Many people don't know that the Korean War of the 1950's technically still hasn’t ended,
as the two sides only signed an armistice as opposed to the typical ceasefire or surrender
that was especially commonplace not long after the end of World War II.
Every President since Eisenhower has had to deal with North Korea in some way, with the
Northern Korea being at its peak during the time of the Cold War.
Since, they've sort of been on their own, with China providing support.
Because of that, they've had to negotiate aid from countries to make up for what they
lost when the Soviet Union fell, so a lot of their behavior was viewed as an attempt
to build up leverage to be used to negotiate aid (as in, we'll stop building X weapons
for Y amounts of food).
The newest leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, has heightened those tensions as he's
felt that the lack of nuclear weapons were the reason that other leaders like Saddam
Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi ended up being overthrown.
Add Donald Trump into that mix and it looks like war with North Korea could happen at
any moment.
Accidentally
The United States has the most advanced and powerful military in the history of the world.
Despite that, though, a lot of the parts of the military are in desperate need of an upgrade.
Nowhere is this more true than the Navy, which has a lot of older ships still in service
and a group of men that have had to deal with budget cuts by lowering their standards in
terms of not only how jobs are done but how people are trained for those jobs.
It's those cuts, or rather the consequences of those cuts, that were blamed for two incidences
in 2017 where Naval vessels crashed into merchant vessels near China.
The Navy is thought of, and promoted as, this technologically advanced tip of the spear
that can locate a Russian submarine 500 miles away or that has gigantic ships that can turn
on a dime.
The fact that these ships couldn't even locate a cargo ship showed that the Navy is either
overworked or in desperate need of some new tech, or probably both.
And that's not the best situation to be in when those ships (or ships like them) are
about as close to North Korean waters as is possible.
Should those ships cross that line they'll be shelled by thousands of mortars and perhaps
start World War III, so knowing what the Navy is capable of (or not capable of) is actually
pretty terrifying.
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Now, let’s take this thought experiment a bit deeper.
False Flag
Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep recently starred in a movie called "The Post", in which they
re-enacted the leak of the Pentagon Papers through The Washington Post.
Those papers where basically a historical record of how the Vietnam War really began,
and what it showed was that the United States essentially lied about Northern Vietnam attacking
their Navy vessels in what is now referred to as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
They essentially created a scenario that justified the beginning of hostilities in Vietnam and
that's something that could very easily happen again in North Korea.
With tensions high and the US bringing a lot of their Navy vessels into the region, the
exact same thing could happen again and we wouldn't be any the wiser, as North Korea
would most definitely claim that the US started the hostilities, and the US would claim the
opposite.
North Korea reportedly has tens of thousands of mortars aimed at South Korea, from it's
capital in Seoul to the islands that lie between both North and South, to the sea itself.
One false move could potentially lead to something devastating, and with a lot of lies to go
along with it.
Trump Acts Like...
Trump
Things are looking up in terms of North Korea's relationship with the world, as the formerly
reclusive leader of the "Hermit Kingdom" had a historic sit down with the leader of South
Korea recently.
However, there is another looming and potentially (literally) earth-shattering meeting on the
horizon, and that's the agreed to sit-down between Kim Jong Un and the President of the
United States Donald Trump.
While that sounds a lot like the beginning to a 2012 novel about the end of the world,
it's going to happen.
You'd think that even Trump's most hawkish advisors would tell Trump to take it easy
on Kim, since he's basically already agreed to a lot of the things that Trump, or at least
the United States, has wanted and thus if Trump just gets Kim to continue to agree to
stop the missile and nuclear bomb testing that North Korea has been conducting, it'll
be a huge win for a President that's in dire need of one.
But this is a President who has literally thrown out the script given to him.
Plus.
now we have John Bolton in the mix, Trump's new national security advisor, who seems to
be looking for yet another war for the United States to get embroiled in.
