Comment on Should South Korea launch a preemptive attack on North Korea?
neidu3@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
No. NK has a bunch of artillery hidden in the forested mountains just north of the border. And and SK has a lot of population centers within within firing distance. And this includes rockets/missiles with some rather spicy warheads.
And rough terrain ensures that a quick blitz to topple the government and their nuclear arsenal won’t work.
Sure, NK will not be able to hold off SK in the long run, especially if SK invites friends. But Seoul will be leveled.
Plus, China really does not want a US ally on its border, and are likely to intervene.
sith@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
I guess the counter argument would be that the situation will only get worse the longer you wait. This has happened many times before.
Hyperlon@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Why do you think the situation can only get worse given more time?
sith@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
I don’t think so. Probably not, but I’m really not sure. It’s a classical argument when starting a war (Germany/WW1 and Japan/WW2), that’s why I brought it up.
I.e. if you believe there is a very high risk for war at SOME point, then you probably want to take control of the situation and start the war at a time and place of your choice. If you can destroy 90% of NKs ICMBs (or other kinds of carriers) today, it’s better to start the war now, if the new technology will bring that number down to say 50% by tomorrow.
The conspiracy theorist in me says that it’s not impossible that the recent coup attempt in SK was somehow related to this kind of thinking. This is how the military tend to reason after all.
Carrolade@lemmy.world 1 week ago
War is very seldom inevitable. We tend not to focus much attention on wars that never started, because that does not make for very engaging history content. It happens far more frequently than a war actually starting though.
SolOrion@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
It kinda can’t, though. ‘South Korea will be leveled’ is basically the worst imaginable outcome, unless you’re saying they’ll nuke the friends SK invites. Realistically, ‘no nukes/missile strikes at other countries’ is probably going to be China’s only requirement for assistance. Which would make it a horrible grueling land war.