North Korea and Superbowl

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Quite right overall. But ref this snip …

Arguably the best time for the US & SK to launch a preemptive war is in the midst of just such a wargame build-up. The Soviets & Warsaw Pact got nervous during every annual Reforger exercise (wiki).

In fact they damn near went apeshit over one similar exercise: Able Archer 83 - Wikipedia

So it’s not insane at all from the NK perspective to prefer the US not conduct aggressive-looking exercises on its doorstep. From the NK POV that’s honestly the time of greatest risk of being attacked. The NKs would also prefer the US to not practice war skills openly with the SKs thereby improving their joint capabilities to hurt NK.

The Soviets used to routinely denounce Reforger as dangerous capitalist-imperialist saber rattling.

So the NK complaints and attempts at influence are all soundly motivated thinking from their end.

Where NK goes off into la la land, as you say, is in implementation: making over the top threats that are grossly disproportionate to the provocation, and far beyond their actual ability to implement should push come to shove.

That’s what earns them the childish tantrum label.

42

Normally, I’d laugh this comment off. Given that our intelligence should know if the NK’s threats are credible. But considering our skunk-works shops apparently can’t figure out how to hack an iPhone, maybe we’ve just been relying on the guys from SK to tell us whether or not there should be something to worry about.

43

That’s a good point, and I agree. I suspect, however, that even the crazies in charge of NK know perfectly well that the US and South Korea aren’t going to invade, and this is mostly for domestic consumption. Kim needs to pump up his people and his military and get China to give him more aid.

Best hope for an end game, of course, is that this all ends “not with a bang but a whimper” - some semi-rational person gains control and opens up the border as happened in East Germany. Then floods of refugees stream into SK, and the world (hopefully) starts spending the trillions needed to incorporate NK into the rest of the world.

Regards,
Shodan

44

North Korea stages it’s own exercises, so their wild-assed claims about SK-US exercises are simply political games.

Of course, NK’s exercises involve 50’s and 60’s era weapons and an extremely limited amount of fuel, so of course the grand show on the other side is a bit unnerving to them.

I’m still waiting for the western response to their bluster to devolve to a simple “Go fuck yourself”.

45

The real risk IMO is that the folks in charge of NK become so insulated from the gross actual facts that they begin to believe their own hysteria. I have to imagine that yes-men are more common in the upper ranks of the NK hierarchy than are hard-headed realists speaking truth to power.

In history there have been any number of leaderships who began to believe their own propaganda. With disastrous results for themselves. But not before destroying a lot of other people & stuff along the way.

We may luck out with NK. We may not. There’s not much advantage for us or the SKs in hastening the day of reckoning.

Meantime preventing them from acquiring reliable deliverable nukes is Job One. But probably not at the expense of deliberately launching a hot war across the DMZ.

46

Of course not - what happened to the big attack they were planning on Super Bowl weekend (that you started this thread about)?

47

I’d like to address some comments to all those who have posted to this thread since I posted the link to this news story this morning. They include the following people:

The Stainless Steel Rat, LSL Guy, Shodan, Omar Little, Chimera, Rigamarole

Most of you have made similar remarks. As I see it, you have said that it’s extremely unlikely that NK could ever cause some serious damage to the USA and that they know what would happen should they ever conduct some serious attack against the USA or its friends and neighbors - such as Japan or South Korea.

I don’t disagree with that. I think you are all quite corrrect in that regard.

I’d like to make the following point to everyone listed above:

It is true the leadership in NK would not want to see their entire country be destroyed and force them to wait for many, many years before their descendents could rise up again and make another concerted effort to harm the USA.

I’m thinking that some form of insanity may take over any rational thinking and they may very well go ahead and reason in some crazy way - maybe something like the following:

“The USA believes they can keep subjegating us because we are afraid of the consequences of an all-out attack on our country. Maybe it’s just more important to send a message to the rest of the world that America just cannot get away with this kind of bullying.”

Please believe me. I know this kind of thinking is really insane and I know the consequences could very well mean the total destruction of NK without a comparable level of destruction in the USA. But, given the NK leadership is truly capable of insane actions which could cause the total destruction of their nation, it just may be something they could actually attempt. That is the thing about insanity.

I know that Hitler was not in the same position as the NK leadership. But you remember that he preferred to suicide and, if necessary, to take all the German people with him - instead of surrendering. Hitler also decided the German people all deserved to die because they were not willing to sacrifice enough of themselves to defeat the Allies. IMO, that certainly was insane. But that is what he wrote in his journal just before he killed himself. Hitler blamed the German people for all his stupid mistakes (like invading Russia and declaring war on the USA and many other of his extreme blunders). But, thank goodness, one big diff between Nazi Germany and NK is that all the power in Nazi Germany was held by one man. He had the power to make these kinds of insane decisions and then to carry them out. I don’t think that is necessarily true of NK. But the same kind of thinking that led Hitler to suicide instead of surrendering could still happen today in NK. Thankfully, I think you are all correct in that NK does not possess the kind of firepower to take the entire world with them should the leader ever decide to suicide. But he sure could make one Hell of a big mess before he does suicide.

Now, I’d like to say something to Rigamarole:

I think you may be stretching things a little bit. You seem to suggest that I thought there would definitely be some kind of attack on Superbowl Sunday. I definitely thought it could be a possibility. But as everyone said, the odds were very low something like that could actually happen.

I never said that some attack would def take place. At least I sure do hope I never gave anyone that impression.

I said there was a possibility they could launch a missile and I was concerned that missile could possibly hit some target in the Bay area. But I was far more concerned about the possibility that could then maybe have some bad implications for the future. I was concerned and I’m still concerned they might somehow develop the technology to place some kind of nuclear device on a missile so that it could possibly be launched against one of their neighbors.

