Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth."

- Albert Camus

"Show respect even to people who don't deserve it; not as a reflection of their character, but as a reflection of yours."

- Dave Willis

Characteristics of the American Way of War (7 of 13)

7. Focused on Firepower. General Westmoreland, then Commander of MACV, once famously and characteristically told a press conference that the correct approach to counterinsurgency was "firepower."72 It has long been the American way in warfare to send metal in harm's way in place of vulnerable flesh. This admirable expression of the country's machine-mindedness undoubtedly is the single most characteristic feature of American war-making at the sharp end. Needless to say, perhaps, a devotion to firepower, while defensible, indeed necessary, cannot help encouraging the armed forces to rely on it even when other modes of military behavior would be more suitable. In irregular conflicts in particular, heavy and sometimes seemingly indiscriminate, certainly disproportionate, resort to firepower solutions, readily becomes self-defeating. A focus on firepower as the key to a victory defined in classic military terms produces the attitude that what we do in war is service targets. Instead of being considered in his cultural context, the enemy is reduced to the dehumanized status of the object of U.S. firepower.73 At its nadir, this characteristic was demonstrated in action in Vietnam with the prevalence of the U.S. artillery's very extensive practice of conducting unaimed harassment and interdiction fire.74 A notable fraction of that artillery fire was expended for no better reason than that the ammunition was available in embarrassing abundance.

Regular warfare is composed of ever varying mixes of the eternal trinity of fire, movement, and shock. Irregular warfare, however, is different. There can be no decisive military engagement, because an agile, elusive, and competent irregular enemy will decline to expose himself in such a way that he can be obliterated by fire, outmaneuvered to annihilation, or destroyed physically and morally by shock effect. In COIN the rules of engagement broadly are the reverse of those standard in regular combat. When in doubt, one should not fire. Why? Because as a general rule, COIN must be conducted around the civilian population who comprise the center of gravity of the conflict. Trigger-happiness cannot help producing undesirable collateral damage; in other words, dead and wounded civilians and fear of American military behavior. Better that an insurgent should escape or, dare one say it, that an American or allied soldier or official be killed, than that a dozen or so bystanders pay the price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The kind of disciplined self-restraint in the resort to force that is mandatory for success in warfare against irregulars does not come easily or naturally to young people whom we train to be aggressive and to kill when necessary in self-defense. Nor does it come easily to officers who have well-founded anxieties about the career implications of suffering casualties. If the armed forces are serious about supporting policy with high competency in the conduct of war against irregulars, then they will need to curb their traditional, indeed cultural, excessive love affair with firepower.

- Colin Gray, 2006

1. N. Korea warns of 'toughest counteraction' against UNSC meeting on country's rights abuse

2. N.Korea Launches Missiles from Submarine

3. US, South Korea start major drills after Pyongyang's weapons test

4. North Korea fires missiles from submarine at underwater target

5. North Korea tests submarine-launched missile, Seoul says

6. North Korea Launches Two Cruise Missiles From Experimental Submarine

7. S. Korea approves plans to buy F-35A fighters, SM-6 interceptors

8. Yoon congratulates China's Xi on reelection

9. Yoon instructs gov't to find new cooperation projects for S. Korea, Japan

10. Pyongyang calls on district agricultural workers to work more innovatively

11. Does North Korea Want to Start a Crisis?

12. Look to Korea to See How China Might Fight in the Pacific Today

1. N. Korea warns of 'toughest counteraction' against UNSC meeting on country's rights abuse

Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. A human rights upfront approach is the right thing to do. Yes, human rights are a threat to the regime. See how the regime reacts. KJU must deny the human rights of the korean people living in the north in order to remain in power.

And we should note, there can be no engagement without a halt to the game's human rights abuses. No company can invest in north Korea when its human rights abuses make South Africa's pale in comparison. No legitimate company could risk the blowback from shareholders and consumers for its support to the despotic regime of KJU through investment in north Korea. People to people engagement (something we desire) is limited due to the regime's control measures. And even humanitarian assistance is either diverted for regime (and military use) or what is provided to the people is presented in a way to make it appear to be from the regime to enhance regime legitimacy.

