What to do if WAR starts with North Korea?

[frugal]

What to do if WAR starts with North Korea?

Sell the STOCKS of PP for some weeks?



Regards

[Thomas Hoog]

No, your portfolio is permanent
Most likely stocks will drop but soon recovering. You don't want to puzzle your mind when to get out or when to get back in.
Just lay back in your beautiful country

[MediumTex]

Turn on the TV and enjoy watching the excitement.

Wars of the last 30 years have been little more than television entertainment for most people in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world.

[dragoncar]

Take off every ZIG!

[melveyr]

If war broke with N Korea here would be my portfolio...

Long: US defense stocks, gold, and oil

Short: The constitution and personal freedom 

[Pointedstick]

If war broke with N Korea here would be my portfolio...

Long: US defense stocks, gold, and oil

Short: The constitution and personal freedom 

If only there were a triple-leveraged inverse fund for that. It's almost guaranteed to go up! 

[rocketdog]

Turn on the TV and enjoy watching the excitement.

Wars of the last 30 years have been little more than television entertainment for most people in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world.

I heard George Carlin say something like that in one of his routines.  I should try to find the clip. 

[rocketdog]

Short: The constitution and personal freedom 

D'OH!  I see what you did there.

[goodasgold]

No need to worry about war.

The Pentagon has come up with a brilliant plan to utterly discredit Dictator Kim and cast him into oblivion BEFORE any war can break out: they have signed him up for the Mets.

[Ad Orientem]

A war with North Korea would end very quickly. If they use a nuke my guess is that the whole war would be over in about 30 minutes. That's about how long it would take to get the confirmation that the fat little guttersnipe had actually gone over the cliff and issue the necessary codes to respond. There is at all times an Ohio class ballistic missile submarine operating somewhere in the Pacific that has the only US strategic weapons that are actually still pretargeted in the otherwise post-cold war era. And they are aimed at North Korea. Travel time from launch to targets would likely be less than 20 minutes. That's 24 Trident missiles, each armed with 8 nuclear warheads. North Korea becomes a glow in the dark parking lot.

Game over.

If the war is conventional it would likely last slightly, but not much, longer. On paper North Korea has something like the world's 5th largest army. But it is entirely composed of ill fed, ill trained and shockingly ill equipped conscripts. The tech level of North Korea's military tops out at around 1975. And that is their better stuff. Most of their artillery and armor is 1960's vintage. They have a lot of artillery piled up on or near the DMZ and within range of Seoul. This could cause significant damage and casualties, mostly to the civilian population. But they would not get much time to use it. We know where their stuff is and both the US and South Korea have very detailed plans to take out North Korea's Artty and what they call an air force fast. My guess is that North Korea's air force would cease to exist as a combat effective force within the first 24 hrs. And their forward artillery positions are already targeted. So they would be gone in a few hours.

Then we would start hammering their command and control and decapitate their political and military leadership. North Korea is probably the world's most totalitarian state with a completely top down chain of command. There is little or no room for improvisation or independence of thought much less action. Once their antiquated communications network is taken out along with the senior leadership everything would likely just collapse.

I feel kinda bad for the poor bastards stuck in their army. They would be like frogs in a barrel. Honestly it wouldn't even be fair. It would almost be target practice except we'd be using live targets. Basically mass murder.

[Ad Orientem]

No need to worry about war.

The Pentagon has come up with a brilliant plan to utterly discredit Dictator Kim and cast him into oblivion BEFORE any war can break out: they have signed him up for the Mets.

That was cold bro. Very cold.

GO METS!

[MediumTex]

I feel kinda bad for the poor bastards stuck in their army. They would be like frogs in a barrel. Honestly it wouldn't even be fair. It would almost be target practice except we'd be using live targets. Basically mass murder.

Sort of like the Iraqi military in the 1991 Gulf War.

[Ad Orientem]

I feel kinda bad for the poor bastards stuck in their army. They would be like frogs in a barrel. Honestly it wouldn't even be fair. It would almost be target practice except we'd be using live targets. Basically mass murder.

Sort of like the Iraqi military in the 1991 Gulf War.

More or less. The only difference being that what we are talking about is a hypothetical war following a North Korean attack. Iraq didn't even threaten much less actually attack the United States.

[craigr]

If the war is conventional it would likely last slightly, but not much, longer.

That's what we thought in the first Korean War, but China disagreed.

[Ad Orientem]

If the war is conventional it would likely last slightly, but not much, longer.

That's what we thought in the first Korean War, but China disagreed.

