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Ed Webb

Japan defense chief: could have pre-emptive strike ability in future - Yahoo! News - 4 views

news.yahoo.com/-strike-ability-064810920.html

Japan China DPRK nukes defense deterrence IR

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Japan has the right to develop the ability to make a pre-emptive strike against an imminent attack given a changing security environment although it has no plan to do so now, the defense minister said on Thursday, days after North Korea conducted a third nuclear test. Any sign that Japan was moving to develop such a capability in response to North Korea's nuclear program could upset neighbors China and South Korea, which have reacted strongly in the past to suggestions it might do so.
  • Onodera said Japan needed to strengthen its ballistic missile defense in view of the North Korean threat. "Japan, the United States and South Korea managed to respond well to North Korea's missile launch on December 12. But North Korea is expected to boost various capabilities further. We need to improve corresponding capabilities as well."
  • "There already is a preliminary agreement between Japan and China to set up a maritime communication mechanism," Onodera said. "The mechanism would include annual meetings, specialists' meetings, hotlines between high-ranking people, and direct communications between ships and planes in the field. I would like to have final agreement reached as soon as possible."
  • Marie-Noelle Nwokolo on 16 Feb 13
     
    History repeats itself in similar ways. If this pattern is to continue, it is likely to lead to an arms race/build-up and some sort of security dilemma.
  • Ed Webb on 18 Feb 13
     
    The security dilemma is precisely what makes this so difficult, so you are right to point to it. If Japan wishes to respond to the threat it feels from DPRK, by swaggering a little or increasing its capabilities as a deterrent, it risks pushing China and ROK to increase their capabilities in response. This kind of arms racing is a prime example of the effect of anarchy: no-one would be behaving irrationally; but the collective outcome would be negative for all of them.
  • Marie-Noelle Nwokolo on 18 Feb 13
     
    Precisely so! Thank you!
Ed Webb

Think Again: North Korea - By David Kang and Victor Cha | Foreign Policy - 1 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...think_again_north_korea

