War in Korea brings great risk, little reward

North Korea’s test of an intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday ratcheted up the tension, making war a real possibility

Ever since the Korean War officially came to an indecisive decades-long pause in 1953, Communist North Korea has repeatedly tested the democratic South Koreans and their American allies with provocations including missile launches intended to demonstrate the North’s military might.

The North often felt emboldened to act based on its close alliance with China, which itself has made major investments for building its military in recent years. Meanwhile, South Korea and the United States often conduct joint military exercises in an effort to keep North Korea in line and prevent a war that never technically ended.

Now, with North Korea’s successful launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the United States, the stakes have risen sharply. Much of the talk about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un centered on his being considered mentally unstable by his enemies, but multiple reports about President Donald Trump have made him appear to be equally unstable.

Needless to say, the prospect of war with North Korea is more than just a nightmare scenario. The Telegraph published an article in which it projected what a war with North Korea would look like, focusing on three potential scenarios.

In one scenario, the United States strikes first with “a limited pre-emptive strike” in an effort to take out the threat of a nuclear strike by the North Koreans. The problem with this scenario, according to Daniel Pinkston, an international relations professor at Troy University’s Seoul campus, is that China and Russia have veto powers in the United Nations Security Council, and South Korea and Japan likely would oppose such a strike based on their being in the immediate line of fire.

A second scenario, where North Korea strikes first, would feature an all out blitz by the North Korean army, which The Telegraph reports has over 1 million people ready to fight, compared with an army strength of 660,000 South Koreans and 28,000 American troops. However, The Telegraph report suggests that the South’s technological advantage would stall out the North’s sheer numbers after about four days of fighting.

Even in a scenario where weapons of mass destruction aren’t being used, the death toll by either of the first two scenarios would be frightening. However, Pinkston said a third scenario, in which North Korea believes defeat is inevitable, would result in the North using weapons of mass destruction, whether they be biological, bacteria-related, or nuclear, and would result in crippling damage to South Korean and American assets.

“The biggest threat, I believe, is an accident, a miscalculation or a misunderstanding escalating very quickly”, he said. “If, for example, one of the North’s missile test launches went wrong and was heading for South Korea.

“The South would immediately see that as an attack and would have to respond, which would lead to escalation on both sides”, he said.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, a former general also warned in an article published Wednesday by The New York Times that if North Korea were to use its arsenal of nuclear weapons, it “would be probably the worst kind of fighting in most people’s lifetimes.” The Times also relayed the United States’s 1994 consideration of surgical strikes aimed at destroying North Korean nuclear assets before they became too powerful. William Perry, the defense secretary under President Clinton at the time, ruled out the strikes because the risk of losing hundreds of thousands of lives was too great.

Attempting to deal with China in an effort to get them to restrain their North Korean allies would also be extremely challenging, as the Chinese and Americans each view the other with suspicion as potential adversaries, even if they attempt to work together as partners. In a best case scenario, Beijing could develop cold feet at the prospect of a catastrophic war on the Korean Peninsula, but in a worst case, China could cast Washington as the aggressors and provide support for a devastating reprisal.

While there may be hope that cooler heads could still prevail, the risk that it’s too late for that is all too real.