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iSteve commenter Candid Observer weighs in on Korea:
I think that the quite plausible scenario here is that N Korea stays under Kim’s rule, and denuclearizes, getting back in return security guarantees and the end of economic sanctions.
People sometimes say that Kim would be crazy to agree to denuclearize given the examples of Saddam Husein and Qaddaffi.
But Hussein and Qaddaffi could hardly be more different in the key respect: they had no independent deterrent against invasion by Western powers, or by those supported by Western powers. Kim, in contrast, has an already overwhelming deterrent against such an invasion, namely its massive conventional artillery and rocket capabilities. It is this defense of course that has kept the US and other powers from seriously entertaining any invasion of N Korea. And it is very difficult indeed to see how this impasse would change if N Korea were to give up nukes.
Here’s an article in the National Interest claiming that North Korea’s conventional capability to flatten Seoul is often exaggerated:
An all-out bombardment of the South Korean capital might very well leave Pyongyang without the ability to actually capture it, while at the same time ensuring a U.S./South Korean counteroffensive that would spell the end of the regime of Kim Jong-un. Even if a million civilians were killed in Seoul it would ensure Kim’s untimely demise, and from his perspective that is still almost certainly a very bad trade.
But South Korea would definitely get its hair mussed in a non-nuclear exchange when the Nork regime’s fate is on the line. Back to Candid Observer:
The removal of nukes from N Korea — given that, objectively, they never really needed them for defense — would be a relatively simple thing to accomplish, and would minimally alter the status quo in the region.
I’d expect this to be the successful outcome of denuclearization, if that were to come to pass.
And I can see how Kim would go for this outcome. N Korea is under great duress due to the current sanctions. How can Kim not reasonably fear that this will bring about his personal demise with greater probability than giving up nukes? By far the best scenario for him is to see a flourishing N Korea, but with his massive conventional deterrent intact, and with further security guarantees.
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‘…N Korea is under great duress due to the current sanctions…’
North Korea has been under great duress since about 1910. The question is whether its Imperial family is. So long as it has nukes I don’t see that it is.
Seems unlikely. I don’t see why he’d denuclearize. Why would you give up your best hand for security and other guarantees that might not be around in the next administration?
Love the Buck Turgidson reference.
Remember the rule around here: if you make a reference to a classic Cold War movie, you've got to show the scene!
https://youtu.be/vuP6KbIsNK4
Countries can’t by definition want anything. If they could it would be abstract perfection and all of God’s powers/ways and more and more and more.
If a country were able to want, how in the universe could it want human wants? What evidence is there for that, unless we start defining country/plurals.
That ruins the whole point though, which is ease of communication of certainly acknowledged over-simplifications for the purpose of potential education of others. I say you can’t unsimplify the over-simplified to get the point across cogently. Or wait, maybe you can, it’s just me that can’t…
Thought-wise NK wants, if that phrase is the window/portal that can be considered now–plausibly– that which might transcend the limited scope contained within the assumptions the writer using a countries [“want”ing] whatever any entity considers “North Korea” to be, and then from that point formulates what ought be, normally positively, nothing less than something needful of my considered opinion.
Most of all North Korea wants what all sovereign countries want: Security and independence. Basically, it wants to be left alone by the hostile powerful countries: USA, Japan, China. But N. Korea is quite clear that it does not want it by any means possible. Only on its own terms. In a long run, it even wants reunification but, again, only on terms that preserve interests of its powerful elites.
As I explained earlier, North Korea is going to go to the table so that China can pretend to be cooperating on the security situation, so that Trump will ease off his pressure on China (tariffs) even as China starts openly trading with North Korea again.
Relations with China are existentially immeasurably more important to North Korea than relations with the United States. The gambit here is to force Trump to refuse to reduce sanctions, to make Trump look recalcitrant, so that China can resume trading with North Korea without losing face.
None of this should mean that Trump should refuse to talk to Kim. I think Trump should talk to Kim. It just means that the dangled carrot, de-nuclearization, is not really on the table and should not be expected.
NK can hide guided missles and rockets all over the place, but they are expensive so it isn’t clear how many they have, and ultimately not very destructive as the Nazis learned with London. Artillery/mortars are much cheaper but can be destroyed from the air once it starts. Tanks and infantry in open spaces are not too effective without air superiority.
I have nothing to add to this excellent commentary, but I would like to posit that this site may very well have the best comments on the internet. I am consistently and truly amazed at the breadth and depth of knowledge of so many of the commenters (and the columnists (…bloggers?)) on this site. This is absolutely world-class discussion of highly significant issues.
Oh wait, there is one, slightly OT point I want to make: the great overuse of sarcasm in our culture (especially by certain unz.com bloggers who shall not be named) contributes to a world where it can be hard to tell when someone is being sincere. I am embarking on a campaign to greatly reduce the use of sarcasm in order to make the world a better, less confusing, more trusting place.
Yeah, AND a pocketful of cash from the United States and South Korea in exchange for the nukes. Let’s say Kim demands… I dunno, $50 billion to give up his nukes, stay in power, and keep his conventional forces intact.
Trump asks the South Koreans to split the cost… and for $25 billion in U.S. money (which is a rounding error in the budget) Trump gets a “uuuge” foreign policy coup, while Kim pretty much maintains the status quo but lines his pockets with more than he can spend in the next five lifetimes. Win-win, and Trump comes away looking like the dealmaking genius he always claimed to be.
Not just that: an invasion of North Korea would mean risking war with China (again).
Here’s what Trump should do, IMO:
Negotiate a deal acceptable to South Korea, China and Russia before meeting with North Korea, and invite Putin, Xi, and Moon to the summit. I like one tweeter’s idea of holding it in Vladivostok. Use the opportunity to reduce tensions with Russia at the same time.
A win-win-win-win deal would probably look something like this:
1) North Korea agrees to give up its nukes and allow monitoring to verify that.
2) North Korea agrees to cut out military provocations of the South and other nonsense.
3) The U.S. reduces its troops in South Korea and promises not to invade the north again, and, in the event the peninsula is ever unified, not to station any troops north of the current DMZ.
4) Similarly, China and Russia agree not to station any troops in what’s now North Korea.
5) Sanctions on North Korea are dropped.
6) Economic aid + economic development for North Korea, with South Korea and China setting up more factories there.
7) In return for hosting and helping to facilitate, the U.S. drops some sanctions on Russia and lets Tillerson’s old company develop Russia’s arctic oil fields.
I think one reason why the US has not, and will not withdraw our forces is that they could not do so without causing the North to freak out believing that a US attack was forthcoming. Even repositioning our forces further south, to evade the North's artillery, would probably elicit such a reaction.
For some reason we made a strategic mistake years ago in stationing our troops along the DMZ. We could just as easily guarantee South Korea's independence by keeping our forces in Guam and letting the world know that if the North attacked the South, we would bomb the North into the stone age. Additionally, by not having our forces on the ground along DMZ, other parties like South Korea, China, Russia and Japan would have to do more heavy lifting to ensure peace.
But with our troops under constant threat, the North has become, and will continue to be, OUR problem because our troops will be among the first to pay the price in any conflict. So this has resulted in the USA, which is over 6500 miles away, having to constantly be involved while local powers, who should be more engaged, sit back and watch.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."Replies: @Dave Pinsen
My understanding is that NK has so much artillery that Seoul could be mostly destroyed before allied forces could destroy the artillery.
Here's what Trump should do, IMO:
Negotiate a deal acceptable to South Korea, China and Russia before meeting with North Korea, and invite Putin, Xi, and Moon to the summit. I like one tweeter's idea of holding it in Vladivostok. Use the opportunity to reduce tensions with Russia at the same time.
A win-win-win-win deal would probably look something like this:
1) North Korea agrees to give up its nukes and allow monitoring to verify that.
2) North Korea agrees to cut out military provocations of the South and other nonsense.
3) The U.S. reduces its troops in South Korea and promises not to invade the north again, and, in the event the peninsula is ever unified, not to station any troops north of the current DMZ.
4) Similarly, China and Russia agree not to station any troops in what's now North Korea.
5) Sanctions on North Korea are dropped.
6) Economic aid + economic development for North Korea, with South Korea and China setting up more factories there.
7) In return for hosting and helping to facilitate, the U.S. drops some sanctions on Russia and lets Tillerson's old company develop Russia's arctic oil fields.Replies: @AndrewR, @istevefan, @Pericles, @Kevin O'Keeffe
The Japanese have a much, much greater interest in the resolution of the NK situation than the Russians do. It is extremely ignorant to claim that Russia deserves a place at the table on this issue but Japan doesn’t. Doing so disqualifies you from opining on this topic.
Without US supply and logistics, here I mean ammo and fuel,ROK capabilities are limited. NK is dug in. Without the US go ahead they would fight to an unpalatable draw, certain civilian casualties and possible loss of Seoul. I were Kim I’d take the deal and declare victory. His main enemies would then be internal and with 70 odd years of tyranny under the family belt, my money’s on him.
The Japanese do have an interest, but there’s also unresolved baggage between them, Russia, China, and Korea that might make a diplomatic solution more difficult. But in their interest, add to my list no more Nork provocations of Japan.
It’s not necessarily wrong for Kim to believe that he can secure some kind of eternal non-intervention guarantee from the United States. True, we overthrew Iraq’s government, but we also kept our promise to the Soviet Union not to overthrow Cuba’s government. We’ve kept that promise to the current day even though the Soviets are no longer around.
Perhaps, Kim believes that he can negotiate some kind of non-aggression pact and/or a formal end to the Korean War in a way that Trump would agree to considering the pressure he’s under from this treasonous Russia Gate thing…they may be trying to get a deal in before Trump is replaced by someone less reasonable.
Another spin on Kim wanting to personally speak to Trump is the following: Trump, even recently, has publicly attacked the Iraq War; Kim may have interpreted Trump’s eccentricity as the result of differing opinions inside his administration and that Trump, by himself, may be reasonable because he sometimes seems reasonable when out from under MacMaster and Deep State Inc.
If any kind of favorable deal for all sides is ever going to be struck, now might be the perfect time. Trump gets a major victory for his re-election, and Kim heads off an internal power struggle as a result of sanctions + doesn’t have to worry about attack anymore.
And as others have pointed out, the North maintains a considerable conventional deterrent; so, a deal may not be out of the question.
Another small possibility is that Kim and company are playing the long game. They may be current pals with the Chinese, but only nominally so. Maybe they anticipate a day when they are in league with the United States, Japan, and South Korea against a superpower – land hungry and very populous – China with a GDP larger than all of those nations combined.
I think the nukes serve as much a deterrent against China as against the US.Replies: @Obsessive Contrarian
Much earlier than all this Kim’s dad visited Putin’s Russia and was very impressed; he gave signals of wanting to moderate and modernize at the time.
OT THE COMING OF THE WAKANDANS
Terrence Howard (the CO in Red Tails) has written a math paper, with the deliberate goal of inspiring new math involvement. I am very bad at math but I think this is a publicity stunt.
He’s calling it “Terryology.”
https://twitter.com/terrencehoward/status/926501086097223681Replies: @Autochthon
BTW, this argument is usually presented algebraically to beginning math students to demonstrate that allowing division by zero leads to absurdities. In the case of an algebraic prresentation, the argument sort of makes sense until one realizes that division by (a-b) is division by zero if a=b. This idiot, evidently couldn't follow the algebra and so substituted numbers for symbols. Those Wakandans have a long ways to go.
This is a brillant comment.
I am suspicious of speculations about “what they want.” It is more useful to observe what they will take. They took a hundred head of cattle from the founder of Hyundai (himself originally a Nork refugee).
Ppl are way over thinking this.
This is a Nixon Mao moment…. nothing.more or less….
Until Tiny Duck gives his opinion, I will not make up my mind. Please Tiny Duck…enlighten us!!!!
Of course you are.
Candid Observer must think the North Koreans are retarded. They will want nothing less than the abrogation of the US-South Korea defence treaty in return for denuclearization.
Steve would be better served not relying on the users here for expert commentary.
