The Military Thread

North korea out numbers south korea's military by 2-to-1. However, you have a vast technological advantage, more and better aircraft and a competent navy. If it was just between North and South, I think the south might be able to win, but there will be massive destruction.

With american support you have a good 30,000 American troops already in the country, plus our Pacific fleet and air force, it will be over much quicker, though not much cleaner. They'll still do quite a bit of damage.

The south would win. Seoul specifically would get the shit shelled out of it and lots of people would die, but the south would most definitely win.

...but who else would get drawn in? That's the trouble with the Korean conflict — it's an Epicentre of the entire Far East situation.

That's the big thing. If it's just the south and north, and then china joins in, South Korea's in BIG trouble. Japan might back you up then, and their navy would be a major help aginst the Chinese fleet. Then comes US support, an attack on our bases, calling up NATO, classic WW3 scenario from here on.

If China stays out, then it's unlikely others will get involved, though the US would still support you and Japan might get involved as well.

It all depend on what North Korea does: if NK fires a missile towards Japan, the brakes come off the JSDF*

Depends on how committed China is to opposing America on these sorts of things. It's possible they could be drawn in by the involvement of American troops but I think the more likely course of action for them is to sit it out and let us spend loads of money, maybe even covertly fund a North Korean insurgency in hopes that it will draw the US into extended involvement.

@joesolo - Now that you brought it up, I believe I underestimated North Korea.

The only city that the North would be able to significantly damage is Seoul. The problem is, since that is where 1/4th of my country's population and pretty much 80% of all the economy is at, the damage to the city would be absolutely devastating. Also, if North invades, then there goes the slightest hope for reunification. A lot of people, particularly the older generation, still suffer from McCarthyism and the invasion would justify their cause.

Basically, it will end in a Pyrrhic Victory.

On the recoiless weapon.

Technically modern rocket launchers are recoiless weapons as well. They utilize back blast to help mitigate weapon recoil. The only difference between a rocket and a Recoiless rifle is the Rocket is self propelled after it leaves the launcher and the Recoiless Rifle fires a shell that is propelled with the force of the intial launch charge alone.

Both weapon systems have a lot of the same capabilities.

edited 4th Oct '12 4:43:52 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Oh yea, even if you "win" there'll be casualties in the hundreds of thousands at a minimum. Arty and dense civilian populations result in alot of dead civilians. then a minimum of 6 million soldiers fighting it out, plus missile land mines airstrikes, ect. and then when you actually turn back and invade North Korea itself, there'll be booby traps, human shields and fanatics galore. Hopefully some rebel bands as well, I've read mention of small groups along the borders fighting with guards once or twice.

A common misperception. An open-source analysis reveals that only the super-long-range Koksan guns (of which there are very few) and the North Korean ballistic missiles can hit Seoul. Will they hurt? Yes, very much. But it's orders of magnitude less than what is commonly imagined.

Also, if NK goes to war, China will stay out. Or it will wait until NK's falling and then move south across the Imjin to secure a buffer zone for itself. China's reasons for supporting NK are as a leashed attack dog to annoy the West with, and as a buffer zone. Nothing more.

I think If china did that It'd be near-universally condemned by the U.N. Russia would just ignore it and maybe Cuba or Iran would say something supportive.

China won't do it because the benefits aren't worth the costs. That's it, pure and simple.

You really still believe that the Chinese government is being "rational"?

Letting its citizens attack Japanese companies, and anything Japanese, or anything "Japanese sounding" even, would hurt them more than it would benefit them...yet regardless of that you believe the Chinese government is still capable of "weighing" the benefits and the costs of its own actions/inactions?

Or they could let the public vent and deal with the Japanese backlash later then the angry public now.

If the North Koreans get involved, the Chinese will as well. Trade and all that shit does not matter when issues of national prestige are in place. And I keep pointing out that Nazi Germany's biggest trading partner on the 21st of June 1941 was Soviet Russia for several reasons. One, because it is true, two because the Chinese government as a whole are very aware of Zhou En-Lai's maxim. "All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.”

The only questions are how far that Chinese involvement will extend, and how many casualties the Chinese civilian population will accept amongst their sons and daughters in the military.

Yes, the Chinese are rational. For the CCP, fanning the flames of nationalism at home distracts nicely from the growing number of questions about its own legitimacy, any speculation over succession, and the like. Plus, they've realized that riots in the street meant pushing things too far: the government newspapers did an about-face and encouraged its readers to be rational and not get carried away after some of the riots got out of hand.

