War clouds on the Korean peninsula: What would we do if…?

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Herb Lin <herblin () stanford edu>
> Date: August 11, 2017 at 7:09:53 PM EDT
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, "ip () listbox com" <ip () listbox com>
> Subject: War clouds on the Korean peninsula: What would we do if…?
>
> http://thebulletin.org/war-clouds-korean-peninsula-what-would-we-do-if%E2%80%A611016
>
>
> ...it’s worth considering what the United States and/or South Korea might do under a variety of scenarios. It’s 
> pretty clear that if North Korea actually launches a nuclear-tipped missile that explodes and causes large-scale 
> casualties in Japan, South Korea, the United States, or anywhere else, nuclear retaliation against North Korea is 
> likely. And it is inconceivable that plans for nuclear strikes against North Korean targets have not already been 
> developed.
> More difficult to predict are the outcomes in a number of scenarios that are still provocative and escalatory but 
> less serious than those resulting in large-scale casualties. Consider the following:
>
> Carrying out the threat recently issued by North Korea to launch several (presumably unarmed) missiles into waters 
> near Guam, but in international waters. (Assume that after launch, radar tracks of these missiles indicate that they 
> will miss Guam by dozens of miles.)
> A demonstration use of nuclear weapons by North Korea, in which a nuclear-tipped missile is launched into the Pacific 
> Ocean and detonates near sea level far from any land mass, causing no casualties.
> The same scenario as above, except that in this variant, a small civilian ship is by chance close enough to the 
> detonation to be seriously damaged, with a few deaths resulting.
> The use of a few shorter-range missiles carrying conventional warheads against the territory of South Korea or Japan, 
> coupled with an explicit threat to launch nuclear weapons if the United States responds militarily.
> ...
>
> Herb Lin 
>
> Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE smartphone



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