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Is U.S. Ready to Two Conflicts?
Aired December 27, 2002 - 14:14 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Tough talk and tougher action in North Korea, along with clashes in the no-fly zones of Iraq raised questions whether the U.S. could fight two regional wars at the same time. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says no problem -- we could not only fight them both, but we could win them both.
Let's talk about it now with retired General Wesley Clark, our CNN military analyst. General, good to see you.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK, (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Nice to see you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: All right. North Korean regime definitely wants to survive. Saddam Hussein definitely wants to survive. What do you think -- is North Korea a bigger threat than Iraq right now?
CLARK: Well, potentially from a military standpoint, yes, it is a bigger threat, and they've got a much stronger army. They do have weapons of mass destruction, including, we believe, a couple, maybe three nuclear weapons. They have Scuds. They can target not only South Korea and our forces in South Korea, but they can target Japan as well.
And so yes, if war were to begin, they would be a bigger threat.
PHILLIPS: All right. But you're obviously making the point, North Korea having such a stronger offensive, so is the reason why the U.S. -- the U.S. is going after Iraq before North Korea is because Iraq basically is an easy get?
CLARK: Well, there's been a lot of explanations offered for why the United States wanted to go after Iraq. We've heard, first, that it was a regime which might give support to the terrorists and al Qaeda. We heard that it was violating U.N. Security Council resolutions, keeping weapons of mass destruction. We've heard about the character of the regime, the fact that it has used these weapons of mass destruction. There have been a lot of reasons for this. And it is in an area that's a very important area to the United States, because of the oil that's there.
So there's a whole collection of reasons why the Middle East is important to us. But so is northeast Asia important to us, and we've had a 50-year defense treaty with the South Koreans. We fought a war there in 1950 to '53. We had 53,000 dead in that war. There were a million casualties, a million deaths on the Korean peninsula from that, and we've always maintained a U.S. deterrent presence in South Korea. So that's also a very important part of the world. PHILLIPS: All right. Donald Rumsfeld coming out and saying, Hey, we can fight North Korea and Iraq at the same time, we can win. Let's take a listen to what he had to say and then talk about that for a moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts as the national strategy, and the force-sizing construct clearly indicates. We're capable of winning decisively in one, and swiftly defeating in the case of the other, and let there be no doubt about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: All right. General, capable -- keyword -- but "complications" another word that needs to come into play here, right?
CLARK: It is complicated. First of all, we've already got forces deployed in Afghanistan and Kosovo and a few still left in Bosnia. And so, when you add all of that together with the war on terror complications in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and elsewhere, you could say we're using many of the assets of one conflict there. We're looking at going into Iraq and then we'd be talking about Korea.
So it's not just one, not just two, but maybe a third significant operational area.
Secondly, it's the question of timing. We always said we could win two nearly simultaneous, but not exactly simultaneous, because you got to get them -- get one started before you go on the other.
And then, third is the characteristic of what war would be like in the Korean Peninsula. We know that in the case of Iraq, we have Iraq in -- it's in a box, and if we take action against Iraq, it will be a timing and a manner of our own choosing.
That's never been the assumption in the case of Korea. They have got a million-man army. Two-thirds of it is within striking distance of the demilitarized zone. They have got weapons of mass destruction, including Scuds with biological, chemical and perhaps some nuclear capabilities. And so they've got 100,000, roughly, special forces troops that would try to infiltrate the South by air, by sea, or through tunnels underneath the demilitarized zone. So this would be a very intense, very difficult, and very complicated campaign. It's not a campaign we would choose to fight. Obviously, if it were forced upon us, we would fight and we would succeed.
PHILLIPS: Have you seen a change in combat readiness in that region?
CLARK: Well, so far as what's been reported in the press, we haven't seen any change, but we always maintain a high readiness posture in Korea.
PHILLIPS: So I guess my final question, can a war with North Korea be prevented? Is it possible to contain North Korea?
CLARK: Certainly it can be prevented, and there should be no concern about any immediate outbreak of conflict on the Korean peninsula. What we're talking about here is, first, the collapse of the nonproliferation regime that the United States, for over 50 years, has been supporting.
We like the International Atomic Energy Agency. It does our bidding, it goes in and inspects and it certifies that countries that are developing nuclear power aren't going to create nuclear weapons.
The North Koreans want to throw the regime out. The Iranians don't want it to inspect their new facilities in Iran. They're stalling that, and of course, the IAEA is inspecting in Iraq.
So we've got a threat to the IAEA, and our nonproliferation regime. We need to deal with this with diplomatic means, and I'm sure that's what the administration is trying to do, going to the neighbors of North Korea, encouraging them to back off, stop trying to bargain with the West that way, come forward in a more direct manner, and let's get the dialogue going between north and south.
PHILLIPS: General Wesley Clark. Thank you, sir.
