North Korea’s military strategy is based on that of the Soviets in WWII, lots and lots of artillery. The North would eventually lose, and it would certainly require the use of tactical nukes to beat them back, but Soule would fall in less than a week (probably much less) with a death toll around 250,000 in only the first few days. I’d say an American or North Korean soldier stationed at the border would have a personal chance of about 1 in 10 of not being killed, and something like 1 in 40 of being injured.
The real question is what would China do. They want a war with us and will have one when THEY are ready. I think if it looked like North Korea were ready to strike the South, China would do everything in their power not to have their plans changed before they are ready.
No, they don’t. They have everything to lose by such a war and have no Navy worth mentioning, as well as an Air Force that’s closer to an Air Farce. They might be able to make a landing on Taiwan, but that’s it - once on Taiwan they cannot now and probably will not be able to in the next half century be able to hold turf. To be blunt their words over Taiwan are just that - words. There’s a very good chance Beijing’d rather not deal with owning a heavily Democratic quasi-nation filled with epople who hate them. Look, its a very regular thing: the JO’s in the army get antsy, the Party rattles some sabers to quiet the idiots, and the US casually places a task force “for training purposes” in the South China Sea. Then everyone goes home and does it again five years later. Ultimately Beijing knows we don’t hate them and are happy to give them our money, and that we sort of like them when they’re not being jerks.
They despise KJI2 and only keep him around becaquse they don’t care to take of NK themselves. Fact is: there are millions of starving people and China wishes nothing more than to keep them out of Manchuria. KJI2 does that, mostly.
China would threaten smish NK like a slow, feeble, and crippled roach. They have no desire for KJI2 to get more power. Faced with a choice between the US and NK, you’d better believe they’ll be knocking on or doorstep in five. At the moment, NK is vaguely useful to China, in the sense that it solves more headaches that it creates, and provides some stabiltiy at least.
The US had plans for first strikes against the USSR as well, but the problems in carrying them out made them pointless except as an exercise in mutual suicide. If North Korea has nukes, they aren’t likely to keep them sitting next to their nuclear facilities, so finding and hitting them is problematic. Hitting the artillery to prevent Seoul from being turned into a chemical wasteland in retaliation would require the use of such a large number of nuclear weapons that Seoul would become a radioactive wasteland instead, hardly a better outcome. If it turns out that North Korea hadn’t put together a functioning nuclear weapon, having so thoroughly nuked North Korea in order to save the world from the dangers of nuclear weapons will make the Iraq WMD debacle pale in comparison.
For starters, North Korea is hardly China’s rabid pit bull. North Korea gets on better with China than with just about anyone else on the planet, but North Korea is so insanely insular that it hardly qualifies them as a pit bull or a satellite. I don’t think China will enjoy watching dozens of nuclear weapons popping off on their doorstep. Should a thermonuclear war result, it’ll hardly just be China’s problem. 24 cities in the US get to go bye-bye after they’re introduced to 2 megaton warheads themselves. The DF-5 ICBM.
The topic asked what happens if the North attacks the South. I maintain that it is US policy to strike North Korea before they can employ their WMDs against us or our allies (remember: there are thousands of US troops by the DMZ). The artillery you mentioned is fully stocked with chemical weapons for use on Seoul. Not using nuclear weapons would be the foolish move, unless one considers Seoul “expendible”, which I don’t.
If China wants to fight a global thermonuclear war over their buddy KJI, that will be their decision. They have nukes, we have nukes. I’m used to this stuff. I grew up during the Cold War and debated nukes, proliferation, ABMs, CBMs (confidence building measures), arms control, the moronic lefty “unilateral nuclear freeze” and whatnot throughout HS and college. Every topic somehow related to nuclear war. What, I’m supposed to be impressed that China has big nukes?
One of the last topics I posted dealt with Chinese nukes. Ever since Clinton buddied up with the PRA they’ve been modernizing their strategic nuclear forces in secret (with our technology). Coincidence? Not.
If you read your own cite you’ll notice the use of the words “reserves the right,” not “is the policy of the US to first strike with nuclear weapons.” The US reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in a first strike against the USSR, it did not make it policy to do so. It hasn’t with regards to North Korea either. There’s a large difference between the reserving the right and making it policy.
