Top UN official says war with North Korea "entirely possible"

daveirl

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mike65

I just did a google for Maurice Strong and got back some stuff from wacked-out sources, dunno if it reflects the man but plenty of nuts are interested in him!

http://www.sovereignty.net/p/sd/strong.html
http://www.endtime.com/html/past_article.asp?ID=10
http://www.globalpolicy.org/finance/docs/machan.htm
http://www.nationalcenter.org/DossierStrong.html
http://kenraggio.com/KRPN-KofiAnnan.htm

http://www.johnworldpeace.com/e030322a.htm
is another article about US-North Korea from Associated Press.

Mike.

daveirl

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mike65

Thats the trouble with North Korea, its run by the most
dangerous nuts in many repects but they're very clever, very shewd with it. And they have got the bomb of course...

Mike.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by daveirl
The thing that strikes me about the whole thing is that the Koreans seem very aware of exactly how to push the right buttons. They seem to be doing a good job of using the US hypocrisy to their advantage.

Their timing was perfect when giving the finger to the US. Just as the US was getting all hawkish with Iraq, they announce that they are resuming their nuclear programme. Then they get to laugh as the US talks about the need for dialogue rather than military action with them.

Of course, they will probably pay at some point.

Venom

Of course, they will probably pay at some point.

I dont think it will be just them who pay's.

Fighting a war against a under trained army with píss poor equipment is damm easy and makes great propaganda on TV but when up against very a very smart army with modern day weapons and atomic weapons is a different story altogeather.

davelerave

yeh.they've got the bomb 'NK-handle with care please Mr Bush '

TomF

I wouldn't be too surprised to see North Korea get "the treatment". I also think a war there would be scheduled for the summer months and the fabled electronic bomb might see its first use to wipe-out all of the fruitcake North Korean Communists' control systems to prevent any use of nuclear weaponry and you would probably see a bombing campaign against military targets that would make Iraq look like a cakewalk.

I think South Korea would be more than happy to host U.S. aircraft and see their northern cousins finally get a chance, after the dust settles, of having a decent meal now and then rather than starving in the dark while the North Korean higher-ups and their military live like kings. Postwar North Korea could resurrect as did South Korea which was the original "tiger" economy.

daveirl

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Typedef

Honestly.

North Korea doesn't have any oil and it has Nuclear Weapons. Thus war will not happen with North Korea.

War against Syria, since the US is in the neighbourhood is entirely more likely.

davelerave

surely there won't be enough support at home or cash for another war.maybe diplomatic or economic actions

Sparks

TomF,

I wouldn't be too surprised to see North Korea get "the treatment". I also think a war there would be scheduled for the summer months and the fabled electronic bomb might see its first use to wipe-out all of the fruitcake North Korean Communists' control systems to prevent any use of nuclear weaponry and you would probably see a bombing campaign against military targets that would make Iraq look like a cakewalk.

Oh dear.
So let's see then. You're proferred course of action is to detonate a tactical nuclear warhead above one of the least modern nations in the world to try to zap radiation-hardened electronics designed to resist exactly such an act, then bomb their artillery positions.

Tom, what would happen is that you wouldn't get the chance. You'd have to get your bombers into S.Korean airbases because they can't deploy against NK from anywhere else. The NK's take one look at that and if they don't open fire, you're lucky. Then you want to detonate a nuke above them. It won't do a damn thing to the troop's gear as half of it is designed to resist such an assault, the other half is so old it's made with valves instead of transistors and valves don't get fried by emp. In fact, it'll act as a giant signal flare to every one of the 16,000 artillery pieces up and down the border to open fire. Let's say your bombers are in the air and the NK's somehow didn't think to put their fighters up. You might get one-sixteenth of their artillery before they get off more than ten rounds each if you're lucky.

By the time your bombers returned home, Seoul, the airbases, and just about every other military target within range will be gravel.

And then the NKs might get mad and use their nukes.

I think South Korea would be more than happy to host U.S. aircraft and see their northern cousins finally get a chance, after the dust settles, of having a decent meal now and then rather than starving in the dark while the North Korean higher-ups and their military live like kings. Postwar North Korea could resurrect as did South Korea which was the original "tiger" economy.

Yes, I'm sure they'd love to be obliterated by NK artillery and then forcibly reunited economically to a nation that makes East Germany look like like King Solomon's mines.

Oh, and how is the US to handle the 400,000 troops in the NK army?

daveg

Oh, and how is the US to handle the 400,000 troops in the NK army?

1,000,000 man army actually.

NK is a very dangerous situation IMO. They seem to be insane enough to drop a nuke. I wonder could China be pulled into the situation as well ?

