The new makers of modern.., p.140
The New Makers of Modern Strategy, page 140
1. Валéрий Герáсимов [Valery Gerasimov], “Ценность науки в предвидении: Новые вызовы требуют переосмыслить формы и способы ведения боевых действий” [“The Value of Science Is in the Foresight: New Challenges Demand Rethinking the Forms and Methods of Carrying Out Combat Operations”], Военно-промышленный курьер [Military-Industrial Courier], February 26, 2013.
2. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans., Samuel B. Griffith (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1971), 77. Emphasis added.
3. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 67.
4. George F. Kennan, “Organizing Political Warfare,” April 30, 1948, Woodrow Wilson Center, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive.
5. Mao Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 46.
6. Oleg Kalugin, “Inside the KGB: An Interview with Retired KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin,” interview by the Cold War Production Team, CNN, January 1998.
7. Charles K. Bartles, “Getting Gerasimov Right,” Military Review 96:1 (2016): 30. Emphasis added.
8. “سردار قاسم سليماني :گمنامي: خواسته شهيدان ما بود” [“Commander Qassemi: Anonymity Was the Wish of Our Martyrs”], روزنامه جمهوري اسلامي [Jomhouri-ye Eslami], June 7, 2005.
9. See, for example, سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], گذری بر دو سال جنگ [A Glance at Two Years of War] (Tehran: Political Office, 1982).
10. سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], گذری بر دو سال جنگ [A Glance at Two Years of War], 15.
11. See, for example, Brandon A. Pinkley, Guarding History: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Memory of the Iran-Iraq War, Special Historical Study 12 (Washington, DC: Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2018). Also see various IRGC histories, such as حسین اردستانی [Hossein Ardestani], کتاب رویارویی استراتژیها جنگ عراق و ایران [Confrontation of Strategies in the Iran-Iraq War] (Tehran: Sepah Center for Sacred Defense Documents and Research, 1388 AH [2009 / 2010 CE]), 101–2; محمد درودیان [Muhammad Durudiyan], آغاز تا پايان: سالنماى تحليلى [Beginning to End: A Year-by-Year Analysis] (Tehran: Sepah Center for War Studies and Research, 1383 AH [2004 / 2005 CE]), 44.
12. The photograph comes from Anisa Shaheed, “Who Is Soleimani’s Successor Ismail Khan?,” Tolo News (Afghanistan), January 5, 2020.
13. US Department of Defense, “OIF EFP Detonations by Month: July 2005 to December 2011,” undated, accessed on April 21, 2022, available at https://admin.govexec.com/media/gbc/docs/pdfs_edit/enclosure_tab_a_document_for_review_(150813_oif_efp_pull_no_summary)_(1).pdf.
14. On these activities see, Seth Jones, Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran, and the Rise of Irregular Warfare (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2021).
15. Tim Arango, et al., “The Iran Cables: Secret Documents Show How Tehran Wields Power in Iraq,” New York Times, November 19, 2019.
16. Arango, “The Iran Cables.”
17. Statement of Ladislav Bittman, Former Deputy Chief of the Disinformation Department of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service, “Soviet Covert Action (The Forgery Offensive): Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,” US House of Representatives (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1980), 43–44.
18. See, for example, Герaсимов [Gerasimov], “Ценность науки в предвидении” [“The Value of Science Is in the Foresight”]; Валерии Герасимов [Valery Gerasimov], “Мир на гранях войны,” [“World on the Brink of War”], Военно-промышленный курьер [Military-Industrial Courier], March 13, 2017.
19. Владимир Тихонов [Vladimir Tikhonov] interview with Валерии Герасимов [Valery Gerasimov], Военно-промышленный курьер [Military-Industrial Courier], May 25, 2005.
20. See the interview with Gerasimov in Наби Набиев [Nabi Nabiyev], “Горячие будни генерала Герасимова” [“Gen. Gerasimov’s Busy Routine”], Крaсная звездa [Red Star], March 12, 2001.
21. Valery Gerasimov, PowerPoint Slides, Moscow Conference on International Security, May 23, 2014. The slides were published in Anthony H. Cordesman, Russia and the “Color Revolution”: A Russian Military View of a World Destabilized by the U.S. and the West (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2014), 11–25.
22. Bartles, “Getting Gerasimov Right.”
23. Герaсимов [Gerasimov], “Ценность науки в предвидении” [“The Value of Science Is in the Foresight”]; Валерии Герасимов [Valery Gerasimov], “По опыту Сирии,” [“On the Syrian Experience”], Военно-промышленный курьер [Military-Industrial Courier], No. 44, March 9, 2016.
