Asymmetrical Information

Isn't diplomacy fascinating? All reports indicate that NK has been a nuclear state for at least 3 or 4 years, but their threat to declare that fact sends everyone into a tizzy.

Everyone's all chipper, thinking things are settling down and they drop a bomb like that (pardon the pun).

Masters, they are. Cutting and slashing all ties in the region. And they said Bush was heavy handed.

If the Pyongyang Gang actually does this, it will be on the unpleasant end of an all-out embargo before the crickets can chirp again -- and Communist China will be a participant.

Bush has been iffy on domestic policy, but he's shown resolve when it comes to dealing with these gangster-states. He could easily get the Chinese into the right frame of mind by threatening to:
1. Revoke their MFN status,
2. Sell nukes to Taiwan in the interests of "regional balance."

The Beijing Politburo would move so fast to quarantine North Korea that it might meet itself at the border.

hi fwp,

"Sell nukes to Taiwan in the interests of "regional balance.""

would you need that? perhaps the threat of a japan with nukes would be enogh to have the ("remember the rape of nanking") chinese quite a quiver? the taiwan approach would likely backfire i think (what would the us do if the chinese launched a pre-emptive invasion with us interests so thinly stretched? fight a nuclear war that kills most of the folks on the planet? wink: rely on that purely defensive missile defense to make that policy work...?)

The problem with the whole "NK has nukes" thing is that it's pretty difficult to actually get the material to make a nuke. Many experts are view the claims that NK has a few as dubious at best. It's worth it to assume that they do, though, since they are trying to get them and they'll probably manage to do so sooner or later.

But now NK is claiming that they'll test one. This is okay so far as I'm concerned because that means that they'll have one less nuke in their arsenal after the test. But it also means that the governments involved will suddenly have to act against an actual threat instead of an unlikely one.

That's pretty much why things are getting serious all of a sudden. Because no one really thought that they actually had any nikes.

James

For Japan to become a nuclear power, it will have to change its own constitution. I'm not suggesting that it won't, I'm just saying that is unlikely. The Japanese have a cultural fear of nuclear bombs.

The Japanese have a general cultural aversion to war over the past sixty years now, that goes beyond mere nukes. And it might be unliklely that they would change their constitution, but they're thinking about exactly that:

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3336439

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3181083.stm

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters08-25-221844.asp?reg=PACRIM

Billy Beck,
Very true. Those who bank too much too much on any Japanese aversion to war being universal among them would do well to read a manga series called "The First President of Japan" by Hiadaka Yoshiki and Tsuhigara Ryuji ( Torrence, California; Gutsoon! Entertainment, 2003, ISBN 0-9725037-7-3 or else www.raijincomics.com ). When you read it keep in mind that in Japan it was first puslished in 1998. Like us the Japanese have an aversion to being defenseless that is even deeper. You may want to keep in mind also that a party plank of the current Prime Minister when he came to power was the alteration of the Constitution so that the Self Defense forces would legally be a full fledged military and it was one he took seriously even long before the current crisis came up.

James,
I'm still not convinced they have nukes. Communists, North Korean Communists in particular, have been known to lie in the past and bluff, tantrums, and boasts have long been a part of their negotiating technique.

Cas,
You post reminds me that anyone opposed to SDI may now regard themselves as discredited. ^_^

Cas, though a nuclear-armed Japan would strike fear into the hearts of the Chinese, a nuclear-armed Taiwan would put an end to one of their dearest fantasies -- victory over "the Nationalists" -- and thus would hit them in an even more sensitive place. As far as I know, they have no ambitions about Japan...though, given the proclivities of Communists, one must keep an open mind about such things.

In the pattern of totalitarianisms throughout history, the Butchers of Beijing have used the "threat" of Taiwan to keep the Chinese populace from becoming querulous and demanding. At the very least, a Taiwan with nukes would compel the Politburo to come up with a new shadow terror. "Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia..."

