Thinking the Unthinkable About North Korea

As I watch the news and follow the inside-the-beltway political wars in Washington DC and observe Americans lost in the “holiday shopping season,” I feel like I am watching a theater of the surreal. Doesn’t anyone actually realize that the USA (and its Japanese and South Korean allies) are at the brink of a nuclear war of some kind with North Korea? As this crisis heads toward some kind of climax, no one seems to be paying any attention. People can’t seem to focus on the reality of a nuclear exchange or a nuclear preemptive strike to prevent even worse losses in the future. No one wants to realistically “think the unthinkable” about this danger of imminent war. Therefore, I will attempt to do so in this post.

The first link is an article that appeared in the USA Today. It paints a picture of North Korea as being some kind of irresistible and unstoppable power that war with it is impossible to consider. It is so one-sided in its perspective that large chunks of its text could have been lifted from a North Korean Ministry of Propaganda press release. The second link offers a perspective on the American military power that can very quickly be brought to bear on North Korea.

The first link lists North Korea’s military assets, and it rightly mentions North Korea’s ability to pulverize Seoul if its many thousands of artillery tubes are allowed to open up on that city for any length of time. However, it depicts the North Koreans as so powerful that they will have destroyed Seoul and all 19 air bases in South Korea “before the United States and its ally could launch effective countermeasures.” I think that claim is utterly ridiculous. The Korean Peninsula is on such a tripwire alert status now that any military action will result in “effective countermeasures” being launched and activated within seconds of any North Korean attack starting. The article does make a very interesting point, however. It reports that North Korean war plans assume that North Korea will strike first in any war with the USA and its allies. This is a very important assertion that the world is not taking seriously. It means that North Korea may make a simultaneous nuclear attack upon the USA and Japan even as it launches a conventional attack vs. South Korea. However, the North Korean conventional forces that could be unleashed are so threatening to South Korea and US forces stationed there that the USA and its allies essentially have no choice but to strike first in a preemptive strike to attempt to save the city of Seoul from destruction and to prevent North Korean nuclear missiles from being fired at targets in the USA and Japan. This evident fact receives almost no reporting in the American press.

The first link cites US National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster as stating the obvious in saying “time is running out.” Is anyone paying attention to such a statement? They should be paying very close attention to it because it is true. A recent post noted reports that the CIA has advised President Trump that he has only three months to deal with the situation in North Korea before that nation can launch nuclear-tipped missiles at any part of the USA. Time is, indeed, running out…

I would like to discuss an option that I have seen no one discuss in any media source. Perhaps they have and I missed it. Allow me to introduce this subject-matter via a short history lesson. As World War II had progressed into 1945, it was thought that the USA and its allies would have to invade Japan in an armed attack to subdue that nation. Japan was an armed camp and it had husbanded its military resources to defend its home islands in such a fanatical opposition to any invasion that no enemy would continue the effort. The USA faced an enemy of tens of millions of combatants ready to fight to the death in Japan in 1945. Estimates have been made that up to one million Americans could have been killed trying to subdue the entire Japanese home islands and many millions of Japanese would have perished as well. Then President Truman replaced Franklin D. Roosevelt as president and Truman learned about the atomic bomb project. Truman wrestled mightily with the decision he had to make, but he eventually used the atomic bomb to kill tens of thousands of people with each of two nuclear bombs instead of opting for a conventional weaponry invasion/war that almost surely would have resulted in many millions of deaths. He sacrificed a relatively small number in order to save the lives of far more people.