I certainly admit the possibility of that happening is very low. But it sure does scare the living daylights out of me. I think there is a possibility they could get that working sometime and that is very, very scary. Don’t you think?

48

Eh.

I consider it an absolute certainty that North Korea will stage attacks on South Korea. They have done so in the past, they’ll do it again in the future.

Little Kim may well decide to launch a nuke. He’s that stupid. But when we’ve reached the point of the South Koreans not only asking for a THUUD system to protect against that possibility, but responding to the Chinese and their blusterous warnings about such a thing by saying “Well then we’ll have to consider building our own nukes”, then perhaps Kim and the Chinese will start to get real about this bullshit.

Kimbo Fat seems to honestly think a single small nuke would utterly destroy the USA.

But seriously, if he launched one of his tiny little [del]penis[/del] nukes at anyone, all the Chinese threats and bluster in the universe won’t protect his sorry ass from the consequences of that act.

49

Being insane is one thing. Having the technical capability to effectively launch long range missiles is another thing, which my understanding is that NK is no where close to be able to do. Their threats are empty.

50

Look what 19 people with box cutters did. I don’t think the lack of a nuclear tipped ICBM is what is preventing NK from causing significant damage.

51

To add to what everybody here has said – Not only NK is basically unable to truly carry out its threats (yes, they may destroy big chunks of Seoul before their fixed artillery positions in the DMZ are reduced to rubble, but that’s about it. NK would be utterly destroyed before long), but China is getting really fed up with them.

China would love to get rid of a “friend” who is unpredictably, whiny and basically psychotic… It is just that they are more worried about ending up with a unified country bordering China that happens to have US military bases in it. Otherwise, China would not hesitate to say “good riddance” to NK.

(OK, there would be problem of a flood of refugees crossing the Yalu river into China, but if China was willing to send tanks against its own citizens in Beijing in 1989, I am sure they would not hesitate to do the same to a bunch of NK foreigners. Not a nice thing, but I guess this is not the #1 worry among the Chinese leadership when it comes to a collapse of the NK state).

52

I think you are quite correct. Indeed, most of NK’s foreign policy is to act crazy enough to make it look like he might do something suicidal, that hurts South Korea (and possibly Japan) even if it results in his own death and the ruin of North Korea in general.

Acting like a scary crazy person is how Kim and his ilk have decided to conduct themselves. And claiming they are developing nukes and ICBMs is part and parcel of that whole policy.

I don’t disagree with any of this either. Like I said, acting crazy enough to convince the rest of the world that you might attack is the whole idea.

But as you say and I agree, the possibility of an attack on the US mainland is so low as to be non-existent at the moment. NK doesn’t have a working ICBM, and they cannot reach any part of the US with missiles. Their threats to date, in the short-term, are entirely aimed at South Korea, and in the medium term, at Japan, by having or claiming to have an ICBM that can reach Japan. That’s scary enough.

The US is acting to contain the threat of NK by conducting this joint exercise, to make it clear that if Kim et al. does launch an attack, then crazy or not, he will die and NK will be destroyed. As well by deploying the anti-missile defense systems to minimize the damage to South Korea, and to minimize the much less credible threat to Japan. NK cannot strike against Japan right now - the anti-missile systems to be deployed in SK will make that strike even less likely, even if NK develops a real ICBM.

The US is given to doing things like flying Stealth bombers around the Korean penisula, and issuing moderately credible threats to shoot down North Korean “satellites”. (The US didn’t, AFAICT, shoot down NK’s most recent “satellite” - the “satellite” failed, thus further reducing the credibility of the threat of an NK ICBM).

So currently, the chance of NK threatening the US is essentially zero. Their chance of threatening Japan is close to zero, and dropping as anti-missile defenses are deployed. Their chances of causing very significant damage to Seoul if they launch a suicide attack are high - which is why the US and South Korea are making it very clear that a suicide attack would be just that.

But Kim issuing empty threats doesn’t change anything, and don’t affect the chances of a real attack.

Regards,
Shodan

53

1957?

54

If anything, NK is far more likely to load a nuke on a fishing boat or submarine, drive it into a harbor and set it off. Then shrug and claim no knowledge of it.

55

Shodan’s reply just above was cogent, thoughtful, and addresses 99% of the substance of your comments.

I’d like to talk about this last bit.

NK is absolutely positively trying to do just that. They absolutely *are *working diligently to get reliable weapons & reliable delivery systems. As with the last decade-plus in Iran, the operative questions are “how close are they?” and “how fast are they progressing?” Together those answers tell us how long we have to stop their progress completely.

The good news is progress is slow and the distance remaining to go is great.

Meantime we and the rest of the world have been working diligently to slow them down. And will continue doing so UFN.

As I explained back in post #12 and others on point, there may come a day when the US starting a hot war is the least bad option to put a final brake on the slow-motion disaster that is NK. Today is not that day.

You are right to be concerned in a softly wary sense. This is one of about 10 snakes around the world that could really bite the US (and the rest of the free world) in the butt eventually.

The best near term thing for us citizens to do collectively is avoid electing know-nothing or isolationist politicians. Prioritize sound mature statecraft in your leaders.

And avoid panicking whenever the enemy says “I want you to panic”. 99+ percent of the damage done to the US by 9/11 was self-inflicted by panicky citizens and shortsighted leaders. A pinprick attack cost us trillions in lost GDP through a self-inflicted and totally unnecessary recession and further trillions in wasteful spending on the wrong war.

Let’s not do that to ourselves again. Be brave. Which comes from a reasoned understanding of the reality, warts and all, and a calm willingness to persevere.