It said 80 000 animals were slaughtered, but as far as industrial farming goes, I have no clue if that's a large figure or not; it seems that tens of thousands of animals get slaughtered at a drop of a dime.
And that was 6 tons of the stuff from a factory, that's many times what you could load into an artillery shell.
Which is not to say it wouldn't suck, it definitely would. But I don't see it being as especially more deadly than just shelling the damn city with explosives.
There was 6 tons of material leaked, which contained an estimated 1 kg of the dioxin. 80,000 animals were slaughtered and they lost the harvests for several years - that's absolutely economically ruinous on anything other then an absolutely isolated scale.
There was 6 tons of material leaked, which contained an estimated 1 kg of the dioxin.
self.readingComprehension -= 1
Well, anyways. I'm not too worried about the farms, I think it'd be preferable that they lob the shells into isolated areas than into a metro, but I'm seeing water contamination as probably the major issue.
NK would be stupid to do that
all that food that they're getting now? the same stuff they're using to keep themselves in power? It'll all get redirected to SK overnight and the only people who end up starving will be in NK
I noticed that one of the tributaries of the river that goes through Seoul starts well north of the DMZ. Gives them a pretty easy opportunity to poison that if they really wanted.
If the US had actually fulfilled its part of the 1994 agreed framework and helped build the light water reactors instead of delaying it for years and not giving the aid that was agreed upon North Korea wouldn't even have a nuclear program. The North Koreans fulfilled their side of the agreement but as usual the US bailed on the agreement as soon as politically possible then claimed the other side is evil/terrorist/rogue/insane for breaking the agreement.
It is amusing when people claim that Kim jong il is insane for wanting nukes while on the other hand praising the existence of nukes for preventing a world war 3 scenario.
Long term solutions for dealing with Best Korea seem to be limited to 2 options:
A. Starve them out.
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles which probably cost more than their entire economy, resulting in a mess of collateral damage and the mother of all refugee crises. And China will be pissed.
I'm thinking we should go ahead with Operation McRib Drop. Maybe we can smuggle some more cell phones and Jackie Chan movies in with the pamphlets. And pictures of happy Not-So-Best Koreans. And some netbooks and copies of Starcraft. And soccer balls with subversive slogans printed on them. I hear that's pretty popular in the parts of the world that aren't Best America.
Squigie on
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"Starving them out" will create the same refugee crisis as a war would so China will never be on board as they don't want to deal with the millions that would spill across the border in any event major enough to force leadership change.
Long term solutions for dealing with Best Korea seem to be limited to 2 options:
A. Starve them out.
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles which probably cost more than their entire economy, resulting in a mess of collateral damage and the mother of all refugee crises. And China will be pissed.
I'm thinking we should go ahead with Operation McRib Drop. Maybe we can smuggle some more cell phones and Jackie Chan movies in with the pamphlets. And pictures of happy Not-So-Best Koreans. And some netbooks and copies of Starcraft. And soccer balls with subversive slogans printed on them. I hear that's pretty popular in the parts of the world that aren't Best America.
There's some truth to this
The korean conflict has to be solved by starcraft
If the US had actually fulfilled its part of the 1994 agreed framework and helped build the light water reactors instead of delaying it for years and not giving the aid that was agreed upon North Korea wouldn't even have a nuclear program. The North Koreans fulfilled their side of the agreement but as usual the US bailed on the agreement as soon as politically possible then claimed the other side is evil/terrorist/rogue/insane for breaking the agreement.
It is amusing when people claim that Kim jong il is insane for wanting nukes while on the other hand praising the existence of nukes for preventing a world war 3 scenario.
The whole "you, a sovereign nation, aren't allowed a nuclear program because we don't want you to have one" thing sits pretty uneasily with me, but so does NK having nuclear weapons with how aggressive they are. The other thing is at Yongbyon they're currently proceeding to try and make light water reactors as benignly as is really possible, and are still getting quite a bit of 'LOOK! THEY'RE EVIL!' for it. But again, shelling civilians.
If the US had actually fulfilled its part of the 1994 agreed framework and helped build the light water reactors instead of delaying it for years and not giving the aid that was agreed upon North Korea wouldn't even have a nuclear program. The North Koreans fulfilled their side of the agreement but as usual the US bailed on the agreement as soon as politically possible then claimed the other side is evil/terrorist/rogue/insane for breaking the agreement.
