GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - View Single Post - North Korea threatens the US with nuclear attack

Joe Obenberger · 09-17-2015, 02:12 PM

A small, mountainous country at war with the United States since Truman was in the White House has endured only by becoming the proverbial porcupine. The cost of any decisive military adventure against North Korea by the United States is so immense that that no US administration would dare to do so without incredible provocation, like the vaporization of the 30,000 US soldiers we station there. The value of our troops is mainly as a tripwire to deter the North from going south. (We've recently re-deployed most of the troop far away from the Seoul area to Camp Humphrey way south to give that tripwire a bit more flexibility against any border area incidents.)

They are dug in so deeply and extensively that even a nuclear strike from the US would have sharply limited military success. In conventional munitions, tanks, artillery, and the like, they near the top of the list. They have more than seventy diesel subs, enough to complicate any US attack for awhile and to get some licks in. They've worked overtime on land to sea missiles and claim that they can overpower the defenses of US aircraft carriers and sink them. The US knows that in the first days of any conflict with Russia, the carriers would be gone in days; the risk presented by Korean missiles is untested, but presenting the risk is probably enough to affect the deployment of carrier groups.

Their nuclear weapons are part of the porcupine strategy. With the US as an adversary, they'd be nuts not to have them and the ability to use them; though we've withdrawn land-based nukes from South Korea, we can deliver them from bombers, unmanned drones, submarines, and surface ships on very, very short order. The North Koreans can sleep a bit more soundly knowing that their small nuclear arsenal has some deterrent effect against a US nuclear strike, and that's most effective if the US believes that they have the potential of retaliation against a first US strike.

My thought is that everything the North Koreans do can be explained by remembering their policy as porcupine defense. I really don't think they will ever go beyond border skirmishes so long as our tripwire is present. Their nukes keep a lid on US reaction and probably contribute to peace, just as the presence of our troops and our offshore nuclear capability keep a lid on their excesses and keep the conflict rhetorical. During the Cold War, my job supported the Pershing nuclear missile units in Germany during the Reagan years. It was controversial, and the anti-neutron bomb protests marched outside my living quarters every Sunday for awhile. I thought then that the Pershings kept the peace just as I think now that the North Korean weapons offer the hope of deterring war and saving countless lives.

09-17-2015, 02:12 PM
Joe Obenberger Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: May 2003 Location: Chicago Posts: 466	A small, mountainous country at war with the United States since Truman was in the White House has endured only by becoming the proverbial porcupine. The cost of any decisive military adventure against North Korea by the United States is so immense that that no US administration would dare to do so without incredible provocation, like the vaporization of the 30,000 US soldiers we station there. The value of our troops is mainly as a tripwire to deter the North from going south. (We've recently re-deployed most of the troop far away from the Seoul area to Camp Humphrey way south to give that tripwire a bit more flexibility against any border area incidents.) They are dug in so deeply and extensively that even a nuclear strike from the US would have sharply limited military success. In conventional munitions, tanks, artillery, and the like, they near the top of the list. They have more than seventy diesel subs, enough to complicate any US attack for awhile and to get some licks in. They've worked overtime on land to sea missiles and claim that they can overpower the defenses of US aircraft carriers and sink them. The US knows that in the first days of any conflict with Russia, the carriers would be gone in days; the risk presented by Korean missiles is untested, but presenting the risk is probably enough to affect the deployment of carrier groups. Their nuclear weapons are part of the porcupine strategy. With the US as an adversary, they'd be nuts not to have them and the ability to use them; though we've withdrawn land-based nukes from South Korea, we can deliver them from bombers, unmanned drones, submarines, and surface ships on very, very short order. The North Koreans can sleep a bit more soundly knowing that their small nuclear arsenal has some deterrent effect against a US nuclear strike, and that's most effective if the US believes that they have the potential of retaliation against a first US strike. My thought is that everything the North Koreans do can be explained by remembering their policy as porcupine defense. I really don't think they will ever go beyond border skirmishes so long as our tripwire is present. Their nukes keep a lid on US reaction and probably contribute to peace, just as the presence of our troops and our offshore nuclear capability keep a lid on their excesses and keep the conflict rhetorical. During the Cold War, my job supported the Pershing nuclear missile units in Germany during the Reagan years. It was controversial, and the anti-neutron bomb protests marched outside my living quarters every Sunday for awhile. I thought then that the Pershings kept the peace just as I think now that the North Korean weapons offer the hope of deterring war and saving countless lives. __________________ Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice. . . Restraint in the pursuit of Justice is no virtue. Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964