Korea DPRK nukes economy development IR

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • There is no threat of war on the Korean peninsula because the United States and South Korea have deterred the regime for over six decades, or so the thinking goes. And the occasional provocation from Pyongyang -- full of sound and fury -- usually ends with it blowing up in its face, signifying nothing. So why worry? Two reasons. First, North Korea has a penchant for testing new South Korean presidents. A new one was just inaugurated in February, and since 1992, the North has welcomed these five new leaders by disturbing the peace.
  • Second, North Korea crossed a major technology threshold in December, when it successfully launched a satellite into orbit. Though the satellite later malfunctioned, the North managed to put the payload into orbit with ballistic missile launch technology that is clearly designed to reach the United States. This development appears to validate former U.S. Defense Secretary Bob Gates's January 2011 claim that the regime was only five years away from fielding a missile that could threaten the continental United States. To make matters worse, Pyongyang conducted a third nuclear test in February, which appears to have been more successful than the previous two.
  • North Korea today can threaten all of South Korea and parts of Japan with its conventional missiles and its conventional military. The North can fire 500,000 rounds of artillery on Seoul in the first hour of a conflict. Stability has held for 60 years because the U.S. security alliances with South Korea and Japan make it clear to the North Korean leadership that if they attacked South Korea or Japan, they would lose both the war and their country. And, for half a century, neither side believed that the benefits of starting a major war outweighed the costs. The worry is that the new North Korean leader might not hold to the same logic, given his youth and inexperience.
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  • Kim Jong Il paid no attention to the public aspect of ruling, whereas his son's visibility and embrace of popular culture appears to be aimed at convincing North Koreans that changes may actually occur under him
  • Authoritarian rulers don't long survive if they're truly out of touch with reality. They need to read palace politics, reward friends and punish enemies, and manage competing interests that are vying for power. Kim Jong Il lasted from 1994 until his death in December 2011 without any obvious internal challenge to his rule, a mark of his political acumen and mastery of factional politics. Although Kim Jong Un is inexperienced, he has held power for over a year and appears to have the acquiescence -- for now -- of the most powerful actors in Pyongyang.
  • Kim faces just as many risks if he meaningfully reforms domestic, economic, or social policy. Even within a totalitarian dictatorship, there are different factions, coalitions, and bureaucratic interests that will be injured by any change in the status quo. Economic reforms, for example, may ultimately help the country but will risk chaos in the markets, weaken powerful stakeholders within the vast bureaucracy, and potentially unleash rising expectations from the general public.
  • five bad decisions North Korea has made in the management of its economy. First, in the aftermath of the Korean War, Kim Jong Un's grandfather -- President Kim Il Sung -- focused exclusively on heavy industry development and the military while expecting the country to be self-sufficient in agriculture. In a country that only has 20 percent arable land, that was a huge mistake. Second, rather than seek technologies and innovations like the Green Revolution that helped nations like India make enormous gains in agricultural productivity in the 1960s and 1970s, the North tried to substitute longer work hours and revolutionary zeal. Given the broken infrastructure, this was like squeezing blood from a stone. Third, rather than trade with the outside world, the North went deeply into debt in the 1970s, borrowing and then defaulting on hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from European countries, which forever lost them lines of credit with any country or international financial institution. Fourth, in the 1980s and 1990s, the North undertook extremely wasteful mega-projects, building stadiums, hydropower projects, and tideland reclamation projects -- most of which failed or were never completed. Finally, after the Chinese and Soviets stopping giving aid to the North at the end of the Cold War, Pyongyang relied on humanitarian assistance as a form of income, instead of trying to fix their economy.
  • North Korea is one of the only countries in the world to have suffered a famine after industrialization
  • China has more influence over North Korea than any other country, but less influence than outsiders think. Beijing-Pyongyang relations haven't been warm ever since China normalized relations with South Korea over 20 years ago, and both sides resent the other. But Beijing has few options. Completely isolating Pyongyang and withdrawing economic and political support could lead to regime collapse, sending a flood of North Korean refugees across the border, and potentially drawing all the surrounding countries into conflict with each other -- which could see the devastating use of nuclear weapons. And China fears that any conflict, or a collapse, could put South Korean or even U.S. troops on its eastern border. As a result, Beijing -- much like Washington -- is faced with the choices of rhetorical pressure, quiet diplomacy, and mild sanctions. As long as China continues to value stability on the peninsula more than it worries about a few nuclear weapons, it will not fundamentally change its policy towards its unruly neighbor.
Ed Webb

Living With Nuclear Outliers - www.nytimes.com - Readability - 0 views

www.readability.com/...2agam0w7

nukes Iran DPRK Korea US USA diplomacy analysis opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • The regimes in North Korea and Iran perceive integration into an international community whose dominant power is the United States as a threat to their survival. Integration might yield short-term regime-sustaining economic benefits, but it carries the risk of regime-terminating political contagion.
  • Pyongyang and Tehran seized on NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya as evidence that Qaddafi had been duped by the West. Essentially, by taking down regimes in Iraq and Libya, Washington priced itself out of the security assurance market in Pyongyang and Tehran
  • The trouble is that “containment” as a strategy is increasingly denounced by hard-liners in the U.S. policy debate as tantamount to appeasement, reducing the administration’s political space
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  • the case for a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program rests on an assessment that the theocratic regime is undeterrable and apocalyptic. But that presumption runs contrary to National Intelligence Estimates, which have characterized the clerical regime’s decision-making as being “guided by a cost-benefit approach.” And U.S. intelligence analysts maintain that Iran has not yet decided to cross the threshold from a potential capability to an actual weapon
  • So long as Iran and North Korea see integration into the international community as a threat to their survival, and so long as they lack any long-term alternative for their economies, they will continue to use their nuclear programs and the ambiguities they generate as a proxy for relations with the world
  • Washington, for its part, does not have the option of changing their regimes or compelling their integration by force. And there is no telling how long their regimes will last
Ed Webb

