General North Korea thread

[houser2112]

There isn't much doubt in my mind that RoK could defeat DPRK if the gloves came off. There is a lot of doubt in my mind that RoK would be fighting just DPRK. For much of it's history, DPRK has been backed by China and the Russians (whether it's the Soviet Union's rather overt support, or my impression of what the current government would do).

There is very very little reason to think that the Chinese or Russians would want any of the crazy these days, if fighting a war was involved on the Korean peninsula. North Korea was desirable to China and the USSR during the Cold War as a buffer state, because it was ideologically committed to communism and willing to work with either of them.

Now, North Korea is a much worse and more obnoxious neighbor than it was thirty years ago, and the Cold War is over. The need for a buffer state simply is not there, not in the same way.

China's recent tack of "if you [DPRK] start something, you're on your own" seems to imply "if you don't, we've got your back". If they didn't want any crazy, why wouldn't they take more aggressive stances on the situation?

[Elheru Aran]

China's recent tack of "if you [DPRK] start something, you're on your own" seems to imply "if you don't, we've got your back". If they didn't want any crazy, why wouldn't they take more aggressive stances on the situation?

Their stance is towards the DPRK as much as it is the US. It's a pretty clear message that the DPRK needs to NOT be crazy in order to continue receiving their support.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

NK has done it again, firing another missile over Japan:

Link.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yup.

If the US goes with the "military option", pray that its done in accord and in close consultation with China. Because otherwise, there's a strong chance that we're looking at global nuclear war before the year is out.

Of course, I can absolutely see Orange Kim going "Fuck the Chinese, they can't tell us what to do!" Hopefully there are more rational and responsible people around him to prevent any... rash decisions.

[Ralin]

Of course, I can absolutely see Orange Kim going "Fuck the Chinese, they can't tell us what to do!"

...Why the hell do you think they're firing these missiles over Japan, specifically?

[Caiaphas]

Of course, I can absolutely see Orange Kim going "Fuck the Chinese, they can't tell us what to do!"

...Why the hell do you think they're firing these missiles over Japan, specifically?

Someone else pointed out earlier in this thread that the Norks just don't have a lot of good options when it comes to missile tests. To the north and west are occupied landmasses, to the south there's a gap between South Korea and Taiwan, but if you continue on that track you hit the Philippines, to the east there's a gap between Hokkaido and the rest of Japan, but the Pacific Ocean lies beyond. So that's basically their only option to test longer-ranged missiles, which is what they did yesterday as seen here. So it seems to me that they're trying to be as responsible as they can, at least in terms of demonstrating their capabilities to the rest of the world while simultaneously not pissing anyone off enough that they set off a war.

That to me seems like the reason they're doing these launches at all. The Norks are just doing what any other country does, which is consider their needs first. They know that China's been vacillating in their support, they know that the superiority of US and South Korean military capabilities means they're going to be turned into a parking lot if we decide to wipe them out, and so their only real option, the only thing that they for sure can count on 100% in the event of an invasion is their own capability to deter any action against them. The missiles therefore read like an attempt to scare the US public into not supporting any action against the Norks for fear of (nuclear) retaliation.

[Broomstick]

It's not the US public they have to scare - the US public is, by and large, a herd of dumb, ill-educated panic-prone animals. It's the US government, the people who actually have control over the US arsenal, they have to convince not to attack them.

[Caiaphas]

It's not the US public they have to scare - the US public is, by and large, a herd of dumb, ill-educated panic-prone animals. It's the US government, the people who actually have control over the US arsenal, they have to convince not to attack them.

Yeah, I see what you mean. Mea culpa.

[The Romulan Republic]

Of course, I can absolutely see Orange Kim going "Fuck the Chinese, they can't tell us what to do!"

...Why the hell do you think they're firing these missiles over Japan, specifically?

Not sure what provoked such a hostile response.

Yeah, if your goal is not to commit Suicide by Orange Imbecile, firing them over Japan is at least smarter than firing them at a US territory, though that's not saying much.

That doesn't mean Trump won't do something idiotic though. Its Trump.

[Ralin]

I had a phone post earlier that apparently gotten eaten, but basically what Caiaphas said. If they want to prove their missiles work they have to test them and over Japan is pretty much the only safe option.

[Enigma]

I wonder if the Japanese or the SK retrieved any of these missiles.

