Us and North Korea First Beef

Here's what war with Democratic people's republic of korea would expect similar

A total-blown war with North Korea wouldn't be equally bad equally you think. It would be much, much worse.

Past Updated Feb 8, 2018, 7:39am EST

Late last September, I moderated a discussion about Democratic people's republic of korea with retired Navy Adm. James Stavridis, whose 37-year military career included a stint running NATO, and Michèle Flournoy, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon during the Obama administration, who has helped shape US policy toward North korea since 1993.

Information technology was a spooky conversation. Stavridis said there was at least a 10 percent chance of a nuclear war between the US and North Korea, and a 20 to 30 percent chance of a conventional conflict that could kill a million people or more. Flournoy said President Trump'south tough talk most N Korea — which has included deriding Kim Jong United nations as "Lilliputian Rocket Homo" and threatening to rain "fire and fury" downwardly on his state — made it "much more probable now that i side or the other will misread what was intended every bit a show of commitment or a testify of forcefulness."

The Trump assistants, for its part, seems more than confident in its ability to manage North Korea with precision. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is pushing something known inside the White Business firm as a "bloody nose" strategy of responding to a N Korean provocation with a fix of limited The states military strikes. McMaster seems to believe that Kim would passively absorb the attack without hit back and risking all-out state of war.

I covered the Iraq State of war from Baghdad. I saw the aftermath of a conflict built atop sunny scenarios and rosy thinking. I've seen the cost of wars that the American people were not prepared for and did not fully empathise. The rhetoric effectually Democratic people's republic of korea is raising those same warning bells for me. For all the talk of nuclear exchanges and giant buttons, there has been trivial realistic discussion of what a war on the Korean Peninsula might hateful, how it could escalate, what commitments would exist required, and what sacrifices would be demanded.

So I've spent the past calendar month posing those questions to more than than a dozen old Pentagon officials, CIA analysts, Us military officers, and think tank experts, as well as to a retired South Korean full general who spent his entire professional life preparing to fight the North. They've all said variants of the same matter: There is a genuine risk of a war on the Korean Peninsula that would involve the use of chemic, biological, and nuclear weapons. Several estimated that millions — plural — would die.

Even more frightening, most of the people I spoke to said they believed Kim would use nuclear weapons against Due south Korea in the initial stages of the fighting — non just as a desperate concluding resort.

"This would exist nothing like Iraq," Flournoy told me. "It's not that the North Korean military is then good. It's that Northward Korea has nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction — and is at present in a situation where they might take real incentives to utilise them."

The experts I spoke to all stressed that Kim could devastate Seoul without even needing to use his weapons of mass destruction. The Due north Korean armed services has an enormous number of rocket launchers and arms pieces inside range of Seoul. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that Kim could hammer the Southward Korean capital with an astonishing 10,000 rockets per minute — and that such a avalanche could kill more than than 300,000 South Koreans in the opening days of the disharmonize. That'south all without using a unmarried nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon.

And retired South Korean Gen. In-Bum Chun, who spent twoscore years in uniform thinking about a confrontation with Democratic people's republic of korea, underscored that Kim also has a unlike kind of weapon: 25 million people — including 1.2 meg active-duty troops and several meg reservists — who have been "indoctrinated since babyhood with the belief that Kim and his family unit are literal gods whose government must be protected at all costs."

"Y'all're talking about people who take basically been brainwashed their entire lives," Chun said. "It would be like what you saw on Okinawa during World War Two, where Japanese civilians and soldiers were all willing to fight to the death. This would be a hard and bloody state of war."

What follows is a guide to what a disharmonize with North Korea might look like. War is inherently unpredictable: It's possible Kim would use every type of weapon of mass devastation he possesses, and it's possible he wouldn't employ whatsoever of them.

But many leading experts fright the worst. And if all of this sounds frightening, it should. A new war on the Korean Peninsula wouldn't be as bad every bit you recollect. Information technology would be much, much worse.

Destroying Kim's nuclear arsenal would require a ground invasion and facing Kim's chemical and biological weapons

The official position of the Trump assistants, similar that of its predecessors, is that North korea'southward nuclear program is unacceptable and that Pyongyang has to give up all its nuclear weapons. If the U.s. and South Korea went to war with the Due north, their fundamental strategic goal would be to capture or destroy all of Pyongyang's nuclear sites, as well as the bases that house its long-range missiles.

In a startlingly blunt letter of the alphabet to Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) last October, Rear Adm. Michael Dumont, speaking on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the "only way to 'locate and destroy — with complete certainty — all components of Due north Korea's nuclear weapons programs' is through a footing invasion."