Not really.
I had a similar argument years ago with a very experienced foreign policy wonk from a paid FP position. In essence, most of the Nork’s artillery that can reach Seoul cannot sustain bombardment and/or would be quickly snuffed out by South Korean/USA counter battery fire and airstrikes. The later being most important. This fellow estimates the most the north would be able inflict on the Seoul would be 50k casualties. Not deaths, casualties.
This was mainly due to the fact that most northern artillery positions in range of Seoul were rocket-based forces that could not sustain a bombardment. Most mountain bases were out of tube range and most missiles were being depleted and those positions would be found rather quickly.
But it also means Kim’s only true deterrent against some adventures (by the US or by China) is his nuclear arsenal.
OT THE COMING OF THE WAKANDANS
Terrence Howard (the CO in Red Tails) has written a math paper, with the deliberate goal of inspiring new math involvement. I am very bad at math but I think this is a publicity stunt.
http://twitter.com/terrencehoward/status/925754491881877507
He's calling it "Terryology."Replies: @Alfa158, @Autochthon, @Almost Missouri, @Jus' Sayin'...
I have a hard science degree with four years of mathematics up through tensor calculus. The “paper” is innumerate gibberish. So either a) it is a tongue in cheek gag or, b) this guy is deranged or c) he is an idiot. In any event he is demonstrating why Wakanda isn’t real.
Wakandans have come a long way but they still have a long way to go. The most advanced architecture in and around Wakandastan was termite mounds until the Arabs and Europeans showed up. Things have progressed since then but Wakandans still can't handle math. Perhaps this is due to the effects of Vibranium radiation.
No.
As long as us agreeable folks just agree to purge Bucklyiets, on ’cause of their purgin’ the Birch Society, then we can all agree purgin, NOW, is the right thing to do.
Those damn powerful Buckleyiets had/have it coming you know.
This was mainly due to the fact that most northern artillery positions in range of Seoul were rocket-based forces that could not sustain a bombardment. Most mountain bases were out of tube range and most missiles were being depleted and those positions would be found rather quickly.Replies: @Twinkie, @reiner Tor
That is a very good assessment.
We can simply all agree if any group, any assembly later labeled a group as it were, were in history’s eye’s to be simpathetic to be being or having been purged, it is the most anti-purging group the language of English (and I know not it, nor any other) has ever described, the most John Birch Society.
How dare Buckley cast him aside, as if Buckley determined history in the sense he, Buckley, is referenced today, even if ’twere only by madmen on the webs labeled inner.
getting back in return security guarantees
Security guarantees, LOL.
How about we make the same offer to the US. The US should give up its nukes, and in return receive security guarantees. You don’t think the US would accept that deal? Nor do I. And North Korea isn’t going to be stupid enough to do so either.
There is only one security guarantee that the US respects – nukes. If North Korea denuclearises the US will invade within a week.
“2) North Korea agrees to cut out military provocations of the South and other nonsense.
3) The U.S. reduces its troops in South Korea and promises not to invade the north again, and, in the event the peninsula is ever unified, not to station any troops north of the current DMZ.
4) Similarly, China and Russia agree not to station any troops in what’s now North Korea.”
The US security state will never agree to that and will find a way to sabotage any deal including those terms for the following reasons:
a. reducing US troops in South Korea would present the future possibility of a more independent South Korea, one that might one day float into China’s orbit.
b. Russia and China already don’t have any appreciable military assets in North Korea, so we’d be trading something for nothing.
Under the assumption that the N. Koreans are actually serious (something we don’t know), a denuclearization in return for a non-aggression treaty and economic sanctions relief might be doable however, assuming that the offer is personally offered to Trump one-on-one in the absence of his neocon military advisors.
“If North Korea denuclearises the US will invade within a week.”
And risk killing millions of Koreans? Yeah, no – sorry. If that was ever going to have happened, it would have occurred back under W. Bush, back when they started this whole nuclear thing.
I don’t know if the North is serious or just stalling for time, but I’m pretty sure that we wouldn’t just attack them absent nuclear weapons because the US already had that chance and didn’t.
Dubya didn’t attack them because he had his hands full with Iraq and Afghanistan.
“In essence, most of the Nork’s artillery that can reach Seoul cannot sustain bombardment and/or would be quickly snuffed out by South Korean/USA counter battery fire and airstrikes. The later being most important. This fellow estimates the most the north would be able inflict on the Seoul would be 50k casualties. Not deaths, casualties.”
Don’t put your faith in such estimates. I heard similar estimates about being able to find and destroy SCUD missiles during the Gulf; the success rate was WAY off by maybe 90%.
We have fairly limited intelligence on what the North has done, and, in any case, we wouldn’t be able to stop them before they hit the South with significant force, and on live television.
Also, the North would simultaneously attempt an invasion. That means street fighting and guerilla warfare in an enclosed, massively populated area. Any war with North Korea would be the kind of war we haven’t seen since at least Vietnam…and the public is even less likely to tolerate mass casualties now.
People tend to get into trouble when they overestimate their own abilities while underestimating their opponents. Ask the Civil War Union and the Allies/Central powers how that worked out for them. Wars that were supposed to end quickly dragged out for years and with significant loss of life.
Anyone handwaving away the kind of total war NK will employ with "muh air support" and "muh counterbattery" is a dangerous idiot who is willingly ignoring the last 17 years of war.
Carry a rifle on the front lines when the first wave of peasant infantry comes through the wire, honestly believing they have to kill 10 imperialist dogs before they're allowed to die, if you think NK isn't a big deal.Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Anonymous
People underestimate what a massive blunder the neocon “axis of evil” formulation turned out to be. By lumping North Korea in with states due for “regime change,” the DPRK’s motivation to develop a nuclear deterrent was increased a great deal.
Trump has rejected interventionism, which is really what allows an opening of negotiations here.
What does North Korea want? Well, first of all Kim wants to avoid being Saddamed or Qaddafied. Secondly, he wants some breathing space. He currently has troops from the world’s three largest military powers on his border, guns pointed toward his country. That’s gotta make you nervous as a leader of a relatively small country. Finally, he wants to pursue his ambitions, whatever they are. Maybe he wants to be seen as the leader who reunited Korea, or maybe he just wants to continue to preside over a lousy tyrannical state. Whatever he prefers, things could only be better for the rest of the world if nukes are removed from the equation, and given the state North Korea’s in right now it could only be better for its people, too, even if Kim stays in power.
If you think in terms of harm reduction, giving Kim security guarantees in return for nuclear disarmament is a winning proposition for everyone.
Seoul is 35 miles from the DMZ. Outside of a few exceptions, such as the Paris Gun, conventional artillery cannot reach 35 miles, unless it is a rocket assisted projectile (RAP), and even that is pushing it. For example, the big guns on the Iowa class battleships had a range of around 24 miles.
The North Koreans have a system called the Koksan that has a range of 36 miles with RAP. So I suppose the northern parts of Seoul or its suburbs might come into range. But when people speak about North Korea’s 10,000 pieces of artillery, the majority is not the Koksan, and could not come close to threatening Seoul. However, the US troops who are close to the DMZ are another story.
Kim would be an idiot to give up his nukes, especially his (coming) ability to annihilate LA. They ensure his survival.
Look what happened to Gaddafi and Ukraine after they gave up their nukes in exchange for “security assurances.” They got steamrolled. Gaddafi was soddomized, then beheaded. You think Kim didn’t notice?
It’s a joke. Trump and Kim both are looking to play the other. One of them will get played.
Time will tell which one.
In 1953, President Eisenhower’s toured the Korean front for a couple of hours, saw the North Koreans’ defensive positions, and decided to negotiate peace. He only gave the subject two sentences in his memoirs, understated but clear: “We used light airplanes to fly along the front… In view of the strength of the positions the enemy had developed, it was obvious that any frontal attack would present great difficulties.” By “would present great difficulties,” he meant, “would result in massive American casualties.”
Nothing has changed since then, except that the North Koreans’ defenses have been built up to be far stronger than they were 65 years ago . Of course, assuming that the Chinese would not intervene, we could defeat the North Koreans if we were willing to accept the loss of tens of thousands of dead American soldiers, in addition to hundreds of thousands of South Korean civilians and soldiers. But we are not. Conventional war with the Norks is inconceivable.
He should never have been in command of UN troops in Korea. MacArthur should have been running the show.
https://i.imgur.com/1DcLI4o.png
As far as today's situation, our air power -- especially with very limited RoE -- will do most of the heavy lifting. Spectacularly capable units like VMFA(AW)-242 will wad the NKs up pretty fast.
Hopefully, nothing will happen, though, because of ... unintended consequences.Replies: @LondonBob
Here's what Trump should do, IMO:
Negotiate a deal acceptable to South Korea, China and Russia before meeting with North Korea, and invite Putin, Xi, and Moon to the summit. I like one tweeter's idea of holding it in Vladivostok. Use the opportunity to reduce tensions with Russia at the same time.
A win-win-win-win deal would probably look something like this:
1) North Korea agrees to give up its nukes and allow monitoring to verify that.
2) North Korea agrees to cut out military provocations of the South and other nonsense.
3) The U.S. reduces its troops in South Korea and promises not to invade the north again, and, in the event the peninsula is ever unified, not to station any troops north of the current DMZ.
4) Similarly, China and Russia agree not to station any troops in what's now North Korea.
5) Sanctions on North Korea are dropped.
6) Economic aid + economic development for North Korea, with South Korea and China setting up more factories there.
7) In return for hosting and helping to facilitate, the U.S. drops some sanctions on Russia and lets Tillerson's old company develop Russia's arctic oil fields.Replies: @AndrewR, @istevefan, @Pericles, @Kevin O'Keeffe
If Trump could get our troops out of South Korea that would be a huge win. But I don’t think the North will allow that to happen. The North knows that without US troops being sitting ducks along the DMZ, the US could launch a strike against the North without sacrificing our troops who would certainly suffer casualties from massed artillery. A single gun could get off at least 4 or more rounds per minute. If you have a few thousand artillery pieces, that is a lot of steel flying through the air in a short period of time.
I think one reason why the US has not, and will not withdraw our forces is that they could not do so without causing the North to freak out believing that a US attack was forthcoming. Even repositioning our forces further south, to evade the North’s artillery, would probably elicit such a reaction.
For some reason we made a strategic mistake years ago in stationing our troops along the DMZ. We could just as easily guarantee South Korea’s independence by keeping our forces in Guam and letting the world know that if the North attacked the South, we would bomb the North into the stone age. Additionally, by not having our forces on the ground along DMZ, other parties like South Korea, China, Russia and Japan would have to do more heavy lifting to ensure peace.
But with our troops under constant threat, the North has become, and will continue to be, OUR problem because our troops will be among the first to pay the price in any conflict. So this has resulted in the USA, which is over 6500 miles away, having to constantly be involved while local powers, who should be more engaged, sit back and watch.
Security guarantees, LOL.
How about we make the same offer to the US. The US should give up its nukes, and in return receive security guarantees. You don't think the US would accept that deal? Nor do I. And North Korea isn't going to be stupid enough to do so either.
There is only one security guarantee that the US respects - nukes. If North Korea denuclearises the US will invade within a week.Replies: @J.Ross, @reiner Tor
This. I hope for liberalization of their society and easing of tesions (in both cases, however slight), not a Nork voluntarily giving up his trump card.
I could imagine a scenario where only 50k people are killed in a conflict with North Korea…but I could also imagine things going wrong and up to a million or more dying. The 50k figure is really just a near-best case.
The North Koreans had approximately ~500 Scud missiles and associated mobile launchers circa 2000. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had increased that to somewhere in the 750 range by now. Those missiles, if launched at Seoul, would cause tremendous damage. And don’t believe any estimates about how we could find the launchers or shoot them down. We’d be overwhelmed, even if we could intercept some (while also having much less success in taking out the launchers than you might think).
In a war time situation, the following sequence of events could occur, causing things to go very badly for the US:
1. The North launches its Scuds at key US military facilities and heavily populated civilian areas looking to cause as much chaos as possible.
