> Further the book, at one point, talks about America's position on Russia and the attempts to keep them from getting "the bomb". It is exactly what has played out and will continue to play out with North Korea and Iran. History is repeating itself and we sure haven't learned from it.
Is it actually similar, though?
The US got the bomb in 1945.
The Russians got theirs in 1949.
Given the size of the Soviet Union, how far it is from the United States, the available spying and reconnaissance technology (no satellites, no stealth aircraft), and that the US was only four years out of World War II, I don't think there is any way the US could have made a creditable threat to use military force to stop the Russians.
Also, China and Russia were still on good terms back then. China might not have stayed out of it if the US attacked their ally and neighbor.
Compare to North Korea and Iran. In both cases the US can make a creditable military threat. From a purely military point of view, the US could easily wipe either (or both) of them out.
Furthermore, neither has any powerful allies who want them to get nukes.
With North Korea, their only powerful ally is China and I don't think China actually cares if North Korea gets destroyed as long as (1) it doesn't send a lot of refugees across the Chinese border, and (2) whatever replaces it continues to function as a buffer zone between them and South Korea because they do not want a US ally right on their border.
That’s not quite an accurate read though, at least as far as NK. The US can’t really make a credible military threat because of the north’s proximity to the south, an important US ally and a country all but guaranteed to be mortally wounded in the event of north/USA hostilities.
Sure we can. We have the capability to totally annihilate as much of North Korea as we need in order to prevent a counter attack. The question is if we are willing to do it, and kill millions of North Korean civilians. Trump is sure trying to convince the North Koreans that he is.
> We have the capability to annihilate as much of NK as we need to prevent a counterattack
...from North Korea
If we start launching nukes in the direction of NK, how does China know it's going to stop in NK and not hit them? Do we call them up first? Then what do they say?
Is it totally out of the question that China would panic (or reason?) and counterattack? NK doesn't exist in a vacuum, and in fact NK wouldn't exist at all today had China not intervened in the last war.
NK is an ongoing humanitarian disaster right now. At the moment, everybody is standing by blaming the NK regime for not acting to resolve it. If you remove the regime, the crisis gets much worse. If you bomb the country, the crisis gets much, much worse.
When you are done bombing the snot out of NK, who will pick up the pieces? Who will be on the hook for millions of starving people? Who will be the neighbor that gets slammed by the masses of humanity in desperation?
You think China hasn't thought about all this? You think they won't automatically recognize the obvious and enormous threat to themselves? Every missile that lands in NK is a direct threat to China.
It's simple orbital mechanics to calculate the trajectory. ICBMs aren't like planes, it's not like they just fly to the target and stop. It's powered during the first minutes of flight and then it just coasts from there. The exception to this is MIRV ICBMs where warheads are deployed one at a time and the final stage changes orbit a bit before releasing the next warhead. MIRVs can't change their trajectory that much though, you can target multiple locations, but they have to be in a couple hundred kilometers of each other.
Basically if there's an ICBM flying over China and it looks like it's going to hit NK, there's no way to kill all of that horizontal velocity and significantly change its trajectory.
I’ve read that ICBMs are very hard to spot after the initial boost phase. That being the case, if I was an ICBM designer, I’d add a cold gas thruster to the payload stage that allowed the target to be adjusted or fine tuned while it was out of the atmosphere in a stealthy way — even a delta-V of just 100 m/s adds up to 280km when the missile takes 45 minutes to arrive.
The US wouldn't launch ICBMs at NK. They would be dropped from bombers or launched from subs/ships.
Most likely bombers though, which is what all of the saber rattling in the news with B52s/B1s has been about.
Also, China has a defense treaty with NK and has very publicly stated that it will honor its treaty unless NK strikes first.
Personally, I don't think nuking North Korea would even be an effective use of resources.
With modern military precision bombing I'd say it's serious overkill unless you want to destroy something like an entire carrier strike group or deliberately cause loss of civilian life.
