A (Somewhat) Realistic North Korean RED DAWN

The YouTuber The Alternate Historian, whom I know from my former days at the Internet's premiere alternate history forum, posted on Twitter recently about making a video discussing a realistic war between the U.S. and North Korea. In the Homefront video game and the 2012 Red Dawn remake the North Koreans manage to land forces on the American mainland and actually take control over much of the continental United States.

Sufficient to say, that isn't going to happen. North Korea's air force is obsolete and owing to lack of fuel, their pilots have little training time. North Korea's navy is primarily focused on its own river and coasts. They're realistically not going transport a whole army to the American mainland and good luck keeping them supplied even if they could get here. Their army is large, but their equipment is obsolete. Their main strengths are masses of artillery threatening the South Korean capital, their nukes and ballistic missiles, and their cyberwarfare capability.

(North Korea's nuclear capabilities seem much more advanced than I'd earlier believed...I thought at best they could manage a "Super-9/11" on one or two cities on the West Coast and then they'd be annihilated, but what the Council on Foreign Relations describes is something more like what's depicted in this faux Congressional commission's report on a North Korean nuclear attack. Yikes.)

So how could you have a realistic Red Dawn where it's the North Koreans of all people landing on the American mainland? Commandos. Before I left the alternate-history forum, I suggested the "more realistic Red Dawn" story would be a small North Korean force taking over an isolated small town in the rural West Coast. In my idea they'd be hidden aboard a civilian ship, while TAH suggested on Twitter they could use submarines. North Korean cyberwar techniques could be used to conceal their approach to the West Coast. The goal isn't to actually conquer the United States; the goal is to seize a town during an international crisis as a bargaining chip to get the U.S. to back off militarily, lift sanctions, etc. Northern California is rather isolated (a large land area with few roads) and if they take a large number of civilians hostage, that would complicate any response from the California National Guard or the regular U.S. military. That means the locals will have to liberate themselves, and so we enter Red Dawn territory.

And that's when things get tricky. There are lots of guns to be had in the rural U.S., even in Democratic states like California, but a force of North Korean regulars is going to have much heavier gear even if they're dramatically outnumbered. I'm imagining them herding captured civilians into camps beneath a battery of portable artillery and then defending said artillery with machine guns. A few dozen guys with rifles might be able to make life difficult for North Korean infantry patrols or do hit-and-run on isolated enemy positions, but good luck with successfully attacking this.

Fortunately, northern California is a major haven for illegally growing marijuana, and the local weed baron "just happens" to have some mortars. Think how mobster Eddie Valentine flips on the evil actor (and Nazi spy) Neville Sinclair in the climax of the film The Rocketeer--like Eddie, this man might not have a problem making money illegally, but collaborating with a totalitarian enemy is something else entirely. A bunch of irregular infantrymen bum-rushing machine guns isn't going to end well for them (and even a successful attack would give the North Koreans time to slaughter the hostages with artillery), but a surprise mortar bombardment could cripple the guns or kill their operators, wreck the machine gun positions, etc.

And that gave me the idea for an analogue for the traitor Daryl from the 1984 version. I'm imagining some young Twitter tankie (an apologist for authoritarian anti-American regimes--think Western leftists defending China's repression of Hong Kong or Xinjiang or Russian bombing of Syrian rebels) initially collaborating with the North Koreans. He erroneously thinks they're "anti-imperialist" or believes the U.S. provoked the North Koreans into this crazed long-shot gamble with economic sanctions or military drills. 

Sufficient to say, the scales fall from his eyes real fast. Although the guerrillas initially don't want his help, he's read the Anarchist's Cookbook and knows how to combine chlorine and bleach to make a crude chemical weapon or can make other chemical concoctions ISIS-style. Putting the trust the North Koreans gave him to good use, he sets off the chemical bomb in the North Korean headquarters at the same time the guerrillas use their new mortars to destroy the artillery the North Koreans are using to hold the townsfolk hostage. If the guerrillas or their weed-baron allies have got some decent machinists, they could make gas shells to make absolutely sure the gun crews are dead.

(Daryl could have some Redemption Equals Death for having been a collaborator initially, or more creatively, survive and everybody believes he was the Wolverines' inside man the entire time.)