2. The North simultaneously initiates a massive artillery barrage along the DMZ in an attempt to clear it out.
3. The US attempts airstrikes to take out artillery and Scud launchers but is less successful than some might think, both in terms of marshaling enough aircraft to make a significant difference quickly and finding their targets, some of which will be mobile.
4. The North quickly follows up its artillery barrage with a full scale invasion of the South. If they are able to flank US troops and enter civilian areas, it could very well be game over at that point. The US couldn’t win without a full scale war not seen since Vietnam or the original Korean War.
5. The Americans carry out massive punitive strikes against the North, but it’s unclear if that will make any kind of difference in the short term. Once the North gets entrenched in the South, it will take large reinforcements of ground troops to get them out.
6. The North goes guerilla warfare as the US continues launching airstrikes, killing large numbers of civilians in the process. The US struggles to quickly marshal enough troops from the area for a counter attack. Something that can’t be done until large numbers of South Koreans are already killed.
7. Regardless of outcome, South Korea is left as devastated as Syria is now, if not more. ~600K died in Syria’s civil war, so about 1,000,000 is what we might see in a worst case scenario for densely populated South Korea…and all of that would be occurring on television in a way not seen then or in any recent American military conflict, perhaps ever.
“If Trump could get our troops out of South Korea that would be a huge win. But I don’t think the North will allow that to happen. The North knows that without US troops being sitting ducks along the DMZ, the US could launch a strike against the North without sacrificing our troops who would certainly suffer casualties from massed artillery.”
I don’t agree. The North would like nothing more than our troops gone from the South as it opens the door for them to invade during a war. People overestimate the effectiveness of airstrikes. If the North overran the South, airstrikes alone wouldn’t prevail (ask the Saudis how their war in Yemen is going). We would need troops, but it would take time to bring them to the area, even from Japan. In the meantime, huge scores of South Koreans are killed. Even if we invade, the death toll could eventually exceed one million or more. Furthermore, it’s unclear just how airstrikes on the North would dislodge troops from the South. Airstrikes against North Vietnam didn’t carry the day back then, so it likely wouldn’t here.
Furthermore, withdrawing American troops from South Korea could eventually result in the South falling into China’s orbit. This isn’t necessarily unreasonable considering China’s staggering growth and Korea’s antipathy towards our Japanese allies. Our Deep State will anticipate that possibility and sabotage any deal where American troops are withdrawn or Korea is reunified without American troops or a formal defense treaty.
I suspect that Eisenhower was specifically commenting on Gen. Mark Clark’s plan for a frontal assault. During World War II, US Army doctrine did not favor frontal assaults and specialized in the holding attack. But they did occur. Gen. Clark was responsible for a murderous example, The Battle of the Rapido River, one of the worst defeats the US Army suffered during World War II.
He should never have been in command of UN troops in Korea. MacArthur should have been running the show.
As far as today’s situation, our air power — especially with very limited RoE — will do most of the heavy lifting. Spectacularly capable units like VMFA(AW)-242 will wad the NKs up pretty fast.
Hopefully, nothing will happen, though, because of … unintended consequences.
This is really about the Koreans and a path way to reunification. Trump needs to facilitate this, already I see voices trying to undermine an agreement already, talks are useless etc. This would be a huge win for Trump amd they don't want that.
Korea is mountainous and their conventional forces are sufficient to deter, nukes should be tradeable. I suppose the Nork leadership wish to avoid prison down the line too, so would need guarantees too. Apparently the Norks aren't seeking withdrawal of US troops so the Pentagon can't complain, too much. In the end it will be South Korea who guarantees North. I am guessing the first stage will be mostly about a formal peace, ending nukes, economic cooperation and lowering of military posturing.Replies: @Pericles
My parents raised me to not be sarcastic. I rebelled against that after coming across as a naive goodie two shoes in worldlier circles. Now I’ve realized the wisdom of my parents’ approach. Sarcasm is greatly overused. Satire and mocking has its place when it’s a form of thinking elevated into comedy, which has the ennobling quality of leavening monotonic earnesty with a gaze into the abyss, rather than an avoidance of thought. But sarcasm as a reflex blocks you off from wonder and growth in considering other points of view.
I see a lot of women who say in their online dating profiles that they love sarcasm and that's a red flag for me. Even with friends, I find that people who are sarcastic all the time are hard to connect with on a deeper level. It's like a shell.
Here's what Trump should do, IMO:
Negotiate a deal acceptable to South Korea, China and Russia before meeting with North Korea, and invite Putin, Xi, and Moon to the summit. I like one tweeter's idea of holding it in Vladivostok. Use the opportunity to reduce tensions with Russia at the same time.
A win-win-win-win deal would probably look something like this:
1) North Korea agrees to give up its nukes and allow monitoring to verify that.
2) North Korea agrees to cut out military provocations of the South and other nonsense.
3) The U.S. reduces its troops in South Korea and promises not to invade the north again, and, in the event the peninsula is ever unified, not to station any troops north of the current DMZ.
4) Similarly, China and Russia agree not to station any troops in what's now North Korea.
5) Sanctions on North Korea are dropped.
6) Economic aid + economic development for North Korea, with South Korea and China setting up more factories there.
7) In return for hosting and helping to facilitate, the U.S. drops some sanctions on Russia and lets Tillerson's old company develop Russia's arctic oil fields.Replies: @AndrewR, @istevefan, @Pericles, @Kevin O'Keeffe
8. The USA pinky swears not to renege this time, not even if it’s like ten years in the future.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
Think of the damage Iran did to us by proxy in Iraq. Imagine what China could do.
The North Koreans had approximately ~500 Scud missiles and associated mobile launchers circa 2000. It wouldn't surprise me if they had increased that to somewhere in the 750 range by now. Those missiles, if launched at Seoul, would cause tremendous damage. And don't believe any estimates about how we could find the launchers or shoot them down. We'd be overwhelmed, even if we could intercept some (while also having much less success in taking out the launchers than you might think).
In a war time situation, the following sequence of events could occur, causing things to go very badly for the US:
1. The North launches its Scuds at key US military facilities and heavily populated civilian areas looking to cause as much chaos as possible.
2. The North simultaneously initiates a massive artillery barrage along the DMZ in an attempt to clear it out.
3. The US attempts airstrikes to take out artillery and Scud launchers but is less successful than some might think, both in terms of marshaling enough aircraft to make a significant difference quickly and finding their targets, some of which will be mobile.
4. The North quickly follows up its artillery barrage with a full scale invasion of the South. If they are able to flank US troops and enter civilian areas, it could very well be game over at that point. The US couldn't win without a full scale war not seen since Vietnam or the original Korean War.
5. The Americans carry out massive punitive strikes against the North, but it's unclear if that will make any kind of difference in the short term. Once the North gets entrenched in the South, it will take large reinforcements of ground troops to get them out.
6. The North goes guerilla warfare as the US continues launching airstrikes, killing large numbers of civilians in the process. The US struggles to quickly marshal enough troops from the area for a counter attack. Something that can't be done until large numbers of South Koreans are already killed.
7. Regardless of outcome, South Korea is left as devastated as Syria is now, if not more. ~600K died in Syria's civil war, so about 1,000,000 is what we might see in a worst case scenario for densely populated South Korea...and all of that would be occurring on television in a way not seen then or in any recent American military conflict, perhaps ever.Replies: @Pericles
South Korea literally has a 50x greater GDP than North Korea. It’s a shame they can’t afford to defend themselves.
You prove my point.
This is an unfunny joke.
I think the fact that Kim going to school inthe West and the relative success of N. Korea at the Olympics sparked this recent flash of interest. It’s not fun being invited to the party but not being fully accepted by the host and other guests. Being a pariah especially for young people takes its toll.
Vladimir Putin and President for Life Xi play chess. Citizen Trump looks like he’s playing Chinese Checkers without all the marbles. South Koreans do not like Kim. However, they are ONE PEOPLE. South Korea doesn’t want 500,000 North Koreans killed by the Military best known for smoldering ruins and incoherent cackling old ladies like Madame’s Albright and Hillary. The South may actually shoot down any US planes that want to nuke the North. BELIEVE IT.
I was born in South Korea. These bozos in the beltway do not even know what Americans think and believe without some poll. I wouldn’t trust the CIA any more than I would Trump. Trump doesn’t have the Grand Army Bush sr and Junior Bush used to crush Saddam. That force in Korea looks like the token force of also rans in the two previous Saddam Wars. It looks like maybe 60,000.
The North has a Million Man Army. THEY ARE FANATICS. Anyone who believes they will surrender like Iraqis have the intelligence of Junior Bush. The South has 600,000. They don’t want the North to be bombed into smoldering ruins. Anyone who talks about nuking North Korea, may as well stay out of South Korea. THEY ARE ONE PEOPLE. Those dummies in the beltway will not even bother to ask them. They’ll be shocked if South Korea shoots down a pre-emptive strike. They’re STUPID.
OT THE COMING OF THE WAKANDANS
Terrence Howard (the CO in Red Tails) has written a math paper, with the deliberate goal of inspiring new math involvement. I am very bad at math but I think this is a publicity stunt.
http://twitter.com/terrencehoward/status/925754491881877507
He's calling it "Terryology."Replies: @Alfa158, @Autochthon, @Almost Missouri, @Jus' Sayin'...
He writes “History of Man,” so the Thought Police will be along to unperson him at any moment.
He should never have been in command of UN troops in Korea. MacArthur should have been running the show.
https://i.imgur.com/1DcLI4o.png
As far as today's situation, our air power -- especially with very limited RoE -- will do most of the heavy lifting. Spectacularly capable units like VMFA(AW)-242 will wad the NKs up pretty fast.
Hopefully, nothing will happen, though, because of ... unintended consequences.Replies: @LondonBob
Clark was incompetent, Ridgway really pulled it around in Korea.
This is really about the Koreans and a path way to reunification. Trump needs to facilitate this, already I see voices trying to undermine an agreement already, talks are useless etc. This would be a huge win for Trump amd they don’t want that.
Korea is mountainous and their conventional forces are sufficient to deter, nukes should be tradeable. I suppose the Nork leadership wish to avoid prison down the line too, so would need guarantees too. Apparently the Norks aren’t seeking withdrawal of US troops so the Pentagon can’t complain, too much. In the end it will be South Korea who guarantees North. I am guessing the first stage will be mostly about a formal peace, ending nukes, economic cooperation and lowering of military posturing.
Does S Korea have anything like Iron Dome? If not they should start writing checks.
Also, if there is a nukes deal with NK the murder of all the nork nuclear scientists and ballistic missile experts has to be done or else they are going to Iran.
You do know he was being sarcastic, right?
The US maintains 28,500 troops in South Korea. This is not an ‘invasion force’ but a ‘hostage’ force to guarantee to South Korea we will honor our defense commitment. North Korea’s conventional army while large is poorly equipped and not really capable of mounting an invasion of South Korea. It does have a large number of artillery along the DMZ but modern radars and anti artillery and rocket weapons could greatly limit the effectiveness of those guns. Think ‘Iron Dome’ which has neutralized Hamas’ ability to attack Israel from Gaza and South Korea is rich enough ( GDP the size of Russia’s) to equip its military with whatever it needs to defend itself against North Korea.
Thus with South Korea now so much larger, richer, and technologically advanced than the North absent the North’s atomic arsenal there is no real reason for the US defend South Korea at all. The real danger, remote that it maybe, would be that a future South Korean government, on a denuclearized peninsula, would mount a conventional attack on the North once it has built an Iron Dome defense over Seoul.
Trump has rejected interventionism, which is really what allows an opening of negotiations here.
What does North Korea want? Well, first of all Kim wants to avoid being Saddamed or Qaddafied. Secondly, he wants some breathing space. He currently has troops from the world's three largest military powers on his border, guns pointed toward his country. That's gotta make you nervous as a leader of a relatively small country. Finally, he wants to pursue his ambitions, whatever they are. Maybe he wants to be seen as the leader who reunited Korea, or maybe he just wants to continue to preside over a lousy tyrannical state. Whatever he prefers, things could only be better for the rest of the world if nukes are removed from the equation, and given the state North Korea's in right now it could only be better for its people, too, even if Kim stays in power.
