Deja vu- Decapitation Strategy

The "preemptive attack/decapitation scenario" will be played out during the summer US-ROK CFC summer military exercises according to an article in the Daily Beast, US to Enrage Kim Jong-un with Assassination Dry Run.*

For the first time in years, joint exercises between the U.S. and South Korea this month will culminate in a trial run of decapitating the North Korean leadership.

According to David Maxwell, retired Special Forces Colonel, "If you get the head of the military forces (which is Kim Jong-un) theoretically you gut (sic) the head of the snake."

Several questions arise in connection with the preemptive attack scenario. Namely, how do US forces ascertain the location of Kim Jong Un? Second how do they move into position without being detected crossing the maritime northern limit lines and the extended buffer zones around them? Third how do they succeed in obtaining permission from South Korean political and military leadership to carry out such a risky attack? Fourth, how do they avoid the risk of a nuclear retaliation against US targets in South Korea and the region? How do they avoid the risk of a conventional retaliation against urban areas such as Seoul? Fifth, what preparations have they made for a Chinese military intervention when their security interests inside North Korea are jeopardized? It should be noted that even right wing experts on the situation in North Korea, such a Victor Cha, and Thae Yong-ho, have warned against preemptive military attack on North Korea as a means to resolve the denuclearization stalemate in the past.

It's quite likely that a target of the new "tactical" nuclear warhead on the submarine launched ballistic missile is North Korea. The weapon appears to be specifically designed to destroy a deeply hardened target in a tactical environment. The US conventional military tactic of “decapitation” of North Korean leadership has been discussed openly in South Korean media in recent years. It never seemed practical, a special operations tactic to resolve a strategic problem.

In any case, if one were to consider the response from North Korea due to a “decapitation” attack with a small yield weapon like the W-76-2, let’s assume it succeeds with the precision and accuracy the new weapons are believed to have. Then in the aftermath of such an attack there remains a nuclear armed North Korea with unknown military commanders in unknown bunkers deciding what the response, if any, should be. Perhaps following US game theory they would decline to escalate the nuclear conflict. Or perhaps they wouldn’t. On the other hand, if the location of the bunker, or Kim Jong-un, was not precisely ascertained, and consequently the chairman or his successor survived, even for only for a brief time, a question arises about what would happen at that point. If one considers the desperation of the moment, the uncertainty, the confusion, and the likelihood of total destruction at the hands of the US military's vastly superior nuclear forces, what is the likely reaction of the North Korean leader? This thought arises, “Even though futilely suicidal, would he not respond in kind with nuclear armed ballistic missiles capable of reaching US bases in the region, where US and allied forces and command and control elements were plainly vulnerable?” Is this not in fact, exactly what would occur, given the ideological basis of North Korean communist doctrine and its self conscious role as the sacrificial victim of great power imperialism? Does the current deployment of US anti-ballistic missile forces in the region really give 100 percent assurance that this wouldn't be an effective response?

This is why Thae Yong-ho refers to the North Korean strategy as a "doomsday machine."

*US to Enrage Kim Jong-un with Assassination Dry Run, by Donald Kirk, The Daily Beast, Aug 3, 2022.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-to-enrage-kim-jong-un-with-assassination-dry-run