In President Donald Trump's speech to South Korea's National Assembly on Wednesday 11/08/2017, the President warned North Korea not to test the US's resolve.
Although President Trump's speech focused largely on the long history of North Korea's human-rights abuses, he mentioned "a path to a much better future" if the country denuclearized.
President Trump mentioned the US victories over ISIS and its nuclear submarines near the North Korean region. He clarified the US government's position that the North Korean government should not mistake the US's restraint for weakness, that it would be a "fatal miscalculation" by North Korea, alluding to the fact that the US government will use military force to denuclearize North Korea if they won't do it themselves.
In a final effort to force the denuclearization of the North, the President called on the international community to implement the UN's strict sanctions on Pyongyang.
North Korean officials were not impressed. "We don't care about what that mad dog may utter because we've already heard enough," they said.
The North Korean government doesn't seem to believe President Trump's statement that he is willing to take military action to force them to denuclearize if all else fails.
The regime of Kim Jong Un has already conducted eighteen missile tests this year, notwithstanding all the sanctions and diplomacy they have received from China, the US and the UN and many other nations. South Korea reported that Pyongyang may test another intercontinental ballistic missile within days.
The North Korean government reaffirmed their commitment to building nuclear weapons, saying that the US's use of "nuclear aircraft carriers and strategic bombers" would cause the North to retaliate, to "counter those threats by bolstering the power of justice in order to take out the root cause of aggression and war."
North Korean government officials have repeatedly said they won't negotiate with the US until they complete their country's nuclear weapons program. However, the US remains intent on preventing North Korea from perfecting a nuclear ICBM capable of reaching the US mainland. (Business Insider)
From these statements, it is clear that if the US government's demands for the denuclearization of North Korea are not met, the US will have no choice but to use military force to take out the North Korean nuclear capability.
Asked on Wednesday, 11/08/2017, if he was considering military action, President Trump told reporters, "Frankly, that's not a first choice, but we will see what happens."
Pacific U.S. allies South Korea and Japan have mostly welcomed Trump's hardline tactics. A South Korean presidential spokesperson, Park Soo-hyun, praised Trump's "firm and specific stance regarding the important issue of maintaining peace and security now facing the international community and the United Nations," according to The Washington Post.(Newsweek)
There are two scenarios which would trigger a war between the US and North Korea.
In the first scenario, the US military would try to shoot down a North Korean missile at liftoff. This could be done by cyberattack, although the US intelligence agencies might not currently have that capability.
If the Trump Administration chooses to interfere in a missile test now or in the future, former generals and military analysts say that the North Korean government is likely to retaliate, unleashing weaponry Pyongyang feared it might otherwise lose in U.S. air strikes.
The other scenario is that North Korea would initiate military action because of fears that an attack from the US military is imminent. Pyongyang could pre-emptively attack to fend off what it fears will be a full-scale assault.
The North Korean government is watching for signals that will tell it when it is time to take action. These signals could range from small steps, such as Washington pulling out diplomatic dependents from South Korea, to major actions, such as deploying more military aircraft, equipment, personnel, or even nuclear weapons in the South.
According to former generals and military specialists who served in Korea, the war would consist of two phases.
The first phase would be a conventional war between North Korea and American and South Korean forces. This phase would likely play out for at least a month, and possibly many weeks more. North Korea has almost 1.2 million troops in its various military branches, plus another six hundred thousand in its reserves and almost six million in its paramilitary reserves, according to "Military Balance 2017," published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
South Korea's armed forces are about half the size of the North's, with 4.5 million troops in its reserves and another 3 million in its paramilitary reserves.
The US has about twenty-eight thousand troops deployed in South Korea, with tens of thousands more in the U.S. Pacific Command because there has been no formal end to the last Korean War, only an armistice.
The generals and military analysts say North Korea would lose the war and Kim Jong Un's regime would probably collapse.
The second phase of Korean War, however, could be deadly according to the military experts.
North Korea has thousands of artillery pieces embedded deep in the northern slopes above the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean Peninsula. North Korea is also in possession of chemical and biological weapons.
There are twenty-five million people in South Korea within artillery range of North Korea.
The second phase of the war would produce tens of thousands of deaths just in Seoul, and possibly a million casualties in the South alone.
As bad as the first phase seems, the second phase could get even worse. "A war would not end quickly after the defeat of North Korean forces," Mark Fitzpatrick, the executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies office in Washington said. "North Korea would not be immediately pacified."
The second phase of the conventional war could devolve into the kind of insurgency that US forces face in the Middle East and South Asia. Loyalists to the Kim regime might continue fighting in terrorist-like cells and guerrilla attacks. "North Korea would not go down as fast as Saddam's regime (in less than a month of the U.S. invasion) or the Taliban (in two months), but the aftermath would be similar and probably of greater intensity," Fitzpatrick said. "North Koreans are brainwashed into believing that the Kim dynasty is deity-like and Americans are the source of all evil."
Now that the true state of affairs between the US and North Korea has been explained, the big question is: What will China do if the two nations go to war?
China is not a friend or ally of the US because it is ruled by a communist government whose real agenda is to eventually destroy all Western-style democracies and replace the US as the dominant world power. "It has been China's dream for a century to become the world's leading nation," wrote Liu Mingfu, then a colonel in the People's Liberation Army, in his 2010 book The China Dream.
Xi Jinping, after becoming general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, echoed the book's language and one of its key themes, "the dream of a strong military", repeatedly in speeches. This dream, he said, would be realized by 2049, a century after the founding of the People's Republic of China. (The Atlantic)
When China believes its military is strong enough to overcome the US and its allies, it will go to war with them, overthrow democracy and replace it with a worldwide communist government ruled by the Chinese.
Beijing does not want North Korea to have nuclear weapons because China wants to remain the ruling power in the region. The latest U.N. resolution imposing new sanctions on Kim's regime produced rare unanimity among the fifteen members of the Security Council.
However, the southern provinces of China are heavily involved in trade with Pyongyang. If North Korea goes to war, China will face economic repercussions. (NewYorker)
Since China and North Korea are both communist countries, Beijing views North Korea as a buffer to prevent the influence of Western democracy along its border.
If the North Korean regime were to collapse, Seoul, a democracy, would become the capital city of the entire Korean peninsula.
The US and the South Koreans would build military bases along the entire eastern border of the peninsula, insuring that the Chinese could not overthrow the new democratic Korea and impose their communist ideology upon the South Koreans. (The Atlantic)
This would be a huge setback to China's plan of eventual world domination.
"North Korea is a subset of our relations with China," Marks said. "What impact would a war have? Devastation of Seoul, the unravelling of world order, and China on the other side with 'enemy' status."
In the event of a war between the US and North Korea, the Chinese government would side with North Korea and help them take down the South Korean government. According to Marks, "everything is up for grabs.", which means that China would use the war as an opportunity to take over South Korea. (NewYorker)
In President Donald Trump's speech to South Korea's National Assembly on Wednesday 11/08/2017, the President warned North Korea not to test the US's resolve.
Although President Trump's speech focused largely on the long history of North Korea's human-rights abuses, he mentioned "a path to a much better future" if the country denuclearized.