[American officials
described the new “counter provocation” plan as calling for an immediate but
proportional “response in kind” — hitting the source of any North Korean attack
with similar weapons. For example, if the North Koreans were to shell a South
Korean island that had military installations, as has occurred in the past, the
plan calls for the South to retaliate quickly with a barrage of artillery of
similar intensity.]
By David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker
WASHINGTON —
As North Korea hints at
new military provocations in the coming days, the United States and South Korea have
drawn up plans to respond more forcefully than in the recent past, but in a
limited way intended to prevent an escalation to broader war.
Amid the rising
tensions, there were still efforts on many fronts on Sunday to limit the
possibility of military conflict. In an indirect but clear criticism of China’s longtime ally,
North Korea, Xi Jinping, China’s new president, said in
a speech on Sunday that no country in Asia “should be allowed to throw a region
and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain.”
A senior adviser to
President Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, appearing on the ABC program “This Week,” played
down the situation as “a pattern of behavior we’ve seen from the North Koreans
many times.”
Still, the escalating
tensions were underscored Sunday when the commander of American forces on the
Korean Peninsula, Gen. James D. Thurman, abruptly canceled a trip to Washington
for Congressional testimony and consultations. So did South Korea’s top
commander.
American officials
described the new “counter provocation” plan as calling for an immediate but
proportional “response in kind” — hitting the source of any North Korean attack
with similar weapons. For example, if the North Koreans were to shell a South
Korean island that had military installations, as has occurred in the past, the
plan calls for the South to retaliate quickly with a barrage of artillery of
similar intensity.
South Korea’s national
security director said Sunday that the North this week might launch one of its
new missiles. If so, Pentagon officials said they would be ready to calculate
its trajectory within seconds and try to shoot it down if it appeared headed
toward impact in South Korea, Japan or Guam, an American territory. But they
planned to do nothing if it were headed toward open water, even if it went over
Japan, as one previous North Korean test did.
The officials doubted
that the North’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, would risk aiming the missile at the
United States or its allies.
Mr. Obama, officials
say, has ruled out striking at the missiles while they are on their launchers —
when they are easiest to destroy — unless there is evidence they are being
fitted with nuclear warheads, which intelligence officials doubt North Korea
yet possesses.
The key, then, is how to
respond to anticipated North Korean hostilities while preventing the crisis
from escalating.
“How we carry out a
proportional retaliation without triggering a general conflict, or an assault
on Seoul, is the hardest part of the problem,” said Gary Samore, who served
until recently as Mr. Obama’s top nuclear adviser and is now the executive
director of Harvard’s Belfer Center
for Science and International Affairs. “Everyone is aware there are
not big margins for error here.”
Some of the public
language from the South Korean government suggests that Seoul and Washington
may not agree on how far any retaliation should go, although the agreement
between the two countries guarantees consultation. “Overreaction by South Korea
is a real risk — and we’re working on that problem,” a senior administration
official said.
South Korea’s new
president, Park Geun-hye, a daughter of a famed South Korean dictator from the
cold war, has indicated that she might also go after the North’s
command-and-control centers responsible for the provocation.
In the past, classified
addendums to the war plan for the Korean Peninsula have not been publicized. So
it is notable that agreement on a new plan was publicly disclosed — both to
deter the North and to reassure the population of the South. The nature of the
response is critical.
Ordering hostilities
short of war in an effort to stage-manage the agenda with Seoul and Washington
has been a major part of the playbook used by the past two generations of
leaders in the North: rapid escalation of a crisis until the United States and
South Korea buy temporary peace with aid or investments.
But some American
intelligence officials believe that Mr. Kim may have more to gain from striking
out at his enemies — within reason — to bolster his credentials with his
military, still deeply suspicious of his youth and inexperience.
The absence of a clear
understanding about when and how to use force on the peninsula reflects, in
part, the rapid shifts over the past 20 years between hard-line South Korean
governments and those advocating a “sunshine policy” of reaching out to the
North.
Ms. Park was elected on
a platform of reopening the possibility of warmer relations with the government
of Mr. Kim, but the rise in tensions has all but eliminated that opportunity,
at least for now. Under current agreements, the South Koreans remain in command
on the peninsula under normal armistice circumstances, but General Thurman, as
the commander of American and United Nations forces, would assume operational
control if war broke out. Wartime control is set to transfer to South Korea
after 2015.
Ms. Park would be under
extraordinary pressure to take action if the North acted out again. When the
Cheonan, a South Korean warship, was sunk in March 2010, her predecessor
decided not to strike back — and it took months to complete a study that
concluded the explosion aboard the ship had been caused by a torpedo shot from
a minisubmarine based just over the border in North Korea. Months later, the
North shelled a lightly inhabited island in the South — and was met by delayed
and ineffective return fire.
“The new agreement
defines action down to the tactical level and locks in alliance political
consultations at the highest level,” an American official said. The official
stressed that the South Korean military would take the lead in any response to
hostilities from the North short of war.
“North Korea has gotten
away with murder — literally — for decades, and the South Korean and American
forces have rarely responded with decisive military action,” said David S.
Maxwell, a retired Army colonel who served five tours in South Korea.
“It’s very important to
break the cycle of provocation,” said Mr. Maxwell, now the associate director
of the Center for Security Studies at
Georgetown University. “These responses have to be proportional. They have to
be delivered decisively, at the time and at the point of provocation.”
As part of prescheduled
military exercises with South Korea, and to prove America’s commitment to
regional security, the United States mounted an unusual, highly publicized show
of force. It included the decision to use nuclear-capable B-2 bombers, which
have a stealthy design to avoid detection, to conduct a mock bombing run in
South Korea.
At the same time, the
Navy moved two missile defense ships into the area, both of which carry
advanced radar and interceptor missiles. A ground-based system with a similar
missile defense capability was ordered moved to Guam, two years ahead of
schedule, to protect that territory and allow the two ships to patrol waters
closer to the Korean Peninsula.
A Pentagon official said
Sunday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had postponed tests of an
intercontinental ballistic missile that had been planned for this week,
concerned that they might “exacerbate the crisis with North Korea.” The tests
will be rescheduled.
The additional American
military presence is believed to be highly worrisome to Beijing, and it is
intended to be. It is an effort to demonstrate to the Chinese that unless they
get their ward under control, they will invite exactly the kind of American military
presence in northeast Asia that they are hoping will go away.
“There are some who
question our long-term staying power in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in
a time of spending constraints,” one American official said. “So it is
important to show our allies that we can still project power in a very
meaningful and rapid way.”
But seen from a North
Korean perspective, the Americans do not stand quite as tall as they once did.
After three successive American presidents have said they could not tolerate a
nuclear North Korea, they are tolerating it.
Moreover, the South has
made North Korean retaliation even easier. New housing developments sprawl
north of Seoul, in areas the South Koreans had once planned to keep as a buffer
zone — and well within range of more than 10,000 short-range artillery and
rocket launchers deployed by the North.
So far, the Obama
administration has not tried to interfere with a North Korean long-range
missile test, even though the North is prohibited from fielding these weapons
by United Nations Security Council resolutions.
But in the days leading
up to a 2006 test launching of a North Korean missile, two prominent Democrats,
William Perry, a former defense secretary, and Ashton B. Carter, a Harvard
professor who is currently the deputy secretary of defense, wrote in The
Washington Post that the Bush administration should destroy the
missile on the North Korean launching pad.
“Should the United
States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to
perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear
weapons to U.S. soil?” they wrote. “We believe not.”
In any event, that
missile blew up by itself, about 40 seconds after it was launched.
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.
