The Donald and Kim Road Show

PERRYSCOPE

Perry Diaz       

Many call it Cold War while some call it World War III in the making.  And there are a growing number of people – experts – who believe that it is a case of two self-centered leaders with bloated egos. 

One of them –Donald J. Trump – is the president of the mightiest and wealthiest country in the world.  The other one is Kim Jong-un, the sociopathic “supreme leader” of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea), one of the poorest countries on the planet.  Trump has at his fingertips the “doomsday code” that could unleash more than 5,000 nuclear missiles that could blow the world to smithereens while Kim has, at best, a few nuclear warheads that he claims could hit any city in the U.S. 

The problem is that the North Koreans don’t have the slightest idea what America’s nuclear weapons could do their country… or could they care less?  Heck, does it matter to the North Koreans whether they instantly perish from a nuclear attack or die slowly from hunger?   

And this makes a difference between the two peoples: the Americans are consciously protective of their individual freedom and affluent capitalistic existence while the North Koreans’ existence is hopelessly helpless.  In other words, a potential loss of 100,000 American lives from a nuclear attack gives the Americans reason to detest war with North Korea while North Korea’s leader would welcome war with the U.S. with the belief that China would also go to war in defense of North Korea.  Didn’t China’s Mao Zedong do just that in 1950?  Indeed, China’s Xi Jinping today is as committed to North Korea as Mao was during the Korean War.  How about Russia’s Vladimir Putin?  With his megalomaniac obsession with power and 5,000 nuclear warheads at his disposal, he might be tempted to join the war on the side of Kim Jong-un.

While it would be unimaginable for China and Russia to go to war against the U.S. for the sake of Kim, we can’t preclude an accidental war from erupting in the Korean Peninsula, a war that could instantly spread to South Korea and Japan, both of whom have mutual defense treaties with the U.S.  In addition, it could also drag Taiwan, the Philippines, and Australia, all of which are treaty allies of the U.S. 

Psychological warfare

But these are all “theoretical” because right now, I believe that Trump and Kim are just waging psychological warfare (psywar) with words, and they know it.  The term is used to denote any action, which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people.  

Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing a target audience's value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning or behavior.  It is used to reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originator's objectives, and is sometimes combined with black operations or false flag tactics. [Source: Wikipedia] 

Given this definition of psywar, who do you think is winning the “word war” between the U.S. and North Korea?  Take for example when Trump threatens to destroy North Korea and the ”Little Rocket Man” Kim, Kim responded that North Korea would retaliate against this “declaration of war” from a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” by downing U.S. military plans and exploding a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.”  North Korea’s foreign minister has characterized his nation’s weapons coming to the U.S. as “inevitable.”

First Strike

While neither side is winning any territorial concessions, North Korea is gaining political capital.  By test launching ballistic missiles and detonating hydrogen bombs, Kim has achieved notoriety and earned the grudging respect of her neighbors.  But what else could they do?  Attack North Korea?  Japan and South Korea wouldn’t do that. Not right now.

But the question is: Would the U.S. eventually launch a “first strike” against North Korea?  So far, the “doves” in the U.S. Congress are prevailing over the “hawks” that couldn’t muster the courage to advocate for a “war policy” against North Korea.

The doves – mostly Democrats – insist that the best way to deal with North Korea is to impose sanctions under the auspices of the United Nations or the European Union.  But the hawks – mostly Republicans – said that sanctioning North Korea wouldn’t work.  They said that it is imperative that the U.S. should consider other alternatives. 

One such advocate is Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). In his commentary, “Why U.S. should strike North Korea ‘before it hits us,’ “ in The San Diego Union-Tribune (Sept. 28, 2017), he wrote: “Let’s be clear. North Korea continues to threaten the United States with a nuclear assault. North Korea has the capability to launch a nuclear attack and San Diego would be a primary target. No more pontificating, no more hypothesizing, no more armchair quarterbacking. The North Korean nuclear capability is real; there is no more timeline. The existential threat has arrived.

“Among these alternatives is a declaration of war, and, if the president were to request one, I would fully support the commander-in-chief, knowing the right time to strike and hit North Korea is before it hits us. The timetable for action should be decided by us, not our adversaries. The U.S. should take North Korea at its word when it has repeatedly threatened attack. I wrote about this in March 2015. The ‘Hunter Doctrine’ -- “You go in, you kick butt, and you leave” -- works in North Korea.

“I’ve been to war in the modern sense and it should not be the case that millions of Americans go to bed worrying about an attack from a Third World dictatorship that managed to build a nuclear weapon. North Korea is not Russia; it is not China; it is not a peer country. North Korea believes it has weighed the U.S.; it believes it has measured the U.S.; but we will not be found wanting. The only way North Korea can harm the United States is if we let it. At this time, we can still seize the initiative.

              This is the reality of the world in which we now live, and pretending the threat doesn’t exist is naive and an option I refuse to entertain.”

Hunter Doctrine

Actually, the “Hunter Doctrine” is nothing new in today’s “special operations” (special ops) warfare, which consists of highly trained operators known as “Special Forces.”  He said it could be applied in North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, some countries in Africa, and possibly even Iran.   

Some Special Forces are organized and deployed to uncharted territories using “lily pods” (as in a frog jumping across a pond toward its prey). Lily pads are small, secretive, inaccessible facilities with limited numbers of troops, Spartan amenities, and prepositioned weaponry and supplies.  They are “scattered across regions in which the United States has previously not maintained a military presence.”

This brings to fore the question: If the U.S. is going to deploy special forces in lily pads in the Korean Peninsula, where would be the most logical places to deploy them?  Using the “Hunter Doctrine,” lily pads can be positioned south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) where U.S. Special Forces could easily sneaked into North Korean territory to, as Hunter says, “Go in, kick butt, and leave.”   

 Sooner or later, Trump and Kim would get tired – nay, bored! – of their psywar and resort to a shooting war.  The question is: who would use nuclear weapons?  If the U.S. strikes first, she could knock out North Korea with conventional weapons using “Prompt Global Strike” strategy, which is to cripple North Korea with conventional weapons in less than one hour.  If the U.S. fails to knock North Korea out, it would give North Korea time to counterattack with nuclear weapons, a scenario that Americans fear most.

 Meanwhile, the Donald and Kim Road Show continue to keep the world on the brink of extinction. (PerryDiaz@gmail.com)