Do we have the troops and infrastructure to fight North Korea?

[irvman21]

Please correct me if you disagree, but I've gone under the assumption that we always have a fully armed Ohio class sitting in the Sea of Japan waiting for NK to either launch at an ally, (or invade the south), and that this is the only real deterent we have in that region. Given that the troop levels we have there can only be considered a token presence when compared with the standing army in the North.

Though, I believe the GW is preparing for a tour in Japan in the next year, so I would imagine that is also meant to send a message.

[Felix_Nietzsche]

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This is just rhetoric at this point, but my question is, can the U.S. fight North Korea, if the U.S. or one of its allies were to be attacked, with such a large number of its armed forces tied up in Iraq?

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You ask the wrong question. A better question would be, "Is North Korea capable of fighting an offensive war."

Allied air power will crush anything that moves on the road. The NK have lots of tanks but not enough fuel to keep them going. What little fuel they do have will be burned by allied air power in attacks on ammo/fuel depots....

A naval blockade will keep supplies out by sea. Unless China or Russia intervenes. I don't think North Koreans can maintain an offensive longer than 2 weeks. Then the allies pummel them from the air for about a month or two and drive them to the Yalu.... Easy win for the USA/SK......

You have to remember North Korea is incredibly poor and most of their people are starving. They do not have the resources to fight a major war... or even a minor one.

[jokerthief]

The biggest reason war with N. Korea would be such a disaster is not nuclear weapons but the enormous amount of conventional artillery that they possess. They could totally destroy most of S. Korea within hours of an attack and there is nothing that we could do to stop it. We are talking about a minimum of a million dead Koreans if full scale war were to break out. With that fact, it doesn't really matter if we can handle them militarily.

[Stu Pidasso]

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define "deal"

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We could repel a North Korean invasion into South Korea. We could push them into to the Yalu river if the chinese stayed out of the fight. In either case causalites would be extreme; Soeul would likely be a pile of rubble.

Stu

[Phenomenon]

I'm new to this political stuff. I've always wondered why anyone hasn't dropped a nuke/huge bomb on U.S. soil?

Is it because,

A)They're hard to come by
B)They simply can't(Doubt it)
B)Unwritten/written rules of war
C)The country that does this would be obliterated off the map

I'd really like to know, thanks.

[irvman21]

Nobody has the capability to drop such a bomb on US soil, leaving only the very few that have the capability via missile. What purpose would it serve for any of those nations to commit such an act? For the glory of killing many thousands of Americans they would be faced with a fleet of subs each with an arsenal measured in megatons. Even the most bat [censored] crazy leader doesn't want his entire nation turned to glass.

[BCPVP]

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Even the most bat [censored] crazy leader doesn't want his entire nation turned to glass.

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Tell that to BluffTHIS!

[Stu Pidasso]

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A)They're hard to come by

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This was very true in the past, less so now, and will be false in the furture.

Stu

[man]

I don't know if we have the force to fight NK but we certainly have nothing to worry about from them. NK simply can't afford to begin a war, in part because the US recently froze a bunch of Kim's Division 39 assets held in Macau (the primary beneficiary of which was NK's military), and also in part to the fact that NK is just gonna begin to starve with the sanctions that are in place.

if we want to push for regime change in NK, we ought to start worrying more about china's stance on NK since their expanding economy is so reliant upon NK for its mineral resources, and also because they prefer an anti-American regime in case of another conflict with taiwan.

[govman6767]

This about sum's it up