Precision strikes could probably take out their nuclear and missile program, and much of the top leadership, and probably cause the regime to eventually collapse. The problem is their artillery, spread throughout the south of the country, that poses a major threat to South Korea.
Agreed. And which was the stated reason for the Clinton administration not bombing North Korea and why I find it weird that North Korea has pushed the nuclear weapon issue.
If North Korea can kill tens of thousands of people in Seoul in a few minutes with just artillery and no one wants to be responsible for that... then why do they feel the need for nukes?
One can envision a world where the US accepts South Korean losses as acceptable, if unfortunate. But I don’t think we would ever accept the loss of an American city.
Because they feel the United States might take the risk of damage to South Korea. As long as US citizens aren't involved (other than a few tourists and business people in Seoul), the US has less skin in the game. If NK can directly threaten the US, the US has to be more careful.
You’re assuming that China’s nuclear force posture is like that of the US or RF. It is much more robust against false alarms. Given the massive alert arsenal the US possesses, along with the historical fact that both the USSR and US sat out strong technical alerts of incoming massive strikes, rather than launch — it’s a good prior that they would sit it out.
From missile launch to missile detonation is enough time for NK to shell large chunks of high population areas of SK. They have the guns already pointed and ready for exactly this reason.
You assuming that NK has an early warning system which consists of more than a guy with binoculars and circa 1960s radar which they don’t.
The US is more than capable of launching a preemptive strike against NK without Seoul being hit nearly as hard as one would think.
The main reason they won’t isn’t the shelling of Seoul is that China won’t allow US troops on its border and neither the US, SK nor China wants to deal with the fallout of having to care for millions of uneducated by modern standards starving people that believe in unicorns.
The flood of refugees into SK would do much more damage than any possible shelling from NK which is also why neither player has pushed for critically destabilizing measures or a regime change for the past 50 years.
> You assuming that NK has an early warning system which consists of more than a guy with binoculars and circa 1960s radar which they don’t.
You don't think China has such a system and won't give a friendly call to North Korea? You'd be willing to bet the lives of South Koreans on that?
Also, as much as we like to think of North Korea as a joke nation, I'm sure there are some very smart people in the government. In fact, there may be more smarter people in government than in the United States. There are plenty of opportunities in the private sector here for a smart ambitious person. There's less private sector opportunity in North Korea, and statistically, 25 million people is bound to produce quite a few very smart people. As long as they can identify and capitalize on some of them, you can bet they are likely government resources.
So, I think it's much more likely that North Korea doesn't have early warning system technology because they've decided they don't need it, and they can focus their research elsewhere. If China gives it to you for free (for the reasons you outlined), then why waste those resources? I would be hesitant to assume any perceived shortcoming of North Korea's situation wasn't specifically sought by them. Not because they are geniuses and masters of strategy that have designed every aspect of their situation, but at least some aspect are, and complacency and underestimating your enemy have no place in war, much less a nuclear war.
China doesn’t have sophisticated early warning systems either, nor does it have a central military command nor integrated command and control infrastructure they’ve started one in 2011 but as their military ranks are a political appointment the competency of their military leadership is lacking at best.
You seem to not understand exactly what the situation is even if NK would get an early warning say 10min it would not even get it past the guy who answers the first phone get alone to the military in the field.
The US and Russia have invested 70 years in building infrastructure which is designed for a single contingency which is to launch a retaliatory strike within 15-20 minutes this requires an enormous investment and North Korea barely has phone lines.
This doesn’t even take into account the fact that the soldiers manning the artilary installations can barely hit anything and that they don’t have enough shells to fire their 11,000 cannons zeroed on Seoul.
North Korea’s conventional military is a joke these days and unless China puts its own soldiers into the fray it won’t be even a two sided fight.
> You seem to not understand exactly what the situation is even if NK would get an early warning say 10min it would not even get it past the guy who answers the first phone get alone to the military in the field.
You seriously think high level Chinese diplomats don't have very quick communication access to Kim Jong-un? Why would you think that? I think it's very likely they have phone access to multiple aids of which one is guaranteed to be very close.
