Tobin Harshaw's interview with retired General Merrill McPeak

[soryang]

Former Air Force General McPeak has published an interview at Bloomberg, where he opines on a range of possibilities military and diplomatic on the mostly unexplored US options in Korea. I found the interview at Bloomberg when I searched the Korean news this morning on the "smart phone." The influence of the two Iraq wars on General McPeak's thinking is inescapable.

He favors extending any deadline for denuclearizing N.Korea to January 2019 apparently, and then using air forces to pound the North Korean artillery around Seoul, and the nuclear and missile testing infrastructure. This is in contrast to the current thinking prevalent in some circles, that the attack should take place after the Olympics and by June of this year. McPeak's thinking process, is encyclopedic in nature, rather than based upon any particular analysis of internal peninsula dynamics. Although, it is not optimal to be focused entirely on target lists, when contemplating strategy, his thinking represents a level above current strategic, military, and diplomatic thinking in the current administration, which is focused on what is essentially an ultimatum and various ground strategies reflective of the service orientations of the ground officers dominating the administration. These officials, particularly, McMaster, are members of the "could have won the Vietnam War" school of thought, and want to reverse the track record on East Asian wars. They also belong to the services who are fond of "fire power demonstrations," and don't spend much time dealing with nuclear strategy or strategic issues.

In his discussion McPeak dismisses the use of ground forces. He says the damage to Seoul wouldn't be "like Stalingrad." The damage to Seoul, "would be over in a few days." Korean analysts have suggested that casualties in Seoul might be around 60,000 a day for about a week, before the threat was eliminated. Of course, this implies no use of special weapons on Seoul. Minimalist estimates of casualties of Korea are inappropriate based upon historical experience.

McPeak is critical of the lack of flexibility of the US on the diplomatic options, and also admitted that past diplomatic failures in recent history with North Korea were mostly on our side. McPeak even goes so far as to put withdrawal of US forces in Korea on the table. The prospect of such a global settlement with North Korea, should be considered.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-27/attacking-north-korea-is-unthinkable-or-is-it

Friendly interview of McPeak on Vietnam and role in Ken Burns documentary.

http://www.oregonlive.com/tv/2017/09/oregons_gen_merrill_mcpeak_on.html

[Historic NY]

1. Merrill McPeak "I think it depends on how skillful we are at handling this problem.

And that's a whole other thing, because we're not showing a lot of cleverness these days."