24. Gerasimov, PowerPoint Slides, May 23, 2014. Emphasis added.
25. Валерии Герасимов [Valery Gerasimov], “Военные опасности и военные угрозы Российской Федерации в современных условиях” [“Military Dangers and Military Threats of the Russian Federation in Modern Conditions”], Армейский Сборник [Army Journal], No. 5, April 16, 2015.
26. Герaсимов [Gerasimov], “Ценность науки в предвидении” [“The Value of Science Is in the Foresight”].
27. Валéрий Герáсимов [Valery Gerasimov], “Влияние современного характера вооруженной борьбы на направленность строительства и развития Вооруженных Сил Российской Федерации. Приоритетные задачи военной науки в обеспечении обороны страны” [“The Influence of the Contemporary Nature of Armed Struggle on the Focus of the Construction and Development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Priority Tasks of Military Science in Safeguarding the Country’s Defense”], Вестник Академии Военных Наук [Journal of the Academy of Military Sciences] 62:2 (2018): 18.
28. Валерии Герасимов [Valery Gerasimov], “ИГИЛ начался с ‘Талибана’ ” [“ISIS Began with the ‘Taliban’ ”], Военно-промышленный курьер [Military-Industrial Courier], October 12, 2015.
29. “Special Operations Forces Created in Russian Armed Forces—General Staff,” Interfax, March 6, 2013.
30. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 77.
31. See Jones, Three Dangerous Men.
32. Валерии Герасимов [Valery Gerasimov], “Вооруженные Силы Российской Федерации и борьба с международным терроризмом” [“The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the Fight Against International Terrorism”], V Московской конференции по международной безопасности [V Moscow Conference on International Security], April 27, 2016.
33. Вíктор Баранéц [Victor Baranets], “Начальник Генштаба Вооруженных сил России генерал армии Валерий Герасимов: ‘Мы переломили хребет ударным силам терроризма’ ” [“Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia Army General Valery Gerasimov: ‘We Have Broken the Ridge of the Shock Forces of Terrorism’ ”], Комсомольская правда [Komsomolskaya Pravda], December 26, 2017.
34. Баранéц [Baranets], “Начальник Генштаба Вооруженных сил России генерал армии Валерий Герасимов” [“Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia Army General Valery Gerasimov”].
35. Герaсимов [Gerasimov], “Вооруженные Силы Российской Федерации и борьба с международным терроризмом” [“The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the Fight Against International Terrorism”].
36. On Russian military preparations in Syria, see Валерий Половинкин [Valery Polovinkin], ed., Российское оружие в сирийском конфликте [Russian Weapons in Syrian Conflict] (Moscow: STATUS, 2016).
37. Герaсимов [Gerasimov], “Ценность науки в предвидении” [“The Value of Science Is in the Foresight”].
38. The data on gross domestic product (purchasing power parity) include: China, $22.5 trillion; United States, $20.5 trillion; Russia, $4.0 trillion (2020 estimates). Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook, “Real GDP (Purchasing Power Parity),” 2021, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/real-gdp-purchasing-power-parity/country-comparison/.
39. The data on population include: China, 1.4 billion; United States, 335 million; Russia, 142 million (2022 estimates). Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook, “Country Comparisons—Population,” 2022, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/population/country-comparison/
40. The data on defense budgets include: China, $193 billion; United States, $738 billion; Russia, $61 billion (2020 estimates). International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, Volume 21 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2022), 23.
41. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK Exposes Series of Russian Cyber Attacks Against Olympic and Paralympic Games (London: UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, October 19, 2020); United States of America v. Yuriy Sergeyevich Andrienko, et al., United States District Court, Western District of Pennsylvania, Indictment, Criminal No. 20–316, October 15, 2020.
42. Совет Безопасности Российской Федерации [Security Council of the Russian Federation], Стратегия национальной безопасности Российской Федерации [National Strategy of the Russian Federation], July 2, 2021.
43. “CAR: Experts Alarmed by the Government’s Use of ‘Russian Trainers,’ Close Contacts with UN Peacekeepers,” Human Rights Council, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner, March 31, 2021, available at https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26961&LangID=E.
44. Lawfare (blog), “What Laws Constrain This Russian Private Military Company?” Zarko Perovic, posted March 23, 2021, https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-laws-constrain-russian-private-military-company; Samuel Ramani, “Russia’s Strategic Transformation in Libya: A Winning Gambit?,” RUSI Commentary, April 28, 2021, available at https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/russias-strategic-transformation-libya-winning-gambit. RUSI is one of the top think tanks in the United Kingdom.
45. Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 1.
46. Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution, 1.
47. Герaсимов [Gerasimov], “Ценность науки в предвидении” [“The Value of Science Is in the Foresight”].
48. David C. Gompert, Astrid Stuth Cevallos, and Cristina L. Garafola, War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2016), xiv.
