Military History: Which high ranking American officer...

[choff]

In one way the N. Koreans remind me of the WW2 Japanese, they don't give up easy. If N. Korea doesn't collapse any time soon, it will be interesting to see how much the average height of a human population can shrink from long term malnutrition.
I recall one report of two N. Korean soldiers who got lost in the DMZ. The U.S. troops guaged their height from close by objects as 4'10''. Later, when they saw the same two soldiers marching in formation, they noted they were the same height as the other troops.
Current events in the ME present new strategic opportunities and challenges. Even if democracies replace the old regimes, food prices and overpopulation will make their survival precarious at best, vulnerable to takeover by religious radicals.
On strategy in general, I would suggest studying the history of the financial industry, as the military is really just a pawn on their chessboard.

[Diogenes]

We begin with survival. It is our duty to survive or it is our duty to die so that others might survive.

Making enemies is not conducive to long term survival.

Surrender before fighting is the best strategy - if you can obtain it.

The best strategy so demoralizes the enemy that no fighting is necessary.

Finesse is better than brute force. Something emphasized in Hart's Strategy.

We already had them as an enemy, had we took out their nuke design facilities it wouldn't matter if they surrendered, taking out their nuke design facilities would have made further fighting unnecessary, and the greatest finesse would have been to destroy their ability to make weapons before they had any ready to use on us.

In other words, defang the thing before it had a chance to strike.

[Diogenes]

And then there is the collateral damage: everyone who is capable goes nuclear, i.e. you get to the current situation 40 years sooner.

You're kidding right? Who's gonna start a nuclear program after they see what happened to the Soviet Nuclear program?

[Diogenes]

Would have been a great plan if we had done it prior to letting the Russians and the Chinese develop Nuclear arsenals of their own. Shooting a sidekick makes a lot more sense BEFORE the main guys obtain guns to point at you.

The United States has the world's most powerful military (arguably the most powerful in history) and you propose...not to use it?!

Let's see...The Russians probably don't give a flying leap for the North Koreans, these days. The Chinese? They care more, especially since North Korea is on their border. Also, the Chinese find North Korea useful for keeping the rest of the world off balance.

I bet if the United States pre-offers and executes a "you break it - you own it" humanitarian operation after de-nuclearizating and decapitating the North Korean leadership, the Chinese would accede (would the Chinese pay for it just to keep the North Korean refugees off Chinese soil? Hmmm).

Also, like General LeMay, I didn't say go nuclear on them, far too messy. The USAF alone has plenty of weapons with non-nuclear explosives to get the job done. A blogger I read calls it a "JDAM party."

Where is the courage of your convictions? The North Korean regime is on par, at least, with Stalin's Soviet Union and even more unpredictable in future action. North Korea probably won't become as dangerous as the Soviet Union was, but dangerous enough (see the linked article above) to warrant a pre-emptive strike.

I think proponents of Soviet forcible de-nuclearization who shy away from proposing the same for North Korea are not being consistent.

Re: MSimon's point of collateral damage. South Korea would breath the worlds greatest sigh of relief for North Korean regime change/denuclearization. The South would receive millions of refugees, see my answer above. Then, of course, there would the convention war to protect South Korea from the die-hard North Koreans who would want revenge...

Okay, when you put it that way, (non nuclear) yeah, it's plausible. Unfortunately, we are spread pretty thin right now. I'm not against hitting North Korea, but I think we should need a serious provocation at this point. Some of the stunts they've been pulling lately are D@mn close if not already sufficient.

[rjaypeters]

If the North Koreans provoke us, then they are more likely to expect a response. National leadership decapitations are more effective if they are a surprise.

Just the problem of an un-declared war. Congress might have something to say about it.

[Jccarlton]

In one way the N. Koreans remind me of the WW2 Japanese, they don't give up easy. If N. Korea doesn't collapse any time soon, it will be interesting to see how much the average height of a human population can shrink from long term malnutrition.
I recall one report of two N. Korean soldiers who got lost in the DMZ. The U.S. troops guaged their height from close by objects as 4'10''. Later, when they saw the same two soldiers marching in formation, they noted they were the same height as the other troops.
Current events in the ME present new strategic opportunities and challenges. Even if democracies replace the old regimes, food prices and overpopulation will make their survival precarious at best, vulnerable to takeover by religious radicals.
On strategy in general, I would suggest studying the history of the financial industry, as the military is really just a pawn on their chessboard.

A couple of years ago two North Korean soldiers drifted south in boat and were picked up by south Korea and repatriated. The difference between the 4' 10" North Korean soldier and the 6' 1" South Korean who escorting him at Pan Mun Jon was amazing.

[ladajo]

ladajo,

If the military is no longer looking at Hart because he is outmoded I believe they are mistaken. Poorly written maybe - after all the book is a series of accretions. But outmoded? Doubtful.

The one area in which he is weak is insurgent warfare. But he does look at it some.

I think the later chapters which codify the material presented in earlier chapters to be most gratifying. And he gives some very useful ideas in terms of using the indirect approach in politics.

Milan Vego is soup d'jour.