N. Korea warns of 'toughest counteraction' against UNSC meeting on country's rights abuse | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 이원주 · March 13, 2023

SEOUL, March 13 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Monday slammed a move by the United States to hold an informal U.N. Security Council (UNSC) meeting on Pyongyang's human rights abuse this week, calling it a scheme to "bring down" its regime.

In a statement issued by the North's foreign ministry, Pyongyang said it "bitterly denounces the U.S. vicious 'human rights' racket" as the "most intensive expression of its hostile policy" toward Pyongyang.

The statement came after Reuters reported last week that the U.S. will hold an informal meeting of UNSC members on the North's human rights abuses this Friday (local time).

The North "solemnly declares once again that it will take the toughest counteraction against the most vicious hostile plots of the U.S.," the ministry said in the statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

"Timed to coincide with the large-scale U.S.-South Korean war exercises to be launched on March 13, the U.S., together with its followers, is scheming to coercively call an informal UN Security Council meeting to discuss the non-existent 'human rights issue' of the DPRK," it added.

DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The North has long been accused of grave human rights abuses, ranging from holding political prisoners in concentration camps to committing torture and carrying out public executions.

The upcoming meeting comes as Pyongyang has escalated tensions on the Korean Peninsula recently with a barrage of weapons tests, including submarine-launched cruise missile tests on Sunday, in apparent protest against the allies' major Freedom Shield exercise.

Youtube

https://youtu.be/4OGfuliEvQo

julesyi@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 이원주 · March 13, 2023

2. N.Korea Launches Missiles from Submarine

Not unexpected.

N.Korea Launches Missiles from Submarine

english.chosun.com

March 13, 2023 12:53

North Korea launched two missiles from a submarine on Sunday morning soon after threatening "more effective, powerful and offensive use of the war deterrent."

The launch coincided with the start of massive military drills by South Korea and the U.S. on Monday.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said on Monday the country launched two strategic cruise missiles from a submarine off Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province into the East Sea. It claimed they flew some 1,500 km over two hours in a figure-of-eight before precisely hitting their targets.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff here confirmed the launch and said they are analyzing the type and trajectories of the missiles.

A missile is being fired from a submarine off Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province on Sunday, in this photo from the [North] Korean Central News Agency the following day.

On Sunday, state media reported that leader Kim Jong-un chaired a meeting of the Workers Party's Central Military Commission as South Korea and the U.S. got ready to start the "Freedom Shield" exercise.

"The meeting discussed and adopted the important practical steps for making more effective, powerful and offensive use of the war deterrent of the country in coping with the present situation in which the war provocations of the U.S. and South Korea are reaching the red-line," it said.

The drills, which last until March 22, include special ops training and practice for stabilizing North Korea after an invasion and managing streams of refugees.

N.Korea Lobs Short-Range Missiles into West Sea

U.S. Military Chief to Visit S.Korea This Month

U.S. Sends 'Ghostrider' Gunship for Special Ops Drill

Nuclear-Powered U.S. Submarine Docks in Busan

Nuclear U.S. Aircraft Carrier to Arrive in Busan Next Month

Korea, U.S., Japan Stage Missile Defense Drill

S.Korea Sends Warning to North with Aerial Refueling Drill

Kim Jong-un's Sister Denies Technical Hitches in ICBM Launch

N.Korea Fires More Missiles as S.Korea, U.S. Stage Air Drill

Korea, U.S. to Stage Nuclear Tabletop Drill

U.S. Stealth Fighters Join Air Drills with S.Korea

Pentagon Releases Nuclear Arms Policy in Korean

U.S. to Send Top-Range Weapons to Korea More Often

S.Korea, U.S. Prepare for N.Korean WMD Attack

english.chosun.com

3. US, South Korea start major drills after Pyongyang's weapons test

Did anyone expect we would halt exercises to prevent provocations? Does anyone think that if we halted exercises that Kim would halt provocations? Is that a good tradeoff: Halt exercises and damage readiness in return for the hope that the regime will not test a weapons system as a provocation?

