I wouldn't worry about this starting WWIII. Despite their meglomaniacal grandstanding, the North Koreans don't have a pot to piss in. 3 million North Koreans have starved to death in the last decade. Despite the size of their military, 90% of their airforce is obsolete. American aircraft from Okinawa could crush the bulk the of the North Korean artillery command before any shells fell on Seoul. The North Koreans are simply no match for the powers which surround it, since they are among the most powerful nations on Earth and North Korea, a Stalinist hell hole, is in total economic ruin. It is impossible to conceal from a satellite the loading of a nuclear device onto an ICBM, and the Americans have the most modern and elite air force on Earth with the exception of Israel. The North Koreans don't have the radar and AA capability to stop a surgical American strike to flatten the launch pad.

deludedgod:

As always, thank you for your perspective! Much appreciated!!!

In a "what if" scenario I could  envision Japan reacting, then allies on either side reacting to those very reactions, and then, voila! WWIII!  It could happen right? Anything's possible yeah?

Right, and you are more versed in these issues then I. BUT! For argument's sake, if N. Korea is flattened, would Russia not react? It's hard for me to imagine them sitting on the sidelines here, but then again, I'm not up on Russia's current military might.

What DG said +++

And amplified by the basic fact that generals are never ready for the next war but rather they are ready for the last war.

In this specific case, we are ready to duke it out with the Soviet Union. With regards to Kim Jong (mentally)ill, I have fairly little concern that he will really get his panties in such a knot that he is willing to tangle with the United States.

Here is the deal:

A single Ohio class submarine is capable of launching 24 Trident D5 missiles, each of which can later deploy up to twelve nukes. Even president Obama/Jesus is not cleared to know where they are but there are at least 50 of them somewhere in the world at any given moment.

Now it is important for me to point out that I am not actually advocating that we drop hundreds of nukes on the PRNK. There is absolutely no valid tactical reason for doing that. However, our ability to do that is trivial. We can.

Kim Jong Il needs to function on that basis.

OK, let's get realistic here. The question is under what consideration could nuclear weapons actually be used, specifically on the Korean peninsula?

OK, much is being made in the news about the PRNK developing rockets that can reach Japan or possibly the USA. Now tell me what the fuck business Kim Jong Il has fucking with either of us.

The real answer is that there is no reason at all. Japan is simply not relevant to him. The USA is the damned elephant in his living room. He has no reason to attack either of us and every reason not to.

So who might he decide to attack?

Well, the wet dream for him is reunification of the north and the south, presumably under his rule. Since we don't really know what his nuclear arsenal really consists of, let's say for shits and giggles that he has a dozen small bombs.

Now tell me why he would want to nuke the very cities that he wants to bring into his control? Obviously, he will never do that. To do so would render the whole point of his posturing moot.

Now I turn to: can those who are opposed to his posturing use nukes against him?

Here I suspect that most people have a poor idea of what a nuclear weapon can actually do. Sure, a nuke is a really fucking big bomb. However, it is still a bomb with finite potential. A city that is built on a flat plain can be essentially scraped clean. Used in the mountains of the Korean peninsula, a nuke is just not going to do more than take out one valley. Several nukes can take out several valleys but apart from that, they are not tactically different from other really big bombs.

Let's have yet another dose of reality here. He has a huge army ready to move south if conditions ever warrant it being worth his while. We have an even larger army ready to ruin his plans should he decide to do so. There is about a mile between the two armies and we have predator drones flying over his camps hourly. He simply cannot even think about getting ready to move his army without us knowing about it.

Even if he did, counting both sides, a conventional war would have about a million deaths in the first week. After the first week, he will simply not have the capability to take the south regardless of whatever else happens.

In my earlier post that was rendered moot, I observed that we can destroy his entire military in about ten minutes. I really don't think that we should but we can. Yet, if we did, we don't even have to use the city buster bombs that we made for duking it out with the Soviets.

Should we decide to go that route, we have the weapons that we designed to deal with a limited nuclear war in Europe. That war would have been a bad idea and the limited nuclear war in Korea would not be a better idea but it would be a trivial act for us to do if the need presented itself.

Seriously, Kim Jong Il knows at least as much as anyone else. He has to know this much. He does not want nuclear weapons because he thinks that he can get away with using them. He wants nuclear weapons because they have the potential to change the game at the bargaining table.

