North Korean Missile Operations

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

If you're practicing invading us, we're going to practice nuking you. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:25

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rapid Career Center for the Middle East, talking to you from snowy Philadelphia today.

Jeffrey 0:32

Wait, what?

Aaron 0:34

I am working from home. It's Friday. Wait, home is in Philadelphia? I have a very weird commuting life, so I spend my time splitting back and forth between Philly and D.C. Did you not know this? No. Oh, really? So I stumped you right here on the podcast?

Jeffrey 0:50

Yeah, I'm staring dumbly at my computer. Which I guess is in contrast to how often I sit here and stare dumbly off into space. I don't know.

Aaron 1:02

I guess you're not staring smartly at your computer. And I have Junior Arms Control Longfellow Ollie with me. Ollie Ollie's raised us some serious dough. That's right. I think my mother is now a member of the Slack channel because of Ollie. Yeah, get that kid out there, man. Yeah, yeah, Ollie's really raising up some dough. We should talk about North Korea. I think we have to, you know, as arms control wonk.

Sort of regularity, they decided to jump in and do something.

Jeffrey 1:31

I don't want to talk about North Korea. I'm tired of North Korea.

Aaron 1:34

You seem decidedly unenthusiastic about today's podcast, which is odd because I really liked your column this week, and so I was excited to talk to you about North Korea, whereas you are not, and the role should be flipped.

Jeffrey 1:46

Well, I just – I'm exhausted. I mean I'll tell you what. So I wrote a column for foreign policy.

Aaron 1:52

You did.

Jeffrey 1:54

It's getting nice and Ali agrees. Yes. It's getting a nice reception. Right. But it is also frustrating.

Aaron 2:02

Explain.

Jeffrey 2:03

Well, because the argument in the column is an argument that I have been making for years. About what North Korea's likely nuclear doctrine is and why it would be important to take serious diplomatic efforts to try to negotiate our way out of this reality. And this entire time, I got nowhere. I gave a version of this talk at Stanford a couple of years ago, and people looked at me like I had an arm grown out of my head.

One fairly famous former... State Department official, you know really poo-pooed the whole idea, you know. And so like, I'm glad that people are like, oh crap, you're right, this is terrible. It would have been better if people had that reaction a couple of years ago before we got to the terrible part.

Aaron 2:59

Yeah, and one thing that I find interesting is that as the Trump administration came in, all you were reading about sort of the coordinated leaks, let's not say the uncoordinated leaks, was that they were going to take a tougher line on North Korea. I think the North Koreans were listening and decided to shove it right back in our face.

And I think it brings the problem that we've talked about in the past about the North Korean issue is – Is it's getting harder and harder to infantilize them as they continue to make a ruckus over there on the Korean Peninsula. And as you rightfully put out in the column, begin to make serious progress towards an active deterrent that can seriously dissuade the U.S. or at least be very destabilizing in that part of the world.

Jeffrey 3:45

Yeah, this is a – Nikki Haley.

Aaron 3:51

I foreshadowed where we would go with this podcast. I thought we'd start with the lunch. But yeah, Nikki Haley is a good example of this.

Jeffrey 3:57

The talking points coming out of the Trump administration are precisely the same warmed over crap we got for the last eight years under the Obama administration, which bear a shocking resemblance to the warmed over crap we got during at least a portion of the Bush administration, which is just kind of not dealing with the problem. Not accepting the scale of the problem, not really noticing that the problem is getting worse, and as you said, infantilizing the North Koreans, right?

So what Nikki Haley said was something like, this is a guy who wants attention, or this is a bid to get our attention, as though it's a toddler throwing food on the floor.

Aaron 4:35

But it's not! No, look, they are getting our attention. I mean, I think that aspect is accurate. But they are getting our attention in ways Very overt ways to signal, you know, and I think what they are trying to signal quite clearly is that we have a deterrent now. Take us seriously. So it's not the infantilization part that they are seeking attention for.

They are seeking attention to validate that they have a nuclear arsenal and they are taking steps to deploy it. And that has serious sort of repercussions or implications for all sorts of U.S. policy, not the least of which is not for liberation.

Jeffrey 5:14

Well, right. Deterring us is not seeking attention, right? I mean, those are two different things. When we do it, we say, oh, we're signaling to deter. We don't ever say we're seeking North Korea's attention. So it's this weird double standard we have. And the other thing that I thought was really interesting was everybody was so primed for an ICBM launch, which, by the way, may yet come.

Right. That when these were known missile types, the initial response was kind of to yawn. Like, oh, they're just known missile types, as though the only thing that counts is the technological development of the missiles. And so the point of the column was to say, well – Look, it might not be an ICBM test, and that may be something that is still in the future, and that is important, but there's this other thing happening, which is that the North Koreans are not testing missiles.

They're conducting military exercises. They know the missiles work, and so the thing I took away from the exercise and the thing I wrote the column about was understanding that we're seeing this shift in the pattern of their missile launches that I think is really consistent with the thing that The North Korean defector from the London embassy, Taeyong Ho, said, which is North Korea is probably giving nuclear weapons to its missile units, or they're in the process of doing that.

And I think that the testing patterns bear that out.

Aaron 6:38

Right. I think this begins to build into how you're able to build that case. It's not just the defector, but it's also the open source work, starting with the launch, and then what you can infer from those launches.

Jeffrey 6:49

Yeah. So for every single launch that happens or has ever happened, we have a nice database that shows exactly what we think was launched, when it was launched, and from where it was launched. My colleague, Shea Cotton – yes, that is his real name – I'm sort of amazed Shay doesn't roll into the office every day in a seersucker suit.

I was about to say. He's fantastic. He keeps the database. And one of the cool things about having a big database like that is you can see a shift in patterns if you bother to chart every test. And so we can talk about this specific test and the data we got out of it, but if you geolocate all the tests...