49. On games and scenarios, see, for example, John Gordon IV, et al., Army First Capabilities for 2025 and Beyond (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2019); Raphael S. Cohen, et al., The Future of Warfare in 2030 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020); David Ochmanek et al., U.S. Military Capabilities and Forces for a Dangerous World (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2017); War on the Rocks (blog), “How Does the Next Great Power Conflict Play Out? Lessons from a Wargame,” James Lacey, posted April 22, 2019; Gompert et al., War with China.
50. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2021), Volume 21, 23.
51. Валерии Герасимов [Valery Gerasimov], “По опыту Сирии,” [“On the Syrian Experience”], Военно-промышленный курьер [Military-Industrial Courier], 44 (March 9, 2016).
CHAPTER 41
The Strength of Weakness
THE KIM DYNASTY AND NORTH KOREA’S STRATEGY FOR SURVIVAL
Sue Mi Terry
On June 25, 1950, North Korea’s army invaded South Korea. This was a costly, almost catastrophic, blunder. After initial success, the North’s forces were sent reeling back by United Nations troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. US and UN troops advanced almost to the Yalu River—the border between China and North Korea. The Northern regime was only saved by a massive and costly intervention by Chinese Communist “volunteers.” Yet the North’s survival in the succeeding decades was not due only to Chinese or Russian patronage. Indeed, the Kim family dynasty survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reform of the post-Mao Chinese economy while learning to manipulate its more powerful patrons.
It survived, moreover, even while economically underperforming its democratic opposite number, South Korea, by an ever-increasing margin. In 1960, North Korea was still an industrial powerhouse that was far ahead, militarily and economically, of its poorer southern cousin. Today, North Korea, which clings to a Marxist planned economy, is one of the poorest countries on the planet while free-market South Korea is one of the richest. South Korea has also gained the conventional military edge over the North, thanks to its technological advantage and its alliance with the United States, which retains the most powerful armed forces in the world.
Yet, despite decades of sanctions and setbacks that might have been expected to end the North Korean regime, it has survived—and the regime, if not ordinary people, has prospered. In the process, North Korea offers a master class in how a minnow can swim among whales. It shows how an economically weak and backward state can leverage its military, security, diplomatic, and intelligence resources to ensure the survival of a regime. North Korea has become a master of strategic Taekwondo. Just as Taekwondo masters employ fast kicks and punches to keep their opponents off-balance, so North Korea has learned how to use military provocations and brinkmanship tactics to wrong-foot its principal adversaries in Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo. The development of a formidable nuclear arsenal combined with missiles capable of hitting the continental United States has greatly heightened the North’s leverage. Pyongyang has perfected the art of geopolitical blackmail, using its provocations and threats to extract concessions that enable the regime’s survival.
While emphasizing its strength to its enemies, North Korea has leveraged its weakness with its principal outside supporter, the People’s Republic of China. Beijing and Pyongyang have frequently been at odds, with China’s more cautious and reformist rulers wishing that North Korea would do more to modernize its economy and to curtail military provocations that provide justification for the United States to enhance its military role in the region. But because Beijing does not want to risk a collapse of the North (which could bring refugees flooding into Chinese territory and US troops back to the Yalu River), it has never fully exercised its economic leverage on North Korea. Pyongyang has been able to get away with actions that irk its sponsors in Beijing because the Chinese government cannot run the risk of indefinitely cutting off fuel and other supplies to the North—steps that could lead to the Kim regime’s downfall.
Meanwhile, the North Korean state was able to survive internally by employing ruthless Stalinist repression of its population. It employs coercive force and fear tactics through overlapping and stovepiped domestic intelligence and police agencies to control the population. The Kim family has also maintained tight control over the population through ideological indoctrination and the maintenance of a monopoly of information. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the regime has been able to survive by securing the support, if not the loyalty, of the elites—powerbrokers or “shareholders” in the party, the military, and the government—by alternately rewarding them with power and prestige, or, if they step out of the line, by severely punishing them.
The North’s wily, brutal, and unscrupulous strategy for survival did not emerge full-grown with the birth of the regime. It has taken three generations to gestate and perfect. This essay will examine the development of the North’s survival strategy, both in regard to outside powers and its own population, under regime founder Kim Il Sung, who ruled from 1948 until his death in 1994; his son Kim Jong Il, who ruled from 1994 until his own death in 2011; and the first decade of the rule of his grandson Kim Jong Un, who has been in power since 2011. Together, these three men have managed to create and maintain the first and only hereditary, Confucian-Marxist dictatorship on the planet with a blend of a bizarre state religion, ideological indoctrination, repressive, totalitarian system, and the relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and a brinkmanship strategy.