James Moore: I'm Scared, Ma - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...im-scared-ma_b_294356.html

disarmament proliferation nukes Iran Israel India Pakistan USA NPT DPRK

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Sep 09 - Cached
  • I lost track of what the narrator was saying and was drawn into the strangest scenes a child might have ever encountered. A classroom of students just like ours was shown taking instructions from their teacher who told them to do something like "drop, roll, and curl" under their desks. A siren wailed in the background and then there was a mushroom cloud rising darkly from the earth. I did not sleep much for many days.
  • The movies and the newscasts about Russia and film of the nuclear explosions in Japan convinced my impressionable mind that every plane over our house feathering its engines was a Soviet bomber that had slipped undetected across the border and was about to drop a deadly explosive into our hillbilly neighborhood. "I'm scared, Ma," I told my mother one groggy morning. "What about, son?" "The airplanes at night when I'm in bed. They might be carrying bombs from the Russians." "Oh son, that's nothing to worry about. Nobody will drop a bomb here."
  • Israel, according to published reports by many defense industry analysts, has the fifth largest nuclear arsenal in the world, but has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty or even formally admit to possession of such technology, even though it is widely-known that the Dimona Reactor in the Negev Desert has been on-line since the 60s. Pakistan and India, sharing a border and contempt for each other, have also refused to be signatories of the treaty. North Korea was once a party to non proliferation, but has since withdrawn and threatens to develop and launch a thermonuclear device. There are also reportedly weapons missing from former Soviet satellite nations.
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  • The U.S. attempts mediation but where does any country's moral authority originate when it has deployed nuclear weapons, still has an arsenal, and is telling another sovereign nation that it cannot develop similar armaments? No one has ever answered this question. Iran also wants to know why Israel is permitted by the world community to have nukes while Tehran is told no. Does not one sovereign nation have the same rights as another sovereign nation? Israel, Pakistan, and India felt geo-political threats and developed nuclear weapons as deterrents, which is the aspiration of the powers in control of Iran and North Korea -- or do they have evil intent?
Ed Webb

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | The paradox of North Korea - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8294007.stm

DPRK nukes BBC

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Oct 09 - Cached
  • North Korea looks across the heavily armed border to its South Korean neighbour, backed by a nuclear superpower, the United States.
  • With the nuclear powers China and Russia on its other border, one of the world's most isolated and friendless countries believes it has a strong and compelling logic for wanting its own atomic bombs.
  • This may be a deeply authoritarian and impoverished place, but at least some of its citizens appear genuinely proud and defiant. Upon whatever it is based, it is that strand of legitimacy, as much as the physical controls, that has helped make North Korea so resilient for so long.
Ed Webb

S. Korea's dilemma? North's unschooled masses, not nukes | McClatchy - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...nite-can-norths-residents.html

DPRK Korea education economy politics diplomacy authoritarianism Totalitarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • should the North collapse, millions of undereducated, traumatized and malnourished North Koreans might come flooding across the border
  • a nation of people who would be startled, if not stunned, by the bright lights and hustle of Seoul, and might in turn overwhelm South Korea's ability to absorb them
  • Officials in Seoul acknowledge the myriad issues that a reunification of the Korean Peninsula would present, though the list of problems is more obvious than their solutions
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • After spending much of an hour trying to describe the Italian Renaissance to a classroom of North Korean defectors — "Can you imagine where Italy is?" — and having to stop to explain what she meant by "far," one teacher at the Yeomyung School said reunification would be tough.
  • "The reason that she was tortured was that her children had escaped,"
Ed Webb