It's thought that Kim wanted nukes because he saw other despots like Saddam Hussein and
Moammar Gaddhafi get overthrown because they didn't have a nuclear deterrent, and now that
he has them he feels like he can focus on other things like the economy of his country
(to avoid getting overthrown organically by his own people), and reducing the crushing
economic sanctions that the world has placed on his country.
But if Trump demands that Kim eliminate the small amount of nukes that North Korea has,
things could turn south, quick (which would be really bad for the South of Korea).
So, stay tuned, as this really is the most likely scenario that'll lead to war.
Exploratory Talks
It's safe to say that the situation in North Korea is both complicated and rife with negative
possibilities and outcomes.
As this list will show, a lot of the more reasonable approaches seem impossible and
that's why a lot of people in the "know" seem terrified that the risk of full-on nuclear
war is near (or at least the outbreak of World War III).
Right when all seemed lost, out of the blue, it was announced that President Trump had
agreed to a tentative sitdown with the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un.
While that seems terrifying based on the temperamental personalities that each have, hopefully, the
translators can act as a buffer and will be able to calm each side down.
Either way, exploratory talks are the beginning of one of the engagement theories, in which
each side begins to feel the other out in the hopes that they'll eventually come to
one of the solutions listed beyond this entry...
But they could also end up engaged in some of the starts to all-out war that are also
listed later.
Typically exploratory talks don't begin with the two men in charge sitting down together,
but that seems to be the case here, which means that the United States is one sentence
away from nuclear war or World War III and the person who is capable of speaking that
sentence is Donald Trump.
While people will make fun of that, it's actually pretty terrifying.
The good news, is that Kim Jong Un is living the dream in North Korea and doesn't actually
want to die or lose his power and way of life, so we've got that going for us in this nightmare
that even two years ago seemed like a "What If...?"
Freeze for Freeze
When it comes to the precarious situation in North Korea, it seems that there are two
countries that are sort of in the middle of things: Russia and China.
That's a really easy way to explain a pretty complicated situation, but they are at least
attempting to become the deal brokers in a situation where it looks like both the United
States and North Korea basically hate one another.
They've been pushing a "Freeze-for-Freeze" deal in which both sides (the sides being
North Korea and the United States and South Korea) will both give up on their military
activities in the region.
That won't happen, though, as the United States dominates the South China Sea and wants to
ensure that it can maintain that dominance, lest China continue to expand on it's burgeoning
empire (told you it was complicated).
That'd require North Korea to give up both it's missiles and nuclear programs while the
US and South Korea would stop with their military exercises in the region, but either way it's
getting little traction from either side and seems like something that won't happen, even
though it's probably the most reasonable next step, which should show you how backwards
this entire situation is.
Back to Basics
Sadly, this seems like the least likely answer to a situation that's clearly reached peaked
levels since President Trump took office.
A few years ago we were close to having some sort of dialogue with North Korea, with the
six-party talks that started to make progress around the time that President Obama took
office.
The history here is that North Korea pulled out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
in 2003, which began attempts to create six-party talks between North Korea, South Korea, The
US, Japan, China and Russia.
The North Koreans pulled out of the six-party talks after the UN condemned a failed satellite
launch in 2009, which has created the situation that we've been dealing with since.
Those that call for returns to the six-party talks may be hoping for a miracle, as Trump
(and his Tweets) seem uninterested in doing so.
He has made demands for North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile development programs
as a condition, and that's just not going to happen.
So, if you're ranking these options in some sort of doomsday fantasy league at your workplace,
I'd put this toward the bottom... and probably invest in some sort of shelter, or at least
stock up on canned goods.
Increasing Economic Pressure
North Korea is called the "Hermit Kingdom" for a reason, as it's the most economically
isolated country on earth.
In this day and age of globalization, it says something that North Korea has limited trade
partners (official or otherwise) and that's based on decades of sanctions thanks to the
world powers that North Korea has been battling with since the Kim regime rose to power.
