Last year at the SIC, I said the United States would likely launch a pre-emptive attack on North Korea. I failed to anticipate the level of opposition from South Korea, which would bear the brunt of the casualties in such an attack. Without South Korea’s support, the US reconsidered its position. No attack came.
I'm not here to condemn him for being wrong. I appreciate an analyst willing to use their best judgment and information to make a prediction.
But what strikes me is that he implies his information says we were going to strike last year but South Korea forced us to reconsider.
As I've noted before, sometime in the fall I got the impression that America had settled on carrying out a strike sometime this year on North Korea's nuclear infrastructure (and not a regime change effort--which would require heavy Chinese reassurances to North Korea--in an effort to give North Korea an incentive not to retaliate, lest we escalate to regime change efforts), before North Korea has a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead at the United States, if China doesn't act in some way to end North Korea's nuclear threat.
One reason I thought the strike would be this year rather than last year was that we needed time to prepare our forces with deploying needed units, training, equipping, and maintenance.
Indeed, until later last year I was impressed by how cooperative South Korea had been considering they are on the frontline of North Korean retaliation should we lead a strike campaign.
At some point, we might have to strike whether or not South Korea cooperates. That would certainly take more time so that no needed assets are in South Korea where they'd be grounded by South Korea.
So the logic that led to a prediction of an American attack in 2017 was sound. I think my guess (with far less information than Friedman has) has a basis in logic, too.
Which means that either prediction could be right even if timing is off. Or could be wrong if the facts change as Friedman says happened with his prediction. That happens too.
Of course, taking the time to prepare for a strike doesn't mean we strike. China might take action.
And I would never say that the strike option is free of problems. All options have potential problems.
UPDATE: Delays in making a decision may be relying on shifting estimates of when North Korea will have a nuclear missile capable of reaching the United States. Past estimates seemed to indicate sometime early this year. I recently heard that the intelligence people estimate a year or more, now.
So we have a bit more time and it is understandable that we hope the horse will sing given all the bad things that can happen regardless of what we do or don't do.