Estimates of the exact numbers of Usa troops that would take part in a push northward vary widely, simply current and former military planners uniformly believe it would crave vastly more than forces than took function in the invasions of Iraq or Transitional islamic state of afghanistan.

A South Korean armed forces white newspaper from 2016, for example, said the United states would need to deploy 690,000 ground troops to Republic of korea if state of war broke out. Bruce Bennett, a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation who has spent decades studying Due north Korea generally and the Kim family specifically, believes those numbers are on the high side, only he thinks the US would need to ship at least 200,000 troops into North korea. Past style of comparison, that would be significantly more troops than the US had in either Iraq or Afghanistan at the peaks of those two long wars.

The 2016 assessment says the Pentagon would also need to send 2,000 warplanes and other shipping to Republic of korea. The US hasn't had that much airpower deployed to a single conflict since Vietnam.

The experts I spoke to believe Kim and his generals know that The states ground forces are better trained and equipped than Due north Korean troops, and that Democratic people's republic of korea's aging fleet of 1,300 Soviet-era warplanes is no match for Washington's land-of-the-art stealth fighters and other jets. So what would happen if US and South Korean troops started pouring into Democratic people's republic of korea while American planes launched wave subsequently wave of airstrikes?

The consensus view is that Kim would effort to level the playing field by using his vast arsenal of chemical weapons, which is believed to be the biggest and about technologically advanced in the world. (Kim is estimated to have between ii,500 and 5,000 metric tons of mortiferous nerve agents like sarin, which can cause paralysis and, ultimately, expiry.)

With so many artillery pieces and rocket launchers trained on Seoul, Kim has the ability to quickly blanket the densely packed urban center with huge amounts of nerve agents. The human being toll would be staggeringly high: The military machine historian Reid Kirby estimated last June that a sustained sarin attack could kill upwardly to 2.five million people in Seoul alone, while injuring nearly 7 one thousand thousand more than. Men, women, and children would very literally choke to death in the streets of one of the world'southward wealthiest and most vibrant cities. It would exist mass murder on a scale rarely seen in human history.

Kim as well has big quantities of VX, an even deadlier chemical weapon, and has already shown a willingness, and power, to apply it against civilian targets abroad. Last February, two women trained past North Korean intelligence agents walked up to Kim's estranged one-half-brother Kim Jong Nam, while the 45-yr-erstwhile walked through an drome in Malaysia, and smeared his face with VX. Authorities there said he suffered a "very painful" death from his exposure to the nerve agent.

Retired Lt. Gen. Chip Gregson, the Pentagon'due south superlative Asia official from 2009 to 2011, says the attack was a brilliant illustration of the North Korean chemic weapons program'southward technological sophistication — and of what may face U.s. and S Korean troops if war were to break out.

"VX is the worst of the worst," Gregson told me. "It'due south a crowd killer. Information technology'south odorless, colorless, and doesn't dissipate apace. The fact that they were able to use it and then precisely — to impale only one person and not even hurt the two handlers — indicates a loftier degree of technical skill and a clear willingness to use a weapon of mass destruction confronting civilian targets. That needs to be factored into the equation when we think about what Kim would do to preempt an attack or retaliate for one."

The Pentagon already assumes that its airbases in and around South korea would exist amidst the first places Kim tried to hit with chemical weapons similar sarin. US military officials don't think North Korea would necessarily succeed in killing many of the pilots and other troops stationed there, all of whom are equipped with gas masks and other protective gear. But they worry an set on could however go far significantly harder for the US to launch air raids against the North past causing panic and anarchy on the bases that firm the American warplanes, bombers, and troops.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Jan-Marc Jouas, the former deputy commander of The states forces in South Korea, said the initial phases of whatsoever offensive against Democratic people's republic of korea depend on American and S Korean planes beingness able to striking Kim's nuclear facilities, armed forces bases, chemical and biological weapons caches, radar systems, and missile defense force arrays.

The air campaign — which would dwarf the "daze and awe" of the Republic of iraq War in size and scope — would be designed to decimate North Korea'south ground forces and destroy the thousands of artillery pieces trained on the South Korean capital before they could be used to level Seoul.

Washington would also endeavor to impale senior N Korean armed services commanders and government officials, including Kim. (Then-called "decapitation" strikes are part of the current US and South Korean war programme for a conflict with North Korea, OPLAN 5015, which explicitly talks about targeting the land's top leadership.)

