Pre-emptive strike on North Korea may be the ‘least-worst’ option

Kim finally has a missile capable of reaching the US mainland, but Washington has been busy too, and the President appears to have a plan.

Defence Secretary James Mattis at the White House last week. Picture: AP

For decades US military planners have considered war against North Korea to be unthinkable. But last week’s test launch by Pyongyang of an intercontinental ballistic missile that might be able to reach anywhere in the US has changed the equation.

Since Donald Trump became President, the US has made clear it has lost faith in the effectiveness of diplomacy when dealing with Kim Jong-un’s regime.

In the Pentagon, officers know an attack on North Korea could lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands — in South Korea as well as the North — and trigger unfathomable global instability.

They have reluctantly concluded, however, that a pre-emptive US military strike and regime change might be the least worst of a menu of bad options.

Kim’s regime called its latest missile the Hwasong-15, which translates as “Mars-15”. Launched on Wednesday, it flew 750km higher than the last missile tested and travelled for 53 minutes — six minutes longer — before plunging into the Sea of Japan.

Its range was sufficient to reach the US if the missile travelled on a flatter trajectory. Afterwards, Mr Trump telephoned Chinese President Xi Jinping and vowed to impose yet more sanctions on Pyongyang. North Korea, however, has defied all rounds of sanctions, conducting 16 missile tests this year.

Mr Trump has threatened that North Korea will be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it fails to abandon its nuclear ambitions. At the weekend, the North Korean Foreign Ministry reportedly branded him a ­“nuclear demon” who was “begging for nuclear war”.

This week, the US and South Korea put on a show of force in joint military exercises. Observers wonder how the North will react.

Away from Mr Trump’s war of words with the North Korean ­regime, James Mattis, the Pentagon chief and a former US Marine Corps general renowned for his fighting in Iraq, has been quietly laying out options.

At a recent event attended by international policymakers and businesspeople, he made plain that the US views the North Korean nuclear capability as a grave threat and is prepared to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike if necessary. A preferred option would be to use joint CIA and US special forces teams — much like the Operational Detachments Alpha or ODAs used during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 — in a clinical attack on Kim’s ­nuclear sites.

That would entail, at the very minimum, a limited ground invasion; but Mr Mattis insisted that casualties might not be as severe as widely thought.

Intriguingly, he suggested North Korea’s nuclear missiles would be handed over to China, presumably for disposal, and that Beijing would have a key role in stabilising North Korea once Kim’s regime had fallen.

A former senior US government official with close ties to the Trump administration outlined another scenario: a bombing war.

The countdown to conflict would begin with the US withdrawing its non-combatant forces from South Korea. This would coincide with a Trump ultimatum to China that it had to force North Korea to give up its nuclear program. An enticement to China could be that the US offers to pull back its South Korea-based forces to Busan, in the country’s south.

In the event of the Chinese baulking, the US would attack North Korea, sending five million refugees into China and putting US troops on the North Korea-China border following the inevitable collapse of Kim’s regime — a nightmarish outcome for Mr Xi.

The former official predicted the US would attack North Kor­ean command sites and missile bunkers — and the formidable border artillery that menaces Seoul and the broad sweep of heavily populated South Korea close to the demilitarised zone between the two countries.

While it was likely that Kim would be able to use his border ­artillery, the former official predicted that mass casualties in South Korea would not be as high as the 300,000 deaths often predicted by military analysts.

Even if the South Korean government collapsed, the former official added, South Korean armed forces would maintain control and Washington and Seoul would be able to build a reunified Korea from the ashes of the conflict.

Others in Washington baulk at this scenario. One State Department official described it as “the kind of cavalier wishful thinking that led us into disaster in Iraq”, adding the danger was that it might be attractive to Mr Trump, “who has shown no grasp of the complexities or inherent dangers of military action on the Korean peninsula”.

The former official said the risks of war were worth taking, given what would transpire if no action was taken. It was possible that Mr Trump might bow to the received wisdom of the US foreign policy establishment that the likely South Korean death toll in any war was unacceptable and that a nuclear-armed Pyongyang could still be contained.

In this “chicken” scenario, he said, the US would put itself and its allies at the mercy of Kim, a ­nuclear-armed madman. In all probability, Kim would sell his ­nuclear missile technology to ­regimes such as Iran and terrorist groups.

North Korea’s enhanced status as a nuclear power could prompt Japan and Saudi Arabia — in response to Iran — to go nuclear too.

The former official, who speaks regularly to Mr Trump, pointed out that General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the head of US forces, had explicitly said war was an option.

“Many people have talked about military options with words like ‘unimaginable’,” General Dunford said in July. “I would probably shift that slightly and say it would be horrific and … a loss of life unlike any we have experienced in our lifetimes — and I mean anyone who’s been alive since World War II has never seen the loss of life that could occur (from) a conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

“But ... it is not unimaginable to have military options to respond to North Korean nuclear capability. What’s unimaginable to me is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver, Colorado … So my job will be to develop military options to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

In a recent letter to congress, Rear Admiral Michael Dumont, vice-director of the Pentagon’s joint staff, said the only way to locate and secure all of North Korea’s nuclear weapons sites “with complete certainty” would be through an invasion of ground forces.

In the event of conflict, he warned, Pyongyang “may consider the use of biological weapons” and had “a longstanding chemical weapons program with the capability to produce nerve, blister, blood and choking agents”. The Congressional Research Service assessed that in the first few days of fighting up to 300,000 ­people could perish.

Mr Mattis has hinted that US plans could prevent North Korea from attacking the South Korean capital, Seoul, whose metropolitan area is home to 25.6 million people. When asked in September if there were any military options that would not put Seoul at grave risk, Mr Mattis responded: “Yes, there are, but I will not go into details.”

Mr Trump has said he wants to keep North Korea guessing and in recent weeks has said repeatedly that the US would “take care” of North Korea. This indicates that he may well have decided what to do.

“On this, Trump has been uncharacteristically consistent,” said the State Department official. “It scares me to say this but it does seem that there is a plan and that Trump and Mattis are prepared to implement it.”

The Sunday Times