While Koizumi has been trying since the first day of his presidency to beef up the SDF -- and has been more successful at it than he has, say, economic reforms -- it's a big leap from that to going nuclear.

But the Japanese have a fairly personal beef with North Korea (in the kidnappings), and it would not surprise me to see the Japanese become less and less averse to force the more sabre-rattling Pyongyang does.

(To some degree I'm still holding on to my theory that Koizumi and Roh Moo-hyun have a good cop/bad cop routine secretly agreed upon, because it tickles me, even though it flies in the face of all logic.)

It isn't exactly necessary to sell nukes to Taiwan. They're perfectly capable of making them, though the North Korean situtation won't be excuse enough. I believe Taiwan stopped their nuclear program back in the '80s.

Japanese's adversion to nuclear weapon is probably the only impedement for them to go nuclear, they too have the technology and material to go on fast track.

Well, Dr. Rummell, fas.org seems to think it's a reasonable probability that NK has at least one nuke. Perhaps you'd like to explain to us how your opinion is more highly informed than theirs.

Some unconfirmed open source material indicates that NK has 1 or 2 implosion-type fission devices by about 1990, but no manufacturing facilities or complete fuel-cycle processes to make more. Those nukes were regarded as "ace in the hole" nukes - since they couldn't be backed up and NK had no long-range delivery mechanism.

They pusued both Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium production. Under the '94 agreement they stopped Pu production at Yongbion, but we had no verification process in place to keep tabs on the HEU facilities. Once they had been successful in establishing the complete processing cycle using HEU and had succesful missile tests, they then knew they could reprocess Pu with impunity, beacuse they then had a functioning deterrent.

The Pu reprocessing, if I remember correctly will allow (in theory) the production of up to roughly 5 devices per month. All of this is well and good, but the 500-lb gorilla is the missile program.

The DPRK tested a three-stage variant of the Taepo Dong to place a satellite in orbit in 1998. The missile seems to have had a third-stage failure, resulting in mission failure. However, this means that they have, essentially, a mechanism to land a nuke in the U.S. If they had high enough power fusion devices, they could also start orbiting nukes for a massive EMP deterrent.

At any rate, part of the calculation on the part of the North Koreans is that while the U.S. has been able to pound them into the dust for more than 50 years, the North Korean feel that they now have the ability to return the favor by nuking LA, DC, NY or Chicago.

This, to their mind, represents a major shift in the deterrent architecture.

However, China is also aware that this may prompt militarisation of the region.

Taiwan indeed had a nuclear program during the eighties, because, in part, they were uncertain about the amount of U.S. support they could rely on. Selling nukes to Taiwan, however, will almost certainly cause a drastic change in US-China relations, possibly resulting in war.

Japan has the technological-industrial base to develop nukes, constitution or not. It is a long term certainty that they will develop them - but then again, that statement is true for just about everyone. Japan hasn't been too aggressive in its nuclear program partly because they feel that their limited land and high population deprives them of the geographical depth needed for a viable second-strike deterrent. If Japan does pursue a nuclear option, I imagine they would almost certainly be trying to develop a SLBM capability as soon as possible, simply to give their deterrent threat some credibility.

In the short-run, stability in the region is predicated on a careful and complex balance of power - NK is screwing with that, and that doesn't make anybody happy.

I don't really take anything the North Koreans say seriously enough to deem it a failure of talks. They may have nukes, and we should take the possibility very seriously, but there's no point in acting as if we give a crap what they say they have. Next thing they'll say they have food.

They certainly have the material and know-how to make some kind of nuclear weapon--the main issue is how efficient the warhead is and whether it can be made small enough to fit on a missile. Recreating "Fat Man" won't be that helpful, as a North Korean bomber would be a rather juicy target for the South Korean air force--a second or third generation enhanced fission weapon that will fit on a NK missile that can hit Japan or even Alaska is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. The danger for NK in testing a nuke is that it's like flashing your hole cards--the level of their progress will be revealed for the world to see, particular if it's an atmospheric test.