Yes, the slow pace we made in giving aid to a country starved, enslaved, and bankrupted by its own leadership was totally responsible for North Korea going nuclear.
If the US had actually fulfilled its part of the 1994 agreed framework and helped build the light water reactors instead of delaying it for years and not giving the aid that was agreed upon North Korea wouldn't even have a nuclear program. The North Koreans fulfilled their side of the agreement but as usual the US bailed on the agreement as soon as politically possible then claimed the other side is evil/terrorist/rogue/insane for breaking the agreement.
Yes, the slow pace we made in giving aid to a country starved, enslaved, and bankrupted by its own leadership was totally responsible for North Korea going nuclear.
I mean, what choice did they have?
I'm not defending the North Korean regime. Simply stating the fact that the US broke the agreement that would have lead to a non-nuclear North Korea. The US has more use for a "big bad" enemy (or thought it did at the time) than it does for a non-nuclear Korean peninsula. The aid was heavy oil for energy that was previously being generated by NK's nuclear reactors that were deactivated under the agreement. When they didn't get the oil they reactivated the reactors and have since used the materials produce weapons. This wouldn't have necessarily stopped the dick waving contests going on but it did at the time and certainly would've made it far less menacing without the looming spectre of nuclear weapons.
Qliphoth on
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
If the US had actually fulfilled its part of the 1994 agreed framework and helped build the light water reactors instead of delaying it for years and not giving the aid that was agreed upon North Korea wouldn't even have a nuclear program. The North Koreans fulfilled their side of the agreement but as usual the US bailed on the agreement as soon as politically possible then claimed the other side is evil/terrorist/rogue/insane for breaking the agreement.
Yes, the slow pace we made in giving aid to a country starved, enslaved, and bankrupted by its own leadership was totally responsible for North Korea going nuclear.
I mean, what choice did they have?
I'm not defending the North Korean regime. Simply stating the fact that the US broke the agreement that would have lead to a non-nuclear North Korea. The US has more use for a "big bad" enemy (or thought it did at the time) than it does for a non-nuclear Korean peninsula. The aid was heavy oil for energy that was previously being generated by NK's nuclear reactors that were deactivated under the agreement. When they didn't get the oil they reactivated the reactors and have since used the materials produce weapons. This wouldn't have necessarily stopped the dick waving contests going on but it did at the time and certainly would've made it far less menacing without the looming spectre of nuclear weapons.
Still, hardly the US' "fault" for their turning the reactors into generators for nuclear fuel.
Just because the city won't change over your old gas lines to electricity doesn't mean you get to use the gas to burn your neighbor's house down.
Israel's military, in my opinion, is probably the most terrifying. If not from actual combat, but from the idea that they are landlocked by people who probably wish to kill them. I imagine their training is much more serious than our death by powerpoint, and in the harder parts of the military they've been known to kill each other... as in, not an accident.
I can't recall ever talking to a Combat Arms Army Soldier that sits in a classroom for "Death by power point" in regarding how to kill someone on a battlefield.
In that situation, plus the fact they aren't a third world country with crappy MIG jets in their air force (They have the F35... and while its no F22, it's an extremely effective war implement), their special forces are damn near second to none, and their pilots are arguably the most skilled in the entire world.
Since when do they have a plane that hasn't even been mass produced yet?
And most of the Army isn't combat arms, but most of the Army will see a firefight in Afghanistan. Several people in my unit, signal people, people whose job it is to make sure the FOBs have their CPOF and JNN working, satellites locked on, and data streams-a-flowin, end up on convoys and even patrols behind 240bs, M4's, or even MK19's. Most of our training consists of being bored while someone reads off a powerpoint presentation, twice-yearly rifle qualifications, the occasional "fun" weapon (The MK19 is a blast, no pun intended), or our EST2000 virtual qualification/scenario trainers.
Back to the subject of N. Korea, is the discovery of a uranium enrichment plant and their display of artillery just some sort of wagging? The guy would have to be even crazier than we think to nuke S. Korea. China would completely let their rabid dog go to the wolves, and possibly try to put it down themselves.
jungleroomx on
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Long term solutions for dealing with Best Korea seem to be limited to 2 options:
A. Starve them out.
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles which probably cost more than their entire economy, resulting in a mess of collateral damage and the mother of all refugee crises. And China will be pissed.