And you track the kinds of missiles that were fired, what we've seen is everybody used to talk about North Korea's missile test site at Musudanri, which was originally called Nodong, which is where the missile – the reason the missiles are called the Nodong and the Musudan and the Taepodong 1 and 2 is those are all the villages around their original missile test site.

Aaron 7:54

Exactly.

Jeffrey 7:55

They haven't fired anything from there in years.

Aaron 7:57

Which matters a lot.

Jeffrey 7:59

Yeah, because they've moved developmental testing, as far as I can tell, down to Wonsan. And they're testing things like the Musudan. And for a while, they were testing the new rocket artillery and the new short-range solid-fuel ballistic missile, although that's moved, and we'll talk about that in a second. They were testing those things out of Wonsan, but the Scuds and the Nodongs weren't being tested out of Wonsan or Musudan.

They were being tested all over the country. Actually, I think I said all over the damn country and I got some like fussy little note on Twitter about my use of the vernacular.

Aaron 8:37

I saw that. The person who said the use of the vernacular undercut your argument even though damn, a four-letter word for me does not take away from the fact of what the hell is going on over there.

Jeffrey 8:50

I think it's good that I don't write like I shit marble.

Aaron 8:53

Right. I just don't understand this. Anyways, but yeah.

Jeffrey 8:56

There's only one person who can write in that voice, and that's Laurie Friedman. Right. He sounds good when he writes in this incredibly magisterial way. I can't do that. I got to write like me. So they're testing those things all over the country. Those are not developmental tests of the missile. They know the missiles work. Those are exercises.

They're testing the units that launch the missiles, and they're testing them according to their war plan. And so, you know, we can look at each of these tests. And match the purpose of those tests to the kinds of things that the North Koreans write about nuclear weapons and the kinds of things that defectors say about nuclear weapons.

And I think we can put together a pretty coherent description of North Korea's nuclear strategy, which is what I do in the column and what I think is scaring the pants off people. Oh, sorry to use the vernacular.

Aaron 9:53

And I think it's important is when you're able to track them all over the – I guess you could track them outside of the original testing basis into where they are now. And it begins to suggest, as you were saying, things about how they actually intend to deploy these. And if they are testing readiness exercises of their rocket forces, it's not, again, as we were saying earlier, a cry for attention, but they're signaling.

I think the first thing is they're actually practicing.

Jeffrey 10:20

I think the main value of this for them is that they train. But then the secondary value, which is why Kim Jong-un is there and why pictures are taken and why pictures are released, is absolutely, as you say, they're signaling.

Aaron 10:34

Right, and I think it's important. When I first saw the announcement pop up on Twitter, I saw multiple projectiles fired into the sea, and my brain just instinctively went, that sounds like a skunk.

Jeffrey 10:44

Right. And I think everybody kind of had that initial reaction. But, you know, one thing is, well, should we go through the open source analysis we were able to do and the things that we were able to learn?

Aaron 10:57

Yeah, exactly. How are you able to find them and then count the numbers and all that fun stuff? Right.

Jeffrey 11:02

So, you know, this is a really weird case because the U.S., So the way these things always play out, right, the South Koreans go first, and they basically give Yonhap a story, which is – Yonhap is like almost state media.

Aaron 11:21

In Turkey, it's like Anadolu Agency. I know exactly what you're talking about.

Jeffrey 11:24

Yeah, it's not literally state media, but to lose sight of that close relationship between the government and Yonhap would cause you to not understand what was going on.

Aaron 11:33

Semi-official is the adjective usually used.

Jeffrey 11:36

You know, it's a little bit like Breitbart.

Aaron 11:41

Is it really that bad? Yeah.

Jeffrey 11:43

Oh, right. So the South Koreans go first, and they aren't super clear about the number of missiles, but they end up on four, as do the Japanese. Yeah. And the U.S. releases this weird statement that refers to a missile. And it's just super vague and totally useless. And then eventually the North Koreans release the pictures and it's the picture show four.

Right. And there's even some video. Right. We actually think there were probably five. And there are actually a lot of rumors about that. Like South Korean sources say there may have been five. I think CNN reported there were actually five. And Dave Schmerler noticed really cleverly that – Kim Jong-un, you know how he always watches from a desk, right?

We actually located the desk, which I don't think any of us have published, but it's on a mountaintop. There's this big building on a mountaintop that overlooks the launch pad and the static engine test stand.

Aaron 12:56

You geolocated his desk?

Jeffrey 12:59

Well, he's outside, yeah. Right. He's outside. He's in front of the building. They put a desk out on a – I think it's a roof of a lower slung command building.

Aaron 13:12

Yeah, like a veranda or something.

Jeffrey 13:14

Well, there are actually two buildings next to one another. There's like an administrative building that is like at the top of the mountain and then you go down some steps and then there's a kind of more like command bunkery looking thing. But they were on the roof of the command bunker because you walk down the steps and you're on the roof.

Got it. I realize this makes no sense at all to somebody who's trying to listen to this in a podcast. It's just like, what the fuck? Slack channel. The point is we figured out where he's sitting, and he's a couple of kilometers away looking down the valley at where the launches happen. And surrounding him are computer screens, so he can watch the launches.

Mm-hmm. And they're super careful never to give you a full unimpeded image of the most important screen. But if you stitch together various pictures, something really interesting appears, which is the computer screen had six panels, one of which was the clock. Told you what time it was. And five of them showed missile trajectories.

Aaron 14:23

Ah, interesting. I thought he got it from the smoke contrails, but never mind. That was right.

Jeffrey 14:26

No, no. That would be more consistent with five missiles being launched than four, because what is the fifth screen for?

Aaron 14:34

Right. But then you only see four in the pictures.

Jeffrey 14:37

And also on the screen, which uses Google Earth, it looks like there are five aim points in the ocean.

Aaron 14:43

Right. Okay. Interesting.

Jeffrey 14:45

But obviously in the image, you only see four. And so one hypothesis is that one of them just didn't fire, which is the rumor going around, right? That there were five, not four, and one didn't work. And so presumably it either didn't fire or didn't go very far. Right. And so it's either cropped out or edited out.

