Key points from “How North Korea Could Cripple the U.S.”
by R. James Woolsey and Peter Vincent Pry, Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2013 –
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- In 2006 and 2008, former Secretary of Defense William Perry and now-Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter urged President Bush to pre-emptively destroy North Korea’s long-range Taepodong 2 missile on its launch pad—the Obama administration should reconsider this recommendation that was rejected by the Bush administration.
- Neither the Bush nor Obama administrations distinguished themselves in preventing North Korea from gaining nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
- Miniaturizing a warhead to fit on a missile is not an overwhelming technical obstacle.
- The Obama administration ignored Defense Intelligence Agency’s estimate that North Korea may have a miniaturized nuclear warhead to be carried by a ballistic missile or satellite.
- North Korea has launched satellites over the South Pole toward the U.S. The U.S. currently has no missile defense assets, no early warning radars and no interceptors devoted to stopping a nuclear armed missile or satellite coming from the south. North Korea orbited its satellites at an altitude optimum for an EMP attack on the contiguous 48 United States.
- An EMP attack would collapse the electric grid and other infrastructure that depends on it—communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water—necessary to sustain modern civilization and the lives of 300 million Americans.
- The Obama administration canceled the only two U.S. boost-phase interception programs, declining even to fund further study of boost-phase or space-based defensive systems.
- The Obama administration should pursue the Perry-Carter recommendation to pre-emptively destroy North Korean ICBMs and space launchers on the ground.