Patriot Missiles Are Made in America and Fail Everywhere - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...in-america-and-fail-everywhere

missiles PATRIOT defense proliferation KSA Israel US USA Iraq nukes DPRK

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • we found that it is very unlikely the missiles were shot down, despite officials’ statements to the contrary. Our approach was simple: We mapped where the debris, including the missile airframe and warhead, fell and where the interceptors were located. In both cases, a clear pattern emerged. The missile itself falls in Riyadh, while the warhead separates and flies over the defense and lands near its target. One warhead fell within a few hundred meters of Terminal 5 at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport. The second warhead, fired a few weeks later, nearly demolished a Honda dealership. In both cases, it was clear to us that, despite official Saudi claims, neither missile was shot down
  • there is no evidence that Saudi Arabia has intercepted any Houthi missiles during the Yemen conflict
  • I am deeply skeptical that Patriot has ever intercepted a long-range ballistic missile in combat — at the least, I have yet to see convincing unclassified evidence of a successful Patriot intercept. During the 1991 Gulf War, the public was led to believe the that the Patriot had near-perfect performance, intercepting 45 of 47 Scud missiles. The U.S. Army later revised that estimate down to about 50 percent — and even then, it expressed “higher” confidence in only about one-quarter of the cases. A pesky Congressional Research Service employee noted that if the Army had correctly applied its own assessment methodology consistently, the number would be far lower. (Reportedly that number was one — as in one lousy Scud missile downed.)
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • there was not enough evidence to conclude that there had been any intercepts. “There is little evidence to prove that the Patriot hit more than a few Scud missiles launched by Iraq during the Gulf War,” a summary of the investigations concluded dryly, “and there are some doubts about even these engagements.” This report — which called on the Pentagon to declassify more information about the performance of the Patriot and request an independent evaluation of the program — never saw the light of day. A fierce lobbying campaign by the Army and Raytheon spiked it, save for a summary.
  • There is enormous pressure on the Saudi government to show that it is taking steps to defend its citizens. By asserting successful intercepts — assertions that are uncritically spread in headlines — the Saudi government is able to present itself as fulfilling its obligations to protect its population. And, like in 1991, the perception that a defense is working helps keep a lid on regional tensions
  • The danger here is that leaders in Saudi Arabia and the United States will come to believe their own nonsense. Consider this: Despite that the fact that anonymous U.S. officials have confirmed that there was no successful intercept in November 2017, President Donald Trump had a very different impression: “Our system knocked the missile out of the air,” Trump told reporters the following day. “That’s how good we are. Nobody makes what we make, and now we’re selling it all over the world.” This is a theme Trump has returned to again and again. When asked about the threat from North Korea’s nuclear-armed missiles, Trump said, “We have missiles that can knock out a missile in the air 97 percent of the time, and if you send two of them, it’s going to get knocked down.” Trump has repeatedly given every indication that he believes missile defenses will protect the United States.
  • Missile defense systems do not represent a solution to the challenge posed by growing missile capabilities or an escape from vulnerability in the nuclear age. There is no magic wand that can “knock down” all the missiles aimed at the United States or its allies. The only solution is to persuade countries not to build these weapons in the first place. If we fail, defenses won’t save us.
Ed Webb

The North Korea Debate Sounds Eerily Familiar - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...547796

Trump US USA diplomacy politics analysis military Iraq Korea North Korea DPRK nukes

shared by Ed Webb on 09 Dec 17 - No Cached
  • The Trump White House talking about North Korea sounds eerily and increasingly like the George W. Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq War. Officials make similar arguments about the necessity of acting against a gathering storm; proudly claim understanding of the adversary’s motivations; express frustration at countries that should be likewise alarmed at the problem not supporting American policy; and believe the sand is running out in the hourglass before military attacks are required. They admit no alternative interpretation of the facts. They are blithely dismissing enormous damage their policy would incur for regional allies. They seem innocent of understanding the disastrous and isolating consequences for America’s role in the world to choose preventive war rather than the moral heights of restraint in the face of threats.
  • Since administration policy treats North Korean leadership statements as actionable, that same rule ought to apply also to the American side. The administration’s statements strongly prejudice policy toward military action: They have not only drawn a red line, they’ve attached a countdown clock to it. President Trump will either fight a preventive war to disarm North Korea, or will be forced in humiliation fashion to dismantle a scaffold of his own construction, calling into question American security guarantees
  • Neither President Trump nor his Cabinet have done anywhere near the kind of spadework necessary to bring Americans along for a war that will require calling up reserve military forces, kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of South Koreans, reshape how the world views America, and consume all the political energy of the Trump presidency
Ed Webb

