I don’t understand why the United States has abused it’s “sole super power” status since the fall of the Soviet Union. For whatever reason we did, I defy anyone to truthfully say that America is better off since we turned our diplomacy over to the defense department and broker diplomacy through the notion of force.
Surely “smart” people recognized that a time would come where there would be three “super powers” instead of one and that we needed to be able to capitalize that the new relationships. But it seems that we won’t recognize that, and we run the risk of there being only two “super powers” and we won’t be one of the two.
Our meddling in the Middle East has done nothing to make America better. An argument can legitimately made that it has, in fact, made America worse.
Now we are threatening North Korea. I can’t say that North Korea doesn’t want to be capable of sending ICBMs to the US mainland. I can say that currently they don’t have any ICBMs.
To make it more perplexing to me is that we act as though we are threatened by North Korea, and yet their neighbors, China, Russia and South Korea don’t share our feelings. They live there, we don’t.
At the same time that we seem to be irrationally provoking North Korea, we seem to be going out of our way to antagonize Russia, China and Pakistan. These are three countries that do have ICBMs, and in the case of Russia, they have more than we do.
Nine countries have nuclear weapons.
| Country | Deployed | Deployed | Reserve/ | Military | Total Inventory | Delivery Capabilities |
| Strategic | Nonstrategic | Nondeployed | Stockpile | |||
| Russia | 1,950 | 0 | 2,350 | 4,300 | 7,000 | Air, Sea, Ground |
| United States | 1,650 | 150 | 2,200 | 4,000 | 6,800 | Air, Sea, Ground |
| France | 280 | n.a. | 10 | 300 | 300 | Air, Sea |
| China | 0 | ? | 270 | 270 | 270 | Air, Sea, Ground |
| United Kingdom | 120 | n.a. | 95 | 215 | 215 | Sea |
| Israel | 0 | n.a. | 80 | 80 | 80 | Air, Sea, Ground |
| Pakistan | 0 | n.a. | 120-130 | 120-130 | 120-130 | Air, Ground |
| India | 0 | n.a. | 110-120 | 110-120 | 110-120 | Air, Sea, Ground |
| North Korea | 0 | n.a. | ? | ? | ? | Suspected Sea, Ground |
| Total:s | ~4,150 | ~150 | ~5,300 | ~9,400 | ~14,930 |
So, why are we going out of our way to destroy relationships with three countries that could destroy us, while fixating on one country that currently can’t?
An ICBM travels 7 kilometers a second! Travel time from Russia to Washington DC is around 30 minutes! We survived the Cold War without a nuclear war, but now seem to want to start one.
China and Russia both have stated that if North Korea started a war, they would not be on North Korea’s side. They have further stated that, if we start a war with North Korea, they would be on North Korea’s side.
How would a war with North Korea evolve? South Korea faces 13,000 conventional artillery guns along the DMZ! 13,000! During the war between the states, a trained gun crew could fire two rounds a minute. Let’s assume that the North Koreans are as well trained as a civil war crew. Two rounds a minute.
26,000 rounds a minute fired into South Korea! And that’s just their artillery. They also have rocket and missile forces!
Of course, they wouldn’t stop after a minute. So, assuming they all continued to operate, they could fire 1.56 MILLION rounds the first hour!
What effects would that have on Seoul? Seoul’s 10 million residents occupy 233 square miles. Assuming a random pattern of shells, that would mean 6,695 rounds per square mile in only the first hour! My neighborhood is about two square miles. I can’t imagine the effects of almost 13,400 rounds in a mere hour. And we live in a very rural area. Imagine the effects in a very developed urban area like Seoul.
I am sick to death of commentary from the folks whose only war experience is movies, games, or textbooks. Here’s an example of one of those intellectuals who advise government leaders on strategy: “Artillery is not that lethal,” says Anthony Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and is a national security analyst for ABC News.
Someone who spent the time to do research on the effects of mass artillery barrages came up with a different conclusion: In the introduction to his book, The Red God of War, British military analyst Chris Bellamy vividly describes some of the effects of massive artillery barrages. Basing his description on eyewitness reports from several wars, he recounts the “sheer horror” and the “sense of hopelessness” artillery barrages create among those on the receiving end. For soldiers subjected to massive artillery barrages, artillery is a “monstrous, apparently unstoppable machine, slicing mechanically through earth, rock, flesh, bone and spirit.” The “psychological effect multiplies its cold lethality many times.” Bellamy continues: “Artillery oppresses, jars, stuns and disorientates the enemy and lifts the morale of its own troops.
At the end of the day, “destroying” North Korea means to somehow kill 25 million people, while somehow negating their ability to kill millions of people who aren’t North Korean. I would like to believe that this is all part of some grand strategy to achieve some sort of diplomatic gains that would make America better. Sadly, what I really believe is that either our government has been taken over by the deep state and stupidly desires total world destruction, or they merely want to bring the Cold War back in order to achieve riches through military and other security spending. If I had to bet, I’d go with stupid.