Battlegrounds

by H. R. McMaster

  22On Trump administration strategy on North Korea in 2017, see Donald J. Trump, “Remarks by President Trump to the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea—Seoul, Republic of Korea,” Remarks, The White House, November 7, 2017, whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-national-assembly-republic-korea-seoul-republic-korea/; James Jeffrey, “What If H.R. McMaster Is Right About North Korea?” The Atlantic, January 18, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/hr-mcmaster-might-be-right-about-north-korea/550799/; Duane Patterson, “National Security Advisor General H. R. McMaster on MSNBC with Hugh,” HughHewitt.com, August 5, 2017, https://www.hughhewitt.com/national-security-advisor-general-h-r-mcmaster-msnbc-hugh/#.

  23“Kim Yong-chol: North Korea’s Controversial Olympics Delegate.” BBC News, February 23, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43169604.

  24A South Korean newspaper claimed that Kim Jong-un had stated his preference for Vietnam-style economic opening over the Chinese model during his summit with President Moon in 2018. See Park Ui-myung and Choi Mira, “North Korean Leader Envisions Vietnam-like Opening for North Korea: Source,” Pulse, May 4, 2018, https://pulsenews.co.kr/view.php?year=2018&no=285653. See also John Reed and Bryan Harris, “North Korea Turns to Vietnam for Economic Ideas,” Financial Times, November 28, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/c8a4fc68-f2cd-11e8-ae55-df4bf40f9d0d.

  25On the masters of money and on Dennis Rodman, see Fifield, The Great Successor, 142–43 and 174–80.

  26Jeong Yong-soo et al., “Donju Are Princes of North Korean Economy,” Korea JoongAng Daily, October 18, 2019, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=3054069.

  27See Trump’s tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1160158591518674945?s=20.

  28White House, “Remarks by President Trump after Meeting with Vice Chairman Kim Yong Chol of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Remarks, The White House, June 1, 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-vice-chairman-kim-yong-chol-democratic-peoples-republic-korea/.

  29See Trump tweet referring to North Korea’s potential to become an “economic powerhouse” and Kim as a “capable leader”: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1094035813820784640?s=20.

  30Roberta Rampton, “‘We Fell in Love’: Trump Swoons over Letters from North Korea’s Kim,” Reuters, September 29, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-trump/we-fell-in-love-trump-swoons-over-letters-from-north-koreas-kim-idUSKCN1MA03Q.

  31Jordan Fabian, “Trump Says Kim Not Responsible for Otto Warmbier’s Death: ‘I Will Take Him at His Word,’” The Hill, February 28, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/431962-trump-says-kim-not-responsible-for-otto-warmbiers-death-i-will-take.

  32For the full speech, see “Address by President Moon Jae-in at May Day Stadium in Pyeongyang,” Chung Wa Dae, https://english1.president.go.kr/briefingspeeches/speeches/70.

  33Fifield, The Great Successor, 277.

  34Eric Beech, “N. Korea Wanted Most Sanctions Lifted in Exchange for Partial Yongbyon Closure—U.S. Official,” Reuters, February 28, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/northkorea-usa-briefing/nkorea-wanted-most-sanctions-lifted-in-exchange-for-partial-yongbyon-closure-us-official-idUSL3N20O1I7.

  35Timothy Martin, “North Korea Fires Insults at U.S., Spares Trump,” Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korea-fires-insults-at-u-s-spares-trump-11560596401?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1.

  36KCNA Watch, “Report on 5th Plenary Meeting of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea,” KNCA Watch, January 1, 2020, https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1577829999-473709661/report-on-5th-plenary-meeting-of-7th-c-c-wpk/.

  37The National Committee on North Korea, “Kim Jong Un’s 2019 New Year Address,” NCNK, January 1, 2019, https://www.ncnk.org/resources/publications/kimjongun_2019_newyearaddress.pdf/file_view.

  38Choe, “Happy Birthday, Trump Tells Kim,” New York Times [date] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/world/asia/trump-kim-jong-un-birthday.html.

  39See David Sanger and Choe Sang-Hun, “North Korea Tests New Weapon,” New York Times, April 17, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/world/asia/north-korea-missile-weapons-test.html; and BBC News, “North Korea: Kim Jong-un Oversees ‘Strike Drill’ Missile Component Test,” BBC, May 5, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48165793.