Tell me how Trump's North Korea gambit ends - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...trumps-north-korea-gambit-ends

US USA Trump DPRK Korea North Korea military idiocy analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Dec 17 - Cached
  • Trump officials working on North Korea have developed the odd consensus that Pyongyang will use its nuclear arsenal to attempt a forcible reunification with South Korea. And if that is the goal, then time is running out for military options that would stop that from happening.
  • The Trump national security team seems convinced that North Korea cannot be deterred, and war is the inevitable outcome.
  • With the administration’s leading spokesman for diplomacy doing nothing but occupying negative space, that leaves the hawks planning a military option. This is disturbing, for two reasons. First, there is still a lot of room for coercive diplomacy, as Michael McFaul noted a few weeks ago. Second, for the life of me, I cannot conceive of a military option that would not lead to a catastrophic loss of life
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  • Maybe Trump’s national security team is trying to bluff its way into getting North Korea to back down. But having seen this White House shoot itself in the foot repeatedly, I now worry that Trump, Kelly and McMaster actually think there is a military solution. Someone smarter and better-informed than me needs to tell me how this ends. Because every time I try to game it out, a Trump-Kim confrontation ends with hell on Earth.
Ed Webb

China's Monster Fishing Fleet Makes Other Countries Go Hungry - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...ca-north-korea-south-china-sea

