As Russian President Vladimir Putin makes his first visit to North Korea in more than two decades this week, his focus is widely seen to be on securing ongoing support from the hermit nation for his grinding war in Ukraine.
The DPRK is unironically the unknown threat that the USA doesn’t want the public to really be aware of. All of the outrageous claims made about the DPRK is because America would not be able to defeat them in open combat.
The Korean War is quite literally the Forgotten War because it’s almost never mentioned when people talk about North Korea. The way the media and governments talk about it, it’s almost as if North Korea simply manifested from thin air and seceded from the south.
I think the other comment is partially a meme/joke, but also the US already tried once to defeat the north and lost... or at least gave up. That was immediately post-WWII US military and economy roaring after facing basically zero setbacks unlike most of the world. Korea and China were coming out of occupation by the fascist Japanese and a brutal incredibly long civil war in China... and still managed to hold their own against, again, the US still at it's WWII strength. And it's not like the US wasn't trying to "win" either they leveled every fucking building in the north and still couldn't make them give up. I'm not an expert on North Korean military shit now, but last I heard they learned from the war with the US and built everything underground so it can't really be targeted by the US. Not easily anyway. We see in Gaza that Israel cannot damage much of the underground infrastructure... imagine that on the nation state level. US would be on a total suicide mission to even try an invasion. Not to mention their nuclear capabilities.
Propaganda is so heavy. I thought you were being 100% serious because it’s quite obvious the US would handily lose that conflict a second time. Probably even worse than the first as neoliberalism has rotted the US from the inside while DPRK has prepared for this inevitability.
The US relies on its asian puppet colonies KUSA and Japan to act as meaningful proxies. KUSA is mostly filled with forced conscripts so judging from the IOF, they don't look like to be an actual competant fighting force. Also in the event of war, military command goes to the US who, as we've seen in Ukraine and Occupied Palestine + Yemen, are so corrupt that it would be a liability so there is a possibility of refuseniks/mutinies in the KUSA army.
Artillery shells are pointed at seoul at all times and can wipe out the entire city in a matter of hours. This inevitably means that SK's economy collapses as all the Chaebols and other assorted bourgeoisie flee and the entire country is militarized while the CIA controlled Korean government would spend all its time doing the classic slava Ukranian trick of kidnapping conscripts and whatnot.
The US backed NATO can't join the conflict because of Comrade Kim Jong Un's investment in nuclear ICBMs (Ukraine much?), inevitably, South Korea's place in the global supply chain would be used as a threat to G7 and the global south to support the war while further isolating the US.
A war with the DPRK could be a flashpoint to a proletarian revolution in KUSA and a complete breakdown of Chaebols which is why the endlessly corrupt and cruel south korean government would never go to war unless the US forced then to (meaning that the Chaebols would know in advance, the optics of which could prove fatal to the rogue state of the ROK).
They couldn't defeat them the first time around and they hadn't had decades to stockpile munitions back then. You can't defeat a country with air power, you can only destroy it, and the west pretty demonstrably only has air power.
The other comments explain it enough I think, I’d just like to add that I think there is a natural reaction to underestimate the North Koreans even among leftists, but imho I think the DPRK would do better in a war against the US in Korea than even the Russians in Ukraine. Just for comparison sake the Russians have been practicing the war in Ukraine for 30 years pretty much, but the DPRK has been practicing since the 1950’s.
They keep claiming they have what they need to destroy Russia, but 2 years into the conflict, it still hasn't shown up, and Russia is even stronger. NATO doesn't have anything else they can part with.
UK admitted they have ammo for 3 weeks of warfare. German military is in shambles. French and Polish disarmed some of their units to send arms to Ukraine. US is not in such a great condition too, eating L after L from barely armed people like Taliban or Ansar Allah.
Sure, they may be well armed but for usual aerial terror campaigns (because not even for naval now), but absolutely not for land warfare.
A very large portion of American military doctrine is centered around avoiding overextension. US military stockpile information isn't published but with their budget and emphasis on being able to fight a traditional war, imperialist projects and counter revolution at the same time, it's safe to assume US stockpiles are still strong. Secondly, American military failure in those regions is more of a result of not knowing how to do counterinsurgency than a lack of material. Also the way the US fights land wars is through campaigns of aerial terror. You can't separate the two when it comes to the US.
If the United States had the capacity to make enough ammunition and ordnance to fight multiple wars at the same time, there would be enough people employed by these companies that you would probably personally know at least 1 of them.
All those places together do not even employ 400,000 people. I work in manufacturing and I don’t know a single person who works at these places. What I’m saying is so many new jobs would be created that MILLIONS of people would from that point on be in the defense sector making bombs and bullets. It’s not even comparable.
