US President Donald Trump may threaten fire and fury and an unimaginable scale of destruction, but he knows that the United States is on the horns of a dilemma. And now Russia too has come out in opposition to unilateral US action, insisting that dialogue is the only way out.
By the looks of it, Kim is not likely to stop his brinkmanship. But provoking the United States beyond a certain point is likely to invite pre-emptive action. Whatever the nature of a pre-emptive strike by the United States and its two major allies in the region — South Korea and Japan — the destruction that would ensue would, to use President Trump’s words, be unimaginable.
The scale referred to by the US president needs to be spelled out. Ira Helfand, co-President of International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, published a paper in 2013 on the consequences of a limited nuclear exchange in South Asia. His findings: Chinese winter wheat production would fall 50 per cent in the first year and, averaged over the entire decade after the war, would be 31 per cent below baseline. More than a billion people in China would face severe food insecurity and the total number of people threatened by nuclear-war induced famine would be well over two billion.
The prospect of a decade of widespread hunger and intense social and economic instability in the world’s largest country has immense implications for the entire global community. These figures — which remain unchallenged — do not take into account the tens of millions of casualties in the countries where the exchange would take place.
If this is the scale of destruction resulting from a limited nuclear exchange, it is not difficult to imagine the scale in a situation where the United States hits North Korea as hard as it can.
An estimate can also be made of the effects of retaliatory action by North Korea against South Korea and Japan. Suffice to say that the casualties could be in the tens of millions in the first 24 hours and an order of magnitude of that figure, if not several orders of magnitude, over a longer period.
At the time of writing, the principal players remain the United States, North Korea, China, South Korea, Japan and now Russia. What about the remaining nations of the world? There does not seem to be any emergency planning for the survival of countries in the region that would surely be affected by the fallout and those beyond who would be affected over a longer period.
In short, practically nobody gets away unscathed. The situation described has to be taken as possible Armageddon, in worst case scenarios. Hence the ineluctable need for the major players to meet at the UN and find an immediate solution to this grave threat to humanity.
A possible way out would be for the United States, China and Russia to issue a joint ultimatum to the North Korean leader to come to the negotiating table and force him to put a cap on his country’s missile and nuclear production. This would be followed by complete dismantlement over a given period, with verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency and designated neutral country experts.
This would need to be preceded by the three big powers working out the compromises that need to take place between the US and North Korea. The broad outlines of concessions demanded from the United States before the ultimatum to the North Korean leader would include the complete withdrawal of all US forces from South Korea in stages and abrogation of the mutual defence pact with South Korea. Neutrality of the Korean peninsula would need to be guaranteed by China, Russia and the United States and endorsed at a special session of the UN Security Council. The United States would need to pledge to abjure military action against North Korea. Finally, the United States, China, South Korea and Japan would need to pledge a substantial sum, say US$50 billion, for the economic revival of North Korea. No attempt at regime change would be made by the United States or its allies.
Kim is unlikely to agree to this even if two of his supporters were to join with the United States. Here is where compellance comes in. After authorisation by the UN Security Council, China, Russia and the United States carry out a full-scale blockade of North Korea by land, sea and air. Simultaneously, leaflets would be regularly dropped over North Korea by China and Russia (not the United States) urging the population to force their leader to come to the negotiating table, failing which the army and the people would be urged to topple the leader before complete starvation sets in.
The blockade would be lifted only when neutral observers are allowed to come into Pyongyang to monitor the agreement, and the three powers feel assured that there is no possibility of the North Korean leader reneging on the deal.
As a final step towards peace in the region, the proposal — which is amenable to sensible tweaking — for the demilitarisation of both Koreas would commence, with guarantees of military protection from the major powers.
A satisfactory outcome in North Korea would send a salutary message to any country aspiring to take the North Korean route. But the biggest take-away would be the coming-together of the leading powers to ward off the direct threats to humanity.
General Vinod Saighal is the Executive Director of Eco Monitors Society, a non-governmental organisation concerned with demography and ecology.
A version of this article was first published here on The Statesman.
“A possible way out would be for the United States, China and Russia to issue a joint ultimatum to the North Korean leader to come to the negotiating table and force him to put a cap on his country’s missile and nuclear production.”
So the logical question is why isn’t China doing all it can do to defuse the problem, given the amount of devastation it will face WHEN the U.S. attacks?
Supposedly, a major concern of theirs is that U.S. influence will exist over the entire Korean peninsula. Then why don’t they enter into discussions with the U.S. promising their support if the U.S. promises not to interfere in N.K. politics?
How this would happen, and what the parameters would be, remain extremely difficult to map out. But this is where the key is that unlocks the problem on the Korean peninsula.
It seems unlikely that any deal can be done until the US demonstrates that the US can honour its own commitments. Let’s see what happens to the deal with Iran.
