The book The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel describes such a scenario.
Chilling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_Light_(novel)
And, of course, for cases of a war starting because of a false belief that they were about to be attacked there is the real life case of Able Archer 83:
A thinking that they can win: Tojikistan, Karabag, Transnistria, Georgia, Donbas, Crimea, Syria, Libya — all set a very damning precedent of the West conceding to use of force.
If China decides to shoot back, all bets are off. It would be exactly the error the Japanese made when they attacked Pearl Harbor and thought they can get away with it. That would directly affect the West and our leaders could not say anymore "will be fine, we're taking the high road here" unless they want to be lynched by a mob.
Also everyone knows that the US is both highly militaristic and highly jingoistic.
That was certainly true up through the early 2000s, but this stereotype is by now out of date. On the left, America is self-loathing, and on the right it's become quite isolationist.
Terrorist attacks like 9/11 leave doubt about who to go after and at what scale to retaliate but a clear attack on a city by a foreign state as an act of war is a different thing. Gloves would come off and the complete full force of every resource ( military, political, economic, etc ) would be brought to bear.
It depends on the specifics, of course. If a specific country directly attacked the US, of course I'd expect (and even demand) a military response. But these days, I wouldn't expect a non-state's terrorist attack to lead to the sort of misguided, ill-informed adventurism that ultimately led us to invade Iraq.
Also ++ for the use of jingoistic. :)
See also: Korean War, where Chinese intervened to stop the US-allied South from winning against the North.
You remember Kim's brother VXed in Malaysia? He was China's bid on NK throne. China was trying to launch a coup in NK.
China been trying to seize power in NK for decades.
NK-China relations are complicated ones. China wants NK, but is afraid of losing NK if their machinations flop, and push the NK towards the West.
>A thinking that they can win
The only way to talk about war is to be prepared to understand 'the other side' of your argument. In this case, you're setting yourself up to have to answer the question: in the 21st century, which nation state has started the most wars, committed violent hostilities, and murdered innocent citizens at massive scales, the most?
That's unlikely to be the scenario. The big problem for China is that they're responsible for the current North Korea regime existing. China has been directly, intentionally propping up and protecting North Korea from day one. The American people will not find it acceptable to exchange Pyongyang for Los Angeles or New York, much less trade several of North Korea's cities for several major US cities.
The American public would demand a nuclear strike against China in retaliation, a more equitable outcome - Shanghai for Los Angeles, Beijing for New York - for those ultimately responsible for what North Korea is today.
That's where hundreds of millions of people could die from a North Korean strike. It's why China should have never enabled and tolerated the Kim regime in the first place, and now it's too late to fix that historic blunder. Any nuclear strike from North Korea will likely result in a nuclear strike against China.
This is equivalent to the Israeli Samson option (which is why you don't want Iran getting nukes).
If the US goes down - eg loses its top 30 cities - why shouldn't it take every Chinese and Russian city with it? Try convincing the American public to not want revenge against anyone that has ever assisted North Korea.
It's also notable that the USA has also tolerated the Kim regime, because it gives them an excuse to be present in force in South Korea. It's not like the CIA couldn't have the Kims removed if they put some effort into it. PRC would have to pretend to be angry about it, but it would also get them out of the awkward situation.
Unfortunately, the stable genius in the WH does.
Which part of this is the President "trying" and the Iranians "declining"?
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/21/734683701/trump-reportedly-or...
He's probably the only Commander-in-Chief I've had so far to say "I don't think it's proportionate to bomb a bunch of people because we lost a drone."
Iran responded with a carefully-targeted retaliation - a small missile strike against an unused/unmaintained US military installation in Iraq. There were no casualties.
Iran chose a target with low strategic value and no personnel present. Just enough of a strike that they could sell it as retaliation, but not enough of a strike to escalate into a full war.
I won't pretend to know if the assassination was warranted or necessary. But it's easily something that Iran could have used to justify a war.
This... doesn't seem likely.
> If the US goes down - eg loses its top 30 cities - why shouldn't it take every Chinese and Russian city with it? Try convincing the American public to not want revenge against anyone that has ever assisted North Korea.
Okay, I see where you're coming from, but this was not the scenario being discussed. The scenario presented was "NK lobs a single nuke at Los Angeles." The expected response is closer to "US decapitates NK before they can fire any more, everybody shits their pants, but no additional nukes are fired."
Decapitating NK in one fell swoop might be possible... decapitating China is highly unlikely. The US should therefore not initiate firing nukes at China unless a substantial number of US cities have already been hit, because doing so would all but guarantee that those cities would be hit by China in the next volley.
A ballistic launch towards NK looks an awful lot like a ballistic launch towards China, is the problem there. Will China "wait and see" where it lands?
In this case, the context would be:
"Holy shit guys, NK just launched a rocket that looks like it's headed for LA!"
[3 minutes later]
"And now the US just launched 14 rockets, and they might be headed for us, but they're probably headed for NK."
China's best option is to wait and see, because if they decide to fire, and were wrong about China being targeted, they'll see another round of launches three minutes after that one, and those will be headed for China.
They've played this all out. MAD really does work.
China doesn't want to enter WWIII any more than the US does. And the US response to an NK attack is very predictable.
Any strike on NK has to decapitate it instantly, or the conventional artillery along the border will pound Seoul into rubble in the meantime. Ballpark figures are 10,000 pieces, some dug in, some mobile, each capable of firing 10kg high explosive and keeping it coming until their ammunition runs out. It's a hard problem for any military planner.
If the SK capital was on their south coast and it was only farmland within artillery range of the border than NK would be an easy problem to solve (obviously if that were the case NK would have developed other weapons to compensate). Notwithstanding China of course.
You would also need to somehow move your DMZ-overrunning force into position without that manoeuvre itself triggering the artillery bombardment.
A prospect of USA trying to win a land war in China is mind boggling, and equally so for China launching a land operation in the USA.
MAD works because everyone knows that starting or joining a nuclear firefight is literally suicide. What would compel them to fire if they're clearly not being targeted?