Now that North Korea has confirmed nukes, the U.S. and South Korea have
finally decided to create a plan on how to deal with the situation.
According to the report, the United States is considering a plan against North Korea to neutralize Pyongyang's nuclear capability with overwhelming use of the U.S. Air Force.
Under the envisaged plan, U.S. combat aircraft and bombers... would conduct "surgical strikes'' on major weapons of mass destruction (WMD) facilities, training sites, and intelligence and communication facilities in the North instead of ground forces advancing into the North, the report said.
Currently, the Operations Plan -- OPLAN 5027, the joint U.S. contingency plan with South Korea, accounts for a conflict involving conventional weapons:
OPLAN 5027, drawn up by the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), aims to deter North Korean forces armed with conventional weapons. The South Korean and U.S. militaries review the contingency scheme every year and update it in accordance with the security situation.
Washington is reportedly committed to dispatching some 690,000 troops with 1,600 aircraft and 160 ships to the peninsula within 90 days after a war breaks out under OPLAN 5027.
The plan, however, lacks specific actions to cope with a nuclear war.
Sources at the JCS said last week that Seoul is reviewing OPLAN 5027 to address North Korea's missile and nuclear threats.
Nevermind the fact that we apparently just started planning for a nuclear North Korea (They didn't see this coming?), where on Earth is the U.S. going to come up with the necessary troop requirement to fulfill such a commitment?
As of August 31, 2006, the U.S. had approximately 1.4 million active military personnel and 1.2 million in Reserve.
Some ignorant war hawks have argued that this would allow us to easily sustain simultaneous operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea.
At the moment, about 171,000 are deployed in Iraq and 23,000 are deployed in and around Afghanistan. Add to that the max 690,000 troop commitment for North Korea and the math makes it seem as though we still have plenty of personnel available for other critical duties. (690K + 171K + 23K = only 884K out of the total 2.6 million active plus reserve military -- leaving over 1.7 million left for other duties).
Clearly, such foolish assertions ignore myriad other critical factors such as troop rotation, attrition, domestic security needs, disaster relief, etc.
Consider this: As of March of this year, nearly one-third of the U.S. ground forces in Iraq are members of the Army National Guard -- a force not intended to fight foreign wars.
The fact that the Guard accounts for a third of our military force in Iraq is symbolic of the lengths to which our military personnel are currently extended. Add Afghanistan to the mix. Toss in our need to retain troop levels to defend our borders, and provide aid in the event of natural disasters, and then consider that a war with North Korea could only be fought one way...
...by reinstating the draft.
Luckily, the CIA assures us we have plenty of 'potential' military personnel to keep any number of wars going simultaneously:
Military service age and obligation: 18 years of age; 17 years of age with written parental consent (2006)(But no under-age beer drinking or they go to jail!)
Manpower available for military service:
males age 18-49: 67,742,879
females age 18-49: 67,070,144 (2005 est.)
Manpower fit for military service:
males age 18-49: 54,609,050
females age 18-49: 54,696,706 (2005 est.)
Manpower reaching military service age annually:
males age 18-49: 2,143,873
females age 18-49: 2,036,201 (2005 est.)
Fortunately or unfortunately, military action against North Korea is not an option and they know it -- in fact, North Koreans set it up that way:
Bill Clinton and William Perry, his Defense secretary, considered going to war against Pyongyang in 1994. On May 19 of that year, Perry, along with the then Joint Chiefs chairman, John Shalikashvili, and the commander of U.S. forces in South Korea at the time, Gen. Gary Luck, briefed the president on the anticipated costs of such a war: roughly 52,000 U.S. military killed or wounded; 490,000 South Korean military ditto, and untold numbers of Northern dead and civilian casualties, all in the first 90 days of conflict--together with a U.S. price tag of more than $61 billion. Luck later calculated the ultimate toll at more than 1 million dead, possibly including as many as 100,000 Americans, and a final bill to U.S. taxpayers in excess of $100 billion--not to mention more than $1 trillion in damage to South Korea's economy.
So much for unilateral preemptive action.
<strike>Fortunately, leaders on both sides are rational and wise. Thus they will no doubt do the right thing.</strike>