Posted on 04/23/2003 10:56:41 AM PDT by Enemy Of The State
US vs Pyongyang: Watch Rumsfeld
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG KONG - As talks finally get under way between the United States and North Korea, the latter, which has made obstinacy and diplomatic misbehavior an art form, would do well to keep in mind the growing influence and staying power in Washington of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
With the US victory in Iraq all but declared, barely a year after a previous triumph in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld's influence has increased by several notches. Together with other neo-conservatives who urged the Iraq war, "Rummy", as he is affectionately known in Washington, is on a roll.
His plan to develop agile US forces, where marines and special forces are used in tandem with massive military power on four platforms (air, space, navy and army), is gaining in momentum. It appears that the Bush Doctrine of preventive war (against terrorism) has found a military equivalent.
Underpinning Rumsfeld's strategic belief is the efficacious mix of local and US forces to perform "3 Ds" missions: degrade, disrupt and destroy. Indeed, it was the shock of September 11, 2001, that caused a major shift in US thinking on how a "war on terror" would best be fought. Although Rumsfeld warned in 1996 of the imminent threat of a missile attack on the United States, in a report co-authored with Senator Warren Rudman, his insistence that the US should create a missile shield has since been played down.
The power of Rumsfeld is all the more interesting granted that he was considered a peripheral figure prior to the wafer-thin electoral victory of President George W Bush. Although the notion of the proverbial revolving door is a truism in Washington, where top figures who leave government are usually not to be heard from again for 10 years or more, this does not seem to apply to Rumsfeld. If anything, Rumsfeld, who left the Gerald Ford administration in 1975 as its defense secretary, has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence.
One could nevertheless point to the role of Vice President Dick Cheney in resuscitating Rumsfeld's career. Cheney was very close to the Bush family. Rumsfeld was also Cheney's superior when the latter was a chief of staff in the Ford administration.
But Cheney would not have been able to redeem Rumsfeld singlehandedly. Rumsfeld's ideology, clothed as it was in what Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security advisor, called "new realism", also proved a plus. New realism, a doctrine that was put out by Rice in Foreign Affairs a few months before the presidential victory of Bush, spoke of the importance of using considerable US power to prevent the rise of peer competitors. This doctrine has guided Bush's thinking as much as it has reinforced Rumsfeld's own position in the administration.
Now that Rumsfeld is at the helm, the time has come for Asia to understand his mental universe lest there be any miscalculation. None is more important than Rumsfeld's view on US forces in South Korea.
Contrary to the belief that the United States will not pull out of Asia, a conventional wisdom that is going around in the region as a geopolitical fact, there is every reason to worry that the US might do just that when it comes to the Korean Peninsula. The aim is to prevent the US from being an open target of North Korea should a war break out.
Some US specialists have also begun arguing that North Korea's constant blackmail can be countered by moving US forces away from fixed, immobile bases. This would strengthen the United States' negotiation with North Korea, as US forces would no longer be sitting ducks.
Indeed, Andrew Marshall, key strategic analyst at Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, has been toying with the idea of creating huge buoyant platforms that can double as the launch pads and runways of US warplanes. This idea has been well received by Rumsfeld, as he has long accepted Marshall's strategic advice.
Furthermore, with the democratization of South Korea in the 1980s, anti-American sentiment has been growing more salient by the day. While the US tend to refer to these anti-American groups as "dissidents" or North Korean sympathizers, the fact is their influence and respectability in Korean society is growing, not waning.
To be sure, Rumsfeld is not one to believe in the importance of bases, seeing them as a huge liability on US flexibility, both militarily and diplomatically. US and South Korean military officials have already discussed ways to consider a major shift in US forces on the Korean Peninsula that would give the South Korean army the primary role in defending the historic invasion routes to Seoul, 50 kilometers south of the North Korean border. This opens up the prospect of redeploying the 16,000-strong US 2nd Infantry Division from bases near the Demilitarized Zone to positions south of Seoul, well out of the way of any immediate threat from North Korean forces.
If Bush is re-elected next year, there is every likelihood that Rumsfeld will be retained in his present capacity as the secretary of defense. If North Korea continues to subject the United States, South Korea and Japan to repeated taunts, there is every reason to believe that, under the guidance of Rumsfeld, the US and its allies will seek to revolutionize the way Asian security has been arranged regarding North Korea.
Inevitably, Rumsfeld would be in a better position than anyone else to "re-engineer" Asian security - better even than Colin Powell, the current secretary of state. This is because Rumsfeld will have had two major war victories under his belt in the span of a few years. Possibly the only thing that can dethrone Rumsfeld is a public scandal. But this does not appear likely, as unlike Cheney, who is occasionally tarred as having special ties to the energy industry in the United States, Rumsfeld has none.
So, in short, it makes sense for the US to move their troops to the southern portion of the peninsula where it is harder to target them. If the N. Koreans move across the border our air power will decimate them before they get too far.
The only issue becomes nuclear. NK has said the only real protection anymore is nuclear. We must take that capability away from them and from other rogue states. Nuclear capability must remain extremely rare. We should be willing to go to war over that issue.
Conservatives coined neo-conservative to refer to liberals who had seen the light and became conservative. Many even switched parties. Ronald Reagan is a perfect example.
The left cannot stand the fact that the right might influence language.
Liberals have successfully co-opted the word "neo-con" and have given it their own definition.
Heaven forbid that conservatives could define their own words.
yitbos
These are featured in the novel "1984", where Orwell calls them "Floating Fortresses".
From your post to Gods ears!!
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