Ed Kyle wrote:

I would look at it this way. If I were an North Korean-type
enemy of the U.S. who wanted a deterrent that I might
actually be able to use if I had to (realizing that I could
never hope to use a nuke and have my country survive),
I might be willing to spend an enormous amount of
money on said deterrent. With a quiver of conventioally
armed ICBMs, I would at least be able to make U.S.
civilians pay whenever a U.S. bomber dropped a load
of bombs on my country, if it ever came to war.

If U.S. civilians suddenly discovered that war was real
and not something just to watch on TV, they might not
be so eager to continue attacking me. During the next
"Korean-ish War" I would be able to demonstrate to
them how powerless their Pentagon really was when it
came to protecting *their* lives. The U.S. government
might come under a lot of internal pressure to negotiate
a settlement rather than continue the fight.

The main problem I see with your proposed strategy, _even if America
KNEW the ICBM's were conventional-armed_, is that, as soon as a North
Korean ICBM hit an American city, there would be immediate popular
support in America for doing whatever amount of damage to North Korea
was required to eliminate the threat. Americans under these
circumstances would get angry at North Korea rather than afraid to
continue the fight, because they would be quite aware that America has
the power to annihilate the entire North Korean population, if
necessary.

Most American citizens do not truly consider foreigners, especially
foreigners from countries Americans never visit on vacations, to be
entirely real, and would have no compunction against killing as many
North Koreans as it took, under those cirucmstances. America,
historically, has rarely responded to attacks on American civilians by
being cowed: the last major attack on American civilians (9/11)
resulted in the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the
overthrow of those countries' Terrorist regimes.

This is a very serious consideration. The American public is arrogant
and _overestimates_ America's military power; any President who
responded to such an attack with conciliation would find his party
losing the next Congressional and possibly Presidential elections. The
temptation on the part of a challenger to promise "payback for
[whenever, wherever this happened]" would be very strong, and if the
incumbent or opponent failed to match this pledge, said challenger
would probably be the next occupant of the White House.

The result of this is that "take out North Korea" would become a
long-term American policy objective. This would be bad for North
Korea, for a number of reasons (more on that later).

Another big problem is that America would _not_ know that the ICBM's
were conventional-armed before the ICBM's hit: there would be a strong
incentive to launch on (confirmed) warning just in case the ICBM's were
targetted on American bases. Admittedly, that temptation would
diminish if we had a full BMD deployed.

Finally, you're assuming that the North Korean ICBM's are accurate
enough to reliably hit urban downtowns. They would probably have huge
CEP's (Circular Error, Probables -- the radius of target point within
which 50% of the shots would fall) and might well simply hit suburbs,
etc. This would actually be _better_ for the North Koreans because the
smaller the American casualties, the less extreme the popular American
wrath.

A big problem from the point of view of the North Koreans is that
America has an embarassingly large number of ways to hurt North Korea.
At the high end of the scale, America could simply target a nuclear
warhead on every North Korean city and major fortified complex --
unlike most nuclear powers, we actually have enough weapons to do this
without seriously depleting our arsenal (and we can always build more).
This would mean the end of North Korea as a nation; South Korea would
probably annex the ruins.

At the low end, America could simply cease all aid to North Korea (in
fact, American aid to North Korea would be politically unthinkable in
the wake of a lethal North Korean attack on an American city with _any_
major weapons) and use her leverage to persuade all American allies to
follow suit. This would probably result in severe famine, with a
Malthusian die-off, within North Korea.

Or, pretty much, anywhere in between. Limited nuclear strikes,
unrestricted conventional bombardment, a ground invasion, sea raids,
etc. etc. North Korea would be fairly helpless in such a situation, as
the extent of the popular American wrath would mean that no President
who killed North Koreans or damaged North Korean property would be
doing wrong in the eyes of public opinion.

Again: unlike Israel, America has no bigger ally restraining her.
It's _very_ important to remember that.

- Jordan