I've got a lot going on, so I'm not going to try to pitch this to Hollywood (which wouldn't be interested, especially with the failure of the Red Dawn remake) or even write a book. Still, it might be interesting.

Patton In Korea? Two Versions of a Communist Confederacy? 1196 Byzantine Revival?

Still self-banned from the alternate history forum, but I still check on the public sections for good stuff to read. Here are some of my latest choices:

Patton in Korea-In which the...controversial...General George Patton doesn't die as a result of a car accident at the end of World War II and after a very brief retirement, is recalled to the colors to command US troops in the Korean War. Only a few chapters in and so far so good...Patton is restoring discipline that in actual history had been seriously allowed to lapse and remembering lessons of WWII that the peacetime army had forgotten to make the North Koreans' opening advance a lot more difficult. But it's not all sunshine and roses--Patton is having territory issues with MacArthur, who's diverting resources for something Patton dismisses as just "an amphibious landing." We'll see how this goes.

Union Blue and Dixie Red: A History of the Communist South-The author of this timeline makes the argument that an independent Confederate States of America would have a lot of the same social conditions that Czarist Russia had, and like Russia might be vulnerable to a Communist takeover if it lasted into the 20th Century. I like the alternate-timeline ephemera--quotes from historians, politicians, books, etc.--that offer hints as to how this happened. The divergence from real history is that it's the North, not the South, that violates Kentucky's neutrality first, and that causes a lot of trouble.

To Live and Die In Dixie: A Communist Confederacy TL-Fellow author Sean C.W. Korsgaard has been tinkering with the idea of a successful Confederate secession that later falls into Communist revolution for years now. The novel that takes place in this timeline involves a reluctant African-American soldier named Malcolm Little (real-life Malcolm X) on a mission to infiltrate the Red Confederacy for the U.S., but getting there is the fun part. The divergence from the timeline seems to be during our history's Seven Days Battle, which in this timeline is referred to as the Six Days Battle. The opening post hints that a lot of "victorious Confederacy" clichés will be avoided--Lee apparently will die a hated pariah rather than a national hero.

The Eagle of the East, Rhomania: An Eastern Roman Timeline-My first professional publication was a military-history article on the 1071 Battle of Manzikert, which kicked off the large-scale Turkish settlement in Asia Minor and the beginning of the end of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. In this scenario, the incompetent and pleasure-loving Byzantine Emperor Alexios III Angelos is deposed by two Anatolian Byzantine aristocrats disgusted by the Empire's failure to defend the Emperor's frontiers against the marauding Seljuk Turks. They reform the military and push back against the Seljuks, but the Venetian doge Enrico Dandalo still hates the Byzantines and he's got an army of Crusaders to plot his revenge.

On Sony, THE INTERVIEW, and Free Speech

I got into an interesting Facebook discussion with my friend Zaid Jilani after I posted this article about how both Republicans and Democrats are standing together against attempts by North Korea (or groups putting on a very good show of acting on behalf of the regime) to stop The Interview as a piece of uplifting news.

To make a long story short, Zaid said that this wasn't a free-speech issue, but Sony covering up for the incompetence of its IT department (Sony has been hacked before, on top of this recent bit of idiocy) by using the hack as part of a publicity campaign for The Interview, a movie that it feared would not do well. He did not see why he ought to give money to a company that repeatedly puts its customers at risk by failing to secure its electronics. To make a long story short, he said that Sony has been playing everybody rushing to its defense in the name of "free speech."

To be fair, he's raised some good points. If he doesn't want to see The Interview because that would be rewarding incompetence, so be it. And I could easily imagine any executive with any degree of intelligence following the dictum of never letting a good crisis go to waste. No less an authority than Forbes magazine agrees.

However, I disagree that it's not a free-speech issue:

*Most of the major American movie chains refused to screen the movie out of fear of extralegal violence, be it a threat of 9/11-esque violence (which might inspired some homegrown moron to attack a theater--I doubt there are North Korean commandos running around) or the more probable danger of hacking. The Sony hack crippled its electronic infrastructure--hacking isn't just a matter of embarrassment (racist Sony e-mails, nude pictures) but a real threat to one's business.