One other thing. Should North Korea went ahead and test their nuke, they will have greatly diminished their stockpile of material.

When India tested their nuke, they made sure to have enough material left to build quit a few more. This forced Pakinstein change their program into a crash course, and detonated probably 1/4 of their supply just to join the club. In the aftermath of those two tests, India can build about 20 nukes, and Pakinstein, a couple.

North Korea, should they decide to test their fate might only have enough material to build one more after their initial detonation.

Obviously, NK doesn't have nukes. Bill Clinton paid them not to.

[/sarcasm]

As someone with a personal stake in Taiwan, I'm not sure that I want Taiwan to have nuclear weapons. They bring too much power and too many unknowns. I believe the best situation is one in which the cost to China of conquest is simply too great, both in terms of civilian casualties and economic resources. Currently, this can probably be best achieved with a very strong Taiwanese conventional force.

we don't need to sell anyone nukes... (well at least these countries specifically)
they're all advanced enough to do things themselves... and japan has a decent space program (aka civilian excuse for icbm development)

what's the difference between an icbm and an atlas/titan/... rocket? the payload

the only reason for us to give people nukes is to slap around another country, HARD

as for getting into a nuke fight with china..notgoing to happen... they don't have second strike capability afaik... their strategic imperative has been moscow/bombay/taipei/tokyo.. so they focused on shorter ranges and less nukes... same idea as france, uk, israel.. enough to make things serious and act as protection/threat but not enough to go toe to toe with the us (and previously ussr)

nuke war with china is survivable, winnable, non-catastrophic (or rather non-apocalyptic), and possibly accomplished via first strike (B1 B2 f117 f35 f22 slbm)

but the threat s that we take constraints off our allies... and that we provide them with the same assistance that china gave to pakistan...

that'll be enough to calm their asses down.. and it won't lead to full on war, since us has overwhelming threat power and china has no credible conventional threat power (sk/taiwan/japan can sink or kill anything that china sends and if they go nuclear... well then all sorts of high energy physics experiments happen in beijing)

but really.. you never know what lil kim will say next...

and the compensation being arranged to china for the refugee camps shoudl turn things around quickly

I for one think the talks were a success. We told that poofy-haired freak to go screw himself.
The US started by saying NK had to get rid of their nukes first and then we could discuss stuff and stuck to that position. The DPRK can bluster all they want but China is starting to understand that we are serious and they have to do something as we aren't going to try to buy them.
Screw danegeld (norkgeld?).

[ Well, Dr. Rummell, fas.org seems to think it's a reasonable probability that NK has at least one nuke. Perhaps you'd like to explain to us how your opinion is more highly informed than theirs. ]

fas.org is just another Web page, with no fas.org-proprietary reconnaissance or spies.

Hopefully, the end results of our participation in negotiation with these maniacs will be to replace our committment to build them light water reactors with something coal-fired.

I am shocked and amazed at this news. Wasn't the Iraq invasion supposed to "send a message" to such tin-plated dictators? Wern't they supposed to see that a new sherrif came to town and this sort of bullying wasn't to be permited?

I just dont understand how this is possible, didn't this guy get the message? Hasn't he been watching televison? Doesn't he know the hell and fury he will find unleashed upon his population?

I just don't understand how this could happen with a greatman like Geroge W. Bush in charge of this great nation.

Sorry, I have to vomit now....

Meditating upon the war in Iraq, the lunatics in North Korea must have learned by now that appearing to have weapons of mass destruction will not deter the US under the Bush administration from invading your country if you are one the most-favored rogue states. It is now less clear if Iraq possessed the weapons it was supposed to have possessed, than it was before the war. The illusion of possession does not suffice. NK has apparently concluded that it must demonstrate that it is in possession of such weapons if it is to avoid attack.

