Into the Fire

CHAPTER FIVE

Midway through the second year of his term as president, Wyatt Midkiff kept wondering when it would get easier and overseas concerns would abate enough to allow him to pursue his expansive domestic agenda. His administration had been rocked by the bombings of the NFL stadiums during his first year in office and then shocked again the past spring by the reprisal attacks on several malls in the Washington, D.C., area. All told, over two thousand Americans had died at the hands of foreign terrorists for hire on his watch.

The retaliatory strike against Iran had served notice that the United States would avenge attacks on its citizens and actually brought a modest extent of goodwill from most of the Arab nations in the Gulf. They all feared Iran and its desire to dominate the region but didn’t have the military wherewithal to take on the Persian state. But there was no denying the United States was not the superpower it once was. And that too was happening on his watch.

The previous administration had set in motion drastic cuts to the U.S. military budget, the sequestration debacle had made that worse, and spiraling costs for military weapons and manpower had strained the ability of the U.S. military to maintain the status quo. His predecessor had announced the United States’ intent to rebalance the Asia-Pacific region and to move substantial forces to that region to show the nations of that part of the world the United States intended to remain a Pacific power. But military budgets were under strain, and the ability to maintain the existing state of affairs, let alone add forces, was a stretch at best, a fantasy at worst.

For a while it had not mattered. But China’s military budget continued to grow at a double-digit rate, and China continued to arm its client states, like North Korea, with modern weaponry. U.S. allies in the region began to ask uncomfortable questions when they saw scant evidence of the U.S. initiative to rebalance the Asia-Pacific region. The hints of greater accommodation with China by even some of the United States’ staunchest allies were becoming more evident.

But this meeting of the president’s senior policy and military advisors was not about China, it was about North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom was acting increasingly irrationally, and U.S. allies and friends in the region — especially South Korea and Japan — were becoming increasingly worried. North Korean provocations — from capturing the USS Pueblo in 1968 to shooting down a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft the next year to North Korea’s strident insistence on the need to field nuclear weapons as a defense against “U.S. imperialism” to the sinking of the South Korean corvette, Cheonan, in 2010 to others — had been going on for almost half a century. But things had gotten worse under the leadership of North Korea’s young, untested, leader, Kim Jong-un.

The faces gathered around the table in the secure conference room in the White House Situation Room were grim. After a nod from the president, his national security advisor, Trevor Harward, opened the meeting. “Mr. President, as you recall, you asked for a constant drumbeat of meetings with your Asia-Pacific intelligence experts. We set up this meeting because there is emergent information we needed to bring to your attention.”

“I’ve been reading your memos, Trevor, as well as the ones Adam has been sending me, but I welcome you bringing everyone together to give it to me right between the running lights.” President Midkiff had attended the University of Florida on a Navy ROTC scholarship and had served on naval surface combatants for four years after graduating. He liberally sprinkled his conversation with Navy lingo.

Harward looked toward the director of national intelligence and nodded. Adam Putnam began. “Mr. President, as you know, North Korea is as unstable under Kim Jong-un as it has been at any time in its history since the North invaded the South over six decades ago. Most of what Kim has done has been internal — like having his uncle and his ‘regent,’ Jang Song Thaek, murdered in late 2013—”

“I remember reading reports he was supposedly thrown to a pack of hungry dogs and family members were forced to watch,” the president interrupted.

“Yes, Mr. President, you’re correct, though those reports were not completely verified by the intelligence community. Not only that, but sources we trust tell us, soon after that, Jang’s sister, Jang Kye-sun, and her husband were executed.”

“As crazy as this all sounds, Mr. President,” Harward added, “for a police state like North Korea, none of it should surprise us. Kim was his father’s youngest son and came into office with no street creds among North Korea’s political or especially its military leadership. He likely figured he would be marginalized by the military unless he took dramatic action to assert his authority. Jang was the perfect target.”

“Okay, I’ve got all that. But now you all are concerned there’s a new problem that goes beyond just a young leader trying to consolidate power. Adam?”

“I was coming to that, Mr. President. After getting over the shock of seeing Jang, who was chairman of North Korea’s National Defense Commission, murdered by the young supreme leader, North Korea’s military came to realize they could influence Kim to take a harder line against the West. Officers who were seen as supporting Kim and who were moderates were forced to retire for health or other bogus reasons.”

“I’m not clear yet why we have an imminent crisis,” Midkiff probed. He didn’t like to keep interrupting his senior advisors, but Putnam tended to take a while to get to the point.

“Mr. President,” his national security advisor replied, “as we’ve briefed you already, North Korea has been shifting ground and naval forces around in peculiar ways that have even Adam’s most talented analysts stumped. Overarching all this is the North Koreans’ history of engineering provocations to keep the nation’s citizens alarmed about United States and South Korean ‘imperialism,’ and for the past several years things have been pretty much same-old, same-old.”

“But not any longer?”

“No, sir. As we have briefed you, these military moves have been perplexing. Coupled with that, late last month, the last senior military leader who was thought to be a moderating influence on Kim, Vice Marshal Sang Won-hong, deputy chief of the general staff of the Korean People’s Army, was murdered.”

“The report I got said it was staged to look like a robbery, but our intelligence community didn’t believe it.”

“Yes, Mr. President, but the feigned robbery was clumsily done at best. Sang had been increasingly outspoken regarding the need for restraint and had Kim’s ear.”

“But if he was a fan of ‘restraint,’ how did he ever climb that high in the North Korean military? Surely the KPA would have cut him from the herd long ago?”

“You’re right, Mr. President,” Putnam continued. “Sang only began to do this about two years ago. His call for restraint was short-term and tactical. He was one of the principals who brokered substantial arms imports from China, and he envisioned a ramp up in these arms transfers once North Korea began selling massive amounts of gas reserves from their offshore fields to China. He simply was calling for time for the KPA to learn to use these newer, more sophisticated weapons and adapt their operational plans and tactics to accommodate the new technology—”

“And that got him murdered?” The president interrupted again.

“Yes, sir,” Putnam continued. “You know how North Korea’s military, reserve, and paramilitary forces suck the life out of the North Korean economy. Their people are increasingly desperate, and recent famines have caused unprecedented suffering. The majority of the KPA’s senior leadership think periodic provocations against the United States, South Korea, and Japan are the only way to keep the North Korean people focused on an external threat and not on their own misery.”

“They’re a police state. Can’t they control the message and tell the people what they want them to hear without creating external provocations?”

“Ten years ago, yes, sir. But with the Internet and smartphones, more and more North Koreans are able to connect with the outside world,” Putnam continued. “What they learn is so startling to them they quickly spread this word throughout informal networks.”

“Mr. President, I think part of Adam’s point is just how desperate conditions are in North Korea,” Harward added. “There are well-documented reports the North Korean diet has been well south of a thousand calories a day for at least a decade. More recently, some reports have pegged that number as approaching five hundred calories a day. Tens of thousands of people are reported to have starved to death in the most recent famine. We can get you additional information on this if you like, sir…”

“No, I get it,” Midkiff interrupted. “You’re concerned North Korea’s military needs to do something provocative against the West to divert attention from what their people have to endure. Tell me what you’re seeing and why we need to keep an eye on it.”

“Yes, Mr. President.” Adam Putnam motioned to one of the Situation Room staffers, and a PowerPoint slide appeared on the large screen display at the far end of the Sit Room.