*For a time it seemed like Sony was going to bury the movie completely--they initially said there were "no plans" to release it on Video On Demand or DVD. Had that happened, the North Koreans would have straight-up silenced a critic well outside of their territory. It'd be like agents of the Nazi regime coming into the U.S. and waging a terror campaign to get United Artists to shelve The Great Dictator.

*An adaptation of the graphic novel Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea that might feature Steve Carrell had the plug pulled on it in the middle of development.

*When a Texas theater chain decided to air Team America World Police in place of The Interview to show it would not be intimidated by North Korean threats, Paramount Pictures prevented them from screening the movie.

*The Associated Press theorized that the attack on Sony would deter Hollywood from making films featuring overseas villains.

These electronic attacks and threats of physical violence have unleashed a massive "chilling effect." People are being intimidated from speaking their minds, producing art, etc. by either a foreign regime, a private entity (a hacker gang trying to sound scarier than it really is), or a combination of the two (a hacker gang working for North Korea). Chuck Wendig explains it very well.

Zaid repeatedly referred to The Interview as a crappy movie. That's purely a subjective matter--I've loved movies like Skyline that had horrible RottenTomatoes ratings and disliked movies like Get Him to the Greek that had much better ratings. RT currently gives The Interview a 48% and a kind of middling critical consensus. I could easily imagine the movie being crap--I didn't really enjoy Wedding Crashers and I disliked Get Him To The Greek so much I turned off the movie 15 minutes in and returned it.

However, just because a movie is crap doesn't mean it isn't worth defending. I read parts of The Satanic Verses and didn't really understand or enjoy it, but that doesn't mean Salman Rushdie should have been left to the tender mercies of the Ayatollah Khomeini and goons inspired by him.

Furthermore, free speech is something that should be extended as broadly as possible to the most unpopular people to make sure everybody is protected.

For example, Hustler magazine is incredibly tasteless, vile, and sexist. It ran an ad depicting Jerry Falwell confessing to incest with his mother, it mocks female politicians by depicting them in sexual situations, one magazine cover featured a woman in a meat grinder, and apparently it had some kind of spread depicting a pornographic version of a concentration camp. Even if you don't have a moral objection to pornography, Hustler is garbage.

However, so long as Hustler's right to free speech, however vile, is protected, more prosaic incidents of artistic nudity (and I mean legitimate art) are in significantly less danger from Moral Guardians on the right (artistic nudity is sinful and immodest, and according to the Calvinists undermines the gospel) or on the left (artistic nudity is exploitation of women). And if history is anything to go by, these groups will impose censorship if they could. This applies to both social conservatives and social liberals.

The same goes for "hate speech." As long as the speech of definitely hateful people like the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, etc. is protected, you won't have the kind of censorship of far more innocent things that "hate speech" laws in France, India, Poland, Britain, etc. have led to.

To quote A Man for All Seasons, I'd give the Devil the benefit of the law for my own safety's sake.

So I will be seeing The Interview as a matter of principle. If the movie sucks, so be it. If I'm giving money to a company that's too inept to protect its employees and customers, so be it. This is about taking a stand against appeasement and threats of violence, in defense of artistic freedom against crude coercion.

A Second Post About "The Interview"

Now it seems that the film The Interview will not be released at all, not even on Video on Demand, at least in the near future. Sony first abandoned plans to release the film after most theater chains in the United States refused to show it after the hackers (likely backed by North Korea) threatened 9/11-esque terror attacks. It seems more realistic that the greater danger would be hacking of customer credit card data and the like rather than physical violence (thus saith Homeland Security), but given how a judge has ruled a lawsuit against the theater in Aurora, Colorado over the shooting in the movie theater can go forward, that theaters might be concerned is understandable.

(The only solution I could think of would be for the government to agree to assume liability for this particular situation on the grounds of defending the citizens' freedoms against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That could potentially be very expensive and theater owners might not want the theaters full of cops--or if a municipality doesn't have enough police, the National Guard--as an alternative to simply not screening the movie. And they're a private business--if they don't want to go to all the trouble, that's their call.)