[Caiaphas]

Would there be enough to retrieve at all? Splashdown isn't exactly a gentle process, and the ocean's pretty deep off the east coast of Japan.

[Batman]

'Humans' routinely survive aircraft crashes and we're a damn lot more fragile then missile components It's not like the missile belly flops into the water at full power.

[Caiaphas]

'Humans' routinely survive aircraft crashes and we're a damn lot more fragile then missile components It's not like the missile belly flops into the water at full power.

Humans in airplane crashes also don't hit the ground in freefall going several hundred meters a second, and also don't have an extensive safety system in place designed to absorb as much of the impact force as possible.

[Ralin]

I wonder if the Japanese or the SK retrieved any of these missiles.

Why exactly would they go through the effort even if they could?

[Caiaphas]

I wonder if the Japanese or the SK retrieved any of these missiles.

Why exactly would they go through the effort even if they could?

More accurately gauge the Norks' level of development in materials science, industrial quality control, and the like?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I'm surprised there aren't any ABM platforms near Japan- and if there are, why there was no attempt to use them to down NK test missiles. I'm not sure what the ROEs are in this kind of situation.

[Simon_Jester]

The missiles are being launched on trajectories that make it very obvious they're not going to fall on Japan unless gravity magically changes strength or something. These long range shots aren't particularly near misses; they're passing hundreds of miles overhead when they cross Japan, and they fall hundreds and hundreds of miles away from Japan. Since Japan adheres to the usual international legal standard that "airspace" stops at the edge of space itself, it's entirely possible that the missiles aren't passing through Japanese 'territory' at all.

So firstly, to shoot down one of the missiles would require a specialized mid-course intercept missile like the American GBI. There's not much incentive to put such a defense system there, because it wouldn't be good at defending anything. It could only engage missiles flying over Japan towards other targets, and there's little else along that trajectory that the North Koreans have a reason to bomb. Missiles headed for the US would be coming in over the pole and are better countered by the US's existing GBI base in Alaska.

Missiles headed for Japan directly would be falling out of the sky onto the Japanese's heads by the time they got that close, so GBI wouldn't be an effective counter. The appropriate defense system would be shorter-ranged systems like THAAD, which the Japanese are looking into obtaining.

Secondly, the interceptor missiles are very expensive and you'd probably have to fire a whole bunch to be sure of a kill, because how humiliating would it be to try and intercept a North Korean missile test and fail? It's not something you'd try lightly if there's no actual danger to life and limb.

[Caiaphas]

Does anyone know whether the Norks would see a successful intercept as provocation? I vaguely remember examples of the Soviets getting tetchy about US ABM systems in the 1980s? since that would mean that they could obliterate the USSR and be relatively shielded from the retaliatory strike (undermining the Mutual bit of Mutually Assured Destruction).

[Simon_Jester]

I suspect the answer is "nobody has the slightest clue," which is probably another reason people don't bother to shoot at North Korean missile tests that obviously aren't going to hit anyone and have already hit engine burnout and gone ballistic before they go anywhere near foreign territory.

The North Koreans' big problem is that unlike the Soviets, they can't credibly threaten to just keep building more and more missiles to swamp any probable defense system we can afford to build. Their capabilities along those lines are more limited. The Soviets could afford to say "look, if you build defenses capable of shooting down five thousand missiles, we'll just fire ten thousand, and if you keep building more ABM to that level we'll take it as evidence of your intent to launch a first strike and in general put our nukes on even more of a hair trigger."

The North Koreans can't, because their deterrent strategy can't actually be based on "kill everyone in the opposing country." What they can achieve is more like the one de Gaulle described for the French nuclear force:

"Within ten years, we shall have the means to kill 80 million Russians. I truly believe that one does not light-heartedly attack people who are able to kill 80 million Russians, even if one can kill 800 million French, that is, if there were 800 million French."

...

This is what the French called "weak-to-strong" deterrence. Basically, the idea is that while you can't truly destroy your enemy, you can hurt them enough that they would never seriously consider attacking you.

The problem is that a "weak-to-strong" deterrent force CANNOT be on a hair trigger, because the 'weak' side of that equation is always gambling on the assumption that the 'strong' side won't seriously anticipate a first strike. In de Gaulle's scenario, the Russians' strategic calculations start to look very different if they perceive a high risk of the nuclear-armed French trying to attack them first anyway. At that point, the idea of a pre-emptive strike that takes out enough French nukes to significantly reduce their ability to do harm becomes more appealing. Against an equally strong power there's little point in doing this because even if you strike first pre-emptively, the enemy has enough power left over to wreck you. But against a weak power, that may not be true.