US, South Korea start major drills after Pyongyang's weapons test

The Korea Times · March 13, 2023

South Korean Army K-5 self-propelled howitzers move in Yeoncheon, near the border with North Korea, Monday, for joint drills with the U.S. military. AP-Yonhap

North Korea's first cruise missile launches from submarine should concern Seoul: expert

By Jung Min-ho

South Korea and the United States launched massive joint military exercises on Monday, as North Korea ratcheted up the threat level by conducting its first submarine-launched cruise missile tests in protest of the drills.

The computer simulation-based Freedom Shield exercise began its 11-day run on a scale not seen since 2017, in order to reinforce the allies' defense capabilities and interoperability amid North Korea's growing nuclear and missile threats.

The exercise, for which the U.S. is expected to deploy some of its most formidable strategic assets such as a nuclear-powered aircraft, includes 20 field training plans with realistic war scenarios. Progress in North Korea's weapons capabilities and Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine were factored into the scenarios, military officials said.

This photo shows South Korean and U.S. troops participating in combined drills in Yeoncheon, near the border with North Korea, Monday. Yonhap F

reedom Shield will "integrate elements of live exercises with constructive simulations" and aims to enhance the South Korean and U.S. militaries' "cooperation through air, land, sea, space, cyber and special operations," according to a statement issued by U.S. Forces Korea. But the details remain undisclosed.

The exercise plan apparently unnerved North Korea, which announced the same day that it launched two cruise missiles from a submarine off its east coast the previous day.

This photo released Monday by North Korea shows a cruise missile being launched by a submarine in waters off North Korea's eastern coast on Sunday. Yonhap

North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) called the missiles "strategic" ― a term typically used to describe weapons that have nuclear capabilities ― and claimed that it verified the reliability of the weapons through the tests.

KCNA claimed the missiles precisely hit their targets 1,500 kilometers away after drawing figure-eight-shaped patterns, and the tests proved North Korea's diversified war deterrence capabilities.

If correct, that means the North is now capable of striking with cruise missiles any place in South Korea and some of Japan's strategically important areas, such as U.S. military bases in Okinawa, from constantly-moving underwater platforms. Cruise missiles are more difficult to detect by radar and possess greater accuracy than ballistic missiles. This should concern South Korea's military, a defense expert said.

"Although it is still unclear whether the missile can carry nuclear weapons in its tip as North Korea claims, this is a significant threat to the military, especially given that it isn't equipped with sufficient detection technology for and offense capabilities against the North's submarines," Shin Jong-woo, an analyst at the Korea Defense and Security Forum, a think tank, told The Korea Times.

"Once out in the ocean, submarines are very difficult to detect. So the best way to deal with the threat is to send, if possible, nuclear-powered attack submarines to the key locations before the armed North Korean submarines leave their bases … It's time, if not too late already, to discuss how to respond to such threats realistically."

This photo released Monday by North Korea shows a submarine during its missile drills in waters off North Korea's eastern coast on Sunday. Yonhap

Last May, the North test-fired a short-range ballistic missile from the same submarine. Many experts said it would take years for the regime to build a fleet of several submarines capable of high-level strikes. North Korea has reportedly been building a new 3,000-ton submarine that can carry three submarine-launched ballistic missiles. It already has an estimated 70-90 diesel-powered submarines ― one of the world's largest fleets. But they are mostly aging and capable of only launching torpedoes but not missiles.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) confirmed that the North's cruise missiles were fired from a submarine in waters near the port city of Sinpo, where its major submarine-building shipyard is located. But the JCS believes that the test results may have been exaggerated, saying its submarine missile technology seems to still be in its "early stages."