So now I have to say here is an interesting wrinkle. Most of the time that Kim Jong-un shows up at one of these events, he poses with that on the desk in front of him. There's a map.

Aaron 15:22

It goes back signaling.

Jeffrey 15:25

And we always flip the map upside down and read it. The map this time, and by the way, one of the really, really interesting things, and Dave and I were thinking about writing something about this, every time that map is the same, it has the same format. So even though you can't actually read the map, it replicates the format over and over again.

And so when you get little hints of what each section on the map is about, you can actually start to infer things about the test, even if you can't read the details. So it's a map of Korea and Japan. And it always has an arc, and that arc runs from the targets in the ocean down to the real simulated target.

So, for example, the first one we noticed this with, there were these two targets in the ocean, and an arc connected them to Busan. Right. So this was a test against Busan, but instead of actually shooting at Busan, they turned. It wasn't exactly 90 degrees, but they turned 90 degrees and fired them out to the ocean. But they traveled the same range to the target.

So there's always that. And then on the right side, there's a narrative piece that describes the purpose of the test. And we notice it has – sometimes the text is all black, but there are red portions. And they always put Kim Jong-un's name in red.

Aaron 16:48

Oh, really? Interesting.

Jeffrey 16:49

Yeah. So you can tell that it's kind of – it's narrative because it's talking about how awesome Kim Jong-un is, right? Right. So it probably explains the purpose of the test.

Aaron 16:59

And standardized.

Jeffrey 17:00

And then there's a – right. So that's the first section. Then there's a second section which has two subsections, one that is always one line long. And another that is always the number of lines of the number of missiles that were launched. And then below that is a table, which has a blue header, and it's a pink and yellow table.

I think the first column is pink and the other columns are yellow. And that also always has the same number of lines as the number of missiles launched. And we've seen close-ups of some of that, and we think it has coordinates for the targets that they're aimed at. Or the coordinates out in the sea that they're shooting at.

Aaron 17:37

Right. Then with the range line, the line running back to infer about distance to get...

Jeffrey 17:44

It has the coordinates of the places they shoot at.

Aaron 17:46

The coordinates of the places they shoot at, which infers range out to what they were simulating to actually shoot at.

Jeffrey 17:53

Right. It's the numerical coordinates for the places represented by the arc.

Aaron 17:57

Right. Interesting.

Jeffrey 17:59

So what's really interesting, though, is we think they expect us to see those maps.

Aaron 18:05

Yeah, I would...

Jeffrey 18:07

And so the map only has four lines on it. It doesn't have five lines. Ah, interesting. And the table only has four lines. And so that's either inconsistent with there being five missiles, or because they expect us to look at the map, they're editing the map digitally.

Aaron 18:25

That would make sense, because they don't want us to know that one of the missiles failed. Especially if there's five computer screens.

Jeffrey 18:31

But on the other hand, they're not that careful with the computer screens.

Aaron 18:36

Right.

Jeffrey 18:37

So, like, what the hell? Right?

Aaron 18:39

Can I make another general comment about the imagery while we're on this? Have you noticed that some of the imagery, one of the guys behind Kim Jong-un is sneezing?

Jeffrey 18:48

No! I missed that!

Aaron 18:51

I mean, maybe I'm remembering it correctly, but I was looking at all the pictures, so I said, the guy behind Kim Jong-un is, like, he's either mid-sneeze or he's, like, blowing his nose. I was like, they obviously don't care about the dude behind him because all they care about is that the portly man up front had, like, a good smile.

Jeffrey 19:05

Are you sure he wasn't just VX'd?

Aaron 19:08

Maybe he was, you know. But, you know, I just found this so interesting, you know, because it was like he totally photobombed the picture and they didn't even care.

Jeffrey 19:17

So we don't exactly know why the map doesn't match the computer screens, although our guess is they expected us to read the map and maybe they altered it. Or, you know, maybe the five trajectories, maybe we're missing something. But because they expect us to read the map, what they make super clear, and we pulled this off, and it was really interesting that kind of nobody else does this, and I guess we're giving away the trade secrets.

For this test, the four targets in the ocean are connected by an arc that terminates at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan.

Aaron 19:52

I mean, that's what you wrote down in your foreign policy piece, is... To strengthen the sort of argument you made up top is that these are drills, not – They are practicing nuking Iwakuni.

Jeffrey 20:07

And by the way, I should say the statement they release makes clear that they were – that this was a unit that was assigned to use nuclear weapons against targets in Japan, against US forces in Japan. So, you know, the statement didn't identify which base in Japan was getting nuked, but the statement said, like, hi, we're practicing nuking a base in Japan.

And then if you, you know, look at the map, the map shows that the base in question is Iwakuni. And we suspect they know that we do that and that that's their way of conveying that. Which, of course, makes sense.

Aaron 20:43

Right. I mean, because I think the backdrop to this is full evil. Yeah. Which is the U.S. and South Korea simulating attacking North Korea, or at least defending from North Korean invasion.

Jeffrey 20:53

What was the big news before Foal Eagle, which was for the first time, U.S. aircraft, which just this year, U.S. F-35s that have been put at Iwakuni would be participating in Foal Eagle. Exactly. And further, the reporting said they would be participating in a strike capacity. They aren't doing air-to-air. They are practicing striking targets in North Korea.

So the North Koreans practice nuking them.

Aaron 21:21

Point, counterpoint, tit for tat in raising the escalation scenario.

Jeffrey 21:26

You know, people – I find people don't get this. Like it's really counterintuitive to them. Like here we are doing this giant invasion which – or giant exercise that the North Koreans think is a rehearsal for an invasion. And so the North Koreans counterprogram their own exercise. Like, oh, well, if you're practicing invading us, we're going to practice nuking you.