However, many movie theaters like the Plaza Theater in Atlanta were still willing to show the movie. I was actually planning on seeing it there as part of a "To Hell With Kim Jong-Un" outing. I am aware there is a risk (however minimal) of violence or (more probable) that my financial data might be compromised in a reprisal hack. Thing is, life has risks.

We are free because people in this country resisted bullies like the British Crown, the Klan, etc. not by cowering and hoping against hope the arrogant and the strong would show mercy. I intended to see the movie to show that I (and presumably the others who would see it with me) were not going to be intimidated by the Internet hired guns of some chunky despot in some unreconstructed Stalinist hellhole. And to all those people moralizing in the comments sections about how showing the movie isn't worth innocent lives, that if there was an incident the same people who condemned Sony for pulling the movie would condemn Sony for releasing the movie, etc., I would remind you that Allied bombing killed vast numbers of civilians living under German occupation in WWII and these same populations thought it was worth it to be liberated. Sometimes freedom has a price.

Then, when I was in the early stages of organizing my outing, Sony pulled the movie completely. One of my friends theorized that the hackers still had unreleased employee personal data that they could have released if further antagonized and Sony knuckled under to their threats to protect employees, which this article here supports. However, this article here depicts Sony warning past and present employees that their data is already out there. If that is the case, this was cowardice on Sony's part, since the hackers would have (foolishly) expended their leverage.

And Paramount is even worse. Some theaters decided to show Team America World Police instead to show they would not be intimidated by Fat Boy and his minions, but Paramount prevented them from screening the film. Paramount has not been hacked and now that the North Koreans' goons' tactics are known, precautions can be taken. And since it seemed the theater owners were making the decision to show the movie on their own, they're the ones assuming liability. This is an even more pathetic case of cowardice on the part of Paramount, which can't even plead coercion the way Sony can.

I've seen some people online suggesting that The Interview would be released later once the hubbub dies down, either theatrically or, to avoid security problems, by video-on-demand. It would be a good idea to give Sony a few months to a year to do the right thing, once the initial threat has passed. However, between Sony's "no plans" statement and this new threat by hackers, that might not be happening. If Sony tried to kill the movie permanently, this would be one of those rare occasions that I would support pirating it and spreading it so far over the Internet that all the threats and bloviations of Sony, Fat Boy, etc. would not be able to stop it. It would foil the North Korean regime's desire that people not see this movie and show Sony that bowing to the demands of hackers can cost them as well.

(And to anyone who says that'd be victimizing Sony twice, this would allow them to get their product out there and have an excuse to the people holding them hostage that they had nothing to do with it. Once the cat's out of the bag, the hackers might back off and Sony can release it legitimately.)

Judd Apatow has said Sony's actions guarantee the film will be seen illegally. Glad to see he agrees with me.

"The Interview," Or Sony Gives Into Terror

I logged onto Facebook this morning and found a rather unpleasant article courtesy of my fellow blogger The Corner Critic. Apparently the Georgia-based movie theater chain Carmike Cinemas has canceled screenings of the upcoming film The Interview due to liability concerns after Internet death threats were made, something done with the blessing of Sony Pictures. The film's premiere in New York was canceled due to threats of a "9/11-style attack." And Sony has already caved to North Korea's whining once already by editing real-life North Korean military medals out of the film.

I can understand prudence, especially if there are lives and/or a great deal of money on the line. However, the chances of anything actually happening are extremely remote. Although North Korea has engaged in state sponsorship of terror before (so there is precedent for violent behavior abroad), incidents like the Rangoon Bombing and the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 were in the 1980s and in Asia to boot. North Korea is a heck of a lot poorer now without Soviet subsidies and with its economy having tanked to the point of famine. And by making threats, whoever is behind the hacks (probably agents of the regime) has openly telegraphed its intentions. Whatever assets, personnel, etc. they've got here (apparently they don't have diplomatic relations with the U.S.) would be under more serious scrutiny. Even if they seriously attempted anything, it would get nixed really quickly.

Hacking and making Internet threats are an extremely cheap way to sow terror. All you really need are a couple guys with computer skills (and diplomatic immunity if they get caught) to do things like hack Sony's computers or send online death threats. Actually putting together a terrorist attack is a much more difficult proposition. The first link cites the Department of Homeland Security saying there is no evidence an actual attack is in the works. This report from the Atlanta-based pop-culture news site Fanbolt confirms it.