Both sides want eventual reunification. I expect a peaceful end, German style.
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles
...you mean nuclear ones?
We have traditional missiles that deliver a payload comparable to very small nuclear munitions.
You can't take out North Korea's military with them, though. Underground bunkers, mountain-tunnel networks, extremely difficult terrain overall, massive manpower reserves and the possibility to mobilize practically the entire country. If it came to war, it would be boots on the ground, just like any other war.
There is really no such thing as a mass-missile warfare anyway.
Long term solutions for dealing with Best Korea seem to be limited to 2 options:
A. Starve them out.
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles which probably cost more than their entire economy, resulting in a mess of collateral damage and the mother of all refugee crises. And China will be pissed.
Both sides want eventual reunification. I expect a peaceful end, German style.
Even though that's the stated goal of both governments, it's not clear that either side actually wants that. A lot of the South Korean population doesn't want to have to deal with all the problems that would be caused by reunification, and the North Korean leaders must realize they'd never be able to maintain their power in a unified country, even if North Korea somehow conquered South Korea.
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles
...you mean nuclear ones?
No, just a small exaggeration of the prospects of a country the size of a kaiser roll held together by propaganda and foreign aid against the most expensive military in the history of the world.
Long term solutions for dealing with Best Korea seem to be limited to 2 options:
A. Starve them out.
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles which probably cost more than their entire economy, resulting in a mess of collateral damage and the mother of all refugee crises. And China will be pissed.
I'm thinking we should go ahead with Operation McRib Drop. Maybe we can smuggle some more cell phones and Jackie Chan movies in with the pamphlets. And pictures of happy Not-So-Best Koreans. And some netbooks and copies of Starcraft. And soccer balls with subversive slogans printed on them. I hear that's pretty popular in the parts of the world that aren't Best America.
There's some truth to this
The korean conflict has to be solved by starcraft
Seriously, damn near every plan put forth in this thread is to sanction them into the ground, bomb them into the ground before they shell the crap out of Seoul, or wait for things to get better on their own. I'm for trying a massive campaign of our own propaganda. Sure, they're xenophobic as hell so they won't trust the West, and they only sorta like China because Japan was the most recent of those two to fuck them over, but there is a whole country of Koreans right next door. Blizzard's Korea might be able to think of a few persuasive arguments. At the least they'd know what's popular and tasty in the area.
Squigie on
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The facts that nukes are very useful is responsible for North Korea going nuclear.
Yeah. I mean, I am all for them never having them. But it IS a really good course of action from their point of view, as it will minimize the chance for any meddling
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles
...you mean nuclear ones?
No, just a small exaggeration of the prospects of a country the size of a kaiser roll held together by propaganda and foreign aid against the most expensive military in the history of the world.
Best America, fuck yeah.
America would obviously win. But it would still be a shitty war that would last for years and there would be lot of dead people at the end of it. Mountain warfare is a bitch. Mountain warfare in a country that has spent pretty much it's entire existence in preparing for the possibility of a war is way worse.
And hey, Americans of all people should know that size matters not.
Vietnam was what it was because we were tossing people with no training into a meat grinder. Our present military is big and professional, and has had nine years to learn about that kind of warfare.
Long term solutions for dealing with Best Korea seem to be limited to 2 options:
A. Starve them out.
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles which probably cost more than their entire economy, resulting in a mess of collateral damage and the mother of all refugee crises. And China will be pissed.
Both sides want eventual reunification. I expect a peaceful end, German style.
except east and west germany were on nearly equal footing in terms of infrastructure and economy, or at least equal as compared to this:
reunification would be pretty much disastrous for the south's economy. Even today east germany is still affected economically by the partition
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles
...you mean nuclear ones?
We have traditional missiles that deliver a payload comparable to very small nuclear munitions.
You can't take out North Korea's military with them, though. Underground bunkers, mountain-tunnel networks, extremely difficult terrain overall, massive manpower reserves and the possibility to mobilize practically the entire country. If it came to war, it would be boots on the ground, just like any other war.
There is really no such thing as a mass-missile warfare anyway.
Boots on the ground is a part of it.
The massive damage is caused by artillery, naval bombardment, and air support. Ground forces are there to secure and go in where bombs will do more harm than good... however...