"Air power is dependent on the number of sorties that can be flown," Jouas told me, using the military'south term for an private air combat mission. "And information technology'southward a lot harder to generate sorties if your airfield is under set on."

Jouas said Air Force personnel conduct chemical weapons drills where they do doing their jobs in gas masks and other equipment they'd wear if the bases were nether actual attack. They try to game out all the diverse ways North Korea could hit the facilities, and to prepare appropriately. It isn't easy.

"We anticipate conventional attacks, nosotros anticipate chemical attacks, we anticipate cyberattacks, and we anticipate North Korean special operations forces existence inserted into the bases," he told me. "We'd notwithstanding be able to wing — and to ultimately defeat North Korea — but in that location would be an unquestionable affect on our operations."

Gregson thinks Kim wouldn't just use his chemical weapons against military targets in South korea. The Pentagon has a sizable military presence in neighboring Japan, and the isle of Guam is a U.s. territory that is home to more than than 163,000 American citizens. Both are well within range of Kim's missiles and rockets — and Gregson expects both would be hit.

Andrew Weber, formerly the banana secretary of defence force for nuclear, chemic, and biological defense programs, told me that the US and Republic of korea would also need to be prepared for Kim to employ biological weapons against both military machine and civilian targets.

Due north Korea'southward arsenal is thought to include smallpox, yellow fever, anthrax, hemorrhagic fever, and even plague. They are some of the nearly frightening substances on world, and Weber expects some of them to be used against South Korean ports, airfields, and cities as a way of killing big numbers of civilians and troops while causing terror on a nationwide scale.

"We would expect to see cocktails of fast-interim biological agents designed to cease troops in their tracks and regular infectious agents that would take more fourth dimension to kill people," he told me. "There would be a significant military impact, and a significant psychological 1. It'southward difficult to overstate just how frightening these types of weapons are."

In an October 2017 report, researchers from Harvard's Belfer Eye noted that minute quantities of anthrax "equivalent to a few bottles of wine" could kill up to one-half the population of a densely populated city like Seoul. Due north Korea could theoretically burn down missiles with payloads of anthrax or other biological weapons into South Korea, or apply drones to disperse the lethal substances from the air.

The researchers wrote that Kim could as well have some of his citizens secretly bring the weapons into the South:

North korea has 200,000 special forces; even a scattering of those special forces armed with BW would be enough to devastate South Korea. What is alarming virtually human being vectors is that they practice not need sophisticated training or technology to spread BW amidst the targets, and they are difficult to observe in advance of an assail. It is theoretically possible that Northward Korean sleeper agents disguised as cleaning and disinfection personnel could disperse BW agents with backpack sprayers. Another possibility is that Due north Korean agents will innovate BW into h2o supplies for major metropolitan areas.

In 2011, Weber helped blueprint a state of war game centered on a simulated N Korean biological weapons attack on the Southward. The do, Able Response, brought together hundreds of armed forces and civilian officials from the US and Republic of korea. The goals were to effigy out the best ways to detect an attack, identify what substance had been used, limit the spread of the virus, and then rush vaccines and other medical care to the infected to salvage as many lives as possible.

The exercises led to physical policy changes, including closer coordination between the Southward Korean military and the country's public health system. The states bases in Southward Korea received new environmental surveillance systems designed to quickly detect the presence of a biological amanuensis. All Us troops in Republic of korea are vaccinated confronting anthrax and smallpox (South Korean troops aren't, to the consternation of Weber and other US officials).

Nonetheless, Weber said his main takeaway was the near impossibility of preventing biological weapons from killing an astonishing number of people. The decease toll in each year'south exercise was often shut to a one thousand thousand. In some cases, it was significantly college because the infection spread to Nihon or other nearby countries.

"It merely takes ane or two people to deliver bioweapons, and tiny quantities of a bacteria or virus tin can cause a massive number of casualties," he told me. "You wouldn't need a missile. You'd need a haversack."

The scary logic behind a North Korean nuclear attack

There's a behemothic question that looms over any discussion of Democratic people's republic of korea's growing arsenal of nuclear weapons: Would Kim actually be willing to use one?

North korea is thought to have nigh 50 nukes. The Us, by dissimilarity, has an astonishing six,800 nuclear weapons (surpassed only past Russia, which has an estimated 7,000 weapons). Trump — or i of his successors — could reply to a North Korean nuclear strike past destroying every major N Korean city in a matter of hours.

