Did they get it right this time?


Preliminary reports indicate that the North Koreans exploded another nuclear bomb Monday, with an NK spokesman saying obliquely that this explosion was "larger" than the last" and corrected "problems" in "increasing the power" of nuclear weapons.

In other words, yeah, the first one was a dud, but we got it right this time.

Most of the stories you'll read over the next few days will connect the explosion to political maneuvering over Kim's successor. (One theory: the successor is demonstrating to Kim and-or others his worthiness as a leader.)

But the explosion is also one more step down an increasingly barren path: it lessens North Korea's leverage rather than increasing it in any sort of international negotiations. The weapon(s) can't be used, since everyone knows what the response will be - complete destruction of the North Korean leadership. Once it's clear that North Korea has the technology, the incentive to make a deal with them lessens. The terms for any deal will also become more onerous from North Korea's point of view, since it will always be possible that they are hiding one or more of the nukes somewhere. (See Rogue Warrior: Dictator's Ransom for a plot built on this premise.)

And what does North Korea do if no one wants to negotiate with it? Blow up something, like maybe South Korea?

The rhetoric that comes from North Korea is so psychotic that you can't rule that out. However, assuming at least a modicum of self-serving preservation is still guiding the leadership (whoever it may be), the options are slim and none. At best, the North Koreans could hope for an arms race kicked off by Iran, allowing it to sell technology to the highest bidder (which of course could be the West and-or China).

Iran's successful missile launching earlier this month - coming after North Korea's own failure - was an interesting coincidence. The two countries are presumed to have traded technology before; what the case is now remains pure speculation - or the stuff of techno-thrillers.

The truth is, Monday's nuke test only made North Korea more irrelevant. The problem is, they don't realize that yet . . . and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to do so.

Everybody likes the new Rogue Warrior . . .

. . . . even our good friend Kim.

This week, the world's favorite ailing dictator issued a statement saying, "Not only am I alive and well, but I owe my health to my good friend and drinking buddy, Dick Marcinko."

(At least I think that's what he said; my Korean is a little rusty.)

The book's website:

www.dictatorsransom.com

The carnage continues . . .

But in a good way - The Rogue Warrior holiday book signing tour continues as Dick & company march through the eastern seaboard . . . next up is a signing at the Borders in Stafford, Virgina, where the man himself will be the featured attraction at their annual open house.

Rumor has it a number of Marines from Quantico are planning to give the RW a hard time - should be a fun show.

Rogue Warrior signings

The Rogue Warrior - Meet the Rogue himself tour continues . . . November 25 at the Borders store in Warrenton, Va., beginning at 7 p.m. There are only a 100 copies of Dictator’s Ransom left though, so hit the place quick.

And somebody bring Dick a Dr. Bombay special. The man gets thirsty on the road . . .

Speaking of pirates & Rogues . . .

Dick will be on Fox & Friends tomorrow, Thursday, at 7:15 a.m. to talk about some of the things that should be done.

He may also give a seminar in ship boarding. Dictator's Ransom*, by the way, details several methods, all battle-tested . . .

(And fug on using those suction cups. Crazy's crazy, but that's just nuts ...)

* The mandatory shameless plug for the new book.

Rogue Warrior Virginia area book signings

People ask me questions . . .

Rogue Warrior book signings in the Virginia area:

11/22 signing at Little Creek in Norfolk
11/25 signing at Borders in Warrenton
12/11 signing at Ft. Lee
12/12 signing at Borders in Springfield

Dick will be at all of these. More details - like the times - should be posted on his website when it become available: www.dickmarcinko.com soon - or check with the bookstores themselves.

As if Halloween weren't scary enough . . .



This promo video for Rogue Warrior never made it, for reasons that will be obvious when you see it. But I promised I'd post it for Halloween . . .

The Man himself ...



The Extended Book on Rogue Warrior: Dictator's Ransom

Richard Marcinko on North Korea

. . . and our new entrant in the Rogue Warrior series, Dictator's Ransom...

If there were a conventional war between North Korea and South Korea, who would win?


If the war was contained between those two nations – not a given – then it would be a matter of where the bulk of the combat took place. North Korea can bear down on Seoul with over two hundred and thirty tubes of heavy artillery in minutes; it has the masses of ground troops "on the line" to overpower the immediate line of contact. The question would then become how fast the South Korean forces could strike back. If North Korea penetrated a significant distance south, the South Korean population might cut and run to preserve their better way of life rather than dig in and fight the onslaught.


South Korea’s strategy would be to stop the attack and go deep into North Korea to sever the command and control networks. Where would they stop? Probably at the Chinese border.