  40Choe Sang-Hun, “New North Korean Missile Comes with Angry Message to South Korea’s President,” New York Times, July 26, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/world/asia/north-korea-missile-moon-jae-in.html.

  41Neil Connor and Nicola Smith, “Beijing Forced to Defend Trade with North Korea after Chinese-made Truck Used to Showcase Missiles,” Telegraph, April 18, 2017, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/18/china-made-truck-used-showcase-missiles-north-korea-parade/. Also, North Korean Economy Watch, “Report of the Panel of Experts Established Pursuant to Resolution 1874 (2009),” NKEW, 4, http://www.nkeconwatch.com/nk-uploads/UN-Panel-of-Experts-NORK-Report-May-2011.pdf

  42On training of DPRK hackers in China, see Kong Ji Young et al., “The All-Purpose Sword: North Korea’s Cyber Operations and Strategies,” Eleventh International Conference on Cyber Conflict, 2019, 14–15, https://ccdcoe.org/uploads/2019/06/Art_08_The-All-Purpose-Sword.pdf. On the effect of sanctions, see Mathew Ha, “U.S. Sanctions North Korean Companies for Profiting from Overseas Slave Labor,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies, January 15, 2020, https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2020/01/15/us-sanctions-north-korean-companies-for-profiting-from-overseas-slave-labor/.

  43Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., “North Korean Illicit Activities and Sanctions: A National Security Dilemma,” Cornell International Law Journal 57 (2018): 51, https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/ILJ/upload/Bechtol-final.pdf.

  44“Report on 5th Plenary Meeting of the 7th C.C. WPK,” KNCA Watch, January 1, 2020, https://kcnawatch.org/newstream/1577829999-473709661/report-on-5th-plenary-meeting-of-7th-c-c-wpk/.

  45UN Human Rights Council, “Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” United Nations Human Rights Council, 15, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/CoIDPRK/Pages/ReportoftheCommissionofInquiryDPRK.aspx

  46Alexander George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1991), 76–81.

  47For more, see Ben Dooley and Choe Sang-Hun, “Japan Imposes Broad New Trade Restrictions on South Korea,” New York Times, August 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/business/japan-south-korea-trade.html.

  48Andy Greenberg, “Silicon Valley Has a Few Ideas for Undermining Kim Jong-un,” Wired, March 10, 2015, https://www.wired.com/2015/03/silicon-valley-ideas-undermining-kim-jong-un/.

  49Lankov, The Real North Korea, 252–54.

  50Lankov, The Real North Korea, 254–58.

  Chapter 13: Entering the Arena

  1Damon Wilson and Maks Czuperski, Digital Resilience, Hybrid Threats, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Atlantic Council, December 20, 2017, in possession of author. This report details the sustained Twitter campaign #FireMcMaster, and concludes that the majority of participants in this campaign were bots coming from alt-right sources of disinformation.

  2William Clinton, “Speech on China Trade Bill,” Speech, Washington, DC, March 8, 2000, https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/Full_Text_of_Clintons_Speech_on_China_Trade_Bi.htm.

  3Adrian Shahbaz, “Freedom on the Net 2018: The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism,” Freedomhouse.org, November 16, 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism.

  4Paul Mozur, “A Genocide Incited on Facebook, with Posts from Myanmar’s Military,” New York Times, October 15, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html.

  5On technology’s effect on children, see Nicholas Kardaras, Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids—and How to
Break the Trance (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2017). On the rise of addictive technology, see Adam L. Alter, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (New York: Penguin Books, 2018).

  6Emerson T. Brooking and Suzanne Kianpour, “Iranian Digital Influence Efforts: Guerrilla Broadcasting for the Twenty-First Century,” Atlantic Council, 2020, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/IRAN-DIGITAL.pdf.

  7Tae-jun Kang, “North Korea’s Influence Operations, Revealed,” The Diplomat, July 25, 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/07/north-koreas-influence-operations-revealed/.

  8On Hong Kong, see Louise Matsakis, “China Attacks Hong Kong Protesters with Fake Social Posts,” Wired, October 19, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/china-twitter-facebook-hong-kong-protests-disinformation/. On Taiwan, see Raymond Zhong, “Awash in Disinformation Before Vote, Taiwan Points Finger at China,” New York Times, January 6, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/technology/taiwan-election-china-disinformation.html.