Experts inside and outside the US government who study North Korea say that Kim is a rational leader with a singular focus on maintaining control of his country. They don't call up he'south stupid, or suicidal. And for a long fourth dimension, they believed that Kim would simply use his nuclear weapons if he were facing military defeat and the imminent collapse of his government. Information technology would exist the last gasp of a dying government, one adamant to impale as many of its enemies as possible before the end came.

Those assessments have now inverse. Most of the experts I spoke to believe North Korea would use nuclear weapons at the starting time of a state of war — non at the end. And most of them believe Kim would be making a rational determination, not a crazy or suicidal one, if he gave the launch order.

One of the all-time explanations for why came from Bennett, the RAND researcher. He's made more than 100 trips to the Korean Peninsula and interviewed an array of North Korean defectors. He also jokes that he'south "kinda, sorta" made it into North Korea itself, including in one case walking through a newly discovered tunnel that Due north Korean troops had dug beneath the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and Republic of korea. He remembers that the walls were covered with graffiti praising Kim.

Bennett began his career at RAND during the height of the Cold War and believes it's impossible to understand why Kim would become nuclear without too understanding why Soviet leaders were prepared to do so.

"In the Cold War, we specifically talked about a logic called 'use them or lose them,' which referred to the fact that the Soviet Marriage understood that the first goal of an American preemptive assault would exist to knock out their nuclear weapons earlier they could be fired at the United states," Bennett told me. "Now retrieve about how Kim is looking at the world. He knows that any US and South Korean strike would be designed to destroy or capture his nuclear weapons. That means he'd need to either employ them early or take chances losing them altogether."

In that location's another big-picture reason Kim might determine to go nuclear: a Common cold War-era concept known every bit "decoupling."

In the 1950s, the Soviet Union was much stronger militarily than Germany, French republic, or the other countries of Western Europe. The US had formally committed to protecting those nations from a Soviet invasion, and Bennett told me that American military planners were prepared to use small-calibration tactical nuclear weapons against the advancing Russian troops to stop the set on.

That entire calculus began to change once the Soviet Marriage developed long-range nuclear missiles capable of reaching the continental United states of america. European leaders openly wondered how far Washington would be willing to become to protect their countries from the Soviet Union given the new risks to the American homeland.

"By the time you get to the late '50s, the French in particular are saying, 'Wait a minute, if the U.s. uses nuclear weapons against Soviet ground forces in Europe, the Soviets are going to fire nuclear weapons at the US. Is the US prepared to trade New York City for Paris?'" Bennett told me.

That'due south why North Korea's new generation of long-range missiles capable of hitting the mainland US is such a game changer.

The North Korean constitution says the country'due south ultimate aim is the reunification of the entire Korean Peninsula under the Kim family unit's control, which would be impossible to pull off with United states of america troops already deployed to Republic of korea and Washington formally committed to going to war on the S's behalf.

So if Kim actually wants to try to reunify the two Koreas, he needs to somehow break up the US-Due south Korea alliance. If the US were no longer willing to defend Seoul, so South korea — which has no nuclear weapons of its own — would be a lot easier to invade and defeat. But how practise yous break up that alliance? How do you convince the U.s.a. not to come to South Korea's defense in case of war?

Being able to credibly threaten to destroy New York or Washington definitely helps. Kim can now force American leaders to finish and think whether information technology's really worth risking a possible nuclear assail on the United states of america mainland just to defend South Korea from a North Korean attack. North Korea has missiles capable of reaching the Westward Declension and is idea to have nuclear warheads that would fit on top of them. They could destroy a major nuclear metropolis. To alter a phrase from the Common cold War, would Trump be prepared to trade San Francisco for Seoul?

If Kim decides the answer is no, using a nuclear weapon against South Korea no longer seems crazy or suicidal. It starts to seem rational. And one particular South Korean city starts to seem like the likeliest target.

In July 2016, Kim test-fired iii missiles as office of what a North Korean state-run news bureau described every bit mock "pre-emptive strikes at ports and airfields in the operational theater in South Korea, where the U.South. imperialists nuclear war hardware is to be hurled" in example of a future conflict between the two sides.

That was widely seen as an implicit threat to use nuclear weapons confronting the South Korean port city of Busan, which would play a vital office in any Pentagon effort to build a strength large enough to defend the S or to lead a preemptive strike on the N.

The Us currently has around 28,500 troops stationed in South korea and would need to deploy hundreds of thousands more if war broke out with the Due north. The Us would as well have to send in thousands of boosted tanks, armored personnel carriers, bombers, fighter jets, helicopters, and arms pieces.

