The Dear Leader is playing with his artillery

[Egbert]

You mean like the assurances given to the Soviet Union as it retreated from eastern Europe? Also HC if the US hasn't left Germany what are the odds of a reduced US presence in Korea should it be unified?

Yes. I am not sure such assurances would be believed thus adding to the potential problems in respect of Korea.

[Egbert]

What would concern me is that his two older brothers were both briefly the heir apparent but fell out of favor with their father. What's with the youngest son that makes him Kim's favorite?

Wouldn't be surprised if that was all a state secret. Anyway, maybe Kim just has a favourite or maybe he thinks #3 is the best potential leader.

[Barnabas]

I'm shocked South Korea hasn't invaded the North yet. If someone sank a US ship and shelled one of our cities we'd be bombing them to the stone age before you could say "strongly condemned".

Given that the US has a bunch of troops and a fleet already deployed to the region, I don't think it would take more than a day or two to topple the North's government.

Israel attacked an American ship and the Yanks patted them on the back

[Barnabas]

BTW, I would love to see South Korea go animal on North Korea

[Darius871]

That was a friendly fire incident. Don't pull a halflotus on me, I'm not interested in conspiracy theories.

Oh be fair; Slaughtermeyer's the one who always *****es about teh j00s. Halflotus just thinks there's an amorphous global power elite of various races conspiring to enslave us all with a new world order, or something.

[Whoha]

Remember this is immediately after WW2. The US military consisted of veterans of Europe and the Pacific. It was the best fighting force in the world at the time, bar none, and was working in coordination with a large multi-national UN force.

Not quite. We largely disbanded our army at the end of WW2, and didn't have that amount of manpower or machinery at our disposal. We are in vastly better shape than we were in the days when we mistakenly believed that there would be a lasting peace after WW2.

[Al B. Sure!]

Not quite. We largely disbanded our army at the end of WW2, and didn't have that amount of manpower or machinery at our disposal. We are in vastly better shape than we were in the days when we mistakenly believed that there would be a lasting peace after WW2.

I'm pretty sure you're mixing up WW1 with WW2.

Remember, Cold War, National Defense Act, etc.

[Egbert]

I'm pretty sure you're mixing up WW1 with WW2.

Remember, Cold War, National Defense Act, etc.

The US military did scale down the military when WW2 ended. Lots of returned servicemen went back to civilian life, machinery decomissioned or scrapped.

USA was having a full on war on two fronts for a while with a military that would be ridiculously large for peace time. Yeah, they kept plenty but cut back plenty.

[Snotty]

North Korea has a total army of nearly 10 million personel and a population not much more than double that. Any full scale invasion of North Korea will be akin to a genocide as all the able bodied men and women will be dead. Thats not a great piece of history to have as the defining fact of your presidency unless your hand is truly forced

[Egbert]

Plus thousands of artillery pieces within range of Seoul (large city, capital of South Korea). Set that lot off and Seoul gets flattened.

[BeBMan]

I don't think China cares enough about North Korea to start a shooting war with the US if South Korea decided it's had enough. As for the high price, which has a greater price, continuing to let the north develop bombs and sink your ships or fighting back? If they had tried to conquer the north a decade ago then they wouldn't have to deal with the whole nukes thing either. This problem isn't going to be getting better anytime soon, if it were me, I would suck it up and end it now rather than let it fester.

The fact of the matter is that besides diplo games no US gov (whether democratic or republican) has done anything more than rhetoric and military exercises towards NK in recent years. Even under Bush there was no serious attempt for a military solution, despite all the rhetoric about NK getting nukes would be inacceptable and whatnot. And so far China has been backing NK for various reasons. If China decides at some point that NK is more of a burden to them than anything else the situation might change, but so far there are no serious indications that this is happening, so it remains a big *if*.

[OzzyKP]

The damage of a war faaaar exceeds the damage of an occasional sunk ship or shelling of random islands.

[Whoha]

I'm pretty sure you're mixing up WW1 with WW2.

Remember, Cold War, National Defense Act, etc.

No I'm not. That was us stepping back up. We slashed over 90% of our army immediately following WW2.

[Asher]

I hope Israel teaches North Korea a lesson!

Israel

[Asher]

The damage of a war faaaar exceeds the damage of an occasional sunk ship or shelling of random islands.

Tell that to Raytheon.