North Korea has been in the news quite a bit lately and I feel the need to weigh in on the subject.
First off, I strongly support free speech and Sony Pictures is free to make movies about whatever they want.
That being said, I think this is stirring up unnecessary trouble. We've got more than enough on our plate right now and we don't need to get into a pissing contest with North Korea. I realize that puts me in the minority around here but just because you can do something doesn't always mean that it's a good idea.
I find the DPRK about as funny as cancer or serial killers. You may think Kim Jong-un is just a funny little guy but he probably killed more people before breakfast this morning than Ted Bundy did in his whole career. I just never found Ted Bundy to be all that funny.
I consider them to be a very dangerous, sometimes unpredictable regime and I don't take them lightly.
In case you didn't know this already, we are technically still at war with North Korea. The Korean War ended with an armistice but there was never a peace treaty. These people have been a pain in our backsides ever since.
In 1963, when I was a but a year old, my father was assigned to the DMZ as a tank commander. He described his role as a "speed bump for the North Korean army" if they ever came across the border. Their orders would have been "hold until relieved", which in Army-speak means stay there and die.
One morning when they were out on patrol, they found footprints going through their encampment from the previous night. North Korean bootprints to be exact. Their commandos had sneaked right through the camp just as a way of saying "We could have killed you if we'd wanted to."
There have been many incidents with them over the years. The USS Pueblo in 1968, the kidnapping of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987 just to name a few. These are not nice people.
In 1994 I was starting to worry that we might go at it with them. Tensions over their nuclear program and the leadership struggle surrounding the death of Kim Il-sung made it a dangerous time. I suffered more than a few sleepless nights that year.
In 2004, while the US military was largely tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, I got an urgent call from my Air National Guard unit. "We volunteers to go to Guam right away."
So off I went. We'd picked up some message traffic from China and North Korea that now might be a good time to take advantage of the US being bogged down in the Middle East. We rushed air and naval forces to the Pacific as a show of force (and that we were paying attention). I spent several weeks refueling B-2s that were making practice runs up towards Korea.
The DPRK remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world today. They have an active army of around 1.2 million plus 8 million reserves. Their equipment is old but they have an awful lot of it. Their air force isn't much to speak of but they have a very credible submarine force plus a large missile force. They have over 1000 ballistic missiles, some capable of reaching as far as Guam.
They maintain a very large number of special forces. In the event of a conflict I would expect them to be inserted behind our lines to disrupt airbases, supply depots and other high value targets. They've seen what American airpower can do and I would expect them to make every effort to disrupt it.
They have a large chemical weapons inventory as well as the ability to field biological weapons. They also have nuclear weapons although I'm not sure if they've been able to make one small enough to fit on a missile - yet.
I've seen some of the plans for what Korea 2.0 would look like and you really, really don't want to go there. The Pentagon expects a war that would last maybe six months with US casualties numbering 50,000 or so. South Korean civilian casualties would likely be in the millions. By an accident of geography Seoul sits well in range of DPRK artillery and would probably be leveled in the first hours of a conflict.
When generals have nightmares they have nightmares about a war on the Korean peninsula. There are an awful lot of military forces crammed into a fairly small area. The terrain is difficult and weather can sometime make air operations difficult. In no way would I expect Desert Storm the Sequel. I don't think the North Korean troops would surrender en masse like the Iraqis. They're tough, smart and resourceful. I would expect them to fight and fight hard.
In a nutshell, North Korea is everything we claimed Iraq was but wasn't. Iraq was evil and weak, which is why we invaded them. North Korea is evil and (relatively) strong. We don't attack them because we know they can hurt us back.
While I think a war with North Korea is unlikely I think it's possible. Imagine two guys trading insults. Insults lead to shoving. Shoving leads to punching. Sometimes it's the same with nations. Sometimes countries go to war because they miscalculate. They assume the other side will back down and they don't.
I could envision North Korea feeling that they've "lost face" and staging an "incident" because of this. We would then have to respond or look weak. That's how people get killed.
I treat North Korea as dangerous, unstable and easily insulted. I believe you have to be firm with them and you can't show weakness. I also believe that you don't want to antagonize or provoke them. When I see a pit bull guarding a junkyard I don't go up and tweak its nose just to see how it will react.
I believe the DPRK will fall someday but I don't know it will play out. None of the scenarios are very promising.
One scenario is that they just collapse. Nobody wants to see this happen. The economic black hole that would create will make German reunification look like a picnic.
Another worry is that their leadership decides "What the heck, we're going down anyways. Might as well go for it." You may tell me that can't happen but we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point. I think we got lucky that the Soviet Union went out with a whimper rather than a bang. If the hardliners in the Kremlin had gotten their way it might have been very different.
A third possibility is that an internal power struggle leads to a conflict. Hard to say how that would play out.
A fourth possibility is the two Koreas going at it as part of a larger regional conflict. I realize this is veering into Tom Clancy territory but it's feasible. China has certainly been flexing their muscles as of late and the US "pivot to Asia" has been going on since at least 2004. Despite all the focus on the Middle East we actually think the next big thing is going to be in the Pacific.
China is also the wild card in the equation. China doesn't really like the DPRK all that much but they do have a mutual defense treaty with them. China likes having them there as a buffer and doesn't want to see a US ally right on their border. I don't think we can assume that China would stay out of a Korean conflict. We made that mistake the first time around and it was costly.
So go ahead. Laugh all you want. I'll be waiting for Sony's next picture, featuring the hilarious Reno 911 style hijinks of the Ferguson Missouri Police Department.