The problem is that the Pentagon's cargo planes can only ferry in a few hundred troops or a couple of tanks at a time. That means the vast bulk of the US troops and equipment would need to come up past gunkhole, a laborious process that could take six weeks or longer to complete. The American ships would unload at Busan, and the best way for Kim to destroy those ports — and significantly slow US efforts to ship in enough troops to brand a difference in the fight — would exist to nuke the city.

Jouas, the retired Air Strength general, told me that Democratic people's republic of korea's thinking about whether to use a nuclear weapon early on in a conflict has likely changed every bit the country has built more of the weapons and developed missiles and rockets capable of hitting more distant targets.

"In the past, when Northward Korea had a limited number of nuclear weapons, the assessment was that they'd marshal them to utilize merely equally a concluding resort," he told me. "Now that their inventory has grown, it'south easier to imagine them using some of the weapons at the onset of hostilities to try to shape the style the remainder of the war would unfold."

Bruce Klingner, a xx-yr veteran of the CIA who spent years studying North korea, told me that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had stood by in 2002 as the U.s. methodically built up the forces it used to invade the country — and oust Hussein — the following yr. He said there was little gamble that Kim would follow in Hussein'due south footsteps and patiently allow the Pentagon to deploy the troops and equipment it would need for a full-on war with North Korea.

"The conventional wisdom used to be that North korea would apply simply nuclear weapons as part of a last gasp, twilight of the gods, pull the temple down upon themselves kind of motion," said Klingner, who now works for the conservative Heritage Foundation. "But we take to set for the real possibility that Kim would use nuclear weapons in the early stages of a conflict, non the latter ones."

Nosotros as well take to prepare for the fact that if the U.s. and North Korea do actually come to blows, China will become involved — and not in the ways that either Washington or Pyongyang might expect.

The China problem

In a contempo essay in Foreign Diplomacy, Oriana Skylar Mastro, a North korea expert at Georgetown University, argues persuasively that the U.s.a. fundamentally misunderstands China's relationship with the Kim authorities. United states of america officials have long believed that Beijing is committed to Democratic people's republic of korea's survival and might accept steps to ensure that Kim'south government doesn't collapse and transport millions of starving refugees flowing into China. That line of thinking, she writes, is "dangerously out of appointment."

Mastro continues:

Today, China is no longer wedded to Democratic people's republic of korea'southward survival. In the issue of a conflict or the regime'southward collapse, Chinese forces would intervene to a degree non previously expected — not to protect Beijing's supposed ally only to secure its own interests.

More specifically, she and several of the other experts I spoke to believe that People's republic of china would quickly send hundreds of thousands of troops into North Korea to seize control of the state's nuclear sites and forbid Kim from using the weapons. Chinese and Due north Korean troops wouldn't be working together against a mutual enemy; they'd be trying to kill each other.

"Prc would have to fight its way into North korea," Mastro told me in an interview. "For the North Koreans, enemy No. 1 is apparently the United States, but enemy No. 2 is China. They sympathize they'd have to potentially fight both countries."

Things would get actually complicated, and really dangerous, one time Chinese troops made their way to the nuclear facilities. The Pentagon has spent years practicing how to send US special operations forces into North Korea to seize Pyongyang'due south nuclear weapons if there were signs that Kim'southward regime was collapsing. The problem is that Chinese troops would almost certainly be sent into North korea at the same time, and with the same goal, as the US forces.

Mastro notes that Chinese troops would only demand to advance 60 miles into North korea to take control of all of the country'southward highest-priority nuclear sites and two-thirds of its highest-priority missile sites. Given that enormous geographic advantage, Beijing'due south troops would almost certainly arrive before the U.s. ones practice.

"When our special forces run into the Chinese special forces, what practice we do? Are we going to shoot at each other or milkshake hands?" Bennett told me. "That's an incredibly risky decision to make on the fly."

There's no reason to think the countries would necessarily come to blows. The United states could alive with the North Korean nuclear weapons catastrophe up in China's hands, since Beijing already has a sizable nuclear arsenal and relatively stable relationships with both Washington and many of its neighbors in the region.

But Beijing would be intervening to protect its own interests, not those of the US. A state of war betwixt N and Republic of korea would almost certainly stop with the creation of a reunified state led by the pro-United states of america government in Seoul; China would want to make sure information technology wasn't left out in the cold.

