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Perle’s of Wisdom from the “Prince of Darkness,” or Neocon Vindication Day
Jonah Goldberg, not your ordinary fire breathing war monger, has reached back in time and remembered a conversation involving the Neocon’s Neocon Richard Perle. Perle often referred to since that time as the “Prince of Darkness” is making some rock solid sense.
Perle of Wisdom on North Korea
Mr. Perle: No, I don’t think we need to launch a strike tomorrow, but I think unless you have decided that you will launch a strike before you will allow North Korea to become a significant nuclear power, and I think in practical terms, that means before you allow them to reprocess the fuel they now have into plutonium — once you make that decision, then I think it’s fine, sit down at the table, but make sure that your allies know that you’ve made that decision and that the North Koreans know that you’ve made that decision.
Mr. Wattenberg: So you agree with Paul and the rest of the panel that we ought to proceed with the negotiations?
Mr. Perle: Only after we make the decision that if the negotiations fail, we will do what the Israelis did and end the program in that way, because if you don’t make that decision first, there is a risk that you go on negotiating past the point at which they take irreversible action and become the nuclear power we’re trying to prevent them from becoming.
There has been way too much demonization of the Neocons. Most of it motivated by left-wing, politically correct foreign policy wishful thinking. We collectively decided to live in a foreign policy safe space blaming the Neocons for frightening us with all of their hardball talk. Now we are being rudely evicted from that safe space by reality in the form of a fat little murdering tyrant with a bad haircut and a robotic killer regime.
Put Richard Perle next to Kim Jong Un, and the Prince of Darkness starts to look like the Angel Gabriel.
Published in General
Pearle was right of course. I imagine that there is nothing any of us can say or speculate about that our military and Rand et al have not gamed and thought through. So the key to all this is in our President’s head. Our system and way of life are not at risk, our cities are not at risk. Many lives in South Korea and perhaps Japan are at risk but not their systems. Investments in the stock market are at risk, but not our economy. If we hit them it seems obvious we must hit them hard enough to reduce their artillery and military to insignificant proportions. This isn’t a surgical strike as in Iraq. I imagine we do not know where a lot of those conventional weapons are so that means we’ll have to kill tens of thousands and devastate the place. The regime cannot survive. The North Koreans and the Chinese must know this. Now we’re on a shortened path of doing something but we must be sure that at the end of it is either their capitulation and survival, or military obliteration. The regime must believe that it can survive capitulation and cannot survive war and they and the Chinese must know we’re not bluffing. If we are bluffing, they will know. The Chinese know us too well.
Undeniable Truth of Life: You cannot “negotiate” with a madman. Kim Jong Un is a madman, and we should have acted on this information long ago. Negotiation will be fruitless, and every minute of delay ensures that the madman has more time to develop a nuclear device that will fit on his new ballistic missile to hit the USA.
I Wal,
Chinese intelligence would know. They would know that and much more useful even critical information. Otherwise, we let their artillery fire first, then we have them located, and then we target them to take them out. Not good.
Regards,
Jim
Nice article. I wish someone had listened to him then.
Perle was right about the NorK nuclear program. Since they went nuclear it’s hard to imagine this working out any other way, so we clearly should have used any means necessary to prevent that. The good news is that we’ll get to do this all over again with Iran. Think we’ll learn anything from it?
That doesn’t mean aggressive, interventionist foreign policy is always right. “NeoCons” (a term I don’t use very often as it’s generally clearer and less off-putting to be more specific) are targets of fair criticism for finding lots of opportunities for aggressive interventionism. I’m not quite ready to beat the neocon drum just yet.
North Korea isn’t about spreading democracy. It actually involves a strategic American interest unlike the dog’s breakfast neocons have created in the Middle East.
But weren’t we told that Iraq was in the process of reconstituting their Nuke program some 20 years after Israel’s bombing run? What is to say that doing so to the Norks back in 97 would not have resulted in some similar situation?
Also what if Japan or the South had done the Israeli thing when Perle made this statement?
Glad to see you brought your sense of humor Robert.
People haven’t applied the term correctly since the first Bush administration. GW Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were never Neo Cons.
Regardless, there are way too many interests involved in the North Korea contretemps. Any form of direct military action is way too risky, under the present circumstances. As noted above, we need to clearly understand the consequences of any threat or red line we invoke. North Korea and China in particular need to understand.
Is South Korea ready to accept 100,000 or so casualties in the course of a North Korean “conventional” retaliation (tube and rocket artillery, chemical weapons, etc.) after a preemptive first strike against the Norks’ nuclear arsenal?
Are the American people ready to accept the loss of an entire Brigade Combat Team (BCT) of Soldiers (about 3,500 pairs of boots on the ground)?