There is one thing going in our favor if North Korea decides to mobilize their entire country, and that is there would be no such thing as collateral damage. Il has to know this, and actually making every citizen a soldier would be to his detriment. The US can positively wreck a country even when its tied to a leash, imagine being put in a position where every single North Korean is a good-to-go target, and its open season. and it is no longer asymmetrical warfare.
That being said, as it has been pointed out, North Korean commandos are terrifying. However, the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of citizens who would be mobilized to fight us would not be, and in the end would be as sad and tragic a situation as any I can think of. "Fight against an incredibly powerful opponent (And if China shooed NK away, a huge team of opponents) and be killed, or we'll kill you ourselves right here."
NK is not a threat to the US, but it is a threat to SK, a threat to Chinas standing (EVEN with its current civil rights violations) in the first-world league of countries, and a threat to its own people.
Vietnam was what it was because we were tossing people with no training into a meat grinder. Our present military is big and professional, and has had nine years to learn about that kind of warfare.
It'll still be hell though.
no, it was because the US had an incredibly confused mission statement that changed a lot, drew a completely artificial division in a country with an incredibly strong national identity, and couldn't stomach the losses that the vietnamese could inflict on them and were willing to suffer in order to do so
the vietnamese had a far more concrete reason to fight than 'uhh dominoes?'
edit: sub-par training was of course a small contribution though
The facts that nukes are very useful is responsible for North Korea going nuclear.
Yeah. I mean, I am all for them never having them. But it IS a really good course of action from their point of view, as it will minimize the chance for any meddling
It is the best deterrent against something like the US invasion of Iraq.
The Vietnam War is a poor comparison to a possible new Korean war because northern Vietnam had the backing of several major powers. China isn't going to want any of them coming over if it can prevent it, and the best Korea can hope for from China in a new Korean war would be for them to be neutral. The technological disparity is also much more vast.
I don't see why this wouldn't be closer to the Korean War where the UN forces drove back the North Korean forces to close to China. Considering it was fought on the same territory, that war would make more sense as a comparison even if it is a flawed comparison because a new war in Korea wouldn't be a proxy war with both sides supported by superpowers.
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles
...you mean nuclear ones?
No, just a small exaggeration of the prospects of a country the size of a kaiser roll held together by propaganda and foreign aid against the most expensive military in the history of the world.
Best America, fuck yeah.
America would obviously win. But it would still be a shitty war that would last for years and there would be lot of dead people at the end of it. Mountain warfare is a bitch. Mountain warfare in a country that has spent pretty much it's entire existence in preparing for the possibility of a war is way worse.
And hey, Americans of all people should know that size matters not.
They are already starving, and 10 million in boots is 10 million not supplying food to that army. All we need to do is sink all their boats and blow up all their artillery, wait a week, and then hold up a sign reading, "WILL TRADE FOOD FOR RIFLES". Perfectly simple and totally foolproof. ...except for all the ways it would be utterly, utterly horrible.
Vietnam was what it was because we were tossing people with no training into a meat grinder. Our present military is big and professional, and has had nine years to learn about that kind of warfare.
It'll still be hell though.
At least we stopped forgetting what snipers are for every time peace was declared. For the longest time, every conflict started off all, "It's not honorable to shoot someone if they can't see you.:x" and ended up, "Holy balls, war is hard!D: Maybe we should train some snipers..."
Squigie on
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They are already starving, and 10 million in boots is 10 million not supplying food to that army. All we need to do is sink all their boats and blow up all their artillery, wait a week, and then hold up a sign reading, "WILL TRADE FOOD FOR RIFLES". Perfectly simple and totally foolproof. ...except for all the ways it would be utterly, utterly horrible.
The people are starving. The army gets all the food and money.
They won't have much use for boats anyway. Their artillery is only meaningful in the opening stages of the war when they rain fire on the border.
You seem to think that North Korea doesn't have any food at all...it does. Just not enough for all of the citizens, but in the case of war everything would go to the army anyway.
The war could not be won without a full scale invasion, occupation (and then annexation) and a massive counter-insurgency campaign where all the thousands of different holdouts and hundreds of tunnel complexes in the sprawling North Korean mountainscape would be flushed out. Anything else is just a fantasy or a result of not knowing much about war.
