I was asked for my thoughts on what would let me breathe a sigh of relief after the outcome of the summit.
In short, as long as there is no damage to the ROK/US alliance and there is no agreement that results in an order for immediate or near term withdrawal or significant reduction of US troops on the peninsula I will breathe a sigh of relief. Another way to say it is I will breathe a sigh of relief if the US (and the ROK) does not fall prey to the north's charm offensive and give concessions with no substantive action from the north in return.
There are two sets of questions we should be asking going into the summit:
First, we need to think deeply about this: Has Kim Jong-un given up the foundational strategy of unification of the peninsula under the north's control through subversion, coercion, and use of force in order to ensure regime survival? Has Kim given up the key supporting objective to split the ROK/US alliance to get US forces off the peninsula so that it can achieve unification? The answer to these questions should guide our strategy.
Second, what do we want to achieve in Korea? What is the acceptable durable political arrangement on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia that will serve and protect US and ROK/US Alliance interests? Again the answer to these questions should guide our strategy.
Personally, I have seen no evidence that Kim has given up on the Kim Family Regime strategy. Therefore my personal assessment remains this:
The only way we are going to see an end to the nuclear program and threats and to the crimes against humanity being committed against the Korean people living in the North by the mafia-like crime family cult known as the Kim family regime is through achievement of unification and the establishment of a United Republic of Korea that is secure and stable, non-nuclear, economically vibrant, and unified under a liberal constitutional form of government determined by the Korean people.
The only way we are going to achieve a unified Korea is through a ROK led effort with the full support of the United States. And for every scenario short of unification from addressing provocations, deterring North Korean attack, to defeating an attack, to dealing with the myriad contingencies that will arise from North Korean instability and regime collapse a strong ROK/US alliance is necessary for a successful outcome.
Therefore while we pursue diplomacy, which I believe must be the priority, we must keep in mind that the "Big Five" will always be looming in the background and we cannot take our eyes of the ball in regards to security:
1. War - the ROK/US Alliance must deter, and if attacked defend, fight and win.
2. Regime Collapse - The ROK/US Alliance must prepare for the real possibility and understand it could lead to war and both war and regime collapse could result in resistance to unification within the north. (This would make the Iraq and Afghan resistance pale in comparison)
3. Human Rights and Crimes Against Humanity - (gulags, external forced labor, etc) must focus on as it is a threat to the Kim Family Regime and undermines domestic legitimacy - and it is a moral imperative. Human Rights is a national security issue because their denial keeps the regime in power and the denial of human rights is key to prioritizing resources for the nuclear and missile programs.
4. Asymmetric threats (provocations to gain political and economic concessions, nuclear program, missile, cyber, and SOF) and global illicit activities (Department 39) are all employed to gain hard currency for the regime and support the regime's conduct of political warfare on the peninsula, in the region, and on a global scale.
5. Unification - the biggest challenge and the solution to the Korea question, which is the unnatural division of the Korean peninsula.
The challenge for the Republic of Korea (ROK), the US, the regional powers, and the international community is how to get from our current state of Armistice and the temporary cessation of hostilities to unification as the path most likely will involve some level of conflict ranging from war to civil conflict and potentially horrendous human suffering in the northern part of Korea. The ROK and its friends and allies face an extraordinary security challenge because of the "Big Five." War, regime collapse, and the nuclear and missile programs pose an existential threat. It is a moral imperative to work to relieve the suffering of the Korean people who live in the worst sustained human rights conditions in modern history. While unification is the desired and necessary "end state," or better yet the acceptable durable political arrangement, achieving it will be costly in treasure for sure and blood as well as there is likely no path to unification without some form of conflict, it may only be a question of scale.
However, despite the above I think the summit will likely occur and success is a low bar with three simple objectives:
1. “Meet and greet” to look KJU in the eye and allow the POTUS and Kim to lay out positions.
2. Agree to allow expert representatives to meet and work on a process for dismantlement of the north's nuclear program without ending sanctions until there is substantive and verifiable action by the north.