President Trump may be facing the same type of decision that President Truman (a Democrat) faced. Indeed, the situation Trump faces is far worse that the one faced by Truman. Japan had no nuclear weapons and had no way of hitting the USA with them if they had possessed them during Truman’s time. Today, Trump is faced with not only a threat of potentially millions of deaths in a conventional-weaponry war, but he also faces an enemy who does have nuclear weapons and is rather close to being able to destroy US cities with them. If Japan had had nuclear weaponry, Truman would not have had to wrestle at all with the decision; he would have used American nuclear weapons on Japan’s nuclear sites very quickly. It is my view that President Trump, now faced with a catastrophic war that could cause millions of civilian casualties in South and North Korea, Japan and to US forces abroad, should logically come to the same conclusion reached by President Truman–that a nuclear attack will actually save vast numbers of lives. However, since North Korea is increasing its nuclear arsenal, Trump must act quickly if a conflagration is to be avoided. Time is running out…

If Truman, a Democrat, opted for a nuclear strike to prevent a catastrophic conventional war from occurring, why should not Trump, a Republican president, opt for a nuclear strike to prevent both a conventional and nuclear conflagration from occurring? Indeed, since North Korea is openly threatening a nuclear war against the USA, why shouldn’t the USA pre-empt a nuclear attack with a nuclear strike of its own vs. North Korea? This would be an appropriate “in-kind” of preemptive attack vs. North Korea’s threatened attack, wouldn’t it? Why does the USA have to limit itself to using conventional weaponry to pre-empt a nuclear attack against American soil and on that of our allies? Given the massive batteries of North Korean artillery tubes and conventional forces poised to attack southward across the DMZ, the most effective use of American power to stop this from occurring would be to lay down a string of small, tactical nuclear weapons across the entire region where the North Korean artillery forces are located. However, there are huge domestic political problems within the USA. Truman had a united United States behind him in 1945, Trump does not. It is most troubling to observe that perhaps the only way for the Leftist American media to support a nuclear attack vs. North Korea is if North Korea attacks first and “nukes” several American cities–wiping out millions of Democratic voters. If that happened, the Left would be screaming for Trump to retaliate with nuclear weapons. Given that obvious fact, why isn’t the Leftist media supporting a pre-emptive strike by American forces to save the lives of millions of Democratic voters in large targeted American cities? Time is running out…

We face a situation where North Korea expects America to endlessly dither and delay so North Korea will be able to hit the USA with a first-strike nuclear attack even as North Korea attacks South Korea and Japan as well. Conversely, American war-planners seem to be like deer caught in the headlights of an approaching car. They assume North Korea will never do what it proclaims that it will do–hit the USA with a first strike nuclear attack. I have no doubt that Trump has already tasked a US nuclear submarine with nuclear-tipped missiles to fire its missiles at pre-assigned North Korean targets the instant that sub’s captain knows that North Korea has launched missiles at the USA. If this happens, minutes later North Korea will cease to exist…permanently. I make no predictions, but I have no doubt that the extinction of North Korea will be the result of any North Korean missile attack vs. US soil. I also have little doubt that North Korea doesn’t understand that reality. North Korea successfully bullied and duped Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama so it thinks Trump will also prove to be just another wimp in his dealings with North Korea. I think North Korea is dead wrong about Trump…and North Korea is likely to end up simply dead if it does not change course very quickly. Time is running out…

When is the best time for a preemptive strike vs. North Korea? Now when they have few missiles and nukes to hit the USA? Or should we wait till next year until North Korea has 50 nuclear-tipped missiles ready to hit the USA? At some point the USA will lose the initiative. What if the USA does nothing now and North Korea has so many nukes in the future that that it issues an ultimatum to the USA: Either you pull all your troops out of South Korea and Japan and surrender all of South Korea to the rulership of North Korea or we will launch 50 nuclear-equipped missiles at you? If that happens, it will be obvious that the USA should have launched a preemptive strike many years ago, but it still has time–barely– to do so now. Time is running out…

Well, let’s all forget about the real world, shall we? Let’s concentrate on the really important stuff. How is the Christmas shopping season going in your city? Have you been following baseball’s winter meetings? How about the Yankees having both Judge and Stanton in the same line-up next year? How is your 401(k) doing in the stock market’s run-up? What’s the latest development in the political civil war occurring within the beltway in Washington, DC? How far down is the attendance at NFL games anyway? Did you buy the latest smart phone yet?

Time is running out…

Thinking the Unthinkable About North Korea

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