South Korea braced for North Korean ‘provocation’ as tension mounts

 

South Korea's president, Lee Myung-bak, at the command HQ of the joint chiefs of staff in Seoul. Photograph: EPA

Around the edge of the baseball field at Camp Bonifas, South Korean marines under the United Nations Command are busy building four bomb shelters.

(2nd LD) Gen. Thurman urges preparation for N. Korean regime collapse (USFK commander-to-be)

Gen. James Thurman

The incoming top American military commander in Korea said Tuesday that the United States and South Korea should prepare for the possibility of a regime collapse in North Korea.

Kim Jong-un Ascent Increases ‘Miscalculation’ Odds, Thurman Says

The inexperience and youth of North Korea’s heir-apparent Kim Jong-un “increase the likelihood of miscalculation” with South Korea and the U.S., according to the nominee for top U.S. general there.

Zumwalt Destroyer Supporters Hope For Revival

Photo credit: Northrop Grumman

Any time a chief of naval operations (CNO) gets ready to leave, U.S. Navy shipbuilding programs on that CNO’s hit list look at the transition as a resurrection opportunity. And no vessel program would stand to benefit more from Adm. Gary Roughead’s departure this fall than the DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer.

The missiles mind game

Drawing by Niyaz Karim

The debate on a joint European missile defense system that gained momentum after the Russia-NATO Lisbon Summit in November 2010 has reached its logical conclusion. On the eve of the meeting of Russian and NATO defense ministers, the alliance’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, officially declined Russia’s idea of “sectoral” missile defense and Russia’s demand for legal guarantees that the system would not target Russia. The same was said with total finality at the meeting. The discussion has thus been thrown back to the chronic phase in which it has languished for 10 years (the topic was broached by then-defense minister Sergei Ivanov in the early 2000s).

Forget Missile Defense, the Threat Is Afghanistan

The more I cover global affairs, the more it takes me back to the 1980s when I wrote for the main Soviet military newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda.