[far-east] the nuclear power game warms up
North Korea’s armed forces comprise:
Active forces: 1.14 million
Special forces: 100,000 estimated
Manpower fit for military service: 3,694,855
It has the world's fifth largest military and is the most militarized nation in proportion to population (estimated at 22 million. Military spending is 22.9% percent of GDP while around 70 percent of the army is deployed within 65 km of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
Overall, the effectiveness of the North Korean military is questionable. The majority of its tanks, for example, were acquired from the now defunct Soviet Union (Russian T-54 and T-55 tanks) - many of which are over 50 years old.
The technological superiority of the U.S. based weapons systems in South Korea would seem to discourage conventional warfare from the north. Therefore, they would most likely resort to other forms of warfare.
North Korea maintains the world's third largest arsenal of chemical weapons which includes mustard gas, phosgene, sarin and V-agents.
Along with these, the DPRK also maintains an active biological weapons program and have developed a significant amount of anthrax, botulism, plague, and smallpox.
They possesse enough weapons grade plutonium for two to five nuclear devices and has reprocessed spent nuclear fuel rods which could contain enough plutonium to produce between six to 12 nuclear weapons.
The greatest threat comes from the weapons of mass destruction and the fact remains that the South could be decimated by a massive biological / chemical attack.
Stats from Robert W. Martin, About Military History
In addition, North Korea has certainly thrown down the gauntlet, at least within its region, even if its current reach does not quite match its rhetoric. Though it can certainly launch and has the current capacity to strike China or Japan, most observers consider it’s still some way away form being a viable threat, although closer than Iran to that goal.
The United States is not convinced, at the official level, that North Korea poses no real threat. Therefore, they have been making overtures, through casual asides in speeches, that if Japan chose to arm itself with nuclear weapons, it would not be against this in principle.
US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer has raised the possibility of an independently nuclear-armed Japan.
"If you had a nuclear North Korea, it seems to me that that increases the pressure on both South Korea and Japan going nuclear themselves," he said.
There are two ways to view this move. The first is the conventional strategic, five year view and the US move would appear to make sense in that context.
However, then one reads and re-reads Vice President Dick Cheney’s comment to Meet the Press, saying:
"The idea of a nuclear-armed North Korea with ballistic missiles to deliver them will, I think, probably set off an arms race in that part of the world."
Now forgive me but when Cheney speaks, Bush, Concoleeza Rice and the world listen. When the man who assumed Kissinger's mantle speaks so calmly, then this scenario is more than likely.
The Bush administration continues to push China to push North Korea to disarm and China is stonewalling. The US therefore considers that one way to motivate Beijing is to scare her with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Japan.
The Republican Party policy committee paper anticipating a North Korean test put it this way: "Essentially, the United States must demand that the PRC [People's Republic of China] make a choice: either help out or face the possibility of other nuclear neighbors."
China will not concern themselves greatly, even if Japan does go nuclear. But Japan will do it because it would expose them to inordinate risk, taking them out of the protective post-war cocoon which enabled their re-industrialization.
Japan simply won’t do it anyway because of the public mood which has not greatly altered since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Plus one other thing.
It can not match China in mutual assured destruction. Japan would lose every time. Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto and that’s the end of Japan.
The same number on China would be sustainable, in Chinese terms. China is also rattling sabres.
Major-General Zhu Chenghu, dean of the Defense Affairs Institute for China's National Defense University of the People's Liberation Army, last year said:
"We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian."
Japanese Self-Defense Forces staff, in 1981, concluded that in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, Japan would suffer about 25 million fatalities, compared with about 1 million in Russia's Far East. The scenario is different in China, with it’s evenly spread population but population does not equal defensive capability in China’s case and geographical depth is everything.
Todd Crowell from the Asia Times concludes:
Japan is much better off continuing to rely on the US and to strengthen its alliance with the US so that it can depend on the United States' nuclear weapons for protection. Among other things, the US provides the strategic depth that Japan simply does not have.