> The US and Russia have invested 70 years in building infrastructure which is designed for a single contingency which is to launch a retaliatory strike within 15-20 minutes this requires an enormous investment and North Korea barely has phone lines.
That's because our system has checks and balances and a heirarchy. Kim Jong-un likely has direct phone access to the cammanders in the field, and through secured lines. That's the first thing you do, and that doesn't take a genius to figure out.
> This doesn’t even take into account the fact that the soldiers manning the artilary installations can barely hit anything and that they don’t have enough shells to fire their 11,000 cannons zeroed on Seoul.
They don't have to aim. Everything is likely already dialed in. There's only one target to retaliate towards no matter who attacks (since it's not going to be China). They could literally have a single qualified person go through and dial in the settings for every piece of artillery and every rocket launcher system, and just have trusted personnel to initiate the attack.
> North Korea’s conventional military is a joke these days and unless China puts its own soldiers into the fray it won’t be even a two sided fight.
It's not about being able to put up a fight, it's about making it too costly to start the fight.
In the end, even if the North Korean response comes after first strike (and a first strike likely wouldn't eliminate their offensive capability, according to retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales[1]), a lot of South Korean lives will be lost.
That's because our system has checks and balances and a heirarchy. Kim Jong-un likely has direct phone access to the cammanders in the field, and through secured lines. That's the first thing you do, and that doesn't take a genius to figure out.
IIRC POTUS can order a nuclear strike by himself. No checks and balances.
The "two man rule" is basically two men check the authenticity of the order (IIRC it is encrypted Twitter-length message) and or turn the keys to "vote" launch. Each launch crew in two silos (4 people) need to vote to launch to actually launch.
There's not a lot of information on the order of succession and the two-man rule on the Internet. ;(
I'd think if everyone above is dead or unreachable the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Secretary of Education can start nuclear war all by themselves too. No checks or balances either.
Again you are missing the point NK has about “11,000” cannons pointed at Seoul these are fixed installations capable of being destroyed in a conventional preemptive strike before anyone gets the order to fire.
By the time it would take China to detect a US attack, figure out what to do, deliver a message to the NK leadership and that message can be relayed to the field there won’t be many canons left.
I think you don’t realize how long does it take for orders to go through, even a close air support request can easily take 30 min or more to push through a single chain of command.
An NK doesn’t even have direct communications with most of their fielded forces.
And as far the the zeroed cannons go it really ain’t that simple, 80% of their shells missed a bloody island that was also zeroed and were not talking about missing a target on the island we’re talking about missing an island several kilometers in size.
What you say is directly contradicted by the quoted words of a retired Major General in the article I previously cited. If you want to convince you me you are more knowledgeable or truthful than what was presented there, you'll need to cite some source. No offense, but when it comes to matters of military action, I'm going to take the word of someone with is or was relatively high in the military over a pseudo-anonymous internet persona unless evidence to the contrary is presented.
Here's the last paragraph: North Korean anti-aircraft weapons “are not all that impressive,” Scales said, “but there’s lots of them.” Could the North Korea guns be taken down? “Sure, over time,” he said. “But by the time we do that, the damage they’d inflict on Seoul would just be staggering.” They go into the reasons for that earlier.
It is pretty rich to repeat over and over again statements like, "I'm sure that" and "I believe" as well as a host of other implications with nothing to back any of your assertions except a Huffington Post article, then try to high road your way out of the corner you built for yourself by demanding citations.
What else do you do when people start calling your beliefs into question? You fall back on facts and expert sources to back up your assertions. And I believe I'm still the only person to have done so in this direct thread, even if only through a Huffington post article. But the point of that article wasnt that it was from the Huffington post, but that they had an expert source, and that's who I referenced.
I was a bit incredulous when I referenced someone that k rw that they were talking about and it was ignored. I'm even more so now when I'm actually being called out for bringing some expert information to this pissing contest.