Except alliances are built not to commit your own country into action it does not want. China is not the Soviet Union; the CCP does not exercise that kind of control over its citizenry—the price of modernization. If the Norks get involved with the US, China has the option to potentially get involved into a war with a nuclear-armed opponent, in addition to all kinds of other screwy business. Every time the North has launched a provocation, China has been mightily embarrassed about it. It does not want war, and if the Norks managed to get into a mess of their own doing, the most the Chinese would do would be to grab what land they can from the Norks. A war with the south would completely and totally wreck the Kim regime in weeks if not days once the tide turns against them, and the Chinese do not want to be burned by that fire; no point trying to prop them up. It wants a pliable buffer zone, and that it may try to set up, but that is not unconditional.

Note that for all intents and purposes I have been modelling a war in which North Korea comes south. Think of it this way: would not the US be embarrassed as hell if South Korea launched a unprovoked and unilateral attack north? There is a small chance that the US might not even be dragged into it; after all, it wasn't in the agreement, and that's with entire brigades and air wings stationed in the South. Now: China has no forces stationed in North Korea. It may state that it will defend North Korea against unprovoked aggression, but its connections are far less extensive. Its priority isn't "defend NK at all costs", which can get prohibitively expensive in political terms, but "keep NK from imploding", because the spillover will flow north, and China does not want to deal with the sudden millions of refugees coming across the Yalu. So if NK launches an invasion south, thereby committing regime suicide, China will be invested in guarding its own priorities: stopping those refugees from entering. The moment the army goes south, the refugees will come north, and that's where the problem will lie.

edited 4th Oct '12 11:10:22 PM by SabresEdge

Explain then World War One. Which came about despite of alliances that were built not to commit my own country into action it did not want. No one in Britain wanted to get involved in a Balkans war. No one.

Yet we did. And we took millions of casualties killed, wounded, captured and missing across Great Britain and its Empire when that war went global. You are thinking in terms of logic. Logic does not apply to these kinds of international willy-waving situations otherwise troops would never leave their barracks at all.

Zhou wasn't just taking the piss out of Clausewitz when he said in 1954 that: "All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.” He meant every word, and lived by it. So do his successors who went on to kill hundreds of unarmed students in the Square of Heavenly Peace 15 years later, let's not forget. A nice long war in the Korean peninsula would suit some of those fuckers down to the ground. Their fathers and grandfathers fought there in the Fifties and they are still pissed that they did not crush the South to a pulp back then and bring the whole land under the Communist bootheels.

That characterization of the PRC as some kind of Real Life version of a James Bond villain does neither you nor they any justice, Tam.

I'm not saying that they're in any way saintly or that I'm fond of them, but instability in the region (which would invariably spread beyond just the peninsula, given alliances and geographic proximity of most of the "major" actors in Asia) would ultimately do the ChiComs no good, and I think they're pragmatic enough to know it. Self-interest is a powerful motivator, and "not winding up at the business end of a gun or rotting away in some shithole of a prison" is pretty much the height of self-interest.

At the least, think of what would happen to all those Chinese geegaws and gadgets that fuel their trade balance sheets if they were to get directly involved in furthering Nork aggression. Nazi Germany and Russia (and earlier, France) aren't a useful comparison point, as Germany didn't absolutely depend on international commerce to the degree that the Chinese economy does. The PRC is already falling below (if not have already fallen below) the rate of growth they need to keep from imploding economically (not "want", "need"), trade being cut off by war would only make things worse. Hell, look at how Iran is currently starting to implode under sanctions and embargoes in response to their policies regarding nuclear weapons.

You're still viewing China through the lense of the 1960s to the 1970s. There is a key difference: by now, the CCP are not communist by any stretch of the word. They have the C in their name, yes, but they don't operate on ideology, which has little appeal. For them, 1989 was a disaster that was narrowly kept from being a catastrophe; it dealt an incredible blow to their legitimacy. Right now the CCP rules not by ideology but by an implicit bargain with the population: as long as we continue to deliver amazing economic growth, you will accept our rules.

But that amazing economic growth is tied in to a hundred things, and ninety-nine are trade-related. A war with Japan or the US would cripple Chinese trade. Not to mention, the CCP does not want instability, and there is nothing more destabilizing than a wide-front East Asian war. An adventure on the Korean Peninsula would jeopardize Chinese stability to a dangerous extent; they know this. China hasn't been unconditionally supporting NK like the pre-WWI alliances; it knows that North Korea has the potential to turn into a liability doublequick. Sure, it's useful to annoy the US with, but it has no business starting any wars. I will bet any amount you desire that that's what Chinese ambassadors have been telling the Norks for the past decade.

And, again, a point I brought up early on: nuclear weapons. For that reason, if for no other, the South will not go north, and the North will stay relatively quiescent. When a regime acquires nukes, it understands that it is now open to complete destruction if it ever uses them. That applies for China, too. Its leaders have studied history, and they know about the Cuban Missile Crisis. If the Norks send a nuclear missile south on a use-it-or-lose-it trip, and the South demands that the US retaliate in kind, who knows where that's headed? Would you want to commit any troops knowing that an enemy nuke might burst over their heads, and you would then have to retaliate? No and hell no. At least a Pacific dispute that flares up has a chance of staying purely conventional; with a third nuclear-armed country in the mix, any kind of troop commitment runs the risk of Armageddon—and the Chinese have no desire for a second Cuban Missile Crisis. Even a cursory knowledge of recent Chinese history will tell you that the consensus-ruled, cautious, stability-at-all-costs CCP of the 1990s is completely different from the one-man-driven, adventurous, ideology-driven CCP of Mao's day.

edited 4th Oct '12 11:58:30 PM by SabresEdge

The government of the PRC act worse than any Bond villain I have ever heard of. Much, much, much fucking worse in fact. And they get away with it, which really annoys the hell out of me.

What about the wholesale harvesting of executed prisoners organs for foreign sale? Or forced abortions? Or the continued refusal by them and their Russian allies to do anything to stop the killings in Syria? Or, on a much less evil note - yet still pretty shady in many respects - the state run gold farming operations in all the major MMORPGS?

Ya think the Chinese people that do that kind of stuff DON'T get told exactly what to do by the Chinese intelligence agencies? It is a useful earner of hard currency for the motherland after all.

The Chi-com government know that they are sitting on a powder-keg, that the shit they pull on a daily basis on their own people will not be allowed to continue forever but they haven't yet worked out a way to transition away from it because they are terrified of what will happen to them when they lose power. Formosa is already taken, after all.

Having a nice wee war down south would be a Useful Distraction. And I repeat, logic has nothing at all to do with how major powers conduct their business. As for Nazi Germany not relying immensely (some historians say disproportionately) on foreign trade? Especially with Russia? Please. Germany had iron and coal. No oil. No rubber. No adequate supply of ball bearings - they were still importing biblical quantities of those from Sweden until the end of the war. And here's a cheeky one. Guess who the biggest customer of General Motors truck parts outside of the US was up until 1945?

Heil.

It's how it's always been: even the Emperors worked under the same conditions — if they failed, they were replaced with a new Dynasty.

Yep, I am aware of that. The thing is, the current government think, hope, and I would say pray if I didn't know that they were state atheists, that they have broken that cycle.

That they are in power for ever. But they are also terrified that it will all come crashing down. Logic and rationality are pretty powerless in face of that kind of terror. Because they know that if sufficiently motivated members of their countrymen and women decide to get rid of them, they would be in the same place they put the Kuomintang government in back in the Forties.

They haven't, and they know it. The "Mandate of Heaven" still applies, even now. Why else would you think they're trying all they can to keep the Chinese economy afloat?

North Korea is 1984:

• They need the North-South divide or their entire society collapses.
• If the North did invade,as soon as they saw the real South Korea, the invasion force would last a month because they'd realize that the Norks lied to them.
• They have enough fuel and firepower to maybe get the drop on Inchon and take Seoul but that's it.
• At best they can wring another couple of decades out of their current situation before another famine or natural disaster pulls the rug out from under the current regime.

Their missiles are what scares US planners the most. That's what they'd use. I know, I'm at Osan, we live with crosshairs on us daily. We'd disappear if the Norks did go all General Ripper. China LOVES North Korea because it ties up US forces. I love the ROK armed forces, they are very professional. However, even they admit that there are gaps in their forces that the US fills. The don't have missile defense, a newer figher (the F-15K is a fighter bomber and the F-16's are good, but most of their jets are F-5's and F-4's) and they'd need a larger fleet to keep China and the North out of their kool-aid.

The North needs nuke to keep the status quo. It's only a matter of time before their conventional forces degrade past the point of being a real deterrent. If they can establish that the nukes are "Holding the west at bay" they can keep their little Potemkin-village going for another 2-3 decades. The mistake Clinton made in the 90's was that NK would go the way Eastern Europe did (no really that's what Clinton believed).

China may hate their bratty comrades in NK, but man do they tie up US forces. If a pacific dispute gets heated, the US has to worry about China and NK. China can play all kinds of games and watch as the US runs around trying to put out the fires.

Personally, before I came here I didn't want a Korea tour. I had other plans. Now, I do like it here. Osan is nice and I have a desk job where I get to file papers instead of move cables or sit in the radar van. The tension is palpable however. Not far from my office their are Patriot Missile launchers with live missiles on them, US launchers. We have a brigade FTX where we're training for what would happen if the sh_t hit the fan.

I hope the US wins the contest to build the ROK-Air Forces newest fighter (yay more US jobs!) but I understand if the ROK skips the F-35. They live with the threats daily. Better a fighter they can afford now vs. the pig in a poke the F-35 almost became.

@d Roy: were you a KATUSA by any chance?

edited 5th Oct '12 12:29:25 AM by TairaMai

^

The South Koreans have their own fighter program too: the KAI KF-X.

edited 5th Oct '12 1:08:17 AM by Greenmantle