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Comment by quonn | Hacker News Reader

This seems unlikely. Even if North Korea would not be backed by China, could the US win a war? Probably not and they know it. North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world and they are probably crazy enough to take huge losses. This is not like Iraq at all, to say nothing of Afghanistan.

There is also little to be gained. Syria would be a more obvious candidate. It's just as good for "focusing our attention", probably can get public support easily, would please both, Saudi Arabia and Israel and could even make strategic sense. (To be clear, I would oppose such a war, of course.)

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I was surprised North Korea had such a large army. I checked; 48.5 active per 1000 capita, whereas US has 4.4.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...

When you have the superiority the US sports, it's not hard to win a war. It becomes a question of what you're willing to do to win it.

The US is one of the only countries in history to have to deal with that question. Defeat Iran? Easy: nukes, or a never-ending bombing campaign that leaves nothing left standing. Throughout most of history, the problem with defeating an enemy wasn't a question of: well, but can we do it without killing too many people.

North Korea's army is worthless. They're extraordinarily backwards, poorly trained, and with mediocre equipment. The problem would be the guerrilla warfare part, much like Vietnam.

Iraq had one of the largest armies as well, and the world watched in shock as the US trivially dismantled it. The US would dismantle the standing North Korean military very quickly, it would be the next stage of the fight that would be terrible.

If the US had a reason to really want to topple North Korea, the easy thing to do would be to make a deal with China: they get Taiwan tomorrow morning, and they allow North Korea to collapse, don't get involved if the US fights a war with North Korea, etc. China would make that deal in a heartbeat.

The biggest problem in fighting a war with North Korea, as everyone knows, is the damage that would be done to South Korea.

> When you have the superiority the US sports, it's not hard to win a war.

What was the last war the US actually won?

You can check for yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Unit...

( 3 years ago )

> When you have the superiority the US sports, it's not hard to win a war.

The "War on Terror" started in 2001 and is an ongoing clusterfuck. As the "War on Terror" hasn't concluded, the last war that the US won was Kosovo in 1999.

I think Adventured overestimates US' superiority.

I suggest you read on North Korean military equipment, supplies and operational readiness.

It is all about the details:

They have the largest submarine force in the world; but every one of them is an outdated diesel-electric.

They have a couple hundred fighter airplanes, but their trained pilots get 10-20 hours of practice every year.

And so on...

They aren't capable of a prolonged attack as they don't have enough food( literally ). At best they can defend for a long time and cause a lot of collateral damage with chemical weapons and short range nukes, which is enough to keep their enemies away.

> They have the largest submarine force in the world; but every one of them is an outdated diesel-electric.

What's wrong with diesel-electric submaries. Here's US superiority vs diesel-electric subs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqFVOL7mLd4

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/nov/13/20061113-121...

No, you're just completely missing his point.

Winning a war is indeed easy for the US if it's willing to go all out. It's just not willing to go all out.

> It's just not willing to go all out.

Then applying logic, it can't win the war.

If the question is: could the US win a war against North Korea?

The answer is: yes, obviously, and the price would be very high in terms of either US soldiers, or North Korean civilians, or both.

The US chooses not to engage in that war, precisely because it already knows the cost equation. Millions would die.

No, I attempted to be very, very specific in what I was claiming.

The US could win the "War on Terror" any time: kill vast quantities of people, as many as it takes, and or whatever it takes (up to and including destroying their culture, wiping out their identity; see: Tibet, or Japan, or what ancient empires did). That's how people were typically truly defeated historically. Whether we're talking about Alexander, the Romans, the Mongols, Nazi Germany, the USSR, etc. One of the few exceptions would be the British Empire, they did a lot less sheer mass murdering.

It is not a question of if the US can win, it's a question of: what is the US willing to do to win.

You can name the number of countries that could stop the US from bombing them perpetually, on one hand. I'm not over-estimating US superiority, I'm proclaiming that the US isn't willing to use any and all tactics to win.

I think you stopped reading Adventured's post too early.

The U.S. defeats conventional armies all the time, and Adventured was responding to the idea that North Korea's conventional army might be a problem for the U.S. It's the guerrilla war afterward that the U.S. might lose, which Adventured goes on to address.

I didn't stop reading. What does "win a war" mean if you only consider initial combat? To that end, let's ignore the last 14 years and declare that the US won the "War on Terror" during the first 6 days carpet bombing of Tora Bora.

Winning a war vs North Korea would be easy for the US: kill very large numbers of people indiscriminately with nukes, or stand-off and just bomb them very heavily and perpetually for a decade until nothing is left. After a very short amount of time, North Korea would be entirely incapable of shooting down high altitude bombers, the US would never have to put boots on the ground, just spend all the money on never-ending bombing raids.

It goes back to what I said: the issue is what the US would be willing to do to win. It's not acceptable to defeat enemies today in a manner in which truly large sums of civilians are killed (I'm talking about killing 1/4, 1/2 of the country, vaporizing them, mowing them down with unrelenting bombardment, and then with starvation).

The US could have easily won the Vietnam war, it won every major engagement. The US could have marched north with a million soldiers and run over the Vietcong, killing however many people were necessary in the process. However it would have required another level of extreme brutality, and potentially (likely?) would have ended in a direct war with Russia or China. The question for the US post WW2 has been what's acceptable to achieve victory in war, because against its adversaries that question has been the only limiting factor, not the ability to achieve victory itself.

As a side note, I consider that the US won the Korean war. Given how South Korea has turned out, I consider it a staggering victory. Especially considering how difficult it was to go into Asia and hold ground with China, Russia and North Korea trying to push you out in one form or another.

The US is never going to nuke another country over hacking, especially of a movie studio.

> What was the last war the US actually won?

Aside from wars which end by formal, unconditional surrender -- where its absolutely unambiguous who "won" -- winning a war isn't a well-defined concept. Particularly not well-defined when one belligerent has ambiguous war aims.

But, I mean, there are few US wars where you can't make an argument that the US won. Certainly, the most recent Iraq War conducted under the authority of the 2002 AUMF (which is distinct from campaign against those parties responsible for 9/11 authorized by the 2001 AUMF) -- in which at least one of the stated war aims was to remove the then-existing Iraqi regime before it could acquire and use WMDs -- was "won" by the US.

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