There’s no limited warfare option when it comes to open conflict with North Korea.
We're talking months of fighting.
You're going to see large amounts of artillery, large amounts of munitions, dropped from aircraft,
from B-52s, B-1s, B-2s.
You're going to see a shelling of the terrain on the Korean Peninsula that you only see
in the movies, from World War II and the Korean War.
This is a very brutal, very deadly regime.
In the event of a military conflict on the Korean Peninsula, we have a situation where
we could potentially be talking about the second, third, and 11th largest economies
in the world, engaged in a military conflict.
The scale of fighting will be greater than anything we've seen around the world since
the Korean War, not just on the Korean Peninsula.
I think that there is a general misperception among the American public as well as among
many of my colleagues here on the Hill, as well as, I believe, with the president of
the United States, that there's some sort of limited warfare that can occur with regards
to North Korea, that would be a surgical strike or a “bloody nose” attack that would not
result in mass casualties, and that's simply not true.
Given the fact that there is a 1.2 million-man army, some 6,500 armored vehicles, tanks,
some 12,000 artillery pieces, chemical weapons, some 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, the amount
of blood and treasure that will be expended if war resumes on the Korean Peninsula will
be on a scale that we have not seen since the Korean War, since the cessation of hostilities
in 1953.
From the very beginning, North Korea would likely fire chemical weapons, potentially
thousands, if not tens of thousands, of rounds.
We're talking about 25 million people in Seoul from all around the world, not just Korean citizens.
A possible 100,000 dead within the first few days and 10,000 the day after that from just
a conventional attack.
I don't think there needs to be any other reason to be concerned about this than just
that alone.
And then the US president, President Trump, would have to decide how does he respond to
that kind of thing?
It has been waiting for the right conditions in the past 65 years.
And at some point, when it deems it has the advantageous position, or when it has no other
option, it may very well attack South Korea, seeking to unify the peninsula under the Northern
regime's control, for one single purpose.
And that is to ensure the survival of the Kim family regime.
According to our commanders in Korea, they could fire something in the neighborhood of
500,000 artillery rounds, shells, and rockets within the first hour, and continue that pace
for probably several hours.
South Korea would, of course, retaliate, using their artillery to try to suppress the North
Korean artillery fire.
And so they would be firing into Pyongyang just as North Korea would be firing into Seoul,
the capital of South Korea.
Unfortunately, I believe that North Korea would be more likely to actually use biological
weapons than nuclear weapons.
One individual or a couple of individuals could deliver a strategic-level attack on
a city, a densely populated area, and expose tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands,
or over a million people to lethal doses of biological weapons.
They are so potent that one or two people with less than a kilogram, for example, of
anthrax, and a sprayer, a backpack sprayer, could deliver over a million doses, lethal
doses, of anthrax and kill tens of thousands or even over 100,000 people in just one attack.
In fact, I think that a military strike will only reinforce the belief among North Koreans
that they need nuclear weapons to make sure that they maintain their sovereignty and their
independence of action.
In the historical literature, we talked about a concept called “use it or lose it.”
As soon as we start attacking North Korea in a way where they could lose their weapons,
they will be tempted to use them.
So if we want to destroy his nuclear weapons, he may well start using them so that he can
get some utility from them, and that's an outcome we really don't want.
I think most people would say that peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula is the
preferred way of going about this, but I think that North Korea’s ambitions are fundamentally
at odds with US policy and South Korea’s policy.
What I learned on the ground talking to both military and civilian leaders is that Kim
Jong Un is not someone who is simply going to disappear.
You can't buy him off.
He is there to stay, and he is determined to retaliate in an overwhelming way, with whatever
weapons he has at his disposal.
We have to understand that trying to take the humanitarian tack with them isn't going
to get us very far.
We've got to be prepared to show them strength for them to respect us.
I would argue that we still have quite a bit of runway to try to shape the way he approaches
the nuclear weapons program.
I think that sanctions have never been tougher.
There are internal stresses in the regime as the sanctions take hold, and the diplomatic
isolation will continue to damage the regime’s ability to gain hard currency for its weapons programs.
Now, I think we owe it to ourselves and to our allies, and for global peace, to let the
maximum pressure work its way on North Korea.