Day 1704 - The Dogs of War

The Defense Intelligence Agency, Mike Flynn's old organization, the same group who offered the assessment years ago about N. Korea, and said also that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the latter two claims proven false, has reported the North Koreans have miniaturized a nuclear weapon to fit on one of their experimental ICBM's. 

The POTUS, as is his character, threatened North Korea yesterday and today with nuclear annihilation, "the likes of which the world has never seem." Surely this is rash bravado of an insecure man because the consequences are unbelievably horrific. Given the source of the report of N.Korea capability is DIA, caveat emptor applies to their warning.

Here are some consequences of the POTUS threat that show the situation is one of Byzantine complexity:

Seoul, S. Korea is located about 30 miles from the DMZ. It has a population of roughly 10,000,000 people. It is about 120 miles from the capital of N. Korea, Pyongyang (estimated population 2.5 million). It is in easy range of North Korean artillery. 

South Korea has a population of 50,000,000, and North Korea 25,000,000. Thus roughly 75,000,000 are in the sphere of any large scale military operation, as the last Korean War showed.

It is probably 500 or so miles to mainland China from those  areas, and Japan lies about 500-600 miles to the South of Southeast.

Currently the prevailing winds over Korea flow south of southwest and loop west over mainland China, but are variable.

As for use of nuclear weapons, we have good information on the effects of a large nuclear explosion, as the POTUS says, the likes of which the world has (seldom, not never) seem:

Castle Bravo was the most powerful thermonuclear test of a US nuclear weapon (not including any subsequent computer simulations that may have been conducted by DOE).  The Russians tested a device of 3 times the yield of Castle Bravo.

Castle Bravo formed a crater 6,500 feet (~1.2 mi) across about 250 feet deep. Its mushroom cloud reached 140,000 feet altitude (well into the stratosphere)  and was 62 miles in diameter within 10 minutes. It contaminated about 7,000 immediate square miles of surface around it. Its direct radioactive plume extended about 280 miles downwind. The shock front of the explosion propagated at 100 feet/sec. This does not assess the impact on direct irradiation from the explosion, nor effects of fallout entrained in upper winds. 

For perspective, the distance from Washington, DC to NYC is 225 miles and to Boston about 442 miles. It is estimated the casualties of such a bomb detonated over Washington, DC would envelop Philadelphia and New York causing deaths of over 50% of the population, if not more, and effects almost as severe would be experienced in Boston.  

Nuclear war, regardless of tactical control of impact point, is not a precise exercise but more of an exercise of wielding a very large sledge hammer.

Now I expect reasonably that with computers, guidance systems and who-knows what kind of material innovations, modern nuclear tactics use smaller, more tactical weapons with smaller, more pinpoint-aimed yields and perhaps even directed radiation as I read about in an Atlantic Monthly article a few years back (not to mention the so-called "neutron bomb" that kills by radiation more than by blast effects). 

Perhaps POTUS should listen to history and voices of history. The bottom line is this:

Any offensive engagement with North Korea that is limited to non-nuclear weapons would rapidly involve population centers of Seoul and North Korea. They would cause 100,000's of thousand casualties before the US or Allies have a chance to react. Subsequent casualties of American soldiers on the ground would be very high due to the extreme topography, as the Korean War showed. Alternatively, we might resort, or feel forced to use nuclear options.

Our subsequent retaliation by a nuclear response would match or exceed these casualties and make the Korean Peninsula uninhabitable for scores of years or more. Furthermore, the radioactive plumes of detonations would be carried over Korea, China and Japan depending on the specific prevailing winds. Fallout would be entrained in the atmosphere and be deposited in the US. ). Of course details of fallout depend on things like whether bombs used an air burst or ground impact burst. But be aware, currently the predominate load of mercury deposited in the USA from burning coal in power plants comes from power plants in China due to easterly prevailing upper atmosphere winds. Where will the fallout come to earth? To use a crude analogy, it would be sort of like urinating into the wind.

So, perhaps we ought to recall the words of a few soldiers, philosophers, priests and statesmen about war:

“Violence is never just: tyrants are persons to whom requisite evil is fun.”  W.H. Auden

The people made the Constitution and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their own will and lives only by their will. (i.e., Only Congress may declare war) - John Marshall, 1755-1835

"Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men." - General George Smith Patton, Jr.

 “Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”  – Marcus Aurelius

"Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men."-
General George Smith Patton, Jr.

"A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over...is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen." --G.K. Chesterton

"War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it." --Martin Luther

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" --The Mahatma Gandhi

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity." - President Dwight D. Eisenhower

 I know a great deal of the horrors and tragedies of war. ... The cost of war in human lives is constantly spread before me, written neatly in many ledgers whose columns are gravestones. I am deeply moved to find some means or method of avoiding another calamity of war." - General George Catlett Marshall

"Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true." - President Ulysses S. Grant

"Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity." – Carl von Clausewitz (Russian general and military strategist)

 “Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.” – Otto Von Bismarck

“Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share in the guilt for the dead.” – General Omar N. Bradley

“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.” – Julius Caesar 

“Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.” – Julius Caesar

“I hold it to be great prudence of men to abstain from threats and insulting words towards anyone, for neither the one nor the other in any way diminishes the strength of the enemy, but one makes him more cautious, and the other increases his hatred of you, and makes him more persevering in his efforts to injure you.”– Niccolo Machiavelli

 “It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disasters to discuss the matter.” – Thucydides, Greek historian. “History of the Peloponnesian War”

“The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.” – Thucydides

"Every gun that is made, every war ship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican President, United States

 Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.  - Gen. Omar Bradley

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home " -James Madison 

"I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind." -Thomas Jefferson

"Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other." - Thomas Jefferson

"The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure." - George Washington

"Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later." -Benjamin Franklin

"How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?" --Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Do not ever say that the desire to 'do good' by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives." -Ayn Rand

"If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road." - George W. Bush,

"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac." - George Orwell

Grace and peace.