That's right, Scott. All us pro-war chest-thumpers were claiming that NK would immediately heel and transform itself into Disneyland-Asia. It must be nice living in a fantasy-world populated principally with strawmen and your own sense of superiority.

By all appearances, Kim DID get the message, and it explains his current behavior quite well. That doesn't mean that Kim upping the psycho-despot ante right now is something to be happy about, but the fact is NK has been circling the drain for awhile now, and the current crisis was going to have to come in some form, at some time. I believe it's better now than later, when Kim is jittery and unsure of himself after Saddam's trouncing. You could disagree with that, but it would be incumbent upon you to make the case for why that's so rather than embarrassing yourself by revealing how distorted and obtuse is your view of the situation and anyone who disagrees.

Sorry, I have to vomit now....

You just did, son. You just did. Now clean it up.

Well, David, we could say that Janegalt.net is just another web page...true, but irrelevant. fas.org does an outstanding job of documenting unclassified weapons capabilities. I use them myself on a regular basis, because their layout is much less opaque than Janes (Janes, not Janegalt).

So, the short answer to your comment is: true, but irrelevant.

Your premise boils down to, "I know NK has no nukes because fas.org tells me so"?

[Well, David, we could say that Janegalt.net is just another web page...true, but irrelevant. fas.org does an outstanding job of documenting unclassified weapons capabilities. ]

But what about the classified stuff?

Well maybe John Kerry will go over to North Korea and decide that the government over there really isn't so bad after all. Senator John Kerry defended a communist dictator in 1984 calling him a “misunderstood Democrat, not a Marxist autocrat”. This same dictator sent Saddam Hussein a letter in 2003 before the US attacked expressing solidarity with him and referring to him as “brother”. This story is only at the Political Times. Check it out!

Joshua Ruszkiewicz
Chief Editor, The Political Times

Here's a taste of fas.org's politics:

http://fas.org/asmp/campaigns/hotspots/hotspots.htm

Troublesome Transfers in the Works

Colombia

Indonesia

Israel

Philippines

Taiwan

Turkey

Listed below are several pending cases of arms transfers or military aid in areas of strategic importance to the United States. In each case, President Bush will need to choose whether he wants the US government to help reduce regional tensions by advocating for restraint in arms purchases or to aggravate latent or ongoing conflicts by promoting imports of high-tech U.S. weaponry.

The country links below provide additional information on the political situation in each state, plus data on U.S. arms transfers and military aid.

...

Israel

Issues: During the fall of 2000, frustrations over the failure of the Camp David peace talks led to renewed fighting between between Palestinians and Israel forces. Violence on both sides has been well documented, with over 2000 deaths and thousands more injuries - mostly Palestinian - occurring since. Israeli forces have used U.S. attack helicopters, F-16 fighter jets, tanks, and guided missiles to target Palestinian demonstrators, forces, and buildings, in what the State Department and human rights groups have called an excessive use of force against relatively lightly armed opponents. The State Department's human rights report documents serious abuses committed by Israeli security units operating in the Occupied Territories, including the excessive use of force at check points and against Palestinian demonstrators. The report also noted that the Israeli military "shelled [Palestine Authority] PA institutions and Palestinian civilian areas in response to individual Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians or settlers." Amnesty International also reported on Israel's practice of "state assassinations," in which suspected terrorists have been executed without arrest or judicial review. The use of U.S. weapons to carry out these extra-judicial killings would violate the terms under which U.S. weapons may be used under the Arms Export Control Act (AECA).

While the escalatory violence that racked Israel and the Occupied Terrorities during the first half of 2002 included many abuses by both sides, the July 23rd bombing of a Gaza City apartment complex housing Hamas military leader Salah Shehadeh highlighted the complicitous role of US weaponry in the self-perpetuating conflict. The Israeli air force used American-made F-16s in the attack, which killed 15 people and destroyed three buildings. Despite the disregard for noncombatants exhibited by the Israelis, the US government's response was minimal; President Bush criticized the attack as "heavy handed." Section 3 of the Arms Export Control prohibits the use of US weapons for purposes other than, inter alia, internal security and limited self-defense, the latter of which is only loosely defined. The Executive Branch is charged with the responsibility of monitoring foreign countries' use of US weapons, and is required to report any violations to Congress. Once reported, either Congress or the President can declare a country ineligible to receive US required to report any suspected violations of the AECA. Prolonged fighting between Israelis and Palestinians is also intensifying tensions with Arab nations and destabilizing the region.