One way or another, it would be a blood bath on both sides, a conventional war comparable, at least on the tactical level, to World War II.



If South Korea would ultimately prevail, why should we worry?


We’d have big worries if South Korea prevailed – who would they turn to to help support the masses they liberated?


The social responsibility would be on a level the world is not prepared for. In Darfur, 400,000 people are estimated to have died from the war and starvation. A Korean war would produce at least ten times that number of casualties – and maybe even a hundred times.


It does remind me of an old joke, a bit of dark humor: Attack the U.S.A. and let them kick your ass. Then they’ll rebuild you. It's far cheaper than a World Bank loan!



Is it really possible that North Korea and-or terrorists could attack the U.S.?


North Korea has missiles that could reach Alaska. How accurate they are is an open question, but then nuclear weapons don’t have to be all that accurate. A strike by North Korea would probably fall short and hit the ocean, ending up as more an embarrassment more than a real loss for us. Another example of the tail wagging the dog.


Of course, if we were attacked, hell would be too good for the leaders who launched the missiles.



Is there a connection between North Korea and international terrorists?


The connection is primary of supply and demand, not ideology. The North Koreans have nukes the terrorists want and need, and the terrorists may have the finances North Korea wants. At this juncture, our best bet is to better monitor what’s going on.



Your new book and upcoming computer game seem to advocate a SEAL-like approach to dealing with North Korea and terrorists. Is that realistic?


It is realistic as a demonstration of our “will” to contain North Korean aspirations. Spec Warfare is not a panacea; it doesn’t replace "boots on the ground" in full-scale military operations and it can’t replace diplomatic or political activity. Shooters are not diplomats or world leaders. But it is an important tool in the modern world. A SEAL-like approach to problems and situations as outlined in the book, in all my books, has numerous advantages. We have to keep that capability sharp. It gets us “eyes on targets” – human beings with real intelligence observing things close up, rather that through tiny electronic devices thousands of miles away. And successful SEAL-like strikes, when appropriate, sting the sleeping dog, putting the world on notice that we are not focused on only oil and the Middle East but the much broader threat of fanatical terrorism.



How close are your books to real life - are they fiction? Non-fiction? Prediction?


The books are a combination of fiction and prediction, as I said earlier. They are a means to show people the threats I see. I write them from the perspective of what I would do if I were the bad guy. That’s the same tactic and philosophy that drove me in the SEALs, in Red Cell, and in my later military and private endeavors. I take the enemy’s mindset, and then I try to tell our side what’s going on, where our weaknesses – and strengths – are.


And, I hope, the books entertain you along the way.

The Rogue as statesman


Why does Marcinko, with a reputation as a wildman, sound more reasonable than any secretary of state we've had since Marshall?

North Korea and China seem particularly close. Would China risk a war over North Korea?

China has a full plate now and I don't think it is in their strategic makeup, let alone their interest, to go to war over North Korea – not right now, at least. They are busy modernizing their armed forces. They were impressed with our "shock & awe" and realize they need to gear up. But the future may be a different story. Remember, their clock ticks a lot slower than ours and they are patient.

China is a concern in its own right. Their army has recently begun training with Russian forces in both China and Russia. That is a "point of interest” we should be looking at.

It’s recently been reported that Korean leader Kim Jong il suffered a serious stroke. Do you have any opinion on who might succeed him?

The bloodline is the normal path; Kim Jong il succeeded his father, and it’s believed that he will choose one of his sons to succeed him. He may already have; we simply don’t know. But Kim Jong il’s bloodlines are, to put it delicately, irregular – besides his natural and acknowledged children, he has some illegitimate and adopted offspring. Things could get pretty complicated.

I believe at least one and more likely two or more of his offspring will attempt to inherit the throne. The army will not trust any of them and will aim to take over in a military coalition. I think the military will succeed and take over, at least in the short term, probably working with one of Kim’s sons as a figurehead.

I do know this: There is no one in the wings with the leadership skills that are required to lead a impoverished nation. None of Kim’s children, or military leaders for that matter, have experience nor international exposure to gain support or approval.

But like all developing nations, there’s the issue of greed over need – they greedy hold onto their power once they get it. The needs of the people will be pushed aside.

Would a new regime in North Korea present a challenge or an opportunity to the U.S.?

A military regime would most likely revert to a "Fortress North Korea" mentality. That could be an extreme problem for us, since they would be reverting to the only thing they know: war and aggression, both internationally and internally. The country will become an even worse police state than it is today. Which is hard to believe.