China is the wild card. If they intervened directly it could get messy. But would they? Chinese foreign policy is probably as close to Bismarkian as any country in the world today. And Bismark's maxim was that countries don't have friends, they have interests. One can never be certain but I have serious doubts that China would see it as being in their interest to get involved in a war on behalf of client state that has been a drag on their resources and an embarrassment to their foreign ministry for decades. Mao is long dead and buried.

If North Korea started shooting first I would be very surprised if the Chinese lifted a finger to support them. My guess is that the Chinese would see this as a timely opportunity to unload a bad investment. China has worked very hard to build up a certain measure of respectability in the world's eyes and they would lose a lot of face backing North Korea in any kind of aggressive war. Worse from their perspective it would be incredibly high risk. Bismark always said he hated war. Not on moral grounds, but rather geo-political. Once armies start marching events move outside the control of statesmen and Kaisers (or Commissars in this case).

But if they did want to support them they would have to move damn quickly. This isn't 1953. North Korea's government would be taken out very very fast in a major war.

[Reub]

No need to worry about war.

The Pentagon has come up with a brilliant plan to utterly discredit Dictator Kim and cast him into oblivion BEFORE any war can break out: they have signed him up for the Mets.

Can we just leave my poor Mets out of it?

That was cold bro. Very cold.

GO METS!

[craigr]

If North Korea started shooting first I would be very surprised if the Chinese lifted a finger to support them.

Why wouldn't they just go in there like they did in Tibet and just take it all over? It would be a perfect excuse for them to do it. Then are we going to push them out to save the North Koreans?

[Ad Orientem]

If North Korea started shooting first I would be very surprised if the Chinese lifted a finger to support them.

Why wouldn't they just go in there like they did in Tibet and just take it all over? It would be a perfect excuse for them to do it. Then are we going to push them out to save the North Koreans?

Because it's not in their national interest. North Korea has nothing that China wants. It is one of the poorest and most underdeveloped nations on Earth. It would be a massive financial, economic and diplomatic liability and it would give China a major black eye in world public opinion. It would certainly damage their global trade. And of course it might destabilize the region. China is all about stability.

What's more, if they played their cards right they could achieve a long standing foreign policy objective by letting North Korea fall. If I were the Chinese and N Korea started a shooting war I would quickly and quietly let the US know that the price of Chinese non-intervention was a discreet understanding that within three years the US would withdraw all or most of its armed forces from Korea.

My guess is Washington would give that pledge in a New York minute. If I were president I sure as hell would.

[MediumTex]

If the U.S. blew it up we would have to go in and rebuild the whole country.

After we were done blowing it up and rebuilding it, China could come in and nationalize everything.

[Ad Orientem]

If the U.S. blew it up we would have to go in and rebuild the whole country.

After we were done blowing it up and rebuilding it, China could come in and nationalize everything.

My guess is that South Korea would bear most of the burden of reconstruction. Another fact that would appeal to China as S Korea is an economic rival. And one needs to consider that most of the Asian Pacific Rim is already nervous about creeping Chinese hegemony. If China moved into North Korea it would send up alarm bells all over the world and might move both Japan and South Korea to consider acquiring nukes. That is something China DOES NOT WANT.

The more I consider it the more unlikely Chinese intervention appears. There is no upside for them and a lot of downside. While staying out would be hugely beneficial to them on many different levels.

[craigr]

I think the only thing we can say is that nobody knows what will happen.

"No plan survives first contact with the enemy."

[moda0306]

Just imagine after all these years of LTT and gold performance how they'd jump in that event. 

[MediumTex]

The North Korean rhetoric is really silly.

I don't understand what their motivation is.  Why not just be quiet and tend to their internal affairs like keeping their people from starving?

There is also something sort of bizarre about welcoming Dennis Rodman with open arms while endlessly talking about nuking his country.

It does seem clear enough, though, that the new boy leader likely isn't really in charge of much at this point.  Only a complete idiot would threaten nuclear war against the U.S. after only a few months on the job as an evil dictator and when he was only in his late 20s.  This feels like a "bluster by committee" sort of effort.

[Pointedstick]

The North Korean rhetoric is really silly.

I don't understand what their motivation is.  Why not just be quiet and tend to their internal affairs like keeping their people from starving?

The most convincing theory I've seen so far is that the bluster is Kim Jong Un's attempt to pacify, occupy, and impress the military brass, most of whom don't really have any loyalty to him.

[MachineGhost]

The whole situation with North Korea reminds me of the most awesome Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.