And we're like, we can't believe you're doing this. They counter-programmed an exercise program. The Soviets did that once, you know, the war scare of 1983. One of the possible explanations for what happened is the Soviets knew we were going to do that big reforger exercise. Right. And there was the command post exercise, able archer. And and so they knew we were going to do a big exercise.

So they counter program that exercise with their own missile alert. Like, well, two of us can play at war games. Let's play the war game at the same time. You play, you will play us. And we really freaked out when we saw it. I find that really interesting. Like, why aren't we prepared for countries to counter program their own war games?

Aaron 22:28

Well, I think with the North Koreans, I mean, this goes back to, I think it's just sinking it, is to diagnosing the level of threat that's going on. And I think that this is really fascinating because right now we're talking about within the regional context. You know, you have the counter-programming or the tats for our tit, I guess, being that you could conduct nuclear counter-strikes on U.S. air bases in Asia-Pacific region.

What I find really, really concerning is that we were all expecting and I think we all still are expecting a future podcast about progress towards an ICBM.

Jeffrey 23:07

One of the interesting things is why – I don't think people think about how these exercises really relate to the ICBM, right? And they don't really put them together. So maybe the way to do this is to talk a little bit about these exercises, say, about North Korean nuclear doctrine, because I think once we do that, then the ICBMs become super clear.

Because I just, you know, the North Koreans aren't going to just erect an ICBM, slap a nuclear warhead on it, scream Juche, and fire it off to D.C. Well, they could.

Aaron 23:37

It's just not likely. I'm just kidding. Right.

Jeffrey 23:42

But I mean like there is this embedded – like it is not children throwing food on the floor, right? It is not – which was Bush's metaphor. It's not what Haley said, someone getting attention. I think that there is a well-thought-out role for nuclear weapons to play in North Korea's security. We can talk about what that role is, but I think that both informs why they're building an ICBM, but then also why I think it's going to be really hard to persuade them to give these things up.

Aaron 24:13

Oh, yeah. I mean, don't even get me started on that. I mean, about the potential policy responses. But yeah, no, let's go into the doctrine first. What I also find really interesting is that there's a very unique interplay here between conventional and nuclear, and their escalation scenarios being different than ours.

Jeffrey 24:30

Right. So, I mean, the thing I argue in the column is that the North Koreans plan to use nuclear weapons in large numbers against U.S. forces throughout South Korea and Japan very early in the conflict, very early in any conflict. And people really act like this is this bizarre idea, and yet – It seems utterly obvious to me.

Saddam twice watched the United States build up a giant invasion force. And once that force got into the region, he had like zero chance of holding us off. And Gaddafi, although he faced a different situation where he had a rebellion that he was trying to suppress, again, Libya was located in such a way that the US and its NATO allies could put air cover over Libya.

And that really put him at a disadvantage relative to these groups. Same with – Slobodan Milosevic, by the way, right? And so if you think about that problem, of course North Korea is going to say like, oh, look, you have swept the skies of our fighters and now you are conducting airstrikes on North Korean military units using aircraft based at Iwakuni.

Why wouldn't you target that airbase? Like, why wouldn't you immediately go and do that? And so it seems obvious to me that, like, the places to hit the U.S. are when our forces are concentrated in ports. And so one exercise they did was – and they were explicit about it. They used a – they practiced using a nuclear weapon to destroy U.S. forces in a port at Busan.

Right. Because everybody's concentrated because they're all coming in through these ports and airfields. And then now they've practiced blowing up an airfield where where we would have, you know, strike aircraft. So like that, that to me seems really obvious. And what's really interesting to me is whenever I say this. Right. Oh, and the North Koreans make no secret of this.

There were these defectors in the 90s who straight out said, this is what Kim Il-sung is thinking. He watched what happened in Iraq. He saw very clearly that you can't afford to let the United States flood forces into the region. You've got to hit the forces before they get there when they're most vulnerable, and nuclear weapons are going to be the best way to do that.

And if all goes according to plan, you will be so shocked at the 20,000 to 30,000 casualties that your troops experience as they're coming in, to say nothing of the horror of the use of nuclear weapons, that you'll stop. And people are like, well, that would be suicide. And I just – like that is to me and everyone says this and I have seen US policymakers say this.

I have seen people who are way more important than me say this and this is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Aaron 27:31

It's not suicide. It's their understanding of deterrence.

Jeffrey 27:35

Well, and you know what was suicide was Saddam not being able to do that and Gaddafi not being able to do that. You know, like actually I was talking to a reporter and we were laughing about this because do you know how Muammar Gaddafi died?

Aaron 27:50

I do. But yes, double listeners.

Jeffrey 27:53

Well, no, I don't – so this is I think a really interesting difference between Americans and say like the rest of the world. We never talk about that, right? Yeah. We don't – it's very graphic. Yeah, that's true. And I think regardless of gender, it's very graphic. But it's a particular – for a very macho leader, it's an especially gruesome end.

And like I think most foreign leaders would rather start a nuclear war than go out that way.

Aaron 28:27

Yeah. I mean especially if you think – one thing I've always found interesting in my studies of different countries, not really North Korea, is there is usually amongst weaker countries a well-understood – it's well-understood that the United States will very, very quickly overwhelm them conventionally. And a lot of their rhetoric and chest pumping is for domestic audiences.

But when you really dig down into it, these cogent, insane people know that the U.S. will win the conventional fight. So they have an inherent desire to prevent said conventional fight by going asymmetric as soon as possible. And so there's two ways they can do this. They can absorb it and then pull the Iraq 2003 and then bleed us for the next 10 years or prevent Iraq 2003 to begin with.

And what you're telling me with the North Korean case is just to go straight to nukes, which makes sense to me actually.

Jeffrey 29:24

Well, so a friend of mine at RAND used to make this point, which is, you know, like we are super focused on asymmetric responses because that's what's hard for us, right? Like Iraq's a disaster for us and we regret it. But that's different than explaining to Kim Jong-un in advance that the plan is the Americans roll in and an insurgency begins and he hops from spider hole to spider hole and While we gradually hunt down and kill every member of his family and ultimately him.