In recent years, North Korea has been trying to improve and diversify its missile platforms in an apparent aim to undermine the allies' response capabilities. Experts warn that the North could unleash additional provocations in the coming days during the combined exercises.

The Korea Times · March 13, 2023

4. North Korea fires missiles from submarine at underwater target

Wouldn't that be called a torpedo? A weapon launched under water at an underwater target? But I will defer ot the naval experts.

Is the regime trying to send a signal that it could attack the USS Springfield, a nuclear attack submarine, which conducted a port call in Pusan?

North Korea fires missiles from submarine at underwater target

asia.nikkei.com

South Korea military on high alert

A submarine-launched ballistic missile is seen in this undated photo released on Oct. 19, 2021 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). © Reuters

March 13, 2023 07:05 JST | North Korea

SEOUL(Reuters) -- North Korea fired two missiles from a submarine on Sunday morning, striking an underwater target, state news agency KCNA reported on Monday.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the military was on high alert and the country's intelligence agency was working with its U.S. counterpart to analyze the specifics of the launch.

5. North Korea tests submarine-launched missile, Seoul says

No one really seems to be getting too worked up over this. There seems to be north Korea "provocation fatigue."

North Korea tests submarine-launched missile, Seoul says

Politico

The test came a day before the U.S. and South Korean militaries begin large-scale joint military drills.

People watch a TV showing a file image of North Korea's missile launch during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, May 7, 2022. | Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo

By Associated Press

03/12/2023 05:59 PM EDT

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Monday it test-fired two cruise missiles from a submarine off its east coast, the latest in the country’s series of weapons tests.

The test on Sunday came a day before the U.S. and South Korean militaries begin large-scale joint military drills that North Korea views as a rehearsal for invasion.

The official Korean Central News Agency said Monday that the missile launches were meant to confirm the reliability of the weapons system and gauge underwater-to-surface offensive operations of the country’s submarine units. The missile tests show the North’s resolve to respond with “overwhelming powerful forces” to “the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces,” which the news agency said “are getting evermore undisguised in their anti-(North Korea) military maneuvers.”

North Korea has been pushing hard for years to acquire the ability to fire nuclear-armed missiles from submarines, the next key piece in an arsenal that includes a variety of weapons with the potential range to reach the U.S. mainland.

Earlier Monday, South Korea’s military said it had detected the launch from a submarine in the waters near the North’s eastern port city of Sinpo on Sunday.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities were analyzing details of the operation.

POLITICO

Politico

6. North Korea Launches Two Cruise Missiles From Experimental Submarine

Excerpts:

If the North’s claims about Sunday’s test are accurate, it would mark the first time Pyongyang had launched cruise missiles from a submarine and the first time it had fired two missiles from a submarine in a single launch, said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korean studies professor at Dongguk University in Seoul.

Submarines and the cruise missiles they fire underwater are difficult to detect and travel relatively shorter distances, making them harder to defend against, Mr. Kim said. By showcasing its underwater missile capabilities, North Korea is aiming to increase pressure on the U.S.’s aircraft carrier fleets in the region, and to challenge the joint military exercises between Washington and Seoul that began this week, he said.

North Korea Launches Two Cruise Missiles From Experimental Submarine

Test occurs with U.S. and South Korea preparing to begin joint military exercises

https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korea-launches-two-cruise-missiles-from-submarine-8eb0dff1?page=1

By Jiyoung SohnFollow

Updated March 13, 2023 3:42 am ET

SEOUL—North Korea launched two underwater cruise missiles from a submarine, the regime said Monday, ahead of the start of large-scale joint U.S. and South Korea military drills this week.

The missiles, which were fired early Sunday morning into the waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, demonstrated the reliability of a system that constitutes one of the country’s nuclear deterrents, North Korean state media said Monday. The missiles were fired from the 8.24 Yongung submarine and traveled for about 932 miles before hitting the target, state media said.

On Monday, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it detected a missile test Sunday that had been fired from a submarine in waters near Sinpo, a North Korean port city. It said its intelligence differed with the North’s description of the launch, without revealing further details.