How about the loss of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, sunk by a Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile? That’s about 6,000 sailors. A unilateral first strike against North Korea will likely bring such a retaliatory strike by their ally, the PRC. Why would China do that? To make damn sure the US knew China could deny any significant reinforcement of the Korean peninsula.
I’m not saying this won’t be what happens or that it doesn’t need to happen. I honestly think it’s more likely than not.
I am saying is that we’re looking at nearly 10,000 American casualties, and possibly 10 times that in South Korea. If my son or daughter were one of those likely casualties, I’d sure as hell want to have an unshakable commitment to victory BEFORE the trigger was pulled, and a clear vision of what that victory will look like after the shooting stops.
“It’s the only way to be sure.”
This hideous fat troll enforces the death penalty for those who steal a bowl of rice. As the country has descended into mass starvation numerous times I’m sure it provided the creature from hell lots of entertainment. Perhaps someone could accidentally slip a little arsenic into his kimchi. Bon appetite.
Regards,
Jim
I think that you are completely incorrect if you actually believe that there is no strategic American interest at issue in the Middle East. Middle Eastern oil is essential to the world economy.
There are many reasonable criticisms of US policy in the Middle East over the years. You can certainly make a strong argument that neocon policy was a costly failure. But I don’t think that you can make a colorable argument that the US has no strategic interest in the Middle East.
In contrast, nothing from North Korea is important to the world economy. Other than the nuclear issue, we have no important strategic interest in North Korea.
I agree that the nuclear issue is extremely important, and it makes dealing with North Korea a critical strategic American interest. The only way in which North Korea differs from many Middle Eastern countries in this regard is that no one stopped the North Koreans from advancing to possession of nuclear weapons.
AP & HO,
I wish we would not be quite so reductionist. What I would prefer is contrasting the policy of Nation Building v. Surge Tactics. We can not always choose where we will be required to fight. However, we can choose the tactics we will employ. Iraq was hopeless as a candidate for Nation Building. If we had simply accepted this reality within one year after shock & awe, the net success would have been manifest. North Korea is a less clear question. South Korea is already a viable democratic capitalist state. The North is locked in a counter productive Stalinist nightmare. This situation is more like West Germany & East Germany. If we were to conquer the North we might very well be able to do an effective Nation Building. However, that is never the motivation to go to war. The motivation is always that of a critical National Interest. The threat of the Kim regime having ICBMs with nuclear warheads is just too great and if we can not change his behavior then war is a possibility because of this critical National Interest. The question of Nation Building v. Surge is a secondary but important question.
Regards,
Jim
John Bolton’s book (Surrender Is Not An Option) recounted his efforts, as UN ambassador, to box the Russians and Chinese into allowing serious sanctions against North Korea. If I remember correctly, Bolton reported that his efforts were undercut by Condoleezza Rice at a critical moment.
I don’t recall the full politics involved, or Rice’s side of the story. I believe that it was during the difficult time when the occupation of Iraq was going very poorly, and the Bush Administration had little political capital to use on the North Korean situation. I think that the key events occurred shortly before the huge Democratic victory in the 2006 midterm election.
Jim, I was just disagreeing with HO’s suggestion that American has no important strategic interest in the Middle East. I actually suspect that HO doesn’t actually believe this, but was engaging in a bit of overstated rhetoric due to understandable frustration with unsuccessful policy in the Middle East.
As something of a James Bond fan, I hesitate to say never, but I have difficulty envisioning circumstances in which I would support going to war solely for the purpose of nation-building. We should not go to war unless there is a combination of: (1) practical interest, (2) moral justification, (3) a viable strategy, and (4) public support. Of course, this level of generalization gives little guidance to practical action.
On Iraq, I think that you are also being reductionist. You write: “Iraq was hopeless as a candidate for Nation Building.” No one could have known this at the time, and even with hindsight, perhaps it could have been successful if done differently, or if the US electorate had shown greater resolve. I actually think that Iraq was successfully stabilized by 2009, and that the Obama administration snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. But I admit that I cannot know this for certain, either, and I expect that the Middle East will continue to be a mess for several hundred years, at least. Even successful nation-building in Iraq would not have solved every problem, though it would probably have led to significant improvement.
I agree that North Korea is a better candidate for nation-building, probably through reunification with the South.
AP,
We are on the same page. Shock & Awe started March of 2003 and was completely successful by December of that same year. The Surge didn’t start until 2007. We need to be tougher on ourselves. We must make a judgment and we can’t indulge wishful thinking. If we had recognized the situation in 2005 and transitioned into the Surge that year, we would have massively reduced our casualties, massively reduced the cost of the war, and surely Iraq would have been stabilized requiring only a small American force to stay on.
