Forgive me for replying to the above post with a recycled variant of something I posted at the kings of war website but I thought the comments appropriate;Originally Posted by Bill Moore
I have to say that making ‘world historical’ generalisations about the nature of future war is like an exercise in divination. I am not personally convinced by the ‘hybrid wars’ or ‘fourth generation warfare’ spiel. If one understands the historical trajectory of North Korean state formation once quickly comes to the conclusion that the most natural thing for a guerrilla regime to o is emphasis its guerrilla forces. This is not a new development. North Korea’s guerrilla or special forces units have been a feature of its armed forces since at least the sixties. Let’s not forget the tunnel incidents of the 60s and seventies and the famous raid (that date escapes me at present) where NK commandos attempted to assassinate President Park. The DPRK was utilising and emphasising its guerilla ops decades before the "Hybrid Fad" too off. While Simpkin, Westmorland and others were busy developing "Assault Breaker, Deep Battle, Air Land Battle" etc, the North Koreans had already realised conventional war between them and the US/SKorean armed forces would be suicidal. Defence industrial concerns, internal stability, sabre-rattling foreign policy (the need to appear fierce even if brittle) and the corporate interests of the Army (and its role in the regime) necessitated a huge conventional build-up.
Furthermore, one should be cognisant of the geopolitical realities of the region. North Korea is not Syria, or Israel or Russia. It really only borders one ‘hostile’ state and the foreign forces of the U.S. Furthermore, the six-party talks, the ballistic missile project and its nuclear weapons programme (whatever its status) bolsters North Korea’s security situation despite what it might appear. The North is diplomatically adept at brinkmanship as a style of diplomacy. But, and here the real issue, is North Korea’s ‘defence transformation’ (tongue in cheek) really about military strategy or regime survival? I think that latter. What I mean by this statement is that employing 1.2 million troops in conventional formations equipped with large numbers of domestically produced armoured vehicles when more than 70% of your domestic oil supply comes via China is not cost effective. Given the draughts and the famines in the 1990s which decimated the available manpower reserves which could be conscripted into the armed forces doesn’t it make more sense to demobilise them and re-divert them into civilian sectors of the economy?
On the other hand it also serves to cut down the influence of the armed forces, especially the geriatric general staff (the old school), who might be a threat to any change in leadership. After all, when Kim Jong-il came to power the first thing he did was rein in the KWP hardliners (hence Kwang Jang Yop’s departure to the South) and it makes sense to prune the hardliners from the military who may object to Kim’s son (whichever one takes the reins). Reducing the military’s power base by diverting forces away from the regular army, and thus into the jurisdiction of the now suitably aligned KWP, makes sense from the perspective of regime survival.
So what this rather rambling post is trying to say is that there’s always more going on than purely a case of ‘international socialisation into the norms of military modernity’ or “hybrid warfare” etc. Our opponents have more on their minds that participating in doctrinal/ideological/philosophical debates which have really rather more to do with intra-service rivalry (a la pork barrel politics- anyone remember Colin Powell’s adumbration of a two theatre warfighting capability as well as international “policing” after the Cold War?) than it has to do with an objective state of affairs. My (recycled) two pence worth.
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