It seems to be common knowlage though that NK could never win a war against the US & SK (mainly due to the fact that most of their tanks/planes/armour is left over from the Korean war) but if they did draw China into the conflict we would all be fvcked.

Also I read that NK would soon be producting enough weapon grade plutonium to construct 1 nuke per week.

gandalf

Yep I do not see the US tackling North Korea head on. They will try other methods.

However I do see the North Koreans striking pre-emtively as they now have the means to hit the West Coast of the US and if Baby George says the wrong thing, pushes sanctions too far etc.................

I'm off to buy NBC suit and build a shelter in the back garden.

Gandalf.

daveg

However I do see the North Koreans striking pre-emtively as they now have the means to hit the West Coast of the US and if Baby George says the wrong thing, pushes sanctions too far etc.................

I don't think they have the capability to strike mainland USA. I know they can reach Japan and some parts of Alaska (which I suppose is still mainland USA)

I also doubt if they would strike the US first as it would defiantly, without any doubt result in the US striking back with a nuke or 2.

Just reading on BBC news website - " The official KCNA news agency said Japan should be "clearly mindful that it is also within the striking range" of North Korea's weapons " More can be read here. I cannot understand their position against Japan who are neutral since the second world war.

Shinji

Korea as a whole has had a very low opinion of Japan for a rather long time - some pretty nasty things happened between them in WW2, and before that you had the Japan/Russia war just after the turn of the 20th century which made a mess out of big parts of Korea as well. For their part, the Japanese have had some pretty racist views of Koreans as well.

Much of this has changed - I'd go so far as to say most of it has, in the past generation or so since the Korean war. Relationships between Japan and South Korea are good, and more importantly, they have a significant bulk of shared culture and generally good relations at grass roots level (there are exceptions of course).

However, North Korea is a bit of a timewarp in this respect. They still despise Japan on the basis of things that happened sixty years ago, and more so, because Japan is seen as an outpost of the USA in the Asia-Pacific area. This is factually correct of course - the USA maintains many military bases in Japan.

Japan itself has a very technologically advanced but quite small military - the JSDF, Japanese Self Defence Force. As the name suggests, their role IS purely defensive - to the extent that they don't have any ballistic missiles with international range (to the best of my knowledge), and although their jet fighters are highly advanced, they cannot operate outside of Japan itself because they simply don't have the range to do that, and Japan has no mid-air refuel capabilities.

If North Korea struck at Japan, they'd have no way to retaliate; they rely entirely on the USA for protection in this respect. This, to a large degree, is the reason for their support of the USA in Iraq; the people of Japan on the ground are fairly vehemently anti-war, but they accept that going against the only people standing between them and the very nasty men next door would be a bit of a silly move.

By the way, a previous poster said that South Korean airbases are the only way to get bombers into North Korea - not so. Even relatively short-range bombers could strike North Korea from Japanese bases; long-range ones could probably manage it from Pearl Harbour.

The situation there has horrific potential though - Japan and South Korea are very civilised, advanced and hugely populated countries. It's hard to see how action against or by North Korea could be carried out without repercussions for those nations. The Japanese for their part are very, very scared of North Korean nukes; they're the only country in the world to have suffered a hostile nuclear strike and it's a testimony to the horror of that event that nearly sixty years down the line, despite a widespread nuclear power program and all the raw materials they could require, Japan remains probably the most vehemently anti-nuclear weapon nation on the planet.

daveg

By the way, a previous poster said that South Korean airbases are the only way to get bombers into North Korea - not so. Even relatively short-range bombers could strike North Korea from Japanese bases; long-range ones could probably manage it from Pearl Harbour

Us bombers can fly from anywhere and drop bombs due to in-air refuling. At the moment B-52 bombers are flying from RAF Fairford in the UK roundtrip to Iraq. Bombing NK would not be a problem.

daveirl

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gandalf

daveg according to CIA Director George Tenet Korea do have a missile capable of hitting the West Coast of the US (along with Alaska & Hawaii).

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/02/12/us.nkorea/

Gandalf.

TomF

I don't know a thing about the controls that North Korea's leaders use for any nuclear weapons they might have, but I would think that if they are enough-advanced to produce such weapons they would not be likely to use old-fashioned electronics (I could be completely wrong here.) I also do not think the U.S. would use a nuclear weapon against North Korea. After all, such a weapon was not used by the U.S. the U.S.S.R., the U.K., France, India, China, Pakistan or Israel (and anyone else in the club I may have missed) since 1945 through some of the most tense moments that I can imagine. Let's see, the count in years that the U.S. has had nuclear weapons is 57, and that may actually be more years than many who post on these boards have had birthdays.