But he can rest assured knowing that this will turn into a terrible quagmire for America. Like that's a terrible plan if you're Kim Jong-un.

Aaron 30:07

Yeah. He's not as nimble as Saddam Hussein either. He'd have trouble fitting down to those spider holes.

Jeffrey 30:13

And I do think that – and this is the first thing, and I was very critical of Danny Russell when he made this comment about how this wouldn't be a realistic plan for North Korea to use nuclear weapons early. That's easy to say when you are sitting in the comfort of Washington, D.C., and basically the idea of losing a war means that other people's kids die, but your life doesn't change.

Right. The stakes for an American policymaker look nothing like the stakes for Kim Jong Un. You know, if he loses a war, he dies. His whole family dies. You know, it's a really severe event. And so, you know, I think the the ability or the ruthlessness of. Right. That you are going to be looking at is not something Americans are prepared for, because, you know, like, oh, well, we get all upset when somebody is mean to us.

You know, like like this is a guy who had his uncle executed with an anti-aircraft machine gun to make a point.

Aaron 31:21

Totally rational. Why not? You're going to go big.

Jeffrey 31:25

But it is the thing is, it is rational. Like it's it's it's not it's not irrational. It's just ruthless. You don't end up being the bloodthirsty dictator of North Korea unless you're willing to like have somebody smear VX on your half-brother's face.

Aaron 31:42

In Malaysia. But what – so let's draw out the nightmare scenario even further and this is ultimately why the SCUD tests are interesting in inferring how they view deterrents. But on the other side of their missile development program, they want much more than a scut and how that can be inherently destabilized.

Jeffrey 32:10

Well, right. So then the other piece of this, which is where the ICBM comes in. I mean people are like, well, he wouldn't dare do this because he knows we would destroy him, right? And the first part of that is that is a stupid thing to say because he already thinks you're going to destroy them. He's not going to be using nuclear weapons unless he thinks that we're playing for keeps.

But the second piece is let's say he does obliterate Seoul and Tokyo while he's in the process of trying to destroy the military facilities that are located in those places or near those places. We might say like, oh, we're going to destroy you, but that's what the ICBMs are for, right? The ICBMs will be sitting there to prevent us from doing anything regrettable in the memory of our erstwhile allies.

Yeah. Because then you have to decide, like, okay, well, so he's clearly playing for keeps. Do we really want to keep pressing, knowing full well that the next phase of this is that the ICBMs come after, you know, well, you saw the map of death. So it's Pearl Harbor, San Diego, Barksdale Air Force Base in D.C. Yeah.

And by the way, you know, Josh Pollock, We discuss this all the time, and I think Josh has a point. I tend to treat these two events as simple or as separate. Day one of the war is they plaster everything in region, and they use that ICBM force as a holdback. His view, which I think is very reasonable, is you actually have a guarantee that that's the plan.

Yeah. You have to at least consider the possibility that actually plan on day one is to hit us so hard everywhere that we stop. Because maybe they worry that if they don't give that order to the ICBMs now, it never gets out.

Aaron 34:05

Yeah, that's an entirely enchanting thought, so thank you, Josh Pollock.

Jeffrey 34:10

Sheer, sheer, sheer hit him with everything you got and hope that the disorganization causes the invasion to falter.

Other voice 34:17

I'm super interested in what y'all's positive note is going to be.

Jeffrey 34:23

It'll be Ollie saying bye-bye. Well, you know, the one I always come back to is the good thing about the end of the world is you're only going to experience it once.

Aaron 34:37

But then we have this interesting thing, right, is that we removed tactical nuclear weapons from Korea in 1991. By accident. Excuse me?

Jeffrey 34:54

I wish Catherine would write the paper. Catherine Dill's thesis for Monterey, which I want her to write up for publication, suggests we didn't actually intend to do that, but okay.

Aaron 35:03

I think we've actually talked about this on one of the podcasts. My point is that the response options in the opening days and what we would push South Korea for are conventional, which brings us to one of my favorite pet projects is the interlinkage between hyper-accurate And then get the job done nuclear weapons that may not be as sort of gold-plated things like we have, but nevertheless can act as a deterrent.

And decapitation within that. And this decapitation destabilizing because Kim Jong-un will now have to fear a cruise missile flying through his window that the South Koreans like to remind him that they can do on a day-in and day-out basis. Right.

Jeffrey 35:48

So I would say two things, right? One is the full Eagle exercise that the North Koreans hate so much, as best I can tell, is a rehearsal for the operations plan, the O plan, which I guess is a new one that's been developed to replace the old one, anticipating a wartime command reverting to the South Koreans someday, but maybe never.

It's called 50-15. And it's – I don't have access to the war plans. I only have the leaks and what people sort of say. But it sounds like it's a preemption against the North Koreans after they do some provocation. So like they provoke by sinking a ship or shelling an island or trying to kill the South Korean president.

And the idea is we go big. And hit them hard. For example, one of the things that was reported is there was a special forces team doing an exercise within the full legal context in which they were going after nuclear and missile facilities. Good luck with that. Yeah, well, I think that's... I don't blame the people who have been told to go do that crazy mission.

I blame the people who tell them to go do that crazy mission. Total agreeance here so I I sincerely mean good luck with that but also that's a crazy thing to ask somebody to do but The point is our plan is not to wait around for the North Koreans to give the order. Our plan is to go big and fast and try to topple that government so that it never has the opportunity to give the order to use nuclear weapons.

Aaron 37:36

Might one call it shock enough?

Jeffrey 37:39

Yeah, exactly. But there's this additional center of decision making. And did I tell you I actually had a paper get killed over this? A colleague refused to publish my paper because he doesn't believe this. But whatever, I'm right.

Aaron 37:54

Okay. Now I'm interested. What is this?

