Bruce Bechtol, author of numerous books and studies on North Korea’s military establishment, estimates North Korea already has 200 of them poised and ready to launch.
Bechtol, whose latest book, Defiant Failed State: The North Korean Threat to International Security, suggests the mayhem North Korea could perpetrate, figures that Guam, home of the strategically vital Andersen Air Force Base and bristling with numerous other adjuncts of U.S. military power, would present an ideal target. It is, he noted, “where we deploy a lot of the U.S. air power that would fly to the Korean peninsula in case of war”.
With North Korea showing off its missiles like an angry tiger baring its teeth, the country confirmed what was already pretty clear, that Kim Jong-Un’s job will be to carry on his father’s legacy of songun, military first, amid rising tensions around Northeast Asia.
The military show may have been just a chest-thumping act of braggadocio intended to disguise the country’s basic weakness.
No one doubts, though, that Kim Jong-Il, whose stiff left arm and limp while walking were clearly visible on the non-stop live broadcast of North Korean television, means to leave songun, his military-first policy, to Kim Jong-Un to carry on and perpetuate. Jong-Un, in his late 20s, has yet to utter a word in public, but he’s sure to have gotten the idea. Whatever he doesn’t know, he’ll pick up as vice chairman of the Workers’ Party military commission, the job his father gave him, along with the rank of general, a week or two before the parade.
More alarming, experts believe the parade showed North Korea had advanced significantly in crafting the Musudan missile. Richard Fisher, with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, told Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, that he perceived “a huge leap in anti-aircraft missile technology”. Once widely deployed, he said, “there is simply no way that U.S. or South Korean aircraft can get close to these targets without risking substantial casualties”.
Not that seeing is always believing. The North Koreans are adept at flim-flam, and it’s quite possible the missiles were “a pre-production batch”, as Fisher put it, or even “failed prototypes”, in the view of Joseph Bermudez, the prolific analyst for Jane’s Information Group. It was, Bermudez noted, “not beyond the North Koreans to put things in the parade that aren’t what they seem to be — that might not be production versions of things” — or “were built specifically to be part of a deception plan to throw off what we are trying to do to track them”.
That’s not particularly comforting when you consider the North Koreans have been working at missiles a long time and are likely to be developing more and better ones regardless of what they showed off at the parade.
One fine time to test a few of them would be in the run-up to next month’s Group of 20 (G-20) meeting in Seoul, the confab of leaders of 19 countries plus the European Union. South Korea doubts if the North Koreans would miss such an opportunity — though the presence of China’s President Hu Jintao at the G-20 may inhibit them from trying anything too drastic.
Then too, Kim Jong-Il has to worry about another problem, his obstreperous oldest son, Kim Jong-Nam, who’s said openly in an interview with a Japanese TV network that he doesn’t believe in “dynastic succession” even if he’s still willing to do whatever he can to help Kim Jong-Un, more than 10 years younger than he.
Jong-Nam, who lives principally in the gambling enclave of Macao, made the remark in Beijing. It’s been rumored that Kim Jong-Il is so fed up with him that he wouldn’t mind seeing him disappear in “an accident”, but the Chinese have reportedly warned him against any such thing on Chinese soil.
The real danger now is that Kim Jong-Il — under the influence of an aggressive Kim Jong-Un — may behave like an unguided missile. The sinking of the Cheonan, blamed by South Korea on a torpedo fired by a North Korean midget submarine, was bad enough. The biggest worry here is no one knows where the North Koreans will strike next, not even the Chinese.
|
ShareThis
