“I think it would be very difficult, challenging — I don’t think there is any question about it,” Amos said, adding that it would “emasculate all our strategic reserves.” For those who remember Gen. Macarthur’s brilliant gambit at Inchon (pictured), Amos delivered a truly worrying assessment that has since been echoed by the deputy commandant. The toll of the last seven years of combat has forced the service to sacrifice its traditionally vaunted capabilities in combined arms operations and large-scale amphibious operations to be the excellent counterinsurgency force it has become.

-

“If there were to be a full-scale war, the casualties would be unimaginable,” said Chaibong Hahm, senior political scientist at the California-based RAND Corporation.

“We don’t know where the existing nuclear weapons are,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Author Robert Kaplan wrote on The Atlantic magazine’s website that “anyone who talks breezily about ‘helping’ North Korea to collapse has simply not learned the lesson of Iraq: The only thing worse than a totalitarian state is no state at all.”

Also, I don’t think North Korea should be compared to Iraq. The actions that worked with Iraq probably won’t directly translate with Korea. North Korea is a much stronger military force with powerful allies. Sure we have divisions stationed in S Korea, but there’s no doubt that we would need to send more troops down there if they did indeed launch a counter-attack. All of these years later N/S Korea is still a very volatile situation with or even without anyone bombing N Korea. The S Korean government did not recently request our troops to stay stationed there for the added company.

Yes, there’s not a whole lot America can do, sanction wise, to really hurt N Korea. However there’s a ton that China could do in posing sanctions strong enough to cripple that government or force them to change their ways. Which is why the Obama administration is seeking help from China as we speak. That’s the right way to go about this. Bottom line is we have time, its not needed for us to rush into combat without first exploring more appropriate means. As an individual the who cares what others think mentality works, but as a country that’s not going to fly. That only hurts us within the international community and whether people want to admit it or not we need their help and support just as much as they need ours.

David, you’re completely right, but I also wonder what their response would be if we needed to request more money and they were no longer happy with us. Whatever the case we have enough enemies as is and its in our best interest to build/repair as many relationships as possible.