Furthermore, it seems rather questionable that movie theaters would be liable in the unlikely event there were some kind of terrorist attack. This article here indicates workplaces can be sued for negligence, but if theaters can get Sony Pictures to provide extra security, hire security guards themselves, or get the local government to provide extra police (spin it as defending Americans' right to see whatever movies they like being under threat from foreign goons), that would indicate they took the threat seriously and would limit their liability.

I do like what this group of human-rights activists are planning on doing--sending copies of The Interview into North Korea via balloon. I wonder if they've already done the same with Team America World Police, since that one mocks Kim Jong-Il mercilessly. The article states that North Korea would be much more upset at The Interview than a film like Titanic because it openly undermines the cult of the Kims. If non-political Western movies weaken the brainwashing as much as the story in the article indicates, movies openly bashing the Kim Dynasty would be even more effective.

China May Be Inclined to Ditch North Korea, According to Wikileaks

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/29/wikileaks-cables-china-reunified-korea

A few days after I posted my theory about how China would benefit from allowing North Korea to collapse and the two Koreas to unite under Seoul, Wikileaks was so kind as to provide the world's media with an ungodly amount of secret diplomatic correspondence.  The documents show at least some elements of the Chinese government are thinking in the same way.

(In fact, the Chinese officials were willing to concede far more than I expected--they would tolerate U.S. troops in united Korea provided they stayed south of the 38th Parallel and wouldn't mind a "benign alliance" between the US and South Korea.)

Some members of my alternate-history forum think that the release of these cables will push the Chinese back toward supporting the North rather than cutting it loose for its bad behavior.  I hope that this is not the case.  Continuing to enable North Korea is making things worse for everybody (the Chinese government itself, the neighbors, and the millions suffering under Kim's odious rule) and provides a continued rationale for U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan, something the Chinese government I imagine doesn't like even if they are more tolerant of this than I expected.

How China Can Take Down North Korea--And Benefit In The Long Run

I was checking out CNN the other day and I found this article.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/11/24/zakaria.china.korea/index.html?hpt=T2

This is something similar to an idea I've had and posted on my alternate-history forum (we have a political-chat section).

Basically, North Korea is heavily dependent on China for 40% of its food and a larger percentage of its energy--I cannot recall how much, but I'm thinking 60% at least.  The news analysts I've read have suggested that without Chinese support, North Korea will collapse.  The Chinese know this and have been sustaining the North Korean regime in order to avoid a refugee crisis on their border and avoid the unification of Korea under Seoul, a move they fear would lead to U.S. troops on the Yalu River, their border with the Koreas.  This was one of the reasons they intervened in the Korean War, preventing the odious Kim regime from being plowed under half-a-century early.

However, the Cold War is over and China is one of our larger business partners.  We really have no reason to use Korea as a springboard to invade China and consequently, they have no reason to fear us doing so.  The only potential flashpoint between us and them is Taiwan and that grows less and less likely due to increasing Taiwanese investment in China and trade between the two.

So if China cuts off support for North Korea and the Northern regime collapses, the Chinese will likely have to deal with refugees, but not a hostile army on their border.

Here's where China's gain comes in.  China right now is sitting on mountains of foreign exchange and their economy has been growing at a brisk clip despite the global recession.  They have huge amounts of cash, which they've been investing in resource-producing ventures in Africa and other places.

They could easily make some deal with Seoul, the U.S., or both in which, after the North collapses, the U.S. will withdraw its soldiers from the Korean Peninsula back to Japan and the Chinese will fund the reconstruction of the North, which is a basket case far worse than East Germany ever was.

China will benefit by no longer having to subsidize North Korea, by removing U.S. troops from their backyard, and gaining massive investment opportunities in newly-united Korea.  Unless China starts treating Korea as a colony, they will gain an ally.  After all, trade between South Korea and China is fairly extensive ($100 billion as of 2006), and both of them are not fans of the Japanese, to put it lightly.  A united Korea allied to China is a geographic dagger pointed at the heart of Japan, a thought that I would imagine fills the hearts of the Japanophobes over there with glee.