What good is a huge land army such as is claimed for North Korea when it has to operate in a narrow peninsula against the kind of firepower represented by carrier- and submarine-based cruise missiles and warplanes like the Wart Hog and airborne Gatling guns and those cluster bombs? North Korean infantry and armour attacks would result in the kind of soldier deaths that haven't been seen since the human wave assaults by the Chinese in Korea in the 1950s, unless you count the human wave assaults by the Iranians and Iraqis against each other in their war in the 1980s. I don't think an army's morale could survive that scale of death--certainly not a slave army. If proof is needed, look at the events of the past three weeks in Iraq. Where is the Elite Republican Guard?

The kind of bunker-busting bombs available to U.S. air forces and the likely comprehensive intelligence of what's-where would, I think, make any present nuclear threat ineffective unless the North Korean crazed leadership decided to detonate their bombs in their own country. As for any future nuclear threat? That may be the problem.

Why would the U.S. want to neutralise the North Korean government and replace it with something a little more democratic? I would say it is because North Korea is an extremely unstable society and might have nuclear weapons, and might try to export future more sophisticated weapons with the intention of detonating them in the U.S.

[Climbing onto soap box, E.U. and U.N. flags fluttering grandly in the background.]
Of course, it might be that nothing more will happen. It could happen that the expense of the Second Gulf War will so upset U.S. voters that George W. Bush is not re-elected in November 2004 and the U.S. may withdraw into its own boundaries and not be such a busy-body in world affairs. Maybe it would be a good thing for the E.U., owned-and-operated by France and Germany, to take over the job of "world's policeman" or for the U.N., somehow changed to a decisive body, to peacefully resolve threats to justice and peace or to organise member-provided forces to cow governments which threaten justice and peace.
[Climbing off soap box.]

simon_partridge

North Korea is in the axis of evil for goodness sake - that means they're in the group of number one targets. A rough time table for past and forthcoming wars might be:
Q4 2001 Afghanistan
Q2 2003 Iraq
Q4 2004 Iran
Q2 2006 North Korea

At that stage a breather will be taken while an EU-style expansion takes place in the axis with Syria, Libya, Lebanon, China and Venezuela currently having the most advanced accession negotiations.

Sparks

Okay, firstly I said US bombers would need to operate from SK, not for range issues, but for logisitics. Bombers could be flown long distances to attack the DPRK, but coordinating sufficent numbers for a preemptive strike on DPRK artillery positions would be rather demanding. We're talking about somewhere on the order of 16,000 artillery positions all along the border here.

Tom,
You're the one that said that the US would use an electronic bomb on the DPRK, not me. That's a nuclear device optimised to produce large emp pulse.

Also, you simply won't be able to win such a war with air power and cruise missiles - this is Korea we're talking here. You would have to have boots on the ground, and given the number of landmines in the DMZ, it would be particularly unpleasant as you'd need to make opposed amphibious assaults - and Normandy worked because the Germans were busy elsewhere. Trying an opposed amphibious assault into North Korea would be a nightmare of epic proportions.

daveirl

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TomF

I was gonna say that, but decided to follow the 24-hour rule and see what kind of fallout (literary) there was.

Sparks

Thanks for the interesting link Dave. I still think that to achieve the obective of assaulting all the DPRK's electronics that they'd have to use a nuclear EMP device though.
Mind you, if they did try that one, well - I never fancied old age much myself... :rolleyes:

Typedef

NK is a very dangerous situation IMO. They seem to be insane enough to drop a nuke.

Of course when the good ol US of A drops nukes... that's a totally different story. Obviously when group (x) as opposed to group (y) uses nukes... it's obvious that one side is sane while the other side is not.

Edit : Just as an ammendum.

The sunshine policy http://www.hankooki.com/kt_nation/200205/t2002052319192741110.htm was supposed to be a stepping stone towards North/South Korean rapprochament and who knows perhaps even reunification. However since the day the current US administratrion got into office it has been taking an aggressive approach towards North Korea, to the detrament of South Korean rapprochament moves.

Surprise, surprise the US would rather have 'an enemy' to fight, so that it can justify it's vast military complex.

However if you really think that North Korea, a nation which is quite close to having famine conditions in many parts, actually wants a war with a country that spends five times the turnover of the Irish economy every year on military accroutraments, then, that is what you think. 'Generally' nations on the verge of famine (like North Korea) have no desire to fight a war and make their situation worse.

Honestly the Americans won't risk the possibility of Nuclear weapons being used against South Korea or Japan, because the reprecussions to the world economy would be too great.

The Americans might go after Iran (for oil and to stick one to the Russians) or Syria (for the sake of Israel), but North Korea is a no flyer.