CLARK: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 27, 2002 - 14:14 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Tough talk and tougher action in North Korea, along with clashes in the no-fly zones of Iraq raised questions whether the U.S. could fight two regional wars at the same time. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says no problem -- we could not only fight them both, but we could win them both.
Let's talk about it now with retired General Wesley Clark, our CNN military analyst. General, good to see you.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK, (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Nice to see you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: All right. North Korean regime definitely wants to survive. Saddam Hussein definitely wants to survive. What do you think -- is North Korea a bigger threat than Iraq right now?
CLARK: Well, potentially from a military standpoint, yes, it is a bigger threat, and they've got a much stronger army. They do have weapons of mass destruction, including, we believe, a couple, maybe three nuclear weapons. They have Scuds. They can target not only South Korea and our forces in South Korea, but they can target Japan as well.
And so yes, if war were to begin, they would be a bigger threat.
PHILLIPS: All right. But you're obviously making the point, North Korea having such a stronger offensive, so is the reason why the U.S. -- the U.S. is going after Iraq before North Korea is because Iraq basically is an easy get?
CLARK: Well, there's been a lot of explanations offered for why the United States wanted to go after Iraq. We've heard, first, that it was a regime which might give support to the terrorists and al Qaeda. We heard that it was violating U.N. Security Council resolutions, keeping weapons of mass destruction. We've heard about the character of the regime, the fact that it has used these weapons of mass destruction. There have been a lot of reasons for this. And it is in an area that's a very important area to the United States, because of the oil that's there.
So there's a whole collection of reasons why the Middle East is important to us. But so is northeast Asia important to us, and we've had a 50-year defense treaty with the South Koreans. We fought a war there in 1950 to '53. We had 53,000 dead in that war. There were a million casualties, a million deaths on the Korean peninsula from that, and we've always maintained a U.S. deterrent presence in South Korea. So that's also a very important part of the world. PHILLIPS: All right. Donald Rumsfeld coming out and saying, Hey, we can fight North Korea and Iraq at the same time, we can win. Let's take a listen to what he had to say and then talk about that for a moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts as the national strategy, and the force-sizing construct clearly indicates. We're capable of winning decisively in one, and swiftly defeating in the case of the other, and let there be no doubt about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: All right. General, capable -- keyword -- but "complications" another word that needs to come into play here, right?
CLARK: It is complicated. First of all, we've already got forces deployed in Afghanistan and Kosovo and a few still left in Bosnia. And so, when you add all of that together with the war on terror complications in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and elsewhere, you could say we're using many of the assets of one conflict there. We're looking at going into Iraq and then we'd be talking about Korea.
So it's not just one, not just two, but maybe a third significant operational area.
Secondly, it's the question of timing. We always said we could win two nearly simultaneous, but not exactly simultaneous, because you got to get them -- get one started before you go on the other.
And then, third is the characteristic of what war would be like in the Korean Peninsula. We know that in the case of Iraq, we have Iraq in -- it's in a box, and if we take action against Iraq, it will be a timing and a manner of our own choosing.
That's never been the assumption in the case of Korea. They have got a million-man army. Two-thirds of it is within striking distance of the demilitarized zone. They have got weapons of mass destruction, including Scuds with biological, chemical and perhaps some nuclear capabilities. And so they've got 100,000, roughly, special forces troops that would try to infiltrate the South by air, by sea, or through tunnels underneath the demilitarized zone. So this would be a very intense, very difficult, and very complicated campaign. It's not a campaign we would choose to fight. Obviously, if it were forced upon us, we would fight and we would succeed.
PHILLIPS: Have you seen a change in combat readiness in that region?
CLARK: Well, so far as what's been reported in the press, we haven't seen any change, but we always maintain a high readiness posture in Korea.
PHILLIPS: So I guess my final question, can a war with North Korea be prevented? Is it possible to contain North Korea?
CLARK: Certainly it can be prevented, and there should be no concern about any immediate outbreak of conflict on the Korean peninsula. What we're talking about here is, first, the collapse of the nonproliferation regime that the United States, for over 50 years, has been supporting.
We like the International Atomic Energy Agency. It does our bidding, it goes in and inspects and it certifies that countries that are developing nuclear power aren't going to create nuclear weapons.
The North Koreans want to throw the regime out. The Iranians don't want it to inspect their new facilities in Iran. They're stalling that, and of course, the IAEA is inspecting in Iraq.
So we've got a threat to the IAEA, and our nonproliferation regime. We need to deal with this with diplomatic means, and I'm sure that's what the administration is trying to do, going to the neighbors of North Korea, encouraging them to back off, stop trying to bargain with the West that way, come forward in a more direct manner, and let's get the dialogue going between north and south.
PHILLIPS: General Wesley Clark. Thank you, sir.
CLARK: Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