South Korea will benefit by not having their capital under constant threat of the North's masses of artillery and not having to put up with constant provocations from the North for fear they'd use that artillery.  Furthermore, the decades-long artificial division of Korea by foreigners will have ended and the massive costs of bringing the North up to South Korea's standards will be largely borne by the Chinese.  Plus the North has large amounts of natural resources Southern businessmen can exploit, although in my scenario, the Chinese would make a grab for those as well.

Although the situation will be, in the short run, very painful for the North Koreans, in the long run, they will be freed from the atrocious rule of the Kim Dynasty without a war that could and likely would kill millions of people.

(The Korean War killed two to four million people, IIRC, and a second war could involve the use of nuclear weapons against South Korea and/or Japan and consequent retaliation in kind from the United States.  It would get bad.)

The United States will benefit by having one less foreign commitment, one that could potentially lead to a massive war if the North goes completely psychotic and attacks the South or Japan, which we are treaty-bound to defend.  Furthermore, a united Korea (that has possibly inherited the North's nuclear arsenal) allied to the Chinese will rattle the Japanese and give them incentive to maintain the current arrangement with us.

Of course, the best-laid plans of mice and men do often go awry.  If the Chinese pull the plug on the North, Kim could try something desperate like invade South Korea and take Seoul hostage in order to extort aid to keep his regime in power or, as his little empire crumbles, fire nuclear-tipped missiles at the Chinese as revenge.  Although the Chinese could offer the North's ruling elite asylum in China to give them an alternative between desperate action and being torn apart by their own starving slaves, this may or may not work, depending on connected to reality the Northern leadership is.

Furthermore, a member of the alternate-history forum said China would not allow the North to collapse anytime soon due to the massive amount of blood and treasure expended in the Korean War to keep the Northern regime going.  I think the figure is that one million Chinese soldiers died there, including Mao's son.  The guy on the forum said the relatives of the men who died are still alive and would raise holy hell.

Well, China is an authoritarian state.  Surely they know how to cover up embarrassing political secrets and deal with people who raise holy hell.  The Chinese government could also justify it, should it become known to the general public, by pointing out that North Korea's erratic and violent behavior is most ungrateful (as it causes PR and other problems for the Chinese) and un-harmonious (by disrupting the worldwide economic order).

Obviously the plan has its risks, but it's worth a thought.

Another News Article Roundup: South Korea and eBooks

I had a couple more news articles I emailed home to blog about, but forgot to. So here they are...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/world/asia/14seoul.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

The opposition to nuclear fuel reprocessing really gets on my nerves.  Anti-nuclear activists criticize nuclear power on the ground it generates dangerous waste that will remain dangerous for thousands of years, but then they turn around and criticize nuclear reprocessing, which will cut short the "dangerous period" immensely.

South Korea is even less able to afford this than the US can, since their country is much smaller than ours and they can't let nuclear waste pile up to the same degree we can.

Plus, the 1974 treaty is out of date.  Back then, South Korea was a ramshackle military dictatorship, "the land of almost-right" and the U.S. had legitimate concerns about how they might use nuclear technology.  South Korea is now a wealthy democracy that is, if anything, rather passive in the face of gross provocations by that loony-tune Kim Jong-Il.

Were I the South Koreans, I would want to greatly revise the treaty to permit nuclear fuel reprocessing or toss the whole thing in the shredder.  The whole "it will give Kim a pretext" business is in my opinion a bunch of nonsense--Kim is going to misbehave regardlses of what the U.S. or South Korea do.  Besides, this isn't something like South Korean testing its own nuke that could well seriously provoke North Korea--the only people who seem really upset are the anti-nuke crowd.

The following article is a bit more light in content.  Apparently Kindle eBooks have exceeded hardcovers in sales on Amazon.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/technology/20kindle.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

I'm rather leery of eBooks as opposed print editions of the collection I'm working on with Daverana because I don't know how to promote eBooks beyond posting "buy my book" on web-sites I frequent a lot, as opposed to organizing signings of physical books at bookstores and other places.

However, eBooks look like they're becoming more popular, so perhaps my fears are unfounded.  After all, Amazon.com has the "customers who like this might also like this" option, which could contribute to eBook sales.