NKorea warns of war if punished for ship sinking

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I'm pretty sure we had a thread on the ship when it was sunk, but I couldn't find it. Anyway, an international team determined that there was overwhelming evidence that N Korea sunk the ship with a missile.

 

This a sticky one with a half-dozen side stories. The first is trying to understand why North Korea did this. It's hard to see a motivation here for an act of war this brazen. What exactly are they trying to provoke and why? It's just not at all clear, as usual, the North Gooks never make sense and they are led by a certifiable looney. Worse, after 60 years of indoctrination and no exposure to outside media, the NK military is fanatical and think they are a world power.

The US has several issues to consider and they all overlap, complicating matters. First of all, NK didn't attack a US asset, they attacked a South Korean asset. South Korea is not an impoverished third-world country anymore. They are a bustling capitalist economic power and have one of the largest militaries in the world. After 60 year of US training the South Gooks are pretty good at their business. We have been gradually turning over military roles along the DMZ to the ROK for a couple of decades now. They are equipped with state of the art weapons. In 2 years we are scheduled to turn over the overall military command to the ROK. Both countries have been working to make South Korea capable and responsible for its own defense, short of nuclear deterrence which we will continue to provide.

So . . . this may be a good time to let the South Koreans deal with this. They were attacked, not us. Of course, we will have to back them up and deal with the consequence which may not be very good. China is a major issue. The last time we got into a shooting war with North Korea, we ended up in a war with China. China does not approve of North Korean aggression, but they do consider North Korea to be a buffer state between us and them and will not tolerate North Korea being invaded. If we sit out the retaliation and let the ROK do it, then perhaps we can induce China to sit it out too. We have spent a lot of money and effort to make South Korea self-sufficient. Now is a good time to see if it worked.

For surely North Korea cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Neither do we need a small incident to give them an excuse to let this mushroom into a general war between North and South. A balance has to be found in how to retaliate for this and draw a line that they cannot cross. A major ground war will have to be conducted by the ROK, because US ground forces are over extended in the middle east. However US air and naval power is undiminished and will be the decider . . . if China and Russia sit it out, which they may very well not do.

This will involve a great deal of diplomacy between a half-dozen affected countries. The US will use it to apply more economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea, especially through China, who has very mixed feelings about North Korea. The danger being that too much pressure could cause the Kim government to collapse leaving a very radical and unrealistic military in charge.

The South Koreans will have to respond in some fashion. They will likely sever a lot of trade between them that has increased in recent years. Trade that the North is desperate for. But the ROK doesn't want to cause a collapse and war either.

If nothing is done, this will happen again, but if too much is done, it can snowball into a major war that we just can't afford right now. I doubt we are going to see an overt military retaliation. More likely some North Korean harbor is going to get covertly mined and they will also suffer a mysterious ship explosion.

 

Well, that was another North Korean incursion in South Korean waters. They were warned back by radio but kept coming and opened fire on a South Korean vessel. Fire was returned and the North Korean ships retreated, one was heavily damaged while the South Koreans took no casualties and only a few small-caliber hits.

The North Koreans are constantly doing small provocations. They think like children and don't seem to understand how outmatched they are. They believe that sabre-rattling gives them leverage somehow by keeping their enemies in "fear".

 

They are getting away with being one of the poorest, undereducated, and hungry industrial countries in the World. Their economy is a joke, they have no media that isn't 100% indoctrination, and the people are increasingly desperate. One of the reasons they stage these incidents is to keep the population constantly worried about foreign invasion and not about how hungry and poor they are.

 

Yes, but they very much do not want to see Korea reunified. Such a union would be essentially a South Korean-style democracy and allied to the US. They want North Korea to be a more compliant and less troublesome client state. They walk a fine trying to Keep South Korea contained without allowing North Korea to start another major war that will involve American and European powers again.

And they want Taiwan very badly. China will not give over North Korea unless we give over Taiwan. And neither side is going to give an inch on this.