9.24.2017

North Korea: Four Scenarios



Scenario #1: coup d'état North Korean Regime Crumbling




Excerpt:

Declaring that “Kim Jong Un’s days are numbered,” one of the highest-ranking North Korean officials to ever defect to South Korea shared rare firsthand knowledge and insight into the what he describes as the deteriorating situation inside the secretive and repressive Kim Jong Un regime.

“The elite class, which had supported North Korean society, has turned their backs on Kim Jong Un. Traditional structures of the North Korean system are crumbling,” said Thae Yong-ho, North Korea’s former deputy ambassador in London, who defected to South Korea in July.

...The possibility of a military coup inside North Korea is remote because the leadership is loyal to Kim, he said. Although he notes that many in the armed forces are also frustrated with the current system.

Thae is currently an analyst at the Institute for National Security Strategy, a research organization affiliated with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
Scenario #2: 'surgical strike' (no response by DPRK) South Korea's military draws up plans for a 'surgical strike' to take out Kim Jong-un's missile and nuclear facilities if orders are given to remove the dictator



Excerpt:

South Korea's military is drawing up plans for a 'surgical strike' to take out Kim Jong-un's missile and nuclear facilities if orders are given to remove the dictator.

Taurus cruise missiles fired from F-15 fighters would be used to destroy the facilities if President Moon Jae-in gives the go ahead in an emergency, it is claimed.

The contingency measure would be initiated by the President's Special Forces, according to reports by Seoul newspaper Munwha Ilbo.
Scenario #3: 'surgical strike' (response by DPRK) In North Korea, ‘Surgical Strike’ Could Spin Into ‘Worst Kind of Fighting’



Excerpt:

Over the years, as it does for potential crises around the world, the Pentagon has drafted and refined multiple war plans, including an enormous retaliatory invasion and limited pre-emptive attacks, and it holds annual military exercises with South Korean forces based on them.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration made a point of threatening a military response. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, commander of the American forces that conducted a missile exercise with South Korea, said the United States had chosen “self-restraint” with the North. Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said her country’s “considerable military forces” were an option. “We will use them if we must, but we prefer not to have to go in that direction,” she told the Security Council.

But the military options are more grim than ever.

Even the most limited strike risks staggering casualties, because North Korea could retaliate with the thousands of artillery pieces it has positioned along its border with the South. Though the arsenal is of limited range and could be destroyed in days, the United States defense secretary, Jim Mattis, recently warned that if North Korea used it, it “would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.”
Scenario #4: North Korea attacks:  North Korean threats make Bay Area ponder the unthinkable: a nuclear attack




Excerpt:

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, Bay Area residents are being forced to confront the unthinkable: the possibility of a nuclear attack on our own soil.

It’s a scenario that suddenly became real after reports that the North Korean government has figured out how to make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on an intercontinental missile — and after President Donald Trump vowed North Koreans would face “fire and fury” if they continued making threats, in an apparently improvised public response.

A nuclear strike would be devastating to the Bay Area, and there’s no preparation that could avoid that. But there are a few simple steps — like staying inside instead of trying to flee — that can help prevent radiation poisoning and save lives, experts say.
Comment: What do you think?

5 comments:

  1. Technically, we've had a ceasefire since the fifties, so the Norks are 1/4 way right, maybe. Praying that there are von Stauffenbergs in Pyongyang, and that they will be more successful than they were in 1944.

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  2. U.S. Sees ‘Four or Five’ Ways to Resolve North Korean Crisis:

    Military analysts say any conflict between the U.S. and North Korea is likely to lead to a devastating attack by Pyongyang on Seoul, endangering millions of lives.

    “There’s not a ‘precision strike’ that solves the problem,” McMaster, an Army lieutenant general, said at an event in Washington hosted by the Institute for the Study of War. “There’s not a military blockade that can solve the problem. What we hope to do is avoid war, but we cannot discount that possibility.”

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  3. Escalating tension has experts simulating a new Korean War, and the scenarios are sobering:

    James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral and dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said the horrific war many have long feared with North Korea is a distinct possibility. He puts the chances of conventional conflict with North Korea at 50-50 and the chances of nuclear war at 10%.

    “We are closer to a nuclear exchange than we have been at any time in the world's history with the single exception of the Cuban missile crisis,’’ Stavridis said.
    ...
    The Pentagon has estimated the potential number of dead in South Korea at 20,000 each day, Givens said. And that is before the North Koreans turn to nuclear weapons.

    Although North Korea has successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile and conducted six nuclear tests, the technologies have not yet been married together. That means that though the West Coast of the U.S. now appears to be within range of North Korea’s missiles, it is unlikely that Pyongyang could credibly target the mainland United States with a fully functioning nuclear weapon at this stage.

    On the other hand, a nuclear device could be smuggled into a container port or dropped from an airplane, perhaps near one of the U.S. bases in Asia.

    “In an all-out conquest for regime survival, they will come after the United States. They are not going to win, but they will try — I guarantee that,’’ Givens said.

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  4. How to Tell If North Korea and America Are Actually Headed to War:

    If war was imminent, we would likely see something we haven’t yet: an evacuation of Americans—civilians, military family members, non-essential personnel—from South Korea, according to Abe Denmark, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia under Barack Obama. “It’s impossible to hide because it’s over 100,000 people,” he said, and it “would signal that things are getting really dangerous.”

    “If you’re actually going to go to war, you have to do a lot of things—primarily in terms of logistics and communications and mobilizing reserve forces … and you don’t see any of those on the [U.S.-South Korean forces] side to the south of the [Korean Demilitarized Zone] nor to the north of it,” said Dennis Blair, a former director of national intelligence and commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific. In 1994, for instance, when Blair was commanding a battle group in the western Pacific and the Clinton administration nearly decided to strike a North Korean nuclear reactor, Blair’s deployment was diverted from the Persian Gulf to Korea, Patriot anti-missile batteries flowed into the region, and a range of military units were put on alert to carry out war plans against North Korea.

    “On the North Korean side, I can’t talk in as much detail, but it’s the logical things you would do if you have a fairly large North Korean army, an infantry-heavy army, and you don’t keep all of the soldiers in readiness all of the time, you don’t keep all of the supplies brought up, the ammunition broken out, the wartime command-and-control modes set up,” Blair added. U.S. officials “monitor very closely those indicators and none of our leaders has spoken publicly saying that those indicators have been activated.”

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