NightWatch

For the Night of 14 October 2009

North Korea: Update. The Workers' Party's official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, reported today that the issue of North Korea's nuclear program can be resolved only when the United States "repeals its hostile policy" toward North Korea and "replaces the armistice agreement with a peace accord."

Comment: The North’s real intentions are debatable invariably because its public statements do not square with its long term behavior. For example, the North, following well established Soviet practice, is prone to announce goals that seem attractive at first glance, but are calculated to be objectionable and rejected by the US.

Thus, for years the North publicly has advocated the withdrawal of US forces and a peace treaty, knowing that the US would never agree. In actuality, its behavior indicated the North never wanted US forces to leave because the removal of the US threat would cause the collapse of the regime. For example, there would be no justification for Stalinist restrictions without an outside threat and the North would be confronted with the requirements of managing a peacetime economy to service the needs of educated, long suffering North Koreans – a horrific prospect even for Koreans.

The purpose of this exercise in diplomatic deception always has been to reinforce the righteousness of North Korea’s leaders and policies without having to change anything. One of the worst outcomes for Pyongyang would be for the US and its allies to accept what the North misjudged as unacceptable terms.

In 2009, the US and South Korean forces are in a position to accept a peace treaty, thereby calling the North’s bluff. The North’s forces, to an absolute certitude, are unable to reunify the peninsula by force, but can still inflict a lot of damage just for spite.

Nevertheless, the idea of a bilateral peace agreement is complicated by the United Nations Armistice Agreement. The US is not at war with North Korea; the United Nations Command is at war. The irony of this situation is that North Korea is a member of the United Nations, making it a member of an organization that is at war with it. South Korea also is not a signatory to the Armistice, so it is not legally at war with North Korea, except in its capacity as a member of the UN.

The North’s leaders know all of this which is one of the reasons they make such proposals.

The larger question is whether the North judges that 2009 is a time when it can survive without the US threat. Can the North Korean communist regime survive without an external threat?

If the Northern communists believe they can, then this is a period of strategic change. The empirical evidence suggests it almost certainly cannot survive unless the North’s leaders are now optimistic about arranging re-unification with the South in some format that bypasses the US.

Success would make Kim Chong-il not only the dutiful Confucian son who fulfills the legacy of his father, Kim Il-song, but also would elevate him above his father, as the unifier of the peninsula. It would also make the lack of a peace agreement with the US inconvenient, if not an impediment.

Does North Korea really want the US forces out? NightWatch judges no, assuming there is no progress towards reunification in a reasonable time frame. The key is the nature of the continuing North-South discourse that is kept secret from the US. The US military presence is not popular in South Korea and could be construed as an impediment to re-unification which is the latest theme in the North’s new peace offensive.

If progress towards reunification is not achievable, the presence of the US forces in the South and the threat to North Korea remains the strongest rationale for demanding personal hardships under a Stalinist regime in Pyongyang. If progress towards reunification is promising, then a peace treaty is within reach.

There is not a lot new in today’s statement, but it tends to indict the US as the impediment towards peace which is the condition for reunification.

Afghanistan: NightWatch Recommends. This comment is a synthetic analysis based on reasoning from historic analogies, as taught in Neustadt and May, Chapter 3, Thinking in Time.

New analysts to the study of Afghanistan should read the documents posted by the National Security Archive on Soviet lessons learned.

Two major themes stand out sharply. Through 1979, Politburo members Gromyko, Kirilenko, Ponomarev and others agreed that the Soviet Union could not afford to lose Afghanistan to the Mujahedin, which they interpreted as a proxy for the US, China, Pakistan and Iran.

Through most of 1979, political and military leaders agreed on one point: Soviet military forces should never be committed to Afghanistan. All other aid should be rendered to enable Afghanistan to save itself.

Unanimity broke in September 1979 when the tyrant Hafizullah Amin overthrew the government and instituted a reign of terror. In Moscow, Communist Party political leaders, including Gromyko and Brezhnev, judged Amin needed to be punished and removed. Military leaders remained steadfastly opposed to the commitment of Soviet forces. Yuri Andropov’s KGB, pandering to the Party leaders, advocated intervention and that swayed the Politburo vote.

The 40^th Army invaded on Christmas Day 1979. KGB combat forces assassinated Amin. Babrak Karmal was installed as the new leader of Afghanistan. The effort was so uncoordinated that the KGB colonel in charge of killing Amin was killed by friendly fire from the advancing 40^th Army.

In the event, the world changed and the loss of Afghanistan was trivial compared to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which the Soviet expedition into Afghanistan accelerated.

The Soviet “empire” collapsed n part because of the Afghanistan drain on its last reserves. The KGB’s intelligence advice was mostly short term alarmist baloney. Russia survived and the Afghanistan problem endures, but is no longer a primary Russian concern. Russian Prime Minister Putin is mildly amused, to be sure.

The second theme is that Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, Chief of the General Staff, and his staff officers unanimously agreed and recommended that Soviet forces should never be committed to Afghanistan because the war was too like the US involvement in Vietnam and was not winnable.

