In 1962, facing Soviet missiles in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy considered limited strike options. Here he confers with Defense Department leaders during the Cuban Missile Crisis. From left to right, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Paul H. Nitze, President Kennedy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell D. Taylor, and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara.
North Korea’s rapidly improving nuclear arsenal poses an intractable problem: should the United States accept the new reality of a nuclear-armed North Korea with intercontinental reach, or should it pre-emptively strike Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missiles? The Telegraph reports that the Trump administration is considering strikes against North Korea to “get their attention and show that we’re serious.” [1] Captain Dave Adams, U.S. Navy (Retired), in a recent Proceedings Today commentary , advocated “limited strikes” on North Korea to “escalate to de-escalate,” and demonstrate U.S. resolve. Similarly, Oriana Skylar Mastro, an Asia-Pacific specialist at Georgetown University, writes that some of her South Korean interlocutors believe that “the United States could conduct a limited surgical strike and North Korea’s response would be minimal,” because Kim Jong Un should fear rationally that escalatory retaliation against overwhelming U.S. and South Korean military power could lead to the end of his regime. [2]
The arguments for limited strikes assume that U.S. military action can, in fact, be limited. The United States would use its military advantage in long-range precision strikes to destroy targets such as a ballistic missile launch site or weapons stockpiles, and threaten little more. Because of its limited scope, such a strike would minimize the risk to U.S. forces and neither threaten Kim Jong Un’s regime nor spark a wider war. The April 2017 strike by U.S. Navy cruise missiles in Syria could be pointed to as an example of a limited strike: 59 Tomahawk missiles were launched from ships at sea to destroy aircraft and damage an airfield, and neither Syria nor its Russian protector retaliated militarily. [3]
Can a strike on North Korean nuclear targets be limited like the Syrian attack? The historical record and contemporary military constraints suggest that an attack against North Korean nuclear facilities could notbe both effective and limited. To be effective, a strike would require manned strike aircraft, which would entail suppressing North Korean air defenses. Adding the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) to an ostensibly limited attack would broaden its scope and make it unlikely Kim Jong Un would perceive the attack as limited. “Escalating to de-escalate,” is not as feasible as some argue, and instead could increase the retaliatory risk to the United States and its Northeast Asian allies.
This problem is best viewed from the perspective of military planners. When the President requests strike options against North Korea, what choices would they provide? Planners likely would seek to balance the effectiveness of the strikes against the risk to U.S. forces, specifically the risk surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) pose to manned strike aircraft. Targeting North Korean air defenses could reduce this risk. Adding SEAD to a limited strike would dramatically expand the scope and political risks of military action; therefore, a limited strike no longer would be limited in its effect.
Organizational Behavior Model
In Essence of Decision, a seminal work analyzing government decision-making during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow argue that political leaders rely on the organizations within their government to frame policy options and execute their chosen strategy. These organizations have complex capabilities, which are controlled, coordinated, and constrained by standard operating procedures and organizational culture. [4]
Consider how a President plans and executes a military operation. He cannot do it himself. He must work with the Department of Defense, to whom he delineates goals and requests options. The Department of Defense develops those options within capability and feasibility constraints. The President then chooses—or refines—an option, and orders the Department of Defense to execute it. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a classic historical example of organizational behavior influencing decision making.
Cuban Missile Crisis: Surgical Attack
In 1962, the Soviet Union deployed nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba, threatening the United States with short notice attack. President John F. Kennedy could not tolerate this risk and requested plans for a “surgical attack,” which could destroy the weapons without requiring an invasion of Cuba and without causing Moscow to attack reciprocally U.S. and allied forces in West Berlin. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara presented five options. The choices ranged from strikes against only the nuclear weapons, requiring 52 sorties, to broader strikes against all military targets in Cuba, which called for over 2,000 sorties. Between these extremes was “Variant III,” which called for 194 sorties to destroy both nuclear targets and air defenses.
As reconnaissance flights discovered more air defenses, Variant III grew to nearly 500 sorties. [5]
The Joint Chiefs of Staff argued that Variant III was the minimum number of strikes required to destroy Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba. Both military necessity and organizational culture influenced this position. Military leaders believed that strikes could not eliminate all the nuclear weapons if air defenses threatened U.S. aircraft. Furthermore, “as an organization, the U.S. Air Force believed deeply in not sending pilots to attack targets without first suppressing air defenses.” [6]
Some civilian advisors rejected the military’s position, asserting that sorties against air defenses were simply “trimmings added by the military” and were not necessary to accomplish a “narrow and specific” strike. Kennedy agreed with the Joint Chiefs that Variant III was the minimum amount of force required, but rejected it because he thought its scope was too broad and risked escalating the conflict. Kennedy instead coerced the Soviets to remove the weapons by quarantining Cuba and negotiating with the Soviet Union. He maintained a latent strike capability throughout the crisis, which buttressed other coercive efforts, but was never used. [7]
Strategic Culture and SEAD
SEAD was in its infancy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even still, this mission attracted the attention of military planners and had a decisive impact on presidential decision making. Fifty-six years later, the air defense threat to U.S. aircraft has grown and proliferated, while the SEAD mission and the military’s organizational preference for operating in uncontested airspace has become further ingrained in U.S. strategic culture. Strategists highlight the challenge modern air defenses pose to U.S. air power. Rapidly advancing air defense technology often advantages the defender over the attacker. [8] Even a less advanced adversary can frustrate U.S. efforts to gain unimpeded use of its skies. [9]
Doctrinally SEAD is defined as neutralizing, destroying, or temporarily degrading enemy air defenses by destroying or disrupting them. [10] Advanced military aircraft and their highly-trained pilots are valuable assets and too limited in quantity to risk unnecessarily.