You’ll note that the use of chemicals on Seoul has been something I’ve been pointing out for three posts now. Consider for a moment how many tactical nuclear weapons will be needed to take out 10,000 artillery pieces and their proximity to Seoul and you’re the one who’s making Seoul expendable through fallout. Again something I’ve been mentioning for a while.
Don’t worry, if wantonly throwing dozens of nukes around in Korea results in a nuclear war, and you’re unlucky enough to be in a city that gets hit by one of those big nukes, you won’t have time to be impressed by it.
Yes, of course. It’s all a big left wing conspiracy. Nixon would be appalled at the thought of buddying up to Red China.
The South Koreans, while I’m sure are very sympathetic towards the North Korean people, share no such feelings for the North Korean military and its screwball-in-chief. Any invasion by them would be no different than if any other foreign power invaded (China, Russia etc.) and would be viewed and treated as such, i.e. they would give 100% because they know they would be fighting for their very survival.
As far as a US pre-emptive nuclear strike, not gonna happen. Even an invasion of SK wouldn’t be a good enough reason for this.
Which, although I agree with that policy, is a shame because Kim Il-Jung is the absolute poster boy for the legitimacy of a nuclear first strike. Because if NK does indeed have even one nuke I can guarantee you that, at this very moment, it is in a warhead, on top of a short range missile, aimed at Seoul, fireable within minutes.
And if Kim is threatened with imminent overthrow there is a 110% chance he will push the button.
He could try, but I’ll bet one of the first U.S. steps in knocking over North Korea is to disrupt every communications relay they can find, and this is where totalitarianism has its key weakness. It wouldn’t surprise me if electronic communication was etremely limited within NK, and all routed among a small number of stations so it can all be monitored by government snoops. Add to that the strict control enforced by Kim and lower-echelon commanders might not be able to make any dramatic moves at all, since they can’t get in touch with anyone higher to approve them.
Breaking command and control with radio jamming and cruise missiles on selected relay stations (or possibly EMP devices) might make NK collapse even faster than Iraq, after the first few days of massive conventional battles. Or so I hope, if it ever happens.
Dissonance, any NK invasion of SK that involves heavy shelling of Seoul (all of them) will kick us up the nuclear escalation ladder faster than you can say “being overrun”.
The NK Army, though outdated, is huge. It’s forward deployed. There are many plans for infiltration into the rear areas of South Korea, according to all the models. So, being overrun, with problems in the rear areas, under heavy shelling of one of the largest cities in Asia – you’re (and others) are saying the US will not use nuclear weapons on North Korea?
Of course there is no policy which guar - an - damn - tees! the US will use nuclear weapons. We reserve the right not to nuke back even if your hometown gets vaporized by an accidental Russian launch, for example.
Shelling with chemical or biological weapons stands a shot of sending the war up the nuclear escalation ladder very quickly, much more so if it is directed not at combat forces but at civilian targets. Heavy shelling of civilian targets (i.e Seoul) with conventional artillery stands some shot of it as well, though personally I would call the possibility extremely remote. For example, during the Gulf War of 1991, the US warned Hussein that he risked nuclear retaliation if Iraqi forces used chemical weapons, but Powell said after the war that he considered it very unlikely that the US would have actually done so. If North Korea has nukes and uses them, than retaliation in kind is much more likely.
In some ways. What I have been saying is that it is not US policy to break out the nukes the moment the war starts, or for that matter to bail out of a failing conventional fight. There are serious practical and political problems with doing so. While I consider the possibility of the ROK being overrun by the DPRK to be very slim, if it were to occur there is no more reason to believe that the reaction will be the resort to nuclear weapons than was the case in 1950 when US, UN, and ROK forces were being overrun first by North Korea and then later during the winter by the Chinese. In both instances the tide was stopped and turned back by conventional means, and again there were serious practical and political problems involved with resorting to nuclear weapons as a solution. It’s worth noting that Seoul was the target of shelling and overrun both times.
This is what I’ve been saying all along, while you have said that it is US policy to break out the WMDs first. It isn’t. A preemptive strike at the start of the war with nuclear weapons assures that North Korea will use theirs (if they have them) and that they will start unloading chemicals on civilian targets as fast as they can. The solution of hitting their means of delivering chemical weapons with nuclear weapons, the only ones capable of destroying them with the needed speed and efficiency, will produce collateral damage nearly as great as the chemicals themselves.