Will North Korea win a war?

Aquamarine

http://www.rense.com/general37/nkorr.htm

Locrian

No, North Korea wouldn't win the war. I'm not so impressed with the information in the link, though I hope the military takes it seriously.

It wasn't that long ago that I remember people gasping about a country the US was about to engage had one of the world's top militaries and couldn't go on enough about how we'd never adapt to the terrain and how we'd never handle their elite troops. What followed was almost effortless.

On the other hand, the question of whether the US would win... well, that seems a much harder question to answer. I don't want anyone to think I've fallen into the trap of thinking there is always exactly one winner.

By the way, thanks for the link, very interesting stuff.

russ_watters

You mean could or would? Stipulating first that our presence in Iraq dropped under 100,000, certainly, no, N. Korea could not win a war with the US. With US strength equal to just before last-year's war with Iraq, we could take N. Korea in a similar amount of time: less than 1 month. Why? Two reasons:

On paper, their military sounds formidable, in reality, its a paper tiger. Why? Money. They don't have any and you can't buy spare parts for tanks and planes without money. See Iraq: on paper, they were similar in strength to N. Korea in 1991 and that was a short war. Since then, the US has advanced N. Korea and Iraq have not (the recent war showed some of our advances). The article practically brags (who wrote that thing? It reads like a propaganda piece) about obsolete Vietnam-era technology. That technology didn't help Iraq any in 1991 - we flew stealth fighters over Baghdad in the opening moments of the war.

Geography: With Pyongyang so close to the 38th parallel, a war that starts there would require masing a large force just north of it to stop a frontal invasion. In all likelyhood the main thrust would bypass this force and encircle the city, while the air force and Navy/Marine Corps air absolutely decimate the bulk of N Korea's military between Pyongyang and the 38th parallel.

WMD: N. Korea doesn't have nukes and likely won't before we have a good theater ABM defense (THAAD and ABL are coming along nicely and the SM-3 is about ready to deploy). The primary concern would be a chemical weapons shelling of Seoul. In any case, this has nothing to do with who would win, but rather if we fight.

edit:
Morale: Its overstated. With 1% of their population starving to death every year (that's 200,000 people), and rumors that the military is feeling the pinch, I doubt their morale is as good as people say. And that's probably moot anyway: some of the things that the US military did to Iraq's military two years ago would send chills down your spine - entire divisions of tanks disapppeared in seconds. There's nothing like rapid annihilation to reduce morale.

Scientific Method

The America-Israel nation can distroy any nation in the world, and will, one by one. It's an interesting situation: those nations that embraced the hippie ideology and decided not to create their own nukes/bio/chem. weapons are now weaker than those nations that did create and continue to create these weapons and are very susceptible to invasion and genocide.

Gonzolo

Yet ASAIK, their own official political concern is to reunite the 2 Koreas, so I hardly see how they could justify using WMD on Seoul, the people they would claim to be liberating.

My concern on this matter is China's involvement, considering their rising economy. Not sure where Russia stands.

Aquamarine

It does read like a propaganda piece. But is interesting since North Korea is close to collapsing due to starvation, economic ruin and infilitration of capitalistic culture. It is not impossible that the military and communist party might prefer to start a war if they believe that they might quickly conquer South Korea. They might see this chance as preferable to what would happen to them if their regime collapses.

http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/qnd...p?target=korea

russ_watters

We've had this discussion before actually, and my position was that I don't think China is a big fan of Il, though they still wouldn't necessarily appreciate US troops across the river from them. Russia has no troops to send and I don't think they'd care anyway. Yikes, the population is already starving to death, and the rations are being reduced more? The UN really needs to step up to the plate and do something about this.

vanesch

Why intervene in a situation that is resolving itself ? If they starve to death, they are not a threat to anyone, right ? Let's say that the population got anorexic

Argentum Vulpes

The UN already went down that road, the Korean war was the UN in the Korean peninsula. Sure it came around by the US badgering the Russian sectary to the UN out of the room so he couldn't veto the vote .

As for the point of WMD it most likely would just galvanize the US into fighting.

Yes we would win open conflict, our military is based on the fact if the enemy cant see you he can't hit you, but you can see him and blow him back into the stone age. Examples JADM's from near earth orbit, Phoenix missiles from 115 miles away, Tomahawk cruse missiles from 690 mile away, well you get the point.

However China is a point that could change the balance either way, in the Korean war we were about to wipe the north off the face of the map, but China got jumpy about the UN forces closing in on the Yalu river. They came to bat for the North and beat the UN back to the 38th. In a conflict now there is the point that the US can dangle our trade agreements, and also the fact that the Chinese aren't to happy with the north. Therefore with China today i think it could go either way.

franznietzsche

I just want to add, N Korea now "officially" has nukes.

This drastically changes the balance of power. While russ is right, they would not win in a conventional war, the possession of nuclear arms almost gaurantees their survival. No president (even bush) would try to invade a country with nuclear arms unilaterally. The same goes for Iran. Once they have the weapons, they're safe. Its a race until then.

PerennialII

The nuke situation does reverse things quite a bit, and other than that, if they're even as close to as fanatical as they're been depicted, this wouldn't be a walk in the park with or without the nuclear capability.

russ_watters

While they may now "officially" have nukes, I'm still on the fence about whether or not they actually have nukes.

CronoSpark

That is a sick sense of humour.

Edit: And as for the nukes in N. Korea, it is still questionable, since if N. Korea has nukes, then every nation should be involved... since a nuke really does damage. Hence... it is to their advantage to have nukes.

franznietzsche

How can you be on the fence? Its not a matter of opinion. THey either do or they don't.

FredGarvin

North Korea's level of nuke stockpile is very low. I read a statement, that was attriubuted to them, that they had two (2) bombs and fuel to make several more. That being said, their nuke ability has just become target numbers 1 and 2 for some Tomahawks, F117's and B2's. It doesn't take much to disable all production, especially on such a small scale.

I would lay dollars to donuts that right now we are trying to find out the locations of where they manufacture the materials and where the bombs are kept.

russ_watters

It most certainly is a matter of opinion at this point, because there is no hard evidence that they have nukes. Here are the facts:

Kim Jong Il is a brutal dictator, clinging to power via military force.
Kim Jong Il claims he has nuclear weapons.
North Korea has not exploded a nuclear weapon.

In light of the 1st and 3rd facts, Il's claim that he has a nuclear weapon must be viewed with suspicion. Furthermore, even if he has something that looks like a bomb, without a successful test, it is impossible to know if it would actually function.

Gokul43201

DPRK has exactly three things going for them (i) Seoul - which is comfortably within artillery range, (ii) Tokyo (iii) the taepodong program.

For these reasons it would take a whole lot of exceptionally good intel a good swig of bravado to engage DPRK in war. Can NK "win" ? Not if the US is (i) ruthless or (ii) has exceptionally good intel.