One of my fellow platoon leaders at the time we got told had been active duty enlisted previously with time in Korea. I won’t pretend to remember all of his comments in detail but the general summary was “Fuck!”
[QUOTE=LSLGuy]
As several people have said in several recent threads, not too many Americans really care enough about SK’s survival to run a big risk of visiting WWIII on the US homeland.
[/quote]
I’d step the issues with our political will up further. We’re undergoing a big spike in being casualty averse with lots of concern about use of ground troops following Iraq and Afghanistan. A single battalion could take casualties in a couple hours that would be in the ballpark of one of the worst months for all US forces in Iraq. One bright side for minimizing the political shock is that we pulled back from the DMZ a while back. US Forces Korea, day to day, is mostly not in range. That at least helps minimize the risk of a lot of dead Americans on the first day of the news cycle. The shock would come soon enough but at least there’s the possibility of time to spread out the twitteratzi storm. Of course NK could well try to capitalize on the issue by sliming USFK bases with ballistic missiles tipped with chemical weapons. They aren’t stupid.
I cut out what was the start of looking at the whole strategic picture since I was getting long. The strategic level, especially, is where we have to look at things that aren’t strictly about combat calculus. Some old dead Prussian guy talked about warfare’s relation to politics. The strategic level is where the means and political goals meet. As you point out the government has to consider whether continuing to fight achieves the political ends better than a negotiated surrender. In addition warfare is a human endeavor and we have fundamentally irrational cognitive biases built in. That includes a route to defeat when the initial shock of battle makes the populace and government in SK think the situation is unwinnable or likely to be so costly it’s not worth it.
Never underestimate the power of the Stockholm Syndrome applied en masse. One of my sisters was an exchange student in Warsaw at the height of the Solidarity movement. Even with considerable outside contact and an active labor movement resisting the Soviet system she met an older woman who was convinced she couldn’t be an American because she was so nice. All of us Americans were evil and wanted to nuke Poland into radioactive glass. Luckily the benevolent Soviets were there to protect them. She truly believed that. North Koreans are even more isolated.
The most important people Kim has to sell it to are senior members in the regime anyway. They actually have better information and would know it was a real, if small, victory. It would generally be in their own self interest to not point out any hyperbole.
Excellent points all. I’d like to expand on the above. Not so much for yourself but for the other readers.
Stockholm syndrome is certainly real. The contexts associated with Stockholm syndrome usually imply something paradoxical coming from a small and seldom-exercised corner of human nature. But what went on in WP-era Poland or current NK is something much bigger and deeper. Something much more in the daily experience of darn near everyone.
People, net of some cynicism, believe the dominant paradigm they’re surrounded with. They have to; otherwise the cognitive dissonance is too great. The people who can’t stand to believe the dominant paradigm become nuts, activists, emigrees, political prisoners, or defectors depending on their and their environment’s details. Everybody else goes along, mostly unaware of any dissonance at all.
How many people in the US today fervently believe the fake news? Or believe Fox’s spin-heavy news? Or Infowars? And these are people who are fully immersed in a pluralistic culture where freedom of information is a totemic Good. Imagine how much easier it is to accept the official line when instead of it being 5% of what’s out there, it’s 99%. And echoed by every casual conversation you have with ordinary people. Only the closest of family dare speak of their doubts. As near as anyone can tell, only a tiny fraction of everybody else doubts as much as you do.
The Polish lady had heard all her life that the Americans were targeting her country with nukes. Which was 100% true. And that we’d use them when we thought it was in our interests, not hers, to do so. Which was also 100% true. And that we had a large army pointed her way on 24/7 alert. Which was also 100% true.
Where the Soviet propaganda BS began was in *why *things were that way and under what circumstances was it actually in our interests to use that stuff. Most importantly, there was BS in why the world might transition from peace into that war.
Your snip from Velocity is the second time in this thread he’s said in effect “We’re the Good Guys. Of course they know that too, deep in their heart of hearts.” I’m not here to pick on Velocity individually; there’s a couple hundred million Americans under the same illusion. He’s an example of a person whose unexamined core beliefs are product of his environment. Just like the Polish lady was. And just like the NK people are. Both the soldiers and the peasants. But most worryingly for us, the middle upper leadership too. They *believe *in the righteousness of their mission. And will behave accordingly. Which will only be overcome by making them more concerned instead about their immediate survival.
South Korea asking for a ceasefire is plenty of victory for Kim. His goal isn’t to conquer the ROK, it’s to secure his place in power. If he could technically win a war with any concessions at all, he can truthfully tell his people they won, and his position and the army’s position are stronger than ever. IF he inflates the concessions, what of it? There’s no free press in North Korea and people happily believe lies even where there is one.