Jeffrey 38:00

So the U.S.-South Korean war plan, I think, is to go first. The South Koreans have their own plan to go first all by themselves. It eventually leaked, right? They call it like the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation Plan. And so I think they plan to use their own ballistic and cruise missiles that they have developed at great cost and deployed in secret at that secret missile base in the center of the country that we found, which they still think is secret because they think taking the patches off the uniforms is a security measure or whatever, guys.

So they have their own forces that are outside of our command where I think they plan – like if the US is taking too long to go first – Before Kim Jong-un can go, I think they plan to launch their own preemption to try to kill Kim Jong-un just like the US did at the beginning of Iraqi freedom when we launched that strike on Dora Farm.

Aaron 39:02

I mean that makes sense. I mean if you can cut the head off the snake, therefore you can stop the launch orders from going down. Presuming that the missile units aren't in the field and don't have orders that can launch if in the event of a loss of leader scenario.

Jeffrey 39:14

Right. So two things about this, right? One is all three of us plan to go first. Two of us are wrong about that.

Aaron 39:22

That's not a recipe for stability.

Jeffrey 39:25

That's right. Because what is going to happen is once a crisis starts, there will be incredible pressure from all three militaries to act quickly. And by the way, that's not their fault. Each of them is charged with coming up with their best possible military solution to this problem. It just so happens that things are structured in such a way that the best solution for every single country is to go first.

And so we have a problem of political control, because I don't blame the militaries for giving each president or... Leader the best military option. But people need to step back and ask whether we've recreated a situation like the one that Barbara Tuchman describes at the beginning of World War I in August 1914. And I have my copy of The Guns of August right here.

Aaron 40:34

Go with it, because you have me on the edge of my seat.

Jeffrey 40:39

General staffs, goaded by their relentless timetables, were pounding on the table for the signal to move, lest their opponents gain an hour's head start. Appalled on the brink, the chiefs of state, who would ultimately be responsible for their country's fate, attempted to back away, but the pull of military schedules dragged them forward. That is exactly what we're talking about!

Aaron 41:06

This doesn't make me feel good. I mean, this really doesn't make me feel good.

Jeffrey 41:11

By the way, sometimes there are people who have raised, I think, legitimate questions about whether she's right about the role of timetables and schedules in driving the European powers toward that particular catastrophe. I don't... Know if she's right about World War I, but there's a reason this book became really popular in the middle of the Cold War.

Right? It may or may not be an accurate description of World War I. It is absolutely an accurate description of the thing that we all worry about in an era of nuclear weapons and now highly precise conventional ones, which is there are enormous advantages to going first. There are enormous advantages to acting quickly. And those suck all of the oxygen out of decision-making because there just is no time.

Aaron 42:04

It also encapsulates for me I mean, fundamental changes to how we need to conceptualize nuclear war planning and deterrence, you know, basically post-1991, which is this is a marrying of three things, nuclear weapons and then a conventionally superior adversary allied with another conventionally superior adversary, one with nukes, the other without. And then intermingled all over this with better defenses against incoming ballistic missiles.

So I'm talking about the THAAD deployment now. This is a change. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is not something that we were dealing with in 1955.

Jeffrey 42:46

No, I think it is a change. I mean, the simplistic way I say it is, you know, we used to imagine these really simple stability models like – It takes two nuclear warheads to destroy at least two, some multiple, to destroy a silo with a missile in it. And so as long as we have the same number of missiles and as long as those missiles have one warhead, you know you have an inherently stable situation because neither side could knock out the other's missiles sitting in their silos.

And I think that's such a nice and simple way to conceptualize this problem. Yeah. But it only worked as long as that was true, right? And it started to slip when it's like, well, what if my ICBMs have multiple warheads? So I now have an advantage from launching first because instead of one target sitting on the ground, I have 10 warheads en route.

And then once you start to add complications to this, missile defenses – and I think people always never understand why people were concerned about missile defenses. But missile defenses – Raised that prospect of like, well, is my missile defense going to be more or effective if I shoot first, right? Well, if I shoot first, then I've already attrited a significant number of their missiles, right?

And so now my missile defense is more effective, right? And so there's, you know, a natural – even though you would think missile defenses are defensive, they really work best as part of an offense where they like, you know, work in this mop-up role, right? And then you introduce conventional weapons that can target not just the forces, but can go after the leadership.

It becomes this incredibly tempting target. But it's a target that's fleeting and requires you to go when you think you have information. And I think as we saw in Dora Farm, it's really easy to overestimate the quality of your information about the location of a foreign leader. Like if Saddam had nuclear weapons – Dora Farm would have been a catastrophe because we missed because the intel was bad because he hadn't been there in a decade.

And whatever, the strike would have started and then whoop, up the balloon goes.

Aaron 45:17

It's not 2003 anymore. There's one thing that we've excelled at in the past 14 years since the strike on Dora Farms is getting a faster intel cycle in order to be able to conduct high-value raids on a very routine basis.

Jeffrey 45:33

Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that I find really distressing about that story is the way Dora Farm played out. The intel came in and they got it kind of in the morning and they knew that they wanted to launch the aircraft at night and have them arrive at Dora Farm just as dawn broke. So that they could strike what they thought was an underground bunker, which didn't exist.

And so basically the cruise missiles and the aircraft would arrive at approximately the same time, so that dawn breaks and the strike happens, and then the aircraft get the hell out of Dodge before the Iraqis can really respond. And so the president has this window between the morning in D.C. and, you know, it's much later in the day in Iraq.

And so then the next morning in Iraq. So he basically gets the whole day to think it over. And by the way, they take the whole day. They put the strike motion into motion with a final decision by the president at the last possible moment. So he gets all day to, like, think about it. Right.

Aaron 46:43

Yeah.

Jeffrey 46:44

But that's not really – even though that doesn't seem like that long ago, that's – I guess, what, 13 years ago?

Aaron 46:54

Yeah, I mean, it was March 2003.