[MSimon]

And then there is the collateral damage: everyone who is capable goes nuclear, i.e. you get to the current situation 40 years sooner.

You're kidding right? Who's gonna start a nuclear program after they see what happened to the Soviet Nuclear program?

They will gang up on you and distribute the program. We had no (or very little) idea about the A.J. Kahn network. Tbat unraveled with a conventional attack on Iraq.

And then you have the problems of trade. Pretty soon the world is filled with enemies and not allies.

Good strategy can lead to bad Grand Strategy. You are really deficient without Hart. Woefully deficient. My condolences.

Fortunately our military is better educated than you are.

[Diogenes]

And then there is the collateral damage: everyone who is capable goes nuclear, i.e. you get to the current situation 40 years sooner.

You're kidding right? Who's gonna start a nuclear program after they see what happened to the Soviet Nuclear program?

They will gang up on you and distribute the program. We had no (or very little) idea about the A.J. Kahn network. Tbat unraveled with a conventional attack on Iraq.

And then you have the problems of trade. Pretty soon the world is filled with enemies and not allies.

Good strategy can lead to bad Grand Strategy. You are really deficient without Hart. Woefully deficient. My condolences.

Fortunately our military is better educated than you are.

-


The Kahn Network wouldn't have happened had we blown the Soviet Nuke design facilities to smithereens. Everything subsequent was the result of that mistake.


As for our Military being better educated than me, I am continuously pointing out to you that the most competent military man of that Era was advising the course of action which you keep denouncing.

[ladajo]

@Diogenes:

No question about it. The Battle of Midway is an example. Of COURSE i'd rather be lucky than good any day of the week, but a person who plans are entirely based on luck is foolish.

Actually, we won Midway because the Japanese had a really bad plan, almost to the point of no plan short of, "Go and capture Midway, the Americans can not stop you." Talk about phase locking...
Of course, they did not even think about how they would even hold Midway if they got it.
Try reading Parshall and Tully's "Shattered Sword", slow but very informative.

I was referring to the Lucky circumstance of the Lost Squadron(s) arriving after the Japanese had already shot the previous wave out of the air. Arriving to find the Japanese trying to refuel and rearm their aircraft, they blew the crap out of the Japanese Aircraft carriers. Something they would not have been able to do had everyone arrived when they were supposed to.

The Japanese may not have prepared adequately for their intended goal, but it really was a bit of good luck for the US that things worked out as they did.

Kept meaning to come back to this and getting sidetracked. Busy week.

The element of luck played for US victory for sure. Without it, we would have missed the meal the Japanese served on a silver platter. But it was as meal we only had to show up for, and trying our hardest, we almost missed it. But it did come at a cost. And if the Japanese had actually followed their doctrine, and done what they did best, there was no way we could have won Midway. Both sides sought a decisive fight, and got it. But the US took a massive gamble in thinking we could win it. The uncharacteristic dividing of the Japanese carriers, uncoordinated use of aircraft, and competing interests all lead to a debacle. It can be argued that they forced victory on us, no matter how unwilling we were to accept it. For sure we did a good job trying to get out of the win.
Even in the end, if the Japanese had pulled together, they could have cost us dearly, even with they one remaining carrier, but they had to throw that one away as well. Shameful.

@Simon - Have you read Vego? Much more up to date than Hart.

Edit: fixed formatting

[krenshala]

If the North Koreans provoke us, then they are more likely to expect a response. National leadership decapitations are more effective if they are a surprise.

Just the problem of an un-declared war. Congress might have something to say about it.

They've stopped shooting, but the participants of the Korean War have yet to sign a peace treaty.

[Luzr]

We already had them as an enemy, had we took out their nuke design facilities it wouldn't matter if they surrendered, taking out their nuke design facilities would have made further fighting unnecessary

I guess here lies the biggest hole in your plan. You clearly overstimate the capability of nuclear attack.

If U.S.A. had hit Soviet nuclear facilities post WWII, what do you think happens next? If you believe they would had surrendered, think twice.

They were at their highest in conventional army force. Everybody in the whole world would be pissed. Soviet would attack Western Europe immediately. And they would likely previal, maybe simply by masses, which they had, maybe because uprovoked nuclear strike would completely ruin postwar public opinion in the west.

[Diogenes]

We already had them as an enemy, had we took out their nuke design facilities it wouldn't matter if they surrendered, taking out their nuke design facilities would have made further fighting unnecessary

I guess here lies the biggest hole in your plan. You clearly overstimate the capability of nuclear attack.

If U.S.A. had hit Soviet nuclear facilities post WWII, what do you think happens next? If you believe they would had surrendered, think twice.

They were at their highest in conventional army force. Everybody in the whole world would be pissed. Soviet would attack Western Europe immediately. And they would likely previal, maybe simply by masses, which they had, maybe because uprovoked nuclear strike would completely ruin postwar public opinion in the west.

Luzr, meet Curtis LeMay.

