http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=564&e=4&u=/nm/20030306/ts_nm/korea_usa_troops_dc
Let’s start a pool to see how long before Kim Jong-Il wipes South Korea off the map.
$5 says he’ll do it in 2005.
I know US national security is improved by letting evil run wild.
The NYT had something on this earlier this week. We’d probably relocate most of the forces to Japan, which is (rightfully) worried as hell about North Korea, to the point that it issued a warning that it reserved the right to strike pre-emptively if it felt North Korea was going to be a nuclear threat to themselves. Of course, it was an empty threat, because the Japanese military ain’t exactly an offensive power, but it shows just how nervous they are about North Korea.
There was a great quote from an NYT article last week from a “senior South Korean diplomat” who was wondering what the hell his president was thinking snubbing the US and putting so much blind faith in North Korea. Are they that friggin’ blind to the North over there?
Frankly, this reminds me of that Larry Bond novel, Red Phoenix. The South Koreans kick the Americans out, and then watch as the North rolls all over them.
Let’s leave the ungrateful bastards. When the North swarms 'em with tanks and mass infantry assaults and artillery bombardments from hell, fuck 'em. It’s not like we didn’t warn them.
Germany is next up on our list. The new NATO commander is pushing ahead with plans to start pulling forces out of Germany. Instead of having massive facilities and infrastructure there, as well as thousands and thousands of family members, we’ll just relocate to smaller Eastern European bases. Most of those small bases would be “jump pads” where we could pre-position equipment and then quickly airlift forces to mate up with them. Those Eastern European countries owuld love to have us there, not only for their own economies, but also for their security. They remember all too well what it’s like having the Red Army around. Our forces would rotate in for 6 month deployments, and then rotate back home. This would eliminate the need to have dependents and all those civilians that the bases in Germany would have.
This new plan isn’t getting much press in the US, but it’s major news in Germany. Quite a few towns that rely heavily on the US military presence there for their economies, and with the German economy in a massive funk, this won’t help them much either. Not to mention, the complete and total diss this represents to Germany, but that’s what they get for subjugating their foreign policy to the French of all people, and stabbing their allies in the back.
I’m totally behind getting out of Germany. Fuck-em. We can just relocate across the borders we were once defending. I don’t think we should pull out of South Korea, though. I don’t care how naive and childish the South Koreans are acting, we can’t just let them get invaded. At least Japan knows to fear NK, you’d think SK would know the score.
Maybe we made a deal with China. “Vote for war with Iraq and we let you walk in and take over the entire Korean peninsula.”
We’d let them have NK, in fact I wish China would yank the chain. But we wouldn’t hand over SK.
Why don’t all the US forces move to Australia ? We have lots of space here and nice beaches and no bad guys within shooting range.
Your crazy moon-continent frightens us.
“Major” news? Is that what the American press told you? After some searching I just found a single article from 22 February on the ZDF website… oh, and I guess there may have been one front-page newspaper article on that subject, too. That’s about it.
Yeah, the mayors of the (usually small and poor) towns with American bases are worried for the local economy. The rest of Germany ranges from “couldn’t care less” to “can’t wait to see them leave”, however. Massive US troop presence in Germany is a relic of post-WW2 occupation and the following Cold War, it’s time to end it.
Remember kids, you can maximize national security by stationing troops based on foreign opinions of a pissant war!
The troops we have in SK are an anachronism. They were there to prevent NK from invading long enough for SK to become able to defend itself. That’s happened.
There’s no way NK can successfully invade SK. They can shell Seoul and kill lots of people, yes. They can hurt SK. But NK would eventually lose. SK has just become too strong for them.
Our presence only makes sense if it makes a difference to the outcome of a military confrontation, and it doesn’t any more. With our presence or without it, a SK-NK dustup would result in SK bloodied but victorious. What if NK developes nukes and uses them? Well, what about that? Having some of our troops there won’t prevent that.
I really think we’re looking at this the wrong way. The intervention and military presence in SK has been a success. We did it. Yay! We’re so used to deployments lasting forever or just failing that it’s easy to forget that sometimes they succeed and can be disbanded.
Same with Germany, BTW. We did it. Russia doesn’t want to invade any more, and even if they did they’d lose. Well done to all involved. Now start getting ready to move, guys. There are plenty of other places we need to put them.
The military doesn’t think SK can defend itself, so you might want to take it up with them.
That line caught me off guard, too. I feel like we are fed the impression that the day we withdraw, North Korea steamrolls the South and communism is immediately adopted. Whether that true or not, I have no idea. Help a brotha out.
The impression I had is that US forces in SK made up a pretty small fraction of total forces there. More of a tripwire to ensure US involvement in case of a future invasion by NK.
Let me ask around on another board read by more military types and see if anything useful results.
You are correct, I believe. Last time I checked, North Korea had something like 900,000 troops on the border, including a boatload of heavy artillery units. The 37,000 US troops couldn’t hope to stop them alone, and it might be tough going with the help of the 450,000 or so (?, need to check that number) Republic Of Korea soldiers - though those guys are tough. The only soldiers the NVA and VC were afraid of during the Vietnam War were the ROKs. They train like maniacs, feel no pain and have zero fear.
Thanks Jessica. Those hard numbers give me a much different picture than what I had formed in my head. Not sure if it was media coverage or reading, but I thought we were propping all of S. Korea up for some reason. :roll:
My, my. Guess who’s having second doubts about North Korea and American troops now.
Yeah, those Americans sure are evil. But wait, please save us!
I think a lot of having any significant number of American troops there is the psychological effect on NK. As it stands now any agression on the part of NK would meet with immediate reprisal from American forces. If we pull out that’s like telling the North we don’t care what happens anymore. I don’t know how well trained the South’s forces are, but they’re outnumbered 2 to 1 by their Communist counterparts. The South may very well emerge victorious if unsupported by us in the event of an invasion, but they’d be pretty badly fucked up. The stalemate that exists now largely due to the North’s fear of being vaporised by the US is certainly preferable to what would be a really ugly war.
But that NYT article goes to show you the SK government knows well enough not to want us gone, even if the average citizen harbors resentment towards the US presense. I think it’s funny that the SK officials talk about maintaining the status quo until the nuclear crisis has passed. As if that’s some kind of phase NK will get over in a few months. The theory that we’re pulling out as part of a preemptive strike strategy is ridiculous and I suspect engineered to get popular support for the continued presense for US forces. Floating a conspiracy theory to get the masses to say, “wait a minute, you’re not going anywhere.” If we were planning even just air strikes we would be calling up reserves and shipping them to the DMZ in preperation.
The big concern here ought to be the stability of the region. North Korea is posturing so hard because they are desperate. Maintaining that huge army for all these years has had disasterous effects on their country. Each generation grows shorter due to poor nutrition, and starvation is a very real spectre for them. This is really all over the US decision to suspend food shipments to NK.Sk wants to unify, but NK is a doctatorship, and they don’t want to lose their personal power. The whole situation has the potential to explode into a lot of suffering for the Korean peoples, and it’s really troubling to watch.