and our allies with commodities and trade.
The Soviet Union decayed from within under external pressure. Our tipping point may have already come under abysmal corporate and national leadership.
Intelligence agencies are not formed by presidential appointments, but instead career intelligence officers and leaders. It is a longstanding effort, but admittedly weakened by people like Edward Snowden. You might as well blame George W Bush as well as Obama for this failure. But certainly if we do not blame Trump for this failure, we should not give Trump credit for the current economic prosperity., either. Politics is a game of distortion and mis-representation, humans at their worst.
1
What were our options? Invasion? And a war with Russia or China. Treading water was unfortunately our best option. It's possible we could have bought all the nuclear technology for sale from Ukraine or Pakistan, by essentially outbidding NK.
Normally, we are inclined to sympathy toward dolts, so it's remarkable that in Trump's case we are free to simultaneously despise him ... but he's worked hard to earn that honor. Regardless, he inherited a stunningly awful situation with North Korea, far worse by any rational metric than the financial meltdown that President Obama inherited. We don't need a leading intellect in the Oval Office right now, we need a steady leader with good instincts. Eisenhower, Kennedy, or H.W. Bush would do. This isn't about politics, it's about survival.
3
We should just leave the Korean Peninsula. Is it really in our national interest to protect them anymore? Let China own this mess.
3
Right, cut and run, show our allies what we're really made of, right? That`ll show 'em what to expect from us when the chips are down.
1
How? How did the SEC miss Bernie Madoff, after countless clues? How did this clown even get close to becoming a candidate? How did Sept. 11th happen, after so many clear warnings? How did all the rating agencies rate the worthless mortgage securities as prime and crash our economy? There must be a vastly better system of incentives established for powerful people to do the right thing.
9
In 3 out of 4 cases, the motivation was money. In the other, the president was given the intel that Al Qeada planned to attack using planes w/in a narrow window of time, and ignored it. These failures were not failures of intelligence, they were failures of greed and arrogance.
Russian technology is no mystery.
3
Why do we even bother with US intelligence agencies?
1
Unethical, immoral and stupid politicians over the last couple of decades have undermined our intelligence agencies. Also the work ethic of people recruited by these agencies is probably not what it was after WW2 and during the Cold War. Many spies within these agencies went undiscovered for many years due to the lack of diligent oversight by their supervisors who in many instances were plainly incompetent. Protecting our America from our enemies seems to come in second to protecting the interests of the billionaires who control our government, the Congress and the White House.
10
why exactly do we in the US fear a NK missile? they would not fire one because it would mean instant vaporization of NK. They are not so dumb to want to be suicide bombers. So why do we worry that they will send one?
5
The US media is guilty of not explaining to the US public how nuclear blackmail works and why NK will very soon become invincible.
2
An interview with McMaster ( of puppet ) is no basis for an article. You may as well have interviewed KellyAnne Conway.
Once I saw his name, I could safely assume the whole premise is a dog whistly attack on Obama.
I didn't bother to read any further. Was I right ?
3
So. One simple explanation for these difficulties correctly evaluating NKorea's nuke capabilities is that an unusual arrangement is in play: China is using NKorea as a proxy for more highly developing Chinese miniaturization technology, which works with the new Chinese ballistic missile, the DF-41. The technical hurdles associated with miniaturization are difficult, probably beyond NKorea's capabilities. China tests nukes in NKorea, and in return supports Kim's regime, and Kim plays it up as a grand distraction; every 'successful' test strengthens his regime. Kim pretty much has to play along, his country is so poor and has got sanctions going now, so he is nearly totally dependant on China... Meanwhile, US intelligence agencies wonder why they're behind the curve...
61
With all due respect, where is your proof that China is conducting nuke test in North Korea . Korean is not a Chinese province for god sake!
With advancing science and technology, the time will come when every nation and major terrorist organization can develop a nuclear missile if it wants to badly enough. We cannot put the genie back in the bottle, It is a losing battle as this knowledge and technology becomes more and more available. so we have to get used to the idea of welcoming some rather unwelcome characters to the nuclear club. And then we really have to learn how to get along with one another. The "Mutually Assured destruction" principle works when there are only two players and both are relatively stable and successful, and have a lot to lose from a nuclear war.
When there are dozens, and one is a desperate regime/organization which sees a nuclear attack as its only survival option, then we are in trouble. If you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose. Then the strategy of imposing sanctions becomes counter-productive. The more desperate the regime and its people become, the more likely they are to strike out. If they were integrated into the world economy as a productive and successful partner (thinking of North Korea here), they would be no more likely to launch a pre-emptive strike than the US - they have too much to lose. Sure they want to re-unify with the south on their own terms, but they would be encouraged to use diplomacy and compromise rather than risk destruction of a successful industry and economy by the retaliation that would certainly occur from the world community.
So if (fill in the culture or religion) terrorists get their hands on a nuclear device we should invite them to be "integrated into the world economy as a productive and successful partner"?
1
Maybe NK does not want to be integrated into the International Community. Doing so would eventually mean that the NK Regime would need to change and become less overbearing and controlling of its citizens.
Maybe NK just wants to have nuclear weapons to use nuclear blackmail against the US and SK in perpetuity.
3
Why are we so anxious about North Korea’s nuclear weapons? The development of them has made life harsh for that nation’s population while also painting a large nuclear bullseye on the country. Even if the country under Kim develops far greater nuclear prowess than it has at present, of what use can it be to them aside from rhetorical? There is no evidence that Kim has ambitions to be a modern-day Genghis Kahn designing to take over the world, but even if he had them, that objective would be ludicrously beyond him. The efforts of the nuclear powers of the world, especially the US, to limit and ultimately end the possession of nuclear weapons is critical to humanities survival. But North Korea has shown that penalizing and making a pariah of nations that are developing nuclear weapons will not always be succeed in stopping the most determined states. Far better for present nuclear powers work patiently to enter into discussions with such new nuclear states addressing issues of mutual concern including those that motivated them to develop a military nuclear capability. Far better that than threatening them with the horror of even a limited nuclear war that could become an unlimited one.
All of this finger pointing about which administration is at fault for letting NK get the bomb sounds just like what was said about China in the 60s and the Soviet Union in the 50s. Let's face the fact that the US can't control everything. Unlike Iraq or Lybia, NK has had Seoul hostage to conventional destruction for a generation or longer. From the standpoint of regime survival, everything that happened in Iraq and Lybia made it imperative that NK develop a nuclear deterrent. Now they have one, they enter the club of mutually assured destruction. We got through this stage with the USSR and with China. We'd best get realistic about dealing with a nuclear NK. It won't be fun or easy. There will never be any big wins. Winning just means people in the US, Japan, and South Korea get to live their lives and raise their families. Achieving that requires a combination of deterrence and strategic patience. It has prevented nuclear war since the USSR got the bomb in 1949. It is not glamorous, but it works.
11
Have you considered the possibility that "deterrence" is IMPOSSIBLE in what is essentially a dormant CIVIL WAR?
Comparisons to the Soviet Union, China and Pakistan are erroneous and dangerous.
2
The November-December issue of the Military Review, the professional journal of the U.S. Army, offers a detailed review of how this situation developed and proposes a policy approach to bring about peaceful denuclearization of North Korea (http://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review//English-Edition....
3
Thank you for the citation; there are cool heads in this land.
1
This is a well considered proposal. Opening up the North would change it. I don't mean overthrow it, I mean change, as does that article.
"it is not too late to peacefully eliminate Pyongyang’s burgeoning nuclear arsenal. North Korea’s denuclearization will be a byproduct of a successful engagement policy, not its singular objective. The North Korea solution that is needed is a policy of changed regime, not regime change. A changed-regime policy will transform North Korea from within"
These ideas should be in articles, offering ideas, not just appearing in comments under article bemoaning failure.
5
are WE really going to play into North Korea's hands, and make believe talks will stop them?.. many decades of useless talks have proven otherwise!!.. they want time to perfect their Nuclear Weapons, Useless talk will enable them!!..
1
It is the curse of every President to inherit the problems of the previous administration; however, the problem with this president is that he shows no interest in any type of diplomacy; he lowers himself to the level of Kim Jong un, thus degrading the office of the Presidency. Whatever may be said of the Obama Presidency, at least he never drug the nation into the mud.
3
Oh, well since we have such a self-proclaimed "Genius" in the White House--I'm sure his sixteen assault victims don't think he is smart, a sociopath maybe. Put fat Kim in charge, he is less crazy than plump Trump the predator and grump.
3
I say the world chokes Russia and China.
2
The problem with delivery is that you do not need the post office, Fedex or DHL. Some guy or other with transport will deliver that package for a small fee no questions.
That was discussed in the 60s and 70s.
What if there was a suitcase bomb that could be delivered by a mole/courier? More likely a compact bomb could have been smuggled into the country and detonated at the appropriate time. A commercial plane or a ship with a container carrying a compact bomb could deliver the bomb. Even worse that container could be sitting somewhere in the US already.
This is not MAD ( Mutually assured destruction)
But you do not have to kill. The threat of serious injury is a sufficient deterrent.
Ask any animal.
1
During 1950s and 1960s as an employee working for a U.S. Congressional research office I was assigned with several other members to do a research project about the Communist Chinese nuclear weapon projects. After more than 4 years intensive searching both Chinese and Western language materials we concluded that Chinese Communist scientists were indeed to start to develop a nuclear project. The first small nuclear reactor was imported from the Soviet Union. But the help from Soviet ended with the first nuclear reactor. The Chinese continued their own nuclear research programs with their own resources and their American-trained and French-trained nuclear and mechanical engineers. The person in charge was General Nie Rongzhen , a famous Chinese Red Army general and Long March survivor. Dr. Chien Sanqiang, a French trained nuclear physicist was in charge the research. Dr. Deng Jiaxian, an American-trained physicist played a major role for the Chinese atomic bomb program. We submitted a report to the late Senator Henry Jackson, Chairman of the Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy. We predicted that China would have a nuclear bomb around mid-1960s. It turned out to be correct and the first Chinese nuclear bomb was conducted Oct. 16, 1964. The Baltimore Sun reported this news first and we were interviewed also. We did not celebrated for this but the Chinese leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai and entire Chinese population celebrated this Nuclear Club Membership event nation wide.
