Quote:
Originally Posted by Eddie
Six thousand men and 21,000 artillery pieces is pretty daunting though.
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Firstly -a preface - this is in part a political discussion so please consider that I offer my views in order to hear what others think about them -I dont write with intent to provoke .
To the case :
I am with Eddie on this one - they might have all sorts of WMDs for these arty pieces .Also they have Seoul in range .
A "Nork" ( love the name ) invasion of the South seemes really far fetched with todays situation.War can take other forms though , and the Norks are unpredictable .
Victory isnt assured imho- it depends on what the objectives are .
Was Gulf 1 a full victory ? Of course it was - but objectives had to be shifted from "kick out Saddam" to "liberate Kuwait and destroy his army - only" to attain this . The kicking out couldnt be done until Gulf 2.
I agree that the US and ROk forces are more than capable of winning a war outright- so the question will turn to -at what cost ?
I believe, for one ,at the price of Seoul, and 500 000 civillian South Koreans for starters .
Then as a second phase ,the massive airborne retaliation will probably kill
100 000 NK service personel ( pulling numbers out of a hat here guys) and God knows what the collateral damage list will read like.
I cant really back it up with hard facts right now, but I have a chilling sensation down my spine that the NORKS arent going to be bowled over the same way the Iraqis were.
For one ,their nationalism goes further back and is more homogenous and hardcore than the composite Iraqi nation .They seem much more hard core-if poor and underequipped. Also I believe they have better organization and better training than the former Iraqi army .
A third phase would probably have to mean incursion onto NK soil . ( A lucky cruise missile hit might solve many problems to alleviate the need for this ,but I have read books from US service personel that have been to PyongYang before - the leadership has had bunkers that can stand up to some nuclear weapons for over 60 years .)
Such an operation/invasion opens up a whole can of new problems .
The western way of waging war has great strengths being the continuation of politics by other means ,as we are democracies and thus our causes are mostly just ,give or take a few -but its major weakness is this also . We cannot ( yes -lumping all of us together ) take the same casualties as the axis of evil guys .Our populace has no stomach for it .Support for the war will dwindle if death tolls rise and the match goes into overtime or if a rematch starts looming on the horizon .Further more - civillian casualties are also a similar concern ,also in the enemies population .
If my haphazard calculations have any merit than I see a death toll in total of around 1000 000 people ,mostly civillians that the Norks attack in Seoul and their own civvies that they will use as shields etc to try to null out US air superiority .A lot of dead NK service personell as well . I will not try to guesstimate at the number of ROK and US personell that will pay the ultimate price - I suspect the number to be staggering compared to the relatively low casualty number from the two Gulf wars -not counting the ongoing operations since 2003.
Thus - considering the risks and the potential costs, I dont think PyongYang could be "defeated" today - if you take their objective as a POV - to stay in power at any cost .Sort of like the Japanese strategy for the battle of Iwo Jima. Make it as costly as possible , and hope this will lead to the possibility for brokering a deal.Sure ,they would loose their huge army ,countless civillians would die and devestation would by all around .But if they could get the ROK and the US to back off, they could stay in control through harsh internal security measures and by more time for the Juche.
As I said in the preface -just one guys opinion.