WP: Clinton Pentagon officials call for strike on North Korea ballistic missile facility if Pyongyang "persists in its launch preparations":

Former defense secretary William J. Perry has called on President Bush to launch a preemptive strike against the long-range ballistic missile that U.S. intelligence analysts say North Korea is preparing to launch.

In an opinion article that appears in today's Washington Post, Perry and former assistant defense secretary Ashton B. Carter argue that if North Korea continues launch preparations, Bush should immediately declare that the United States will destroy the missile before it can be fired.

Perry and Carter suggest using a cruise missile launched from a submarine and carrying a high-explosive warhead. "The effect on the Taepodong would be devastating," they write, using the name of the Korean missile. "The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive -- the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed."

As President Bill Clinton's defense secretary, Perry oversaw preparation for airstrikes on North Korean nuclear facilities in 1994, an attack that was never carried out. He has remained deeply involved in Korean policy issues and is widely respected in national-security circles, especially among senior military officers. He has been a critic of the Bush administration's approach to North Korea.

"We believe diplomacy might have precluded the current situation," Perry and Carter said. "But diplomacy has failed, and we cannot sit by and let this deadly threat mature."

Here's the Bill Perry/Ash Carter oped:

...The United States should emphasize that the strike, if mounted, would not be an attack on the entire country, or even its military, but only on the missile that North Korea pledged not to launch -- one designed to carry nuclear weapons. We should sharply warn North Korea against further escalation.

North Korea could respond to U.S. resolve by taking the drastic step of threatening all-out war on the Korean Peninsula. But it is unlikely to act on that threat. Why attack South Korea, which has been working to improve North-South relations (sometimes at odds with the United States) and which was openly opposing the U.S. action? An invasion of South Korea would bring about the certain end of Kim Jong Il's regime within a few bloody weeks of war, as surely he knows. Though war is unlikely, it would be prudent for the United States to enhance deterrence by introducing U.S. air and naval forces into the region at the same time it made its threat to strike the Taepodong. If North Korea opted for such a suicidal course, these extra forces would make its defeat swifter and less costly in lives -- American, South Korean and North Korean.

This is a hard measure for President Bush to take. It undoubtedly carries risk. But the risk of continuing inaction in the face of North Korea's race to threaten this country would be greater. ...

(I studied with Carter in the late 1990s when he was working the North Korea problem as a consultant with Perry to the Clinton administration, and informed us how close we had come to war in 1994. ... As back then, one wonders if we are far closer to a military option with Korea now than might be indicated by the relative lack of press chatter.)

Update. Or is this just more Kabuki? From a colleague knowledgeable about the issue: "Everyone is trying to depict North Korea as so unpredictable and crazy. It’s just the opposite: They’re totally predictable. All this is just another bluff to get more aid and to strengthen their bargaining position. South Korea already came out today and said they didn’t think Pyongyang was going to launch. It’s just another act in the North Korean kabuki." Bill Arkin and Noah Shachtman think the crisis is overblown too.

I asked Asia expert Chris Nelson what he thinks. He writes, "The only plausible explanation I have seen so far is that Perry thinks this will get the Norks' attention that everyone is seriously pissed of, so they better back down."

So is the Perry/Carter oped a diplomatic tactic in its own right? From two Korea experts Pyongyang is familiar with as deeply serious and who have urged Washington towards diplomacy 'til now?

"That's not to say folks agree with [Perry's] analysis," Nelson adds. "They think Perry has flipped out."

Posted by Laura at June 21, 2006 10:51 PM