The North Korean situation is reaching a crisis point, beyond which the United States will be in the position of having to acquiesce to the Nork’s status in the nuclear club. As is widely understood, the military options today are fraught with peril. Armchair generals might…
The North Korean situation is reaching a crisis point, beyond which the United States will be in the position of having to acquiesce to the Nork’s status in the nuclear club. As is widely understood, the military options today are fraught with peril. Armchair generals might spin out scenarios of a decapitating strike on North Korea, but in the real world the chances of success are too uncertain.
Austin Bay, who knows a thing of five about such matters, lays out how it might be done, but even his account leaves ample room for doubt:
The U. S. and its allies in east Asia have the aircraft and missiles (cruise and ballistic) to deliver at least 2,000 (likely more) precision blockbuster-sized conventional weapons within a two to 10 minute time frame on North Korea’s critical targets. The April U. S. Tomahawk cruise missile attack on a Syrian Shayrat airbase provides an example. The missiles were fired at a distance, but since they can “loiter, ” the 59 missiles arrived near simultaneously. U. S. Air Force heavy bombers can drop smart bombs so that munitions dropped from different aircraft arrive near simultaneously. A simultaneous strategic bombing strike seeks to surprise the enemy, destroy his strategic weapons systems and suppress his key defenses throughout the battle area. That is asking a lot—perhaps too much.
This doesn’ t mean it won’ t come to this. It is widely reported that President Clinton seriously contemplated a military strike on North Korea in 1994, but among the factors that led him to shelve the idea was the thought that North Korea, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s turn toward capitalism, wasn’ t long for this world in its present form. That was back in those glorious “end of history” years when liberalism and democracy and western enlightenment were thought to be imminently sweeping the entire globe. Never mind North Korea: the Middle East soon dispelled that chimera. North Korea is powerful evidence that Orwell’s nightmare world is a more durable form of rule that we thought. North Korea, absent some real pressure, isn’ t going away any time soon.
