CIA chief and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opens debate on nuclear strike plans

Panetta Sparks Debate Over U.S. Nuclear Strike on North Korea NewsWeek, By Lauren Walker and Jeff Stein 14 Oct 14, The specter of nuclear mushroom clouds rising over northeast Asia has long been a staple of nightmare scenarios in the event of another war between North and South Korea. It’s a prospect so apocalyptic that American officials have rarely articulated exactly what would trigger their use of weapons that could instantly kill millions and make the entire peninsula uninhabitable for decades.

In a memoir published last week, however, former CIA chief and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta reopened the prickly issue, recalling a chilling, 2010 briefing in Seoul by General Walter L. “Skip” Sharp, the commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, who told him just such a nightmare could come true should communist forces pour across the DMZ as they did in 1950.

“If North Korea moved across the border, our war plans called for the senior American general on the peninsula to take command of all U.S. and South Korea forces and defend South Korea— including by the use of nuclear weapons, if necessary,” Panetta writes in “Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace.”………

Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the non-partisan International Assessment and Strategy Center in Washington, D.C., said American officials have “likely” discussed the first use of nuclear weapons privately with South Korea and Japan through the years. But he was surprised to see Panetta’s remarks, telling Newsweek, “it is rare to have this recounted publicly by such a recently serving former senior official.”

Washington’s policy on using nuclear weapons to deter a North Korean invasion could be likened to Israel’s position of “studied ambiguity” on its atomic stockpiles – or just official confusion, judging from the reaction to Panetta’s remarks. Although the U.S. first deployed tactical nukes to the peninsula in 1958, American officials shied from affirming their presence until the mid-1970s, when U.S. forces were routed in Vietnam and Seoul threatened to develop its own deterrent should U.S. troops depart. Even though President George H.W. Bush began withdrawing nuclear weapons from South Korean soil and U.S. ships off the peninsula in 1991 – a process continued in 2010 when President Barack Obama retired them from submarines as well – U.S.-South Korean communiques over the years have cited “extended [nuclear] deterrence” from afar as policy.

But arms control specialist Jeffrey Lewis dismissed the prospect of the U.S. ever resorting to nuclear weapons to obliterate North Korea. “We [are] simply telling the South Koreans what they want to hear,” said Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, of Panetta’s tale. “But the reality is that the United States wouldn’t use nuclear weapons against North Korea any more than it did against Iraq.”

South Korea knows this, Lewis maintains. ”The problem with placing a misleading emphasis on nuclear weapons [that] we never plan to use is the rhetoric comes back to haunt us when South Korean politicians argue that Seoul should build a bomb,” he told Newsweek.

Constantly framing the issue in terms of a potential North Korean invasion is also misleading, says Roehrig, director of the Naval War College’s Asia-Pacific Studies Group…….. http://www.newsweek.com/panetta-sparks-debate-over-us-nuclear-strike-north-korea-277432