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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.