3. Agree to a follow-up meeting to discuss results of expert representative meetings (perhaps in 3 to 6 months)
Lastly, based on recent reporting in Washington and Seoul as well as the results of the 27 April Panmunjom Declaration I think it is possible that we will see a declaration to the end of the Korean War. As long as we do not fall victim to the euphoria such a declaration will bring and keep the question of the north's foundational strategy in mind I will breathe a sigh of relief. And if such a declaration is made there will need to be a parallel effort by the ROK, US, and north Korea to develop and implement a peace mechanism that will ensure the security of north and South. A declaration of the end of the Korean War will be simple. developing a peace mechanism and ensuring security and stability on the Korean peninsula while the Kim Family Regime remains in power will remain the most pressing. complex, and difficult challenge.
A powerful read. Only Henry Kissinger could combine the Enlightenment and Article Intelligence for a critical essay.
In addition to reading this important essay for the philosophical (and technical) discussion there is one paragraph that should inspire us all because Dr. Kissinger is truly the epitome of a life-long learner and we should all strive to emulate him in at least this aspect. As brilliant an intellect as he is he knows his limitations and set out to overcome them. At 94 years old he knows he has much to learn. How many of us who are much younger and are digital immigrants or even digital aliens have said that this AI stuff is just too complicated or complex and I do not need to worry about it and will leave that to our youth.
Excerpts:
Aware of my lack of technical competence in this field, I organized a number of informal dialogues on the subject, with the advice and cooperation of acquaintances in technology and the humanities. These discussions have caused my concerns to grow.
The internet age in which we already live prefigures some of the questions and issues that AI will only make more acute. The Enlightenment sought to submit traditional verities to a liberated, analytic human reason. The internet’s purpose is to ratify knowledge through the accumulation and manipulation of ever expanding data. Human cognition loses its personal character. Individuals turn into data, and data become regnant.
A powerful conclusion that we should really ponder:
The Enlightenment started with essentially philosophical insights spread by a new technology. Our period is moving in the opposite direction. It has generated a potentially dominating technology in search of a guiding philosophy. Other countries have made AI a major national project. The United States has not yet, as a nation, systematically explored its full scope, studied its implications, or begun the process of ultimate learning. This should be given a high national priority, above all, from the point of view of relating AI to humanistic traditions.
AI developers, as inexperienced in politics and philosophy as I am in technology, should ask themselves some of the questions I have raised here in order to build answers into their engineering efforts. The U.S. government should consider a presidential commission of eminent thinkers to help develop a national vision. This much is certain: If we do not start this effort soon, before long we shall discover that we started too late.
Philosophically, intellectually—in every way—human society is unprepared for the rise of artificial intelligence.
Three years ago, at a conference on transatlantic issues, the subject of artificial intelligence appeared on the agenda. I was on the verge of skipping that session—it lay outside my usual concerns—but the beginning of the presentation held me in my seat.
The speaker described the workings of a computer program that would soon challenge international champions in the game Go. I was amazed that a computer could master Go, which is more complex than chess. In it, each player deploys 180 or 181 pieces (depending on which color he or she chooses), placed alternately on an initially empty board; victory goes to the side that, by making better strategic decisions, immobilizes his or her opponent by more effectively controlling territory.
The speaker insisted that this ability could not be preprogrammed. His machine, he said, learned to master Go by training itself through practice. Given Go’s basic rules, the computer played innumerable games against itself, learning from its mistakes and refining its algorithms accordingly. In the process, it exceeded the skills of its human mentors. And indeed, in the months following the speech, an AI program named AlphaGo would decisively defeat the world’s greatest Go players.
As I listened to the speaker celebrate this technical progress, my experience as a historian and occasional practicing statesman gave me pause. What would be the impact on history of self-learning machines—machines that acquired knowledge by processes particular to themselves, and applied that knowledge to ends for which there may be no category of human understanding? Would these machines learn to communicate with one another? How would choices be made among emerging options? Was it possible that human history might go the way of the Incas, faced with a Spanish culture incomprehensible and even awe-inspiring to them? Were we at the edge of a new phase of human history?
