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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhy Mattis versus Kim Jong-Un Will End Badly for Us All
https://warontherocks.com/2017/04/why-mattis-versus-kim-jong-un-will-end-badly-for-us-all/Inadvertent war in Korea is more likely now than at any point in recent history. Whereas a second Korean war has always been possible, clashing U.S. and North Korean theories of victory beliefs about what it takes to successfully coerce and control escalation now make it plausible, even probable.
Patterns of bluster and brinkmanship have of course long characterized affairs on the Korean Peninsula. For Korea watchers, theres a perverse comfort in the predictability of a situation that, to the uninitiated, sometimes looks anything but stable.
So on some level, the rhythm of recent saber-rattling between the Trump administration and North Korea recalls the perverse comfort of typical Korea policy. On a recent visit to South Korea, Vice President Mike Pence cited U.S. attacks in Syria and Afghanistan as indications of U.S. resolve against North Korea. This statement followed numerous officials confirming that the administration is contemplating preventive strikes against the North, and a recent policy review on North Korea yielding one overarching imperative: maximum pressure. North Koreas rhetoric and posturing has been no less confrontational and no less familiar. As Pence departed Alaska for South Korea, North Korea attempted a submarine-launched ballistic missile test that failed. Upon news that a U.S. carrier group was headed to its neighborhood, North Korea responded that a thermonuclear war may break out at any moment and that its ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S.
These words and deeds themselves are more heated than usual, but unremarkable in the context of all thats come before. North Korea routinely threatens war, often summoning images of a future mushroom cloud. The United States routinely dispatches aircraft carriers, bombers, and other strategic military assets in hopes of signaling resolve while actually registering little more than displeasure with North Korean behavior. The notion of maximum pressure, moreover, only differs from the approach of past U.S. presidents in the ambiguous adjective maximum. Pressure is the historical mean of U.S. policy toward North Korea. My concern is not with these observable dynamics to date, but rather with what lies beneath them, and what may be coming soon as a consequence.
Its getting harder to ignore that the Pentagon, under Secretary Jim Mattis, may have a coercive theory of victory that largely mirrors that of North Korea under Kim Jong-Un. The danger is in the fundamental incompatibility of these disturbingly similar sets of strategic beliefs.
U.S. Signaling Antagonism
Senior U.S. military officers have repeatedly and publicly claimed that Deterrence=Capability x National Interest x Signaling. This aggressive formula is at odds with best practices from deterrence theory, as I discuss in my forthcoming episode of Pacific Pundit. Placing direct causal emphasis on using the military to signal resolve toward an adversary is mistakenly provocative, even antagonistic. It risks goading an adversary into aggressive actions, thereby bringing about deterrence failure. It ignores how and why military signals are taken seriously by adversaries, which has less to do with the wielding of a weapon than the history of proven willingness to use it. And it wrongly implies the need to take positive military action for example, by deploying assets that would be necessary for prosecuting a war, like an aircraft carrier just for stability to hold, to say nothing of what it might take to coerce your adversary into doing something they might otherwise not do. When signaling is treated as a cause and deterrence as an outcome, virtually any offensive action can be logically justified on the grounds that it helps buy the United States the deterrence it already has.
So, if moving ships and bombers around on a map were the full extent of U.S. plans to apply maximum pressure to North Korea, then U.S. policy might struggle to achieve its aims, but it would be no more dangerous than usual. In the context of this distorted formula, however, there are two interrelated differences that give reason to worry. First, the most direct reason that past crises with North Korea have not bubbled over into war was American restraint. The historical record of U.S.-North Korea relations reveals the surprising extent to which North Korea was poised to automatically retaliate and escalate in response to U.S. uses of force that never took place. Second, numerous administration sources have conveyed that the Trump administration is willing to launch preventive strikes in response to unspecified North Korean provocations, potentially even in response to non-violent actions like nuclear testing. This would be unprecedented. The United States has almost never threatened offensive action against North Korea; retaliatory action in response to violence sure, but never threatening to draw first blood. As crazy as such a move sounds, it would be consistent with a more offensive theory of victory that believes it necessary to do something more than uphold defense commitments. As I outline below, the preventive use of force which is logically justifiable when signaling is mistakenly believed to be a cause of deterrence clashes rather explosively with North Koreas own theory of victory.
flamingdem
(39,328 posts)and these two paragraphs to end the first section:
The Pentagons belief that sustained deterrence rests on communicating resolve through military posturing rather than through upholding commitments is in keeping with an expectation that war in Korea would be Kim Jong-Uns responsibility, not Americas. A U.S. general assigned to Korea recently told the press, Our biggest concern is that hes going to miscalculate. Thats always our concern. This kind of thinking overlooks the interdependence of North Korean strategic decision-making with our own. A North Korean attack is most likely in response to it misinterpreting Americas aggressive signaling as something more dramatic or imminent than Washington intends.
In fairness, the U.S. militarys faith in the ability to signal resolve through military assets predates the Trump administration. Some version of the deterrence formula above was occasionally espoused by military counterparts when I served in the Pentagon during the Obama administration. The difference is that the Obama administration was notoriously risk-averse, and the White House micromanaged the Department of Defense, allowing it very little discretion on policy matters. But the Trump administration appears to be a much more permissive even enabling environment for such coercive beliefs, if only because of Mattiss reputation as a hawk and the prominence of the Pentagon in President Trumps national security policy to date.
Clarifying North Koreas Theory of Victory - MORE AT LINK