Monday's report accused Washington of escalating military pressure on the country with war exercises, a massive arms buildup and aerial espionage by basing new spy planes in South Korea.
"This is a grave military provocation and blackmail to the DPRK, being an indication that the U.S. is rapidly pushing ahead in various fields with the extremely dangerous war moves," the dispatch said.
"The army and people of the DPRK are now in full preparedness to answer a pre-emptive attack with a relentless annihilating strike and a nuclear war with a mighty nuclear deterrent," the report said.
Issuing threats like this may very well deter us from striking first. The uncertainty of whether we could destroy every nuclear asset in a preemptive strike is probably too high to risk such a move.
But the question is, is the Pillsbury Nuke Boy truly convinced we are constantly plotting against him and always on the verge of attacking, thwarted only by the constant vigilance of North Korean forces?
If so, North Korea could convince themselves we really are about to attack and light off a nuke toward us, or Seoul, or Japan.
If North Korea ever does that, all the worries about targeting uncertainty evaporate. We will strike and continue to strike with nukes against military targets in isolated areas and precision conventional weapons against leadership targets in cities or other military targets. We'd have to start with strikes against weapons that could be used at a distance like naval units, airfields and aircraft, and missile units that can threaten us. Then we'd work on artillery and rockets. I'd guess the South Koreans would start on those targets to protect Seoul as much as possible.
North Korea shouldn't forget the warning, "if you strike a king, kill him." They can kill a lot of us or our allies but as bad as that is, we will survive their attack. We, in turn, have the power to destroy North Korea.
Fifty years ago, we did a lot of damage to North Korea with far more primative air power:
Korean People's Army (KPA) losses in the Korean War, called the Fatherland Liberation War by North Korea, totaled more than half a million persons, although North Korea has not released figures. The war also resulted in the virtual destruction of North Korea's economy and infrastructure. By the time the armistice was signed in 1953, North Korea had been devastated by three years of bombing attacks that had left almost no modern buildings standing.
Until attacked by nukes, we will react to uncertainty about destroying North Korea's nukes by using means other than direct preemptive attack. Once we are attacked, we will react to uncertainty by attacking as long as it takes to virtually destroy North Korea again.
So how crazy are the rulers of North Korea? If rational by our perspective, they'd never actually nuke us. But this isn't a safe assumption.
And if we counter-attack like I outline, will the KPA just sit and take it or will they remember who the "People" in KPA really are and so try to end the reason for our attack before we devastate North Korea again?
