{"id":58205,"date":"2018-03-10T18:09:14","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T18:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=58205"},"modified":"2018-03-10T18:40:08","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T18:40:08","slug":"how-the-hell-can-un-trump-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=58205","title":{"rendered":"How the hell can Un trump Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — a face-off between two impulsives, and thoughtful planning at a tabletop exercise ]
\n.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How the hell can Un, with one star and no stripes, hope to trump Trump<\/strong>, with fifty stars and thirteen stripes backing him up?<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Or:<\/p>\n

How the hell can Un, with maybe a dozen nukes, one of which might be a hydrogen bomb, and some untested missiles designed to reach anywhere in the continental US, hope to trump Trump<\/strong>, with a stockpile of 1,411 nuclear warheads deployed on 673 ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers [Wikipedis<\/a>] and an impressive array of generals, admirals and such, one of whom — Gen. Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs — is positively pushing his way out of the photo-frame into at least simulated warfare with North Korea:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

The simulation in question was described, as far as is visible under a cloak of secrecy, in a recent NYT article titled U.S. Banks on Diplomacy With North Korea, but Moves Ahead on Military Plans<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A classified military exercise last week examined how American troops would mobilize and strike if ordered into a potential war on the Korean Peninsula, even as diplomatic overtures between the North and the Trump administration continue.<\/p>\n

The war planning, known as a \u201ctabletop exercise,\u201d was held over several days in Hawaii. It included Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army\u2019s chief of staff, and Gen. Tony Thomas, the head of Special Operations Command.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anything that occupies two generals “over several days” plus planning and debriefing is serious business — especially those two generals.<\/p>\n

War with North Korea — Hawaii their nuclear targets.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Oops, the NYT article also features some awkward questions commanders of the US battleforce would face:<\/p>\n

\n
  • How many conventional and Special Operations forces could be deployed, in phases, to target North Korean nuclear sites.\n
  • Whether the Army\u2019s 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions could be charged with fighting in tunnels\n
  • Exhaustive plans to take down North Korea\u2019s integrated air defenses, allowing American manned and unmanned aircraft into the reclusive country.\n
  • Plans for the morbid but necessary details of personnel recovery plans, such as if pilots are shot down, and the evacuation of the dead and wounded.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    **<\/p>\n

    And Un considers the very fact of the US President agreeing to meet with the dictator of N Korea, ie Donald Trump with himself, to be a clear and unequivocal demonstration of parity. As CNN puts it:<\/p>\n

    with the simple fact of the meeting, Kim has already achieved his objective: he’s at the table on the world stage, being taken seriously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Or MSNBC, in a piece titled On North Korea, Trump gambles from a position of weakness<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    Trump has agreed to give Kim Jong-un exactly what he wants. North Korean leaders have sought this kind of meeting for decades because it would necessarily elevate the rogue state: it would show the world that North Korea\u2019s leader is being treated as an equal by the Leader of the Free World. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Equal? Mirror image?<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    **<\/p>\n

    Nota bene:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    China, Japan and Russia have cheered an impending meeting between United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a \u201csignificant first step\u201d towards the de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    China, Japan and Russia, India, and obviously South Korea, are all actors with significant interesta in any US – North-Korean diplomacy — giving us a seven-node tug-of-war for our planners to map — and Donald Trump<\/strong> to intuitively grok.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [ by Charles Cameron — a face-off between two impulsives, and thoughtful planning at a tabletop exercise ] . How the hell can Un, with one star and no stripes, hope to trump Trump, with fifty stars and thirteen stripes backing him up? ** Or: How the hell can Un, with maybe a dozen nukes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,1314,529,695,319,428,98,743,1,1363],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-donald-trump","category-games","category-korea","category-map","category-maps-of-war","category-north-korea","category-simulation","category-uncategorized","category-war-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58205"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58229,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58205\/revisions\/58229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}