The only conventional capability in the NKPA is their artillery, with its rockets and long-range guns strung along the DMZ in range of Seoul. The North Korean Special Forces pose a serious unconventional threat. These two forces would cause serious damage to the South. Yet the North Koreans know well they would eventually lose against the more modern and powerful South Korean and U.S. militaries.
What about the North Korean nuclear threat? This is where mythology trumps strategy. Kim Jong Un, like his father and grandfather, is the one character who can order a nuclear strike or an invasion of the South. But the historical-behavioral background of the Kims argues that they have been in the shakedown business—not the war-making business—for more than seven decades. Their scope insensitivity is incredibly narrow; they are leaders with no experiential depth. They carry on a predictable comic-opera rant after each of their underground nuclear tests in order to extort food and fuel from the West. In truth the North Koreans know they have nothing that even comes close to a legitimate strategic nuclear capability. It will be years—if not decades—before they put together a rudimentary nuclear missile force, one capable of threatening anyone. These people act like clowns, and their repetitively bad behavior has become tiresomely antiquated. North Korea is nothing more than an isolated, neo-Stalinist enclave sandwiched between superior fighting neighbors who would crush it if it dared to advance beyond its borders . . . and the North Koreans know it.
Next in line among the usual suspects is the sentimental favorite: Russia. Vladimir Putin is indeed another international sociopath who has been given an extraordinary license to bully his “near abroad” neighbors. No one questions that it is Putin’s hand that directs the ethnic Russian “separatists” to defy the legitimately elected Ukrainian government. This administration and members of NATO and the European Union (EU) have failed to halt his aggression. Sanctions may harm the new urban middle and upper classes, but Putin’s stranglehold on the Russian media and his promise to restore Russian power and prestige maintain his popularity among the people. He and his country score high on both variables: a huge nuclear arsenal and past personal behavior that is both troubling and unpredictable; further, Putin’s social insensitivity equals Hitler’s.
Putin has publicly stated that his national security objective is to split the NATO alliance. He believes NATO and its prime benefactor, the United States, are the principal impediments to his grand design to return Russia to imperial greatness, and Russia will do what Putin wants. But on the surface, Putin holds a weak military hand. Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. It is a failing state only half the size of the Soviet Union, with an economy less than a tenth of those of the United States and the EU combined. Putin’s military is getting better, to be sure, but a closer look reveals an establishment made up mostly of unwilling young men who lost the conscription lottery. The Russians do not have a single fifth-generation stealth aircraft. Their conventional navy would last a day in combat against ours. Virtually all of their armored forces date from the Desert Storm era, and we witnessed how well those performed in the hands of Saddam’s military.
In November 2015, I visited our Army in Europe to speak firsthand with the leaders of all NATO armies. In sum, all of the European generals I spoke to considered Putin “containable” if the United States placed a few armored brigades within the eastern NATO states: the Baltics and Poland. The cost of such a move to the United States would be minimal. Moving existing matériel to Europe would not require a single new weapons program or any increase in existing manpower. From what I witnessed, I strongly believe that such a force, properly positioned, would create a deterrent sufficiently intimidating to keep Mr. Putin on his side of the line for a very long time.
To anticipate whom we must fear the most, we must return to Colonel Yahara. Take a moment and look across a map of the expanse of Islamic nations in turmoil. Begin your visual transit with the North African states that touch the Atlantic, shift southward into central Africa and across the troubled and chaotic states that border the Mediterranean. Skip to the Levant, then to the true heartland of the Middle East: Pakistan and Iraq. What you see is utter chaos, perhaps the most destructive array of geopolitical mendacity and horror seen since the Assyrian holocaust in the eighth century BC.
Scholars call this turgid sweep the “Arc of Instability.” After the collapse of Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, and the expansion of the threat from radical Islamism, perhaps a more relevant term might be the “Arc of Failure.” This growing horror is persistent, most likely generational . . . and it affects our homeland. Radical Islamist threats are growing. But also, more troubling, they are becoming more skilled at both terrorism and war.
Look carefully at media images of ground fighting across the Middle East, and you will notice that the bad guys are also fighting differently.2 In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the West confronted terrorists acting like, well, terrorists. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda relied on ambushes, roadside bombings, sniper fire, and the occasional “fire and run” mortar or rocket attack to inflict casualties on U.S. forces. When terrorists were stupid enough to come out of the shadows, they fought as individuals in a mob of other individuals. Just the rip of a Kalashnikov or a single launch of a rocket-propelled grenade was enough to show their manhood. If they stood to reload they risked annihilation at the hands of their disciplined, well trained, and heavily armed U.S. opponents.
Today it is different. We now see Islamic fighters becoming skilled Soldiers. The thrust of ISIS down the Euphrates illustrates a style of warfare that melds the old and the new. U.S. Soldiers fighting in Iraq used to say, “Thank God they can’t shoot.” Well, now they can. They maneuver in reasonably disciplined fighting formations, often mounted on board pickups and captured Iraqi Humvees. They employ mortars and rockets in deadly barrages. To be sure, parts of the old terrorist playbook remain: they butcher and execute in front of the global media to make the Iraqis, Syrians, and Libyans understand, in unambiguous terms, the terrible consequences of continued resistance. Like their forbearers, they still display the terrorist’s eager willingness for death and the media savvy of the “propaganda of the deed.”
We see these newly formed pseudo-armies emerging across the Levant as well. The Darwinian process of wartime immersion has forced them to either be dead or a lot better. Some observers of their transformation admit that Hezbollah now are among the best-trained and skilled light infantry on the planet . . . and thanks to their Iranian patron, they have stockpiled more than 100,000 rockets ready to be fired against Israeli civilians.
And now there is Hamas. Gone are the fleeting “pickup teams” from Operation Cast Lead in 2008. We see Hamas fighting in small, strictly organized, tightly bound teams under the authority of connected, well informed commanders. In their war against Israeli intrusion in 2014, Hamas units stood and fought from building hideouts and tunnel entrances. Instead of charging the Israelis, Hamas waited for the Israelis to pass before ambushing them from the rear, occasionally dressed in Israeli uniforms. Like Hezbollah, they are getting good with second-generation weapons, such as wire-guided antitank missiles. The Israelis started the Gaza campaign trying to fight house to house. Soon, tank and infantry fire was replaced by hundred-ton barrages of precision two-thousand-pound bombs—and Hamas still did not quit.
These groups are now well-armed, well-trained, well-equipped, well-led, disciplined, and often flush with cash to buy or bribe their way out of difficulties. While the story of the disintegration of the Iraqi army is multicausal, the fact that it was never trained to face such a competent opponent was certainly a factor.
Michael Morrell, former