3
Reportedly, JFK was considering a pre-emptive strike on the PRC to prevent the Chinese from developing a nuclear capability.
1
One does not need to be a self-described “Very Stable Genius,” to understand the urgency of the implications of Kim Jong-un’s 2016 missile launches.
Whereas Mr. Jun is “young, inexperienced and distrusted by his military,” substitute old for young and that perfectly describes Trump.
3
It not impossible for NK to be ahead in mobile, solid fuel ICMBs vs US, Russia and China. Afterall, Samsung and LG of SK make better LCD and OLED displays than most countries. Its also likely that US defences, like THAAD, are known to the Pentagon to be ineffective against multiple warheads reentering at supersonic velocities. Otherwise, why all the big fuss?
There is some doubt that their missiles will survive the immense heat of reentry, I am sure NK is well aware of that possibility. And that's why I believe they will denotate it 20 miles above the target, in the ionosphere. The resultant electromagnetic storm from the energy will knock out the power grid within hundreds of miles radius, together with internet hubs that will take months to repair. Forget about Tweets from Trump for awhile!
3
The US has shielded its internet hubs to resist EM surges, Chin. Kind of obvious, wouldn't you say? Of course, an EM surge over China and NK would be great for their leaders, since they would stop having to strictly censor the internet.
1
Their risk in doing that will be the conversion of NK into a vast empty hole within about 80 seconds. Maybe less.
I like how this article still writes about the possibility of a US military intervention in North Korea that would not turn out to be a doomsday scenario, if not at the world level then at the regional one.
Not even speaking about revenge games, nuclear dissemination if an attempt is made on the country or the regime wether with warheads/material ... or simply by disseminating the knowledge they gained during'their arms race.
Dominance of people, countries, time and again proves it has to come to an end. Kim Jong-un has , finally, achieved North Korea's goal to talk and demonstrate to the US their right for the Korea peninsula to be an independent Country. Lets not forget the dominance and humiliation the Japanese impose on then for many years and the US and Russia did not recognize after world war II, their right to be independent.
3
N Korea has, since the Korean War, been a client state of both the Russians and the Chinese. It’s clear that Pakistan received bomb designs from China to help complicate the lives of a newly nuclear India and the US. Both the Chinese and the Russians have violated UN sanctions supplying all those things necessary to eventually nuke us, and all we do is enrich them. The Russians have directly attacked us in our last Presidential election. And what do we have in the White House and the Republican Congress? Attacks on our FBI and Hillary Clinton.
When will Americans wake up? Hopefully with a New Democratic Congress next November. Then Trump and Pence. And then recognizing who are our friends and who are our enemies. Our current regime can’t even admit the Russians attacked our election. Time for them to go.
42
You think all of this happened during the current administration? Where was Obama and Co. for 8 years?
5
It's called "kicking the can down the road". The question is, for us, now where does the road lead? Or where does it end?
1
"N Korea has, since the Korean War, been a client state of both the Russians and the Chinese. "
What about that statement says I think "all of this happened during the current administration?" BUT, again, that fool in the Oval Office won't even admit the Russians attacked us directly, and neither does most of his party.
Obama derangement syndrome is strong in this one....
1
If North Korea managed to make progress without American Intelligence Agencies noting it, time has come to for better leadership at the Top and Trump, the self proclaimed genius is not capable of providing that level of leadership. You have to make Friends and keep them in the World to be a World Leader.
7
This is not the first time that the US Intelligence Agency or Agencies underestimated an Asiatic country.
In December 1941, they knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor. But they were convince that the Japanese Imperial Navy did not have the equipment and the training to be successful.
In January 1951, the intelligence agencies failed to see that the People Republic of China was going to invade Korea to save North Korea.
In 1967, we were told that North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front or Viet-Cong were on the brink of defeat. According to the militaries the light was at the end of the tunnel. In January 1968 it was the Tet Offensive.
In 2003 it was the infamous Mission Accomplished in the Irak War.
What will be next?
6
You left out the Battle of the Bulge and 9/11. Not Asian but the same failure.
1
What will be next? Maybe that the U. S. will stop trying to control the whole world.
5
You might be confusing intelligence with propaganda.
1
This article is remarkably free from Trump baiting. Irrespective of personality profile of President Trump, on matters of policy making it makes sense to focus on Trump Presidency, not the man himself. It is truly high standard journalism of proper kind.
The long term resolution to Korean threat begins with reducing tension between two Koreas. This has finally begun to happen a bit, and if the Winter Olympics are conducted peacefully, it is likely that their peace process between the two sibling nations may prosper.
Reality recognition principle led to new Jerusalem policy. ISIS has got decimated in Iraq and Syria. Pakistan has been put on mat and has to now make hard choices. North Koreans now clearly understand that Chinese cooperation ruptures beyond a point, while centuries of Korean affinity may endure. Via sharp turns and twists, definitely unconventional, Trump Presidency seems to be somehow getting things move in the right direction.
8
No administration wanted to take on NK, so the intelligence services provided cover. The "armistice" was signed in 1953 and no effort had been made to undertake the work for a "peace treaty." Why not? As much as one detests the NK regime, an armistice means no shooting; it does not mean peace.
1
It's largely a peripheral observation, but it struck me how North Korea's greatest asset in protecting itself from foreign surveillance is its limited computer-to-computer network. Maybe we should all take a page from our hostile global neighbor and revisit how much we, organizations and individuals alike, voluntarily make available or discoverable online for anyone anywhere in the world to see.
2
The "Internet of Things" is an accident waiting to happen.
On his way out Obama told Trump that the national security priority was North Korea. He, Obama, simply passed the problem along to the next guy, as every president before him has done.
Now the president is not allowing North Korea to threaten the US, and he's being demonized for it. His critics should know that not everyone is in favor of continuing the same old ineffective policies.
9
But I think everyone can agree that his schoolboy-ish manners and taunting are asinine and worse - unhelpful. 'My button is bigger than yours'?
Two mad-men egging each other on to war while the rest of us (both Americans and South Koreans) pay the price.
15
It is hard to believe that they got this tech so quickly without the Russians helping them a lot. There were recent reports about rocket engines from Russia even. Furthermore, the whole thing plays directly into Putin's hands.
5
Still making the same mistake: underestimating the enemy. He is closer to nuclear delivery than we want to believe.
2
The real threat here is Iran - with 4 times the population and virtually unlimited financial and trade resources and access to nuclear technologies for hire/sale. With 4 times the population, scientists studying abroad at major western universities and almost unfettered access to western technologies. Plus Iran has repeatedly threatened to annihilate Israel - the worlds’ 4th or 5th most sophisticated nuclear power with land, sea and air delivery systems. We can be certain NK technologies have been purchased by Iran.
Without a massive pre-emptive strike we know the future. Likely loss of one or more American cities by design or accident. Which US President wants that historical distinction.
Why blame the CIA. Insiders know that virtually every major significant intelligence event since the end of WWII was missed by our establishment. Most notably the break up of the Soviet Union. Neither we nor our so called allies have the ability to do better in the future.
We can all thank Pres. Obama for kicking the NK can down the road. And his predecessors to lessor degrees. We elect Commanders in Chief who fail to make major military decisions when they are required. Ultimately that will doom our “noble experiment” in a people’s republic.
5
There is a long distance between looking at ambiguous information and the certainty of an event when it becomes public. In that sense, intelligence gathering will always be behind the curve.
We also tend to believe that because we invest so much money, time, and brain power into gaining information that even a poor state such as North Korea cannot hide anything from us. The truth is that geniuses walk down practically every lane in the world. Americans have no monopoly on being smart or inventive, for good purposes or bad ones.
So, now we face a humiliating prospect of having to coax an insular and paranoid state into the community of nations without starting Armageddon. We need skillful diplomats to take those steps. Too bad they are leaving our national service because their services are not wanted by our leaders.
218
Please don't lose sight of the fact that these "skillful diplomats" played a very large role in the decisions that produced this situation.
Let's hope their replacements succeed.
1
The problem is not coaxing "an insular and paranoid state into the community of nations" but more directly preventing Armageddon while meeting American national interests. There are many indications that the DPRK wants participation in the community of nations. It is party to key international agreements such as the Climate Accord and the Outer Space Treaty. Given its security can be assured participation may progress faster than expected.
I accept most of what you write except for the bit describing North Korea as 'insular and paranoid'. You see, it is American doing that has made NORTH Korea insular: imposing sanctions, cutting of-trade, etc. has TURNED North Korea into insularity as a policy for survival. And then, it is not North Korea that is paranoid, it is America that is paranoid. Because America coerces and blackmails other (especially smaller and less well armed) nations into doing its bidding, it is indeed America as a nation that is paranoid.
While the North Korean leader might be paranoid, but then so is Donald Trunk; he constant refrain is that others are bilking our nation, and he has his hands on the BIGGEST BUTTON.
We must demand that all world leaders ban nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and also ban the manufacture and sales of such horrors. The USA, China, Russia, France, England, North Korea, Germany, India, Pakistan and ALL members of the "nuclear club" and those capable of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, including poison gas and germ warfare weapons, must stop the madness NOW. I don't care how much money our corporations make off these weapons, it is morally wrong and very unwise to allow them to exist. We humans have proven ourselves unfit to possess weapons like these. If we fail to begin dismantling our arsenals of destruction, it is only a matter of time before they are used against us and our fellow humans on this fragile planet Earth.
14
Please. Include Israel in this club
20
I wonder if you grasp the impossibility of this scenario.
Arsenal reduction after the Cold War was one thing, asking countries to disarm themselves of these weapons out of the blue is just pure out of touch wishful thinking.
India-Pakistan-China are locked together in a long term tango.
France has a historical trauma about being invaded and Europe is still looking at Russia as a willing expansionist with enough tanks to invade the west.
Israël need it'be say more.
USA-Russia.
The ones who did willingly disarm (mostly Ukraine after USSR collapse), did so out of economic conditions under the umbrella of other superpowers.
34
You are forgetting Libya. And see what happened to it.