Aware of my lack of technical competence in this field, I organized a number of informal dialogues on the subject, with the advice and cooperation of acquaintances in technology and the humanities. These discussions have caused my concerns to grow.
Heretofore, the technological advance that most altered the course of modern history was the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, which allowed the search for empirical knowledge to supplant liturgical doctrine, and the Age of Reason to gradually supersede the Age of Religion. Individual insight and scientific knowledge replaced faith as the principal criterion of human consciousness. Information was stored and systematized in expanding libraries. The Age of Reason originated the thoughts and actions that shaped the contemporary world order.
But that order is now in upheaval amid a new, even more sweeping technological revolution whose consequences we have failed to fully reckon with, and whose culmination may be a world relying on machines powered by data and algorithms and ungoverned by ethical or philosophical norms.
The internet age in which we already live prefigures some of the questions and issues that AI will only make more acute. The Enlightenment sought to submit traditional verities to a liberated, analytic human reason. The internet’s purpose is to ratify knowledge through the accumulation and manipulation of ever expanding data. Human cognition loses its personal character. Individuals turn into data, and data become regnant.
Users of the internet emphasize retrieving and manipulating information over contextualizing or conceptualizing its meaning. They rarely interrogate history or philosophy; as a rule, they demand information relevant to their immediate practical needs. In the process, search-engine algorithms acquire the capacity to predict the preferences of individual clients, enabling the algorithms to personalize results and make them available to other parties for political or commercial purposes. Truth becomes relative. Information threatens to overwhelm wisdom.
Inundated via social media with the opinions of multitudes, users are diverted from introspection; in truth many technophiles use the internet to avoid the solitude they dread. All of these pressures weaken the fortitude required to develop and sustain convictions that can be implemented only by traveling a lonely road, which is the essence of creativity.
The impact of internet technology on politics is particularly pronounced. The ability to target micro-groups has broken up the previous consensus on priorities by permitting a focus on specialized purposes or grievances. Political leaders, overwhelmed by niche pressures, are deprived of time to think or reflect on context, contracting the space available for them to develop vision.
The digital world’s emphasis on speed inhibits reflection; its incentive empowers the radical over the thoughtful; its values are shaped by subgroup consensus, not by introspection. For all its achievements, it runs the risk of turning on itself as its impositions overwhelm its conveniences.
As the internet and increased computing power have facilitated the accumulation and analysis of vast data, unprecedented vistas for human understanding have emerged. Perhaps most significant is the project of producing artificial intelligence—a technology capable of inventing and solving complex, seemingly abstract problems by processes that seem to replicate those of the human mind.
This goes far beyond automation as we have known it. Automation deals with means; it achieves prescribed objectives by rationalizing or mechanizing instruments for reaching them. AI, by contrast, deals with ends; it establishes its own objectives. To the extent that its achievements are in part shaped by itself, AI is inherently unstable. AI systems, through their very operations, are in constant flux as they acquire and instantly analyze new data, then seek to improve themselves on the basis of that analysis. Through this process, artificial intelligence develops an ability previously thought to be reserved for human beings. It makes strategic judgments about the future, some based on data received as code (for example, the rules of a game), and some based on data it gathers itself (for example, by playing 1 million iterations of a game).
The driverless car illustrates the difference between the actions of traditional human-controlled, software-powered computers and the universe AI seeks to navigate. Driving a car requires judgments in multiple situations impossible to anticipate and hence to program in advance. What would happen, to use a well-known hypothetical example, if such a car were obliged by circumstance to choose between killing a grandparent and killing a child? Whom would it choose? Why? Which factors among its options would it attempt to optimize? And could it explain its rationale? Challenged, its truthful answer would likely be, were it able to communicate: “I don’t know (because I am following mathematical, not human, principles),” or “You would not understand (because I have been trained to act in a certain way but not to explain it).” Yet driverless cars are likely to be prevalent on roads within a decade.