If you think in terms of harm reduction, giving Kim security guarantees in return for nuclear disarmament is a winning proposition for everyone.Replies: @Anonymous
Yep, and people should take this rare opportunity to be hopeful about something for a change. Besides, Trump needs a big win and soon, because even the NYT is now carrying on about Chesty Daniels, or whatever her name is.
If only Trump had had the sense to pork her in the Oval Office, like Clinton did, we’d have to let him off the hook. But then, he wasn’t president yet, was he. Details details.
Kim has done nothing to irritate Israel or her partisans, so he’s quite safe from the fate that met Qaddafi and Saddam.
OT THE COMING OF THE WAKANDANS
Terrence Howard (the CO in Red Tails) has written a math paper, with the deliberate goal of inspiring new math involvement. I am very bad at math but I think this is a publicity stunt.
http://twitter.com/terrencehoward/status/925754491881877507
He's calling it "Terryology."Replies: @Alfa158, @Autochthon, @Almost Missouri, @Jus' Sayin'...
It’s Civil Rights Math.
“No more than ten to twenty million killed, tops! Uh, depending on the breaks . . .”
Remember the rule around here: if you make a reference to a classic Cold War movie, you’ve got to show the scene!
Your comment informs us of very little other than the fact that you have poor social skills.
https://twitter.com/terrencehoward/status/926501086097223681Replies: @Autochthon
Something something…”mathematic [sic]” … blackety blackety black … yadda yadda yadda … those are plump for Asian boobies … do as I say, don’t do who I do ….
I don't agree. The North would like nothing more than our troops gone from the South as it opens the door for them to invade during a war. People overestimate the effectiveness of airstrikes. If the North overran the South, airstrikes alone wouldn't prevail (ask the Saudis how their war in Yemen is going). We would need troops, but it would take time to bring them to the area, even from Japan. In the meantime, huge scores of South Koreans are killed. Even if we invade, the death toll could eventually exceed one million or more. Furthermore, it's unclear just how airstrikes on the North would dislodge troops from the South. Airstrikes against North Vietnam didn't carry the day back then, so it likely wouldn't here.
Furthermore, withdrawing American troops from South Korea could eventually result in the South falling into China's orbit. This isn't necessarily unreasonable considering China's staggering growth and Korea's antipathy towards our Japanese allies. Our Deep State will anticipate that possibility and sabotage any deal where American troops are withdrawn or Korea is reunified without American troops or a formal defense treaty.Replies: @Dave Pinsen
When it comes to strategic bombing, yes. When it comes to stopping conventional invasion forces, no. Laser-guided bombs were a game changer. With it, U.S. air power + South Vietnamese ground forces stopped the North’s conventional invasion in 1972 (South Vietnam fell in 1975 when he didn’t provide any air support).
North Korea wants more money from the United States and an end to the sanctions. They scammed billions of dollars from us when Clinton was the President.
President Clinton approved a plan to give more than $4 billion in energy aid to North Korea in return for a commitment from the country’s Communist leadership to freeze and gradually dismantle its nuclear weapons development program in 1994.
“This agreement will help achieve a longstanding and vital American objective — an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula,” Mr. Clinton. The accord calls for a consortium of nations to provide the North with two light-water nuclear reactors, designed in a manner that makes it far more difficult for the North to convert nuclear waste into atomic weapons. But the agreement allows North Korea to keep their uranium rods for an unspecified number of years. This provision means that the potential that North Korea could break its agreements and quickly produce nuclear weapons will not disappear. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/19/world/clinton-approves-a-plan-to-give-aid-to-north-koreans.html?pagewanted=all
Kim can emulate his father and con the United States into giving them Billions of dollars. How insane were we to give nuclear reactors to North Korea 25 years ago and allow them to keep their enriched uranium rods ?
Somewhat OT:
Not sure what North Korea wants, but South Korea likes to follow the latest trends. And the latest one is #MeToo.
That has led to a suicide. Actor Jo Min Ki, who was recently hit with a wave of sexual harassment allegations, was found dead on March 9. He had admitted to sexual harassment after he had been accused by as many as 20 women. Jo Min Ki had allegedly sexually harassed his female drama students while working as a professor at Cheongju University and actresses that he worked with.
https://www.soompi.com/2018/03/09/breaking-jo-min-ki-reportedly-found-dead/
There are several other korean entertainers that are accused of sexual harassment, so the scandal is getting pretty big.
In a more serious vein, I believe it's up to China to solve the mess in North Korea. They have experience in transitioning from a Communist concentration camp run by a Communist Party to a modern capitalist economy run by the same Communist Party. North Korea with or without Kim, with or without nukes, can also succeed in joining the international community. And political change doesn't necessarily imply reunification with South Korea. American diplomats unfortunately cannot think outside of the box.
In other words, their conventional deterrence is not in a good shape.
Perhaps, Kim believes that he can negotiate some kind of non-aggression pact and/or a formal end to the Korean War in a way that Trump would agree to considering the pressure he's under from this treasonous Russia Gate thing...they may be trying to get a deal in before Trump is replaced by someone less reasonable.
Another spin on Kim wanting to personally speak to Trump is the following: Trump, even recently, has publicly attacked the Iraq War; Kim may have interpreted Trump's eccentricity as the result of differing opinions inside his administration and that Trump, by himself, may be reasonable because he sometimes seems reasonable when out from under MacMaster and Deep State Inc.
If any kind of favorable deal for all sides is ever going to be struck, now might be the perfect time. Trump gets a major victory for his re-election, and Kim heads off an internal power struggle as a result of sanctions + doesn't have to worry about attack anymore.
And as others have pointed out, the North maintains a considerable conventional deterrent; so, a deal may not be out of the question.
Another small possibility is that Kim and company are playing the long game. They may be current pals with the Chinese, but only nominally so. Maybe they anticipate a day when they are in league with the United States, Japan, and South Korea against a superpower - land hungry and very populous - China with a GDP larger than all of those nations combined.Replies: @reiner Tor
Actually, giving up nukes makes no sense in that scenario. If he openly became enemies with the Chinese (currently they’re frenemies), then having nukes would be essential. Against the Chinese.
I think the nukes serve as much a deterrent against China as against the US.
This was mainly due to the fact that most northern artillery positions in range of Seoul were rocket-based forces that could not sustain a bombardment. Most mountain bases were out of tube range and most missiles were being depleted and those positions would be found rather quickly.Replies: @Twinkie, @reiner Tor
Assuming they have no usable nukes (or if they do, they won’t use them), I don’t think this assessment is wrong.
But it also means Kim’s only true deterrent against some adventures (by the US or by China) is his nuclear arsenal.
So you agree that Kim has no other deterrent but the nuclear one?
Security guarantees, LOL.
How about we make the same offer to the US. The US should give up its nukes, and in return receive security guarantees. You don't think the US would accept that deal? Nor do I. And North Korea isn't going to be stupid enough to do so either.
There is only one security guarantee that the US respects - nukes. If North Korea denuclearises the US will invade within a week.Replies: @J.Ross, @reiner Tor
I don’t think the US would attack within a week. It took them almost a decade before they got Gaddafi.
Actually I don’t think they’ll ever attack North Korea if it denuclearizes. But a softer regime change effort is certainly in the cards. And since the denuclearization will be accompanied by the opening up of society, I wouldn’t bet on young Kim keeping his kingdom till he dies peacefully in old age. And since there’s at least as much bad blood between him and the US (or between him and his subjects) as was the case with Gaddafi, I wouldn’t bet on his surviving the regime change at all.
Relations with China are existentially immeasurably more important to North Korea than relations with the United States. The gambit here is to force Trump to refuse to reduce sanctions, to make Trump look recalcitrant, so that China can resume trading with North Korea without losing face.
None of this should mean that Trump should refuse to talk to Kim. I think Trump should talk to Kim. It just means that the dangled carrot, de-nuclearization, is not really on the table and should not be expected.Replies: @Obsessive Contrarian
Is Kim Jong Un a Chinese puppet or not? If not, would he really do anything China disapproves of?
And risk killing millions of Koreans? Yeah, no - sorry. If that was ever going to have happened, it would have occurred back under W. Bush, back when they started this whole nuclear thing.
I don't know if the North is serious or just stalling for time, but I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't just attack them absent nuclear weapons because the US already had that chance and didn't.Replies: @reiner Tor
A former South Korean president recently said that in 1994 Clinton wanted to attack them, but he vetoed it. Something said ex-president greatly regretted twenty-three years later.
Dubya didn’t attack them because he had his hands full with Iraq and Afghanistan.
I think the nukes serve as much a deterrent against China as against the US.Replies: @Obsessive Contrarian
If that’s true then perhaps we supported them covertly, just because? If you call that short-sighted, well, that’s American policy in a word.
Don't put your faith in such estimates. I heard similar estimates about being able to find and destroy SCUD missiles during the Gulf; the success rate was WAY off by maybe 90%.
We have fairly limited intelligence on what the North has done, and, in any case, we wouldn't be able to stop them before they hit the South with significant force, and on live television.
Also, the North would simultaneously attempt an invasion. That means street fighting and guerilla warfare in an enclosed, massively populated area. Any war with North Korea would be the kind of war we haven't seen since at least Vietnam...and the public is even less likely to tolerate mass casualties now.
People tend to get into trouble when they overestimate their own abilities while underestimating their opponents. Ask the Civil War Union and the Allies/Central powers how that worked out for them. Wars that were supposed to end quickly dragged out for years and with significant loss of life.Replies: @Jack Hanson, @reiner Tor
Agreed.
Anyone handwaving away the kind of total war NK will employ with “muh air support” and “muh counterbattery” is a dangerous idiot who is willingly ignoring the last 17 years of war.
Carry a rifle on the front lines when the first wave of peasant infantry comes through the wire, honestly believing they have to kill 10 imperialist dogs before they’re allowed to die, if you think NK isn’t a big deal.
US capabilities are also immensely stronger. The Nork soldiers are also probably less motivated than they were half a century or six and a half decades ago. They are nearly starving, as are their families, and they know that South Korea is enormously wealthy (unlike half a century ago, when it was just as dirt poor as North Korea). It’s not obvious that the Norks wouldn’t just surrender en masse.
Don't put your faith in such estimates. I heard similar estimates about being able to find and destroy SCUD missiles during the Gulf; the success rate was WAY off by maybe 90%.
We have fairly limited intelligence on what the North has done, and, in any case, we wouldn't be able to stop them before they hit the South with significant force, and on live television.
Also, the North would simultaneously attempt an invasion. That means street fighting and guerilla warfare in an enclosed, massively populated area. Any war with North Korea would be the kind of war we haven't seen since at least Vietnam...and the public is even less likely to tolerate mass casualties now.
People tend to get into trouble when they overestimate their own abilities while underestimating their opponents. Ask the Civil War Union and the Allies/Central powers how that worked out for them. Wars that were supposed to end quickly dragged out for years and with significant loss of life.Replies: @Jack Hanson, @reiner Tor
But it’s also valid for Kim, who shouldn’t overestimate his own abilities.
My mistake. I took AndrewR to be making sarcasm and J.Ross to be serious. I should try to ignore both.
I am embarking on a campaign to greatly reduce the use of sarcasm in order to make the world a better, less confusing, more trusting place.
Good luck with that!
This is really about the Koreans and a path way to reunification. Trump needs to facilitate this, already I see voices trying to undermine an agreement already, talks are useless etc. This would be a huge win for Trump amd they don't want that.
Korea is mountainous and their conventional forces are sufficient to deter, nukes should be tradeable. I suppose the Nork leadership wish to avoid prison down the line too, so would need guarantees too. Apparently the Norks aren't seeking withdrawal of US troops so the Pentagon can't complain, too much. In the end it will be South Korea who guarantees North. I am guessing the first stage will be mostly about a formal peace, ending nukes, economic cooperation and lowering of military posturing.Replies: @Pericles
Prison? Saddam was hanged and Khadaffi got murdered by a mob. Not to mention the experiences of earlier nations. Don’t count on any clemency if you’re up against the US.