There are thousands of Chinese elite nationals living in the U.S. They are wealthy; own second homes and educate their children at our Universities. Either China fixes this OR we start confiscating property and deporting these people. You will be surprised how fast China steps in if their lavish lifestyles are in jeopardy of being lost. "To kill a general aim arrows at his horse." And the horse is HERE living in luxury, grazing on our land of American freedom.
6
Your solution sounds blatantly unconstitutional.
7
Aaron: With all the negative things that can be said of the New York Times, it used to be that rather intelligent people were the ones that read it.
5
Take their property like we did Japanese Americans in 1942? Really?
1
SEEMS TO ME THAT OUR "FRIENDS" IN RUSSIA, IRAN AND PAKISTAN Helped Kim along in acquiring the atomic weapons. Given that Kim's latest rocket design is based on a Soviet rocket, I'd say that Putin le Putain has had a hand in this. And we've got Trump, who's been described by a psychiatrist Bandi Lee at Yale as deteriorating, posing a great danger to national security and global peace. It's horrifying how profound Trump's destructive impact on the US has strangled us. We're weak. The weakest we've ever been in modern times. TRUMP and his criminal cronies MUST GO!
12
I remember multiple pieces written by the Times in the 1990’s, railing against any spending on ballistic missile defense. They dismissed the DPRK threat, saying it was “decades away.”
Guess what? “Decades away” is here.
Very shortsighted.
11
Perhaps Obama put NK with ISIS as the "junior varsity" and not in need of serious action. Well, actually, Obama exercised "strategic patience" while NK built nuclear weapons. We are the beneficiaries of strategic patience. Now, doesn't that feel good.
12
Didn't you read the article?
3
If we ever needed a cool intellect as Commander-in-Chief it is now; instead we have a man who did not even want to be President lying in bed with Big Macs watching Fox and Friends.
14
If you read the article then you might come to understand that Mr. Obama’s cool and measured strategy brought us to the current state of affairs. Read between the lines and you’ll see that the Times, however it bobs and weaves, points to Obama’s recurring failure of imagination.
9
If you wanted an invertibrate for POTUS, you had one for the past two terms. See what "cool intellect" has gotten. What would Hillary do? Ask Qadaffi!
3
And these are the same intelligence officials who sad Sadaam had nukes and that 100% in 2016 Russia hacked our election...er ...interfered with the democratic process ...er ... bought Facebook ads?
12
Trump should blame Obama so he feels better) and declare this cold war over. Any attack on NK by the U.S. could be net with a launch, and although it would mean the end of NK, it could also mean the end of civilization, ad once nukes start flying the Chinese and Russians are likely to launch also.
The arrogant aggressive attitude of the U.S. has been met with escalation, not capitulation, every time. For example: President Obama... authorized an intensification of covert cyberstrikes and electronic strikes on the North’s missile program. The pace of missile tests accelerated, reaching a peak of more than two dozen in 2016."
And when Trump came in metaphorically threatening a first strike, NK sped up its efforts even more resulting in a hydrogen bomb and ICBM.
Notice that the only person that had luck slowing down NK was Carter when Clinton's again backfired.
Interestingly, probably our biggest mistake was letting NK poach Russian scientists who brought designs with them. We should have snatched them up with offers of more money and nicer living conditions.
But for all of you war mongers, This is over. They probably figured out ceramic hear shields long ago. Attacking NK now risks global nuclear war.
5
"The North’s rapid progress raises a number of awkward questions..."
It sure does. One of the most awkward questions--which never seems to get asked in press coverage of this crisis--is the degree to which North Korea may be getting direct help from other nations, such as China and especially Russia, to accelerate their nuclear program.
Russia and China make a big show of opposing the North's nuclear program, both at the U.N. and in diplomatic talks with the U.S. But what exactly happened between 2016, when 7 out of 8 North Korean missiles "blew up on the pad or shattered in flight," and 2017, when they "in quick succession demonstrated ranges that could reach Guam, then the West Coast, then Washington"? It is interesting that the successful missiles were "based on a decades-old Soviet engine design," and the time frame of their launches coincided with rapid deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations over issues such as Ukraine, the Syrian war, and economic sanctions.
In the worst case, Russia may view the North Korean crisis as an opportunity to launch proxy nuclear strikes against the U.S. In the event that a war breaks out, they may be scheming to make sure that as many nuclear ICBMs as possible are fired at the U.S. from North Korea, all the while maintaining "plausible deniability" of their own involvement, as they did when they sent soldiers into Ukraine, shot down a commerical Malaysian airliner, helped Assad bomb civilians, etc.
America should tread with care...
150
"May be" and "interesting" and "never asked questions" are ways to assert conclusions for which there are no facts in support.
The US talked about the dangers of former soviet scientists on the market back when the USSR collapsed. It has been a constant issue, arising from collapse of large nuclear weapons infrastructure into people who are not paid, and can't even feed themselves.
Now they have something very valuable in their personal control, which they can sell in just a very few places. It can't be a surprise that one or two may have done so, rather than starve. They can't eat their research, only sell it.
It is wild neocon threat-seeking to go from there to an international conspiracy of governments.
Finally, if the Russian or Chinese government wanted to give them a missile or weapon, they could just do it. They would not have to go through all this.
3
When a nation contemplates war against an enemy, as the U.S. government is now doing with North Korea, it is necessary to consider all contigencies when assessing the threat posed by the conflict. In this context, speculating about Russian assistance to North Korea is not "conspiracy mongering," it is worst-case scenario risk planning. It is one thing to start a war against North Korea alone, and quite another to start a war against North Korea aided secretly by Russia. We'd better be considering that contingency before we go diving into a war.
For decades, we have been told that Russia and the U.S. will never fight a nuclear war, because both nations are deterred by the logic of "mutually assured destruction." In principle, North Korea could offer Russia an opportunity to circumvent that logic. By secretly aiding the North Korean nuclear program and "plausibly denying" it, Russia might be able evade retaliation for a nuclear attack that they helped to bring about.
You claim that "if the Russian or Chinese government wanted to give [North Korea] a missile or weapon, they could just do it." Russian could have just sent their soldiers into Ukraine as well, in Russian uniforms. But they didn't. They could have just admitted that the meddled in U.S. elections. But they didn't. Plausible deniability is their modus operandi.
I'm not saying this Russian conspiracy theory is true. I'm saying we'd better consider it before going to war against North Korea.
Your speculation are baseless nonsense. Nobody wants a nuclear war, and Neither Chinese nor Russian government wants another country to share the privilege of nuclear country. It's utterly surprising to see the number of recommendation your posts receive, no offense, but you are probably still stuck in the Cold War mindset while the world has progressed past it.
2
Let's admit that our own intelligence within North Korea is lacking. There's a limit that we can discern from satellite images. What is lacking is to be undercover in NK, probably the most dangerous spy mission in the world. Any volunteers?
Our foreign policy is now to abandon our belief in a nuclear free Korean peninsula. NK is a first class nuclear power and they would rather fire a nuclear warhead than give it up. The real question is who taught them how to build these missiles and the bomb? Maybe that's where the sanctions should be.
5
Suppose the, in the near term, NK demonstrates to the satisfaction of everyone that it has a fully operational ICBM capable of reliably delivering a thermonuclear device anywhere in the world. Assume also that he demonstrates mobile or submarine launch capability that is very hard to 100% eliminate in a preemptive strike. After all, this is something that multiple countries did over 50 years ago, so it's far from impossible.
What if Kim then announces that he is going to invade the South and take Seoul and a few other valuable targets and that if any other foreign power intervenes, he will nuke them?
Do we risk trading NYC, LA, DC, or Chicago for Seoul?
10
That's the deal we're in, not just in East Asia but in Western Europe, as well. Either we put our cities at risk to defend Japan, South Korea, Germany, Scandinavia and everyone else, or we accept the alternative. That alternative is nuclear proliferation on a scale that is unimaginable to Americans comfortably far removed from the "either/or" threat that you describe. We can imagine alternatives, but imaginary alternatives are of little interest to the contestants in this particular existential drama.
1
Well - we can easily ship 25 nukes and rockets to South Korea and 25 to Japan - and announce it. And if NK attacks either one, they can defend themselves.
BR,
And then we can watch and see what China has to say about that. I have a pretty good idea, and I'll bet if you consider it, you will too,
As an Israeli reading this article, the analogy with Iran's nuclear program and the 'deal' to delay its development, looms very large. It is clear that American intelligence assessments are very inaccurate especially regarding time lines. Their ability to detect when a nation cheats is also quite poor. The CIA was unaware of a N. Korean designed reactor being built in Syria. Hence, any Israeli government faced with a likely nuclear armed Iran combined with ICBMs must take such an eventuality as a near certainty. The liberal West looks at Israel and Netanyahu as hysterical and pushed through an agreement with Iran that still leaves an existential threat to Israel in place - after all, Iran has on innumerable occasions threatened to destroy Israel. As Trump and the right in America has maintained, the agreement is worthless and is merely putting off the inevitable. History mandates that Jews need good historical memories, viz. Munich agreement that brought 'peace' in our time. The current N. Korean situation is proof of principle that the impotency of the U.S. in the face of nuclear proliferation is bringing us all to the edge of Armageddon.
5
Globalists are terrible at deterrence, and we've had a globalist in the White House for 8 years. While they're off creating their new world, the bad guys are living in the present, undeterred.
5
It must be such an easy thing to see the world as good and bag guys.
No wonder.
2
Of course, Israel was the first in the region to acquire nuclear weapons. Not a criticism, they were more than justified. But a fact, nevertheless
2
Billions less on surveillance of Americans, more for rogue adversaries that threaten us with nuclear weapons.
3
It’s comforting to know that our “commander-in-chief’s” understaning of dealing with North Korea, the complexities of interrealted and interdependent foreign policy, and nuclear warfare is summed up with “my button is bigger.” Coverage of this little boy Electoral-college placed president as having any idea of what he’a doing with regard to North Korea is just farce. We have a child throwing playground trantrums and apparently no adults brave enough to say No you can’t play world leader, you’re only 5 years old. We have so much advanced technology - perhaps we should focus more on advancing human beings so we’re smart enough and insightful enough not to let small children control countries and play with lethal weapons.
16
I suggest you read the article before you share your thoughts.