I don't see why this wouldn't be closer to the Korean War where the UN forces drove back the North Korean forces to close to China. Considering it was fought on the same territory, that war would make more sense as a comparison even if it is a flawed comparison because a new war in Korea wouldn't be a proxy war with both sides supported by superpowers.
It's a good comparison.
It also took 170,000 dead soldiers on the UN side to accomplish that.
The obvious technological progress means that the casualties on South Korean/U.S. side would be losing less soldiers, but there would still be casualties. More then in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. Defenitely more for the South Koreans. You'd also be looking for hundreds of thousands of casualties in the North Korean side, civilian and military.
Anyone who thinks the war would be easy is fooling themselves.
Some of the war-boners ITT are making me feel a bit ill. It's obvious there are loads of ways to get North Korea to integrate into the international community peacefully, the best way would be to drop those fucking sanctions and let their industry build up, quality of life increase, and for the people to start dealing with the outside world and go HEY COCKS EASE OFF A BIT (at their government).
Or we could keep choking them because they kinda beat us in war and they all deserve to starve as a result
Have sanctions ever done any good in history? I kind of think they only serve to strengthen the death-grip a tyrannical government has on its people.
Some of the war-boners ITT are making me feel a bit ill. It's obvious there are loads of ways to get North Korea to integrate into the international community peacefully, the best way would be to drop those fucking sanctions and let their industry build up, quality of life increase, and for the people to start dealing with the outside world and go HEY COCKS EASE OFF A BIT (at their government).
Or we could keep choking them because they kinda beat us in war and they all deserve to starve as a result
Have sanctions ever done any good in history? I kind of think they only serve to strengthen the death-grip a tyrannical government has on its people.
There are no sanctions against North Korea except towards arms trade, illegal drugs and other stuff the ruling elite is so fond of. It's largest and almost only trade partner is China who couldn't give a flying crap about what U.S. imposes on North Korea or not.
In fact, the whole aid that keeps North Koreans from succumbing to the famine is sort of the opposite of sanctions.
And North Korea's shitty situation is not in any way or form a result of said relatively recent sanctions imposed to it by the United States. The disastrous policies of Kim il Sung and his son are the reason the country is a shithole.
I kind of lump them all together in terms of general shittyness of foreign policy. Pointing at those places like they're anything special in the world isn't really helping
Robman on
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
Korea, Cuba, Iraq.
All the same.
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Waffles or whateverPreviously known as, I shit you not, "Waffen"Registered Userregular
Its funny now because my dad (he freaks out about anything like this) is already up in a shout saying he doesn't want his son serving in no Second Korean war. Then I respond "Its the same one, it never ended".
Posts
But seriously, how bad is that?
It said 80 000 animals were slaughtered, but as far as industrial farming goes, I have no clue if that's a large figure or not; it seems that tens of thousands of animals get slaughtered at a drop of a dime.
And that was 6 tons of the stuff from a factory, that's many times what you could load into an artillery shell.
Which is not to say it wouldn't suck, it definitely would. But I don't see it being as especially more deadly than just shelling the damn city with explosives.
self.readingComprehension -= 1
Well, anyways. I'm not too worried about the farms, I think it'd be preferable that they lob the shells into isolated areas than into a metro, but I'm seeing water contamination as probably the major issue.
all that food that they're getting now? the same stuff they're using to keep themselves in power? It'll all get redirected to SK overnight and the only people who end up starving will be in NK
edit: oh they did this with it
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It is amusing when people claim that Kim jong il is insane for wanting nukes while on the other hand praising the existence of nukes for preventing a world war 3 scenario.
A. Starve them out.
B. Take out their military with a handful of missiles which probably cost more than their entire economy, resulting in a mess of collateral damage and the mother of all refugee crises. And China will be pissed.
I'm thinking we should go ahead with Operation McRib Drop. Maybe we can smuggle some more cell phones and Jackie Chan movies in with the pamphlets. And pictures of happy Not-So-Best Koreans. And some netbooks and copies of Starcraft. And soccer balls with subversive slogans printed on them. I hear that's pretty popular in the parts of the world that aren't Best America.
...you mean nuclear ones?