A lot of useful comments here.
One point raised is that the deterrent effect of N Korea’s conventional attack is far overstated — someone suggested a figure of only 50K civilian casualties.
But, as others have also pointed out, that’s probably a best case scenario. In fact, of course, we don’t really know what the real numbers might be — as is true in any war. If we were to engage in a pre-emptive strike, we would have to do so with a genuine risk that the numbers might be much, much higher.
The question is, would we be willing to take that risk if N Korea controlled no nukes? I think the answer is a clear no — not least because historically we refused to do so when N Korea possessed only conventional weapons. It’s hard to see how that equation would be changed in a future in which N Korea relied on conventional deterrents.
And this brings up another key point. If there is anything that changes the equation, it is precisely the potential of N Korea to possess nukes. We might well be willing to risk a large number of casualties if we believed that the alternative was that, down the line, N Korea might threaten millions of lives, especially American civilian lives.
The point is that this transitional period, just before N Korea has a true nuke capability, represents a unique opportunity to get something done in the way of denuclearization.
Kim has to realize that we now have more incentive than at any other time to attack him. And our sanctions also represent a serious internal threat to his regime.
Thus, Kim has an unprecedented incentive to do a deal at this very moment.
And as Trump’s Luck would have it, Trump’s the man on the scene uniquely able and willing to make this happen.
I feel pretty hopeful something will work out.
For example a small road mobile ICBM force might work as a deterrent. (Currently their forces might be semi road mobile, liquid fuel missiles, but capable of hiding in caves while fueling, and probably it’s possible to transport the fuel to the caves.) It’d be able to kill a few million people in the US. Once they had it, no one would attack them under any circumstances. Even if they were embarking on a program to build a twice as large or three times larger deterrent.
The current conventional deterrent is not really a deterrent.
I never liked sarcasm, and thought I was the only one sometimes. I think there’s a certain defensiveness to it, instead of just being open and genuine.
I see a lot of women who say in their online dating profiles that they love sarcasm and that’s a red flag for me. Even with friends, I find that people who are sarcastic all the time are hard to connect with on a deeper level. It’s like a shell.
What does N. Korea want?
My layman’s guess is reunification and the expulsion of foreigners, meaning, most relevantly, the U.S. bases.
The book “The Cleanest Race” paints N. Korea not as communist but as xenophobic, right-wing and racist to the core. According to this theory, Pyongyang sees the Korean race — North and South — as inviolable. The South has dirtied itself by mixing with foreigners according to the North and they must be corrected. Also, it’s worth noting that on some Korean forums, many from the South agree with this proposition and also want the U.S. out. I say let them sort it out themselves.
I already explained it at length in other threads. I only wrote “No” because the Disagree button was unavailable for me st the time.
Anyone handwaving away the kind of total war NK will employ with "muh air support" and "muh counterbattery" is a dangerous idiot who is willingly ignoring the last 17 years of war.
Carry a rifle on the front lines when the first wave of peasant infantry comes through the wire, honestly believing they have to kill 10 imperialist dogs before they're allowed to die, if you think NK isn't a big deal.Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Anonymous
Right. Cite me just one war that went as easily as predicted beforehand. The troops in WWI all thought they’d be home by Christmas.
Christian Bale is primarily English in ancestry. My theory as to his sarcastic, and now famous, comment “Oh good for you” was that he was doing a New York actor, maybe Pacino, while he was lashing out at the director of photography who invaded his space on set.
North Korea wants what Kim Jong Un wants. For him to live well and to be thought of as a hero with his legacy, wealth and family secure.
Trump can offer all of that. If he does, there’ll be some bizarro lionisation of Un, mark my words. Indeed, that better explains the media’s sycophancy at the Olympics than their hysteria over Trump does.
Hey, the Nobel prize committee may not even mind giving it to Trump if it is joint with Kim Jong Un.
North Korea has been under great duress since about 1910. The question is whether its Imperial family is. So long as it has nukes I don't see that it is.Replies: @Pat Boyle
I find it very hard to ‘get inside the head’ of the Kim dynasty.
Hitler – a very evil man who caused a lot of trouble – still seems understandable, even rational. He thought he was establishing a 1,000 year Reich. He probably thought of himself as a kind of Henry Ford for the German people giving them Volkswagens and autobahns. Stalin had all those five year plans. He evidently thought he was elevating Russia. And Mao had his “Great Leap Forward”.
All these other infamous totalitarians seemed to think that their reign was benefiting their people – at least in the long run. But not the Kim family.
Maybe the North Korean populace has been kept in the dark about their country and it’s place among nations. But surely the leaders know that their regime has created a race of stunted peasants starving in the dark. How do they justify their actions to themselves?
It is not what NK wants,but what NK has that is of interests to Trump, America and the rest of the world. Cobalt. NK has Cobalt and everybody else wants it.
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00809A000700100540-9.pdf
This makes the most sense:
https://haralduhlig.blogspot.com/2018/03/kim-jong-un-will-successfully-test.html
The only thing that will persuade the U.S. to pursue a sane sensible foreign policy is fear. As anyone who has ever had to deal with an unintelligent bully knows, nothing else works.
‘Further security guarantees’ from who, big brother/ one-world government? That’s well beyond laughable. They’ve never, ever, kept their word on anything at all. Indian treaties, Gaddaffi… What a big bully. Look at the sanctions on Cuba. For what? One reason only: they don’t do what they’re told, they don’t allow themselves to be ruled by British and American corporations, but want to be ruled by an actual person, one of their own. Big no-no. You simply do what the bully says, or you get fucked with. What the bully says is stuff like, ‘you will have IMF-imposed sanctions’, austerity for the 99%, etc.
Never give up nukes, NK, never! Let the motherfucking USA do it first, with full international inspection from Cuba, Venezuela, NK, China and Russia. Or else!
Here's what Trump should do, IMO:
Negotiate a deal acceptable to South Korea, China and Russia before meeting with North Korea, and invite Putin, Xi, and Moon to the summit. I like one tweeter's idea of holding it in Vladivostok. Use the opportunity to reduce tensions with Russia at the same time.
A win-win-win-win deal would probably look something like this:
1) North Korea agrees to give up its nukes and allow monitoring to verify that.
2) North Korea agrees to cut out military provocations of the South and other nonsense.
3) The U.S. reduces its troops in South Korea and promises not to invade the north again, and, in the event the peninsula is ever unified, not to station any troops north of the current DMZ.
4) Similarly, China and Russia agree not to station any troops in what's now North Korea.
5) Sanctions on North Korea are dropped.
6) Economic aid + economic development for North Korea, with South Korea and China setting up more factories there.
7) In return for hosting and helping to facilitate, the U.S. drops some sanctions on Russia and lets Tillerson's old company develop Russia's arctic oil fields.Replies: @AndrewR, @istevefan, @Pericles, @Kevin O'Keeffe
I had proposed it be held on Sakhalin, but Vladivostok is undoubtedly a smarter choice. Not much infrastructure in, um…the largest settlement on Sakhalin.
Massed artillery, massed infantry, massed anything became obsolete with the invention of modern cluster munitions.
http://soldiers.dodlive.mil/tag/the-great-bugout/
Do you not remember learning “the basic laws of common sense” in school?
I meant it both ways.
Anyone handwaving away the kind of total war NK will employ with "muh air support" and "muh counterbattery" is a dangerous idiot who is willingly ignoring the last 17 years of war.
Carry a rifle on the front lines when the first wave of peasant infantry comes through the wire, honestly believing they have to kill 10 imperialist dogs before they're allowed to die, if you think NK isn't a big deal.Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Anonymous
They’re ignoring the Korean War itself, where we had air superiority over the peninsula except for a narrow patch near the Chinese border called “MiG alley.” We bombed the hell out of North Korea, including civilian targets, so much so that we ran out of targets. The infantry still had to fight though in vicious close combat, to the cost of over 100,000 casualties, including 36K KIA.
Not sure what North Korea wants, but South Korea likes to follow the latest trends. And the latest one is #MeToo.
That has led to a suicide. Actor Jo Min Ki, who was recently hit with a wave of sexual harassment allegations, was found dead on March 9. He had admitted to sexual harassment after he had been accused by as many as 20 women. Jo Min Ki had allegedly sexually harassed his female drama students while working as a professor at Cheongju University and actresses that he worked with.
https://www.soompi.com/2018/03/09/breaking-jo-min-ki-reportedly-found-dead/
There are several other korean entertainers that are accused of sexual harassment, so the scandal is getting pretty big.Replies: @BB753
No way they can pull a #MeToo on Kim Yong Un. Though he’s probably harassed a quarter of the female population of North Korea!
In a more serious vein, I believe it’s up to China to solve the mess in North Korea. They have experience in transitioning from a Communist concentration camp run by a Communist Party to a modern capitalist economy run by the same Communist Party. North Korea with or without Kim, with or without nukes, can also succeed in joining the international community. And political change doesn’t necessarily imply reunification with South Korea. American diplomats unfortunately cannot think outside of the box.
OT THE COMING OF THE WAKANDANS
Terrence Howard (the CO in Red Tails) has written a math paper, with the deliberate goal of inspiring new math involvement. I am very bad at math but I think this is a publicity stunt.
http://twitter.com/terrencehoward/status/925754491881877507
He's calling it "Terryology."Replies: @Alfa158, @Autochthon, @Almost Missouri, @Jus' Sayin'...
Wakandans have learned how to divide by zero and with this anything is possible. /sarc/
BTW, this argument is usually presented algebraically to beginning math students to demonstrate that allowing division by zero leads to absurdities. In the case of an algebraic prresentation, the argument sort of makes sense until one realizes that division by (a-b) is division by zero if a=b. This idiot, evidently couldn’t follow the algebra and so substituted numbers for symbols. Those Wakandans have a long ways to go.
He’s an idiot. Basically he copied a hoary algebraic demonstration that 1+1=2 which ultimately relies on division by zero. The idea is to demonstrate to new math students that division by zero is not allowed/defined because it leads to absurdities. This moron couldn’t deal with the algebra and so substituted numbers for algebraic symbols. He then still managed to miss the point of the demonstration.
Wakandans have come a long way but they still have a long way to go. The most advanced architecture in and around Wakandastan was termite mounds until the Arabs and Europeans showed up. Things have progressed since then but Wakandans still can’t handle math. Perhaps this is due to the effects of Vibranium radiation.
To add a few points to those already made by your commenters, the main long term strategic threat to both the US and North Korea is the rise of China. We have more than enough common interests to support a nuclear deal. The North can get 4 things in return for a genuine denuclearization: (i) end to sanctions (ii) a great power security guarantee (e.g. with the US, Russia, China) (iii) hugely expanded economic and other cooperation with the South, leading to (iv) the golden apple for Kim Jong Un – Korean reunification on a timeline and terms to be sorted out among the Koreans themselves. Never underestimate the power of Korean nationalism. Kim would give a lot to go down in history as the father of reunification. For the US, in addition to removal of the North Korean missile threat, the rise of a powerful, nationalistic, unified Korean state as another counterbalance to China is absolutely in our long term strategic interest. I blog about this in more detail here: https://naimisha_forest.silvrback.com/towards-the-korean-century
“hair mussed”. well played Steve
The North could unleash hundreds of thousands of fanatical special operations forces into the south by means of sapper tunnels, aging aircraft and midget submarines. Assuming these guys fight with the tenacity afforded them, that would be a nightmare scenario which would far exceed anything short of a nuclear attack.
That doesn't make them any less terrifying in a battle though.
https://haralduhlig.blogspot.com/2018/03/kim-jong-un-will-successfully-test.htmlReplies: @dfordoom
Which might well be a more stable and safer situation for the world.