Walmart is a big employer. Can they supply war munitions? Being a big employer is genuinely irrelevant unless the bulk of those employees are making munitions
Look I'm not trying to be a dick here but are you being serious? The US can deliver some special, expensive wundermunitions via aircraft, if they have absolute air superiority. They only get that against shepherds. We're talking about enemies in 2024 who have more than just sheep maintenance capacity, so...
Overextension of the US army isn't really happening now. The US military's greatest weakness is the inability to hold objectives and fight counterinsurgency and that's more of what we're seeing, not supply or logistics failures.
The US Navy is currently extremely overextended. They are currently losing what Navy officers have described as the largest naval battle the US has been in since WW2 against a nation whose navy consists of speedboats.
On the subject of supply or logistics, the US military basically lacks any of the transport/airlift capacity they had 25 years ago. That, to my mind, qualifies as a supply or logistics failure, given that such a capacity would be a basic necessity for any actual Army engagement in a conflict.
It doesn't make it less dangerous. My argument is that the US military is still a very large danger, and being unable to hold ground but able to kill a lot of people is still very dangerous.
It really isn’t. For nato to be well armed they would have to dump massive amounts of money into manufacturing and even then it would take years to get up to speed. We have every indication that the US has given from their own stockpiles. Not all of it, but there really isn’t old stock to speak of.
The slow progress is very much intentional. Less casualties for Russia, more for Ukraine.
The digging in also was intentional, Ukraine was very open about its planned counter offensive. Russia dug in and let them come.
Don't get me wrong, there have been russian fuck ups, like, after the peace negotiation broke down, not taking into consideration that many contract soldiers might not renew their contracts.
It looks to me (I am not a reliable source) like Russia won the war immediately. There will never be a stable, western aligned government in Ukraine again. But there will be a huge buffer zone that keeps NATO far from anything Russia considers dangerous.
Ukraine is only getting more Western aligned due to the war. I could easily see a Zelnsky dictatorship for a while. I don't think they are ever joining NATO but they have only gotten more Western aligned recently.
There will never be a stable, western-aligned government again. There's never gonna be a stable, eastern-aligned government either. The rightwing coups will never end. Ukraine is destroyed for the working class. The bourgeoisie might have one last chance to sell out and move to the US.
Dictatorships are perfectly stable. At present time the right loves Zelnsky and has no reason to coup. As long as the war continues Zelnsky is staying in power and in the pocket of the West. I agree with you on Ukraine being destroyed for the working class though.
How you propose to reverse or even avoid this? Keel up before nazis and allow for genocide in Donbas and another yeltsinisation of Russia? This time maybe terminal since west seem helbent on balkanization of Russia.
At this point, you can't. Continuing support for Ukraine is the best way to worsen the situation and continue keeping Zelnsky in power and continue the meat grinder. If the West pulls out, two things are possible. One is that Russia continues to push West and try to take Kyiv which will lead to Zelnsky staying in power for as long as the war continues and a protected urban warfare campaign through Kyiv which will take Russia an incredibly long time to win. The other possibility is that peace talks happen and Russia keeps their controlled territory and ends the war. This is the best chance of a "good" outcome but anyone who gets in power, declares martial law and tries to retake lost territory is just going to become Zelnsky 2. Either way, it's going to be a series of stable leaders (dictatorships) trying to cozy up with the West to defeat Russia. I don't think there ever was the possibility of a good outcome here.
Maybe or maybe not, if AFU really does break at some point the occupation process might not be as hard as you think, and afterwards - we also heard it about Chechenya that Russians will be drowned in blood there but nothing of sorts happened.
No US leader would be stupid enough to invade. It doesn't matter to the US who would win in Korea, all the average person would know is that a few million died after LA got nuked.
That mostly depends on if China gets involved which seems less likely than it did the last time. Also "unified Korea but no LA" is not a great trade, even for the American bourgeoisie.
The DPRK is unironically the unknown threat that the USA doesn’t want the public to really be aware of. All of the outrageous claims made about the DPRK is because America would not be able to defeat them in open combat.
The Korean War is quite literally the Forgotten War because it’s almost never mentioned when people talk about North Korea. The way the media and governments talk about it, it’s almost as if North Korea simply manifested from thin air and seceded from the south.
What makes you say this? Not doubting I'm just unsure how that would go either way tbh. I don't have the confidence to say that.
