US Secretary of Defense James Mattis stands next to South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjeom on Oct. 27 as he calls for North Korea to cease its military provocations and give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons. (Yonhap News)
Michael Peck, National Interest: This is America's Top-Secret Plan to Crush North Korea in a War
For years, the expectation had been that a second Korean War would resemble with the first, a big-unit conventional war with U.S. and South Korean forces first stopping the enemy and then counterattacking into North Korea. But OPLAN 5015 reportedly takes a more twenty-first century approach of limited war, special forces and precision weapons. Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported in 2015 that the plan resembled guerrilla warfare, with special forces assassinations and targeted attacks on key facilities. The goal was to consolidate several older war plans, minimize casualties in a war and even prepare for the possibility that the North Korean regime might collapse.
North Korea’s unpredictable leader Kim Jong-un has many ways of making war upon his neighbors. He can unleash commandos, or cyberweapons, or threaten to utilize weapons of mass destruction unless the world complies with his wishes.
Whether Kim Jong-un will live to see the results is another matter.
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WNU Editor: I am sure the U.S. has a very good plan on "crushing North Korea" in a war. But it is also true that any war plan becomes obsolete a minute after it becomes implemented.
3 comments:
Wnu exactly. And the US has a long, long track record of underestimating its enemies. And an almost equally long track record of overestimating technology, training and its own capabilities. And then the mistakes..remember the bodycount fiasco? And then the US - as a democracy - has the "problem" that their own people won't want that war abroad. Many, many things have gone wrong before - the US win almost all battles, but lost almost all wars. Resilience depends on justification of war. If the North attacks the US, and succeeds in killing a few thousand, the military has a couple years worth of public opinion to bomb North Korea into the stone age - much more time they'd ever need. Unless China gets involved again, just like they did in the first Korean war. Then we're in for WW3, because Americans are fed up with thieving Chinese -- and Chinese (often not knowing/fully understanding what's going on thanks to state propaganda, firewalls and information suppression) want to chew American butt. The nukes would come out quick. How limited it'll remain is everyone's guess. If China is accused and proven to help north Korea with their nuke program (and it looks like they did ), then my money is on the US because all of its allies would make even 1.5bn Chinese a thing of the past very quickly. And China made so many enemies out of its neighbours, I doubt they have good leadership either.
"the US win almost all battles, but lost almost all wars"
Not a true statement. wikipedia has an exaustive analysis of US armed conflicts throughout US history. The final tally goes like this:
84 - US military victory
11 - US Military defeat
3 - Stalemate
2 - Compromise
Anon # 1,
Your entire post is spot on. The first sentence is especially true. The US does have a long history of overestimating our capabilities while underestimating those of adversaries and THEY ARE STILL AT!! It is as though some can just never learn!!
Overestimating your capabilities and underestimating those of an opposing force or potential opposing force is always dangerous. During war time this is especially dangerous. We have been EXTREMELY blessed so far that this has not caused our non military people serious harm YET.
Anon # 2,
When discussing what has happened lately the statement that the US loses almost all of its war is spot on. If we go back in history, the track record was different. Furthermore I am sure that operations like Libya, Gulf War 1 (Desert Storm), Kosovo, etc may be listed as victories but each of these were/are strategic defeats.
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