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Saturday, March 03, 2018

Hoping is Not a Strategy

I just don't buy the notion that there is a way to avoid using all the conventional units on both sides of the DMZ in a war on the Korean peninsula:

Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported in 2015 that the plan resembled guerrilla warfare, with special forces assassinations and targeted attacks on key facilities. The goal was to consolidate several older war plans, minimize casualties in a war and even prepare for the possibility that the North Korean regime might collapse.

So North Korea would go along with waging a war with special forces and targeted attacks when they have the vast majority of their conventional forces looming north of the DMZ with Seoul enticingly close to their artillery?

Nice work if you can get it, as the saying goes.

And what's with all those special forces calling in strikes on North Korean targets? How long do they do that waiting for the possibility that the regime might collapse? They can survive that long on the ground?

So we go to war with no plan to actually defeat the North Koreans other than hoping that a collapse will save us the need of using conventional military forces in a conventional campaign?

Hopium 44 has a longer half life than I thought!

And finally, special forces engaged in irregular warfare is not in any way guerrilla warfare and it doesn't actually resemble it.

Guerrilla warfare relies on the support of the people to support irregular warfare. What North Korean civilians are going to be the sea that the special forces fish swim in?

I suppose if stories like this scare North Korea into giving up nukes or convinces China that they need to deal with North Korea before we do, it might be of use.