I think the other comment is partially a meme/joke, but also the US already tried once to defeat the north and lost... or at least gave up. That was immediately post-WWII US military and economy roaring after facing basically zero setbacks unlike most of the world. Korea and China were coming out of occupation by the fascist Japanese and a brutal incredibly long civil war in China... and still managed to hold their own against, again, the US still at it's WWII strength. And it's not like the US wasn't trying to "win" either they leveled every fucking building in the north and still couldn't make them give up. I'm not an expert on North Korean military shit now, but last I heard they learned from the war with the US and built everything underground so it can't really be targeted by the US. Not easily anyway. We see in Gaza that Israel cannot damage much of the underground infrastructure... imagine that on the nation state level. US would be on a total suicide mission to even try an invasion. Not to mention their nuclear capabilities.
I’d like to reiterate that my comment was not a meme/joke
Propaganda is so heavy. I thought you were being 100% serious because it’s quite obvious the US would handily lose that conflict a second time. Probably even worse than the first as neoliberalism has rotted the US from the inside while DPRK has prepared for this inevitability.
The US relies on its asian puppet colonies KUSA and Japan to act as meaningful proxies. KUSA is mostly filled with forced conscripts so judging from the IOF, they don't look like to be an actual competant fighting force. Also in the event of war, military command goes to the US who, as we've seen in Ukraine and Occupied Palestine + Yemen, are so corrupt that it would be a liability so there is a possibility of refuseniks/mutinies in the KUSA army.
Artillery shells are pointed at seoul at all times and can wipe out the entire city in a matter of hours. This inevitably means that SK's economy collapses as all the Chaebols and other assorted bourgeoisie flee and the entire country is militarized while the CIA controlled Korean government would spend all its time doing the classic slava Ukranian trick of kidnapping conscripts and whatnot.
The US backed NATO can't join the conflict because of Comrade Kim Jong Un's investment in nuclear ICBMs (Ukraine much?), inevitably, South Korea's place in the global supply chain would be used as a threat to G7 and the global south to support the war while further isolating the US.
A war with the DPRK could be a flashpoint to a proletarian revolution in KUSA and a complete breakdown of Chaebols which is why the endlessly corrupt and cruel south korean government would never go to war unless the US forced then to (meaning that the Chaebols would know in advance, the optics of which could prove fatal to the rogue state of the ROK).
They couldn't defeat them the first time around and they hadn't had decades to stockpile munitions back then. You can't defeat a country with air power, you can only destroy it, and the west pretty demonstrably only has air power.
And even then it's only when there are no threats to their aircraft. They haven't fought a foe with actual air defenses in decades.
The other comments explain it enough I think, I’d just like to add that I think there is a natural reaction to underestimate the North Koreans even among leftists, but imho I think the DPRK would do better in a war against the US in Korea than even the Russians in Ukraine. Just for comparison sake the Russians have been practicing the war in Ukraine for 30 years pretty much, but the DPRK has been practicing since the 1950’s.
Russia hasn't been doing great in Ukraine though. The front has been dug in for months and Russian progress is a crawl at best.
Russia is doing extremely well. Victory has nothing to do with how much of an area you occupy.
you are measuring by territory, but attrition war suits their goal of demilitarizing the Ukraine more than holding land
Sure, they are depleting Ukrainian arms but Ukraine has such a steady supply of NATO arms that it's almost impossible to make a dent.
This may be true in several years, but if I'm not mistaken, all sources indicate that NATO's already been bled dry.
NATO has mostly given old munitions, not their main stockpiles. NATO still remains a well armed threat.
They keep claiming they have what they need to destroy Russia, but 2 years into the conflict, it still hasn't shown up, and Russia is even stronger. NATO doesn't have anything else they can part with.
UK admitted they have ammo for 3 weeks of warfare. German military is in shambles. French and Polish disarmed some of their units to send arms to Ukraine. US is not in such a great condition too, eating L after L from barely armed people like Taliban or Ansar Allah.
Sure, they may be well armed but for usual aerial terror campaigns (because not even for naval now), but absolutely not for land warfare.
A very large portion of American military doctrine is centered around avoiding overextension. US military stockpile information isn't published but with their budget and emphasis on being able to fight a traditional war, imperialist projects and counter revolution at the same time, it's safe to assume US stockpiles are still strong. Secondly, American military failure in those regions is more of a result of not knowing how to do counterinsurgency than a lack of material. Also the way the US fights land wars is through campaigns of aerial terror. You can't separate the two when it comes to the US.
If the United States had the capacity to make enough ammunition and ordnance to fight multiple wars at the same time, there would be enough people employed by these companies that you would probably personally know at least 1 of them.
It's not like Ball, Lockheed, Northrop or Boeing are huge employers or anything
All those places together do not even employ 400,000 people. I work in manufacturing and I don’t know a single person who works at these places. What I’m saying is so many new jobs would be created that MILLIONS of people would from that point on be in the defense sector making bombs and bullets. It’s not even comparable.
