What if we started again the Korea war?

Last week, Laure presented us an article from the Guardian which deals with the issue of North Korea. Barrack Obama, the US president, has recently delivered a speech for the commemoration of the Korea war that demanded to North Korea an immediate interruption of its nuclear program. He said the United-States would always protect South Korea against its northern communist neighbor and considered as provocation the sinking of a South Korean corvette in March. A month ago, in North Korean capital Pyongyang, Dictator Kim Jong-Il gave the power to his son. Thus, Kim made sure that his political system would not collapse after his upcoming death.

Laure asked us if a military intervention for democracy was necessary to protect a people dying of food shortage from its dictators, Kim Jong-Il and his son, and if the regime, based on the military, was a danger for the international community.

More than 1.5 million people work for the People’s Army in North Korea which represents the fourth greatest army in the world for a country of the size of Ireland. Moreover, if such an instable regime owned the nuclear bomb, it could some terrible consequences. Yet, as far as I’m concerned, we should relax a bit: a nuclear war is –at least I hope so – still far from us. Why? Because nobody is interested in starting this war. North Korea seems to have very few reasons to desire to be fully destroyed by a worldwide coalition. Moreover, since it has neither military base outside of its territory nor ballistic missile submarine, it has no means to attack territories such as Europe or even the United-States… They can only bomb South Korea (with missiles or planes) – but do we really care about South Korea? – which means they could not do anything against an attack from western country. Such a nuclear war would not last more than a day with minor consequences for the world.

On the other hand, the international community – to say it differently the US, Europe and their allies - does not desire a new conflict since it already has to cope with the Iraq and more particularly the Afghanistan war. These two experiences might also have discouraged the US of starting other “preventive wars”. Finally, Western countries need an enemy and North Korea, with Iran, is the most seducing candidate for that role. The only state that could be willing to start a war would be South Korea that would reunite its thousands years old country but North Korean are so deprived that this reunification would have as a consequence decades of economic crises and social agitation. I am not sure those are risks South Korean are ready to take.