Geriatrix
Executive Member
http://open.salon.com/blog/don_rich...rea_says_it_is_about_to_be_attacked_watch_out
In my posts dating to late January, I predicted that the Korean Peninsula would become a very exciting place to watch due to Russian manipulation of North Korea, potentially as exciting as in the last Korean War.
We are now arriving at a very dangerous moment, as predicted.
The North Koreans are loudly announcing that they are about to be attacked.
Why?
Because while out of one side of its mouth, Russia is talking moderation, in private, their intelligence services, and especially their agents and agents of influence in the North ,are pouring poison into the ear of a dangerously isolated, and therefore dangerously paranoid, regime that the United States is about to attack it pre-emptively.
What is the point of this Russian exercise?
The Russian strategy is to trigger what from the North Korean prespective would be a pre-emptive strike on South Korea and U.S. Armed Forces defending the South, thereby straining U.S. military forces worlwide to the absolute maximum by precipitating a Second Korean War, a war in which this time all the parties will be nuclear armed states.
There is no more demanding military contingency for the U.S. Armed Forces than a war on the Korean Peninsula, both because of the geography of Seoul in relation to the DMZ, and most especially, because of the committment of DPRK soldiers to fight to the death for the Unity of the Motherland.
Current Americans cannot conceive of this North Korean committment, because our current mentality is so much more individualistic than is the case is in a North Korean society, a society that amounts to a modern Sparta.
Sparta did beat Athens by the way, even though the democratic Athenians were wealthier, because authoritarian states always have an edge in terms of unity of prupose.
The North Koreans may not have very modern weapons, and they may die by the hundreds of thousands, but they are not Iraqis who are going to run away in the face of superior American firepower.
The two South Korean divisions that fought in Vietnam were more feared by the VC and the NVA and the NVA than were the better armed Americans; they took ears, so the Vietnamese wouldn't get to go to heaven: mentality.
Actually, they even kind of scared the Americans.
In a Second Korean War, the North Koreans wwould blindly march into artillery barrages singing praises to the Dear Leader and Death for the Motherland.
At a minimum, ta dying DPRK would ake thousands of American soldiers, sailors, and airmen with them, and take hundreds of thousands, if not low millions, of South Koreans with them as well.
As an American, you cannot ever underestimate the gravity of the Korean military continency; ever, it is one of the biggest of all, save Russia or China.
The added strain on the U.S. Armed Forces of a Second Korean War would be especially severe if the United States executed a war plan which intensively used tactical nuclear weapons on North Korean artillery emplacements around Seoul.
This has always been a potential U.S. war plan in Korea, whatever the status of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons is in theory.
This is also a war plan that the U.S. very might likely feel compelled to execute in practice, in order to prevent the obliteration of Seoul, given the fact that there are around 10,000 such artillery pieces in place around a metropolitan area of more than 15,000,000 people, and that on such a time urgent basis, the alternatives might fail to prevent hundreds of thousands of South Korean deaths, not to mention the military supply issues that instantly would arise in the pandamonium ensuing a 10,000 piece artillery barrage on a densely populated urban area.
This potentially severe extra strain on U.S. Armed Forces worldwide would derive from the fact that, just as U.S. forces approaching the Yalu in October 1950 triggered Chinese intervention, so too might U.S. use of even tactical nuclear weapons induce Chinese intervention in a Second Kirean War, and therefore cause a Great Power War on the Korean Peninsula.
Just like the last time, but with nuclear weapons on the table.
This would have the same effect from a Russian point of view as the first Korean War, which was to bleed the U.S. and China to Russian balance of power advantage.
This is the real Russian game on the Korean Peninsula, as usual: a Russian Win-Win, everyone else, Die-Die.
Above all else, the United States needs to recognize that the North Korean regime is an incredibly dangerous entity, paranoid, and with not much too lose, and be very careful about doing anything now that might cause an accidental collision, or create the possibility of a deliberate collision, between North Korean and ROK/U.S. forces that sends the North Koreans on a suicide mission to unify the Motherland, or die trying.
It would probably be helpful to immediately offer North Korean military officers travel time to the South on a time urgent basis to demonstrate that whatever intelligence that they are being fed by the Russians about an imminent American attack is false.
It might be wise as well to reconsider raising American and ROK alert status, especially near the DMZ, and to reconsider naval exericises near the DMZ, especially in the disputed naval zone just to the south of the DMZ.
If the U.S. and South Korea are not very, very careful, the North Koreans are likely to find it far too easy to make accidental or deliberate contact with U.S. or R.O.K. forces, thereby triggering a disastrous Second Korean War.
This would be a war in which nuclear weapons will probably be used by all the parties to the conflict, one which would devastate the world economy, and a war in which the only possible beneficiary is Russia, just like the First Korean War.