Martin Biography timothywmartin Timothy. Martin wsj. To Read the Full Story. Subscribe Sign In. Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership. Resume Subscription We are delighted that you'd like to resume your subscription. Please click confirm to resume now. Intelligence network In addition to this detailed operational planning, the U.
Target list The ultimate question is whether the combined militaries of the U. Frequent overflights of U.
Delivery systems What can be brought to bear? Handy option While some may dismiss this scenario because the concentration of forces it requires would alert the North to an impending attack, what is important to note is that the U. More on subject. Opinion: Can the North Korean leopard change its spots?
The June 12, , Singapore summit between the president of the United States and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was better than the alternative — a potentially catastrophic outcome of belligerent rhetoric between two nuclear-armed states.
A great deal will depend on what has been agreed in that other, less Forget about the nukes, where is our aid? The leaders of China have not found a way yet to tame their rogue ally, Kim Jung-un.
Thus far, the North Korean dictator has been able to continue both developing his weapons of mass destruction, which China fears and has gently tried to block, and extracting economic aid from Beijing Lord Alton of Liverpool has chaired a parliamentary committee on North Korea for 10 years.
The COI report underlines and corroborates the witness statements about unspeakable More on region. Sharp deal drives wedge into Japan Inc. Beijing has become increasingly impatient. Echoed by Chinese diplomats, Mr. More on similar topics. Trump pushes U. Though there is wide agreement that the U. Held in conjunction with NATO partners, the maneuvers had Sweden flexing its military muscle for the first time in decades.
They could tilt the Now they are training to engage their NATO counterparts. As a result, Western militaries have been forced to change the way they approach this threat. Though Russian special forces are Insights delivered. A weekly summary, plus unique comments from Prince Michael of Liechtenstein. Suggested reports. Will the South Korean success story continue? South Korea has proven that even through adversity and the constant threat of war, it can still develop and progress.
That will continue to be the case if the precarious peace on the Korean Peninsula continues. The United States, Russia, China and smaller states in possession of such arms are, at most, modernizing their arsenals. North Korea and possibly Iran cannot be prevented from developing nuclear The complex web of interests and commitments in the region makes it hard to see a way to defuse the crisis, but it also seems unlikely that The move may ratchet up pressure on Kim Jong-un to moderate his behavior, especially if China joins in.
But it also brings the world closer to a potentially disastrous Recent topics, shifts and disruptions. The policies used to contain the Covid pandemic have brought disruption that moved at a speed not seen in It is theoretically possible that North Korean sleeper agents disguised as cleaning and disinfection personnel could disperse BW agents with backpack sprayers. Another possibility is that North Korean agents will introduce BW into water supplies for major metropolitan areas.
In , Weber helped design a war game centered on a simulated North Korean biological weapons attack on the South. The exercise, Able Response , brought together hundreds of military and civilian officials from the US and South Korea. The goals were to figure out the best ways to detect an attack, identify what substance had been used, limit the spread of the virus, and then rush vaccines and other medical care to the infected to save as many lives as possible.
US bases in South Korea received new environmental surveillance systems designed to quickly detect the presence of a biological agent. Still, Weber said his main takeaway was the near impossibility of preventing biological weapons from killing an astonishing number of people.
In some cases, it was significantly higher because the infection spread to Japan or other nearby countries. North Korea is thought to have about 50 nukes. The US, by contrast, has an astonishing 6, nuclear weapons surpassed only by Russia, which has an estimated 7, weapons.
Trump — or one of his successors — could respond to a North Korean nuclear strike by destroying every major North Korean city in a matter of hours. Experts inside and outside the US government who study North Korea say that Kim is a rational leader with a singular focus on maintaining control of his country. And for a long time, they believed that Kim would only use his nuclear weapons if he were facing military defeat and the imminent collapse of his government.
It would be the last gasp of a dying regime, one determined to kill as many of its enemies as possible before the end came. Those assessments have now changed. Most of the experts I spoke to believe North Korea would use nuclear weapons at the beginning of a war — not at the end. And most of them believe Kim would be making a rational decision, not a crazy or suicidal one, if he gave the launch order.
He remembers that the walls were covered with graffiti praising Kim. He knows that any US and South Korean strike would be designed to destroy or capture his nuclear weapons. In the s, the Soviet Union was much stronger militarily than Germany, France, or the other countries of Western Europe. The US had formally committed to protecting those nations from a Soviet invasion, and Bennett told me that American military planners were prepared to use small-scale tactical nuclear weapons against the advancing Russian troops to stop the assault.
That entire calculus began to change once the Soviet Union developed long-range nuclear missiles capable of reaching the continental US. European leaders openly wondered how far Washington would be willing to go to protect their countries from the Soviet Union given the new risks to the American homeland. If the US were no longer willing to defend Seoul, then South Korea — which has no nuclear weapons of its own — would be a lot easier to invade and defeat.
But how do you break up that alliance? Being able to credibly threaten to destroy New York or Washington definitely helps. North Korea has missiles capable of reaching the West Coast and is thought to have nuclear warheads that would fit on top of them. They could destroy a major nuclear city. If Kim decides the answer is no, using a nuclear weapon against South Korea no longer seems crazy or suicidal.
It starts to seem rational. And one particular South Korean city starts to seem like the likeliest target. That was widely seen as an implicit threat to use nuclear weapons against the South Korean port city of Busan, which would play a vital role in any Pentagon effort to build a force big enough to defend the South or to lead a preemptive strike on the North. The US currently has around 28, troops stationed in South Korea and would need to deploy hundreds of thousands more if war broke out with the North.
The US would also have to send in thousands of additional tanks, armored personnel carriers, bombers, fighter jets, helicopters, and artillery pieces.
That means the vast bulk of the US troops and equipment would need to come by boat, a laborious process that could take six weeks or longer to complete. The American ships would unload at Busan, and the best way for Kim to destroy those ports — and significantly slow US efforts to send in enough troops to make a difference in the fight — would be to nuke the city.
Bruce Klingner, a year veteran of the CIA who spent years studying North Korea, told me that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had stood by in as the US methodically built up the forces it used to invade the country — and oust Hussein — the following year.
We also have to prepare for the fact that if the US and North Korea do actually come to blows, China will get involved — and not in the ways that either Washington or Pyongyang might expect. Things would get really complicated, and really dangerous, once Chinese troops made their way to the nuclear facilities. The problem is that Chinese troops would almost certainly be sent into North Korea at the same time, and with the same goal, as the US forces.
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