Hard to say for certain, I think a lot will depend on how damaging the strike is. If it's just a single missile destroyed then he might be content with just some firing over the DMZ. If it's a decapitation attempt then you can be sure that the response will be a lot stronger. The problem with asymmetric escalation is that it starts the nuclear ball rolling at a very early stage, but it is also a greater deterrent because your opponent doesn't have many ways they can strike at you without risking immediate full nuclear retaliation.
So the options range from shells across the DMZ, to a conventional explosive warhead on Guam, right up to the Grand Tour which will come in one of two ways. Either he'll launch all but the ICBMs, hitting targets in South Korea, Japan and Guam, and then threaten the US with the ICBMs if they don't end the war now, or he'll fire everything in a use it or lose it style scenario.

Again, hard to be certain, but two scenarios come to mind. It'll either be before a US strike or after one. If North Korea figures that the US is about to start hitting its nuclear infrastructure then it may well decide to act first in order to get its punches in while it still has them. You see in the stand-off in Korea whoever goes first gets an advantage, so it's in the best interests of all the players to be the first one to fire...but there's the knowledge that when they do fire they will create a firestorm that will be hard to stop.

If it doesn't escalate then it'll be conventional weaponry, but it's more likely to be nuclear, biological and chemical. So your standard nuclear fare plus 2,500 to 5,000 tons of nerve and blister agents, and then there's anthrax, VX, Smallpox, Cholera, the plague, and all other kinds of lovely stuff. All of which will be sprinkled liberally over Japan and South Korea, quite possibly over Guam, Hawaii and the US too for that matter.


Well, it will probably start with a gravity dropped thermonuclear device over Pyongyang, and the permission for forces bombing North Korea to use nuclear 'bunker buster' weapons against hardened sites.

Very likely.

Definitely. They will throw the whole kitchen sink at North Korea.

The key question which remains after all the missiles have flown though is 'what next?'. Will the US have to march to the Yalu in order to end the war? Will China get involved in order to prevent the US from going that far?

It could be that the opening millions of deaths are just the first casualties in a drawn out war and occupation which would last for decades.

Thank you so much for your answer Oberon.

We have heard so much about KJU. On the other hand we may not really know how good he is when it comes to lead his troops and his strategic skills.

Or does USA/SK/JP and others have a very good insight on how good or bad he is.

Markus

It appears that some, due to the apparent conventional superiority of the US, assume that nuclear weapons deter only other WMDs and forget the fairly recent historical example of early cold war era NATO, where nuclear weapons were used to deter a perceived conventional threat from being realised.

So yes, in the current situation, DPRK uses nuclear weapons to deter a conventional attack. As such, it must keep it's deterent credible and thus allow no doubt that nuclear weapons would be used if any significant attack (that their conventional cant handle) occurs.

The reasons behind this stance are simple - nuclear deterence is cheaper and DPRK is not exactly a wealthy country.

Morever I do not see any incentive not to use non strategic and strategic nuclear weapons if a significant attack occurs - as Yugoslavia, Iraq, Lybia, Syria show once you are in trouble without backup you are dead anyway.

Mupac, I don't know if an all out situation will occur first. Containment is a strong consideration considering the amount of death/ destruction. Especially on the side of the Americans. Clean-up will still be expected and WMD is...messy.

Things can change. Things seem to have been quiet, comparatively anyway. For me, I am glad that a tough stance is being taken. The world has let NK slide for a long time and NK comes across as radically irresponsible to a high degree. The use of VX seems to have awaken countries to the danger of NK, not to mention longer range missiles.

I wish we had a tougher stance on the cyber attacks, though.

Most important-I truly hope they will find a peaceful solution.
(I know I'm a dreamer)

If the first shot is fired the situation could in the worse case, escalate very very fast within hours instead of 1-2 day or days.

It can goes from a local showdown to a would-out showdown within hours

That's why it's so important to find a peaceful solution. A war shall always be the last outcome in a crisis.