Heretofore confined to specific fields of activity, AI research now seeks to bring about a “generally intelligent” AI capable of executing tasks in multiple fields. A growing percentage of human activity will, within a measurable time period, be driven by AI algorithms. But these algorithms, being mathematical interpretations of observed data, do not explain the underlying reality that produces them. Paradoxically, as the world becomes more transparent, it will also become increasingly mysterious. What will distinguish that new world from the one we have known? How will we live in it? How will we manage AI, improve it, or at the very least prevent it from doing harm, culminating in the most ominous concern: that AI, by mastering certain competencies more rapidly and definitively than humans, could over time diminish human competence and the human condition itself as it turns it into data.
Artificial intelligence will in time bring extraordinary benefits to medical science, clean-energy provision, environmental issues, and many other areas. But precisely because AI makes judgments regarding an evolving, as-yet-undetermined future, uncertainty and ambiguity are inherent in its results. There are three areas of special concern:
First, that AI may achieve unintended results. Science fiction has imagined scenarios of AI turning on its creators. More likely is the danger that AI will misinterpret human instructions due to its inherent lack of context. A famous recent example was the AI chatbot called Tay, designed to generate friendly conversation in the language patterns of a 19-year-old girl. But the machine proved unable to define the imperatives of “friendly” and “reasonable” language installed by its instructors and instead became racist, sexist, and otherwise inflammatory in its responses. Some in the technology world claim that the experiment was ill-conceived and poorly executed, but it illustrates an underlying ambiguity: To what extent is it possible to enable AI to comprehend the context that informs its instructions? What medium could have helped Tay define for itself offensive, a word upon whose meaning humans do not universally agree? Can we, at an early stage, detect and correct an AI program that is acting outside our framework of expectation? Or will AI, left to its own devices, inevitably develop slight deviations that could, over time, cascade into catastrophic departures?
Second, that in achieving intended goals, AI may change human thought processes and human values. AlphaGo defeated the world Go champions by making strategically unprecedented moves—moves that humans had not conceived and have not yet successfully learned to overcome. Are these moves beyond the capacity of the human brain? Or could humans learn them now that they have been demonstrated by a new master?
Before AI began to play Go, the game had varied, layered purposes: A player sought not only to win, but also to learn new strategies potentially applicable to other of life’s dimensions. For its part, by contrast, AI knows only one purpose: to win. It “learns” not conceptually but mathematically, by marginal adjustments to its algorithms. So in learning to win Go by playing it differently than humans do, AI has changed both the game’s nature and its impact. Does this single-minded insistence on prevailing characterize all AI?
Other AI projects work on modifying human thought by developing devices capable of generating a range of answers to human queries. Beyond factual questions (“What is the temperature outside?”), questions about the nature of reality or the meaning of life raise deeper issues. Do we want children to learn values through discourse with untethered algorithms? Should we protect privacy by restricting AI’s learning about its questioners? If so, how do we accomplish these goals?
If AI learns exponentially faster than humans, we must expect it to accelerate, also exponentially, the trial-and-error process by which human decisions are generally made: to make mistakes faster and of greater magnitude than humans do. It may be impossible to temper those mistakes, as researchers in AI often suggest, by including in a program caveats requiring “ethical” or “reasonable” outcomes. Entire academic disciplines have arisen out of humanity’s inability to agree upon how to define these terms. Should AI therefore become their arbiter?
Third, that AI may reach intended goals, but be unable to explain the rationale for its conclusions. In certain fields—pattern recognition, big-data analysis, gaming—AI’s capacities already may exceed those of humans. If its computational power continues to compound rapidly, AI may soon be able to optimize situations in ways that are at least marginally different, and probably significantly different, from how humans would optimize them. But at that point, will AI be able to explain, in a way that humans can understand, why its actions are optimal? Or will AI’s decision making surpass the explanatory powers of human language and reason? Through all human history, civilizations have created ways to explain the world around them—in the Middle Ages, religion; in the Enlightenment, reason; in the 19th century, history; in the 20th century, ideology. The most difficult yet important question about the world into which we are headed is this: What will become of human consciousness if its own explanatory power is surpassed by AI, and societies are no longer able to interpret the world they inhabit in terms that are meaningful to them?
How is consciousness to be defined in a world of machines that reduce human experience to mathematical data, interpreted by their own memories? Who is responsible for the actions of AI? How should liability be determined for their mistakes? Can a legal system designed by humans keep pace with activities produced by an AI capable of outthinking and potentially outmaneuvering them?
Ultimately, the term artificial intelligence may be a misnomer. To be sure, these machines can solve complex, seemingly abstract problems that had previously yielded only to human cognition. But what they do uniquely is not thinking as heretofore conceived and experienced. Rather, it is unprecedented memorization and computation. Because of its inherent superiority in these fields, AI is likely to win any game assigned to it. But for our purposes as humans, the games are not only about winning; they are about thinking. By treating a mathematical process as if it were a thought process, and either trying to mimic that process ourselves or merely accepting the results, we are in danger of losing the capacity that has been the essence of human cognition.
The implications of this evolution are shown by a recently designed program, AlphaZero, which plays chess at a level superior to chess masters and in a style not previously seen in chess history. On its own, in just a few hours of self-play, it achieved a level of skill that took human beings 1,500 years to attain. Only the basic rules of the game were provided to AlphaZero. Neither human beings nor human-generated data were part of its process of self-learning. If AlphaZero was able to achieve this mastery so rapidly, where will AI be in five years? What will be the impact on human cognition generally? What is the role of ethics in this process, which consists in essence of the acceleration of choices?
Typically, these questions are left to technologists and to the intelligentsia of related scientific fields. Philosophers and others in the field of the humanities who helped shape previous concepts of world order tend to be disadvantaged, lacking knowledge of AI’s mechanisms or being overawed by its capacities. In contrast, the scientific world is impelled to explore the technical possibilities of its achievements, and the technological world is preoccupied with commercial vistas of fabulous scale. The incentive of both these worlds is to push the limits of discoveries rather than to comprehend them. And governance, insofar as it deals with the subject, is more likely to investigate AI’s applications for security and intelligence than to explore the transformation of the human condition that it has begun to produce.
The Enlightenment started with essentially philosophical insights spread by a new technology. Our period is moving in the opposite direction. It has generated a potentially dominating technology in search of a guiding philosophy. Other countries have made AI a major national project. The United States has not yet, as a nation, systematically explored its full scope, studied its implications, or begun the process of ultimate learning. This should be given a high national priority, above all, from the point of view of relating AI to humanistic traditions.
AI developers, as inexperienced in politics and philosophy as I am in technology, should ask themselves some of the questions I have raised here in order to build answers into their engineering efforts. The U.S. government should consider a presidential commission of eminent thinkers to help develop a national vision. This much is certain: If we do not start this effort soon, before long we shall discover that we started too late.
I do not recall ever seeing a single joint publication focused solely on Strategy in joint doctrine.
I think the author must have been a National War College graduate or faculty member.
I think this will be useful not only for PME but also in civilian institutions that focus on security studies and strategy.
Note that I have excerpted the definitions of interests below.
Key chapter quotes:
Chapter I Theory
“Without a strategy, facing up to any problem or striving for any objective would be considered negligent.” Sir Lawrence Freedman Strategy: A History
Chapter II Strategic Ends and Means
“The most fundamental task in devising a grand strategy is to determine a nation’s national interests. Once they are identified, they drive a nation’s foreign policy and military strategy; they determine the basic direction that it takes, the types and amounts of resources that it needs, and the manner in which the state must employ them to succeed. Because of the critical role that national interests play, they must be carefully justified, not merely assumed.” Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America
Chapter III Strategic Ways
“The most complete and happy victory is this: to compel one’s enemy to give up his purpose, while suffering no harm oneself.” Flavius Belisarius (505-565)
Chapter IV Assessing Strategy
“No plan of operation extends with certainty beyond contact with the enemy’s main hostile force.” Field Marshal General Helmuth von Moltke the Elder Chief of the German General Staff (1857-1888)
JDN 1-18, "Strategy." 25 Apr 18
This joint doctrine note (JDN) provides guidance to develop, implement strategy, and assess strategy. It focuses on the development of national-level military strategy and how the military instrument of power is used, in combination with the other instruments of national power, in pursuit of policy objectives. It discusses the essential elements of any strategy; the relationship of ends, ways, and means; and the interaction among strategic objectives, national strategy, and military strategy. It also examines strategies that may be developed in different situations. Finally, it looks at how strategy is made, who makes it, what moral criteria guide strategic decisions, and what pitfalls may occur in the making of strategy.