3
The article discusses the complexity and challenges in determining (and therefore developing appropriate policy toward) North Korea’s development of nuclear capabilities over the period of time of several US adminstrations. My comment highlights the incongruity of having a man-child leading us not only in particularly challenging times given North Korea’s apparent geometric advances, but also in the light of the less than successful ability to do so by his predecessors who were not only more competant, but at least comported themselves for the most part as adults.
3
No need to worry, as we have a President who is a stable genius up there with other stable geniuses such as Secretariat, Citation, and Seattle Slew.
That said, American intelligence has been a failure for decades. Before 9/11, intelligence files were somewhat amusing, as it became apparent these agencies were bureaucracies often inventing enemies to justify increasing budgets and power. Simultaneously, they had become highly politicized, trying to please Presidents, not one of whom has ever held the agencies accountable. After 9/11, it's no longer funny.
The purpose of intelligence is to gather and analyze data, giving the results to the President and other officials. Instead, the agencies have largely presented "evidence" they believe Presidents want to hear. Meanwhile, they have been given legitimate military functions, such as the targeting drone program. Through all this, genuine intelligence gathering and analysis has deteriorated badly. Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Korea.
We could have prevented North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ICBMs by going after those countries and corporations -- even if American or allied -- that supplied the know-how and material for these programs. No administration has choked off the intellectual, financial, and material resources necessary to build these weapons. It's not like Pyongyang University is known for its outstanding physics department, nor is North Korea awash in foreign capital and domestic uranium.
2
Kim's rational for nuclear weapons is not a sign of suicidal irrational thinking. He knows quite well that the US would annihilate his county if he attacks South Korea or Japan much less the United States with nuclear weapons. I think we might find it more probable to realize what his foreign affairs officers have been saying. We got Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to give up his nukes and what happened? We, and the Russians, got the Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal with kumbaya promises and what happened? We, and our Israeli ally destroyed the nuclear reactors, first in Iraq and later in Syria and what happened to those countries. And now who threatens Iran with obliteration if it develops nuclear weapons? Is it any wonder that the DPRK under Kim sees the United States as its mortal enemy and only the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to our aggression will allow them to develop their country free of American interference? I think China has made it clear that they will defend North Korea if we attack the North first, but will not support them if they attack the US, South Korea or Japan. I believe the genie is out of the box and we will have to live with a nuclear-armed North Korea just as we lived with a nuclear USSR and China for decades.
84
The American intelligence community has been a failure for decades. Before 9/11, going through cubic feet of intelligence files was pretty much an amusing endeavor, it apparent these agencies were bloated bureaucracies, often inventing enemies to justify increasing budgets and power. Simultaneously, they had become highly politicized, trying to please Presidents, not one of whom has ever held the agencies accountable. After 9/11, this was no longer funny.
The purpose of intelligence is to gather and analyze data, giving the results to the President and other policy-making officials. Instead, the agencies have tried to please Presidents, presenting "evidence" they believe he wanted to hear. Meanwhile, Presidents have given them legitimate military functions, such as the targeting drone program. Through all this, genuine intelligence gathering and analysis has deteriorated badly. Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Korea.
If we had really wanted to prevent North Korea's development of nuclear weapons, ICBMs, and cyber attacks, we would have gone after those countries and corporations -- even if American or allied -- that supplied the know-how and material for these programs. Neither the Bush, Obama, nor Trump administrations choked off the intellectual, financial, and material resources necessary to build these weapons. It's not like Pyongyang University is known for its outstanding physics department, nor is North Korea awash in foreign capital and domestic uranium.
3
There is evidence they got help, or stole Russian technology. Their missiles rocket design looks a lot like Russian Missiles manufactured in the Ukraine. Given the turmoil in the Ukraine that is not far fetched. Maybe part of Putin's plan to destabilize east Asia and take the pressure off his adventures in Europe.
8
The problem with North Korea is multi-faceted, but it demonstrates that the US intelligence agencies failed at containment and under estimated the threat, now the only options are engagement, cyber capabilities or other asymmetrical means, the US should have taken care of the issue in the 1960's, when the North's capabilities were in their infancy. I hate to say this, but it shows arrogance by key decision makers and now the problem has no good solutions, but it is quite laughable to say there are many Korean experts, who are white,and do not understand the language and the culture. And sadly they are tasked with making crucial decisions. Korea has been carved up by the Russians and the Americans, because it is a site of proxy war. They had no choice in the matter and now the US is paying for it. There is no easy solution to the problem.
72
Agreed. Each administration kicked the can down the road, apparently due to faulty/politicized intelligence, wishful thinking, incompetence, what have you. At this point it might makes sense to let them have their weapons and engage diplomatically through South Korea.
1
Yeah, it's definitely Eisenhower's fault. He signaled the North that he would end the war during his campaign, with his famous I'll go to Korea pledge. I'm sure old Adlai would have carried the war through to completion, mobilized a million man army, pushed the Chinese back across the Yalu and maybe thrown in a few tac nukes, just to make a point.
Hindsight is so 20/20. Nobody here (or anywhere else) has explained exactly what any previous president could have done, without fighting WWIII, to prevent the current situation from developing.
3
The blame lies primarily with Clinton and Bush Jr. They should have taken care of the problem. By the time Obama took over, it was already late in the game.
If Eisenhower had been president in place of Clinton, he would have stopped NK cold.
Most people do not realise or know that the reason that both China and North Korea developed their Nuclear Weapons programs in direct response to American actions as well as plans discussed at the time during the Korean War conflict.
The American air bombing campaign on North Korea over 3 years during the conflict , levelled almost every standing structure in the country and killed upwards of 25% of all North Koreans.
Talk of using nuclear weapons to destroy Chinese Cities to halt the Chinese advance pushing back the U.S from North Korea towards the end of the conflict, convinced China that it needed its own nuclear deterrence from possible American threats and/or attack, just as a devastated North Korea vowed that never again would it allow another country to almost destroy it with impunity as occurred from the U.S bombing campaign.
I'm surprised Vietnam and a host of other countries have not developed Nuclear Weapons as a deterrence in response to American wars and devastation visited upon them by the actions of a Super Power that thought and still thinks it can largely do what it thinks or wants to do to others, mostly for reasons that we now know were invalid, illegal , achieved nothing of merit or were unnecessary in regards to their purported justifications and criminal in the millions of innocent lives taken in the doing by and of the United States and it's sometimes willing allies/supporters.
9
The question that comes to mind is: What is the US intelligence community good for? what American taxpayers are getting in return for their money?
The US has the largest and most expensive intelligence/information service community in the world. Second to none.
President Trump, however, does not trust intelligence briefings and has attacked the leadership of CIA, FBI NSA. The record of the intelligence community is poor.
Not a single major national security threat of the last few decades -- 9/11 and now North Korea's nuclear program -- was properly assessed and preventive countermeasures were taken.
If the performance requirement standards applied to corporations were used to assess the intelligence agencies, probably the majority would be out of business.
5
Congress has failed in their responsibility to oversee the machinations of the bureaucracies created to do the work. Maybe we need to implement term limits for unelected government officials in order to mitigate these dire effects of careerism.
1
It is clear that the sudden change in their capability came about around mid to late 2016. There is only one country that has to gain from having the US tied up in this - China. Trump had made many comments during his campaign on the addressing the massive imbalance China has over the US on trade. This is hugely destabilizing for the Chinese economy particularly since the Chinese government artificially supports their currency as well as the debt on many of their companies. They needed two things, one is that Chinese companies quickly buy foreign assets - hence the billions they have spent in buying US and other western companies. Secondly, they needed leverage with the Trump administration over any trade issues. They have successfully achieved this with North Korea. They have helped the North Koreans achieve the missile and nuclear weapons breakthrough. Now as Kim Jong has softened his stance, watch the administration say positive things about Xi and the Chinese. The Chinese know that Trump cares less about geopolitics and more about making deals. The Chinese have us over a barrel and we have a dangerous new world order emerging. If there ever was a need for strong, unflinching US leadership, it is now.
9
China's interest in helping North Korea's development of nuclear technology is roughly equivalent to the US's interest in giving nukes to Mexico -- none.
Perhaps if we had a functioning intelligence security system these days (CIA, Defense, FBI), a function State Dept and a Security of State who wasn't clueless, and a "President" who paid any heed to intelligence services and authorities, and wasn't obsessed with Twittering (instead of governing) and all the investigations about his illegal actions and election-tampering with the Russians, the USA wouldn't be "surprised" by these development (and many others) over that last year?
6
Considering that the truck the missile is sitting on is from China, I would hardly categorize the North Korean missile progress as something of a breakthrough as much as I would strategic partnerships.
10
It does not take a rocket science to see what happened here.
I doubt very seriously that the North Koreans were able to develop their technology, and a hydrogen bomb in less than a year.
I firmly believe the Chinese transfered the technology directly to the North Koreans.
Think about it, Trump's candidacy and early presidency he was bragging about how he was going to go after for China because of their trade policies and currency manipulation.
Now, instead of doing any of that, Trump is begging them to intervene on the the United States behalf, when all along it was these Chinese who transferred the technology to the North Koreans to begin with.
It was the Chinese who saved North Korea during the Korean War. The Chinese are the North Koreans biggest Ally. Do you honestly think the China does not control North Korea?
Believe you me history repeats itself. We need leaders with enough intellect to understand what is really going on in the world, Beyond the headlines.
Right now our country is in grave Danger with a Madman at the helm.
Norman ( a simple attorney with his mind open.)
28
Indeed, China benefits by having a proxy state as a buffer between them and Japan. We can't lean on China too hard because to do so would risk losing whatever help they provide us in containing North Korea. We can't push North Korea too much because it threatens SK and Japan, and any conflict would involve China. In the meantime China can continue to develop the way they want to. Russia and China can advance their interests in surreptitious ways around the globe, ensnaring the US in various conflicts that prevent us from directly dealing with them. Agreed.
The American intelligence community has been a failure for decades. Before 9/11, going through cubic feet of intelligence files was pretty much an amusing endeavor, as it became apparent these agencies were bloated bureaucracies, inventing enemies to justify increasing budgets and power. Simultaneously, they had become highly politicized, trying to please Presidents, not one of whom has ever held the agencies accountable. After 9/11, this was no longer funny.
