An East Coast defense expert says there’s a 90 percent chance that North Korea will start a shooting exchange with South Korea that will result in a cycle of successively larger retaliations by both sides — a scenario that could draw the United States back into conflict on the peninsula.
John Pike, director of think tank GlobalSecurity.org, said it has become "quite clear" that North Korea’s young "supreme leader," Kim Jong Un, "needs to be seen as the public face of a successful military confrontation with the Americans."
North Korea is running out of "nonkinetic," or nonwarfare, moves, Pike said.
"So they are going to have to start shooting as they have done in the past," Pike said. "I don’t know exactly what they are going to shoot at, but they are going to find something in South Korea to shoot at."
Pike said he doesn’t know when that will happen, but suspects the South Koreans "aren’t going to stand for it, and they will hit back — only harder." The North will then respond in kind, he contends.
"Kim Jong Un’s challenge is to demonstrate that he is the iron-willed commander, that he will not flinch in the face of adversity," Pike said by telephone Thursday.
Several days into a new limited conflict, China "hopefully" could exert its influence on its nuclear neighbor to still the North’s military actions, said Pike, who founded GlobalSecurity in 2000 in Alexandria, Va., and before that worked for the Federation of American Scientists.
The scenario is among the outcomes that defense experts foresee from the brinkmanship that has seen North Korea threaten South Korea as well as Hawaii and other parts of the United States with nuclear attack, and current U.S.-South Korean exercises with nuclear-capable B-2 and B-52 bombers and F-22 fighters.
There are risks that a provocation aimed at South Korea or U.S. forces might spin out of control, retired U.S. Adm. Dennis Blair, a former head of U.S. Pacific Command, told Bloomberg News.
"I’m not relaxed about this one," said Blair, a former director of national intelligence with the Obama administration, citing the youth and inexperience of Kim, 30, who took over in December 2011 after his father’s death.
"I think this one’s more dangerous than in 2010," Blair told the news organization.
The South Korean navy ship Cheonan sank March 26 of that year, and 46 sailors died. A South Korean investigation, with participation from the United States, determined a North Korean submarine torpedo was to blame.
In November 2010, North Korea shelled a South Korean border island, killing four.
Brad Glosserman, executive director of the Pacific Forum Center for Strategic and International Studies in Honolulu, said GlobalSecurity’s Pike "is a very smart guy" and that the scenario he outlined "is definitely a possibility."
But he sees another possible outcome. Kim could launch a missile to celebrate the April 15 birthday of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, who invaded South Korea in 1950.
"Just a missile launch," he said by phone. "Doesn’t launch it at anybody, but just does it as a show of defiance." Kim could then say, "We have intimidated the foreigners," and de-escalate, he said.
Glosserman added that the "great unknown" is Kim. Does he have a chip on his shoulder? Is he reckless? How constrained is he by others around him?
"We just don’t know how he reacts and how he responds," he said.
However, if the North and South start an escalating tit-for-tat shooting exchange, the United States, being a South Korean ally, "has a very high probability of being involved," Glosserman said.
Air Force Lt. Col. DeDe Halfhill, deputy director of U.S. Pacific Command public affairs at Camp Smith, said, "We take the current rhetoric and actions very seriously, and continue to monitor the situation closely."
"We remain in regular contact with U.S. Forces Korea, whose commander, Gen. (James) Thurman, is coordinating closely with U.S. Ambassador Sung Kim and South Korean officials and military commanders," Halfhill said in an email.
"We are taking a range of prudent measures, including on missile defense, to enhance both homeland and allied security," she said. "Our actions — the B-2 and B-52 flights — have been important steps to reassure our allies, demonstrate our resolve to the North, and reduce pressure on Seoul to take unilateral action. This has reduced the chance of miscalculation and provocation."
Despite the rhetoric coming from the North, "we are not seeing changes to the North Korean military posture — such as large-scale mobilizations and positioning of forces," she said.
Experts disagree on whether the North has miniaturized nuclear warheads that can be placed on missiles. George Lewis, a senior research associate at the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University in New York, said North Korea likely doesn’t have that ability.
"I’m completely confident he (Kim) doesn’t have the capability to launch a nuclear warhead on a missile towards either Hawaii or any other part of the United States," said Lewis, who also runs the website mostlymissiledefense.com. "I’m not confident that he might not have the capability to drive (a nuclear weapon) in a minisubmarine (off) the coast of South Korea or something."
GlobalSecurity’s Pike said he suspects the North does have miniaturized nuclear warheads.
"They’ve been in cahoots with Pakistan for 15 years now," and Pakistan has such technology, Pike said.
Pike also lays out a worst-case scenario with a short-lived but all-out conventional war on the peninsula, and North Korea, losing its grip, lobbing a nuclear missile toward Pearl Harbor or Guam to get the Chinese involved.
The Pentagon said it is deploying a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system to Guam, and Pearl Harbor has five Navy ships with ballistic missile shoot-down capability.
The Defense Department "is taking a range of prudent measures to position our assets and capabilities to best defend against potential threats," said Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Cathy Wilkinson.
The guided-missile destroyers USS John S. McCain and Decatur "have arrived at predetermined positions in the Western Pacific, where they will be poised to respond to any missile threats to our allies or our territory," she said.