I'm in class so I can't post as detailed as I wish, but there are at least three links in this comment section from much more credible sources that might inform your opinion more. I recommend the New Yorker article first. You need to segregate your emotions from your reasoning. Having a misinformed opinion is not a crime, but it is correctable. My chief issue with your comments is, as I stated before, your general implications and assertions, particularly in regards to China and Best Korean competency. I too am still learning just how isolated, geographically, ideologically, and intellectually, the Juche government of NK is.
Don't hear what I'm not saying: I think you are ignorant of some of the facts, not incapable of understanding. I see now that my initial comment was overly petulant and could have been more constructively worded. I will post some links I find helpful when I get out. But should you gave the time there are some enlightening docs on documentaryheaven.com (their site is a huge mess) about Best Korea. Be well.
> but there are at least three links in this comment section from much more credible sources that might inform your opinion more.
And none as direct ancestors to this comment. If you follow this directly up thread up you'll find I'm the only one to have sourced any reference beyond the very top level comment, which was an Amazon link to a book. Even if we expand to branches from tzs second level comment, there's almost no references.
> I recommend the New Yorker article first.
I did find what I assume is the New Yorker article you mentioned in a sub-thread that starts out talking about Qaddafi, but it just seems to bolster my point:
Six years into Kim Jong Un’s reign, some analysts in Seoul argue that senior Party officials can overrule or direct him, but U.S. intelligence believes that Kim is in sole command. ... That left Jong Un, who had received a degree in physics from Kim Il Sung University, had trained as an artillery officer, and was active in security and political work.
So an intelligent person that is well versed in the challenges and threats artillery faces? Are we to assume he ignores the obvious weaknesses that he should know of (since he's trained in their aspects) then?
The Obama Administration studied the potential costs and benefits of a preventive war intended to destroy North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Its conclusion, according to Rice, in the Times, was that it would be “lunacy,” resulting in “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of casualties.” ... If Kim used his stockpiles of sarin gas and biological weapons, the toll would reach the millions. U.S. and South Korean forces could eventually overwhelm the North Korean military, but, by any measure, the conflict would yield one of the worst mass killings in the modern age.
So the same source you called out as worth reading that might inform my opinion mirror what I've been stating all along. Attacking North Korea would result in massive casualties in South Korea. There is no current strategy that would result in us wiping out the offensive capability of North Korea before they can cause massive damage.
> My chief issue with your comments is, as I stated before, your general implications and assertions, particularly in regards to China and Best Korean competency.
So, my implications and assertions that a nation that views its defense a existential priority won't put the bare minimum of 1910's level technology in place to make sure they have secure land lines run to important military locations? This is a country with artillery that is literally "dug in", as in they've placed the entire thing below ground with large hanger doors that can be closed to shield the artillery for defense, and opened for attack.
NK has an estimated 12,000 pieces of tube artillery, and another 2,300 multiple launch rocket systems.[1] That we would be capable of knocking all these out, or that they don't have specific orders on exactly how to proceed should the command structure deteriorate that would result in them commencing attack requires more explanation than "we'll take out the cannons quickly" which is the argument most the responses have put forth, and as I've references previously from educated sources, that is not the case.
I'll just note that I'm still citing references, my own and ones you pointed out, which still support my argument. If you can't cite something yourself, perhaps you should examine your own beliefs, and why there's no evidence to be found for them.
I think it’s fair to assume that such answers assume the US isn’t willing to preemptively nuke an entire southern swath of North Korea. If we are, and Trump is trying very hard to at least pretend that we are, it’s a totally different ballgame.
There's also the dud rate that's a contributing factor here.
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IIRC from a recent article regarding potential DPRK artillery salvo on Seoul the civilian casualties are in the tens of thousands.
South Korea kind of like Israel have bomb shelters everywhere. So DPRK only has a very limited number of salvos before people realize what's happening and seek cover (also counter-battery fire).
IMHO South Korea should have moved their capital a long time ago. They had 50+ years.
Your first strike plan appears to use nuclear weapons against another country (not seen since 1945), on such a massive scale that it knocks out the ability for North Korea to respond.