The purpose of intelligence is to gather and analyze data, giving the results to the President and other authorized policy-making officials. Instead, the agencies have tried to please Presidents, presenting "evidence" they believe he wants to hear. Meanwhile, they have taken over legitimate military functions, such as the targeting drone program. Through all this, genuine intelligence gathering and analysis has deteriorated badly. Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, Iran, Iraq, Korea.
If we had really wanted to prevent North Korea's development of nuclear weapons, ICBMs, and cyber attacks, we would have gone after those countries and corporations -- even if American or allied -- that supplied the know-how and material for these programs. Neither the Bush, Obama, nor Trump administrations choked off the intellectual, financial, and material resources necessary to build these weapons. It's not like Pyongyang University is known for its outstanding physics department, nor is North Korea awash in foreign capital and domestic uranium.
5
it would appear the GOP strategy to Make America Dumb Again has been more successful than intended...
12
Dear Will
Did our entire failure occur since the last presidential election?... OR is it somewhat more likely that there was significant shortfall in the preceding eight years?
1
"That deal appeared to hold for six years but, in fact, the North began cheating on the agreement within a few years. Secretly, it was pursuing an alternative path to the bomb using uranium fuel."
False. It was the US which sabotaged the Agreed Framework by failing to deliver agreed upon oil and the two light water reactors. Furthermore, the Agreement said nothing about uranium. Uranium is enriched for commercial nuclear reactors and only one nuclear weapon, the Hiroshima bomb, has been made using uranium instead of plutonium. No nuclear power does this because it is a highly inefficient method which requires a huge amount of 90% enriched uranium, about 50 pounds if I recall correctly, which in turn requires a huge number of centrifuges which North Korea never had.
5
You are so right! We lacked sufficient appeasement!
1
America has almost never been right from the beginning on any issue, starting with the Boston Tea Party. But until now, she was always right at the end, whether that meant helping to defeat the Germans in 1918, or again in 1944. Of course then came the CIA in Iran, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the War in Panama, the first Gulf War, Yugoslavia, Shock and Awe - all served some purpose which was less than noble, some CIA purpose that was opaque, possibly sickening, but compared to the religious fundamentalists or the communists, it seemed like in the end America always made good. Unfortunately these days Trump and America are one. And plain old American style good is alt gone.
6
Our intelligence agencies are a profound, long-term, highly-politicized failure, as I've described in a previous comment. However, that seriously unfortunate reality is greatly exacerbated by having a stable genius for a President, one up there with other stable geniuses such as Secretariat, Citation, and Seattle Slew.
7
The Presidents over the past 30 years should hang their heads in shame and apologize to the people of the world for their lack of action on stopping this rouge country's gearing up to kill as many people as they can.
Shame to all.
27
And you propose??
BTW - I doubt NK is a fashion center. Its rogue, not rouge.
If Bush II had not made up stories about Iraq and attacked it to get its oil, none of this would have occurred.
Unfortunate, but assured mutual destructions by nuclear weapons have kept this world "safe". and without any major wars. North Korea is not suicidal and therefore, we can live safely in this world. Though, it is important to restrict trigger happy politicians such as Trump from starting nuclear attacks on North Korea.
15
You clearly don't understand North Korea, do you? Kim will absolutely take out anyone he thinks might be about to take him out. His is deeply paranoid and not stupid. Last month it came out from recent defectors that he has trained "brainwashed fighters who will "live and die" for Kim Jong-un and even have their own "nuclear backpacks." You need to be living in the scary reality of now with the rest of us, so you can help to best decide, along with your Congresspeople, what the best options are for us as a country.
9
The Kims are not insane. They are Machiavellian. The I'd invaded Korea, and to protect themselves from the U.S., in a way we refused to end for 60 years, they built nuclear weapons. Note we can't attack then without risking global nuclear war. That is no more insane than having thousands is nuclear weapons and a military that is bigger than the next ten combined, that is at an almost perpetual state of war and troops stationed in over a hundred countries.
The Chinese manage to protect their interests without projecting military force. Why can't we?
Channel surfing last night, I came across a remake of "Red Dawn". The North Koreans were everywhere! I hoped our "genius" of a President wasn't watching and getting ready use his bigger button.
Call me naive, but it's hard to tell other countries, no matter how heinous, they can't have nuclear weapons when we have way too many ourselves. We certainly painted ourselves into a deadly corner.
7
"The missiles Mr. Kim has launched in recent months bear numerous signs of Soviet provenance." If the GOP and right-wing radio/TV cared about the safety and future of America, they would focus on the sentence quoted above. Uranium One, however, endlessly fascinates them. It's truly pathetic to see how hate and political conformity can so blind a large block of people.
15
some things never change
Despite the presidents claim to "stable genius" he sometimes acts more like a pampered emperor, but mostly his is mob boss. So it's frightening to wonder how his really going to anything without getting done without getting a staggering number of people killed. But worries me more is the way politicians are approaching this as a "wait until he fumbles the ball moment". And that puts this president in play, with a clue, insulting his way into Armageddon. HEY, BOTH HOUSES - THAT'S REALLY A BAD IDEA!!!
15
We don't need our self-proclaimed "stable genius" as POTUS; we need a stable of geniuses -- STAT.
23
Why is this a surprise? Let's try some outside the box thinking for a change. Let's ask South Korea to surrender to North Korea and when their soldiers cross the DMZ shower them with free capitalistic merchandise. That will probably cause them to lose their minds with the decadence of the west. Or better yet bomb north Korea with food and cell phones so their brainwashed population can finally realize how the other half lives. They will probably throw the food into sea and destroy the cell phones under the direction of their fearless leader.
The average citizen in North Korea does not understand why the United States hates them so much. The same way the average rural person in Afghanistan had no idea about 9-11 because they did not have access to TV and were told to perceive American soldiers as invaders.
9
Let’s hope the concept of “mutual assured destruction” works with North Korea.
6
Being smug and underestimating our enemy is never good. Also breaking our alliances and building bridges with an adversary who is in cahoots with our enemy is utter stupidity and extremely dangerous. And now we have gotten into the dangerous predicament of a real nuclear war. Our superiority complex was our undoing. Know your enemy and don't insult their intelligence and capability. It's not North Korea who sprinted ( this bunny did'nt take a nap! ) but we became the tortoise.
27
If only Obama had been paying attention.
12
Didn't u read the article? He WAS paying attention. Look at the missile failure rates, for example. I think the China baiting scenario and subsequent acceleration of the North Korean grasp of the nuclear and missile launching capacities rather eloquently defines the scenario.
3
Only fools would believe that NK has accomplished so much on their own. Certainly China and Russia are actively participating and supporting NK's development. They can easily use NK to keep Don off balance and to make him and the US look like fools. War mongering fools.
They know Don is unstable and that his ego and Kim's ego are comparable. Nothing would solidify China's place as a world power more than a US/NK war. No one, not Kim or Don, would be stupid enough to use nuclear weapons. Conventional weapons would be plenty. Come on Don, Russia and China re not our friends.
6
The challenges our intelligence agencies face is understandable. Covert operations are impossible in North Korea, we have no embassy, no agents on the ground. We learn their weapons progress with each launch while relying on limited data from satellite images.
This is exactly why tweets boasting about the size of nuclear buttons are so reckless and even dangerous. We just aren’t certain of the progress of the North Korean nuclear program. Taunts like that tweet might just encourage Kim to show us just how dangerous he he is and elevate his menacing acts to a new level.
31
Now let's not make the same mistake again. This time it could be Iran. If we don't keep up our side of the Iranian Deal, the Iranians will not do so either. And we would once again taken by surprise. After all, I'm sure they have their Nuclear Plan Drafts somewhere!
19
Serves it well to the U.S. Government for still putting still credit on a bloated, outdated and incompetent intelligence system.
The average citizen assumes that intelligence agencies are just like in the movies: full efficient and sophisticated with Tom Cruise ready to save the day in 2 hours or less.
Actually, the CIA and other are just old procrastinating powers on themselves, pampered agencies used to make a cheap buck selling snake oil during the cold war.... time after time they failed U.S. so what is happening with NK is hardly a surprise.
10
Let's be honest. This is a president who wasn't in office two minutes before sounding off against this country's Intelligence Agencies in public, thereby undermining both their purpose and authority.
And with the Robert Mueller Russia investigation now in full swing, and the focus increasingly on previous campaign officials, as well as family members -- there's no reason to doubt that Donald Trump is getting worried. In fact, very worried indeed.
That said; when you have a president so self-assured in the knowledge that he knows everything better than everyone else, and who keeps both the U.S. State Department and U.S. Intelligence Agencies on a choke-hold, it's hardly surprising that the world continues to spin around without us, and we know nothing about it.
So, you tell me -- are we "winning" yet?
9
This is a classic case of deterrence run amuck. The Kim regime is not interested in attacking the US, since its obliteration would then be certain. Rather, given the fraught state of PRNK-US relations - made worse by Trump's bellicosity and unpredictability - the North is so worried about maintaining a credible deterrent that it has gone overboard, and is now threatened by the over-reaction it has generated in the US. The world would be much safer if the US would stop hyperventilating about the North's capabilities and began focusing on its intentions, which (if Trump's supposed national security team could only realize) are to prevent a US and South Korean attack, not to commit national and personal suicide.
8
Gareth Porter asserts in a recent article that it was the US that abandoned the Clinton agreement with North Korea because VP Cheney and other Bush adminsitration officials wanted to "funding and field a national missile defense system as quickly as possible." The bottom line is once again we see our country hastening to war--but this time an unprecedented war which could see the involvement of major nuclear powers like China as well as possibly Russia. This article in my opinion wants again raises fear with no serious discussion of the potentially devastating and disasterous consequences to the economies of all countries involved should such a war take place. Not to mention the potential destruction and genocidal nature to the Koreas overall as well as potentially Japan. With so many destroyed countries in the wake of the War on Terror, you'd think just once the Pentagon could counsel prudence and patience and push for a diplomatic end to this crisis as well as the complete de-nuclearization and de-militarization of the entire Korean Peninsula. The US has options. We can simply leave our base in South Korea and allow the two Koreas to resolve their own problems. For once we should consider Preserving the Peace.