The United States invests substantial amounts of money and effort into reducing vulnerability to air defenses. Low-observable “stealth” technology lowers an aircraft’s radar cross-section, reducing, but not eliminating, its vulnerability. To further protect manned aircraft, the United States can suppress air defenses kinetically, by destroying them, and electronically, by jamming or deceiving them. From the perspective of U.S. military planners, countering enemy air defenses is an essential aspect of warfighting.
The United States’ most recent major air campaign, Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya in 2011, demonstrates this ingrained commitment to SEAD. Even though Libya did not have a modern air defense system, degrading the Qaddafi regime’s air defenses was a primary objective. [11] After the first two days of strikes, Libyan air defenses posed no threat to coalition aircraft. [12]
Limited Attack Options in North Korea
If asked to provide options for limited strikes against North Korean nuclear targets, the U.S. military would likely provide a range of options, just as it did during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Because of the military’s strong organizational preference for suppressing enemy air defenses to reduce risks to manned aircraft, the Department of Defense would likely advocate something like 1962’s “Variant III,” a limited strike that also counters air defenses. It is difficult to predict exactly what a modern “Variant III” would look like. Limited strikes on North Korea would, however, be very different from either the attack on Syrian airfields in 2017 or the 2011 campaign in Libya.
Unlike Syria, a strike against North Korean nuclear sites likely would require more than just stand-off weapons, such as cruise missiles. North Korea is known to place many military capabilities in underground or hardened facilities. [13] Because some targets in North Korea’s nuclear program are probably in hardened facilities, stand-off weapons alone would be insufficient. Their warheads—which typically weigh no more than 1,000 pounds—are too small. Striking hardened targets would require larger and more destructive weapons, such as “bunker buster” munitions and perhaps even the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator. [14] Only aircraft can deliver these large weapons.
In Libya, the coalition maintained air dominance for an entire campaign. [15] A limited strike against North Korea would not require that level of effort, but the United States could not ignore North Korean air defenses either. Analysts believe North Korean defenses include a mix of older Soviet SAMs and newer indigenously produced weapons and sensors. [16] Military planners would want to destroy or disrupt significant amounts of these defenses to enable an effective strike. Long-range unmanned precision strike weapons could be used against stationary components of North Korea’s air defenses, like fixed radar sites, reducing the number of manned sorties. Manned SEAD sorties still might be desired, however, to counter mobile or unlocated air defenses.
Kim Jong Un Perceives a Limited Attack
A limited strike, broadened to suppress air defenses, would raise important questions about how Kim Jong Un would perceive and respond to it. On the receiving end, the attack might not seem limited in scope. Furthermore, that “limited” distinction would be meaningless to Kim. An attack may destroy some, but not likely all, of his nuclear capabilities, and the accompanying SEAD effort would degrade his ability to defend his country from follow-on attacks. So, what U.S. leaders would define as a limited attack may appear to Kim Jong Un as the first step in a larger attack with existential consequences.
North Korea’s most advanced surface-to-air missile (SAM), the KN-06, is shown here in the 2013 Victory Day Parade in Pyongyang.
Could the United States credibly assure Kim Jong Un that a limited attack, especially one that also disabled much of his air defenses, was not a precursor to more strikes and a threat to his hold on power? The track record works against the United States because it sought and achieved regime change by military means in Iraq. The United States professed not to seek regime change by military means in Libya, but achieved it nonetheless. North Korean officials are familiar with both examples and conclude that holding on to their nuclear weapons helps ward off a similar fate. [17] President Trump’s bellicose posture towards Kim also might weaken the credibility of a claim that an attack was limited.
Almost any conceivable reaction by Kim would place U.S. military personnel and citizens in the region and allies at risk, and would escalate the conflict. If a limited attack successfully disabled Kim’s nuclear program, the millions of South Koreans and thousands of Americans within artillery range of the De-Militarized Zone still would be vulnerable to retaliatory conventional attacks. If some nuclear weapons remained unscathed after a limited attack, Kim could lash out with those as well.
It is optimistic at best, and dangerous at worst, to believe that Kim would acquiesce to a limited attack by the United States. Just as in the Cuban Missile Crisis, military leaders likely would advocate for a limited attack that probably would not appear limited because it would include the militarily-sound and culturally-rooted objective of suppressing North Korean air defenses. Even if diplomatic efforts accompanied a strike, Kim likely would perceive a strike against his nuclear force (a manifestation of core his national interests) and his air defenses (an essential shield against future attacks) as the prelude to a broader campaign aimed at regime change. A limited strike could not eliminate all of Kim’s means of reprisal, and therefore would not diminish the risk of retaliation and escalation with conventional and nuclear weapons.
The U.S. Navy’s EA-18G Growler airborne electronic attack aircraft is among the weapon systems that could be used to defeat or disrupt North Korea’s air defenses. The aircraft shown here is equipped with AGM-88 HARM anti-radiation missiles and ALQ-99 electronic warfare pods.
Organizational culture has shaped the advice the Department of Defense provides to the President. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy recognized the dilemma this posed. The Defense Department resisted the politically feasible option, a surgical strike, because they argued it was militarily unfeasible. And Kennedy was wise enough to realize that the militarily effective option, a strike that included SEAD, would have upended his de-escalatory political goals. President Trump may face a similar dilemma today. Like Kennedy, he may be best served by recognizing this quandary and seeking more innovative means short of war, but still underpinned by U.S. military power, to coerce or deter Kim Jong Un.
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