Lets say for some miracle you're right, and the plan works. The fallout is going somewhere - China, South Korea, Japan, and the far east of Russia. That's a lot of unhappy people right there, before the rest of the world realises just what tiny hands has done and the US truly becomes the evil empire.
The US doesn't need a nuclear strike, the fixed artillery installations can be hit with cruise missiles and air strikes, Pyongyang can be levelled with conventional bombing.
People also overestimate the amount of fallout from modern nuclear weapons, it won't be a picnic site anytime soon but it's not going to turn into a Fall out game either.
Nuking the DMZ isn't going to happen unless it's to stop a flood of 200 million zombies, but nuking Pyongyang isn't going to have drastic effects on SK due to fallout or radiation worse case people would have to drink bottled water for a few weeks.
> People also overestimate the amount of fallout from modern nuclear weapons
If those people include the South Koreans, you still have a problem. Some estimates I’ve heard say more Americans were killed by heart attacks caused by the increase in blood pressure caused by the fear of terrorism after 9/11 than by actual terrorism. Likewise, if just 10% of Seoul flees in fear of radiation, I’d expect many dead just from the running-away part.
DPRK leadership wouldn't know a strike was underway until most of their military capability could be destroyed by stratcom.
A strike would not originate from North Dakota -- it would come from stealth bombers right on top of their artillery forces and command and control infrastructure, as well as from nearby boomers (ctf134) launching at a pace of a dozen warheads per minute, per boat, throwing mk-4/5's with recently upgraded fuzing systems.
When the LEP is complete, they will be GPS guided and accurate enough to destroy hardened targets from kinetic energy alone.
If the DPRK threat continues to escalate, and the US were concerned enough, F-35's could be upgraded with B61-12 harnesses, adding a nuclear stealth armada with pinpoint-accurate weapons to the arsenal. US fbm's are also not equipped to close to capacity due to arms control agreements. During initial flight testing, maneuvers consistent with deployment of 14 warheads were observed, meaning an fbm could deploy 336 warheads.
You're underestimating the power and depth of American and South Korean counterbattery along the DMZ. DPRK will not be able to sustain a prolonged artillery attack. They'll get a their first punches in, but they won't be able to keep it up. All that shit is completely automated, too. All they have to do is flip a switch and anything in Best Korea firing ordnance across the DMZ will explode fairly quickly and completely automatically.
And South Koreans: Seoul is just 60km (35 miles) from the border, about as far as Palo Alto from SF. Even if the nukes don't affect South Korea, the DPRK has the border lined with arms (conventional, but effective enough).
If you "annihilate as much as North Korea as we need in order to prevent a counter attack" you'd also be annihilating much of South Korea- and China, and every country bordering North Korea to boot.
That's unless your scientists have found a way to control nuclear fallout so that it stays within national borders.
> If you "annihilate as much as North Korea as we need in order to prevent a counter attack" you'd also be annihilating much of South Korea- and China, and every country bordering North Korea to boot.
Trouble with NK is, they don't have second strike capability, so a disarming first strike from the US is possible and NK knows that. That puts NK in a use it or lose it situation with their nuclear weapons and it may be, that the regime calculates that they (the generals) can survive one. Or they don't, they calculate that their only chance is rapid escalation and basically calling the bluff of the US, or they may just prefer to go out with a bang rather than with a wimper. That means that the nuclear threshold for NK may be a lot sooner than it would be if they have second strike capability. And the US knows that, and knows that they may have to use a disarming first strike before NK decides it's only chance is rapid escalation. NK knows that the US knows. Toss twitter into the mix and you have a pretty toxic stew, even though nobody is actually very unhappy about the status quo.
China cares a lot if North Korea became reunified and the US still kept military bases in Korea. China doesn't want US forces on its border any more than the US wants Chinese forces on its border. They support NK because it is a buffer.
> Given the size of the Soviet Union, how far it is from the United States, the available spying and reconnaissance technology (no satellites, no stealth aircraft), and that the US was only four years out of World War II, I don't think there is any way the US could have made a creditable threat to use military force to stop the Russians.