5
One of the important elements of any strategy is to never underestimate your opponent or enemy. America has been doing that for a long time with NK. Blaming ex-Soviet scientists or Putin is another way we maintain our negative view of NK and dismiss their abilities. This is to our peril, though I doubt Kim Jong-un plans a nuclear strike against the US.
Kim realized something that the US, including the intelligence agencies, seem to have missed: his border with China is open. Trucks roll both ways. It was easy for him to send North Korean agents to China and other countries to operate the businesses needed to order material for the nuclear program, or just to make life better for the loyal citizens. While oil might be easier to stop from reaching NK, the multitude of parts are simply ordered over the internet and either shipped to China or made there. I doubt the Chinese border guards have been diligent on implementing any sanctions searches of traffic to NK. China doesn't care if NK is an annoyance or danger to the US. Quite the opposite. A useful distraction to the US.
8
If we're really lucky, Kim Jong-Un will be removed from power in a coup. I dread to contemplate what will happen if we're really unlucky. I think it's time to concentrate on missile defense and civil defense including modern bomb shelters. In 1983, Reagan proposed a "Star Wars" (Strategic Defense Initiative) missile shield to protect the U.S. against ICBMs; Trump wants to build a wall on the Southern border to keep poor Mexicans out, and that Mexico would pay for it. For political considerations instead of pragmatic one, we'll likely get the Wall, and the U.S. Taxpayer will foot the bill. The Chinese tried building a wall in earnest in 220 B.C., and again during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Now it's just a tourist attraction. Even before construction has begun on Trump's "big, beautiful wall," I hear Reagan exclaiming in my head, "Mr. Trump, (for God's sake) tear down this wall!"
6
It seems clear that North Korea will eventually get an operational ICBM with a 1960's vintage thermonuclear device. Whether it's a matter of a few months or a couple years doesn't matter that much.
I would take Kim's new willingness to talk to South Korea as a sign that he has confidence in the strength of his hand. If the US pushes him enough, he will eventually be forced into conducting an atmospheric test to demonstrate his capabilities.
The real question is what Kim will do once he has convinced the world that he has a fully operational nuclear capability.
Under one scenario, he could simply use it as a deterrent to preserve his regime without fear of foreign intervention. Under another scenario, he could attempt nuclear blackmail to obtain concessions from the South, Japan and the West. He will certainly want the sanctions eased and the ability to improve conditions for his populace, which can't be held in check forever after their country is secure from imminent invasion by their long-time enemies.
There doesn't seem to be any effective strategy to prevent this from happening and complaining that past presidents, from Truman forward, didn't solve the insoluble is not really much of an answer. You could quibble with what Clinton and Bush did, but it probably doesn't matter.
What this proves is that if a state is determined enough to obtain a nuclear capability, it is probably impossible to stop it.
8
Yes, North Korea has nuclear weapons, and perhaps a means to deliver them. But if they do that, the next day, North Korea will become a radioactive desert caused by retaliatory strikes. And it will remain a radioactive desert for the next 50 years.
3
A key to more rapid then expected progress is how N.Korea changed its treatment of scientists and engineers under Kim
" Science Worship
Mr. Kim has elevated science as an ideal in the regime’s propaganda and put his fondness for scientists and engineers on prominent display across North Korea.
Four years after taking power in 2011, Kim Jong-un opened a six-lane avenue in Pyongyang known as Future Scientists Street, with gleaming apartment towers for scientists, engineers and their families"
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/15/world/asia/north-korea-sc...
Compare this to the US.
8
Just as with Iran, you don't know how long things might take so just assume they have every capability they might have. We helped with money and incentives to each country. Making nuclear weapons is not that difficult when you have the materials, same with rockets. And I bet it was Obama era people making these estimates or influencing them a lot.
5
Underestimated DPRK, overestimated IRAQ, underestimated VIET NAM, underestimated NAZIS, underestimated ISIS, it's not how much our intelligence agencies get it wrong but whether or not they ever get it right. -CN
49
How do we know what they get right? Isn’t that the hurdle in being critical of our intelligence agencies?
I wouldn't worry about it. Donald Trump is a stone cold genius.
Of course, so was the unabomber.
37
" so was the unabomber."
Yes, but the unabomber went to Harvard and that makes all the difference.
5
Actually he was a genius, a math prodigy. He was, I assume, mentally ill, but he was a genius. Unfortunately Trump seems to be mentally ill, but for better or worse is clearly not a genius.
The good news is Trump was a real estate developer, and a sleazy one at that. Any prosecutor worth his salt who digs enough will find lots and lots of skeletons, it's the nature of the business.
2
Its good news only if you think Mike Pence would be an improvement. In fact, Pence is far more likely to get us into a nuclear war since, being a soldier of Christ, he welcomes Armageddon rather than trying to avoid it.
3
This commenter's rhetorical question reminds me of Colin Powell's Feb. 2002 speech to the UN, about Iraq's imagined WMDs:
"When was the last time US intelligence agencies got something right? We have been treated to weapons of mass destruction..."
Powell showed a satellite photo of some wooden shack in Iraq that, he said, US intelligence experts suspected contained a laboratory to make WMDs. I remember saying out loud to the TV: "Well, why don't you just call one of the inspectors [there were many thousands of them in Iraq, most with sophisticated detectors capable of detecting radiation from a half mile away] and ask him to take a look?" I said much the same thing in response to one of Powell's other revelations: that the Iraqis had moved dirt at another site, obviously -- Powell said -- trying to cover up radioactive material. Saddam Hussein said the inspectors were welcome to look under his bed if they liked (as far as I know, they didn't).
In other words, it wasn't just our "intelligence agencies" at fault then, and I suspect the same is true today – we just don't care what they have to say. Bush the Younger wanted to go to war against Iraq, and Powell had been "sidelined" until he got back on the bus with that UN speech. It really didn't matter whether Iraq had WMD or not, and plain old common sense wasn't going to change that.
20
I'd bet good money that the Russian "freelancers" likely helping the North Korean efforts are operating with the blessing and indirect support of the Russian government. As always, Putin likes to maintain plausible deniability while pushing his agenda of creating chaos for the West and splitting the US from its allies. This has so many upsides for him, tieing Trump (or whatever US president) in knots while he pursues his interests in Syria and Ukraine without interference. Not to mention laughing himself silly while watching the spectacle of Trump trying to out-crazy Kim. He even offered to act as an intermediary to solve the problem, a particularly delicious twist, no doubt. Vlad must be saying to himself "I'm like really smart, a genius!"
6
Not improbable that Putin has been providing North Korea plans from Soviet era missiles and warheads. Trump is beholden to Putin, for reasons not yet revealed. Meanwhile, Trump will never call Putin out on anything, including assisting North Korea. So, yet, another horrific downside of Trump's criminality and treason.
8
Ok, Tom Clancy, why is Trump beholden to Putin? Please elaborate.
2
The Pakistanis bartered their (Chinese given) nuclear bomb technology for North Korean missile technology for which Abdul Qadeer Khan was made the official scape goat. The CIA knew but had to keep the Pakistani generals happy in its war on Communist Afghanistan. Result: two dangerous nuclear rogues regimes for advancing the collapse of the USSR by a few years.
The whole discussion of stopping North Korea (or any country for that matter) from developing nuclear weapns baffles me. In a country that has perverted the idea of weapon ownership as a nearly divine right declared by the 2d Amendment for chiefly reasons of self-protection, why wouldn't we expect every sovereign nation on earth to want to develop a nuclear weapon for their own protection? And why wouldn't we respect their right to do so? I think all this intelligence effort is a waste of time.
59
[... W]e have to accelerate our own efforts to resolve the issue short of conflict.”
Short of conflict, it won't be resolved. Neither can it be resolved with conflict without sustaining and inflicting on other innocent people unacceptable, horrific consequences.
The sane, ugly truth is that we're stuck with this. The bright side is that the concept of mutually assured destruction applies equally to all equal nuclear powers. Although they haven't yet achieved parity, they probably do have the ability to nuke one or more of our cities, which should be enough destruction for us to say the concept's currently in play.
That is, it would be enough with a sane commander-in-chief ...
3
Sanger and Broad seem to believe "that there was less pressure to bolster missile defenses" due to our inaccurate intelligence assessments of NK's missile development progress. Gentlemen, there is NO "missile defense". Once ONE missile has been launched and identified, WE would immediately launch a huge nuclear counterattack. NO ONE in our command structure would consider waiting to see if we could "knock down" a missile (there would undoubtedly be more than one!), before responding. That response would be a thermonuclear nightmare, quite easily setting off responses in kind from russia and China. ALL of the Korean peninsula would be destroyed,
Japan would likely be another target, but all the ensuing carnage would result in a nuclear winter. The human species may not survive such a preventable disaster.
Stop thinking as if there is some strategic and tactical "way" to "win" or even survive! You don't seem to grasp the power of these weapons. There is NO WINNING.
104
this can't be said enough. there is no defense against these weapons, only one of which could cause the greatest devastation the US has ever seen.
And air currents will transport radioactive fallout of thermonuclear counterattack in Korean peninsula back to US - first from Alaska to LA, then in full sweep across the continent … in how many weeks? So any such bombastic assault will likely kill off as many Americans as enemy, only maybe more slowly as radiation takes its time.
If North Korea launched a nuclear armed missile at the United States, I don't think Russia or China would back the country to the hilt.
`
Even with a formal alliance, China recently implied it would not support North Korea if it was the aggressor. Now maybe that could change, but don't see a WWIII scenario playing out like that, involving Russia and China.
`
Otherwise, it is quite possible that a President would see if the GMD (Ground-based Midcourse Defense) would work, if a single missile is launched.
If more missiles were launched, like 100, for whatever reason, then a response like the old doctrine of massive retaliation, could unfold.
hmm. could it be a coincidence that north Korea advanced during the Bush administration, north korea stopped advancing during the clinton administration, north korea advanced during the Bush Jr. administration, north korea continuously failed during the Obama administration and then has had incredible advances with direct Russian support during the Trump administration?
23
“There is still time to start a dialogue.”
