North Korea Calls Hawaii and U.S. Mainland Targets

I asked before if anyone thought war with North Korea was possible and was met mostly with negative feedback (as in, answers of “No”).

My point of view back then was very simple. Kim Jung Un Ill…Jong…whatever the fat kid’s name is (seriously if you want people to remember your name don’t make it 3 separate words, 1 or 2 of which are the same as other historical people whose names also take years to remember) is 30, which is already a problem as far as respect goes in his country, and he has to work hard to garner the respect of his people.

And to do that he employed exactly the same tactic as China: Start fights with other countries so that your people don’t realize how crappy their own country is (which is to say it has its perks, but then it has 10 times more problems for every perk).

The major miscalculation being that this is the soul basis of the respect he gets from his people, which means he has literally no choice but to keep escalating things until eventually war begins and his country is completely annihilated. He really can’t back down or he loses faith with his people. Not only that but he is trying to get out of his father’s shadow.

Basically, war can’t be avoided. Backing down is obviously not possible.

Neither is maintaining his current position. If all he is is threats, his people will soon realize this as well once the world just types “/ignore NorthKorea”. it isn’t enough in the long run to even just maintain his current level of threats in order to placate his people.

He literally has no choice. Backing down means losing the respect of his people which he will never be able to regain at his age.

Keeping the status quo of threats won’t be enough when his own people get tired of it and demand action.

He’s already stated he will make a pre-emptive strike, and frankly he has no choice. So war will happen.

It was also stated by some that North Korea and South Korea would not be united, but instead North Korea would become part of China.

This won’t happen. South Korea and North Korea will definitely become reunited to the chagrin of China (the article is long so to just explain its point, China does not want North Korea to start a war because then China would have one fewer ally and share one more border with an American ally (or rather the same number of borders, but a bigger one)).

My questions are:

#1: What do you think is going through Kim…Fat’s head? Clearly he is under peer pressure, but do you really think he believes he can do any damage to anyone at all? Does he really believe he could win a war? Do his people really believe that?

#2: Where do you think he will strike first? Hawaii, South Korea, Guam, and Japan have all been mentioned as possible targets.

#3: What will he strike? Military bases only? Or something like Tokyo, just to do as much damage possible before being wiped off the map?

#4: How will he strike? Starting off with nuclear? Or starting off with a large barrage of standard missiles?

#5: Do you think anyone would support him in a war in which he strikes first? Do you think it’s possible that he secretly has agreements with other countries to back him in a war, which would explain why he thinks he could actually win a war?

#6: How long do you think the war would last? 6 days? 6 hours?

#7: Same question as last time: How will North Koreans and South Koreans get along after being reunited?

#8: Japan, Australia to sanction N Korean bank as part of U.S.-led crackdown America has been called the “World Police” for a long time. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in satire. But in this case North Korea is specifically pointing at America. Do you agree with America playing World Police in this instance? Why or why not?

L. Spiro

I'd be surprised if China let's him go to war with the US, Japan, or South Korea. Regardless of diplomatic and even military relations, their economic relationships would be greatly strained if such a thing happened. Also, it would severely hurt China's (and by extension Russia's) standing in the international community. It's one thing to defend someone who acts like a nutjob. It's another thing to be actually responsible for that nutjob and have to clean up his mess afterwards as well.

My questions are:
#1: What do you think is going through Kim…Fat’s head? Clearly he is under peer pressure, but do you really think he believes he can do any damage to anyone at all? Does he really believe he could win a war? Do his people really believe that?
#2: Where do you think he will strike first? Hawaii, South Korea, Guam, and Japan have all been mentioned as possible targets.
#3: What will he strike? Military bases only? Or something like Tokyo, just to do as much damage possible before being wiped off the map?
#4: How will he strike? Starting off with nuclear? Or starting off with a large barrage of standard missiles?
#5: Do you think anyone would support him in a war in which he strikes first? Do you think it’s possible that he secretly has agreements with other countries to back him in a war, which would explain why he thinks he could actually win a war?
#6: How long do you think the war would last? 6 days? 6 hours?
#7: Same question as last time: How will North Koreans and South Koreans get along after being reunited?
#8: Japan, Australia to sanction N Korean bank as part of U.S.-led crackdown America has been called the “World Police” for a long time. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in satire. But in this case North Korea is specifically pointing at America. Do you agree with America playing World Police in this instance? Why or why not?

