Yankee Go Home, but come back if we need you...

South Korea is in an interesting position today. The Communists in North Korea have admitted having nuclear weapons and would use them against bases in the south.

“If the U.S. imperialists ignite flames of war, we will first of all strike all bases of U.S. imperialist aggressors and turn them into a sea of fire”

First strike. That sounds like a policy indication to me. I know that could mean that will be their first move after we attack them, but I doubt it. America is stretched two thin. In 1986 we had 16 deployable carriers. We had to postpone the attacks on Lybia in order to move enough assets into the area, prompting one soviet official to muse out loud, I wonder how many carriers they would need to attack us.

Today we have one fully capable conventional powered carrier, USS KITTY HAWK. USS JOHN F KENNEDY is based in Pensacola, FL but is not fully active, she spends most of her time supporting training of pilots this leaves USS ENTERPRISE, and the 9 carriers of the Nimitz class. This is a total of 12 carriers. We can rule out KENNEDY off the bat as she is in poor material condition and had to delay her last deployment by months and in fact her CO was relieved. Of the remaining 11 not all will be deployable at any giver time, at least two will be in extended overhauls and at least two more in some sort of rehab from the current tempo of ops. We maintain a presence in the gulf and med, that takes four carriers out due to commitments. That leaves three carries to respond to a crisis on the Korean peninsula.

The NK’s know we are extended too far and know that there will never be a better time for them to launch the war of reunification. One reason the north needs to launch a war is to keep the people at home from revolting against the regime. They are under paid, underfed, undereducated and have little hope for more than scratching out an existence. If the government keeps the propaganda at a high tempo, keeps telling the people that the evil Americans will invade they can give them something else to focus on. The north also wants the economic resources of the south.

North Korea, thru the flawed theory of communism has run the country into the ground. The South on the other hand has let capitalism work and has become a major world player in economics. The north can not but help envy the resources, the power it provides as well as the happiness of the people. They will of course, not see that they would destroy it just as they have in their own country, as Cuba has done and as the Soviet Union did.

The South for their part, they want the Americans to leave, but to not go too far, because they just might need us after all.


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