{"id":96188,"date":"2017-07-31T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T11:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=96188"},"modified":"2017-07-30T16:34:31","modified_gmt":"2017-07-30T15:34:31","slug":"trump-intel-chief-north-korea-learned-from-libya-war-to-never-give-up-nukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/07\/trump-intel-chief-north-korea-learned-from-libya-war-to-never-give-up-nukes\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Intel Chief: North Korea Learned from Libya War to \u201cNever\u201d Give Up Nukes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspects troops of Unit 534 of the Korean People\u2019s Army on Jan. 12, 2014. KNS\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

29 Jul 2017 – <\/em>The media is now filled with headlines about North Korea\u2019s missile test<\/a> on Friday, which demonstrated that its ICBMs may be able to reach the continental U.S. What isn\u2019t\u00a0mentioned in any of these stories is\u00a0how we got to this point \u2014 in particular, what Dan Coats, President Donald Trump\u2019s Director of National Security,\u00a0explained last week<\/a>\u00a0at the Aspen Security Forum.<\/p>\n

North Korea\u2019s 33-year-old dictator Kim Jong-un is not crazy, said Coats. In fact, he has \u201csome rationale backing his actions\u201d regarding the country\u2019s nuclear weapons. That rationale is the way\u00a0the U.S. has demonstrated that North Korea must keep them\u00a0to ensure \u201csurvival for his regime, survival for his country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim, according to Coats, \u201chas watched, I think, what has happened around the world relative to nations that possess nuclear capabilities and the leverage they have and seen that having the nuclear card in your pocket results in a lot of deterrence capability.\u201d In particular, \u201cThe lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes \u2026 \u00a0is, unfortunately: If you had nukes, never give them up. If you don\u2019t have them, get them.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is, of course, blindingly obvious<\/a> and has been since the U.S. helped oust longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi\u2019s regime in 2011. But U.S. officials have rarely if ever acknowledged this reality. Here\u2019s the timeline:<\/p>\n

In December 2003, Libya announced that it would surrender\u00a0its biological and chemical weapons stockpiles, as well as its rudimentary nuclear weapons program.<\/p>\n

In celebrating Libya\u2019s decision, President George W. Bush declared<\/a> that the rest of the world should take away the message that \u201cleaders who abandon the pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them, will find an open path to better relations with the United States and other free nations.\u201d Paula DeSutter, Bush\u2019s Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance, explained that<\/a> \u201cwe want Libya to be a model for other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2011, the U.S. and NATO conducted a bombing campaign to assist Libyan rebels in overthrowing the Gaddafi government. Gaddafi himself was captured by one rebel faction, who apparently sodomized him with a bayonet<\/a> and then killed him.<\/p>\n

You would definitely expect this to get\u00a0the attention of North Korea\u2019s ruling clique \u2014 especially given that Iraq had also disarmed and then been invaded, with its dictator executed by a howling mob.<\/p>\n

And, indeed, North Korea said this explicitly<\/a> at the time. Its foreign ministry stated, \u201cThe Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson,\u201d which was that the\u00a0deal to rid Libya of weapons of mass destruction had been \u201can invasion tactic to disarm the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the Obama administration shamelessly denied this. A\u00a0reporter told<\/a> State Department spokesperson Mark Toner that \u201cNorth Koreans are looking at this\u201d and it didn\u2019t \u201cgive them a lot of incentive to give up their nuclear weapons.\u201d Toner replied that \u201cwhere [Libya is]\u00a0at today has absolutely no connection with them renouncing their nuclear program and nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, North Koreans and other countries can read, and so understand what America\u2019s foreign policy elite has repeatedly explained why we want small countries to disarm. It\u2019s not because we fear that they<\/em> will use WMD in a first strike on\u00a0us<\/em>, since nations\u00a0like North Korea understand that would immediately lead to their obliteration. Instead, our mandarins explicitly say the problem is that unconventional weapons help small countries deter us<\/em> from attacking them<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There are many examples<\/a>. For instance, in a 2001 memo, then-Secretary of Defense\u00a0Donald Rumsfeld stated:<\/p>\n

Several of these [small enemy nations] are intensely hostile to the United States and are arming to deter us from bringing our conventional or nuclear power to bear in a regional crisis. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

[U]niversally available [WMD] technologies can be used to create \u201casymmetric\u201d responses\u00a0that cannot defeat our forces, but can deny access to critical areas in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia\u2026\u201casymmetric\u201d approaches can limit our ability to apply military power.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The think tank Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative pressure group that had a heavy influence on George W. Bush\u2019s administration, made the same point in an influential paper called \u201cRebuilding America\u2019s Defenses<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

The United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action\u00a0by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself. Of all the new and current missions for U.S. armed forces, this must have priority. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

In the post-Cold War era, America and its allies, rather than the Soviet Union, have become the primary objects of deterrence and\u00a0it is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, even Dan Coats himself has said this, in a 2008 op-ed<\/a> he co-wrote. \u201cAn Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons capability would be strategically untenable,\u201d Coats said, because it would possess\u00a0a \u201cdeterrent\u201d against U.S. attack. And to prevent Iran from acquiring the ability to deter us, he explained, we might have to attack them.<\/p>\n

Video of Coats\u2019 full remarks are below: (Source: The Aspen Institute<\/a>)<\/p>\n

DAN COATS: It has become a potential existential threat to the United States and it is of great concern.<\/em><\/p>\n

LESTER HOLT: And in terms of the number of options available publicly we know that there aren\u2019t a lot of great options there, and a lot of it is trying to see into Kim Jong-un\u2019s head and that\u2019s I suspect that most difficult kind of intelligence trying to predict someone\u2019s behavior.<\/em><\/p>\n

COATS:\u00a0 Well, he\u2019s demonstrated behavior publicly that really raises some questions about who he is and how he thinks and how he acts, what his behavior is, but our assessment has come \u2014 has pretty much resulted in the fact that while he\u2019s a very unusual type of person, he\u2019s not crazy.\u00a0 And there is some rationale backing his actions which are survival, survival for his regime, survival for his country, and he has watched I think what has happened around the world relative to nations that possess nuclear capabilities and the leverage they have and seen that having the nuclear card in your pocket results in a lot of deterrence capability.\u00a0 The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes and Ukraine giving up its nukes is unfortunately if you had nukes, never give them up.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t have them, get them, and we see a lot of nations now thinking about how do we get them and none more persistent than North Korea \u2026<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

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Jon Schwarz<\/a> – jon.schwarz@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dan Coats did something truly shocking at the Aspen Security Forum: He told the truth about the effects of U.S. foreign policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}