The potential for accidental war is highest in conditions where technology and doctrine overwhelmingly favor quick, offensive action, and produce quick, decisive outcomes. Wars that could de-escalate following a border skirmish and a few artillery duels can escalate beyond control if both sides understand the timing of offensive action to be critical. Arguably, the conditions on the Korean Peninsula currently match this description. Although there’s virtually no scenario in which North Korea could win a war, if allowed to mobilize and launch well prepared, coordinate offensive activities the DPRK could inflict severe damage on the South Korean military and South Korean civilians.
Even so
U.S. and ROK Combined Forces Command implements a pre-arranged plan -- perhaps using submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs dropped from a B-2 -- to eliminate North Korea's two major missile launch facilities: Tonghae in the northeast and Sohae in the northwest, both of which are fairly close to the Chinese border. North Korea responds with more rockets and Scud missiles, accompanied by North Korean Central News announcements suggesting that they could be armed with biological agents.
China, seeking to restrain all sides, pours troops and materiel across the border to protect its interests and instigates a secret plan to replace Kim Jong Un with a senior general who understands the North's total dependence on its only ally. The resulting confusion leads to a belief that North Korea, and not just the Kim regime, is collapsing. Meanwhile, the United States quietly embarks on a secret mission to secure North Korea's nuclear weapons.
Even now, however, the Second Korean War has only just begun because, as conflict breaks out, all participants expand their strategic goals. South Korea -- which initially had hoped only to force North Korea to calm down enough to re-enter negotiations on nuclear weapons, expanded inter-Korean economic ties, and human rights -- now believes North Korea is going to collapse and starts to implement an assertive reunification policy. The U.S. policy of deterrence and strategic patience has failed, so Washington decides to pursue active denuclearization and regime change. It joins with Seoul in planning postwar reconstruction in which the peninsula is reunified.
Pic -"DMZ will not last forever, right?"