The only thing that will persuade the U.S. to pursue a sane sensible foreign policy is fear. As anyone who has ever had to deal with an unintelligent bully knows, nothing else works.
Loose shoes, …. ?
No, Just No.
If the American President agrees to removing sanctions in return for ending North Korea’s nuclear program, what would make that any different from past agreements? At least to an uninformed layman, this sounds exactly like what happened before.
Furthermore, why should our president agree to anything that assures the continued existence of North Korea as it is?
No. We are in the dominant position, for perhaps the last time if we don’t use it correctly. China will do whatever it does quietly to prop up North Korea if we just agree to remove sanctions. Any agreement of that sort will leave the door cracked open for them to build up whatever they can to cause more distractions in the future.
No. Push hard. There is no reason not to. Stop being pussies. Sorry, but this is the real world. Keep the fricken sanctions unless they lick our damn boots.
PS, to restate the obvious for the umpteenth time: China is our enemy. It does not have our best interests at heart. Stop ignoring the real gorilla in the room.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."Replies: @Dave Pinsen
I hear ya, but China gives us an incentive to not renege.
Think of the damage Iran did to us by proxy in Iraq. Imagine what China could do.
” By far the best scenario for him is to see a flourishing N Korea . . . .” When you say “flourishing,” what exactly do you mean within the context of N. Korea?
No way will Kim give up his nukes. He may start negotiations indicating such, but, if we know anything, the N. Korean regime’s native tongue is to lie. Additionally, the sanctions are not affecting Kim personally. He is still fat, happy and evil.
First, it might do so only relative to its current level of extreme deprivation. Lifting the economic sanctions, or moderating them, might allow it to return to a more stable state -- one that would allow Kim to be less concerned about being overthrown.
But it might seek, and, conditional on good behavior, be allowed, to flourish in a much more satisfying way. Here I think the model for its future might be that of China, not S Korea.
China has of course flourished economically even while being at all times under the thumb of a Communist dictatorship. This would seem to be a model Kim would be comfortable with.
One way this might be brought about would be for a large corporation to outsource manufacturing jobs to N Korea. There might be no place in the world in which a potentially high quality workforce might be available at a lower cost. N Korea could choose its best trained/educated citizens to take on the first jobs. It would be in the interests of S Korea to encourage some of its corporations to open such plants.Replies: @reiner Tor
This:
Good novel about the Norks infiltrating Japan’s Kyushu island.
Not when its dug defilade into hundreds of meters of granite or grabbing US troops “by the buckle”. COL Hackworth was talking about the Vietnamese doing that to neutralize US CAS 50 years ago.
I swear some of you have the memory of a goldfish.
In addition the NRO signals intelligence monitoring of North Korea via the Trumpet-F/O satellites with their SBIRS-HEO early warning packages and other resources is pretty thorough, and orders of magnitude more capable than anything available in Viet Nam war days. If Kim gives the "go" signal, we'll probably know it before his artillery commanders do.And under what conditions would the North Koreans be able to "grab US troops by the belt buckle," since we wouldn't be invading North Korea with our ground troops, but only destroying their offensive capability by air power? It would be they moving on South Korea, and should they try that, Yngvar is correct. They would have to mass in the open in order to move south, and if they did that, they would be destroyed. Even if they could theoretically get in close enough to neutralize air support, we aren't going to be giving them the chance.
If the South Korean army wanted to launch a counter-attack into North Korea, that would be their affair -- and their casualties.
I'm curious, by the way, why it is you who are the Eeyore in this discussion. Aren't you always ridiculing naysayers?PS: There's not going to be a war. CAS from 75 meters(note the pressure wave): one bomb, target destroyed. Not something that could have been done except by luck in Col. Hackworth's day. Now routine.
https://youtu.be/k42t9IRpaAEReplies: @Jack Hanson
“North Korea’s conventional army while large is poorly equipped and not really capable of mounting an invasion of South Korea.”
Really? Then how did ISIS invade and take large chunks of Syria and Iraq with not much more than Toyota trucks for transportation? Don’t believe the North can’t stage an invasion of the South. It can, and there is no good reason to believe otherwise. Assuming they can’t is just wishful thinking at best; and a possibly fatal miscalculation if anyone at the Pentagon buys into it.
“It does have a large number of artillery along the DMZ but modern radars and anti artillery and rocket weapons could greatly limit the effectiveness of those guns.”
That’s just on paper. Don’t put all of your eggs into that basket. North Korea isn’t Hamas and none of those weapon systems have been tested in an actual war against a worthy opponent. Both the Allies and the Central Powers thought they had the perfect game plan as WW1 started – turned out that all of their assumptions were wrong.
The Nork SF are more akin to the 75th Ranger Regiment of the 80s more so than our “Special Forces”. They’re elite light infantry versus UW specialists.
That doesn’t make them any less terrifying in a battle though.
No no no. This is why Wilson, in my opinion, was a terrible president. He actually thought the general public was competent enough understand foreign policy. They aren’t. As one of the commenters above said (paraphrasing) “don’t get your foreign policy advice from commenters here on this blog.” That’s definitely true.
“If the American President agrees to removing sanctions in return for ending North Korea’s nuclear program, what would make that any different from past agreements? At least to an uninformed layman, this sounds exactly like what happened before.”
Those agreements prevented North Korea from getting a nuclear weapon years sooner than they did. In hindsight, they were worth it. Another agreement that at least temporarily denuclearizes the area in return for sanctions relief and a security guarantee is also worth it.
True, they could again abrogate any future agreement, but nothing prevents us from putting the sanctions back on if they do. Otherwise, it’s either do nothing and watch their stockpile grow or launch a devastating first strike – something that might not only jeopardize our partnerships with Japan and South Korea, but might also cause a war that even the Pentagon is afraid of.
“Furthermore, why should our president agree to anything that assures the continued existence of North Korea as it is?”
Do you really think the North Korean government would agree to any deal that says otherwise?
“No. We are in the dominant position, for perhaps the last time if we don’t use it correctly. China will do whatever it does quietly to prop up North Korea if we just agree to remove sanctions. Any agreement of that sort will leave the door cracked open for them to build up whatever they can to cause more distractions in the future.”
We are in no position to dictate terms to North Korea. We are not in any kind of “dominant” position and we certainly won’t attack them while they have nuclear weapons; we were too afraid to attack them even when they didn’t.
“No. Push hard. There is no reason not to. Stop being pussies. Sorry, but this is the real world. Keep the fricken sanctions unless they lick our damn boots.”
Totally useless comment.
“PS, to restate the obvious for the umpteenth time: China is our enemy. It does not have our best interests at heart. Stop ignoring the real gorilla in the room.”
Our government is slated to borrow up to one trillion dollars next fiscal year. We are in no position to pick a fight with the Chinese.
Really? Then how did ISIS invade and take large chunks of Syria and Iraq with not much more than Toyota trucks for transportation? Don't believe the North can't stage an invasion of the South. It can, and there is no good reason to believe otherwise. Assuming they can't is just wishful thinking at best; and a possibly fatal miscalculation if anyone at the Pentagon buys into it.
"It does have a large number of artillery along the DMZ but modern radars and anti artillery and rocket weapons could greatly limit the effectiveness of those guns."
That's just on paper. Don't put all of your eggs into that basket. North Korea isn't Hamas and none of those weapon systems have been tested in an actual war against a worthy opponent. Both the Allies and the Central Powers thought they had the perfect game plan as WW1 started - turned out that all of their assumptions were wrong.Replies: @Jack Hanson, @reiner Tor
The Russians have a signals jammer in Syria that is an absolute monster which shuts down anything they don’t want broadcasting.
Anyone thinking US “hi-tek” means anyone who stands up against us Iraq in Gulf War I is a fool.
Forgot the link. https://twitter.com/dpinsen/status/510933170167250944?s=21
“US capabilities are also immensely stronger.”
I would say that US capabilities are only immensely stronger in certain respects (air, navy, logistics, etc.). While it’s probably true that each American soldier is relatively more effective than his counterpart during the Korean War, it might not be by an immense margin considering circumstances.
We have only about 35,000 troops in the South. If the North somehow successfully executed a large invasion of the South – infiltrating civilian areas – it’s not clear to me that we wouldn’t need to significantly reinforce with additional soldiers, maybe 100K. In any case, lots of people would get killed.
“The Nork soldiers are also probably less motivated than they were half a century or six and a half decades ago…It’s not obvious that the Norks wouldn’t just surrender en masse.”
Do we know that for sure and do we want to take that chance? North Korea is the world’s most isolated state. These people have been brainwashed from birth and have virtually no access to the outside world. Scary.
But we are talking about Kim and his point of view. Would it be wise for him to bank on the US never doing anything unwise? I mean, do you think the US never did anything unwise in the past, say, couple decades or so?
Sure, they’re in HARTS. That’s no surprise. Their positions are known and measures to destroy them devised years ago. The biggest guns, trained on Seoul, are the 170mm Koksans. We don’t have to destroy them to make them useless, just trap them inside their tunnels. Ditto their rockets.
Firing positions and roads obliterated, tunnel entrances blocked. BLU-118/B with GBU of choice, no problem.
You assert that there have been no improvements in close air support capabilities since Hackworth’s day? You believe we are going to kick out our JTACs, throw away our FLIRs, and donate to the Salvation Army our JDAMs and all the cool stuff the mag rats (red shirts) on the boats play with, and go back to iron bombs and optical bomb-aiming?
In addition the NRO signals intelligence monitoring of North Korea via the Trumpet-F/O satellites with their SBIRS-HEO early warning packages and other resources is pretty thorough, and orders of magnitude more capable than anything available in Viet Nam war days. If Kim gives the “go” signal, we’ll probably know it before his artillery commanders do.
And under what conditions would the North Koreans be able to “grab US troops by the belt buckle,” since we wouldn’t be invading North Korea with our ground troops, but only destroying their offensive capability by air power? It would be they moving on South Korea, and should they try that, Yngvar is correct. They would have to mass in the open in order to move south, and if they did that, they would be destroyed. Even if they could theoretically get in close enough to neutralize air support, we aren’t going to be giving them the chance.
If the South Korean army wanted to launch a counter-attack into North Korea, that would be their affair — and their casualties.
I’m curious, by the way, why it is you who are the Eeyore in this discussion. Aren’t you always ridiculing naysayers?
PS: There’s not going to be a war.
CAS from 75 meters(note the pressure wave): one bomb, target destroyed. Not something that could have been done except by luck in Col. Hackworth’s day. Now routine.
Okay bruh.
2) CAS may have gotten better, but explosives have too. And guess what my man, there ain't no splitting a hair so fine that you're not going to kill US troops when they're in a close on <100m fire fight with Nork troops. You also seem to think the Norks are just gonna mass to be taken out by our air power. Okay sure dude.
3) Oh boy, the perennial "we'll just BOMB em into submission! There's going to be no ground combat." I see I am dealing with one of those unserious people who have learned nothing.
Go back to stroking to Jane's Airpower. LMBO.
Are you autistic? Are you unable to grok the difference between a realistic take on the state of a ground war with North Korea versus the weekly cries of "TRUMP HAS BETRAYED US" from the Ball Gag Crew?
Short answer seems to be yes.Replies: @Twinkie
“A former South Korean president recently said that in 1994 Clinton wanted to attack them, but he vetoed it. Something said ex-president greatly regretted twenty-three years later.”
Clinton was really in no position to attack North Korea back in 1994. If anything, we were probably less able to handle a North Korean counter attack back then than we are now. Thank God he was talked out of it. Clinton made a lot of mistakes on foreign policy. It’s good that this wasn’t one of them, even if it wasn’t his idea.
“Dubya didn’t attack them because he had his hands full with Iraq and Afghanistan.”
So at least one good thing came out of those wars.
Massed infantry or artillery won’t be the problem, just like it wasn’t in the first Korean War.
http://soldiers.dodlive.mil/tag/the-great-bugout/
“Actually, giving up nukes makes no sense in that scenario. If he openly became enemies with the Chinese (currently they’re frenemies), then having nukes would be essential. Against the Chinese.”