Since the outbreak of renewed violence, the U.S. government has authorized the transfer of tens of thousands of weapons, including 52 F-16I fighter jets, 9 AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters; 23 AH-1F attack helicopters, 1,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs); 59 UH-60L Black Hawk utility helicopters; and at least 80,000 M-16 rifles.

Status : Ongoing

Acutally, fas.org is not very reassuring re NK A-bombs:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/index.html

Nuclear Weapons Program
Current Status, Updated 4/24/03

In a roundtable discussion with the United States and China in Beijing on April 24, 2003, North Korean officials admitted for the first time that they possessed nuclear weapons. Furthermore, North Korean officials claim to have reprocessed spent fuel rods and have threatened to begin exporting nuclear materials unless the United States agrees to one-on-one talks with North Korea.

Tensions between the United States and North Korea have been running especially high since, in early October of 2002, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly informed North Korean officials that the United States was aware that North Korea had a program underway to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons. Initially North Korea denied this, but later confirmed the veracity of the US claim. In confirming that they had an active nuclear weapons program, they also declared the Agreed Framework nullified.

...

There is an entire world of open source intelligence - it does, however, require some skill to extract useful information. If you take a story, let's say, Pakistani sale of nuclear technology to North Korea, and start doing the Nexis searches of news sources around the world, you can usually trace the story back to one specific leak. The "leaks" are generally "unnamed sources from the intelligence community". The process by which a government disseminates information on things it doesn't want to draw attention to is through leaks to the media.

On occasions where they do want to draw attention to something, they issue something like a National Intelligence Estimate, White Paper or announce something during a Congressional Hearing. These reports are most assuredly based on the magical classified evidence, but tend to be very judicious in what they'll announce. This is primarily because once it becomes an official pronouncement the information gets put fully in play. As a result, the official releases also tend to be based on numerous sources - the shaky analyses tends to stay in house.

The vast majority of the time, open-source material confirms the official announcements, plus a small amount of additional information. This information should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt, since it is unconfirmed. Sussing out the legitimate from the hysterical, and comparing it with official documents, is one the particular skill involved in open-source analysis.

As far as FAS (and globalsecurity.org) go, they tend to be very thorough in their analysis, but tend to have a very definite analytical viewpoint. This is not to imply in any way, shape, or form, that they deliberately skew their analysis, but we might be able to say that they are quite sensitive to a certain analytical perspective. To answer an implied question, they are open-source in their analysis, but generally are very, very good at doing their homework. In particular, John Pike (of globalsecurity.org) is generally on top of things as the size of his shop will allow.

Jane’s on the other hand is a trade journal. When they write of industry happenings, they tend to be very spot on. When they depart from that narrow path, they get shaky quickly. Much of this is due to two factors - one is that they need to present information not found in the major news dailies (otherwise, why publish?) and the circles they and their reporters inhabit. As a result they hear a lot more chaff and are compelled to look for the bigger leads. Generally they are a good place to start one's research, but shouldn't be taken as the final authority.

What does all this mean w/r/t NoKo? Well, the early nineties report was an alleged leak from State. Very little has been heard about that in recent memory. Does NoKo have a nuke program? Almost certainly. Do they have nukes? My guess is probably. More significantly, whether or not they have nukes at a given time is becoming increasingly irrelevant since they've pretty much taken out all the stops on their nuclear program.