North Korea has dozens of submarines, but the 8.24 Yongung, or Aug. 24 Hero, is its only known ballistic-missile submarine. Pyongyang uses the experimental submarine to test submarine-launched ballistic missiles and to train its navy on the use of ballistic missile submarines, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Why Kim Jong Un’s Daughter Is All Over North Korean Media

S. Korea approves plans to buy F-35A fighters, SM-6 interceptors | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 채윤환 · March 13, 2023

SEOUL, March 13 (Yonhap) -- South Korea endorsed major defense projects Monday to purchase an additional batch of F-35A stealth fighters and shipborne Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) interceptors, the state arms procurement agency said, in a move to reinforce deterrence against North Korea's evolving military threats.

The Defense Project Promotion Committee approved a 3.75 trillion-won (US$2.85 billion) plan to buy the U.S.-made radar-evading jets through 2028, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said.

It did not disclose the number of jets to be purchased, but Seoul is expected to bring in some 20 F-35As under the new plan. The country's Air Force currently runs 40 F-35As manufactured by the U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin.

The jets, if deployed, will prop up the country's Kill Chain preemptive strike system, a pillar of its three-pronged deterrence program against the North's nuclear and missile threats, according to DAPA.

A South Korean F-35A radar-evading fighter takes off from an airbase in Cheongju, 112 kilometers south of Seoul, to take part in combined air drills with the United States on Feb. 3, 2023, in this file photo provided by the Air Force. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

The committee also approved a first-stage purchase plan for the SM-6 manufactured by the U.S. defense firm Raytheon Technologies Corp. It is part of the 770 billion-won two-stage project that will run from this year through 2031 with an aim to better counter threats from hostile aircraft and missiles.

The Navy plans to run the interceptors on its 8,200-ton KDX-III Batch-II Aegis destroyers, which it plans to deploy in the coming years.

The armed service has been operating the SM-2 ship-to-air missiles on its existing fleet of Aegis destroyers, but it has been seeking more advanced, longer-range interceptors.

The committee also gave the green light to a basic plan worth 1.55 trillion won to develop a tactical ground-to-ground vehicle-loaded guided weapon from 2023-2032 to boost the military's precision strike capabilities.

It also approved a 690 billion-won development plan to run from 2023-2030 for local research and production of a ship-to-air missile to be deployed on the Navy's next-generation KDDX destroyers currently under development.

yunhwanchae@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 채윤환 · March 13, 2023

8. Yoon congratulates China's Xi on reelection

Yoon congratulates China's Xi on reelection | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 김나영 · March 13, 2023

SEOUL, March 13 (Yonhap) -- President Yoon Suk Yeol on Monday sent a congratulatory message to Chinese President Xi Jinping for his election for a third term, an informed official said.

Details of the message are expected to be disclosed by China in accordance with diplomatic protocol, the official told Yonhap News Agency on the condition of anonymity.

On Friday, Xi was reelected president for another five-year term by the National People's Congress, becoming the longest-serving head of state of China.

A March 10, 2023, file photo of President Yoon Suk Yeol (Pool photo) (Yonhap)

nyway@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 김나영 · March 13, 2023

9. Yoon instructs gov't to find new cooperation projects for S. Korea, Japan

Can they generate some positive momentum?

Yoon instructs gov't to find new cooperation projects for S. Korea, Japan | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 이해아 · March 13, 2023

By Lee Haye-ah

SEOUL, March 13 (Yonhap) -- President Yoon Suk Yeol instructed the government Monday to look for new projects to help South Korea and Japan increase cooperation and build a future-oriented relationship, his spokesperson said.

Yoon's instruction came days before he heads to Japan on Thursday to meet with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the wake of Seoul's decision to compensate Korean victims of Japan's wartime forced labor on its own without Japanese firms' contributions.