First off, I still disagree that there will be a shooting war with NK. War can absolutely be avoided, and the latest in a long string of threats from the country that perfected extortion-via-tantrum will not convince me otherwise. Also, I don't find your argument for why war is inevitable very compelling. NK is brutally repressive, which goes a long way towards preventing popular revolt and makes a revolt far more difficult. Plus, even if Kim Jong Un is at risk of being deposed from within, it's not like he'll be able to hold onto power after losing a war he initiated for no reason, with nothing to gain.

NK is already on the /ignore list for its threats. The previous two generations of leaders did exactly that-- threats, never quite enough action to provoke military retaliation, peppered with "Sea of Fire" and "We're coming for the US" rhetoric. I agree that Kim Jong Un seems far less adept at this game than his father or grandfather, but I don't think that he'll abandon it in favor of a suicidal war. Plus he may not be as in-charge as he predecessors. His whole cabinet served under his father, and whether Un is unbalanced or not I can't imagine his generals meekly going along with suicide-by-pointless-attack plan.

Anyhow, on to the list:

#1: I doubt it. He's not so much under peer pressure as pillar pressure. He has no peers-- he's the privileged son of a dictator supported by his (far more capable) father's junta. He could do some fairly intense damage, in his neighborhood, but he's not going to damage the US in any meaningful way. He certainly isn't going to win a war. What his people believe, who knows? They're inundated with propaganda, and we outside of NK don't have much of an idea what they think about anything.

#2: Of the choices you present, SK or Guam. But strategically they're all losers for NK, so it's hard to imagine a conflict targeting anyone at all.

#3: As above, he'll strike nothing. But if he were to stage an attack, I have to imagine it would aim to inflict maximum damage.

#4: NK won't last long in a war, and their missile technology is hard to move around and deploy. If they don't use the big guns straightaway, they won't have a chance to use them at all. EDIT: NK may be able to continue existing for a while during war, but their ability to project power into distant theaters of war will be difficult to hold onto. Once their best missiles are out of the picture, they're stuck moving a conventional army around with little supply-line defense, and not a whole lot of supplies.

#5: No. What could NK possibly deliver via war that other nations couldn't get on their own with less fuss? Particularly if the other nations would take a visible role in the war?

#6: This would depend on what is struck, and with what weapons, and when NK would feel beaten enough to accept the incredibly harsh surrender terms that would be forced on them. I doubt it would end by conquest, but NK is in rough shape with zero military force brought against them. How could they weather a siege for any period of time?

#7: No idea. Maybe never.

#8: NK is always pointing at the US with its threats. The sanctions against NK are overwhelmingly pushed through the U.N., not enacted externally by the US and friends. I'm not sure of the specific sanction you're describing, but I feel like the US approach to NK is very un-World Police.

My question in response to yours is that what would be the true motivations of NORTH KOREA? This is something on a much larger scale than the North Korean dictator's strive to escape the shadow of his predecessor. He would not start the largest conflict of the 21st century unless he had one of the best reasons of the 21st century. My guess is that if a war was ever started (very unlikely in my opinion) that it would be waged because of the vast industry and wealth in South Korea. If the two countries ever combined, with N. Korea's agriculture and huge space and S. Korea's economy and industries, it would be a powerhouse greater than even Japan, if it was not communist. In the past Hitler started WWII over gaining "lebensraum" or "living room" for the Germans. I see the same here, although the environment is different, and not very conducive to a tragedy on the scale of a war.

he has literally no choice but to keep escalating things until eventually war begins and his country is completely annihilated

Choice (A) keep going down the "all talk" route, and occasionally kill me a south korean soldier.

Choice (B) start a war that annihilates my country and ends in my death.

I fail to see how there is no choice here, and how (B) is inevitable...

Keep in mind that for every bit of crazy internal propaganda that they have (a lot of which is actually justified, seeing as they actually are under seige and constant threat from us), there is just as much external propaganda coming from us that's designed to make them look even more crazy than they really are. The amount of propaganda in our media aimed against the enemies (or exploited allies, whatever) of the west is pretty ridiculous TBH...