Jeffrey 46:57

Yeah, I mean, the joke I told in the piece is, you know, you may end up, that decision to strike may be so quick, and especially if the South Koreans are the ones who decide that they think they know where Kim is and they take a swipe at him and they miss or they hit, but it doesn't decapitate the government.

You might have your nuclear war before Trump even has time to tweet about it.

Aaron 47:20

What I also wanted to bring up was in the North Korean case, it's not a binary. In something you touched on, and I was having a separate conversation about why THAAD is pissing off China and South Korea within the specific context of the mop-up rule.

Jeffrey 47:37

Yeah, I don't get this. I mean, I don't know if any of you are... The thing the Chinese say, and this is now, like, graduated to, like, the smart, sophisticated thing analysts say, is it's not the interceptors. They say it's the radar.

Aaron 47:55

Huh?

Jeffrey 47:55

What?

Aaron 47:57

That makes no sense.

Jeffrey 47:57

This makes no sense!

Aaron 47:59

The radar?

Jeffrey 47:59

Like, we have... Two phased array radars, one in Qatar and one in Taiwan that are sitting there. Actually, I don't know if they've actually put the one in Qatar yet, but the one in Taiwan has been there for years to watch Chinese missile tests. And we have space-based assets. And we have a sea-based X-band radar we can roll in.

And we have AN-TIPI-2 THAAD-like radars sitting in Japan. And so the idea that one of these damn radars sitting on a golf course in South Korea is going to provide some dramatic new level of radar fidelity watching Chinese missile tests is crazy.

Aaron 48:47

No. For me, I'm not a China expert. It seems like it's an escalatory pattern for increased missile defenses in the Asia-Pacific region and therefore incentivizing the – therefore challenging China's current posture, nuclear posture.

Jeffrey 49:01

Yeah. That's what I think. Yeah. The most polite thing I can think to say about this is they are abstractly worried about missile defenses. Yeah. And for whatever reason, they have chosen to make this specific instance of missile defense the hill they will die on. Go ahead. You tell me.

Aaron 49:21

Well, you wrote the book on Chinese missile – on Chinese nuclear forces. Yeah, but I'm baffled.

Jeffrey 49:27

I'm like, I wrote the book, but I would say to my Chinese friends, y'all are crazy.

Aaron 49:31

Well, they are being crazy. But what I think – the reason I brought it up is what I find fascinating.

Jeffrey 49:36

They even shut down the – it's a Lotte-owned golf course, which is involved in a land swap with the Ministry of Defense. They gave them the golf course in exchange for some other land. And so China is punishing Lotte outlets. I guess I heard on NPR. I haven't verified this. But like a whole bunch of Lotte department stores in China were all shut down for fire code violations.

That's fantastic.

Aaron 50:01

I actually didn't know this.

Jeffrey 50:02

Suddenly they developed fire code and then apparently there was a joint venture with Hershey making chocolate that just got shut down.

Aaron 50:08

I had no idea. The reason why I brought it up is because even the introduction of what we would call defensive weapons, it doesn't play out within the binary between just – or I guess the triad of US, South Korean, North Korean relations, both military and political. But it also bleeds over into regional stability writ large. And then are we not at the beginning of sort of this multi-phased – I don't want to call it an arms race.

But these are counter moves to North Korea.

Jeffrey 50:43

I've already called it an arms race.

Aaron 50:44

Yeah, but maybe just call it what it is, an arms race. And so we are at the precipice of something much bigger than just four scuds being flown into the sea to simulate an attack on the US airbase.

Jeffrey 50:57

So, fair enough. I guess I would say one THAAD battery I don't even think provides significant defense against North Korea.

Aaron 51:06

Talk about that, because I was also talking about this in private today, but explain it.

Jeffrey 51:12

Okay, well, let me count the ways. It has a forward-looking radar with a 120-degree field of vision. And so if you have one sitting in the middle of the country, well, kind of south-central... It can basically surveil the landmass of North Korea and a little bit of the oceans on either side. But a North Korean submarine that sails not very far one way or the other will be out of the radar's field of vision and then can fire a nuclear-armed missile at the THAAD battery from behind its radar.

So they won't even see the missile coming in until it detonates and presumably wipes out the battery. So you would need at least two. And they would have to be positioned so that they could cover the oceans. No one talks about radar blackout attacks, which is a perfectly reasonable way to get things through, right? You can fuse a nuclear weapon to detonate in the sky, and that will create a few seconds of blackout for ground-based radars, which may be enough to dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the defense, right?

You can overwhelm those systems, right? The reason they're launching four at a time is to make sure there are lots and lots of targets up. So even though THAAD has plenty of interceptors, it may be that the battle management software can be overwhelmed. We're talking about nuclear weapons. And so even if only a fraction of your nuclear-armed missiles get through, you're still going to achieve your goal.

So THAAD, it's not that THAAD has to be perfect because there's still some value in attrition. But, like, it's got to be pretty near to perfect. And it doesn't provide any defense really for Seoul against short-range missiles. And so, you know, it's one battery that provides a little bit of a niche capability against a certain class of missiles fired from certain places.

Like, the North Koreans have lots of ways that they can arms race out of a THAAD battery being a big deal. And then you get into this classic question of arms races, which I think we now have to deal with all over the region, as everybody goes crazy with both missile defenses and missiles of both conventional and, in some cases, nuclear.

You know, is it cheaper for North Korea to build extended-range Scuds, or is it cheaper for us to build – you know, to deploy THAAD batteries? And, you know, the whole reason for the extended-range Scud is it has almost the same range as a Nodong, and it's vastly cheaper.

Aaron 53:40

Just preach, brother. I mean, I swear to God. Like, somebody – This interplay between conventional and nuclear, and then conventional nuclear. Precision strike and then conventional missile defense and then the adversary having the capacity to continually build up cheaper, longer range scuds is something that remains understudied. And it's just, it's playing out in the Middle East. It's playing out now in the Asia Pacific.

