Best thing the South Koreans can do is quietly sign contracts with China to buy materials from them to rebuild Seoul and North Korea after the South wins the war, thus giving China financial incentive to stay out of it (although they might possibly start nudging NK into attacking just to see it get clobbered quickly so they can start making money off reconstruction).
But again, as I’ve said, China has to realize that any fears of US troops on their border after unification are short-sighted. The Koreas are traditionally close to China for a reason - it’s their ONLY land border.
Any unified Korea is going to ask American troops to leave within a very few years, and then adopt a much closer relationship to China. PERIOD.
So in the end, the question for China is: Would you rather keep an irrational Stalinist death-camp state like NK on your border…or have a strong, wealthy, high tech Unified Korean Friend on your border?
MSNBC articles are saying that atmospheric tests are putting the power of the bomb at around 1 kiloton. So ISTM that we are not just dealing with seismic data here.
Also, I don’t understand why people keep saying Kim Jung Il is crazy. The guy’s a frickin genius. He gets all the power, all the money, all the pussy, and all the best drugs, plus he’s got all his countrymen thinking he got 18 holes-in-one the first time he set foot on a golf course.
I saw a guy, I can’t remember his name, on one of those cable political talk shows. He said that in North Korea, there are about 300 people who really matter. They all have their own interests, and Kim Jung Il has to keep them all happy to remain in power. What seems like “crazy” behavior to us is really Kim deftly walking a fine line between all those people. We don’t see the behind the scenes stuff, so there doesn’t seem to by any rhyme or reason to his actions to us, but he is really skillfully pulling strings to placate those people. (The guy seemed to know what he was talking about, but of course I have no way of knowing. Of course, the fact that Kim has managed to hold on to power this long suggests that he must have some skill at politics, and if he were really insane he probably would have started a war before now.)
I doubt that all his countrymen sing his praises…but, yeah, he get’s all that and more. The thing is that his loony policies have made his nation a pariah and caused the deaths of millions due to starvation (we won’t even get into the possible other millions he and his henchmen have killed directly).
‘Crazy’ is one of the kinder things you can say about him…no matter how much pussy he’s getting, or how good the drugs are. Myself, I think ‘evil’ is a better term…though at a guess he actually IS mad as a hatter as well.
-XT
The US wouldn’t allow a NK victory. Navy F-18s would be bombing them within two hours of the initial salvo and they wouldn’t stop bombing for as long as there was artillery to fire.
It could be to China’s advantage because SK business that is centralized in Seoul might come to Shanghai or something.
North Korea would cease to exist as a meaningful entity in the space of a week or two.
Carrier groups in the Persian gulf can strike at North Korea, the Pacific fleet would be pounding them with Tomahawks. Jets would be scrambled in Okinawa and California. We could very easily strike North Korea. North Korea’s cessation of existance would take the time it requires to find out that it is happening, notify the President, get him to sign the order, to get it distributed down the chain of command, for the jets to fly there, for the missiles to fly from the jets to North Korea, and from there it would be a matter of hours until North Korea has decisively lost, and it comes down to fighting partisans in the hills. Something tells me that the troops in the North would defect en masse if the promise of joining their kin in South Korea were waved before them.
You’re assuming the Chinese don’t interfere. They could impose a ‘No fly’ zone which would obviate your scenario.
The Chinese are not going to do something that that allows North Korea to pound the south into dust.
Could they impose a no-fly zone and then invade-or-otherwise-topple NK themselves?
How is that superior? Stop another nation from committing their military, causing tension with that nation, and instead of letting them do the dirty work risk your men and materiel instead. Sun Tzu would retch at that sort of logic. No, Sun Tzu would blithely look the other way and try to get under the table concessions, and so would China.
Sounds like a real world version of the Paranoia! role-playing game.
Come to think of it, that explains quite a lot about North Korea.
Dear Leader is Happy!
Dear Leader is Insane!
If there are only 300 shouldn’t it be pretty easy to take them all out?
Sure. But it will be a long, painful process, especially if they are in the Hot Gates. First you will have to send in the Immortals, then you’ll need to get a bunch of big elephant/rino looking thingies and girly men with veils to toss grenades at them…finally, after untold deaths and carnage (and a lot of really cool slow motion fight scenes), you’ll need to get a gawky looking hunch back to show you how to get around behind them…
All in all I’d say it will take several hours and a least one large popcorn to accomplish. I concede though that MMV…
-XT
Well they have Ultraviolet armor and lasers and six clones a piece. Easier said than done.
I think what will happen is NK will make threats unless they receive food and fuel. They will get it and still do what they want to as far as developing nukes. A better plan would be to not give NK anything and let their citizen’s revolt when they start to starve.
In Iraq there were only 56, if I remember those silly playing cards. So, this would be six times as hard, apparently.
-Joe
Exactly how many F-18s are within bombing range, and what makes you think the North Koreans would not try to shoot them down?
North Korea could not be caused to “Cease to exist” without using nuclear weapons, and bringing the full force of the United States’s air power to bear would require restaging most of it, which takes time and effort, during which time the North Koreans are not going to just wait. Aerial bombardment is not some magical cure for all military ills.
They would try, of course they would try.
The US isn’t going to commit ground forces to North Korea, we would just bomb out their ability to fight. And there is a lot of US war material that is within range of North Korea. North Korean technology is primitive next to American technology and to the technology we share with South Korea.
Then the USA would be contributing remarkably little to the defense of an ally, since that would be a pathetically minor contribution. Such aerial power as could be mustered would not have a significant impact on the early stages of the war.
This isn’t Nintendo. A carrier battle group carries in the order of 70 to 90 combat aircraft. Against a force the size of North Korea that’s not going to blow up much of their army; I think you’re wildly exagerrating the capability of an aircraft to consistently destroy ground troops.
For an example, study up on the Kosovo air campaign in 1999; bombing the hell out of a country with an army no more advanced (probably less so) than North Korea, NATO was shockingly ineffective in destroying ground forces. They forced Serbia to give up the issue largely by virtue of (a) attacking civilian targets and (b) the fact that Serbia had no way of attacking NATO. North Korea has a way of attacking South Korea; drive south. If you want to win a real war, you need boots on the ground and that is that.
The military situation is such that having fancy airplanes in California several days from effective staging in the theatre is not going to prevent a large North Korean force from wrecking Seoul. The North Koreans are a morning’s walk from downtown Seoul and a day or two from most of what’s south of the 38th parallel. Your promises of death-by-airplane aren’t going to be of much comfort to a half-torched South Korea.
Well, to be fair it would take even longer to stage a substantial troop presence in SK. We can definitely get bombers and such their a lot faster.
Seoul would still be toast even if we committed the troops.