Originally posted by Woolie Wool
Nuclear brinkmanship? The first strikes against NK would probably be to destroy its WMDs and nuclear facilities. We'd probably ship our best Patriot missiles to Japan and South Korea to stop incoming nukes. If a nuke hits, NK's Communist government will have hell to pay.
There really is no choice because Kim Jong Il cares about nothing but power. His people can go to hell in his mind as long as he still has control.
The war will happen eventually. Either we strike first or they nail one of our allies in the Pacific and drag us into the war.
Also, Iraq has a functioning provisional government and elections will be held this year. So there.
Iraq has a provisional government which is composed of exiles with virtually no grass roots support. The US has had to resort to asking the Us for help in establishing the
feasibility of elections this year, but the UN doubts that it will be possible by the summer date. The situation in Iraq is highly unstable - there's an ongoing guerilla war, and we've already seen mass protests aimed at the provisional government.
You're making a key assumption that the US knows where the nukes are. As Iraq shows, US intelligence can be extremely misleading when it comes to the location of WMD.
Not to mention that there is probably no way to tell whether a water tanker carries water or biological agents - and thus what the effect of blowing up that tanker is.
And just a single miss can result in the deaths of thousands, most likely civillians...
In fact, the Iraq war is a perfect example - several missiles succeeded in landing near allied positions and even, IIRC, one in Kuwait city. And NK will undoubtedly have both better missiles and more of them.
A war will solve nothing... all it will do is further destroy international relations, and kill a lot of people. To assume that you can simply send in troops, kill a few hundred (thousand) people and walk out leaving a happy, stable populace is sheer idiocy.
What you will have is a monumental death toll, the possbility of Chinese involvement, the potential for deployment of nuclear and biological weapons, thousands of destitute refugees swamping SK and collapsing the economy there, the need for a massive aid effort, long term military occupation to preserve civil order (of many more troops than Iraq), the likely collapse of international relations between China and the US (even if China remained neutral), the likelihood of WMD material being 'leaked' by the fleeing NK leadership, etc.