Markus

There are a lot of unknowns in this situation, if the US does launch a limited conventional strike and does not aim for a decapitation strike or target the nuclear weapons where they are stored, then Kim Jong-un may decide on a limited conventional retaliation against US bases in the ROK, Japan or Guam.
It's very much a game of bluff, like most nuclear confrontations, neither side wants to use them but if they don't use them when they said that they would then it undermines the deterrent effect of the weapons. Not to mention that given the knife-edge political theatre of the DPRK if KJU showed too much weakness then he'd suffer a 7mm brain hemorrhage and someone else would take over, potentially his sister puppeted by the generals.
One has to remember that Kim is stuck between the US on one side, and his own generals on the other. When Kim Jong-il took control after Kim Il-sung died back in the 1990s, one of the first things he had to do was put down a military coup. Fast forward to the last days of Kim Jong-il and what do you see, the Cheonan incident and the shelling of Yeonpyeong island, not to mention more than a few purges in the DPRK military, all attempts by KJU to solidify his control over the military. Now I'm sure that many shed no tears for Kim Jong-un, but I'm not so convinced that a) a civil war is healthy for the Korean peninsula and eastern Asia as a whole, and b) that there is no risk that whatever replaces Kim Jong-un won't be even worse than him.

So yeah, I'm a dreamer with you right here, but both sides have pushed forward this escalation, and neither side are willing to take the embarrassment that de-escalating it would result in, so slowly but surely on this road, we're all heading for one place.

We have US Army intell, US Air Force intell, US Navy intell, CIA intell, NSA intell and who know how many think tanks.

Would it not be easier to just put a price on Kim (rocket man's) head?

A price or a prize if you will to take him out ... no more problem with nuclear development of a way to end life on earth as we know it?

Cost of a war in the billions of dollars to wage one and the billions of dollars to repair the damages from one plus the tens of thousands of lives lost.

Not to make fun of the situation, but Trump can't make that many phone calls to the parents and wives of the lost servicemen now can he?

Take the dude out before he causes anymore trouble :yep:

Not really, placing a bounty on his head would not work.

The simple question you have to ask - what would happen if the glorious leader dies? Would it change the situation, or would it lead to another person taking his place, a person that knows that the west is after his head and thus has no insentive to negotiate?

^ the problem seems to be that decaptating a head of the state is a no-no in internatioanl politics.
It is much better to let millions of ordinary people suffer and die, instead of removing a lunatic. It is also much easier to influence one person, instead of millions.

If you compare what's happening today to history its nothing new. The rhetoric always gets ramped up every single time the U.S. and S.Korea conduct war games. Nothing to see here move along.

The king is dead - all hail the king.

By removing a person you belive to be a lunatic you would either install another lunatic or destroy the state.

Yup, lessons that should have been learnt at least twice already.

That doesn't make what the lunatic in question is doing any better mind you, although one has to be careful in who they label as a lunatic since, let's face it, there's more than a few people who consider a certain major world power to have a lunatic for a leader, and yet no-one would consider leading a war to overthrow them. However, the conditions in the DPRK are certainly a crime of their own, but it's questionable how much they would be improved through the total destruction of North Korea and the ruining of South Korea.

Or, break the cycle of lunacy and there is a possibility his replacement will be a halfway rational person. Think of Kruschev after replacing Stalin

In your example the "lunatic" was not removed through violence by an external party.

Nor was Khrushev a better leader than Stalin.

I think the key difference here, which is also highlighted in the comparison between Krushchev and Stalin is the differences in what the west considers to be a decent leader and what the east does. The west tends to look favourably on Krushchev because of his more liberal policies and the de-stalinisation process, whereas he is seen in Russia as being quite a weak figure.
The sort of person that we in the west might want to run North Korea would probably be overthrown by Koreans fairly quickly or killed.
Plus there's the chaos that would be caused by the removal of the top figures of North Korea, think of Iraq but this time the terrorists have ICBMs.
We really should learn from our past mistakes before we make new ones. :yep: