As crazy as North Korea is, if they fire first, South Korea isn't just a sitting duck.
North Korea would probably be obliterated just from South Korea hitting back, let alone if anyone else allied to South Korea jumps in.
Micro scale MAD. North Korea is just grandstanding for food, it doesn't really mean that they will follow through. I mean, they're a dictatorship, so who knows.
There's no doubt the US and allies will be victorious, barring massive strategic blunders, but there's also no way to prevent horrific levels of destruction.
To say nothing of China stepping in and kicking off WWIII.
No-one is going to start an actual war.
It's naïve to say "we were just trying to make the point X, we didn't think it would escalate" when the actors involved have the resources and incentive to react with interest.
If anything North Korea developing its own nuclear arsenal took war off the table. That was the point, although full-scale war was probably already off the table, but a more limited action to topple the regime probably wasn't.
It's borderline madness to suggest otherwise.
so far, MAD has kept that from happening again. But it's not borderline madness to observe something that definitely actually happened.
A war on the Korean peninsula already happened in the past and it went quite badly for all involved.
Now it is 2020, with very interconnected economies between all involved and with the US, China, Russia, and North Korea having nuclear arsenals. Therefore it is indeed borderline madness to suggest that anyone might decide to start a full out war on the Korean peninsula, it is even more ridiculous to suggest that this might happen "by accident" (like it is ridiculous to suggest that WWI started by accident).
In the real world of today one might look at Chinese-Indian relations. Probably 10s of soldiers on both sides died recently. Are the nukes flying yet? Of course not, no-one is suicidal and both sides won't attempt anything beyond their skirmishes in one or 2 remote valleys.
It's only sensationalist news channels that peddle the risk of war with North Korea.
Hardly. NK nukes don't really change SK's MAD vulnerability calculus; it's more of a factor for the US. I worked with a guy who was present in 2010 during that year's Key Resolve....when the "exercise" suddenly became very real due to the sinking of the Cheonan.[1] He was dialed into the video teleconferences that were held by the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said the ROK military leadership was absolutely furious and was legitimately ready to basically re-start the war, and that it was the USFK Commander (the US military 4-star who would command the fight) who had to talk the ROK generals down from the ledge.
It came up in conversation I think during 2016's Ulchi Freedom Guardian because the NKs were launching ballistic missiles during the exercise and we all experienced a "pucker factor" for a moment because we weren't sure if they were escalating the conflict or not. Then the missile trajectories indicated they'd land in the ocean and we could breathe again. Fun times.
I have no idea how you could read what I wrote and conclude "see nobody was serious". Seems like the worst case of normalcy bias I've ever witnessed on HN.
This is not normalcy bias. This is keeping lucid and realising, as said and repeated, that war in Korea is not a realistic prospect, instead of going all Dr Strangelove after watching to many movies.
Again, the Korean War was painful for all involved at the time. Today war is simply not possible anymore by any assessment of the situation.
The worst thing that could realistically happen in Korea is a collapse of North Korean regime. This could trigger a limited civil war but everyone would have an interest in limiting the fallout, and this is why people tend to be very cautious about any suggestion of effecting "regime change" in the North.
With the caveat that I wasn't the one there, so this is second-hand: Yes, that's how it was communicated to me. The Korean 4-stars were advising restarting the war, and the sole American 4-star to have any say in the matter was the only voice of sanity. I dunno how much of that conversation made it to the South Korean President, so I don't know if he fired anyone afterwards. I'm not sure what the formal process is for the ROK-JCS, USFK, CFC, etc... to make a recommendation to the Korean President, as well as the US President, as well as the United Nations Command. All I know is that if left to their own devices in 2010, the ROK JCS would have invaded the North, knowing full-well what the consequences would be.
Things coming down to only one, single, yet influential person saying "that's a bad idea" should highlight that maybe we don't have sufficiently robust institutional controls in place to avoid a bloody conflict indefinitely.
>>>The worst thing that could realistically happen in Korea is a collapse of North Korean regime.
I'll absolutely agree with this though. There is a very poor understanding of the morale and motivations of most of the NK flag officers. We don't know which ones will outright surrender. We don't know which ones will say "Fuck it, attack the Imperialists!" We do have a reasonable understanding of the Kim regime's priorities: regime survival. So the status quo is preferable to the almost-guaranteed chaos that will ensue should the NK commanders suddenly find themselves in a power vacuum, especially if caused by a hostile foreign actor.
It’s not clear the regime is prioritizing this aspect of their military beyond paper tiger levels.
People actually have to keep loading and firing those guns. And not run out of ammo. And the guns have to not break down.
Then, maybe North Korea can get to millions of casualties.
That, combined with how quickly and effectively the US and South Korea can start firing counterbattery missions and establish air superiority to attack the Northern batteries from the air.
The idea is to deploy, fire a few shots and the GTFO as quickly as possible, as the other side has detected your projectiles via counter battery radar and likely sent their own, all possibly within seconds of your first round being fired & often in an automatic manner.
Its reportedly even crazier for mortars - mortars shells move much more slowly than artillery shells, yet you can platform the origin of their trajectory just as well.
This can theoretically result in the mortar being destroyed by a counter battery artilery shell before the first mortars shell it fired even impacts.
So no wonder fixed artilery emplacements might be considered less viable when cutting edge artillery tech is considered.
If China will say "jump" to Kim, he will, for as long as the physical security of Kim's family is provided (which is pretty much the one, and only carrot China been using with them)