"President Yoon asked that each ministry of the government find and pursue cooperation projects in each area for a future-oriented relationship between South Korea and Japan," presidential spokesperson Lee Do-woon told reporters of Yoon's meeting with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo earlier in the day.

"Prime Minister Han reported that he will find and give shape to exchange and cooperation projects in each area to help the development of a new relationship between South Korea and Japan," he said.

National Security Adviser Kim Sung-han plans to hold a press briefing on Tuesday on the details of Yoon's planned summit with Kishida, Lee said.

Presidential spokesperson Lee Do-woon gives a press briefing at the presidential office in Seoul on March 13, 2023. (Yonhap)

hague@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 이해아 · March 13, 2023

10. Pyongyang calls on district agricultural workers to work more innovatively

Blame everyone but the one person who is the cause of all problems in north Korea: Kim Jong Un

Pyongyang calls on district agricultural workers to work more innovatively

By Jong So Yong - 2023.03.13 5:00pm

dailynk.com

A panorama of Pyongyang published in state media in December 2019. (Rodong Sinmun - News1)

Pyongyang’s city authorities have called on district agricultural management committees to “work in a new way” ahead of the spring planting season in accordance with policies espoused at a recent enlarged plenary meeting, a reporting partner in Pyongyang told Daily NK on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The recent Seventh Enlarged Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee emphasized increasing agricultural production.

On Mar. 4, the city’s party committee “appealed to district agricultural management committee to be aware that they’ve been tasked with vegetable and grain production and work in a new way, stressing the policies of the Seventh Enlarged Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee,” the reporting partner said.

The city committee said farms have been doing a half-hearted job relying solely on mobilized labor because they are afflicted with the so-called “rural community support disease,” which refers to a frame of mind where labor provided by the general population is taken for granted.

The party committee called on farms to abandon this practice, emphasizing that from this year, farms should put together labor organizations through bold management.

Essentially, the committee proposed that Pyongyang’s agricultural workers abandon their old ways, warning that government agencies and enterprises have quotas of their own and cannot put their factories on the backburner to send workers to agricultural communities to help out through the autumn harvest.

The reporting partner said the party committee also criticized farms, asking for how long “they are going to survive on the entire nation rushing to help out in agricultural villages rather than organizing their own labor,” and calling on Pyongyang to take the lead in realizing the policies of the Seventh Enlarged Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee.

In particular, the city’s party committee called on agricultural committees to create fields that receive no outside labor or seeds, as well as labor subteams, work teams and farms that do the farmwork themselves.

It called on farm laborers to demonstrate an attitude of taking responsibility for leading the seed revolution, organizing product reviews and completing scientific irrigation systems.

The city’s party committee also decided to instruct agricultural management committees to set up trial fields this year that receive no outside labor, with each farm starting with one such farm with a view to gradually expanding their number.

The reporting partner said farms in Sadong District and Nangnang District are responding to the city’s aggressive exhortations and instructions by launching efforts to put together subteams or work teams on a trial basis.

Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.

Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.

Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.

Read in Korean

dailynk.com

11. Does North Korea Want to Start a Crisis?

"A showdown looming?" There has always been a showdown looming since the Armistice of 1953.

Does North Korea Want to Start a Crisis?

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · March 10, 2023

On Thursday morning, North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile toward the Yellow Sea just days after Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said in a statement that any effort to shoot down one of North Korea’s test missiles would be an act of war.

The missile was reportedly launched at around 6:20pm local time, from a site near the North Korean city of Nampo towards the waters of the Yellow Sea off its west coast. The Yellow Sea is located between China and the Korean Peninsula.

The launch followed the deployment of a U.S. Air Force nuclear-capable B-52 Stratofortress to the Korean Peninsula earlier this week as part of joint exercises with South Korean warplanes. It was also likely in reaction to the planned large-scale joint military “Freedom Shield” exercise between the United States and South Korea that is scheduled to take place later this month. It would be the largest such drill held between the two nations since 2018.

Provocation And Response

North Korea has called such exercises a provocation.

