Wikileaks document dump: not a triumph for anti-war forces, and not likely to result in War Crimes prosecutions

The giant Wikileaks document-dump has taken place, and all of the usual political elements are in place to regard this as a victory for anti-war, and international law proponents. Superficially, this is true, insofar as US national military forces are dismayed by the release, and insofar as the detailed reports of war are off-putting to many people.

Blunt assessment. Wikileaks release does not legally threaten any significant war-crimes issue for the US, or for any significant number of US soldiers. Moreover, these leaks are more likely to support more war-making than not. Why?

There are two potential US war crimes listed in this article.

1.

Insurgents try to surrender to helicopter gunship, and are gunned down. Unnattractive, and one can easily envision how technological advancement would create additional ethical problems, but US Army lawyer is correct. Individual soldiers cannot surrender to attack aircraft.

The easiest means of understanding this is to use the reciprocity principle. Can attack aircraft or a bomber surrender to an anti-aircraft battery? Not really, and in the same way, ground forces cannot practically surrender to aerial units, except possibly, when large military units engage in mass surrender.

This becomes all the more clear when one considers that aerial assault normally engages forces which are surrounded by their compatriots. Even if one were to imagine that helicopters could drop down to pick up the prisoners (something which is not in fact true, because helicopters will normally have either a configuration, or a load of friendly forces which prevent this) the surrounding enemy forces would attack the aircraft when it slows and enters a vulnerable takeoff and landing phase.

Even for enemy soldiers on the front lines, surrender would require advancing accross no-mans land to meet the enemy. It is unlikely that the soldiers who wanted to surrender would be able to do so on many occasions, because their military compatriots beside and behind them would not allow this. As a practical matter, attack aircraft perform more as munitions than as merciful soldiers in war.

2.

Hundreds of civilians killed at US military checkpoints. Use of completely lethal force, without any particular restraint meets the proportionate use of force standards required in international law because of the use of suicide bombing attack vehicles by Iraqi resistance elements.

Beyond any question of accidental running of military checkpoints by Iraqis, it is highly believable that Iraqi civilians would in fact attempt to run military checkpoints because of the large number of criminals who set up checkpoints for the purposes of theft, and often kidnapping. Thus, while trigger happy action by US forces is likely enough, nothing about gunning down a civilian family stands out as a likely abuse on the basis of the existance of such casualties.

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I would further note that the Wikileaks documents indicate that Iranian forces supported insurgents, trained forces which kidnapped/prisoner-snatched US military personell, and provided chemical weapons for terrorist use.

This information is very likely to be at least partially untrue, and even in the case that it was not, would fall under the heading of covert actions by states, which should be expected, and which would better be ignored on a small scale, than dealt with openly.

With the open release of these reports, the most significant effect will be the strengthening of the hands of those supporting a war with Iran.

It is in fact, not unlikely that the person or persons who leaked this information, in fact did so as a way of boosting US Iranian tensions. Indeed it is quite possible that a foreign intelligence service was involved in this leak, with most of the nations in the Mideast, and several Lebanese and Iraqi factions being likely candidates for such action. Many of these nations have the necessary capabilities due to proximity of US forces, technical skill, or the presence of large numbers of expatriates, or ethnic compatriots in the US military (particularly important to Lebanese factions).

I do not say that Wikileaks is necessarily a great force for evil because of this, but the release of these reports is not a great triumph for the anti-war movement considering just what was released, and considering the timing of the release, after such point as withdrawal from Iraq has become a moot point from a political standpoint in the US.



This is an excellent example of how government leaks can be more a matter of law-breaking, or civil-disobedience, than a matter of simple government openness.

The "fire shower of nuclear retaliation", and North Korean strategy.

A recent statement in North Korea's main newspaper Rodong Sinmun is potentially interesting for what it reveals about their nuclear strategy.

The north Koreans were responding, in typically bellicose fashion, to the US announcement that it was extending its 'nuclear umbrella' to cover South Korea. Short exempts of the North Korean article can be found all over the web, but when scanning the news on the subject quickly, one relatively short article I found
from a fairly obscure source included enough of the North Korean statement to potentially reveal something interesting about their nuclear strategy. Virtually everyone mentioned the "fire shower of nuclear retaliation", but what most of the articles leave out the following words "all over South Korea."

This statement is a fairly strong indication that nuclear weapon targeting in North Korea definitely includes South Korea of course, but this may well indicate that their nuclear targeting may be focused MOSTLY on South Korea, rather than on South Korean allies like the US or Japan.

Fireball from Minor Scale test immediately after detonation. This was a conventional (non-nuclear) test using only high explosives, and it was above, rather than below ground, but the scale is similar to the latest (2009) North Korean test (yield estemated by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists). Note the F-4 Phantom aircraft in the foreground for scale.

We have to realize that North Korea targeting the South cannot be regarded as a completely foregone conclusion, because the North regards the South as part of their own nation, and fallout from any such strike would most certainly affect them.

Now the North Korean military and government are composed of very hard men, and it is unsurprising that they would be willing to accept the damage, but they are also a nation with a strong propaganda focus as well, and the possibility of being nuked by the North certainly has the possibility of alienating otherwise sympathetic South Koreans.

The sword of propaganda is double-edged in this case, because the possibility of nuclear war also might encourage South Koreans to make additional concessions to the North, but even so, it is doubtful that the North would risk the negative consequences unless they meant what they said. The North Korean ideology is more patriotic and focused on uniting the nation than it is communist and committed to international socialism, and such a strategy would not fit well with an idle threat to nuke your "own" people and land.

North Koria's Ballistic missiles "RODONG"(=NODONG), "TAEPODONG-1" and "TAEPODONG-2"

The REASON that this strategy would be adopted is most likely, technical. Even though North Korea has nuclear weapons, it most likely lacks the ability to place them on ICBM's (missiles). Considering the level (technical or numerical) of North Korean air-power, they could not rely on bomber delivery to far off locations, as the US Strategic Air Command did in the 1950's. It is fairly likely however, that a bomb could be dropped on the South, right across the border.

While technical limitations are likely to have been the most decisive, it is also likely the strategy is based in no small part on the idea that a limited, rather than total, nuclear war scenario is the most desirable. Communist nuclear thinking around the globe never truly embraced mutually assured destruction, and it would not seem especially wise for North Korea to be an exception, at least so long as North Korea lacks nuclear parity (technically unlikely). In the event of a war breaking out on the Korean peninsula, were the North to be pushed to use a nuke locally, the chances that international intervention (especially by China or Russia) would force a truce, would logically be higher, than if San Diego, Maui, or Tokyo were to be vitrified.

Thus the most likely scenario is that North Korean weapons are first, last-ditch solutions to a lost war, and also coming a close second, a deterrent to nuclear attack, which would be most likely to occur if North Korea was WINNING a war with the South, and looked likely to take over the entire nation.

To some degree, this should be reassuring to Americans, Japanese, or other US allies, but it is also very clear that reducing hostilities with North Korea is desirable. Long-extended hostilities will tend to tilt North Korean nuclear strategy further and further towards retaliation; bringing the war TO hated enemies, rather than resorting to targeting that nearly attacks oneself.