I’m glad South Korea is starting the dialogue. Who but the nearest neighbor, a “relative” of long association, would be a better dialogue partner?
The safest thing is to leave this to the Asian community. With South Korea first.
I feel the world is in much safer hands that way.
(Trump, on the other hand, seems to be a pyromaniac when it comes to almost anything - at home or abroad. I hope he can somehow be kept from his finger on the Twitter. Or any other “button.”)
8
If I was Kim Jong-un right now and thinking logically -- a tall order for him, I admit -- I’d be saying to myself why should I bother to attack anybody when the U.S. is busy destroying itself politically and socially; and all I have to do is stick around for a few more months or years until it finishes the job; and then do anything in Asia I want to do.
8
Can you give any examples? I think not. Stock market doing beautifully, jobs on the increase.
Where have you been for so long Piotr? There's a guy in town now named Trump who's been wrecking the place.
1
If we do not want other people to have nuclear weapons, why do we and other nuclear powers have them? How did Israel get 200-400 such weapons without anyone say a word about them?
Kim wants nuclear weapons because he knows that is the way he can protect himself and his country against his real and perceived enemies. He knows what happened to other dictators like Saddam and Qaddafi after they gave up on their nuclear weapons programs.
64
Israel developed its capabilities prior to the non-proliferation efforts/treaty of the late 1960s. And they acquired those capabilities in part from help from France. Not sure why Israel is being brought up, except some try to pain a picture of hypocrisy in the world community. Otherwise, no one has made noise since the 1960s of attacking North Korea (to be generous, really the 1950s if discounting reactions to the Pueblo Incident), while North Korea undertook a range of aggressive and provocative policies and acts (think bombings, kidnappings, infiltration, etc.) - so would doubt the argument emphasizing defense. The only trouble makers in the area have been the North Koreans, especially since 1980s.
This is this is a long line of intelligence failures, CIAstated that shah of Iran would in power for a long time, he was gone within a month, Vietnam Nam would lose, Soviet Union was not collapsing, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, now Iran will fall,
Maybe our intelligence guys need to stop watching TV and Hollywood movies and rather do their job
6
If North Korea was underestimated it wasn't by President Obama, he warned trump it was the most dangerous situation he would be facing. Unfortunately our president didn't listen and would rather tweet insults like a 10 year old.
6
Well why did not Obama do something in 8 years in office? Seems he just kicked the can down the road.
Trump has been President almost a year but has managed to escalate tensions with Kim the US and South Korea to an alarming extent. He wants a War to prove himself a tough talker with the Biggest "Button!" Russia is taking advantage of Trump, shipping Oil & technology to NK out in the open. War would be another disaster & NYT needs to tamp down articles that would in any way justify NK War or minimize the ability for peaceful agreement. Trump purposefully tweets insults while SK makes slight advances toward negotiations and de-escalation. Trump is Not Capable of Negotiating that is clear. I wish SK success and urge them to ignore and exclude the US in negotiations as We are stuck with an unqualified ineffective and ill equipped leader. Trump is unable to use logic and facts. He'd rather believe Conspiracy Theorists and low information Sychophant Entertainment Channel as sources. I pray we will survive such a calamity.
6
I have been saying for years that North Korea was much further along in its nuclear program.
I think my words were ... North Korea only builds nukes ... they don't feed their people. They build nukes ... it's all they do ...
6
I think they are the ones that are underestimating us.....
Their time is coming.
2
We have a “stable genius” as one leader versus a “madman” as the other in the duel between the US and North Korea. It is too bad for us they have the “stable genius”.
6
I'm glad Trump is on our side. He doesn't seem to fail, now does he?
1
Back in the 1990's Bernard Schwartz of Loral Corporation revealed key rocketry secrets to the Chinese, with the apparent blessing of Bill Clinton. Loral and Hughes provided Chinese space engineers with technical rocketry data that greatly assisted Beijing's troubled ballistic missile program. Most of PRC's missiles disintegrated in flight or badly missed their mark prior to these disclosures. Read for yourself: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/campfin/stories/sa...
I'm sure these secrets were passed along to North Korea.
6
China has had reliable ICBMs by 1980 at the latest, and quite possibly as early as 1970.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Land...
Technology discovery is not a monopoly and preventing transfer of the technology has proven to be difficult. It is typically ignored in favor of threats and carrot sticks.
Your cite is demonstrates an ongoing problem that has existed since the start of the cold war. The responsibility lies over many administrations of both parties confronted with a lack of easy solutions.
Our POTUS is not helping with his provocative rhetoric on North Korea. Pointing out and publicizing violations by China and Russia (and other countries) is a more effective tactic he has started to use. Review of our own security gaps is called for as well.
Trump's hands-off approach to Putin is treasonous and unpatriotic.
51
The headline should read: How the Obama Administration Allowed a Nuclear Norh Korea. Let’s tell it like it is, without blaming the intelligence community.
11
Please refer to the comment above by Howard64.
Also, if you read the article better, you would know that North Korea detonated its first nuclear weapon in 2006 during the Bush administration. Did Obama allow that?
3
Response to Loomy-
Oh, Bush and Condoleezza Rice have some explaining to do, as well. We may as well of had Neville Chamberlain in charge of our North Korean policy.
2
No one "allowed " anything except nature. Given the time and resources any nation can create and deploy nuclear weapons.
1
The whole world watched N.Korea developing these missiles, brought into living rooms during evening news, and Intelligence Agenies are surprised & confused. Scary! Never underestimate enemies or fools.
6
“But in 2008, two years after its first nuclear test, Condoleezza Rice, then secretary of state, warned allies that the North was on the verge of another leap...”
...yet the Bush and Obama administrations continued to appease the North Korean mad man, until it was too late.
8
One of the great what iffs is what if we had gone to war against NK instead of Iraq?
No oil to steal in NK sealed the deal.
2
8 years of dialogue by Obama administration is the reason. Despots only underestand one thing, the hammer and the fist.
5
Funny how alternate reality republicons change history at a whim.
Just to re-educate you, there was no threat of nuclear annihilation with our last real President, Obama, because he was an expert politician who knew how to play the game, keeping the North Koreans at bay.
Now, our artery-hardened "president" brought us immediately to the brink of nuclear annihilation, because he knows zero about history, politics and truth.
But to the anarchists who seem to be the rage in America, everything is Obama, Hillary, etc., etc. fault. Nice try, but time to go back to school and learn a little about that long-forgotten concept: truth.
6
Six factors that have contributed to this rapid development:
1-Availability of technical weapons information by the US, Russia, China on computers, whether public, secret or top secret.
2-The inability of the US to protect such information from clever hackers
3-The determination of NK scientist and engineers to obtain such information, in any way they can
4-Uzhnoye rocket factory in So Ukraine selling rocket technologies to NK for a hefty price
5-Russian free lancers providing assistance to NK engineers, directly
6-China's reluctance to help the US and the West control the NK. In fact, their secret pleasure to have US remain in constant fear of NK's nuclear reach to their boarders, and China's own worry to let NK fail and be taken over by their enemy, the South Koreans,
6
Do you think we would have been more informed if we had an ambassador in South Korea?
3
Ahem.. leading from behind.
1
Maybe I'm mistaken but it seems to me that our intelligence agencies are always, almost without exception found to be greatly mistaken, late and simply unable to do their job. The agencies were asleep at 911, they were asleep for the invasion of Ukraine and Crimea. They were asleep when Assad used chemical weapons and when Saddam Hussein was accused of harboring weapons of mass destruction. The agencies were asleep when Syria began to fall apart and they failed to make the case for arming the rebels and hampered their response. They failed to warn during the invasion of Iraq when the dismantling of the government and army fostered the forming of factions opposing the Americans and the government of Iraq. They failed to see how the Russians were building relationships with Assad gaining port access. They failed to see what was happening in Turkey and the rise of Erdogan. And they certainly failed in assessing the nuclear program of North Korea. Not to forget how they failed to stop hacking of major computer systems across the United States including invasion of government agencies and large international corporations like Sony.
Exactly what are our security agencies doing to protect us and to give timely, and well documented information to our leadership? How much more underestimation of the capabilities of our enemies can we survive?
Remember Pearl Harbor or the Cuban Missile Crisis? Remember the invasion of Czechoslovakia? Remember 911? What's next?
34
They were wrong in Iran in 1953 and in Vietnam in 1963 and at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and very wrong about the USSR. They are hardly ever right.
6
Exactly who do you think informed Kennedy that the Soviets were arming Cuba?
It was Bush II who was asleep at the helm ignoring FBI agents pointing out that people were taking flying lessons without learning how to land. he also ignorned what Clinton had warned him about.
1
War, be it between two countries or states or another world war between a whole host of nations is inevitable. History may not repeat itself completely but it does rhyme. With Trump at the helm, I hope the Chinese are right in what they call the man, "a paper tiger." If not, in the words of C3PO, "we're doomed."
1
Why were we saber-rattling against Iran instead of North Korea while the latter had for years been farther ahead on both N bombs and Intercontinental Missiles to deliver them while the former had done no bomb development and apparently no work on missiles that can reach the U.S. (which is much farther away anyhow. Who sets up such apparently mis-aligned priorities in our defense system?
2
There are several lessons. The first necessity is obviously preventing the North's missiles and nuclear testing from happening. Sanctions must be verifiably executed and there should be a preparation of further sanctions in the event of such new tests happening (secondary sanctions on any entities - Chinese, Russian or any others). The North's crossing the finish line is based on doping and the source of doping assistance needs to be further investigated and punished (that will prevent future supply of missile fuel etc.). In the long run, the North will need to maintain and replenish its manufacturing capabilities used to finish missiles and nuclear weapons. Those machineries, certain of foreign origin, should not be serviced under any circumstances. People of the North will suffer further as a result of sanctions. But, we live in a world where we have to choose who will be the last among equals.
1
I’ve never understood the macho posturing of the US towards N. Korea as a strategy to prevent them from developing an effective nuclear force. They have demonstrated for years that they care more about achieving a nuclear deterrent against attack or invasion than they do about the well-being of their people, which should be the main concern of any government, but especially of one that is poor and fairly isolated.