* Who he? Marshall was the guy with the plan - during Truman's administration, he got Europe back on its feet. He was also part of the group that came up with the idea of containing the Soviet Union so it would collapse. And oh yeah, he led the American army during WWII, and served for a year as defense secretary (during the Korean War).

On North Korea:

The purloined Rogue Warrior - Richard Marcinko interview continues.

What happens if North Korea does agree to get rid of its bombs? Will it still be a problem?

RW: They will not totally disband. They will lie to their benefit. We would probably do the same under the guise of "national interest."

Their bombs and nuclear material are not the only threats we have to contend with. They’ve already shared their nuclear expertise. Again, I won’t go into details, but it’s not hard to discover the connection between Pakistan’s bomb program and North Korea’s. The whole Syria matter was in the news recently. And those are only two well-known examples.

No matter what they agree to, North Korea is likely to retain a capability to jump start a nuclear weapons program. They’re going to do that; there’s no doubt in my mind. But even if they truly and totally disbanded their program and somehow eliminated the knowledge that makes that capability possible, they will still be a regional problem.

If only because of the shear numbers in the armed forces, North Korea will remain a threat to South Korea and possibly Japan for years to come. Invading South Korea represents an opportunity to unite their homeland. Beyond that, it would also give them a bread basket – or a rice bowl, to be more literal. It would lay open all of the technological advances the south enjoys, at a fraction of the price of South Korea paid to develop them. It’s a very tempting bowl of candy, right there on their kitchen counter.

Will North Korea attack? Maybe, if they believe the rest of the world is "too busy" with other problems of the day.

More Rogue . . .

The Bush administration has recently entered into an agreement with North Korea that, ultimately, should result in its getting rid of its nuclear weapons making capability. Do you think North Korea can be trusted to follow through on any agreements?

RW: My answer is somewhere between “NO!” and “HELL NO!” It is not to their advantage. They will remain the tail attempting to wag the dog.

But they have already agreed. Can we make them live up to that agreement?

RW: They’ve already backtracked, threatening to rebuild the reactor they destroyed under the agreement. But yes, the international players – the U.S., Japan, South Korea, China – should try to hold them to everything they’ve agreed to do, and more. There will be no guarantees. Again, they have little or nothing to lose by pushing back. They will continue to challenge the world like a young child with selective hearing.

Do you see alternatives to the present policy of negotiating with North Korea?

RW: We certainly do not have a military option. The only action we can afford to take today would be a series of strategic strikes – missiles and bombs, no boots on the ground. That would entail a lot of collateral damage that politically we can't afford and don't want to deal with at this time, especially during a time of transition from one president to another.

The months leading up to the election and immediately afterward are going to be our most vulnerable time – I’d say from now through at least the first 100 days of the new administration. Whoever is elected. We have a marvelous team but we are out of bench!!

So you endorse the present policy?

RW: Let’s say I’m not criticizing it.

It's easy to "Monday morning quarterback". We didn't take North Korea serious enough for too long. We have few experts, little knowledge and virtually no HUMINT [human intelligence – information gathered by spies and other human sources] in the area. We have to rely on third nation input for everything. And I never trust my translators.

Speaking of Rogue Warrior




You can order from Amazon here, and Barnes and Noble here.

The book's website is here.

The Rogue Warrior meets the press

I purloined the transcript from one of Dick Marcinko's interviews about the new book. It's supposed to get posted to the book's website soon. In the meantime, I'll post some here.

Hopefully it makes interesting reading.

Your new book, Rogue Warrior: Dictator’s Ransom, is set largely in North Korea. Was that a random choice?


Richard Marcinko: One of the things I’ve always tried to do in my fictional books is alert the general public to what’s going on outside of America. The plots come out of real dangers around the world. The books are a means to tell our citizens about the threats I see as a SEAL with a lot of CT [counter-terrorism] experience. I call it “fiction or prediction” – yes, the stories are mostly made up, but they depict situations and events that do exist or will very shortly.

I chose to focus on North Korea this time because it is a rogue – little ‘R’ – nation. They have very few ties to other countries with the exception of China and, though their relationship is not exactly ideal, South Korea. On the other hand, North Korea has one of the largest standing armies in the world. Unclassified estimates put the overall military force at one million men; that’s out of a total population of 23 million in a country about the size of Mississippi.

Just for comparison’s sake, roughly 2.3 million Americans serve in the U.S. military, including our reserves and the guy who mops the floor at the Pentagon every night. If we had the same proportion of people in uniform that North Korea does, our armed forces would have over 13 million members. And I’m not counting North Korea’s reserves and other components in my totals.

