I agree, and this is why the initial scenario in the OP will not happen. They would need to go all out or nothing. And the net result would be identical no matter what; everyone in a leadership position in NK would be dead, and the entire military destroyed within 3 days or less. It’s a no-win situation for them if they attack Seoul, or if they try to nuke another country. Even a madman knows this.
NK is posturing. As usual. Why do they do this? Because it is the only tool they have left at their disposal.
Threaten, posture, and then they get stuff.
It’s the only thing they know how to do. This time, they are confused because they are not getting stuff. So they ramp up the posturing and threats.
I see a huge difference between North Korea in which the South Koreans would come in and provide the role of the government and Iraq or Afghanistan in which we tried to create something from scratch.
Possibly except for the fact that they hate us, they really hate us. They blame us for their past 60 years of suffering. I don’t think that they would be particularly amenable to the notion of a government that is friends with us. It would probably be easier than Iraq or Afghanistan but I believe that it would still be very difficult, especially if the North Koreans are provided full representation in the new government.
Response has to be multi-lateral. Not to include South Korea would just be stupid. Not to include China in the decision-making would be preposterously stupid. China would not be pleased with a large-scale nuclear bomb going off near their border.
I have no problem at all with tactical nukes being used to destroy their plutonium facility, but I think the scuttlebutt is that we haven’t identified allof their Uranium enrichment capabilities. We could also use bunker-busters on the border launch facilities. I’m not going to feel one bit guilty if an avalanche starts there.
But Theater Nukes are not the answer here. And any way you slice it, we need a massive humanitarian response, probably involving an enormous percentage of the South Korean population. We would also need food aid from all over the world. And I think the medical and mental-health challenges there are unprecedented. Imagine a population living with the knowledge and fear of concentration camps for three generations now?
And the one thing msot certain of all, the USA is the last country in the world to be able to help out with humanitarian efforts ont he ground. For three generations they’ve been trained to hate and fear us, with all suffering they, their parents, and Grandparents have endured placed squarely on our shoulders. I’m guessing a majority of the population would die of starvation rather than accept food from an American soldier.
There certainly were many problems with the reunification of Germany, and the working assumption by the South Koreans is that this is going to be much, much harder as the economic gap is much greater. The former East Germany was the most successful of East European countries where North Korea is in dire poverty.
I saw a TV program about the reunification which and it was interesting to see some changes which you don’t think about. One type of job in the former East Germany which became obsolete were bicycle messengers, as there had not been enough telephone lines there for businesses. It took a tremendous amount of cash infusion to build an infrastructure in the East.
It will take an even greater amount in North Korea, and while South Korea is one of the four Asian tigers, this is money which they don’t have. The ROK’s position for years has been to be friendly enough with PDRK to not have a shooting war, but not to get too close as it really can’t afford to reunite.
This is another practical reason for not using nukes willy-nilly, it would simply add that much more to the cost of reconstruction. Unless people are arguing that the US should start annihilating countries and leaving them in dire poverty and chaos as warnings, much like the brutal thugs of yesterday.
You know, depending on how you use them, a nuclear attack might actually present less of an economic and humanitarian problem than peaceful reunification…how much of NK’s 24 million desperately-poor population would you have to reduce to be the equivalent of East Germany’s 16 million comparatively-well-off population?
I don’t remember how I found it - but there is a small-scale “rescue” group which is in the business of smuggling out North Koreans.
They set up a AMA chat on Reddit (which I have never seen before) with one of their rescues - this was a young man.
It seems there is a large division between the generations (surprise!) with the under-30’s starting to smuggle in western music and movies. The internet is known of, and it’s a matter of time before they learn to hack their intranet run be the government.
The government no longer tries t claim they are rich; the line now is “we are poor, but things are getting better” - you may have heard Kim’s comments about using the re-started reactor to improve the economy - he has been busy trying to do both guns and butter.
But no, the younger set realize that the anti-US garbage is lies - the info age is not going to be shut out forever.
Oh - when the US was shipping rice, Kim’s dad did not deny it came from the US - but claimed it was “tribute”. I very much doubt Kim would be stupid enough to make such a claim; based on that brief chat, such a lie would never be believed by the under-30 set.
See Albania - it was a Stalinist holdout much like NK - the Simpsons had an episode in which they host an Albanian child (who was a spy, of course). They are now a member of NATO.
Responding with a nuke is flirting with the end of the world. It puts nukes back on the table for everyone. It’s something you only do if you absolutely have to. And since North Korea can’t successfully nuke us, it’s not absolutely necessary.
A unilateral approach is stupid, as it means we might have enemies and prolong the fighting. We have to get everyone involved.
And, yes, I agree, this scenario will not happen. Not only because Kim is posturing, but because we will be aware of anything before it happens and can preemptively deal with it. The only way Kim could have possibly pulled this off is if he kept it a secret.
EDIT: In other words, what Gyrate said, just put more simply.
At the time of the German reunification, the East German population was only 26% of the West German population and its per capita GDP was 63% than that of West Germany. In contrast, North Korea is about half the population of the ROK, and its per capita GDP is a mere 8% of that of South Korea.
Rough calculations show that the average resultant per capita of Germany post unification was 92% of the pre-unification economy whereas it would be 69% for South Korea. In order to achieve the same 92%, 20 million North Koreans would need to ah, err be nuked.
Nonetheless, that’s how the US would be seen. If it had been a successful nuclear attack, then a nuclear response would have been seen as proportionate. A failed attack warrants a lesser (albeit still severe) response.
I have instructed the Operations department to replace your BB gun & steak knife with a compression phaser rifle and light-saber. Try not to harm any innocents, and go with Athena.
