> And bombing North Korea would be an act of war

Fun fact: the US is technically still at war with Korea. The Korean war was never actually stopped...

But I do agree resuming hostilities would lead to unpredictable and undesirable outcomes.

> But I do agree resuming hostilities would lead to unpredictable and undesirable outcomes.

Could you expand on this? Perhaps naively, I would expect the US & allies to be able to bomb all NK military assets and topple the inferior government easily & quickly. It wouldn't be another guerilla ground war, we just want to destroy their military capabilities.

I guess there is still the concern that China would back NK, but I can't see what China benefits from that. A war with other superpowers to protect a poor, weak, unpredictable regime?

Seoul is close enough to the DMZ to be in the firing range of conventional artillery. There's a non-nuclear form of MAD at play.

DPRK is useful because it can inflict damage and threats without having its masters (most likely Russia or China) getting directly involved.

Also helpful to collect intelligence.

Sending missiles toward Japan directly hurts the economy of Japan and its political stability (which in returns, has positive effects that the competitors of Japan can reap).

A buffer State. The PRC doesn’t want the Korean Peninsula used as a land-based route for an invasion of China by Japan, the US or Russia. Even if the DPRK is a problem, it’s also a barrier to entry for invading China and that’s good enough for the PRC to still support it.

> I guess there is still the concern that China would back NK, but I can't see what China benefits from that. A war with other superpowers to protect a poor, weak, unpredictable regime?

North Korea has been very useful to China. You could make either case: that China would come to NK's rescue [1], or that it would hasten its demise [2].

There is also the possibility that North Korea would nuke Beijing if it was on the brink of defeat and China didn't come to its aid. The distance between North Korea and Beijing is only a few hundred kilometers, after all, and though North Korea may not have China's sophisticated arsenal of missiles, it has enough functional short range and medium range ballistic missiles to wipe Beijing off the map. A kind of reverse NATO, if you will. China might be condemned to back North Korea, even if it doesn't want to, under threat of nuclear annihilation.

[1] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/2022-02-...

[2] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2017-12-12/why-...

North Korea has nuclear weapons. They have ICBMs that can hit west coast of US but few enough that maybe could be intercepted. They also have shorter range missiles that threaten South Korea and Japan.

North Korea has few enough nukes that first strike to take them out is possible. But would likely require using nukes. China, and much of the world, would not be happy. Acceptable if war has broken out, not to start a war.

* North Korea aka the DPRK.

And that’s one of those “fun” facts we learn in school that as I grow older I increasingly question the veracity or usefulness of saying it. It’s unclear whether Korea and the DPRK are even at war with each other in any usefully understood manner; just that they view each other as illegitimate sovereigns occupying their territory in an official manner, much like China and the PRC.

I think that North Korea and South Korea are still at war. Did the US ever declare war against North Korea? I thought that the US was there due to the UN getting involved. Skipping the need for the US to declare war.

Perhaps he means in a "proxy-war" ? Because US is supporting South Korea and USSR / Russia is supporting DPRK.

Has the US ever "declared war" since WWII?

I believe they've all been AUMFs (Authorizations for the Use of Military Force), effectively bypassing various checks and safeguards in place when starting formal wars.

I think the only safeguard is authorization by Congress. Is there another one?

Here are three more:

Checks and balances: A formal declaration of war requires a higher level of political support and public debate, providing more opportunity for scrutiny and oversight.

Indefinite conflicts: AUMFs often lack clear objectives or timelines, which can lead to prolonged and open-ended military engagements.

Legal ambiguity: AUMFs can create legal ambiguity, as they may not explicitly invoke the laws of war, which govern the conduct of armed forces and the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war, and non-combatants.

It also never officially started either, it was a "NATO police action."

UN, not NATO.

> U.S. wanted to respond in kind, it could launch a missile from a ship in the Sea of Japan

There really isn't a ballistic trajectory that wouldn't land in PRC or SKR waters, unless it's a (relatively) low flying cruise missile that overflys SKR waters and circles back to land inJapanese waters in east sea which is much more escalatory than lofting a high flying ballistic over air space. Practically there isn't a viable "proportional" response, especially if failure = ordnance lands in PRC or RU territory.