There are some that say we should simply keep increasing those sanctions, forcing North
Korea to the bargaining table by limiting its already limited access to goods and services
both from the internal and external point of view.
The problem with that is that it's hard to enforce, as satellite images have recently
shown Russian and Chinese ships trading with North Korean ships, which brings up the main
problem: China.
For any of this to work, we'd both need China to participate officially and unofficially,
as they have said in the past that they condemn actions by the North Koreans but have seemingly
kept trading with them (as they fear a humanitarian crisis on their border).
The other problem is that this hasn't seemed to work in the past, so there's that.
Decapitation
There's another theory that may seem like the obvious choice, but because of the nature
of how things work in North Korea, it could end up creating endless chaos both in North
Korea itself as well as for its neighbor to the west, China.
That theory is called "Decapitation", and talks about killing Kim Jong Un, allowing
the people (in theory) of North Korea to be free of the cult of personality that has dominated
the country for decades.
It's been reported that the South Koreans have a special unit in their military whose
sole purpose is infiltrating their way into Kim Jong Un's palace and taking him out, Seal
Team Six style.
The South recently promoted this as a bargaining chip to hopefully get the North Koreans to
the bargaining table, but it didn't work (at least not immediately).
Kim is one of the best guarded human beings in the world and has been far more successful
at assassinating those that could challenge his power (like his older brother) than anyone
has been at murdering him; and who's to say that taking him "out" would make anything
better?
There are nearly 26 million people that live in North Korea, and as we've seen in Iraq
and Libya, killing dictators doesn't always make things better.
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to say the world would be a lot better if
both Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddhafi were still in power, human rights abuses notwithstanding.
Forceful Containment - The "Bloody Nose" Method
There are those, some of which are currently in charge of the United States' government
and military, that believe that the previous regimes in the US (and elsewhere) have been
"too soft" on North Korea and have allowed a bad problem to escalate to a terrible problem.
They may have a point, as it appears that North Korea has ignored all of the sanctions
directed its way and that those sanctions also may have bolstered the regimes claims
of being mistreated to its people.
Those people believe that the time for talking is over, especially because the North Koreans
don't really do what they say anyway, and that a time for "limited" military action
has begun.
That's the crux of "Forceful Containment" an idea that a limited strike on small targets
could show North Korea that the United States and its allies mean business.
The problem behind this idea is obvious: North Korea could see this as an overt act of war
and could respond appropriately, which would escalate to an out-and-out war between the
US, South Korea and North Korea (and potentially China, and Russia and... there you go, World
War III).
This shows just how precarious the situation is and why it's been such a hard nut to crack.
This has been called the "Bloody Nose" option and has been debated feverishly by people
who debate those sorts of things; but luckily, at least for now, it seems that Trump has
either decided against it or has had enough push back from his generals to not have done
it.
Preventative Strike
President Trump has given his opponents a lot of soundbites to make fun of him, or to
define him, and there was perhaps no better example of this than the "Fire and Fury" line
he repeated to reporters while meeting with his military advisors not long into his presidency.
That's an actual strategy though, as Trump was using the same bellicose language toward
the Northern Koreans that they were using against him and also implying, "Remember 'Shock
and Awe'?
Well wait until you see THIS".
Fire and Fury would be the first part of a preventative option that was laid out by previous
US National Security Advisor, HR McMaster.
The general idea is that the United States would initiate a war with North Korea before
they have the ability or option to use any of their weapons against the US or it's allies,
and in the process they'd lay waste to most of the military infrastructure (and otherwise)
in North Korea.
This "Hammer" would lay waste to most of North Korea and because a lot of it lies underground,
it would take a tremendous amount of firepower, which means also killing a lot of civilians.
That's one big negative, the others being that North Korea has been preparing for this
very thing for decades and has over 8,000 "big guns" aimed at Seoul, South Korea, one
of the largest cities in the world.
Also, no first strike would completely disable the North Koreans, meaning they'd still be
able to respond.
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