In a statement, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command offered a response: “We are aware of the ballistic missile launch and are consulting closely with our allies and partners. While we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel or territory, or to our allies, the missile launch highlights the destabilizing impact of the DPRK’s (North Korea’s) unlawful WMD and ballistic missile programs. The U.S. commitments to the defense of the Republic of Korea and Japan remain ironclad.”

A U.S. intelligence threat assessment report, released on Wednesday, suggested, “Since September 2022, North Korea has timed its missile launches and military demonstrations to counter U.S.–South Korea exercises probably to attempt to coerce the United States and South Korea to change their behavior,” Reuters reported.

The Nuclear Hermit Kingdom

North Korea conducted a record number of missile tests last year and has continued to demonstrate its capabilities in 2023 – which has already included the launches of an intercontinental ballistic missile, short-range missiles, and a purported long-range cruise missile system.

There is a common belief that Pyongyang’s increased testing activity and threats are an attempt to show that it is able to conduct nuclear strikes in South Korea and even on the U.S. mainland. Experts have suggested that Kim may see his nuclear arsenal as his strongest guarantee of survival, and it is part of an effort to force the United States to deal with North Korea as a nuclear power – which could allow Pyongyang to negotiate badly needed economic concessions from a position of strength.

To date, Washington and its allies have never shot down any North Korean ballistic missile, even as they are banned by the United Nations Security Council. However, there is a concern that the regime could fire additional missiles over its neighbors, including Japan, and turn the Pacific Ocean into a firing range.

“The Pacific Ocean does not belong to the dominium of the U.S. or Japan,” Kim You Jong also said in her statement to state media.

That fact may be true, but it also isn’t North Korea’s either – and a showdown could be looming.

Author Experience and Expertise:

A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.

19fortyfive.com · by Peter Suciu · March 10, 2023

12. Look to Korea to See How China Might Fight in the Pacific Today

Excerpts:

But that doesn’t mean the campaign was fated to succeed. It’s no accident that Chinese forces fared relatively well during the opening phase of the intervention late in 1950. Northern Korea, a predominantly continental theater, constituted the arena for the ground-war phase. The Chinese host was thrown back when it made its own lunge toward the far reaches of the peninsula. Sea power—carrier aviation, ship-launched ordnance, amphibious forces—can make its weight felt far more easily south of the narrow neck than in the wide, mountainous north.

And it did. The PLA had little ability to oppose allied maritime operations around southern Korea, either by dispatching barely existent seagoing forces or by using shore-based forces to sling antiship and antiair weapons out to sea. That’s a deficit the PLA has worked feverishly—and with a considerable measure of success—to correct over the past quarter-century or thereabouts.

Our Chinese friends are students of history, and they do their homework. You can bet they will do their utmost to avoid repeating the mistakes their forebears committed in Korea.

Maybe Korea shouldn’t be a forgotten war after all.

Look to Korea to See How China Might Fight in the Pacific Today

19fortyfive.com · by James Holmes · March 13, 2023

This week I returned to the mothership for the first time in a dozen years, to take part in a conference at Vanderbilt University asking whether Chinese strategy is “universal or unique?”

My answer: Chinese maritime strategy is novel but not unique. Chinese strategists excel at combining and recombining the same concepts available to everyone, and to do so in ways that often baffle outsiders. Confounding prospective foes is a feature for them, not a bug.

The presentations made me think. Thinking is good.

China, the Korean War, and Modern Warfare

During the proceedings something dawned on me with regard to the Korean War. Namely that the forgotten war could furnish future combatants clues as to how the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) may wage war in maritime Asia. The China seas and Western Pacific comprise an oceanic battleground, but then the Korean Peninsula south of the “narrow neck” that roughly coincides with the inter-Korean border is a maritime theater in its own right.

Sea power can range all across it.

In geostrategic terms southern Korea is a half-island grafted onto continental Asia. In effect it’s part of the first island chain that plays such a prominent part in regional politics and strategy. It’s worthwhile mining the war for lessons applicable to today. The main thing PLA commanders must have learned from studying the conflict: it’s hard and perilous to fight on an island unless you command the air and sea around it.