Former General Vinod Saighal claims that North Korea wants nuclear weapons to defend it’s regime. That is not why North Korea wants nuclear weapons. If the US was going to attack the North we had 15 years from the collapse of the Soviet Union until the North’s first bomb test in 2006 and we did not attack. The North wants nuclear weapons to threaten the US to get the US to abandon the South to force unification on its terms. So what is Mr Saighal plan, “before the ultimatum to the North Korean leader would include the complete withdrawal of all US forces from South Korea in stages and abrogation of the mutual defence pact with South Korea.” Why would North Korea want an end to the US defense treaty with South Korea unless they plan to attack. So the plan is we give Kim everything he wants and hope he is nice. Kim knows that North Korea in not a legitimate State, it is a family mafia state that rules by terror for the benefit of a small group. Kim knows in ten years or less there will be only one Korean State. Either he gets control of the South or he is forced to flee or he dies. China now is the only force keeping North Korea alive, providing billions in aid including most of the North’s oil and 93% of its trade. China keeps the North alive because they think it aids the communist party of China. I believe Mr Saighal’s plan in not realistic and is driven by his negative views of the US.
This analysis offers an interesting set of alternative interventions in the current situation with N Korea, etc. But I think it is unrealistic to propose that the US, China, and Russia could ever work together as suggested.
First, the three main players have very divergent priorities and goals.
Second, there is considerable tension right now between the US and Russia. And not much less between the US and China.
Third, there is a significant lack of trust between the US and the other two.
Thus, how could these obstacles be overcome to allow them to work in a concerted, coordinated, and consistent way? Not very likely, in my opinion.
This is an interesting analysis of the ongoing North Korean missile crisis but there are nuances not articulated.
1“As long as Kim knows that China will not join hands with the United States in taking him out, he will keep…thumbing his nose at the United States.”
China is unlikely to join hands with the US because after the job is done the US will thumb its nose at China and then put military bases next to the Yalu River. This is because ultimately the ‘real’ target is China, as Rex Tillerson said in Manila “North Korea is not the enemy” and that “the US is not planning a regime change there.”
2 “US President Donald Trump may threaten fire and fury and an unimaginable scale of destruction, but he knows that the United States is on the horns of a dilemma.”
Trump’s empty threats are like the horns of a steer. He may have a point here and a point there but there is a lot of bull in between. By resorting to calling Kim Jong Un names and threatening to destroy North Korea completely, Donald Trump showed poor presidential judgement. He lost the narrative by lifting Kim Jong Un onto the world stage and allowed Kim to return the compliments by calling Trump a “deranged US dotard.”
3 “And now Russia too has come out in opposition to unilateral US action, insisting that dialogue is the only way out.”
Both Russia and China are ready for WW3 and they have warned the US not to unilaterally strike the DPRK.
4 “But provoking the United States beyond a certain point is likely to invite pre-emptive action.”
According to Mr Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s FM: “Americans won’t strike [North] Korea, because not only do they suspect, but know for sure that Pyongyang has nuclear weapons.” He opined that “The US carried out strikes on Iraq solely because they were 100 percent sure there were no weapons of mass destruction”.
5 “Whatever the nature of a pre-emptive strike by the United States and its two major allies in the region –the destruction that would ensue would be unimaginable.”
In such an all out nuclear war it is possible that the Korean peninsula, Guam, Hawaii and Japan could be reduced to wastelands and about 50 million innocent people could perish in just the first 24 hours alone.
6 “In short, practically nobody gets away unscathed. The situation described has to be taken as possible Armageddon, in worst case scenarios.”
This is true because in a nuclear war between the US and the DPRK, both Russia and China will not stand idle, at the risk of being nuked too, as nearly happened during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. They could retaliate against continental USA, using hypersonic nuclear glide bombers, falling from sub-orbital altitude at 10 times the speed of sound. Other regional states could settle old scores: India v Pakistan; Israel v Iran, Russia v EU.
7 A nuclear winter could set in and billions will die of famine as all plants and plankton will perish without any sunlight. No country will escape unscathed. Someone had better remind Donald J Trump and Kim Jong Un that nukes are not fire-crackers. The half-life of U238 is about 4.5 billion years. Albert Einstein once warned (paraphrased): “I know not what weapons will be used in WW3 but in WW4, they will fight with sticks and stones.”
8 “A possible way out would be for the United States, China and Russia to issue a joint ultimatum to the North Korean leader to come to the negotiating table..”
Russia and China will never agree to do such a deal with the ‘double-talking’ United States, seeing that Donald Trump is about to abrogate the nuclear deal with Iran.
9 In my view, the best option is a)for the US and South Korea to stop military drills or threaten the DPRK with extinction b)for the US to remove the THAAD from South Korea c)for the DPRK to reciprocate by stopping further nuclear and ICBM tests and d)for the UN to reconvene the 6-party talk to bring back peace to the Korean peninsula.
10 Then there should be a revival of an East Asia Community, ushering in a new era of peace, held together by an expanded Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, comprising of the 10 Asean nations, China, India, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand plus 2 new partners, Russia and Pakistan.
With the absence of the United States in Asia, Japan and South Korea will cease to be client states. Russia and Japan will sign a peace treaty and so will the two Koreans eventually. The peaceful reunification of Korea will leverage on the estimated US$10 trillion of mineral wealth in the north, including the world’s biggest deposits of rare earths.
11 Then the way forward is with the BRI, which will connect key markets in the East and the West to guarantee an era of peace and tranquillity for trade, skills, ideas and cultural exchanges to flourish, leading to a higher quality of life for the 7.5 billion people on Planet Earth.