Let’s learn all that we can from our experiences. We have learned only the lessons that the left wing cultural Marxists want us to learn. That’s what has been running us into the ground ever since.
Regards,
Jim
By the way, I just read some of the Wikipedia summaries on the North Korean nuclear program, which led me to lessen the blame that I assign to the Clinton administration. Declining to heap blame on a Clinton does not come naturally to me, but I’m trying to be fair minded.
The North Korean nuclear dispute heated up in 1993, resulting in the Clinton administration’s negotiation of the “Agreed Framework” in October 1994. This was just before the landmark Republican Congressional victory in the 1994 midterm elections (the Newt Gingrich/Contract With America election).
The Agreed Framework was not a very good agreement. It apparently allowed North Korea to keep a fair amount of plutonium already produced, and the inspection system was slow and ineffective. There were political problems on our side, as well, as the Republicans in Congress didn’t like the agreement and didn’t comply with some of the terms (including lifting sanctions and providing fuel oil).
Frankly, this looks a lot like the Iran deal made by the Obama administration. The basic idea of both deals was to delay the rogue regime’s nuclear program for maybe 5-10 years, and hope that things improved during that time.
The statement from the Wikipedia article that I found most interesting was this:
Well, I remember those days, and this doesn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to have believed at the time. Kim Il-sung had been the only leader in the entire existence of North Korea. Almost every Communist regime on the planet had collapsed in the prior 5 years. Germany had just been reunited.
I have to admit that, in 1994, the idea that the North Korea problem would solve itself, if we could just kick the can a few years down the road, sounds pretty reasonable.
I think that there is serious blame that should be placed on the Clinton administration for failing to react to North Korean violations of the Agreed Framework in the late 1990s, but I don’t know the full details of this.
It’s Clinton’s fault — with an assist by Jimmy Carter.
Agreements with North Korea and Iran both suffer from the same flaw, ineffective inspection regimes. This by the way was also a not inconsequential error we made dealing with Iraq.
Of course, for any inspection regime to be effective, we have to be determined to force the end state. If we can’t commit to that, it’s really a big fat nothing. Non-proliferation theater!
“Ignorance is Blix” — I loved that bumper sticker when it came out.
I believe that promoting stability throughout the world promotes American interests. I’m not for converting the Norko’s to democracy. I’m for killing their leaders and destroying their retaliatory capability. I value American civilian lives over Korean (northern or southern) civilian lives. I reject the idea of an “exit strategy”. We had no such thing in Germany, Japan, or S. Korea. I would have maintained a considerable US military presence in Iraq to keep an eye on Iran the way we did in S. Korea and Japan to keep an eye on China and North Korea. I don’t really care that the tide has turned on neoconservatism. I think it’s interesting that neoconservatism gets no credit for the relative stability in Iraq that Barack Obama inherited but so much of the blame for the chaos that followed Obama’s precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. That policy was not a neoconservative policy.
BTW, I adopted the dragon as the neoconservative symbol even before that awesome Game of Thrones episode the other night.
Fire away.
Mostly because neoconservatism had nothing to do with the stability we won in Iraq with the surge. And it did not have anything to do with the post withdrawal chaos.
I’m not even sure anyone can decisively define neoconservatism in the modern era. Its genesis was in the 70s and its apogee was in the early 90s. I’ve always regarded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as more Jacksonian responses. And our post war occupations as more in line with a sort of Wilsonian moral consensus.
The surge was a use of military force to promote American interests in the Middle East. It showed we were serious about fighting radical extremism and establishing an American presence in Iraq that should have been permanent. In that way, the surge was a neoconservative policy. Of course, you’re right that neoconservatism is not particularly well-defined in the modern era, so it’s hard to say what exactly a neoconservative policy looks like in Iraq or East Asia.
I define neoconservatism as using military power and physical presence to shape geopolitical and national political outcomes in our favor throughout the world. I would say that WWII and its aftermath was a neoconservative policy. We basically set up the post-war financial and military security system to benefit us and keep our enemies from becoming too powerful.
Neo-cons. are Neo-Girondins. And I am not in a rush to forgive either for their screw ups.
nor I
We have been told exactly when they will launch their missiles, (Aug 15 I think they said) what route they will take (over Japan) and where they will come down(18 miles from Guam).
And we can’t intercept ’em?
Okay, this is only a “test”, but I think if we can, we should shoot these missiles outta the sky.
And if we can’t– we better say our prayers.
Because if we’re helpless even when we have all this information, there’s no possible way we can deflect a sneak attack. And y’know, in war, those are kinda the norm.
Pray for the people of the Korean peninsula. We’ll be fine.
Good statement. Now what can we do to convince China we are not just a “paper tiger”.