One could as easily take the opposite lesson. Namely:
He’s discovered a new and inexhaustible toy in the Middle East. Pretexts for polls-boosting adventurism there will come at least weekly until forever.
In that reading NK will never, never, rise to the level of mattering to Trump.
So which is it? Time will tell.
So, CNN says that there is a US ‘carrier-led strike group’ headed to ‘the Western Pacific Ocean near the Korean Peninsula’.
TV news this morning signals a shift in administration propaganda. The strike on Syria is being framed as a warning to North Korea. A carrier group is moving toward North Korea. Trump was on the phone this morning with the acting president of South Korea. And, the phrase “going it alone” is repeated in news broadcasts.
Propagandizing the public is a key preliminary to an attack.
Crane
So far, China is silent on the subject. Will be interesting to see if they come out with a statement. Usually China complains loudly when the US military makes a deliberate show of force in their neighbourhood.
Q#84,
Good point. It’ll be interesting to see if China stays on the sidelines.
Crane
Propaganda on both sides is escalating.
Crane
What this actually looks like to me is that the carrier group is positioning itself to do a missile intercept. I believe that next week is the anniversary birthday of lil’ Kimmy 3.0’s grandpa, and everyone is expecting the NKs to launch another rocket to celebrate. I THINK that what the US Navy is doing is positioning itself to knock down the missile if they launch. If so, it’s a pretty risky (from a ‘we will look like fools if we miss it’ perspective) endeavor.
The NKs of course are going nuts, but that’s what they always do whenever the US does anything in their region…so, that’s pretty much business as usual for them, wrt propaganda.
Could be spectacular if the Navy scores a hit!
Crane
If it ends up a shooting war, and rockets fired at Tokyo and Seoul cause damage and death, wouldn’t this cause massive damage to US relations to these other countries that aren’t China?
Especially as they don’t seem to be involved in the question of whether or not this war that massively involves their security happens or not.
Even if DPRK is conquered with minimal SK/Japanese deaths, it would literally piss off every country in that corner of the world, drive a wedge between the US and its allies there and drive China into the arms of Putin.
Especially as China and SK would be left to carry the can of restoring DPRK into a functioning region, whether as part of a unified Korea or as a separate state.
Why wouldn’t the USN just send Aegis then, no need for the carrier?
I think that depends a great deal on whether the e.g. Japanese decide the war happened here and now because of something the US did or something NK did.
And that’s a matter for spin doctors and the vagaries of public opinion to decide. If indeed shooting starts there’ll be enough honest tits and tats along the way for various thoughtful observers to plant their flag on either side. And that’s before the fog of war and the smokescreen of competing propaganda add their confusion to the mix.
You’re a UK person. If you’re old enough, think back to the bad old days of the Soviets. Had WWIII gone hot across the inter-German border in the 70s or 80s, whose fault would you have assessed it to be? Was it the US or the USSR? NATO or the WP?
Most of us then in the West had the feeling that WWIII wasn’t inevitable, but it was far more likely than not eventually. Most everyone’s goal was not to prevent it, but to prevent it this week. With the recognition that the opposition could, at any time, take that option away.
Most of what I read then or since about the Soviet establishment’s view was the same. Whether we’re talking the military, the foreign ministry, or the Politburo, they were playing essentially a delaying game while warily watching for us to upset the chessboard & force their hand into hot war.
IMO that’s exactly where NK & the UN/US is today. Except we’ve got hotter heads in charge of both sides now.
Well, speculating, because it’s a show of force as well, plus if you send a single cruiser out and it shoots down a missile it might be vulnerable all by itself, whereas if you send a carrier task group it’s unlikely NK will fuck with them. But mostly I’m guessing it’s a show of strength.
If I’m right, I hope they don’t fuck up the intercept. Would be a serious blow to the confidence of our allies AND might be a dangerous boost to lil’ Kimmy 3.0’s to do something even more stupid than usual.
We’ve talked about this subject in the past and came to the following conclusions for a preemptive strike on NK.
Seoul would be devastated and perhaps Tokyo nuked.
A flood of North Koreans would flee to China.
Considering how vested the US is in trade with China and given what a nuclear strike would do to the stock market I think we would have to factor another Great Depression in as well.
There would be no winners, only losers.
Whether Trump has the wherewithal to understand this is an open question.
Really China would have to be the one to take out NK’s leadership.
D#23,
NK does not have the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead to Tokyo.
Seoul would suffer minor damage if any, unless it was a pre-emptive strike by NK.
There would definitely be refugees into China.
Crane
Love how Trump, the expert on all things military, calls a carrier task group (7 ships) a ‘powerful, powerful armada.’
He is sort of the perfect counterpoint to Un, though; he’s every bit as reality-challenged and crazy.
I don’t think Trump is quite and crazy as lil’ Kimmy 3.0, nor QUITE as reality challenged. On the raw intelligence scale though I’m pretty sure Kimmy has the Trumpster beat though. Plus, his daddy hit 11 holes in one the first time he played golf, bowled a perfect 300 the first time, was born under a double rainbow and controlled the weather based on his mood, and never had to pee or crap! What’s Trump got? Nuffin! His dad was just a multi-millionaire. Freaking piker, in comparison.
Trump is backing into the same problem JFK faced with the Cubans the US had trained to “Free Cuba!”.
Namely:
You’ve got them in position, what are you going to do with them?
You now have, amid way too much fanfare, a carrier group off NK’s coast.
Now what?
Do they launch a couple of missiles and then go home?
Stay around until NK “Crosses a Line”? What “Line”?
JFK let the Cubans charge across a beach. A heavily defended beach. None of the air support they thought they’d get.
It was called “Bay of Pigs”. But it did get rid of the Cubans everyone in Central America knew were being trained by the US.
Kim sitting on some reasonably reliable scud’s, and the carrier acting as a target - is Kim stupid enough to try a shot?
If he does, is Trump stupid enough to retaliate?
The offense is likely to be more like the Gulf of Tonkin incident - minor, ambiguous events that provide a convenient core for administration propaganda.
The response depends on what three options are offered to Trump by the military. The counter response will depend on the palace politics of NK. The counter/counter response will depend on Trump’s ‘policy’ of the day. The counter/counter/counter response…
Crane
I think you’re grossly overegging your comparison here.
The US has a carrier group off Korea a significant fraction of every year. And has done so for decades. Yes, this particular move was not scheduled months in advance. But there’s not much “fanfare” above and beyond the long term normal for DoD saber-rattling, as multiplied by Trumps’ general tendency to shout about everything more than previous administrations.
Unlike the Cuban irregulars, this is not a *use it or lose it *hair trigger force. The carrier and support ships can drive around there for a couple weeks, Trump can loudly announce “I showed Lil Kim who’s boss!”, and the ships can drive off to their Philippine R&R as planned.
To be sure, Kim *might *rise to the bait and start shooting, Trump *might *invent a Tonkin-style provocation from whole cloth, or some other Tom Clancy-esque thing *might *happen. But that’s not the way to bet. It’s certainly not the way to assert things must happen.