Active forces: 1.14 million
Special forces: 100,000 estimated
Manpower fit for military service: 3,694,855
It has the world's fifth largest military and is the most militarized nation in proportion to population (estimated at 22 million. Military spending is 22.9% percent of GDP while around 70 percent of the army is deployed within 65 km of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
Overall, the effectiveness of the North Korean military is questionable. The majority of its tanks, for example, were acquired from the now defunct Soviet Union (Russian T-54 and T-55 tanks) - many of which are over 50 years old.
The technological superiority of the U.S. based weapons systems in South Korea would seem to discourage conventional warfare from the north. Therefore, they would most likely resort to other forms of warfare.
North Korea maintains the world's third largest arsenal of chemical weapons which includes mustard gas, phosgene, sarin and V-agents.
Along with these, the DPRK also maintains an active biological weapons program and have developed a significant amount of anthrax, botulism, plague, and smallpox.
They possesse enough weapons grade plutonium for two to five nuclear devices and has reprocessed spent nuclear fuel rods which could contain enough plutonium to produce between six to 12 nuclear weapons.
The greatest threat comes from the weapons of mass destruction and the fact remains that the South could be decimated by a massive biological / chemical attack.
Stats from Robert W. Martin, About Military History
In addition, North Korea has certainly thrown down the gauntlet, at least within its region, even if its current reach does not quite match its rhetoric. Though it can certainly launch and has the current capacity to strike China or Japan, most observers consider it’s still some way away form being a viable threat, although closer than Iran to that goal.
The United States is not convinced, at the official level, that North Korea poses no real threat. Therefore, they have been making overtures, through casual asides in speeches, that if Japan chose to arm itself with nuclear weapons, it would not be against this in principle.
US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer has raised the possibility of an independently nuclear-armed Japan.
"If you had a nuclear North Korea, it seems to me that that increases the pressure on both South Korea and Japan going nuclear themselves," he said.
There are two ways to view this move. The first is the conventional strategic, five year view and the US move would appear to make sense in that context.
However, then one reads and re-reads Vice President Dick Cheney’s comment to Meet the Press, saying:
"The idea of a nuclear-armed North Korea with ballistic missiles to deliver them will, I think, probably set off an arms race in that part of the world."
Now forgive me but when Cheney speaks, Bush, Concoleeza Rice and the world listen. When the man who assumed Kissinger's mantle speaks so calmly, then this scenario is more than likely.
The Bush administration continues to push China to push North Korea to disarm and China is stonewalling. The US therefore considers that one way to motivate Beijing is to scare her with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Japan.
The Republican Party policy committee paper anticipating a North Korean test put it this way: "Essentially, the United States must demand that the PRC [People's Republic of China] make a choice: either help out or face the possibility of other nuclear neighbors."
China will not concern themselves greatly, even if Japan does go nuclear. But Japan will do it because it would expose them to inordinate risk, taking them out of the protective post-war cocoon which enabled their re-industrialization.
Japan simply won’t do it anyway because of the public mood which has not greatly altered since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Plus one other thing.
It can not match China in mutual assured destruction. Japan would lose every time. Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto and that’s the end of Japan.
The same number on China would be sustainable, in Chinese terms. China is also rattling sabres.
Major-General Zhu Chenghu, dean of the Defense Affairs Institute for China's National Defense University of the People's Liberation Army, last year said:
"We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian."
Japanese Self-Defense Forces staff, in 1981, concluded that in a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, Japan would suffer about 25 million fatalities, compared with about 1 million in Russia's Far East. The scenario is different in China, with it’s evenly spread population but population does not equal defensive capability in China’s case and geographical depth is everything.
Todd Crowell from the Asia Times concludes:
Japan is much better off continuing to rely on the US and to strengthen its alliance with the US so that it can depend on the United States' nuclear weapons for protection. Among other things, the US provides the strategic depth that Japan simply does not have.
posted by James Higham @ 17:47
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