One approach is to categorize national interests as vital, important, and peripheral.
Vital interests: What are we willing to die for? States generally have four vital interests: security of the home territory, safety of citizens at home and abroad, economic prosperity, and preservation of the national way of life.
Important interests: What are we willing to fight for? Nations important interests generally include freedom of access to the global commons, regional stability, secure alliances, or the promotion of the state’s values.
Peripheral interests: What are we willing to fund (deploy peacekeepers, balance trade deficits)?
Ambassador Joseph DeTrani and I participated in a 20 minute talk show "Washington Talk" with host Eunjung Cho produced by the Voice of America. This is broadcast in both South Korea and north Korea and the target audience is the elite in Pyongyang.
Unfortunately I do not think we solved the denuclearization problem. :-)
The video is in English with Korean subtitles and is at this link:
[Washington Talk] North Korea denuclearization solution ...
Washington tackles a weekly analysis of North Korean hot issues with Washington experts. This week, we will examine whether the US and North Korea will be able to find contacts in the denuclearization law, and analyze the meaning of Korean art troupes' Pyongyang performances.
This event for the Institute of Corean American Studies took place yesterday on Capitol Hill. Dr. Taro O and I had to do an impromptu talk in place of the Honorable Mary Beth Long who could not make it at the last minute. My remarks are first followed by Dr. O and the William Brown and Larry Niksch.
Edward Luttwak followed with a talk (at the 1 hour mark) on how unprepared is the ROK government and military based on his four visits to the Peninsula since Jimmy Carter was President. I have never heard such a disrespectful presentation that was extremely insulting to not only our allies but also to every US commander in Korea since Jimmy Carter. Needless to say I was incredulous when I heard his presentation.
Last to speak is Tong Kim (at the 2:04 mark). He is a career State Department translator who has spent decades translating for our senior most US officials to include our Presidents in north and South Korea. He accompanied Secretary Albright to north Korea, among other trips to Pyongyang. He has met more senior north Korean officials than any American.
U.S.-North Korea Talks A group Korean Peninsula analysts shared their views and insights on the strategies President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un can bring to their meeting scheduled for later in the spring. The panelists also gave a historic perspective of previous U.S.-North Korean talks and what some of the drawbacks can be when negotiating with the North Korean regime. close
PEOPLE IN THIS VIDEO
William BrownFellowInstitute for Corean-American Studies
Sang Joo KimSenior Fellow & Executive V.P.Institute for Corean-American Studies
Synja KimPresidentInstitute for Corean-American Studies
Tong KimFellowInstitute for Corean-American Studies
Edward N. LuttwakConsultantDepartment of Defense->Office of Net Assessment
I did a Voice of America talk show yesterday with Frank Jannuzi for broadcast into north Korea (and it is shown in South Korea as well). (It is in English with Korean subtitles).
I think the title should be North Korea's Nuclear Talks with South Korea US Combined Training Prospects. I think this went from English to Korean and back to English.
