For more than a year, debate on Korea has proceeded as if two viable alternatives were on offer. One, in diplomatese, is to “play it long,” to avoid turning a drama into a crisis. The other is to play chicken with Kim Il Sung until he blinks. It’s a false choice. The second course would escalate tension until, as one Asian scholar says, “Doomsday becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Military planners in Washington readily explain why: conventional weapons can’t destroy Kim’s military capability.
The reasons go beyond the well-known nightmare of Korea’s geography, which makes Seoul an easy target for a surprise attack. Just north of the border, Kim has batteries of rocket artillery housed in tunnels bored into hillsides, protected by blast doors. The rockets can be fired without leaving their lairs (the rocket launchers come up on elevators; the doors open; bang; the doors close; the launchers go down). So to destroy the launchers with conventional arms, you have about a minute while they are in the open. The U.S. Army is working on a scheme to link reconnaissance systems with its own rockets to drench the North’s artillery with fire during the magic minute. But army planners don’t think the system will be ready until next year – or even 1996. America doesn’t have the conventional weapons to take out underground sites hiding rockets or Kim’s nuclear facilities. For 30 years, war planners assumed that Soviet silos and command bunkers would be destroyed by nuclear bombs.
Next problem: North Korea has Scud-B and Scud-C missiles, more lethal than the Scuds that Saddam Hussein used in the gulf war; they are based in wooded, heavily defended valleys 30 miles south of Pyongyang. The PAC-2 Patriot missile now in South Korea is really an antiaircraft system, unlikely to be very effective against Kim’s Scuds. And some of those Scuds are armed with chemical weapons to disable airfields in the South.
Of course, all of these difficulties might be overcome if the United States were to threaten to use nuclear weapons against Kim’s forces. Not coincidentally, Truman and Eisenhower both considered using nukes in the Korean War. But simply to mention the words “nuclear war” is enough to understand why Washington will avoid escalating the Korean crisis.
South Koreans, who have built one of the world’s economic miracles from the ashes of war, understand these truths. They think that in the best of circumstances reunifying the peninsula – their ultimate dream – would cost $200 billion to $300 billion over 10 years. The cost of unification after a war beggars belief. And so everyone will continue to play Korea long. Donald Gregg, George Bush’s ambassador to Seoul, warns Washington against “compensatory toughness” – or the temptation to respond to accusations of weakness elsewhere in the world with a hard line on Korea. Most Asia watchers believe that, one day, economic pressures will bring a less bellicose regime to the North. The best the West can do is wait. In truth, there’s no other obvious option short of Doomsday.
