OPINION
Why China wants North Korea to be a nuclear threat
By Ralph Peters
August 3, 2017 | 7:28pm
Photo: A North Korean soldier guards the border near the Chinese border town of Dandong, northeastern Liaoning province of China
AP
If worse came to worst and North Korea detonated a nuclear warhead above Honolulu, the losses would include up to 44,000 US troops, as well as our vital bases ringing the city — beginning with Pearl Harbor.
Who would benefit?
Not North Korea. We’d level that mountainous country.
Certainly not us, with our Pacific forces crippled to a degree the Japanese couldn’t have hoped to achieve in 1941.
The sole winner would be China — not even a party to the conflict. And that is a cardinal reason why Beijing will not help us halt Pyongyang’s nuke and missile programs.
Washington has deluded itself into bipartisan groupthink yet again, desperate to believe that, if only we better explain our argument, China will turn on its most important ally, North Korea. Our folly ignores the strategic perspective entirely: We don’t even try to identify China’s ultimate goals.
The central Chinese ambition is to become the dominant military (as well as economic) power in the Pacific. North Korea could fulfill that ambition for Beijing without the Chinese firing one shot.
Nor would our losses be limited to Pearl Harbor, Pacific Command Headquarters at Camp H.M. Smith, Ft. Shafter, Schofield Barracks, Hickam and Wheeler Fields, the vast and venerable Tripler Army Medical Center or the various other military facilities we’ve concentrated around Honolulu.
North Korea would not rely on a single missile and one lonely warhead, but would wait to attack until it possessed an arsenal it believed could ravage our capabilities and break our will at one blow. (The North Koreans are confident that we lack the guts to use nukes even in response — they don’t understand us any better than we understand them.)
Hawaii would top the target list, but Pyongyang’s intermediate range missiles would aim at our bases in Japan — not least, on Okinawa — while ICBMs also would target our bases in northwestern Washington state, from Joint Base Lewis-McChord to the Bangor naval base that’s our only Trident ballistic missile submarine sustainment facility in the Pacific theater. One nuke on Bangor, and our indispensable Trident subs are homeless.
But the biggest mainland target would be the complex of Navy and Marine bases in San Diego County, Calif.
With its active-duty population of 110,000 service members, the county’s the Pacific heart of our Marine Corps, as well as the home port for 66 irreplaceable surface vessels and submarines, almost a quarter of our current fleet.
Hit those three target complexes hard enough — Hawaii, San Diego County and the greater Puget Sound area in Washington, then toss in Guam, and China inherits the Pacific by default — unless we want to fight Beijing with our arms already broken.
Did I mention the Panama Canal? In World War II, the canal we built gave us a vital strategic advantage as we transferred forces and materiel between the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.
Today — thank you, President Carter — the canal is operated by a Chinese company that could close the canal to “all combatant nations” in time of war. North Korea has no navy to speak of, so that means us.
We look like strategic idiots.
Oh, Washington wonks will object that China would be too worried about North Korean refugees flooding Manchuria to let a war happen. Sorry, but Beijing is confident that the People’s Liberation Army could handle any footloose North Koreans.
Radiation blowing across the Yalu into northeast China? A small price to pay for an otherwise bloodless strategic victory. Anyway, the Chinese attitude remains the same as that of Stalin’s generals in the Great Patriotic War: “We’ve got a lot of people.”
Yes, the scenario outlined above is the worst-case version. But in the military, you always plan for the worst (a dictum ignored, to disastrous effects, in the US invasion of Iraq).
Any serious strategist with a grasp of history would describe our current responses to the North Korean threat as irresponsible. I’d call it frivolous. Certainly, that’s how Kim Jong-un and his cadres see it.
So we blunder on, fingers crossed, while the Chinese revel in our strategic blindness.
With a partial doomsday looming, I have to end with an embarrassing confession: I’ve always secretly wanted one of those awful Hawaiian shirts on sale in Waikiki junk shops. I’m beginning to feel I should make my purchase soon.
Ralph Peters is Fox News’ strategic analyst.
READ MORE: http://nypost.com/2017/08/03/why-china-wants-north-korea-to-be-a-nuclear-threat/
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The sole winner would be China — not even a party to the conflict. And that is a cardinal reason why Beijing will not help us halt Pyongyang’s nuke and missile programs.
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What do YOU think?
It seems to be very HARD to believe that many world leaders DON'T SEE "this" !?
It is clearly that ALL communists ARE BRUTAL and LIAR.
ALL of them CAN NOT BE TRUSTED.
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Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
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