I can’t get into the debate about how many nuclear weapons North Korea has or may have; much of the information is highly classified. But anyone with access to the internet can use a search engine to find fairly knowledgeable sources who estimate they may have more than a dozen weapons. Even the optimists say they have at least six.

The world doesn’t know enough of North Korea’s internal functions nor goals. And the reverse is also true – North Koreans know nothing of the outside world. But here’s what we do know: The North Korean economy is in shambles. People are starving there. With hunger and the economy such serious issues, North Korea must turn to China, and Russia as well, for assistance. To help them get the aid that they want, they focus on us as a threat. In effect what they’re doing is giving China and Russia a chance to irritate us through a surrogate that anyone can flush without anyone missing them. North Korea is a "dispensable pawn" on the world stage. It’s what they have to do to eat.

It’s a dangerous game for us, and also for them. But with their people starving, they’re a cornered rat with nothing to lose in anything they attempt, whether it is invading South Korea or selling nuclear weapons to terrorist who will gladly pay for the toys.


The Bush administration has recently entered into an agreement with North Korea that, ultimately, should result in its getting rid of its nuclear weapons making capability. Do you think North Korea can be trusted to follow through on any agreements?

My answer is somewhere between “NO!” and “HELL NO!” It is not to their advantage. They will remain the tail attempting to wag the dog.

So shoot me . . .



People scold me for forgetting to link to the website: www.DictatorsRansom.com

Click here to pre-order the book from B&N online.

Rogue Warrior: Dictators Ransom update

People ask about the signing schedule . . .

Dick is doing some signings at military bases on the east coast around the middle of October when the book comes out. He's also probably going to be in San Antonio during that same period doing appearances there. Last I heard, nothing has been set up in NYC, but that may change.

The schedule is actually set by the publisher, but it has to coordinate with Dick's schedule, which can be pretty nutso.

We're hoping to get a list of the appearances on the book's website: www.dictatorsransom.com shortly. You can also go from there to Dick's main site, which is a good way to keep up with him directly.

Truth is, I'm a flea on the back of the dog when it comes to most of the promotion stuff for Rogue Warrior. We have a publicity manager as well as people at the publisher who handle all that. Dick handles the appearances and the interviews himself as a general rule.

Me - pretty much I stay in the bar and drink beer. Who the hell wants to hear me talk?

Re-re-rewriting

Most writers are unrepentant tinkerers, never really content with how a sentence sounds, let alone how a story goes. Given the chance, they'll change, edit, rearrange, shift, rework, rethink and rehash for the rest of their lives.

I'm one of them.

Deadlines usually save me. To get it out the door (or off the computer) by a certain time, you have to stop tinkering eventually. My rule is that, once it's done, it's done, go, get out, move on, no looking back.

Of course, that doesn't really work with a book. The copy edit comes back, then the proofs, and, arg, the finished product. Which in my mind, and I'm sure in most writers' minds, isn't really finished - it's just the state of the story when an arbitrary deadline arrived.

I try to avoid making too many changes at either the copy edit or the proof stages; the first because I don't necessarily trust myself to be objective - the first time you see the book back, no matter how good it really is, it sucks - and the second because publishers tend to completely freak when you do much more than point out typos.

But lately, I've been confronted with another stage - the excerpt for the web stage. The other day, looking over the first chapter of the new Rogue Warrior book, Dictator's Ransom, I was confronted with a whole bunch of prose that read not the way I wanted it to read. (Kinda like that sentence.)

It was tempting - beyond tempting - to revise it. But would people who then bought the book notice the changes and say, WTF?

I guess there's a philosophical question there: once it's "done," should it really be "done"?

I made a few changes, and probably would have made more, had a deadline not loomed... good thing it's football season, or I might still be tinkering.

And now for the shameless plug: www.dictatorsransom.com

Another rejected RW trailer . . .



More from the rejected trailer series for the new Rogue Warrior book . . . the real video, which features Dick talking about the book and how it relates to the world situation, should be available soon.

Getting there . . .




But it's a bumpy road . . .

Two months to go.

Vatican/Rogue postscript

Working with Richard Marcinko is not only an honor - he's an f'in' war hero, for christsakes - but it's also a pisser. He has one kick-ass sense of humor and you have to be on your toes, even at three and four in the morning. . . .

As for the Pope . . . well, let's just say that, in certain respects, his personality differs greatly from Demo Dick's. Not that you can afford to go to sleep in his presence either . . .

If you haven't read Holy Terror, grab it from the library or bookstore. And if you have - thanks. The next installment in the series, Dictator's Ransom, is due out soon. There's a website, or should be by the time I'm back: www.dictatorsransom.com