You are overestimating their abilities, just like was done with Saddam's vaunted military, which was the fifth largest in the world at the time. In the end, they were surrendering to reporters.
Fifty years ago and with considerably less military capability the North Koreans (with Chinese help) managed to fight us to a stand still.
No, we defeated the North Koreans going all the way up to the Yalu. It was the Chinese intervention (and our decision not to use all the weapons in our arsenal) that resulted in a stalemate. The Chinese forces outnumbered the North Koreans 3 to 1. We were still able to project force and power halfway around the world and inflict far more casualties on the enemy than they did to us.
The North Koreans invaded the South, a surprise attack. The Incheon landing, just 3 months after the invasion, turned the tide. The UN troops then captured Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and drove to the Yalu River bordering China. The Chinese came in after that and a stalemate ensued. The US did not declare war against North Korea or China nor did we engage in an all out effort to defeat the enemy.
The enemy had all the advantages in terms of terrain, proximity, shorter supply lines, etc., yet they couldn't defeat us even in a land war.
they launch a war there will be no half measures. If they have a weapon they'll use it, screw the consequences. Same with the Iranians and a big segement of our other enemies. The Wehrmacht was one of the most capable and professional fighting forces ever put in the field. They were also some of the most vicious and ruthless combatants of the era, but the relatively primative Russians defeated them (with big help from nature).
The Iranians can't "launch" a war against anyone, because they don't have the logistics to carry it out any more than they could defeat Saddam. The North Koreans can only go south and they would be met by a very well equipped and trained ROK force supplemented by US air power and command systems. I have participated in some war game exercises assuming a NK invasion of the South. In the end, we prevail because of our superior military ability and technical means to oversee the battlefield and coordinate our response. If the NKs use nuclear weapons, it is game over for them.
The Russians didn't defeat the Wehrmacht, but they did inflict enormous casualties helped by arms and supplies from the US and Hitler's mistake of opennng a two front war. The vastness of Russia also strectched the Germans supply lines as the Russians retreated. The Russians lost about 9 million military personnel and 16 million civilians.
Numbers are not meaningless, unless you are assuming that they are facing us directly and that there's nothing else occupying our forces. And they did fight Iraq to a draw for eight years. Imagine what they can do to Yemen or Saudi Arabia if they set out to?
For starters. We would never permit them to invade Saudi Arabia or the Arabian peninsula. The Iranians don't have the logistical ability to project the forces needed to invade SA or Yemen. The Iraqis and the Iranians are not even third rate military powers. They were both incompetent.
And if you don't think the current Iranian or North Korean military with their current weapons could wipe out the Imperial Japanese or German armies of World War 2 in hours then your smoking something.
A silly comparison, but even then I would still put my money on the Germans and Japanese who would use their superior military organization, industrial might, and logistical capabilities along with superbly trained and battle hardened veterans to win the day, espeically if that is all they had to deal with.
We are not living in the 1940s, but in the present. By conmparison, the military power of Iran and North Korea is not that daunting. Israel could mop the floor with either of them.
I'm measuring their ability to inflict damage on relatively undefended opponents. The current axis of evil has the WW2 axis powers beat all to hell. Even their ability to inflict damage on us with our modern capabilities is nothing to ignore. They would have a short and very violoent experience on the battlefield, no doubt about that, but at what cost to our forces or our society, if they were able to choose the battlefield? And don't forget that they may have nukes.
I have no idea what "relatively undefended opponents" your are refering to, but neither has the ability to project their power significantly. If they were to use nukes, then they would be committing national suicide. I just think they are more rational than you think they are. You can come up with all the scenarios and comparisons you want, but the political and military reality is that a direct, traceable attack on the US is highly unlikely.
As to the rest, you just don't see the same world that I do and are not willing to consider other possibilities. Is it likely that it will play out as I have suggested or Newt has implied? Probably not. Is it possible? Absolutely. Any other conclusion is a "failure of imagination."
We have contingency plans for all kinds of events, including thinking the unthinkable as Herman Khan wrote.
I agree with almost everything you say in this post, and the differences are largely NOT on the points you have made, but about my not adequately explaining what I'm trying to say.
this has become a long enough post as each iteration goes around that it will take me some time to do a full response justice, but I'll take a crack at it later.
However, again, I don't disagree with the majority of what you state. I'm tyring to make a different point and obviously failing miserably (but that's not unusual).
Russian Tanks were technologically superior to their German equivalents in 1941 to 1943. Aircraft and Arty equivalent. The German army of WW2 had a shallow armored technical edge backed up by a large, relatively primitive bulk army. The Russian and German armys, technologically speaking, were roughly equivalent technologically. The fact of the matter is the Russians beat the Germans eating American food, brought to them on American trucks from American supplied rail lines pulled by American made locomotives using American logistical supplies to repair their weapons and vehicles while marching to Berlin on American made boots. In 1945 the Russians, like the French, promptly forgot all the sacrifices everyone else made out desire to forget their humiliations.