Walmart is a big employer. Can they supply war munitions? Being a big employer is genuinely irrelevant unless the bulk of those employees are making munitions
Those companies make materiel, yes. They don't specialize on artillery but the US tends to focus more on bombs and rocketry which is what they make.
Look I'm not trying to be a dick here but are you being serious? The US can deliver some special, expensive wundermunitions via aircraft, if they have absolute air superiority. They only get that against shepherds. We're talking about enemies in 2024 who have more than just sheep maintenance capacity, so...
And yet they are currently already overextended.
Overextension of the US army isn't really happening now. The US military's greatest weakness is the inability to hold objectives and fight counterinsurgency and that's more of what we're seeing, not supply or logistics failures.
The US Navy is currently extremely overextended. They are currently losing what Navy officers have described as the largest naval battle the US has been in since WW2 against a nation whose navy consists of speedboats.
On the subject of supply or logistics, the US military basically lacks any of the transport/airlift capacity they had 25 years ago. That, to my mind, qualifies as a supply or logistics failure, given that such a capacity would be a basic necessity for any actual Army engagement in a conflict.
Just gonna add here that yes, the US military does have trouble with the basic requirements of a military. This does not help your argument.
It doesn't make it less dangerous. My argument is that the US military is still a very large danger, and being unable to hold ground but able to kill a lot of people is still very dangerous.
There's no question about that. The US military can do massacres, but it can't achieve military goals unless they're just "air based massacres".
It really isn’t. For nato to be well armed they would have to dump massive amounts of money into manufacturing and even then it would take years to get up to speed. We have every indication that the US has given from their own stockpiles. Not all of it, but there really isn’t old stock to speak of.
That supply has long since started to dry up. All they get is below the rate at which they lose it. And they get less and less.
The slow progress is very much intentional. Less casualties for Russia, more for Ukraine. The digging in also was intentional, Ukraine was very open about its planned counter offensive. Russia dug in and let them come.
Don't get me wrong, there have been russian fuck ups, like, after the peace negotiation broke down, not taking into consideration that many contract soldiers might not renew their contracts.
It looks to me (I am not a reliable source) like Russia won the war immediately. There will never be a stable, western aligned government in Ukraine again. But there will be a huge buffer zone that keeps NATO far from anything Russia considers dangerous.
Ukraine is only getting more Western aligned due to the war. I could easily see a Zelnsky dictatorship for a while. I don't think they are ever joining NATO but they have only gotten more Western aligned recently.
There will never be a stable, western-aligned government again. There's never gonna be a stable, eastern-aligned government either. The rightwing coups will never end. Ukraine is destroyed for the working class. The bourgeoisie might have one last chance to sell out and move to the US.
Dictatorships are perfectly stable. At present time the right loves Zelnsky and has no reason to coup. As long as the war continues Zelnsky is staying in power and in the pocket of the West. I agree with you on Ukraine being destroyed for the working class though.
How you propose to reverse or even avoid this? Keel up before nazis and allow for genocide in Donbas and another yeltsinisation of Russia? This time maybe terminal since west seem helbent on balkanization of Russia.
At this point, you can't. Continuing support for Ukraine is the best way to worsen the situation and continue keeping Zelnsky in power and continue the meat grinder. If the West pulls out, two things are possible. One is that Russia continues to push West and try to take Kyiv which will lead to Zelnsky staying in power for as long as the war continues and a protected urban warfare campaign through Kyiv which will take Russia an incredibly long time to win. The other possibility is that peace talks happen and Russia keeps their controlled territory and ends the war. This is the best chance of a "good" outcome but anyone who gets in power, declares martial law and tries to retake lost territory is just going to become Zelnsky 2. Either way, it's going to be a series of stable leaders (dictatorships) trying to cozy up with the West to defeat Russia. I don't think there ever was the possibility of a good outcome here.
I'm more and more convinced least bad option is to just annex everything and try Chechenya method.
The issue with annexation is it requires occupation which is going to kill a ton of people.
Maybe or maybe not, if AFU really does break at some point the occupation process might not be as hard as you think, and afterwards - we also heard it about Chechenya that Russians will be drowned in blood there but nothing of sorts happened.
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No US leader would be stupid enough to invade. It doesn't matter to the US who would win in Korea, all the average person would know is that a few million died after LA got nuked.
I disagree I think they would like to unify Korea under a South Korean banner, but cannot do it due to the DPRKs military strength.
That mostly depends on if China gets involved which seems less likely than it did the last time. Also "unified Korea but no LA" is not a great trade, even for the American bourgeoisie.
Pretty much yeah, and now they're forced to acknowledge the reality of what DPRK is.
That's not a particularly exclusive club.