Fresh off its victory in the Chinese Civil War, Communist China intervened on the peninsula to stem General Douglas MacArthur’s offensive short of the Yalu River. Whether Mao Zedong’s motives for intervening in the forgotten war were more strategically offensive or strategically defensive in outlook is debatable. Mao (and his successors) invariably cast their strategies as defensive. And, of course, the founding Chinese Communist Party chairman was an exponent of the doctrine—which verged and verges on dogma for the PLA—of “active defense.”

Long story short, active defense is a weaker combatant’s method for flipping the script on on stronger foe. The weak start off on the strategic defensive, buying time to tap their military potential. In the meantime they seek out opportunities to engage and annihilate isolated enemy units, enfeebling the foe by increments. Active defense portends strategic defense through offensive tactics and operations. It narrows, then reverses, an adverse military balance.

To borrow from boxing legend Jack Dempsey, the best strategic defense for Maoists is a good tactical offense.

But it can be a forward defense as well. China is not strategically autistic. It need not—and will not—mindlessly rerun the Maoist script in all future contingencies. Nor will it forever condemn itself to resisting foreign forces that invade the country. It will adapt time-honored practices to the realities of great power. Even for a contender with China’s leanings, then, it is possible to dispatch forces into unguarded or lightly guarded geographic space and defend it by harnessing active-defense principles.

In fact, the Prussian martial guru Moltke the Elder once pronounced strategic offense coupled with tactical defense the strongest form of warfare. You grab something and hold it—daring an assailant to come and take it while fighting at a tactical disadvantage. In warfare as in ordinary life, possession is nine-tenths of the law.

For Communist China, fighting in Korea deployed active defense with an offensive twist. But the expedition didn’t flout Maoist orthodoxy. Nothing in Mao’s writings proscribes going on the strategic offensive. In fact, the very point of active defense is to set the conditions to unleash a conventional counteroffensive culminating in a crushing battlefield victory. Active defense simply defers the counteroffensive till a more propitious time, once the correlation of forces has come to favor the active defender. There’s no reason to postpone the offensive if the PLA already commands battlefield parity or superiority. You can skip the strategic defensive.

That was the case in northern Korea after MacArthur and his U.S./UN army overshot their ability to sustain offensive operations. Intervening in Korea was not some outlandish abandonment of active defense.

But that doesn’t mean the campaign was fated to succeed. It’s no accident that Chinese forces fared relatively well during the opening phase of the intervention late in 1950. Northern Korea, a predominantly continental theater, constituted the arena for the ground-war phase. The Chinese host was thrown back when it made its own lunge toward the far reaches of the peninsula. Sea power—carrier aviation, ship-launched ordnance, amphibious forces—can make its weight felt far more easily south of the narrow neck than in the wide, mountainous north.

And it did. The PLA had little ability to oppose allied maritime operations around southern Korea, either by dispatching barely existent seagoing forces or by using shore-based forces to sling antiship and antiair weapons out to sea. That’s a deficit the PLA has worked feverishly—and with a considerable measure of success—to correct over the past quarter-century or thereabouts.

Our Chinese friends are students of history, and they do their homework. You can bet they will do their utmost to avoid repeating the mistakes their forebears committed in Korea.

Maybe Korea shouldn’t be a forgotten war after all.

Author Expertise and Biography

Dr. James Holmes, a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, holds the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and served on the faculty of the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. A former U.S. Navy surface-warfare officer, he was the last gunnery officer in history to fire a battleship’s big guns in anger, during the first Gulf War in 1991. He earned the Naval War College Foundation Award in 1994, signifying the top graduate in his class. His books include Red Star over the Pacific, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of 2010 and a fixture on the Navy Professional Reading List. General James Mattis deems him “troublesome.”

19fortyfive.com · by James Holmes · March 13, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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