So basically, a "weak-to-strong" deterrent strategy has a lot less room for the kind of posturing and muscle-flexing both sides engaged in during, say, the Cold War. It serves only to deter conquest by outside adversaries; it cannot be used 'offensively' to extract concessions from them except under special conditions.

My biggest hope regarding North Korea is that their government actually understands this. My biggest fear is that they don't. If they don't, then it is very likely that at some point they will overstep, react badly to a trivial 'provocation' that exists only in their minds, and begin behaving too aggressively. Maybe even so aggressively that some other nuclear power decides their military needs to be put down like a rabid dog as far as possible, if only to make sure that North Korea"only" causes casualties in the single-digit-millions with its 'predictable' nuclear strike(s).

[Caiaphas]

Sorry, let me just see if I've got this right: weak-to-strong deterrance is basically predicated on the idea that while you, the "strong" one, can obliterate me, I, the "weak" one, can cripple you, for a given value of cripple. Hence, it makes zero sense for the weak power to launch a first strike, because the retaliation will annihilate them. Although I suppose that in the case of the Soviets, they had a lot more to worry about (in terms of nations likely to launch on them as well regardless of who shot first) since it wasn't just France they needed to figure into their calculations, it was Britain and the United States too.

[Simon_Jester]

Basically, yes. The thing to remember is that during this timeframe, France was not a NATO member. The French actually withdrew from NATO and pursued an independent deterrent. And it was built around "weak-to-strong" reasoning.

So, for that matter, was the British nuclear deterrent, which by the 1960s was based entirely on the idea that a small number of ballistic missile submarines could do so much damage to the Soviets by launching their missiles in the direction of "fuck you Moscow," that the Russians wouldn't attack Britain with nuclear weapons. This was basically the only way the British could have a deterrent at all, because Britain was so close to Soviet territory and so densely inhabited that a nuclear first strike would wipe out civilization on the island quite easily. There was no location remote enough to be a safe place to put missile silos or nuclear bombers where they'd get adequate advance warning of an attack.

In both the cases of Britain and France, part of the point of doing this was to have an independent nuclear deterrent that didn't rely on American cooperation. Because on some level European leaders couldn't be entirely sure the US military would be willing to fight World War III, draw Russian nuclear fire, and lose New York and Chicago. Not all in order to avenge or save from conquest cities like London and Paris.

...

But yeah, basically you have it summed up pretty well in terms of the strategic logic. The weak-to-strong deterrent is quite effective, but ONLY as a defensive deterrent. If you try to use it to bully your larger and more powerful opponent, you give them far too much incentive to invest in anti-missile defenses* or otherwise neutralize your arsenal.

The problem is, the North Koreans may not quite understand this. Their society is so heavily organized around propaganda and saying what makes the Supreme Leader happy. It's very easy to imagine this kind of "uh yeah, it would be really fucking stupid to try this" realization getting suppressed. Or even having its proponents shot.
___________________________

*[This actually became a problem for the Brits when the Russians started investing in ABM defenses around Moscow, by the way]

[Caiaphas]

Would it really be proper to say that the people running North Korea and the actual average North Korean citizen would have the same understanding of the geopolitical situation, though? I mean, Un was Western-educated, unless my memory fails me, so I personally find it unlikely that he doesn't at least have some understanding of the realities of the situation vis a vis "poke the US too much and get turned into a parking lot".

[Broomstick]

Of course the ruling elite and the average North Korean have very different views of the situation. One thing you hear over and over from North Koreans who flee the country is that they've been lied to all their lives.

[Ralin]

I think there's a tendency to assume either complete cynicism or complete sincerity on the part of the North Korean elite. Kim Jong-un's generals (not even getting into Kim himself for the moment) are almost certainly better informed about their country's economy and military capabilities and that of their neighbors and enemies than the general population, but they still come from the same society. They probably have similar values, similar views about how society should be set up, how to deal with enemies and threats, etc. There will be differences in their outlooks, sure, even really big differences, but I don't think it's a given that their world view is in a whole other ballpark, so to speak.