The new old war in Korea

[Jester]

Yet, even experience didn't stop us from making stupid strategic mistakes in Korea, Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, Iraq, or Afghanistan. And, even now I doubt we've really learned our lesson yet about letting politics interfere with national security.

Korea was a long time ago, and a very different war. The overriding issue of potential war with the Soviets dictated a great deal about how that war was going to end. It also taught the North Koreans a hell of a lesson - they're going to level your country with bombers, and if you can't do something about that, you're pretty much screwed. How well they've learned that lesson, vs. how far modern air power has come, is an interesting question.

Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as Somalia to some extent, were all about occupation, rather than conventional war. Would the North Koreans still be able to fight after the back of their military regime was irrevocably broken? Would they even want to? I don't know. It would be an interesting test case for the power of ideological conditioning. But by the time it became a situation like Iraq or Afghanistan, the threat of a North Korean invasion would have been long ended. The big threat is their army, and that's not something they can hide very well.

The US is damn good at its primary role - blowing the hell out of opposing conventional forces. And that's exactly what North Korea has, big Soviet-style masses of tanks, troops, and artillery. Where the US seems to struggle is in adapting all that firepower to conflicts which do not have obvious enemies to smash. But, at least until it turns into an occupation, North Korea is a textbook case of the obvious enemy - you know who they are, where they are, what they are.

-Jester