No longer contented with the haphazard escalation of rhetoric that has brought the Korean Peninsula to the brink of all-out war, the Obama Administration has announced a formal system of tit-for-tat retaliation that they have tellingly dubbed “counterprovocation.”
In essence, counterprovocation calls for the US to launch immediate but “proportional” attacks against North Korea in retaliation for incidents, using roughly similar weapons and hitting roughly similar targets.
While tit-for-tat shellings and tit-for-tat missile strikes seem to be the definition of a system designed to see incidents escalate into all-out warfare, US officials are presenting it as an alternative designed to prevent war, figuring that if they strike North Korean targets in a similar enough manner everyone will just stop and marvel at the proportionality.
Without having even started, the program already has obvious holes, not the least of which is South Korea, whose government is seeing this whole thing as permission to attack the North in response to any provocation so long as they can argue that it is roughly proportional. They are also saying they want to attack the “command and control” centers responsible for any provocations on top of this. Officials concede that “overreaction by South Korea is a real risk.”
And really, how much proportionality can there ever be in a shooting war, with both sides seeing their own territory as inherently more valuable and their own lives as more precious than the enemy’s, and inevitably trying to make the opponent pay a similar price with a dramatically larger hit? Far from a real effort to avoid war, the plan seems to formalize the system by which the US will get sucked rapidly into one, should shooting begin.
Pentagon officials are set for this to get out of control quickly, and the top US commander is ditching a planned testimony to the US Congress in favor of staying close in case the war breaks out.
This Korea sideshow is getting tiresome and dragging on as long as the "MASH" TV series did. The DC neocons and warmongers need to get back to their day job of Iran-trashing, Izzrael-praising and expanding the police state in Amerika.
I say that if ANY targe iin the U.S. or South Korea is hit, we give advance promise thhat we will knock NK off the map!
Um, proportionality is what sane people see. This is an experiment to see whether Kim is sane, or whether the dictator playing a ball of fury for his henchmen and people is going to remain in character or suddenly develop insight and statesmanship after being counter-provoked.
One question: who appointed us the arbiter of Kim's psychological balance? Was it South Korea? Are they using us for that? What then is the quid pro quo?
I'm just an American citizen with children who could be drafted if the notion of "shared sacrifice" really catches on during this or subsequent administrations. So am I supposed to sit and wait for this experiment to produce results (the negative being a nuking of Seoul) or am I supposed to cry out for a drone to take out Kim as the only rational solution? Somehow I feel the War Party which has been in power so long (it wouldn't have mattered if Kerry beat Bush would it?) will decide, not the peace-loving electorate.
If another Bush gets into power in 2016, that might be a good time to consider moving your family to Canada.
Just another case of the US kicking the pit bull while he is asleep.(and the outcome when he is awake is anyone guess.)
musings
“peace-loving electorate”
Problem is, our voting majority is the 51% most wealthy and greedy bunch of dictator voters the world has ever known.
You make that claim at least once a day. The voter demographic statistics seem to say exactly the opposite.
"Counterprovocation?" More kinetic military stupidity from Team Obama. So Junior JongUn shouts crazy crap from North Korea and the US shouts 'proportional' crap in response.
Is there not ONE rational adult left in all of Babylon-On-The-Potomac? The query would be rhetorical.
The escalation of this situation by the Obama Administration is sickening. In 2016, I will be writing in my vote for Dennis Rodman.
"While tit-for-tat shellings and tit-for-tat missile strikes seem to be the definition of a system designed to see incidents escalate into all-out warfare…"
Tit-for-tat is the most famous strategy to have been shown to induce cooperation in games with noncooperative equilibria. I agree with most of the points in the article but thought the preceding sentence should be noted. It is not necessarily true that the strategy is being adopted in bad faith.
the US is like the bully in the school yard who has a small kid cornered and says "Come on, do something. Hit me. Come on." And everyone is watching, and when the small kid finally throws a little punch, if only to try to save face, the bully uses that as his excuse to beat the crap out of him. US is just a regular, vicious bully. Nothing special. Just dumb upstarts with too much power. Bunch of dishonorable jerks going around killing women and children from drones and planes. The samurai would shake their heads in disgust.
Tit-for-tat is an inferior strategy. A single perceived defection from one side of a TFT-playing pair leads to a never ending spiral of retaliation. That would be the point of adopting it given a press that will go along with e.g. Iran-did-Bulgaria. In NK's case, you're supposed to believe that the policy puts-it-all-in-NK's-hands. …but remember e.g. The Maine, The Lusitania, Gulf of Tonkin, …
What if everyone – the media included – just ignored North Korea? No more provocative war games, no more finger wagging. This "crisis" would just fizzle away.
Who started ratcheting up the tension? Would the US shrug off the same activity on any of it's borders by a hostile power? It's criminal that the US population is so gullible and badly informed.
South Korean jets and U.S. attack helicopters set the skies alight today as the two nations conducted spectacular live fire drills which were the biggest since the Korean War.
The 'war games' and huge explosions south of the Korean border today came amid escalating tensions between Korea's north and south countries, and included a 'provocative' gesture where a North Korean flag was used as a target.
The drill at Poncheon, near the heavily-armed North Korean border, involved 2,000 troops along with jet fighters, tanks, Apache attack helicopters, A-10 'tank-killer' aircraft, missiles and multiple rocket launchers.
The exercises were intended to mark this week's 62nd anniversary of the start of the Korean War in 1950, which ended in a truce, leaving the Korean Peninsula still technically at war.
Military allies Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. are set begin a three-day naval exercise in the Yellow Sea this weekend, which could further raise tensions around North Korea.
Todays drills, involving 2,000 troops from the U.S. and South Korea, are intended to send a clear warning against North Korea aggression by showing U.S. and South Korean combat readiness, South Korea's Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Officials have described these as the biggest ever joint drills. They coincide with several days of joint naval exercises involving a nuclear-powered U.S. supercarrier and separate U.S., South Korean and Japanese naval rescue drills.
Proportionality? . . . . . I already knew the pentagon goons were dumb as rocks, we certainly see that in this idiotic strategy; we all know what happens when war starts, how it excalates. A good example would be the first bombing of London during WWII, which as the result of one bomber straying off course, but it brought on a mountain of retaliation and the deaths of many civilians. . . . . the monkeys at the pentagon are in dire need of replacement, along with the clown we have for president.