I must stress this; if war breaks out, North Korea does not have to capture South Korea to win. Forcing South Korea to sue for peace and hand over anything at all, be it a tiny scrap of territory or economic concessions or basically anything, would be a massive victory. If South Korea breaks with the USA to arrange a ceasefire it might also break the military alliance between the ROK and the USA, thereby giving North Korea a level of security they’ve never had. It would be a dream come true for NK.
I will be the first to say that I am hardly unbiased by any means (for that matter, I do know the Chinese, NKers., etc. genuinely believe themselves to be the good guys.) But ISTM that the Kim regime’s lying is pretty clumsy, and that if they genuinely want to fool people then they should tailor their lying to be as close to reality as possible, so as to be more believable. (I say this as someone who was a compulsive liar from adolescence through early 20s.) Skillful lying doesn’t stretch the fib too far, and the Kim regime sure does. But yeah, you are right, there can be a projection fallacy.
I have always assumed that the worst case scenario is South Korea achieving a pyrrhic victory. I can’t imagine any type of scenario in which NK achieves any kind of victory. My assumption has always been that they would lose*, the only question is how much damage they can do to SK in the process. An actual victory? How is that even possible?
*By lose I mean total defeat, the way Germany and Japan lost at the end of WWII or maybe even worse.
I don’t mean to spam the thread here, but, again, the scenario is very easy to imagine; North Korea achieves some degree of strategic surprise and their initial attack pushes a reasonable distance into South Korea. Seoul is itself infiltrated or partially cut off in the first week of hostilities and the South Korean government, panicking over mounting destruction and civilian deaths, arranges a ceasefire and gives up some concessions to get the Norks out of their country. That’s quite a plausible scenario.
I don’t mean to spam the thread here, but, again, the scenario is very easy to imagine; North Korea achieves some degree of strategic surprise and their initial attack pushes a reasonable distance into South Korea. Seoul is itself infiltrated or partially cut off in the first week of hostilities and the South Korean government, panicking over mounting destruction and civilian deaths, arranges a ceasefire and gives up some concessions to get the Norks out of their country. That’s quite a plausible scenario.
It is again terribly important to understand that we are not talking about a game of Total Annihilation here where one side has way better units and its Level 3 bots inevitably defeat the other side’s Level 2 bots. There are issue of politics here. The ROK is not going to give up two million civilian lives to make a point; if the Allied wall doesn’t hold back the horde (and North Korea’s military is more or less designed to slip by) the logical course of action might be “stop the war as soon as possible.” If that means conceding defeat and giving up a little chunk of land north of Goseong or something, well, so be it. And if the situation was ugly I wouldn’t blame them a bit.
Really? Can the North Korean’s hold any land once the US campaign starts that destroys every bridge, every artillery piece, every tank, power plant, ship and anything else worth destroying? We can delivery a horrendous remote destructive campaign that will leave the North Korean army basically cut off in South Korea and scavenging for food. This should only take about a week.
Invading North Korea would be no cakewalk and I think a terrible mistake, but pummeling their military and infrastructure is what the US is ready to do and I am sure planning is in place for just such a scenario.
IMO now retired but professional opinion yes they can hold land. It’s especially true in the near DMZ area where they are still in range of at least some of their artillery in HARTS. They are largely an infantry force operating in terrain that greatly restricts mounted avenues of approach. I’ve dealt with a North Korean doctrinal defense in command post exercises. Their infantry was dug in, in depth, at platoon level with interlocking fires. Imagine leaving a dog in a confined space with a couple thousand very hungry ticks. The little blood suckers dig in everywhere. They make relatively hard targets for air and artillery with just normal field fortifications and you have to hit them one platoon position at a time. It’s possible to move in and dig them out but those are not antiseptic remote attacks. Those are ugly, close up, ground fights supported by fires. Likely those are also slow and costly fights.
I wouldn’t be sure we even have a fully permissive air environment a week in. Again their air defenses are deeply dug in. Simply not opening the door and bringing all of their systems into firing positions will allow them to conserve parts of it past the initial strikes. It is probably impossible to disable the entire network quickly to enable operating from the air with relative impunity. Unless the North Koreans are both very stupid and ignore their own doctrine they should be able to drag out how long they can effectively contest complete US/SK air supremacy.
