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From KCNA:

Bill Clinton Arrives Here
Pyongyang, August 4 (KCNA) — Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, and his party arrived here Tuesday by air.

They were greeted by Yang Hyong Sop, vice-president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, and Kim Kye Gwan, vice-minister of Foreign Affairs.

A little girl presented a bouquet to Bill Clinton.

What is it about North Korean leaders at death’s door and ex-Presidents?

Comment [4]

The text of Pavel Podvig’s new article (“The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn’t: Soviet Military Buildup in the 1970s”) is available at his website. The outlines of the story are familiar enough:

Although the Soviet Union denied that the purpose of its modernization program was to acquire a counterforce capability or to achieve military advantage, its protests had virtually no impact on the debate in the United States. Some experts in the United States did, however, question the alarmist interpretation of the Soviet program or point out that because of the uncertainties associated with any nuclear attack, it would be impossible for the Soviet Union to take advantage of its alleged counterforce potential. Nevertheless, the issue of the United States’ “window of vulnerability” achieved prominence on the U.S. political agenda in the late 1970s and early 1980s, opening the way for the United States to launch its own strategic modernization effort, which included development of the MX ICBM and Trident II sea-launched ballistic missile, and eventually the Strategic Defense Initiative missile defense program.

Based on a new documentary find, Podvig concludes that Soviet capabilities were less than they were cracked up to be.

There’s something of the ages in this story.

From Bernard Brodie, Sea Power in the Machine Age, 2d ed., Princeton University Press, 1943:

By 1845 the steam war fleet was considered a naval arm of great importance. In that year Lord Palmerston, who not after all the chief scare-monger of the realm, referred to the great land forces of France and warned his countrymen that the Channel was no longer a barrier. “Steam navigation,” he declared, had “rendered that which was before impassable by a military force nothing more than a river passable by a steam bridge.” This phrase, “a river passable by a steam bridge,” was not to lack an echo.

The account continues:

In the midst of this alienation and mutual suspicion, a letter written by the Duke of Wellington late in 1847 to another soldier, Sir John Burgoyne, regarding the state of the nation’s defenses, found its way into the press. This letter stated that the writer had “examined and reconnoitred, over and over again, the whole coast from the North Foreland . . . to Selsey Hill, near Portsmouth,” and he believed that excepting immediately under the fire of Dover Castle, there was “not a spot on the coast on which infantry might not be thrown on shore at any time of tide, with any wind, and in any weather, and from which such a body of infantry so thrown on shore, would not find within a distance of five miles a road into the interior of the country, through the cliffs, practicable for the march of a body of troops.”

Cobden considered these statements so absurd from the viewpoint of tactical science alone as to be evidence of failing powers on the part of their author. But is it clear that most Englishmen did not so regard them. Panic spread over the country.

Perhaps needless to say, Britain also had a fleet — and a much better one than that of France!

Comment [2]

Comeback time already?

Following are some excerpts from a translation of the August 26, 2008 statement of the North Korean Foreign Ministry Spokesman. The full text appears in the comments.

The official English translation is now available here.

The 3 October agreement — which stipulates the second-stage action measures for the implementation of the 19 September Joint Statement on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula — includes our obligation to submit a nuclear declaration and the US obligation to remove our country from the list of “state sponsors of terrorism.”

We fulfilled our obligation by submitting a nuclear declaration on 26 June.

However, the United States did not remove us from the list of “state sponsors of terrorism” by the promised date for the “reason” that there was no agreement on a verification protocol on our nuclear declaration.

This is clear violation of the agreement.

In no agreement among the six parties or between the DPRK and the United States does an article stipulate the issue of verifying our nuclear declaration as a conditionality for the removal from the list.

If the United States thought it could conduct a house search on our country, too, as it pleased — like in Iraq — it is a big miscalculation.

Under the condition where the United States violated the agreements, we have been unavoidably left with no option but to take the following countermeasures in accordance with “action-for-action” principle.

First, to immediately suspend the work of neutralizing our nuclear facilities, which was in progress in accordance with the 3 October agreement. This measure came into effect on 14 August, and concerned parties have been notified already.

Second, we will consider soon the measure of restoring the Yo’ngbyo’n nuclear facilities to their original state…

You’ll sometimes hear it said that verification, as an issue, is the opposite of arms control. That strikes me as short-sighted. Not everything can be finessed. With hindsight, certainly, it is hard to explain how the verification subplot of the North Korea soap opera has been neglected to the point of re-emerging as BDA, Round Two.

Comment [9]