Washington tackles a weekly analysis of North Korean hot issues with Washington experts. This week, we will evaluate the role of Korea as a "dialogue partner" between the US and North Korea on the occasion of the PyeongChang Olympics, and look at the implications of the US union training, which is expected to resume next month. Progress: Jo Eun Jung. Daring: Frank Jannuzi (President of Mansfield Foundation), David Maxwell (ICAS Senior Researcher, Korea Institute for National Unification)
We should remember that north Korea considers the ROK/US Combined Forces Command exercises a provocation while north Korea conducts provocations that includes shelling civilian and military personnel on islands and murdering 46 South Korean sailors when it sank the Cheonan.
north Korean propaganda has pundits, progressives (in the ROK) and the press (and those who sympathize with north Korea) calling for another postponement or even cancellation or a at least a reduction or scaling back of the upcoming exercises. But we should ask ourselves objectively what do we think we will get from north Korea if we postpone, cancel, or scale back the exercises? What do these people think the north will do in return?
Will the north end its provocations to gain political and economic concessions?
Will it end its winter and summer training cycles?
Will it withdraw the thousands of artillery and rocket systems along the DMZ?
Will it cease its infiltration of spies and SOF into the South?
Will it cease its unification campaign using subversion, coercion, and if necessary force?
Will it end seeking to split the ROK/US Alliance?
Will it ends its global illicit activities (counterfeiting, drug trafficking, use of slave labor)?
Will it end its proliferation activities around the world?
Will it end its WMD cooperation with Syria and Iran?
Will it end its human rights violations and crimes against humanity?
Will it come to the negotiating table?
Will it pledge to denuclearize?
Will it denuclearize?
Does anyone think that postponement, cancellation or scaling back of the exercises will result in a reduction in tensions?
The only thing we will see happen if we postpone, cancel, scale back the exercises is that the regime will shift fires to new propaganda targets and continue all of the above. The only thing we will get in return for postponing the exercises are:
A reduction in ROK/US military readiness.
A reduction in ROK/US deterrent capabilities.
More emboldened north Korean propaganda as it will deem cancellation a success (and it will still focus on the exercises even if we scale it back to a one platoon, one aircraft, and one ship exercise)
More demands on the ROK/US alliance that will not be reciprocated by the regime.
And of course all of the above is not all inclusive, the north will think of many more ways to benefit from our decision to cancel the exercises.
We should remember that the reason for the exercises is due to the stated and demonstrated threat to the very existence of our blood ally the Republic of Korea.
The bottom line is that we will get nothing in return for postponement or cancellation of the exercises. Some might feel good about doing it in the misguided idea that it will somehow change north Korean behavior and reduce tensions but I believe that they could not be more wrong.
N. Korea issues warning over U.S. military provocations
SEOUL, March 3 (Yonhap) -- North Korea's representative told the United Nations-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva last month that Pyongyang stands ready to fight back against any military provocation from the United States, the North's official media reported Saturday.
The Korean Central News Agency quoted the North's representative to the U.N. office in Geneva as telling the plenary meeting of the U.N. disarmament conference on Tuesday that it is a legitimate right of a sovereign state to take measures to increase its national defense capability for coping with outside threats.
"(North Korea) was compelled to possess a nuclear deterrent in order to protect its sovereignty and the security of its nation from the harsh hostile policy and nuclear threat of the U.S. that have persisted for years," the unidentified representative was quoted as saying in English.
"However, the hostile forces led by the U.S. labeled the exercise of this legitimate right as a 'threat to global peace' and misused the voting mechanism of the U.N. Security Council to cook up several 'sanctions resolutions' in an attempt to deprive the DPRK of its self-defensive right." The DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.
The North's representative then accused the U.S. of "amassing huge strategic assets in and around the Korean Peninsula, and mulling staging joint military exercises aimed at a pre-emptive nuclear attack on North Korea."
"In order to defend itself from such threats, the DPRK had access to nuclear weapons, treasured sword of justice. As we have stated on numerous occasions, we will consider any type of blockade as an act of war against us, and if the U.S. has indeed the guts to confront us in any 'rough' manner, we will not (hesitate) to respond to it," the representative said.
A Reuters photo taken Feb. 27, 2018, shows Han Tae-song, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, speaking at the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.Photo by: Yonhap
A Reuters photo taken Feb. 27, 2018, shows Han Tae-song, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, speaking at the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.Photo by: Yonhap