There's some truth to this
The korean conflict has to be solved by starcraft
The whole "you, a sovereign nation, aren't allowed a nuclear program because we don't want you to have one" thing sits pretty uneasily with me, but so does NK having nuclear weapons with how aggressive they are. The other thing is at Yongbyon they're currently proceeding to try and make light water reactors as benignly as is really possible, and are still getting quite a bit of 'LOOK! THEY'RE EVIL!' for it. But again, shelling civilians.
kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
Yes, the slow pace we made in giving aid to a country starved, enslaved, and bankrupted by its own leadership was totally responsible for North Korea going nuclear.
I mean, what choice did they have?
I'm not defending the North Korean regime. Simply stating the fact that the US broke the agreement that would have lead to a non-nuclear North Korea. The US has more use for a "big bad" enemy (or thought it did at the time) than it does for a non-nuclear Korean peninsula. The aid was heavy oil for energy that was previously being generated by NK's nuclear reactors that were deactivated under the agreement. When they didn't get the oil they reactivated the reactors and have since used the materials produce weapons. This wouldn't have necessarily stopped the dick waving contests going on but it did at the time and certainly would've made it far less menacing without the looming spectre of nuclear weapons.
Still, hardly the US' "fault" for their turning the reactors into generators for nuclear fuel.
Just because the city won't change over your old gas lines to electricity doesn't mean you get to use the gas to burn your neighbor's house down.
To answer your second question first:
http://www.armybase.us/2009/07/israel-air-force-orders-1st-f-35-jsf-squadron/
And most of the Army isn't combat arms, but most of the Army will see a firefight in Afghanistan. Several people in my unit, signal people, people whose job it is to make sure the FOBs have their CPOF and JNN working, satellites locked on, and data streams-a-flowin, end up on convoys and even patrols behind 240bs, M4's, or even MK19's. Most of our training consists of being bored while someone reads off a powerpoint presentation, twice-yearly rifle qualifications, the occasional "fun" weapon (The MK19 is a blast, no pun intended), or our EST2000 virtual qualification/scenario trainers.
Back to the subject of N. Korea, is the discovery of a uranium enrichment plant and their display of artillery just some sort of wagging? The guy would have to be even crazier than we think to nuke S. Korea. China would completely let their rabid dog go to the wolves, and possibly try to put it down themselves.
We have traditional missiles that deliver a payload comparable to very small nuclear munitions.
Both sides want eventual reunification. I expect a peaceful end, German style.
You can't take out North Korea's military with them, though. Underground bunkers, mountain-tunnel networks, extremely difficult terrain overall, massive manpower reserves and the possibility to mobilize practically the entire country. If it came to war, it would be boots on the ground, just like any other war.
There is really no such thing as a mass-missile warfare anyway.
Even though that's the stated goal of both governments, it's not clear that either side actually wants that. A lot of the South Korean population doesn't want to have to deal with all the problems that would be caused by reunification, and the North Korean leaders must realize they'd never be able to maintain their power in a unified country, even if North Korea somehow conquered South Korea.
No, just a small exaggeration of the prospects of a country the size of a kaiser roll held together by propaganda and foreign aid against the most expensive military in the history of the world.
Seriously, damn near every plan put forth in this thread is to sanction them into the ground, bomb them into the ground before they shell the crap out of Seoul, or wait for things to get better on their own. I'm for trying a massive campaign of our own propaganda. Sure, they're xenophobic as hell so they won't trust the West, and they only sorta like China because Japan was the most recent of those two to fuck them over, but there is a whole country of Koreans right next door. Blizzard's Korea might be able to think of a few persuasive arguments. At the least they'd know what's popular and tasty in the area.
Yeah. I mean, I am all for them never having them. But it IS a really good course of action from their point of view, as it will minimize the chance for any meddling
America would obviously win. But it would still be a shitty war that would last for years and there would be lot of dead people at the end of it. Mountain warfare is a bitch. Mountain warfare in a country that has spent pretty much it's entire existence in preparing for the possibility of a war is way worse.
And hey, Americans of all people should know that size matters not.
It'll still be hell though.
except east and west germany were on nearly equal footing in terms of infrastructure and economy, or at least equal as compared to this:
reunification would be pretty much disastrous for the south's economy. Even today east germany is still affected economically by the partition
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Boots on the ground is a part of it.
The massive damage is caused by artillery, naval bombardment, and air support. Ground forces are there to secure and go in where bombs will do more harm than good... however...