A few excerpts:

Curtis LeMay believed he knew a way to end the invasion as quickly as it had begun. " We slipped a note kind of under the door into the Pentagon," he recalled in retirement, "and said, 'Look, let us go up there... and burn down five of the biggest towns in North Korea- and they're not very big- and that ought to stop it." Well, the answer to that was four or five screams -' You'll kill a lot of noncombatants,' and 'it's too horrible.' The only lesson LeMay thought he learned in Korea was "How not to use the strategic air weapon."

Curtis LeMay had been building and training the Strategic Air Command with unflagging determination since he took charge in October 1948. " I see no other way of being ready when the whistle blows, " he told an audience of officers at the Armed Forces Staff College several years later, " unless you do day after day exactly what you are going to do when the fighting starts. And that's what we're doing now and have been doing for some time."

By January 1950, eighteen atomic-bomb assembly crews had been qualified, with four more to be added by June, when LeMay would have more than 250 operational atomic-modified aircraft.
His Primary mission, as a SAC historian describes it, was to "lay down an atomic attack on Russia in the event of war." LeMay interpreted that mission to mean an all-out attack at the beginning of war, a strategy he called a "Sunday Punch." To see how well his crews were trained, he staged a major maneuver on June 6, 1950, involving half the aircraft under his command.

Fifty-eight bomb carriers simulated dropping bombs; some of them arrived back at their bases with as little as seventy-five gallons of fuel left in their tanks. Unlike the debacle over Dayton, Ohio, a year and a half earlier, this exercise was a success; all seventeen designated target areas -on the books, Soviet Urban areas- were hit. "This," concludes the report, was the first realistic test of Strategic Air Command's ability to deploy and execute the initial strike. "

"So we went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea too. We even burned down [the South Korean port city of] Pusan-an accident, but we burned it down anyway....Over a period of three years or so, we killed off-what-twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure? Over a period of three years, this seemed to be acceptable to everybody, but to kill a few people at the start right away, no, we can't seem to stomach that. "

"There was a time in the 1950s when we could have won a war against Russia. It would have cost us essentially the accident rate of the flying time, because their defenses were pretty weak. One time in the 1950s we flew all of the reconnaissance aircraft that SAC possessed over Vladivostok at high noon. Two reconnaissance airplanes saw MIGs, but there were no interceptions made. It was well planned, too-crisscrossing paths of all the reconnaissance airplanes. Each target was hit by at least two, and usually three, reconnaissance airplanes to make sure we got pictures of it. We practically mapped the place up there with no resistance at all. We could have launched bombing attacks, planned and executed just as well at that time. "

There's more, much more. LeMay was convinced we should prevent the Soviets from acquiring nuclear weapons, and he was convinced we had the ability to do it. I suggest the man knew what he was talking about.


Excerpts taken from "DARK SUN, The Making of the Hydrogen bomb." by Richard Rhodes.

[Luzr]

"There was a time in the 1950s when we could have won a war against Russia. It would have cost us essentially the accident rate of the flying time, because their defenses were pretty weak. One time in the 1950s we flew all of the reconnaissance aircraft that SAC possessed over Vladivostok at high noon. Two reconnaissance airplanes saw MIGs, but there were no interceptions made. It was well planned, too-crisscrossing paths of all the reconnaissance airplanes. Each target was hit by at least two, and usually three, reconnaissance airplanes to make sure we got pictures of it. We practically mapped the place up there with no resistance at all. We could have launched bombing attacks, planned and executed just as well at that time. "

There's more, much more. LeMay was convinced we should prevent the Soviets from acquiring nuclear weapons, and he was convinced we had the ability to do it. I suggest the man knew what he was talking about.

I suggest the world was pretty lucky that this plan have not happened.

The idea that Soviets would not retaliate with conventional forces is just silly. And when Soviet tank armies are at Paris, are you going to bomb France to the stone age too?

[Diogenes]

"There was a time in the 1950s when we could have won a war against Russia. It would have cost us essentially the accident rate of the flying time, because their defenses were pretty weak. One time in the 1950s we flew all of the reconnaissance aircraft that SAC possessed over Vladivostok at high noon. Two reconnaissance airplanes saw MIGs, but there were no interceptions made. It was well planned, too-crisscrossing paths of all the reconnaissance airplanes. Each target was hit by at least two, and usually three, reconnaissance airplanes to make sure we got pictures of it. We practically mapped the place up there with no resistance at all. We could have launched bombing attacks, planned and executed just as well at that time. "

There's more, much more. LeMay was convinced we should prevent the Soviets from acquiring nuclear weapons, and he was convinced we had the ability to do it. I suggest the man knew what he was talking about.

I suggest the world was pretty lucky that this plan have not happened.

The idea that Soviets would not retaliate with conventional forces is just silly. And when Soviet tank armies are at Paris, are you going to bomb France to the stone age too?

The salient point is that it was sheer insanity to allow someone to build weapons that will kill your entire nation. We risked the annihilation of millions of our citizens just because we couldn't stomach the casualties of preventing it. As I said, the way things worked out was not a "brilliant strategy" it was pure luck, And Dodgy luck at that!

The man that saved the world.


Had Stanislav Petrov done what many soviet officers would have done, you would all now be on my side denouncing the utter stupidity of letting the soviets reach nuclear parity.