The suggestion in my post was that he might want to position himself in such a way as to counterbalance rising Chinese influence at some future date by keeping his options open to go the other way. Otherwise, North Korea is doomed to be a Chinese vassal state fifty years from now. Granted, that’s a best case – hail Mary – kind of thing; he could just be stalling for time.
Furthermore, if North Korea did fall away from China by some miracle, they would not necessarily need nuclear weapons as Japan and South Korea also do not need them – because they have a security guarantee from the US and our nuclear weapons.
“I think the nukes serve as much a deterrent against China as against the US.”
Maybe so. But on the other hand, the Chinese don’t have to invade to personally threaten Kim. There’s always the coup option. Better relations with the West and a better economy lessen that probability. Who knows what’s going on in North Korea. Maybe Kim sees that as a more intimidate threat to his survival.
The American Century died with the economy in The Real Estate Bubble Burst. That was the WMD that mattered. Uncle Shammy couldn’t whip eggs. The US Military is a shambles. They had FIVE collisions against slow boats in the OCEAN. Diversity is our enemies’ strength. Half the Air Force is Grounded Permanently due to a lack of trained pilots and technicians. How’s that for Affirmative Action? The Norks may have outdated equipment, but at least their troops know how to use it.
Uncle Shammy looks like a sad broke dick old man who is picking fights with EVERYONE to prove he’s still got it. He doesn’t you know. That force in Korea isn’t the Grand Army of 500,000 White guys wanting money for college anymore. Its diversity and women in make work jobs and paper tiger with nucular stockpile.
Why don’t you face it? Besides Gung Ho neocon chickens still seeing a Grand Chessboard, Korea is another in the long line of lost causes.
Uncle Shammy will nuke for food at this point. His American Dream is the brown thumb of ruin.
Me too!
Kim might be looking at Vietnam, another (N)EA country ruled by ostensibly communist generals, that is quickly developing along the lines of Asian Tigers of the 90s, and is now able to have nice things. China, of course, is another recently prosperous country ruled by ostensibly communist bureaucrats. HBD-wise, Kim can look at South Korea. An invasion by Russia can hardly be of concern to him (no Russian-speakers there to “protect”), so he might well consider giving up nukes in exchange for an end to sanctions and security guarantees. Having thus ensured the stability of his regime, he can ask the Vietnamese for pointers.
The suggestion in my post was that he might want to position himself in such a way as to counterbalance rising Chinese influence at some future date by keeping his options open to go the other way. Otherwise, North Korea is doomed to be a Chinese vassal state fifty years from now. Granted, that's a best case - hail Mary - kind of thing; he could just be stalling for time.
Furthermore, if North Korea did fall away from China by some miracle, they would not necessarily need nuclear weapons as Japan and South Korea also do not need them - because they have a security guarantee from the US and our nuclear weapons.
"I think the nukes serve as much a deterrent against China as against the US."
Maybe so. But on the other hand, the Chinese don't have to invade to personally threaten Kim. There's always the coup option. Better relations with the West and a better economy lessen that probability. Who knows what's going on in North Korea. Maybe Kim sees that as a more intimidate threat to his survival.Replies: @reiner Tor
The Chinese presumably cannot just oust Kim with a coup. If they could, they would, but apparently he executed all pro-China people in his entourage, including his own uncle. I guess all people there took notice. Unlike his father, he’s never visited China, and probably not many of his people have the sort of regular contact with China that would be needed for such a coup.
That’s true, for the moment. But currently the US still has unquestionable military superiority in the theater, and China is not yet the superpower it will be in the future. Things will change. It’s also questionable if the US would ever risk nuclear war on behalf of North Korea, however realigned it might be. I wouldn’t stake my dynasty’s survival on the US coming to help under any circumstances. The nukes will always be there.
Clinton was really in no position to attack North Korea back in 1994. If anything, we were probably less able to handle a North Korean counter attack back then than we are now. Thank God he was talked out of it. Clinton made a lot of mistakes on foreign policy. It's good that this wasn't one of them, even if it wasn't his idea.
"Dubya didn’t attack them because he had his hands full with Iraq and Afghanistan."
So at least one good thing came out of those wars.Replies: @reiner Tor
We don’t know what would have happened, had the US attacked North Korea then. There was a famine back then, could they have waged a war for long?
I would say that US capabilities are only immensely stronger in certain respects (air, navy, logistics, etc.). While it's probably true that each American soldier is relatively more effective than his counterpart during the Korean War, it might not be by an immense margin considering circumstances.
We have only about 35,000 troops in the South. If the North somehow successfully executed a large invasion of the South - infiltrating civilian areas - it's not clear to me that we wouldn't need to significantly reinforce with additional soldiers, maybe 100K. In any case, lots of people would get killed.
"The Nork soldiers are also probably less motivated than they were half a century or six and a half decades ago...It’s not obvious that the Norks wouldn’t just surrender en masse."
Do we know that for sure and do we want to take that chance? North Korea is the world's most isolated state. These people have been brainwashed from birth and have virtually no access to the outside world. Scary.Replies: @reiner Tor
You are correct from an American point of view: even if North Korea didn’t have nuclear weapons, it’d be unwise to attack it.
But we are talking about Kim and his point of view. Would it be wise for him to bank on the US never doing anything unwise? I mean, do you think the US never did anything unwise in the past, say, couple decades or so?
Really? Then how did ISIS invade and take large chunks of Syria and Iraq with not much more than Toyota trucks for transportation? Don't believe the North can't stage an invasion of the South. It can, and there is no good reason to believe otherwise. Assuming they can't is just wishful thinking at best; and a possibly fatal miscalculation if anyone at the Pentagon buys into it.
"It does have a large number of artillery along the DMZ but modern radars and anti artillery and rocket weapons could greatly limit the effectiveness of those guns."
That's just on paper. Don't put all of your eggs into that basket. North Korea isn't Hamas and none of those weapon systems have been tested in an actual war against a worthy opponent. Both the Allies and the Central Powers thought they had the perfect game plan as WW1 started - turned out that all of their assumptions were wrong.Replies: @Jack Hanson, @reiner Tor
They didn’t have to fight against the combined forces of the US and South Korea. I think Moshe Dayan said about the secret of the IDF: fighting Arabs.
One point raised is that the deterrent effect of N Korea's conventional attack is far overstated -- someone suggested a figure of only 50K civilian casualties.
But, as others have also pointed out, that's probably a best case scenario. In fact, of course, we don't really know what the real numbers might be -- as is true in any war. If we were to engage in a pre-emptive strike, we would have to do so with a genuine risk that the numbers might be much, much higher.
The question is, would we be willing to take that risk if N Korea controlled no nukes? I think the answer is a clear no -- not least because historically we refused to do so when N Korea possessed only conventional weapons. It's hard to see how that equation would be changed in a future in which N Korea relied on conventional deterrents.
And this brings up another key point. If there is anything that changes the equation, it is precisely the potential of N Korea to possess nukes. We might well be willing to risk a large number of casualties if we believed that the alternative was that, down the line, N Korea might threaten millions of lives, especially American civilian lives.
The point is that this transitional period, just before N Korea has a true nuke capability, represents a unique opportunity to get something done in the way of denuclearization.
Kim has to realize that we now have more incentive than at any other time to attack him. And our sanctions also represent a serious internal threat to his regime.
Thus, Kim has an unprecedented incentive to do a deal at this very moment.
And as Trump's Luck would have it, Trump's the man on the scene uniquely able and willing to make this happen.
I feel pretty hopeful something will work out.Replies: @reiner Tor
Only if it came under attack. And then it would be obliterated. MAD and all that. It’s neocon foolishness to think that using nuclear weapons automatically follows from having them. In fact, most countries who ever developed nuclear weapons did so with the sole intention to use them for deterrence.
But you said he already had a deterrent. A deterrent is something which, actually, deters an attack.
For example a small road mobile ICBM force might work as a deterrent. (Currently their forces might be semi road mobile, liquid fuel missiles, but capable of hiding in caves while fueling, and probably it’s possible to transport the fuel to the caves.) It’d be able to kill a few million people in the US. Once they had it, no one would attack them under any circumstances. Even if they were embarking on a program to build a twice as large or three times larger deterrent.
The current conventional deterrent is not really a deterrent.
No way will Kim give up his nukes. He may start negotiations indicating such, but, if we know anything, the N. Korean regime's native tongue is to lie. Additionally, the sanctions are not affecting Kim personally. He is still fat, happy and evil.Replies: @candid_observer
N Korea might “flourish” on a number of levels.
First, it might do so only relative to its current level of extreme deprivation. Lifting the economic sanctions, or moderating them, might allow it to return to a more stable state — one that would allow Kim to be less concerned about being overthrown.
But it might seek, and, conditional on good behavior, be allowed, to flourish in a much more satisfying way. Here I think the model for its future might be that of China, not S Korea.
China has of course flourished economically even while being at all times under the thumb of a Communist dictatorship. This would seem to be a model Kim would be comfortable with.
One way this might be brought about would be for a large corporation to outsource manufacturing jobs to N Korea. There might be no place in the world in which a potentially high quality workforce might be available at a lower cost. N Korea could choose its best trained/educated citizens to take on the first jobs. It would be in the interests of S Korea to encourage some of its corporations to open such plants.
On the other hand, the North Korean regime lacks any such legitimacy, or at least they have it to a lesser extent, even though that is the direction of their propaganda. (I.e. “South Korean living standards might be higher, but they are American puppets, and we are no one’s puppets!”)
Developing working nukes would greatly add to this legitimacy, and might just allow them to pursue a looser economic system (which, by the way, the younger Kim has already started doing before the sanctions).
But if they were still dependent on foreign security guarantees, then by opening up the economy, they’d just become a poorer and less free version of South Korea. As the system would open up, it’d lose its legitimacy.
I agree that it’s possible that young Kim might thread this path nevertheless, but I don’t think it’s obviously good for him. Revolutions don’t start when oppression is the strongest, they start when regimes start to loosen up.Replies: @candid_observer
First, it might do so only relative to its current level of extreme deprivation. Lifting the economic sanctions, or moderating them, might allow it to return to a more stable state -- one that would allow Kim to be less concerned about being overthrown.
But it might seek, and, conditional on good behavior, be allowed, to flourish in a much more satisfying way. Here I think the model for its future might be that of China, not S Korea.
China has of course flourished economically even while being at all times under the thumb of a Communist dictatorship. This would seem to be a model Kim would be comfortable with.
One way this might be brought about would be for a large corporation to outsource manufacturing jobs to N Korea. There might be no place in the world in which a potentially high quality workforce might be available at a lower cost. N Korea could choose its best trained/educated citizens to take on the first jobs. It would be in the interests of S Korea to encourage some of its corporations to open such plants.Replies: @reiner Tor
The difference is that the Chinese regime has more legitimacy than the North Korean. This is because (yeah, I also heard of Taiwan) the Chinese regime is the only Chinese government, moreover, it’s the first Chinese regime to be completely independent of any foreign powers for two centuries, or, if you count the Manchu as foreigners (which they actually were), then for four centuries China wasn’t completely independent until the communists made it so in the middle of the 20th century. (Maybe not in 1949, but at the latest by the 1960s it was independent.) Getting richer and a superpower adds a lot to its legitimacy.
On the other hand, the North Korean regime lacks any such legitimacy, or at least they have it to a lesser extent, even though that is the direction of their propaganda. (I.e. “South Korean living standards might be higher, but they are American puppets, and we are no one’s puppets!”)
Developing working nukes would greatly add to this legitimacy, and might just allow them to pursue a looser economic system (which, by the way, the younger Kim has already started doing before the sanctions).
But if they were still dependent on foreign security guarantees, then by opening up the economy, they’d just become a poorer and less free version of South Korea. As the system would open up, it’d lose its legitimacy.
I agree that it’s possible that young Kim might thread this path nevertheless, but I don’t think it’s obviously good for him. Revolutions don’t start when oppression is the strongest, they start when regimes start to loosen up.