  9Madeleine Carlisle, “New Orleans Declared a State of Emergency and Took Down Servers After Cyber Attack,” Time, December 14, 2019, https://time.com/5750242/new-orleans-cyber-attack/.

  10James Clapper, “The Battle for Cybersecurity,” Keynote Presentation, ICF CyberSci Symposium 2017, Fairfax, VA, September 28, 2017.

  11Todd C. Lopez, “Cyber Command Expects Lessons from 2018 Midterms to Apply in 2020,” U.S. Department of Defense. February 14, 2019, https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/1758488/cyber-command-expects-lessons-from-2018-midterms-to-apply-in-2020/.

  12United States Congress, House of Representatives, Hearing Before the Armed Services Committee, “Cyber Warfare in the 21st Century: Threats, Challenges, and Opportunities,” 115th Congress, 75 (statement of Jason Healey, Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, 2017), https://govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-115hhrg24680/pdf/CHRG-115hhrg24680.pdf.

  13Mia Shuang Li, “Google’s Dragonfly Will Intensify Surveillance on Journalists in China,” Columbia Journalism Review, December 11, 2018, https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/dragonfly-censorship-google-china.php.

  14John Noble Wilford, “With Fear and Wonder in Its Wake, Sputnik Lifted Us into the Future,” New York Times, September 25, 2007, https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/science/space/25sput.html; Larry Abramson, “Sputnik Left Legacy for U.S. Science Education,” NPR, September 30, 2007, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14829195.

  15Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, “Reflections on Post–Cold War Issues for International Space Cooperation,” Smithsonian, May 23, 2010, https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/reflections-post-cold-war-issues-international-space-cooperation.

  16“Challenges to Security in Space,” Defense Intelligence Agency, January 2019, https://www.dia.mil/Portals/27/Documents/News/Military%20Power%20Publications/Space_Threat_V14_020119_sm.pdf.

  17On anti-satellite weapons, see “Counterspace Capabilities,” United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, August 6, 2018, https://www.unidir.org/files/medias/pdfs/counterspace-capabilities-backgrounder-eng-0-771.pdf.

  18Comments from the author at the National Space Council’s inaugural meeting, October 5, 2017.

  19Sean Kelly, “China Is Infiltrating U.S. Space Industry with Investments,” The Hill, Peter Greenberger, December 26, 2018, https://thehill.com/opinion/international/422870-chinese-is-infiltrating-us-space-industry-with-investments-and.

  20Yaakov Lappin, “Chinese Company Set to Manage Haifa’s Port, Testing U.S.-Israeli Alliance,” South Florida Sun Sentinel, January 29, 2019, https://www.sun-sentinel.com/florida-jewish-journal/fl-jj-chinese-company-set-manage-haifa-port-20190206-story.html.

  21Samm Sacks and Justin Sherman, “Global Data Governance: Concepts, Obstacles, and Prospects,” New America, https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/reports/global-data-governance/.

  22Department of Defense, “Missile Defense Review,” 2019, https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Interactive/2018/11-2019-Missile-Defense-Review/The%202019%20MDR_Executive%20Summary.pdf.

  23“Statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord” Remarks, The White House, June 1, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-trump-paris-climate-accord/.

  24Patrick Herhold and Emily Farnworth, “The Net-Zero Challenge: Global Climate Action at a Crossroads (Part 1),” World Economic Forum in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group, December 2019, https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-net-zero-challenge-global-climate-action-at-a-crossroads-part-1.

  25Richard Muller, Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines (W. W. Norton and Company, 2012).

  26Steve Inskeep and Ashley Westerman Inskeep. “Why Is China Placing a Global Bet on Coal?” NPR, April 19, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/716347646/why-is-china-placing-a-global-bet-on-coal; author’s calculation based on a 1000 MWe coal plant. See Jordan Hanania et al., “Energy Education—Coal Fired Power Plant,” EnergyEducation.CA, February 14, 2019, https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Coal_fired_power_plant.

  27David Obura, “Kenya’s Most Polluting Coal Plant Could Poison Coastline,” Climate Change News, September 20, 2017, https://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/09/20/kenyas-polluting-coal-plant-poison-coastline/.