With the reprocessing of all 8,000 rods, they'll have enough for roughly 6 devices, in addition to the 1-2 they already have. Keep in mind, however, that this is just for the Plutonium devices, and doesn't include the Uranium bombs. Those are a lot harder to get a count on, simply because we have a much poorer idea of where the enrichment facilities are (which are critical to guesstimating production capacity). One thing that is for certain, however, is that North Korea maintains uranium mines with some 4 million tons of high-quality exploitable ore.

Other tidbits mentioned elsewhere in the comments: Japan is within range of some 650-700 shorter range ballistic missiles. The U.S. is thought to be in range of the Taepo-Dong missile, this is based on the unsuccesful North Korean attempt to launch a satellite.

Reading comprehension, David.

Rummel said:
Many experts are view the claims that NK has a few as dubious at best.

I said, in response:
Well, Dr. Rummell, fas.org seems to think it's a reasonable probability that NK has at least one nuke.

I'm well aware of their politics. I think the fact that they think NK has nukes is more telling because of their politics. So, since you and I appear to be making the exact same case, what say we stop polluting the bandwidth?

BTW fas.org has some really detailed photos of the sole NK launch facility. I'm betting we have fairly precise GPS coordinates on that location and have a plan to move on it in the remote event that NK decides to use it.

BTW, David, I didn't respond to your question regarding the classified stuff because it's not relevant. No classified material makes it out into the open without a declassification taking place, or the DIA or equivalent looking to make an arrest. So it doesn't matter who's got the goods on classified data as far as this forum is concerned, because we can't discuss any of it.

NK has been playing this bluster and threaten game for 50 years. Instead of paying attention to their melodramatic press releases, consider that they were demanding talks with US alone, without even including SK, and we refused.

There was quite a bit of criticism that we should go ahead and talk as NK wished, and offer incentives, etc.,etc. The US position was to decline anything that didn't include the other interested parties in the region.

After a few months of huffing and puffing, the recent talks in Bejing were just what we had been insisitng on, and the deciding voice was China, which told its client to join in for a negotiated solution or else no more assistance.

Why would China do this? Because they don't want to take any chance that NK would provoke a US military action. China would be trapped. Either bail out or try to fight. If the former, they are hugely embarrassed. If the latter, they know the decimation of their armed forces would be the only possible outcome.

It's interesting what happens when you push back instead of caving in.

There was a story out not long after the whole NK Nuke thing came out that Japan had "lost" 200 kilos of plutonium from one of their nuke plants.

China is stuck, and was stuck listening to the lunatic ravings of the North Koreans, for this and the previous 3 party talks, just as we planned all along. China is coming around to the fact that Kim is nuts and desperate, and will get the entire region either in a war, or with nukes in Japan, Taiwan, and elsewhere in the Pacific Rim, thereby reducing China's prestige as the only nuclear power.

The outcome of another Korean War is far from certain (at least in Chinese and Korean eyes). The two things that the Chinese fears above all others are nuclear proliferation in East Asia (ironic, given their track record in that arena), and Missile Defense. Among other things a lot of the Chinese Politburo living in the Long March Oldster's Home still view a resurgent Japan as the primary regional threat to peace. Not unlike the way the denizens of the Great Patriotic War Oldster's Home in Moscow feared a resurgent Germany.

Considering the missile capability that North Korea has on hand, Japan will continue their integration into a U.S. regional missile defense program. This, plus the possibility that Japan might even consider the possibility of the suggestion of the random notion that they might want to mull over the option of nukes makes Beijing very uncomfortable.

The other China kicker here is that they have zero interest in a NoKo collapse and U.S. troops policing a nation on their border. If you think about it, it'll be the first time that the U.S. and China would have troops across a common border, which complicates the whole Taiwan situation immensely.

So, if they can let North Korea keep afloat without having to pick up the tab, they'd be all for it. This is why they've been a bit slow to move. It appears, however, that the adminsitration's reluctance to cave has caused the Chinese to start taking a relatively active role in the dispute.

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