WASHINGTON: Across the military, officers and troops are quietly preparingfor a war they hope will not come, NYT has reported.
At Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month, a mix of 48 Apache gunships andChinook cargo helicopters took off in an exercise that practiced movingtroops and equipment under live artillery fire to assault targets. Two dayslater, in the skies above Nevada, 119 soldiers from the Army’s 82ndAirborne Division parachuted out of C-17 military cargo planes under coverof darkness in an exercise that simulated a foreign invasion.
Next month, at Army posts across the United States, more than 1,000 reservesoldiers will practice how to set up mobilization centers that movemilitary forces overseas in a hurry. And beginning next month with theWinter Olympics in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang, the Pentagon plansto send more Special Operations troops to the Korean Peninsula, an initialstep toward what some officials said ultimately could be the formation of aKorea-based task force similar to the types that are fighting in Iraq andSyria. Others said the plan was strictly related to counterterrorismefforts.
In the world of the US military, where contingency planning is a mantradrummed into the psyche of every officer, the moves are ostensibly part ofstandard Defense Department training and troop rotations. But the scope andtiming of the exercises suggest a renewed focus on getting the country’smilitary prepared for what could be on the horizon with North Korea.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Gen Joseph F Dunford Jr, chairman of theJoint Chiefs of Staff, both argue forcefully for using diplomacy to addressPyongyang nuclear ambitions. A war with North Korea, Mattis said in August,would be “catastrophic.” Still, about two dozen current and former Pentagonofficials and senior commanders said in interviews that the exerciseslargely reflected the military’s response to orders from Mattis and servicechiefs to be ready for any possible military action on the Korean Peninsula.
President Dobald Trump’s words have left senior military leaders andrank-and-file troops convinced that they need to accelerate theircontingency planning.
In perhaps the most incendiary exchange, in a September speech at theUnited Nations, Trump vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if itthreatened the United States, and derided the rogue nation’s leader, KimJong Un, as “Rocket Man.” In response, Kim said he would deploy the”highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history” against the UnitedStates, and described Trump as a “mentally deranged US dotard.”
Trump’s rhetoric has since cooled after a fresh attempt at detente betweenPyongyang and Seoul. In an interview last week with The Wall StreetJournal, Trump was quoted as saying, “I probably have a very goodrelationship with Kim Jong Un,” despite their mutual public insults. Butthe president said Sunday that The Journal had misquoted him, and that hehad actually said “I’d probably have” a good relationship if he wanted one.
A false alarm in Hawaii on Saturday that set off about 40 minutes of panicafter a state emergency response employee mistakenly sent out a text alertwarning of an incoming ballistic missile attack underscored Americans’anxiety about North Korea.