If we are willing to engage in the stupid posturing that such weapons lead us to, then he has no chip to use. We made these things for the purpose of “saber rattling” towards the Soviet Union. Now we have them. It might be a nice idea to live in a nuclear free world but the fact that we don't live in such a world leads to the fact that even with nukes and advanced missiles, the PRNK is bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Given an actual mission, with an actual nuclear threat, and I'd say "hours", because they'd have backup. A galvanized American nation is the exact opposite of strategically desirable. What are there, 20 B-2s? At how many thousands of pounds of payload each?

Jeeeeezus.

OK, COOL! Thanks for all the input y'all...

I was just talking about defeating the North's military capability, I wasn't even considering occupation.

Well, no, 'World War III' isn't really a concern at all. China and Russia, while historically supportive of North Korea, are terribly unlikely to come to their assistance in the current political climate; the nations simply do not share their prior commonalities, and while China clearly still gives a shameful amount of respect to Kim, it's easy to see that the two powers have grown worlds apart since the Korean war. China has moved forward with the rest of the world - North Korea has remained in the past.

I am very, very concerned for South Korea right now, however.

As bankrpt and outdated as North Korea's military is, as we have previously seen in the Korean War, low-tech brute force offensives from out of left field can quite easily catch even the most observant and technically advanced opponent off-guard. This long-range missile test I find frightening for two big reasons:

1) There is, essentially, no good option for South Korea in the event of strictly a long-range missile attack out of the proverbial blue. Yes, the United States (as well as the Russians, and I would like to think that they would also act to prevent a nuclear strike against South Korea) can likely spot the missile being loaded and act (there are also low-tech counter-intelligence maneuvers that the North Korean army coul employ to conceal their activities... though, frankly, they're so poorly trained and funded that I doubt they would think to do any)... but then what? They would have to get permission from SecDef to order a strike, scramble the aircraft, fly to the coordinates and deliver their payload without being shot down by SAMs even without an initial SEAD action.

I really don't like those kind of odds. It's not like loading an ICBM onto a launcher and firing it at Seoul would be a difficult or lengthy procedure, even for North Korea. 

The thing is... I also don't know what else to do. In this instance, Kim is essentially untouchable until he actually does something, as the consequences of disarming them pre-emptively by force would be catastrophic (as DeludedGod already mentioned) for every unfortunate soul in the country.

2) Kim Jong Ill is totally insane. Telling him that you would retaliate against him would likely illicit a sneer and little else. Do remember - he is not even the official president of the country. His dead father owns that title, and Kim refers to him as the ruling power! The United States blowing away his palace would be inconsequential to him so long as his last moments were spent smiling at a burning horizon over which the 'impure' South Koreans used to live.

I don't fear for my own safety. It's laughable to suggest that North Korea could ever, in it's current state, pose a credible threat to North America (or, really, any industrialized nation with missile interception technology). However, I do not want to live in a world where a modern, booming, secular society was erased by theological madmen who we foolishly handed the eraser to. South Korea's future ought to be very, very bright - watching it get swallowed by an old monster that should never have been led out onto the Earth would leave me feeling rather sick.

To be fair, WWII is still technically not over. Several countries never signed peace treaties, and still officially are hostile and at war.

I would not worry about North Korea though. Really, they aren't that much of a threat to anyone. People make a bigger deal about it than it deserves.

That's like saying Iraq was going to attack us, when they already had their hands full and are across an ocean.

North Korea is less of a threat than China is, owning so much of the international markets. They can economically pound us into dust. That would ruin the nation in a heartbeat, without ever needing missiles. It would just hurt them a bit in the process, and we haven't given them a good enough reason yet.

No kidding. If I were an American pilot, I'd feel like I was a thief in the night. They wouldn't even know what to point the SAMs at.

Oh my God!

I'm gonna get a script for Valium and Ambien IMMEDIATELY!

BTW. Don't be concerned about the fucker in the SUV shoving a suppository up your ass every morning on the way to work.
Nobody's gonna get hurt from a 10's of millions of assholes.
An A-bomb is something I'm really gonna loose sleep over.
Gotta run to the Doc. L8r.

Although the US is capable of hitting the DPRK hard from a distance, they will still have to send in ground troops and that's when all hell will break loose for the US military. Remember Viet-Nam? Asians have a very different culture than ours, especially when it comes to conflict and war. Plus, it will create such tension among other nations that the conflict is sure to broaden....