People are trying to over analyze North Korea’s behavior. This tantrum is pretty much par for the course. This is how they do internal politics, it’s part of how they brainwash their own people, it’s how they whip up nationalist feelings, it’s one of the ways they try to get their half starved population to work harder for the Juche cause, etc.
Every year, like clockwork, North Korea throws a tantrum around about the time the US and South Korea hold their annual exercises. Every year North Korea, the media, various geopolitical analysts, etc, tell us this is the worst it’s ever been. After a few weeks the shouting dies down, the Norks declare victory, and we move on.
We can plainly see with the use of satellites and other intelligence gathering that North Korea isn’t really on some war footing. They aren’t moving troops, they aren’t actually doing anything militarily that would indicate an attack is imminent. North Korea is so broke they probably can’t afford an army wide show of force anyway.
It’s possible North Korea might miscalculate and take their bluster campaign a step too far and actually shoot at something, but most likely they will continue stomping their feet for a few weeks and then return to the status-quo.
here’s my prediction. Missiles will be launched, NK will call it a successful military operation and show phony pictures of US destruction. We will do nothing and declare it only a test launch. We will then give them food aid. The End.
North Korea uses Orwell’s “1984” as an instruction manual.
This reminds me a lot of the first gulf war. The media was going nuts over how the Iraqis had “desert” tanks and were superior fighters in that terrain. I remember people talking about how we shouldn’t go because the Iraqis will easily destroy our forces and we aren’t cut out for desert fighting.
Unfortunately, the media wasn’t aware of how awesome Abrams tanks with GPS tracking are. We plowed through sand storms and picked off Iraqi tanks from thousands of yards with precision while going something like 20/30mph in the desert. It was embarrassing for Iraq. I can’t remember the kill ratios but I think we only lost a couple Bradleys from enemy fire.
Not trying to get too overconfident here, just throwing in my agreement that the media does indeed have a habit of overestimating the opposition. Let the military do the overestimating, that way we can be sure they’ll turn the area into a parking lot.
a friend on mine was in intelligence, and his job was to monitor NK fishing boats; that was 30 years ago, so I would guess using today’s equipment, fat-boy, can’t go to the toilet, without someone knowing about it....by the way, where does NK, get their fuel, knock down the tankers heading that way, and they all freeze in the dark....