Posted on 01/05/2003 7:36:49 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Edited on 04/13/2004 3:30:07 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
NK won't do anything to the ROK. The NK regime would go down about 5-10 weeks after the ROKA completes its mobilization. At that point the ROKA will start advancing north and the trans-Pacific shipping pipeline will be filled with the US strategic reserve of artillery munitions. Unless NK uses weapons of mass destruction earlier, in which case they'll be nuked to glass. Not tactical nukes - strategic ones to put them down ASAP before they can do more damage.
Look, NK has a 1930's style economy and transportation infrastructure, is cut up by mountains and has minimal food stocks. PGM attack will close the RR tunnels and bridges, and coastal shipping will cease. Then they'll starve even if the NK regime then surrenders (it won't) and we try to save the population.
Millions, repeat, millions of NK civilians (probably 10 million plus) will die within four months of any NK attack on the ROK. And the NK regime will die. Both of those will happen in the event of an NK attack on the ROK regardless of what else happens.
And the NK leaders know this. They might attack the ROK if they are convinced they're already going down within a few months, but events haven't gotten anywhere near that yet.
The idea of the NKPA doing anything beyond hunkering down in its bunkers and bombarding the Seoul area is ludicrous. They don't have the capability anymore.
The Seoul Snatch ceased to be a possibility at least 15 years ago. The NKPA lost its offensive maneuver capability when the Soviets stopped giving them POL during Reagan's second term.
My reading of history is a little different- I believe that the American people were VERY tired of war, and just wanted to get back to a normal way of life. Remember, prior to Pearl Harbor, the majority of popular sentiment in this country was Isolationist. We like to forget that, but it is true (as you will see if you go back and read magazines and newspapers from the 1935-1941 era).
I think it reflects well on Truman and Eisenhower that they were able to accomplish as much as they did. (Korea, Strategic Air Command, nuclear submarine program, etc). With a Bill Clinton or a Jimmy-Boy Carter, we would most likely have been conquered and destroyed by the mid-1960's. After all, the Communists had over half of the planet- AND nuclear weapons, and the means to deliver them.
I don't think I can agree. The absolute chaos that would erupt in a city of what--12 million people--all trying to flee south on the one main highway would create its own dynamic of death. Under the best of circumstances hundreds of thousands would die. Disease would thrive in the mounds of rotting corpses and spread quickly through the broken infrastructure. Mass starvation would begin to set in within a few weeks. Our forces would be contending day and night with panicked South Koreans while trying to fight off the North Koreans. It would be very, very ugly.
Ground conquest of NK can't begin until we've filled the trans-Pacific shipping pipeline with artillery munitions, which will take at least six weeks. We can nuke them to glass a lot faster than that but wouldn't unless they used chemical, biological or nuclear weapons first. Then we'd hit them with the massive strategic nuclear attack.
There are lots and lots of indications that the NKPA is much, much worse run than the 1940's Red Army. Starting with lots more lying at all levels.
Great one! Hey I don't think it can be successful, I was only asking are the DPRK lunatics thinking it can be?
Exactly. While the ROKs would likely hold on to Seoul, the city is too densely packed to weather an attack without collapsing. Imagine trying to make food deliveries in a city being hit with up to 300 artillery rounds several times a minute. The crowds would stop tearing each other apart just long enough to tear you apart.
There are no B-52s routinely stationed at Guam, but we may move some there.
As far as conventional war on the Korean peninsula, I would make two points:
1) The terrain is terrible- as is the weather (very hot in Summer, Arctic in Winter, muddy rice paddies, few roads, lots of rugged mountains- not "hills" as someone has described them!)
2) I have had the privilege of pursuing N. Korean infiltrators up and down some of those mountains- and they are GOOD SOLDIERS! These are not Iraqi clowns, who come out with their hands in the air after you drop a few bombs on them. Their command structure and logistics are both weak, but the individual soldier is willing and able to put up a hell of a fight.
The latter fell apart in the famine. IMO they'd be at most nuisances now.
Too true. The only reason that they don't get top billing is that internal North Korean operations are just far too arcane for most people, although more and more are studying up, thanks to the recent press about this nuclear issue. They are well on their way to becoming their own cliche, especially after the dust settles and the truth is more widely known.
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