That whole 'massive military presence in western europe and asia minor' thing notwithstanding of couse..
Less so than you might think. We brought our forces home after WWII, which put them on the wrong side of the Atlantic to mount a defense against a Soviet invasion of Europe. That's actually where a lot of the early urgency originated in nuclear weapons development - not just to stay ahead of the Russkies, but to as quickly as possible mount a credible deterrent to precisely that potential Soviet war plan.
We brought some of them home. The US still had a quarter of a million troops in Germany in the late 1980s. In the 1950s, there were still 300,000 to 400,000 across all of Europe (eg 50,000 in the UK in the mid to late 1950s).
That's not but about a sixth of what the tank-heavy Red Army had at the time - a sixth which in a new war would have no hope of timely reinforcement, because of the aforementioned ocean. A nuclear deterrent was still seen as valuable, even necessary, and I think not wrongly so.
The US forces obviously were not the only counter forces in Europe. It wasn't just ~300,000 US troops vs the entire Red Army.
It was: the US, the UK, France, Western Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Turkey. Russia also very likely would have lost several of its western post WW2 Soviet Union territories in the chaos.
The US could bomb Russia from all over Europe. Russia couldn't sustain a meaningful bombing campaign against the US mainland. Russia also had a mediocre navy compared to the US. Rapid attrition would have guaranteed a Russian loss.
Russia was very weak for 30 years after WW2 (really their entire existence except for the brief oil boom of 1974-84). While the US was in the exact opposite position. Timely US reinforcement probably would not have been necessary. That's a war that would have gone on either for years, or for a few weeks. Russia also would have had few allies in a European war. The US had the manpower, financial and manufacturing ability to stay in a long-term fight with Russia, whereas Russia could not have afforded to stay in it. They could have never replaced their war manufacturing after the US destroyed it with aerial bombing, and the war would have ended there (in the non-nuclear scenario). Russia would pull out the nuclear card, an equivalent of suing for peace, and that would have been that.
Some of the NATO plans for a Soviet attack were pretty crazy. They had plans where they would not start any real defensive action until the enemy reached the Rhine, hoping to trade almost all of West Germany for time so that US reinforcements could cross the Atlantic and deploy.
Major bridges and railway lines in Germany were designed with ways to block or destroy them to deny then to the enemy. Even the smaller roads near the border had holes in them for explosive charges (sometimes allegedly even pre-placed to save time). I grew up at the Czech border and have seen these. All of this was done to slow any invasion force that might enter the country from the east. After the fall of the iron curtain all of this was removed.
Also, Germany until 1990 was hardly in a political position to deny its western Allies the stationing of more troops if they had really wanted. Formally, provisions from the WW2 surrender were still in place that would have allowed the disbanding of the West German government and placement under allied control (this finally ended with the 2 plus 4 treaties).
Thankfully, the defense plan never needed to be tested, so there is no telling if it would have worked.
> the US was only four years out of World War II, I don't think there is any way the US could have made a creditable threat to use military force to stop the Russians.
Is it actually similar, though?
The US got the bomb in 1945.
The Russians got theirs in 1949.
Given the size of the Soviet Union, how far it is from the United States, the available spying and reconnaissance technology (no satellites, no stealth aircraft), and that the US was only four years out of World War II, I don't think there is any way the US could have made a creditable threat to use military force to stop the Russians.
Also, China and Russia were still on good terms back then. China might not have stayed out of it if the US attacked their ally and neighbor.
Compare to North Korea and Iran. In both cases the US can make a creditable military threat. From a purely military point of view, the US could easily wipe either (or both) of them out.
Furthermore, neither has any powerful allies who want them to get nukes.
With North Korea, their only powerful ally is China and I don't think China actually cares if North Korea gets destroyed as long as (1) it doesn't send a lot of refugees across the Chinese border, and (2) whatever replaces it continues to function as a buffer zone between them and South Korea because they do not want a US ally right on their border.