There is one thing going in our favor if North Korea decides to mobilize their entire country, and that is there would be no such thing as collateral damage. Il has to know this, and actually making every citizen a soldier would be to his detriment. The US can positively wreck a country even when its tied to a leash, imagine being put in a position where every single North Korean is a good-to-go target, and its open season. and it is no longer asymmetrical warfare.
That being said, as it has been pointed out, North Korean commandos are terrifying. However, the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of citizens who would be mobilized to fight us would not be, and in the end would be as sad and tragic a situation as any I can think of. "Fight against an incredibly powerful opponent (And if China shooed NK away, a huge team of opponents) and be killed, or we'll kill you ourselves right here."
NK is not a threat to the US, but it is a threat to SK, a threat to Chinas standing (EVEN with its current civil rights violations) in the first-world league of countries, and a threat to its own people.
no, it was because the US had an incredibly confused mission statement that changed a lot, drew a completely artificial division in a country with an incredibly strong national identity, and couldn't stomach the losses that the vietnamese could inflict on them and were willing to suffer in order to do so
the vietnamese had a far more concrete reason to fight than 'uhh dominoes?'
edit: sub-par training was of course a small contribution though
kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
It is the best deterrent against something like the US invasion of Iraq.
The Vietnam War is a poor comparison to a possible new Korean war because northern Vietnam had the backing of several major powers. China isn't going to want any of them coming over if it can prevent it, and the best Korea can hope for from China in a new Korean war would be for them to be neutral. The technological disparity is also much more vast.
I don't see why this wouldn't be closer to the Korean War where the UN forces drove back the North Korean forces to close to China. Considering it was fought on the same territory, that war would make more sense as a comparison even if it is a flawed comparison because a new war in Korea wouldn't be a proxy war with both sides supported by superpowers.
They are already starving, and 10 million in boots is 10 million not supplying food to that army. All we need to do is sink all their boats and blow up all their artillery, wait a week, and then hold up a sign reading, "WILL TRADE FOOD FOR RIFLES". Perfectly simple and totally foolproof. ...except for all the ways it would be utterly, utterly horrible.
At least we stopped forgetting what snipers are for every time peace was declared. For the longest time, every conflict started off all, "It's not honorable to shoot someone if they can't see you.:x" and ended up, "Holy balls, war is hard!D: Maybe we should train some snipers..."
This is the worst situation because the best thing that can happen is really, really bad.
The people are starving. The army gets all the food and money.
They won't have much use for boats anyway. Their artillery is only meaningful in the opening stages of the war when they rain fire on the border.
You seem to think that North Korea doesn't have any food at all...it does. Just not enough for all of the citizens, but in the case of war everything would go to the army anyway.
The war could not be won without a full scale invasion, occupation (and then annexation) and a massive counter-insurgency campaign where all the thousands of different holdouts and hundreds of tunnel complexes in the sprawling North Korean mountainscape would be flushed out. Anything else is just a fantasy or a result of not knowing much about war.
It's a good comparison.
It also took 170,000 dead soldiers on the UN side to accomplish that.
The obvious technological progress means that the casualties on South Korean/U.S. side would be losing less soldiers, but there would still be casualties. More then in the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. Defenitely more for the South Koreans. You'd also be looking for hundreds of thousands of casualties in the North Korean side, civilian and military.
Anyone who thinks the war would be easy is fooling themselves.
Or we could keep choking them because they kinda beat us in war and they all deserve to starve as a result
Have sanctions ever done any good in history? I kind of think they only serve to strengthen the death-grip a tyrannical government has on its people.
There are no sanctions against North Korea except towards arms trade, illegal drugs and other stuff the ruling elite is so fond of. It's largest and almost only trade partner is China who couldn't give a flying crap about what U.S. imposes on North Korea or not.
In fact, the whole aid that keeps North Koreans from succumbing to the famine is sort of the opposite of sanctions.
And North Korea's shitty situation is not in any way or form a result of said relatively recent sanctions imposed to it by the United States. The disastrous policies of Kim il Sung and his son are the reason the country is a shithole.
I think you are thinking more of Iran or Cuba.
All the same.
Its funny now because my dad (he freaks out about anything like this) is already up in a shout saying he doesn't want his son serving in no Second Korean war. Then I respond "Its the same one, it never ended".