The Grossly Premature Military Options

You might recall that the other day I mentioned that there were some who were calling for military action against North Korea. The reliably superhawkish John Bolton has obliged by instantiating that in his Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Absent a successful diplomatic play, what’s left is unpalatable military options. But many say, even while admitting America’s vulnerability to North Korean missiles, that using force to neutralize the threat would be too dangerous. The only option, this argument goes, is to accept a nuclear North Korea and attempt to contain and deter it.

The people saying this are largely the same ones who argued that “carrots and sticks” would prevent Pyongyang from getting nuclear weapons. They are prepared to leave Americans as nuclear hostages of the Kim family dictatorship. This is unacceptable. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has it right. “What’s unimaginable to me,” he said last month at the Aspen Security Forum, “is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver.” So what are the military options, knowing that the U.S. must plan for the worst?

First, Washington could pre-emptively strike at Pyongyang’s known nuclear facilities, ballistic-missile factories and launch sites, and submarine bases. There are innumerable variations, starting at the low end with sabotage, cyberattacks and general disruption. The high end could involve using air- and sea-based power to eliminate the entire program as American analysts understand it.

Second, the U.S. could wait until a missile is poised for launch toward America, and then destroy it. This would provide more time but at the cost of increased risk. Intelligence is never perfect. A North Korean missile could be in flight to a city near you before the military can respond.

Third, the U.S. could use airstrikes or special forces to decapitate North Korea’s national command authority, sowing chaos, and then sweep in on the ground from South Korea to seize Pyongyang, nuclear assets, key military sites and other territory.

His first option is not pre-emption. It is a preventive attack. Preventive war is never morally justified.

His second option is pre-emption. It would be morally justified. As Sec. Bolton notes it is riskier and, sadly, we may not have that capability.

I don’t believe as some do that China or Russia would respond to a pre-emptive strike by the U. S. against an imminent attack by North Korea or a retaliatory strike by the U. S. following an attack by North Korea by joining in support of North Korea. Both the Chinese and the Russians are consummate foreign policy realists and both recognize that’s precisely what they would do under similar circumstances. They wouldn’t like it and they would complain about it but I believe that would be the limit of their response so long as we didn’t overstep which we would be sorely tempted to do, i.e. if we entered North Korea with U. S. troops.

His third option is also preventive war. Not only is it immoral but, since China and Russia would enter on North Korea’s side, it would probably be the start of global nuclear war.

Unfortunately, there are some people who take John Bolton seriously and some of them are in the Trump Administration, possibly the president himself.