News North Korea Renounces Truce-U.S. Military on High Alert

I want my coke, playa.

edit: Wait....you said grammar...not spelling.

 

Happening. Seoul and Tokyo have been getting everything that they can afford for decades now. Both countries produce US jets under license so that they can afford even more. Both countries have huge and numerous US bases with even niftier toys. The carriers are in place and west pacific airbases are loaded with combat aircraft and have capacity to asborb more muy pronto. B-52's from Louisiana rotate regularly to Guam where they now have a permanent presence. The whole damn bomber group could be there in 36 hours.

But North Korea is going to lose a naval war and they are going to lose an air war, too, assuming China declines to fight for them again. The military problem is stopping a ground invasion. ROK has a big army and they are tough little bastards and we have a division on the ground and another on Okinawa. But it will take time to deploy armored units from the US (assuming they are not doing infantry duty in Iraq). Time the gooksters aren't likely to give us. They are forward-deployed all the time. They don't have to call up reserves and move units south to the Zone. They are already there and their logistics in place.

That's the rub. If they come across the DMZ, we can shoot them up and bomb the hell out of them but we can't keep them from taking Seoul, which is just a few miles behind the Zone. Just like in 1950, we'll have to retreat to the lower peninsula, while shooting them up and waiting for the CONUS units to arrive.

We just can't protect Seoul itself . . . unless we use the tactical nuclear weapons that have been deployed there for 50 years. That is the threat that has kept North Korea behind the fence all this time. We will have to use the nukes to save Seoul and the NK's always believed that we would, they remember Hiroshima.

Now, they have deluded themselves into imagining that their rickety rockets and primitive fission devices are enough to deter the US from using the nukes. They begin to dream of that invasion again . . .

He needs to move at the right time, which hasn't arrived yet. The Koreans are bluffers and everybody knows it. Their schoolyard taunts alone reveal just how little they understand of the geopolitics at play around them. The beloved leader does not command the reverence that his dead father did, and now he's near death himself. Whoever comes next inherits a huge mess with a starving population, the emnity of the world, and a potential nuclear war with the Superpower . . . one they are bound to lose. There is a internal power struggle going on with an impoverished and desperate population to boot. It's likely to get worse very soon and the conditions for internal collapse or revolution are certainly there.

The best way to deal with them is the way we dealt with the Soviet Union--ruin them economically, stymie all their chances for military expansion, and let them crumble of their own failures. The way we should have handled Iraq . . .

If they force the issue and start a shooting war, our military has been studying the ways to defeat them for many decades and it will be short and extremely violent. The only question is will we be willing to use the nukes to save Seoul. I think we have to. That brings up the probability of upsetting China greatly. This is what Obama must handle carefully. The Chinese screwed up everything for us the last time we fought in Korea.

There is plenty of time for Obama to manipulate the North Koreans, Chinese and Russia before taking action. He has to drive a wedge between the Koreans and the big Asian powers. This will take time. But it must be done before Korea can actually destroy a South Korean or Japanese city with a weaponized device and an effective delivery system. They may never get there, time is running out for them.

And obviously he needs time to get the overstretched army and marines redeployed out of the middle east if we are going to have to fight a ground war in Korea, which is a major possibility, given that it is the only card the NK's really have to play until and unless they can actually mount a device on an ICBM and vaporize Los Angeles.

North Korea exploded a nuclear weapon in defiance of treaties and George Bush didn't do a goddamn thing. He couldn't do much really, and was pragmatic for once in his life. Our ground forces were badly overextended and we could not afford three wars at once, not to mention one with China involved. He had already limited his own options and needed to bide his time, which he did, thankfully.

But the times, they are a changin'. The Chinese and Russians are losing patience and beginning to wonder what they get in return for supporting this tinpot dictator. They don't want the US goaded into invading North Korea to end all of this nonsense.

You've got to figure that they have plans for making North Korea into a Chinese province. That will take a lot of carrot and stick. They are also awaiting a North Korean government collapse which they are in great position to exploit with food and aid and power and everything the poor starving people need. A US and ROK army on the ground would foul all of that up.

If China shuts off the border, the whole place will starve in 6 months. Not to mention the loss of high-tech equipment and foreign brainpower which will cripple them. I think China is going to eventually step up and deal with North Korea itself. The South Koreans won't like it, but we'll probably go for it. We aren't going to spend our treasure and lives helping South Korea to expand, only to defend it from attack.