Updated, 7:45 p.m.
Hawaiians woke up for breakfast this morning to a spine-tingling message. An emergency public warning had been sent to cell phones of an incoming missile from North Korea. And, it said, “This is not a drill.”
There was an interval of some minutes when Hawaiians and visitors asked each other what to do. They did not at all dismiss the message. They also had no idea how to take shelter or what else to do. Someone advised, “close the windows.” Travelers went to grab identification documents.
Then an all-clear went out from several sources. One of the first evidently came from U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. As one wag cracked, “the trip to the breakfast room turned into a trip to the bar,” notwithstanding the early hour. Slowly – with many deep sighs of relief and thoughts about what war would be like – the panic subsided.
The instant reactions concerned, naturally enough, individual feelings and reactions, and some talk that the emergency authorities should get some advice ready for such an instance.
But, for those of us who were familiar with Cold War scenarios, as depicted both in the press and in such non-classified works as Fail-Safe (the actual machinery being highly classified), the incident sheds light on the perils of President Trump's current bellicose exchanges with North Korea.
While I had earlier speculated that the warning had come from the U.S. military's Pacific Command, it turns out that it came from the state's Emergency Management Agency as a result of human error. The incident should make us reflect about the possibility that the U.S. military may have to make quick decisions on scant information when confronted by a suspected North Korean action.
Anti-missile defenses function best when they take out a North Korean missile before it gets up above the atmosphere. This means anti-missile batteries must get ready to fire within a couple of minutes – just a handful, not very many. That means that anything North Korean that cannot be ruled out as a ballistic missile might cause an attempt to instantly take it out, before time for second thoughts.
Moreover, in a crisis atmosphere – real or like today’s -- the best defense may be a good offense. If the Trump Pentagon is on a hair-trigger alert, it might respond to a warning, whether it is completely false like this Hawaiian one, or just an overreaction to something that actually happens but is not meant by the other side to start a war. For example, the Trump Pentagon might conduct an air strike on North Korean missile and nuclear sites. Let us hope it would be a conventional attack and not a nuclear escalation, but that is not beyond the realm of possibilities.
Before drawing conclusions, let us go one level further. During the Cold War, strategic analysts not only analyzed what the American reaction would be, but further, what our Cold War opponents would do in response. Particularly, they analyzed what the Soviets would do, once they saw that Americans believed a war had been launched.
Now think about Kim Jong Un’s regime’s reaction. They must surely have a ways of knowing when an alert goes off like this Hawaiian one. One step further down the road to perdition, they might see American anti-missile systems going into action. They might do nothing – or they might not. Surely at least some North Korean military leaders would argue that ballistic missiles – and conceivably nuclear weapons – should get used before they were destroyed by an American strike.
Slightly less catastrophic, but still alarming, they might start a bombardment of South Korea. In their view, by slaughtering thousands of South Koreans, the North Koreans would be laying down a marker to warn of what happens if the U.S. military attacks the North Korean regime.
What does this tell us of the implications of President Trump’s aggressive and provocative war of words with Kim Jong Un? In a word, it is alarming, with the potential to cause havoc. We are creating a situation where an American miscalculation is both possible and disastrous. And, we are creating a situation where a North Korean reaction to an American miscalculation is also both possible and even more ruinous. There needs to be some channel of communications between the American and North Korean military to avert, not just something as pedestrian as the usual antagonism and militarism, but catastrophe.
The Hawaii alert is a wake-up call.