English do sarcasm quite easily. I guess you don’t know anyone from here.
Sarcasm won't do when thousands of English girls are raped and brutalized by Muslim Rape gangs. Sarcasm ain't sufficient when greedy bankers and real estate interests keep the mass immigration floodgates open in one of the most densely populated nations in Europe.
Sarcasm Sucks!
We hayseeds of the Western world, to steal a phrase, will have to come over the pond and topple your totalitarian plutocracy. We in the United States have our horror stories, too, and we will soon topple our totalitarian ruling class.
Cheers!Replies: @Tyrion 2
On the other hand, the North Korean regime lacks any such legitimacy, or at least they have it to a lesser extent, even though that is the direction of their propaganda. (I.e. “South Korean living standards might be higher, but they are American puppets, and we are no one’s puppets!”)
Developing working nukes would greatly add to this legitimacy, and might just allow them to pursue a looser economic system (which, by the way, the younger Kim has already started doing before the sanctions).
But if they were still dependent on foreign security guarantees, then by opening up the economy, they’d just become a poorer and less free version of South Korea. As the system would open up, it’d lose its legitimacy.
I agree that it’s possible that young Kim might thread this path nevertheless, but I don’t think it’s obviously good for him. Revolutions don’t start when oppression is the strongest, they start when regimes start to loosen up.Replies: @candid_observer
I think Kim, even in his wildest delusions, can’t imagine that N Korea is the equivalent of China, and can expect the same sort of treatment as a world power as China.
Kim has an immediate, absolutely pressing problem: he needs to mitigate the current internal pressure the economic sanctions are creating (which will only get worse over time), and fend off any potential military moves against him. If he doesn’t make it through this crisis, he and his family’s legacy is gone forever.
We need to pose the best set of sticks and carrots to get him to give up his nukes.
The stick is obviously the threat of a military intervention or the encouragement of a coup.
But the carrot might be to offer him a genuine path of entry to economic success — again, conditional on good behavior.
I think the best way to do this is to return to realpolitik, or perhaps HBD politic.
China demonstrates how HBD politic can work. A priori, one might have thought that China couldn’t enter the class of economically successful nations, because it was communist and oppressive. But HBD would predict that the Chinese, as is true of all East Asians, is very well positioned for economic success, possessing a population both quite smart and quite industrious. Flouting all expectations, China was able to become successful by allowing foreign companies to outsource manufacturing jobs to China. No doubt being communist wouldn’t have allowed this capability to come about organically from within, but it worked fine to import the opportunity.
I see the same possibility in the case of N Korea. I can also see how it would be extremely attractive to Kim. It would allow him to retain his power, and his family’s legacy. Economic success would redound to his credit, and establish an authentic, robust legitimacy.
We, on our part, would have to grant that our individualistic culture is not perhaps the end all and be all of economic productivity — which would perhaps be hard for many libertarian, anti-communist types.
This last would be the realpolitik part of the deal: we’d have to give up our always counterproductive need to “reform” any nation we deal with.
Leave that moralizing impulse to the Bushes and Obamas of the world.
Uncle Shammy looks like a sad broke dick old man who is picking fights with EVERYONE to prove he's still got it. He doesn't you know. That force in Korea isn't the Grand Army of 500,000 White guys wanting money for college anymore. Its diversity and women in make work jobs and paper tiger with nucular stockpile.
Why don't you face it? Besides Gung Ho neocon chickens still seeing a Grand Chessboard, Korea is another in the long line of lost causes.
Uncle Shammy will nuke for food at this point. His American Dream is the brown thumb of ruin.Replies: @BB753
Sad but true. Great post!
In addition the NRO signals intelligence monitoring of North Korea via the Trumpet-F/O satellites with their SBIRS-HEO early warning packages and other resources is pretty thorough, and orders of magnitude more capable than anything available in Viet Nam war days. If Kim gives the "go" signal, we'll probably know it before his artillery commanders do.And under what conditions would the North Koreans be able to "grab US troops by the belt buckle," since we wouldn't be invading North Korea with our ground troops, but only destroying their offensive capability by air power? It would be they moving on South Korea, and should they try that, Yngvar is correct. They would have to mass in the open in order to move south, and if they did that, they would be destroyed. Even if they could theoretically get in close enough to neutralize air support, we aren't going to be giving them the chance.
If the South Korean army wanted to launch a counter-attack into North Korea, that would be their affair -- and their casualties.
I'm curious, by the way, why it is you who are the Eeyore in this discussion. Aren't you always ridiculing naysayers?PS: There's not going to be a war. CAS from 75 meters(note the pressure wave): one bomb, target destroyed. Not something that could have been done except by luck in Col. Hackworth's day. Now routine.
https://youtu.be/k42t9IRpaAEReplies: @Jack Hanson
1) Assuming a hardened mountain of slate is the same as a mud hut of straw and clay, and gonna be easily buried by a 500 lbs bomb.
Okay bruh.
2) CAS may have gotten better, but explosives have too. And guess what my man, there ain’t no splitting a hair so fine that you’re not going to kill US troops when they’re in a close on <100m fire fight with Nork troops. You also seem to think the Norks are just gonna mass to be taken out by our air power. Okay sure dude.
3) Oh boy, the perennial "we'll just BOMB em into submission! There's going to be no ground combat." I see I am dealing with one of those unserious people who have learned nothing.
Go back to stroking to Jane's Airpower. LMBO.
Are you autistic? Are you unable to grok the difference between a realistic take on the state of a ground war with North Korea versus the weekly cries of "TRUMP HAS BETRAYED US" from the Ball Gag Crew?
Short answer seems to be yes.
Do you even know what the terrrain in the prospective battlefields in any conflict with North Korea looks like? I do, because I’ve walked just about every kilometer of it.
First of all, the conventional military forces of North Korea have atrophied dramatically since the 1980s. Much of their equipment is obsolescent, and are in any case worn down by lack of repair and spare parts for which they were heavily dependent on the Soviet Union. Their training and readiness have eroded dramatically, especially in the technical arms that are highly capital-intensive such as air and mechanized forces. You do know how combat-ineffective pilots with few flight hours are like, yes?
Meanwhile the morale and indoctrination of their regular military have tanked due to the wide availability of k-dramas and k-pop in North Korean black markets. Just about everyone in North Korea now knows that the South Korean running dogs of Yankee imperialists are now, in fact, not starving and groveling for food, but playing with iPads and driving SUVs.
The regular North Korean army units are now used more often for non-military labor than they spend time doing large-scale training that is vital for launching successful large-scale mechanized operations.
What is more, with this drained, demoralized, and poorly-trained and -supplied force, the North Koreans are now facing a lavishly equipped South Korean military that is highly modernized and comparatively very well-trained. And given the highly constricted and rugged nature of the border areas that channels any large scale troop movements into a few corridors, South Korea has spent 70 years fortifying those chokepoints. So any North Korean offensive without NBC strikes are liable to look like the Basrah “Highway of Death.”
Even the much heralded North Korean special forces units are merely better-fed, -trained, and -indoctrinated infantry units with greater political reliability, not anything that resembles special operations units in Western (or South Korean) sense. They are essentially regime-protection/anti-coup units.
There is reason why the North Korean government gets hysterical every time the combined U.S.-ROK forces conduct large-scale exercises - they are terrified that one of these exercises will be an actual invasion, which, if materialized, will topple their regime in short order.
Without nuclear weapons, the Kim regime simply has no credible deterrence, not that the U.S. and South Korea have any interest in occupying and administering that failing state.I am not one of those people, but that televised meeting about gun control sure sounded like a betrayal, what with Feinstein clapping with joy at Trump asking to add her proposals to any new gun bill.
I agree, and think about it in the framework of game theory last summer in https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/05/12/conventional_artillery_and_nuclear__missiles_in_north_korea_111363.html
Okay bruh.
2) CAS may have gotten better, but explosives have too. And guess what my man, there ain't no splitting a hair so fine that you're not going to kill US troops when they're in a close on <100m fire fight with Nork troops. You also seem to think the Norks are just gonna mass to be taken out by our air power. Okay sure dude.
3) Oh boy, the perennial "we'll just BOMB em into submission! There's going to be no ground combat." I see I am dealing with one of those unserious people who have learned nothing.
Go back to stroking to Jane's Airpower. LMBO.
Are you autistic? Are you unable to grok the difference between a realistic take on the state of a ground war with North Korea versus the weekly cries of "TRUMP HAS BETRAYED US" from the Ball Gag Crew?
Short answer seems to be yes.Replies: @Twinkie
You sure like to berate other people in the most juvenile manner possible even when your knowledge in the topic under discussion is close to zero.
Do you even know what the terrrain in the prospective battlefields in any conflict with North Korea looks like? I do, because I’ve walked just about every kilometer of it.
First of all, the conventional military forces of North Korea have atrophied dramatically since the 1980s. Much of their equipment is obsolescent, and are in any case worn down by lack of repair and spare parts for which they were heavily dependent on the Soviet Union. Their training and readiness have eroded dramatically, especially in the technical arms that are highly capital-intensive such as air and mechanized forces. You do know how combat-ineffective pilots with few flight hours are like, yes?
Meanwhile the morale and indoctrination of their regular military have tanked due to the wide availability of k-dramas and k-pop in North Korean black markets. Just about everyone in North Korea now knows that the South Korean running dogs of Yankee imperialists are now, in fact, not starving and groveling for food, but playing with iPads and driving SUVs.
The regular North Korean army units are now used more often for non-military labor than they spend time doing large-scale training that is vital for launching successful large-scale mechanized operations.
What is more, with this drained, demoralized, and poorly-trained and -supplied force, the North Koreans are now facing a lavishly equipped South Korean military that is highly modernized and comparatively very well-trained. And given the highly constricted and rugged nature of the border areas that channels any large scale troop movements into a few corridors, South Korea has spent 70 years fortifying those chokepoints. So any North Korean offensive without NBC strikes are liable to look like the Basrah “Highway of Death.”
Even the much heralded North Korean special forces units are merely better-fed, -trained, and -indoctrinated infantry units with greater political reliability, not anything that resembles special operations units in Western (or South Korean) sense. They are essentially regime-protection/anti-coup units.
There is reason why the North Korean government gets hysterical every time the combined U.S.-ROK forces conduct large-scale exercises – they are terrified that one of these exercises will be an actual invasion, which, if materialized, will topple their regime in short order.
Without nuclear weapons, the Kim regime simply has no credible deterrence, not that the U.S. and South Korea have any interest in occupying and administering that failing state.
I am not one of those people, but that televised meeting about gun control sure sounded like a betrayal, what with Feinstein clapping with joy at Trump asking to add her proposals to any new gun bill.
I have English blood and it is boiling because the United Kingdom government under ruling class puppet Prime Minister Theresa May and Home Secretary Amber Rudd detained and imprisoned a young American woman named Brittany Pettibone for political reasons. Pettibone supports free speech, and the UK ruling class wants to kill free speech.
Sarcasm won’t do when thousands of English girls are raped and brutalized by Muslim Rape gangs. Sarcasm ain’t sufficient when greedy bankers and real estate interests keep the mass immigration floodgates open in one of the most densely populated nations in Europe.
Sarcasm Sucks!
We hayseeds of the Western world, to steal a phrase, will have to come over the pond and topple your totalitarian plutocracy. We in the United States have our horror stories, too, and we will soon topple our totalitarian ruling class.
Cheers!
Sarcasm won't do when thousands of English girls are raped and brutalized by Muslim Rape gangs. Sarcasm ain't sufficient when greedy bankers and real estate interests keep the mass immigration floodgates open in one of the most densely populated nations in Europe.
Sarcasm Sucks!
We hayseeds of the Western world, to steal a phrase, will have to come over the pond and topple your totalitarian plutocracy. We in the United States have our horror stories, too, and we will soon topple our totalitarian ruling class.
Cheers!Replies: @Tyrion 2
I appreciate your sentiment. One quibble though, I don’t think she was arrested. I think she was turned away at the airport.
China? In a discussion of North Korean security, China is not mentioned?