I mean, this is, I think, something that really bears out watching. But I think the important thing is, is that missile defense doesn't solve this. It's not the policy panacea to address the North Korean problem. It's a tool maybe to hit some because as you said, there is some value in attrition. But the problem is a lot bigger than one THAAD battery.

Jeffrey 54:26

Yeah. I mean ultimately, I find myself in this weird position because I also don't understand the like widespread South Korean reaction to THAAD. Like it seems like it's really politically controversial. And it's weird because on the other hand, the South Koreans are building a ton of indigenous missile defenses themselves. And I don't – I don't see why this is a controversial issue like if you can provide some defense against North Korean missiles, it makes sense to do that if it's cost-effective and likely to work.

So it strikes me and apparently strikes Ali as a relatively boring technical and financial question rather than, you know, like something that should get people out into the streets. But I do worry about this other problem, which is instead of treating it as this boring technical question for the people who are opposed, they're deeply, deeply opposed. But for the people who are in favor, it's like a magic wand.

And people are acting like this THAAD battery is going to relieve us of the obligation to try to manage this threat. And it doesn't, right? Like it doesn't relieve us of this obligation. It makes a modest contribution that in no way, shape or form gets at the fundamental issue, which is our growing vulnerability to the North Koreans.

Aaron 55:49

See, that's not a happy note, Jeffrey. I can't end it right there. But we are growing more vulnerable to the North Koreans. I think it's – I think, Scott, I don't think there is a happy note. I think to try and pull a happy note out of this would be to infantilize them like my son behind me.

Jeffrey 56:08

Can I end on a neutral note? Sure. Then this is what we wanted. This is what we picked. For the whole time that I've been writing these articles, I have been saying, I get it. We don't like the North Koreans. It's an ugly government. It treats its citizens badly. It abducts people. It holds people hostage and ransoms them.

It murders people. It's the worst possible government you can imagine, and so I understand why we don't want to bargain with them. And when we do bargain with them, they're difficult and overly lawyerly, and then they cheat. I get it. So we don't want to talk to them. We don't want to deal with them. I had endless conversations with people over the past, I don't know, 15 years where I think both the Bush and Obama administrations, they would make some efforts, but they wouldn't get too excited about it because they were like, you know, it's just not much upside for us.

It's not really something we think we can do anything about. It's too hard and it's too politically difficult. It's like, okay, fine. The cost of that is where we are today. This is what we chose. We decided that we didn't want to have a state dinner with a guy who leads a starving country. We didn't want to sign an arms control agreement or a nonproliferation agreement with a cheater.

I get it. The cost of that is that their program is unconstrained and that they're moving to build exactly the deterrent that they said in the 1990s they were going to build. This is what we wanted. So like this is what we wanted. Now we have it. So don't complain. You know, like the only interesting thing for someone to do would be to come out and say, golly, I wish I had done something differently.

But if you're not willing to do that and I see no evidence that anybody in the Obama or Bush administrations is willing to come out and say like, oh, I wish we'd done something differently, then this is what you picked. So, you know, deal with it.

Aaron 58:11

Well, I think the even – and this president inherits this. But the instincts on the very tough political questions, at least in the first 50 days or so, have been missile defense, yelling publicly that China can solve this.

Jeffrey 58:34

One phone call.

Aaron 58:35

One phone call.

Jeffrey 58:37

One phone call.

Aaron 58:38

Lauding a decrease in coal exports as if that really is going to change the impetus to develop an ICBM. And not dealing with The inevitability of having to sit down and talk to these people about building in constraints into the development of their program.

Jeffrey 59:00

Look, they're going to put a nuclear weapon on an ICBM. They're going to shift over to solid fuel. Well, they're there.

Aaron 59:07

I mean, this is – Right.

Jeffrey 59:09

I mean, they're well on their way. When Ali is doing this, we'll be talking – Well, I don't know. Maybe – I guess the other thing you could do is hope for collapse, right?

Aaron 59:19

Well, isn't that the policy? Just keep sanctioning them and hope for collapse? Apparently. I mean that's what I can discern in the policy. It's just sanction, sanction, sanction and then hopefully they'll collapse. Then you can fidget around the edges to try and get China to hasten that through sanctions. Yeah. So there you go. No, that's a cynical note to end the podcast.

It's the realest note. That's where we're at.

Jeffrey 59:46

No, no. I have the positive note. I found it. Oh, what is it? Aaron, there are any number of escapist fantasies in which the Trump administration can take solace. They have their pick. They do. They do. They can indulge several totally unrealistic fantasies by which this problem will magically resolve itself. Oh, well, we still have more podcasts.

I mean, it's like healthcare. It's access. We have choice. You have choice now. We can choose to do all these different things. That's right. I can't afford any of them, but we could choose. We could choose. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's probably enough about North Korea.

Aaron 1:00:25

Yeah. Hopefully, the next pod, they just calm down. Calm down, North Korea. Give us six months so we can talk about something else.

Jeffrey 1:00:31

Oh, you know what? Here's the other happy note. What an amazing Slack channel we have. Scott, do you want to talk about how things are going on the Slack channel and or subscriber benefits?

Other voice 1:00:44

Yeah, Slack is going super well. We have a burgeoning biochem radiological, like, Resident expertise hanging around that pops up every now and then, which is very interesting. And James Pearson and Andrea Berger are sharing all of their fun Glowcom brochures and evidence from the Slack channel. That's generating a lot of fun content right now. So people should come on down to the Slack channel.

Thanks, Scott.

Jeffrey 1:01:10

Hey, Aaron, thank you for joining me. Of course. Until next week. And thank you for listening. If you enjoy the podcast, leave us a positive review at iTunes. It helps move us up the charts and helps other people find us. And if you really like the podcast, consider becoming a supporter, and you can get access to the awesome Slack channel and a whole bunch of other subscriber benefits that Scott just described.

Aaron 1:01:33

Thank you for listening.

Other voice 1:01:36

I'll light it up in post. Don't worry.