  28John Mandyck and Eric Schultz, Food Foolish: The Hidden Connection Between Food Waste, Hunger, and Climate Change (Carrier Corp., 2015).

  29Note: Migration is taking a psychological as well as a physical toll, encouraging a populist turn in the polities of those nations most effected.

  30Muller, Energy for Future Presidents, 260.

  31Note: NITI Aayog, a “prominent government think tank,” claimed that “More than 600 million Indians face ‘acute water shortages.’” Seventy percent of the nation’s water supply has been contaminated, which results in about 200,000 deaths every year. About two dozen cities could run out of groundwater entirely by next year, and about 40 percent of India will have “no access to drinking water” by 2030. James Temple. “India’s Water Crisis Is Already Here. Climate Change Will Compound It,” MIT Technology Review, April 24, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613344/indias-water-crisis-is-already-here-climate-change-will-compound-it/.

  32Muller, Energy for Future Presidents.

  33Mandyck and Schultz, Food Foolish.

  34Eliza Barclay and Brian Resnick, “How Big Was the Global Climate Strike? 4 Million People, Activists Estimate,” Vox, September 22, 2019, https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/9/20/20876143/climate-strike-2019-september-20-crowd-estimate.

  35“‘No Planet B’: Millions Take to Streets in Global Climate Strike,” Al Jazeera, September 20, 2019, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/planet-thousands-join-global-climate-strike-asia-190920040636503.html.

  36Elizabeth Weise, “On World Environment Day, Everything You Know About Energy in the U.S. Might Be Wrong,” USA Today, June 4, 2019, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/06/04/climate-change-coal-now-more-expensive-than-wind-solar-energy/1277637001/.

  37Alison St. John, “A Better Nuclear Power Plant?,” KPBS, May 21, 2012, https://www.kpbs.org/news/2012/may/21/better-nuclear-power-plant/.

  38World Nuclear Association, “Plans for New Reactors Worldwide,” updated January 2020, https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx.

  39Bloomberg, “Made-in-China Reactor Gains Favor at Home as U.S. Nuclear Technology Falters,” Japan Times, April 2, 2019, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/02/business/corporate-business/made-china-reactor-gains-favor-home-u-s-nuclear-technology-falters/#.Xi6NWBNKiCW.

  40Elting E. Morison, Men, Machines, and Modern Times (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 85.

  Conclusion

  1Paraphrased from H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty (New York: Harper Perennial, 1997), ix.

  2McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 180–96.

  3McMaster, Dereliction
of Duty, 260.

  4McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 156.

  5My belief was consistent with Professor Richard Betts’s definition of strategy as “the essential ingredient for making war either politically effective or morally tenable. It is the link between military means and political ends, the scheme for how to make one produce the other. Without strategy, there is no rationale for how force will achieve purposes worth the price in blood and treasure.” See Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” International Security (Fall 2000), http://www.columbia.edu/itc/sipa/U6800/readings-sm/strategy_betts.pdf.

  6Carl von Clausewitz, On War (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & C., 1918).

  7Conrad Crane, Avoiding Vietnam: The U.S. Army’s Response to Defeat in Southeast Asia (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002).

  8Hew Strachan, “Strategy and the Limitation of War,” Survival 50, no. 1 (February/March 2008): 31–54, DOI: 10.1080/00396330801899470. See also Hew Strachan, The Direction of War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 54–55.

  9On North Vietnam’s response, see Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 413.

  10Speech to the American Historical Association, December 28, 1939, https://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/speech-to-the-american-historical-association/.

  11E. J. Dionne Jr., “Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome,” Washington Post, March 4, 1991.

  12John J. Mearsheimer, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 121 and 41.

  13Kelsey Piper, “George Soros and Charles Koch Team Up for a Common Cause: An End to ‘Endless War,’” Vox, July 1, 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/7/1/20677441/soros-koch-end-interventionist-wars-military; Nahal Toosi, “Koch Showers Millions on Think Tanks to Push a Restrained Foreign Policy,” Politico, February 13, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/13/charles-koch-grants-foreign-policy-think-tanks-114898; Beverly Gage, “The Koch Foundation Is Trying to Reshape Foreign Policy. With Liberal Allies,” New York Times Magazine, September 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/charles-koch-foundation-education.html.