Africa China fish resources oceans Argentina Gambia Mozambique DPRK

shared by Ed Webb on 15 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Today, according to a report by the British Overseas Development Institute, China’s blue-water fishing fleet is by far the world’s largest, and includes 12,490 unique vessels that were observed to have been fishing outside China’s internationally recognized EEZ in 2017 and 2018. That’s many times more than previous estimates, and very different from China’s own claim of having only 3,000 ships fishing international or other countries’ waters—but that’s only because China doesn’t recognize the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty’s demarcation of maritime borders.
  • Though China isn’t alone in its destructive fishing practices, it stands apart by virtue of its sheer size and the extent to which it pushes its highly subsidized fleet across the world’s oceans. It’s also the only country whose fishing fleet has a geopolitical mission, taking over weaker countries’ waters and expanding Beijing’s maritime territorial ambitions. One of the malicious consequences of all this is that China’s monster fishing fleet robs poorer nations—from North Korea to the countries of West Africa—of desperately needed protein.
  • Chinese authorities don’t enforce many rules either, so very few Chinese ships opt to fly flags of convenience. “They are their own flag of convenience,” Schvartzman said. “And they effectively created a port of convenience—a pirate port—in Montevideo.”
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • While much has been written about Chinese overfishing, it’s only recently become possible to document its vast extent, thanks to new satellite technologies such as those providing data to Global Fishing Watch. The same tracking technology that is used to prevent vessels from hiding or circumventing sanctions shows that China’s fishing fleet appears engaged, often illegally, in the effort to haul in as much seafood as it can, as fast as it can, in as many places as it can—with little regard for how its practices affect malnourished people or diminish the stocks of their fish.
  • China’s yearly bill for fisheries subsidies—of which 94 percent covers shipping fuel—comes to $5.9 billion. That’s about $347,000 per vessel per year, far more than any other major fishing country. European Union vessels, also considered highly subsidized, receive only about $23,000 a year
  • its record contains little in the way of sustainable fishing. Its own coastline, once among the richest in the world, has been more overfished by its 300,000-strong domestic coastal fleet than the waters of almost any other nation, with less than 15 percent of the original fish biomass remaining
  • Some 250 Chinese vessels fish for squid just outside Argentina’s 200-mile EEZ, sometimes dashing into Argentina’s waters illegally. When a Chinese jigger intruded in 2018, an Argentine warship pursuing it was nearly rammed by three other Chinese jiggers. “It’s literally a war,” said Milko Schvartzman, a former Greenpeace campaign manager and fisheries expert who estimates the illegal Argentinian fishery at $1 billion a year. “I have no doubt this will end in tragedy.”
  • China’s South Atlantic fishing fleet is based in Montevideo, the capital and main port of Uruguay, Argentina’s northern neighbor. Uruguay seems to have given China and its fishing fleet a free hand
  • China’s 1.4 billion people not only consume 38 percent of global fish production, but indulge in one of the highest per-capita consumption rates of fish and seafood, both wild and farmed, in the world—37.8 kilograms per person per year, up from only 7 kilograms per person per year in 1985, according to figures provided by China to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
  • The Europeans, in particular, are also involved in a lot of illegal fishing, said Vanya Vulperhorst, director of Oceana’s campaign against illegal fishing, often using boats with non-European flags to get around the rules. The illegal market in Mediterranean bluefin tuna, for example, is twice the size of the legal one, according to Europol.
  • In Mozambique, the Chinese were more successful. In 2017, they effectively took over the port of Beira, doubling its capacity so it could accommodate over 100 trawlers
  • The Mozambican Channel, between Madagascar and Mozambique, had been relatively unfished, and the Chinese fleet has been able to catch over 60,000 tons a year of large, high-quality bottomfish like seabream and groupers, all of which go to China. “They pay the government a pittance for the right to fish,” Failler said. “The locals now complain they aren’t catching anything anymore.”
  • in northwest Africa, the Chinese built around 20 fishmeal plants to process sardinella, a once-abundant and highly nutritious mackerel-sized fish, into feed for aquaculture and poultry. That industry has created a similar situation as in North Korea: During the winter dry season, smoked sardinella constituted the main source of affordable protein for the region, one of the poorest in the world. In Gambia, Chinese companies operate three fishmeal plants built five years ago and suck up so much sardinella that the local supply is reduced to a trickle. “It’s devastating,” said Mustapha Manneh, a Gambian journalist. “Gambians depend on this fish for their daily meal.” In Kartong, where he lives, he says the price has risen five-fold. Further inland in Koina, where the country reaches into the arid Sahel region, sardinella prices have risen tenfold. Fishing in the Gambia river instead can’t compensate for the loss of sardinella. “It is dangerous because there are so many hippos,” Manneh said. “The destruction cannot be overemphasized.”
  • 90 percent of fishmeal is made from perfectly edible fish like sardinella
  • Half the global catch, much of it taken from or near the waters of poor countries, is then turned into fishmeal to grow fish like salmon, which are consumed in rich countries.
  • China has been paying fishermen to cast their nets around the Paracel Islands since the 1970s and the Spratlys since the 1980s
  • China is the only country with a strategic fishing fleet. Of the crew on the vessels operating in the South China Sea, Poling said “either they’re fishers paid to go fish somewhere, and that’s the only reason they do it, or they are officially in the militia, which means they never fish—they just use fishing boats to monitor other fleets, run supplies, or ram other boats.” Pauly, the fisheries scientist, said that “no one else does this except in war.”
  • There, the Chinese not only make up 40 percent of the foreign fleet, but have also drawn attention with the high number of dead crew members they have been reported to bring in—about one a month. “Conditions on their boats are horrible, some of the worst in the world,” Schvartzman said. “Sometimes they dump the bodies at sea, but usually they don’t because the crew would rebel.”
  • At the World Trade Organization, talks are underway to reduce fishing subsidies, with an agreement due by the end of the year
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