In this, and this alone, a war with North Korea would bear some similarities to the war in Iraq. When the Bush administration ousted the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, it wasn't prepared for what became a concerted and years-long Iranian push to ensure that Iraq's political system was dominated by Shia political parties with close ties to Tehran. Iran has largely gotten its way: Several of Republic of iraq'due south postwar leaders have allowed Iranian militias to operate within the country, and Baghdad has noticeably chilly relationships with Kingdom of saudi arabia and Iran's other regional rivals.

All of which is to say that China, like Iran, would be trying to stabilize postwar Korea on its ain terms, not those of the US. And it would be doing so against a Trump administration that is notably hostile and fearful of Red china's rise global influence.

Trump and Kim have the ability to commencement a nuclear war. Will they walk dorsum from the brink?

So how scared should we exist?

That, more than anything else, is the question that'southward been on my mind for the weeks I've spent reporting this story. The adept news is that the experts I spoke to don't call back war is inevitable, or fifty-fifty probable. Most, like Jung Pak, a quondam Democratic people's republic of korea analyst for the CIA, believe that Kim is a rational leader who has been conscientious during his years in power to walk right up to the edge without going over information technology.

"People say he's young and untested, but he's not that immature anymore and he'south not that untested anymore," she said, noting that Kim has led his country since 2011 and has managed to massively expand his nuclear arsenal without triggering a state of war with the Usa or South Korea. "He'due south a brutal dictator that is ambitious and vindictive and decumbent to violence, but he's a rational leader making fundamentally rational choices. He knows how to punch things up, simply he also knows how to recalibrate and dial them back down."

Pak and others note there accept been some contempo, frail signs of diplomatic progress. Northward and Southward Korea just appear plans for their athletes to railroad train together in accelerate of the Winter Olympics and enter the opening ceremonies as i team, under the flag of a reunified Korea. The North and Due south Korean governments are holding ongoing talks, and South Korea and the US agreed to postpone new military exercises until after the Olympics, a move widely seen as a goodwill gesture to Democratic people's republic of korea. Trump is for the moment saying he's committed to diplomacy and believes he would "probably have a very expert relationship with Kim Jong Un."

Merely here'due south the bad news, and the reason hours of conversations with some of the people who know North Korea best have left me feeling profoundly unsettled: It's easy to imagine a misunderstanding or accidental run-in between the two skittish countries leading to a full-blown war.

"I accept queasy feeling that nosotros're in 1914 stumbling towards Sarajevo," Sen. Angus King (I-ME) said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing terminal September, a reference to the assassination of an Austrian archduke that triggered the devastation of World War I. "And what worries me is not an instantaneous nuclear confrontation, but an adventitious escalation based upon the rhetoric that'due south going back and forth."

Male monarch continued:

That's what worries me, is a misinterpretation, a misunderstanding, an event: a shooting downwards of a bomber, a strike on a ship that leads to a countermeasure, that leads to a countermeasure, and the cease consequence is that if Kim Jong Un feels his regime is under attack, and so the unthinkable happens.

He and so asked Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, who was testifying at the session, if the Usa and North Korea had any straight lines of communication that could exist used to defuse a tense state of affairs before information technology spirals out of control.

"We practice not," Dunford replied.

And that's the most dangerous aspect of the current standoff, and the outcome that could most easily lead to a conflict whose potential human costs are so high — millions dead, millions more wounded, major cities lying in ruins — equally to exist almost unimaginable.

The US is led by a hotheaded president who lacks military feel, is prone to unpredictable flashes of rage and fury, talks openly of destroying another sovereign land, and has alarmed advisers with his ignorance about America's massive number of nuclear weapons and seemingly blasé attitude toward their use. (Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's comment that Trump was a "fucking moron" came later the president told his acme advisers that he wanted a tenfold increase in the size of the Usa nuclear arsenal.)

North Korea is led past Kim, a man who rarely leaves his ain land, has executed scores of relatives and high-ranking officials, literally starves his own people to free upwards money for his state'southward nuclear program, and regularly uses apocalyptic language to describe what he sees every bit a coming war with the US and Republic of korea.

Maybe next week Kim will test-fire a missile that flies as well close to Guam or Hawaii and Trump will decide enough is enough. Or perchance a United states transport will accidentally drift into North Korean waters and Kim'southward navy will open fire. With no lines of communication, a uncomplicated fault could set off a cascading series of responses that ultimately atomic number 82 to all-out war. In a state of affairs this combustible, there are an enormous number of moves — some intentional, some accidental — that could light the lucifer.

CREDITS
Editors: Ezra Klein and Jennifer Williams
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