Interesting to NightWatch is that the Soviet military leaders, who had a half century tradition of involvement in Afghanistan since the 1920s, recommended against intervention by Soviet forces, even as late as November and early December 1979. The decision to invade was made on 12 December 1979, as documented by the National Security Archive documents.

The irony is that battle tested Soviet Marshals and Generals with long experience and a tradition of operations in central Asia wanted no part of another military action in Afghanistan. This matches British military conclusions from its historic fights in the frontier region. It contrasts sharply with the “can do” attitude of US generals who have no experience in Afghanistan, but have read lots of books.

The Soviet political leaders ignored the military advice and committed the 40^th Army on Christmas 1979. Against expectations, the Soviets succeeded in gradually restoring a measure of stability to most of Afghanistan until the US introduced Stinger missiles to the Mujahedin which eliminated Soviet air superiority. The availability of Pakistan as a safe haven for the Mujahedin was the critical weakness in the Soviet position, the documents relate.

A third theme is that the Soviets insisted on working with the government they backed. They kept Soviet forces separate from Afghan forces. They demanded the Afghan government and Afghan forces step up to defend the government to which they swore an oath. Their approach succeeded, until the US intervened with the Stingers.

In this exercise in “reasoning from historic analogies”, the National Security Archive documents cover the year of deliberations by the Soviet Politburo about whether to escalate Soviet support. The decision to send Soviet troops was agonizing.

For NightWatch, the ideas, proposals and concepts are close matches to the debate in the US today about the same issue. The Soviets plowed the same ground only twenty years ago. It is important to take their experiences into account.

Among the differences is that Soviet political leaders were the first to be persuaded that the political situation in Kabul could only be save by Soviet forces. Soviet military leaders disagreed on military grounds.

The US debate appears structured precisely opposite. Political leaders doubt the military can do what its leaders claim.

The documents in the National Security Archive collectively are a cautionary tale and worth reading.

Turkey-Israel: Update. The recent cancellation of Turkey's participation in NATO air force exercises was due to Israel's delay in delivering unmanned aerial vehicles to the Turkish military, not to political reasons, Turkish officials said today, Today's Zaman reported. An unnamed official said, "Turkey needs those vehicles in its fight against terror. What led to the recent crisis between Turkey and Israel was the delay in the delivery." Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said the military's General Staff called for the cancellation.

This explanation is not credible without a few more details.

Russia: According to the secretary if the Russian Security Council, the Russian governments recently announced review of its nuclear weapons policy retains and expands the option of preemptive nuclear weapons use in war.

Analysts are again referred to the National Security Archive file of interviews with Russian senior officials about Soviet views of nuclear weapons. The documents show the Russians concluded that the threat of theater nuclear weapons was not real except as it made escalation to total nuclear war inevitable. Thus, theater use = global use.

The Russians have no new nuclear weapons doctrine. As during the Soviet regime, the Russians will use nukes when they conclude the enemy has begun preparing nukes or conventional forces capable of defeating Russian forces in a theater, such as the Far East. According to a BDM contractor study, this is “pre-emption” in Russian doctrine.

What it means and has always meant is that the Russians will not fire first but nor will they absorb a first strike without firing, nor will they absorb a conventional defeat without using nuclear weapons against the attacker, China.

Thus the doctrine is not new, only its public articulation. Russian strategists are telling the truth now, whereas they were evasive about pre-emption during the Cold War.

By definition, pre-emption means Russia will try to attack with nuclear weapons in the interval between the start of enemy war preparations and the launching of the attack. In the West this is described as launch on tactical warning (LOTW).

For China, the message is that that Russians want China to know that any border incursion risks all.

The not-so-new doctrine means almost nothing for NATO, unless NATO tries to use force to intervene in the Ukraine or Georgia. The National Security Archive documents establish that the Russians are bluffing because they know nuclear war is inherently not limitable.

Thus a Russian threat of theater use of nuclear weapons implies the Russians are prepared to accept 85% destruction in a nuclear exchange and are challenging a would-be enemy to examine whether he is prepared to accept the same. That is the essence of deterrence.

Venezuela: Correction. President Chavez excoriated golf, but did not ban it, a double check of sources disclosed. He closed two world -class golf resorts to build public housing on them.

Honduras: Earlier today the negotiator representing ousted President Zelaya said a deal has been reached to resolve the crisis stemming from Zelaya's removal from office in June, and that the deal will be presented to Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti for approval, Reuters reported.

Later reporting from the Honduran government clarified there is no deal and will be no deal to re-install Zelaya as president. Never mind.

China: Too good to omit. (Note: photo embedded here.)

A Brilliant and Resourceful Reader forwarded a Google earth image of an aircraft carrier in China. The location is a few miles southeast of Shanghai, near the coast. The ship is made of concrete. The helicopters and fighters look real enough.

Appears to be a full scale model of a Russian Kuznetsov-class carrier. That is rather conclusive on the issue of what kind of aircraft carrier the Chinese want. The Kuznetsov-class carrier Varyag may be seen in Google Earth imagery of the port of Dalien in northern China, up the coast on the north side of the Bohai Gulf.

End of NightWatch for 14 October.