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发帖数: 3150 | 1 US stealth bomber as messenger: what it says to China, North Korea
The Pentagon sent its distinctive bat-wing-shaped B-2 stealth bombers flying
low over the Korean Peninsula this week – dropping munitions over a remote
South Korean island – in what US military officials initially described as
a routine training exercise.
But the B-2 bomber runs – along with the US military’s unusually frank
announcement of this fact – were designed to send a far more pointed
warning to North Korea, and more precisely to the country’s young dictator,
Kim Jong-un, who lately has been increasingly bellicose in his words and
actions, say senior US officials.
Kim’s “provocative actions” and “belligerent tone” have “ratcheted up
the danger, and I think we have to understand that reality,” Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday afternoon in his first joint press
conference with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin
Dempsey.
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This danger includes the nation’s third nuclear test in February and
threats to aim long-range artillery and rockets at US and allied troops.
The B-2 bomber can fly some 6,500 miles, drop smart bombs, and is nuclear-
capable.
It is also the same US aircraft that infamously hit the Chinese Embassy in
Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1999.
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While this was described as an accident at the time, conventional wisdom
among many defense analysts today is that China’s Peoples Liberation Army
forces in the embassy basement were sending out intelligence information to
President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, whose military was committing
atrocities.
The B-2 bomber does, after all, have the most precisely targeted munitions
in any military arsenal, accurate to within two meters, the defense analysts
point out.
Yet regardless of whether this theory about the 1999 B-2 bombing is true,
the point is that the Chinese and North Korean government believe it to be
true, says Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security
Program at the Center for a New American Security.
For that reason, the training run involving the B-2 bombers “is a subtle
signal to China and North Korea to say ‘Look, war can really happen. We’re
not going to be deterred, and we’re going to go after high-value target
sites.’ ”
But does the US know enough about Kim’s rationality to bring out the B-2
bombers, which could further provoke North Korea?
“There are a lot of unknowns here,” Mr. Hagel conceded Thursday. “But we
have to take seriously every provocative, bellicose word and action that
this new young leader has taken so far since he’s come to power.”
Given those unknowns, then, is it wise to eye-poke an unpredictable –
possibly irrational – new dictator?
“I don’t think we’re poking,” Hagel said. “I don’t think we’re doing
anything extraordinary, or provocative, or out of the orbit of what other
nations do to protect their own interests.”
The point, both General Dempsey and Hagel reiterated, is not just to flex US
military muscles for North Korea’s benefit, but more importantly to
reassure US allies that the Pentagon has their back.
“The reaction to the B-2 that we’re most concerned about it not
necessarily the reaction that it might elicit in North Korea,” Dempsey said
Thursday. “Those exercises are mostly to assure our allies that they can
count on us to be prepared.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2013/0328/US-stealth-bomb |
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