Perhaps even longer-term sanctions will convince them to stop, but does that really appear to be based on history? For some reason, they greatly fear invasion or attack. Why is that? Perhaps the history of regime-change attempts by the US and our actual interventions in the affairs of other countries, even to the extent of waging war on baseless grounds (Iraq), has something to do with it.
Our military appears to be less inclined to engage in provocations and macho posturing in recent decades than are some of our politicians. Unless the US decides that it is OK to take out a country with nuclear force, even if “targeted”, and kill hundreds of thousands of people because we “think” another country might strike first (as foolish an action as a country could make against the US), then we have to consider more reasonable and moral choices.
Of those, engagement of a country economically and diplomatically, which often leads to cultural engagement and better understanding, seems to me the best way to minimize the risk of war and improve the well-being of the people.
1
The fact that this dreadful situation was allowed to fester for the last quarter of a century up to this point says a lot of the previous feeble administrations. Thankfully, we now have President Trump who takes this matter seriously and has made it abundantly clear that the US and the free world will no longer dilly-dally about this alarming situation.
3
Oh, puleeze. Trump's chest beating is the problem.
It's so reassuring to know that we have a "very stable genius" in charge of our nation's reaction to Kim's nuclear weaponry accomplishments. Who else could have so ably put Mr. Kim in his place by bragging about his superior button size?
1
R. Law and others blaming Russia did not read the NY Times
North Korea’s Missile Success Is Linked to Ukrainian Plant, Investigators Say
NY TImes Aug 14, 2017
That is the Ukraine , not Russia.
But why would the Ukraine do so ?
"But since Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was removed from power in 2014, the state-owned factory, known as Yuzhmash, has fallen on hard times. The Russians canceled upgrades of their nuclear fleet. The factory is underused, awash in unpaid bills and low morale"
(NYT 8/14/2017)
That is more than a bit interesting
Viktor Yanukovych was Putin's man in the Ukraine. He was removed in the Maidan revolution - that many suspect was supported by cash from the West.
The contents of an intercepted phone call between US n intercepted phone call between Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Neuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt can be found on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTos0duooaU
The law of unintended consequences has struck again.
5
Great reporting by Sanger and Broad. We can see the evolution of North Korea's nuclear design. One of my questions was the rôle of (former) Russian bomb designers in North Korea; North Korea can't do it all on its own. From the Sanger and Broad report:
"After the collapse of the Soviet Union, waves of its impoverished missile scientists began to head for North Korea. While Russian security forces intercepted some, others made it out or assisted the North from afar. In retrospect, former American intelligence officials say they almost certainly missed significant transfers of technology."
It's interesting. Part of this failure can be attributed to the failure to conduct preemptive attacks on North Korea. No one in the U.S. would move each time North Korea achieved a milestone. *Yet*, the Bush administration, and congress, had no difficulty in mounting a war in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein.
Given that we engineered the war in Iraq, there is really no excuse for not militarily addressing North Korea's nuclear weapons development. But of course we were afraid of China's rôle in such an action.
It has turned out that the Iraq War was a terrible mistake, and now the failure to confront North Korea back then has become another terrible mistake. It appears that the least violent alternative is to edge North Korea into a stable leadership, but one with a nuclear capability. It is a very delicate balance.
3
No the Iraq war was not a mistake, trying to rebuild Iraq was.
The key sentence:
" In interviews, intelligence officials said “freelancers” from the former Soviet Union — “a handful” by the estimate of one official — are almost certainly working with North Korea. "
And this administration has yet to put in place the new Russia sanctions passed by Congress.
The administration's dereliction is a clear and present danger.
154
Yes, there is "still time to start a dialogue." Problem is, our country is now governed by a president who's not interested in dialogue or even capable of conducting one. Things could hardly be worse, yet they keep getting worse!
105
What a double joke, the president today indicated his desire to talk, Rocket Boy understands nothing other than violence and only that which threatens his life.
2
@Emmanuel Goldstein:
Kim Jong-un’s rising belligerence was enabled by the inaction of former President Obama and his predecessors. Yes, Trump is notorious for making incendiary and outrageous twitter comments and sound bites, but fact is that he’s the first President to draw a line in the sand to confront North Korean aggression.
Iran may be next...
2
He can’t even make a coherent monologue! (“I’m like, really smart”...)
2
Eyes in the sky cannot see everything. One needs feet on the ground. A toast to the old school ways of spying and "establishing equilibrium".
8
Various experts have debunked the notion that N. Korea could hit the West Coast and/or Washington. The latest is Robert Kelley, a former director of nuclear inspections in Iraq in 1992 and 2001 who recently stated the North Koreans are clueless as to how well their "weapons" perform and where they will fall. He further stated it is the US who has been tracking the missiles that N. Korea shoots off and we know more than they do about where they fall. He scoffed at the notion that these are nuclear weapons and said all we know is that they are powerful missiles. Most arms experts concede that at the present time they have no known method of delivery to whatever it is they are shooting off. And that's up for debate as well.
11
One might say that Kim Jong Un's "two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart"...
97
This is a frightening report, but to me the most worrisome part is the quote by Dr. Hecker, the former Los Alamos director, that there is still time "to start a dialogue, in an effort to reduce current tensions and head off misunderstandings that could lead to war."
Talk about wishful thinking! So far as I can see, there is not a shred of evidence after several decades to suggest that any kind of "dialogue" with NK will do anything other than give Kim Jong-un buying time to further develop his country's nuclear delivery capability. Far too much time has been wasted already in futile attempts at negotiation, which is why the US and its allies are now facing this dire predicament.
Nobody wants military action, including myself. But at this point, I see no other viable alternative. The US must stop Kim's further development of his ICBM program, and must do it immediately. It is not necessary to destroy his entire arsenal of nuclear weapons, but only neccessary to target his development program and stop that. Is there a risk of war from limited strikes? Perhaps, but probably not. Kim knows that any attempt at large scale retaliation, would lead immediately to the destruction of his entire regime. He may be crazy, but he's not stupid or suicidal.
12
Without subduing the country and changing the regime, we'd have to constantly revisit the problem with more strikes over the years. At some point it would provoke a response that would kill many thousands or some millions, depending.
Not sure the South Koreans would paint such a rosy picture as you. Half their country is in the direct line of fire from North Korean artillery.
2
Easy for us to say with little at risk, less so for millions of South Koreans and Japanese. For Kim it would be very hard to tell if we were mounting a "surgical strike" vs a "destroy the regime strike". If he decides the latter then why wouldn't he unleash whatever he has? I can assure you I would. I agree with your logic in the case we don't attack, because it would be suicide to go first, which I'm sure he knows. But if we go first? Then don't be in South Korea or Japan.
"Yet their inability to foresee the North’s rapid strides over the past several months now ranks among America’s most significant intelligence failures,"
Obviously, the Russians helped. The intelligence failure was not underestimating the North's capabilities, but the extent to which the Russians were willing to spite America.
110
And the Chinese.
5
And they're "winning".
2
And don't forget Pakistan: spotted shipments from Russia and Pakistan containing parts for centrifuges used to enrich uranium.
It doesn’t make sense that these missiles have a “Soviet provenance” from the collapse of the USSR. If that were true, they would have had long-range capabilities years ago. More likely, Putin shared these technologies more recently in the obvious efforts to destabilize power structures around the world as a way to advance Russian interests. What’s worse is that we now have a U.S. President willing to let Russia do whatever it wants without repercussions.
210
When Russian weapons programs went into decline thanks to arms limitations treaties you'd have lots of folks whose life's store of expertise lost a lot of market value. It makes sense for some such individuals to fall subject to inducements elsewhere, especially if conditions back home weren't so great. Putin is having "successful"adventures internationally but domestically things really have been bad thanks to corruption and the collapse of the oil market. And a small number of such people might make a crucial difference to North Korea but there is such a broad range of expertise required to pull off one of these projects that the pace of progress is inherently tough to estimate. You can get held up in so many different ways. Or at least that is the way I see it. Just making a modern pencil with a metal attachment for an eraser requires a huge pyramid of industrial capabilities most of us never think about and probably aren't even conscious of existing. Einstein would not by himself be able to make a modern pencil. Obviously it is vastly vastly more challenging for one of these weapons systems.
1
Were you taking the same anti-Putin position during the Obama administration, when many experts also noted Russian (and Chinese) assistance to the NK nuclear-capable missile program?
5
A smart scientist doesnt = long range missles. They also need access to technology and materials.
Maybe America should have tried or tried harder to get these former USSR scientists.
When was the last time US intelligence agencies got something right? We have been treated to weapons of mass destruction, leaks of vital secrets, employees walking out of various parts of government with top secret information etc.
The problem is these agencies are driven more by domestic politics their theoretical mission. They seek out the answers their bosses want. And to divert attention from their own incompetence.
How did we spend months worrying about Hillary's email server without noticing that the government's own servers were being looted of vital secrets including hacking tools that have now been turned against all of us. How did they miss one of their own employees taking secrets home for years and storing them in his basement. How did an army private get access to all those state department messages and then take them and without getting caught until he publicly identified himself by giving them to Wikileaks. Even after tha fiasco, a lowly contract employee somehow walked off with another load of secrets he had no reason to have access to.
It makes you wonder, did the Russians really interfere in our elections in such a clumsy and obvious fashion. Or was that just another example of our intelligence community giving a comfortable answer to a question they have no real way of answering definitively. In short, there is no reason to believe anything they say. They are incompetent.
151
You seem to worry only about issues not discussed in the article.
20
One obvious change in U.S. internal operations has been the contracting to civilian companies of what should have been closely guarded and proprietary information and processes. Once we "outsourced" our intelligence tools and training, we lost control. I'm afraid that's a "bell that cannot be unrung".
Look to those who are responsible for those decisions. They should be out on the street, and that does NOT mean they should be allowed to be employed by any of those defense contractors.
3
> In short, there is no reason to believe anything they say. They are incompetent.
Right . . . the flurry of increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear tests are all a figment of our imagination.
I'll take these well-publicized and much-discussed tests over your analysis any day of the week and then some. So will, I suspect, the citizens in Seoul and Tokyo and -- sooner rather than later -- Los Angeles and Seattle.
2