If they can manage to damage air bases in SK and possibly Japan with their ballistic missile threat the tempo of air operation likely slows too. If they do have effective chemical warheads for their ballistic missile force the tempo slows even more when those bases are potentially hit with persistent agents. There simply won’t be enough of the standoff weapons like Tomahawk to significantly reduce 13,000 artillery tubes dug in. We tend to reserve them for higher payoff targets like mission command centers and key air defense locations anyway. Many of those NK has buried under granite where they can shrug off most strikes.
There was a reason as recently as last decade that Bush was asking for money to develop nuclear armed penetrators for our Air Force. The problems of their fortifications is that much of a challenge that we were considering use of nuclear weapons to address it. As much as I appreciate your confidence in my brothers and sisters still in uniform, North Korea has been preparing for a technologically superior enemy that loves to use fires in massive amounts. Their doctrine grew out of the question “We’re going to get pummeled from the air…how do we win anyway?”
I say again, we were looking at the development of ground penetrating nukes as a tool to address their answers to that question. We were doing it as recently as 2005. Not just nukes exploding on the surface. Surface nuclear explosions weren’t enough for their hardest and most critical targets. Really let that sink in.
I don’t see how the competence of the North Korean’s infantry stops them from eventually losing to artillery fire and bombing basically from one coast to another. What I mean is, the basic way the battle would go is, the North Koreans start shooting. They gradually kill many of the Americans positioned there and many of the civilians in Seoul with artillery fire. But as they are doing so - especially after a day or 2 when the Americans start to bring in reinforcements in mass - they start losing forces to mass bombing runs and artillery fire using artilllery that out-ranges what the NORKs have. (and it’s more accurate as well - the Americans can jam the counter-battery radar the NORKS use, and also prevent scouting by shooting down scout aircraft. So even if the Americans move their artillery pieces close to save on propellant, the NORKS would have trouble determining where to return fire.)
Large numbers of infantry doesn’t do you much good against this kind of shellfire. And of course the Americans can bring in tanks and Bradleys, depending on the terrain. Anyways, obviously the Americans are going to win eventually, it just would be very costly to do so.
The Americans only get to bring in reinforcements in mass if the infrastructure to do so is in place. Special-ops troops disrupting the rear and biological or chemical attacks on airfields, for example, might mean large numbers of reinforcements can’t arrive on day 2, but instead are delayed for days or weeks while decontamination, cleanup, mopping up, rebuilding/repairing facilities, etc., takes places. Mass bombing runs and artillery aren’t terribly effective against Ranger-type units, for example; they have to be hunted down in small-unit operations. The DPRK special operations troops have been variously estimated to number between 60K and 180K (the upper estimate is roughly the size of the entire U.S. Marine Corps, as a comparison). If even a few thousand of these make it into the south (via tunnels, submarines, etc.), well, a few thousand saboteurs, many of them likely wearing South Korean uniforms, have the potential to foul things up for awhile.
Also, these troops almost certainly are tasked with disrupting civilian activities too: hospitals, evacuation infrastructure, communications, etc. Their allies are delayed or can’t stop the invasion quickly, the bulk of the populace becomes demoralized and wants a quick solution–that’s starting to sound like France, ca. June 1940. I don’t believe that’s a likely scenario in Korea, but I don’t think it’s an impossible one either.
Still being targeted. Still to be used when interests demand. Still have a large army just next to her borders. Only now its the other guy.
After a while, does it matter? Capabilities over intentions and ideals. Look at it from a North Korean POV. You have a guy with a big stick and a propensity to use it who has said that “I’ll pound you into sand”. And within living memory carried out a genocidal air campaign against you. Would you not be at least on edge?
A sane, reasonable outcome is possible. I am not saying it’s ever going to happen, just that it could be done. Kim Jong could get an ally (probably China) to agree to host him and his relatives and allow him to transfer a billion dollars or so as walking around money to banks controlled by the ally. He could gradually transition to some kind of more democratic government and quit trying to build atomic weapons. He could probably negotiate, and get, large payments from the US for some of this.
It doesn’t have to end in bloodshed or nuclear fire. But that seems like the most likely eventual outcome.
The president doesn’t have authority to start a war. Trump would need Congress to authorize war, and he’s said many times that he would let the generals make the decisions about how to fight it. Trump’s role is Commander in Chief, so he’d have some say. It’s the job of the executive branch to manage relations between countries. He might feel war is necessary to deal with a dictator, but as for how it’s carried out, that’s not his domain. Obama would micromanage conflicts from the war room, and he would dictate military policy…a lot of it made the military weaker because he didn’t have any military expertise. I wish Obama had left things to the generals.