A Sneak Peek at America’s War Plans for North Korea

Foreign Policy ^ | September 7, 2017 | Chetan Peddada

[2ndDivisionVet]

In a secret underground base, Command Post Tango, the combined headquarters of the U.S.-South Korean command, is abuzz with activity. North Korean artillery has pummeled sites around Seoul, leaving thousands of South Korean and American civilians and service members dead. A toxic combination of North Korean provocations and U.S. escalation has prompted the North to launch a last-ditch effort to seize the whole peninsula.

As the generals fill an auditorium-sized sand-table battlefield showing the disposition of friendly forces and the extent of likely follow-up attacks, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans are displaced in and around Seoul, seeking shelter and safety. Reports of North Korean insurgent strikes are streaming in as computer screens flash with alerts of cyberattacks on Seoul’s infrastructure, taking water and power off the grid and paralyzing attempts to help the civilian population.

This is a fictional scenario, but an all-too-possible one. As a U.S. Army intelligence officer in South Korea, I helped prepare for various war scenarios by testing assumptions and refining war plans in several theaterwide exercises.

Put fears of full-blown nuclear war aside for a moment. We’ve never been closer to a conventional North Korean attack on South Korea, and I can attest that the U.S. military knows how devastating the consequences would be. We can expect a massive humanitarian crisis, enormous loss of life, and economic disaster. There’s almost no doubt that the North would lose — but in going down Pyongyang could take much of the Korean Peninsula with it.

Pyongyang goes all in

What could provoke North Korea to start such a conflict? Kim Jong Un may eventually believe that he has no choice, given his country’s chronic humanitarian crisis, with an estimated 41 percent of the population undernourished, and additional sanctions threatening to bring back the famines of the 1990s....

[GenXteacher]

The last plan worked pretty good until the Chicoms showed up.

[The Great RJ]

Consider how the US media would report this war. Immediately the spittle spewing reporters on CNN will blame the war on Trump and wax eloquent on how Obama’s appeasement kept us out of war. Even as the flag draped coffins of US service personnel arrive in the US there will be calls for Trump’s impeachment and cutting off funds for “Trump’s war”. The leftists will replay the anti war riots of the 1960s, attempt to block US war material from going to the front and try to end the bombing campaign with staged photos of women and children being killed by US actions. The carnage on Seoul will be glossed over and blamed solely on Trump. Even if Kim Jong-un succeeded in lobbing one or more nukes at Hawaii or the US mainland the blame Trump vitriol would continue.

[Jack Hammer]

Contrariwise, after all the tree bark and roasted rats, even a single cheeseburger would blow out a North Korean digestive system and render its owner instantly unconscious.

Secret weapon.