saturday night brief
2017-10-7
Evening.
It is 12:37PM in Pyongyang.
Trump's been running his mouth again on Twitter. Broadly, he is apparently limiting his options to military force, at least rhetorically. As the House Representative for my district, Rep. Jayapal, put it earlier today, "My heart was chilled because I believe this president has been itching to go to war.". And he called his opponent in the 2016 election a warmonger....
There's been a slight shakeup in the NK central military commission, according to Yonap, the SK news source. I don't have enough knowledge to grasp the portents. At this level of power, personnell is policy.
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2017/10/08/0200000000AEN20171008000700315.html
The expectation is that there's a missile test coming up soon, likely in the next 7 days. South Korea and the US have bent their electronic eye upon the region.
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/2017/10/08/0200000000AEN20171008001200315.html
A PR dump from North Korea on counterterrorism blames the United States for sending a strike force of some sort earlier this year that they caught (claimed to be South Korean / US forces), and the DPRK calls it terrorism. Leaving aside their propagandistic attack on the US, I'm wondering about the strike force. Did such a thing exist? Was it more than a tourist group being naively snoopy? I wonder.
http://exploredprk.com/news/dprk-representative-on-principled-stand-of-dprk-on-terrorism/
Miscellaneous tweets don't appear to have a concentrated focus. Most at this sample time seem to be vaguely anti-war (I don't mean committed peaceniks, to be clear).
Some thoughts on what is likely to transpire in the short term....
Trump wants war, and doesn't seem too picky about how
I don't see any reports of significant troop movement, such as what would be required for a full invasion into North Korea. I would guess, therefore, that any strike Trump orders would be a limited air based strike, possibly with paratroopers. First pass would be probably be targeting Mr. Kim and the nuclear weapons, along with the weapons aimed at Seoul. This will have to be mostly perfect in order to remove the risk of retaliation. It won't be perfect, because the first casualty of war is the plan. It'll be bloody. If the US can strike fast enough and present a fait accompli with limited repercussions, China will probably settle for a unified Korea and a US pullback. I doubt that will occur, though.
Best of luck, dear reader. May you make your peace with Yahweh before the bombs fall.
Tags: #DPRK #trumpenwar #north korea
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