experts and former officials say that a real war on the Korean peninsula is a scenario nightmarish that would cause terrible loss and potentially trigger a nuclear exchange.
The crisis provoked this week by an artillery attack by North Korea, a South Korean island, seems to make the prospect of an all-out conflict less distant, and representatives of the United States - conscious of the high stakes - have studiously avoided talk of military action.
With a display of artillery trained on Seoul , North Korea could easily jump from the glass towers south of the capital booming for days and kill a large number of civilians by U.S. forces and South Korean prevailed, the experts.
"Models Unofficial Pentagon assumed it would take months to win the war for a cost of nearly one million people or more, in total, including the dead and wounded," said AFP by Michael O'Hanlon, a scholar at the Brookings Institution.
"and that without nuclear weapons could be used," said O'Hanlon, who wrote a book on the effects of a potential war.
The U.S. and allied military planners have long believed that the North would be submerged in a conventional war, but they worry about how Seoul would use his arsenal of chemical weapons and biological, as well as its small cache of bombs, "said Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the Rand Corporation.
" The key question is whether or not they can use their WMD (weapons of mass destruction) effectively, "said Bennett.
Bennett and some other analysts say that North Korea will probably be able to fit a nuclear warhead on its missiles in a few months, and it may already be successful.
In the first hours and days of conflict, combat aircraft the United States will focus on the shooting of nuclear sites, missiles and chemical weapons before the North Koreans have had a chance to use them.
In a war game that was played in 2005 by The Atlantic magazine, former military officers and officials have concluded that American fighters would have to carry up to 4,000 trips per day to prevent a catastrophic weapons of mass destruction on Seoul and the region.
In a war game that was played in 2005 by The Atlantic magazine, former military officers and officials have concluded that American fighters would have to carry up to 4,000 trips per day to prevent a catastrophic weapons of mass destruction on Seoul and the region.
South Korea has said it believes the North has about 100 nuclear facilities, but in the event of war, Pyongyang probably would have stored weapons and atomic material to other places, including a vast network of subterranean sites, "said Bennett.
"We can not have adequate supervision throughout Korea North on the go when something is done, "he said.
If the North chose to fire shells or chemicals in Seoul to launch raids from the sky weapons biological by special forces, it would be risking massive retaliation from the U.S. military - increasing the risk of the first nuclear war.
O'Hanlon said that a scenario more likely is that North Korea conducts a "demonstration" of launching a nuclear weapon, possibly offshore South Korean, in order to deter an invasion by the superior U.S. and allied forces.
"Using a nuke like a clap of demonstration and other detonators to deter a cons-offensive could be a useful strategy for them," he said.
"Fears about the consequences of North Korea's active nuclear armed missiles have led some to call for preemptive strikes."
In 2006, former Defense Secretary William Perry and Ashton Carter, now head of arms procurement in the Pentagon, argued for launching such a preemptive strike to prevent the North from conducting a test ballistic missile.
A retired U.S. colonel, John Collins, in 2003 examined a range of military options and scenarios with North Korea - from naval blockade to nuclear strikes - and fired a dark conclusion.
"All options of the United States described above, could trigger an uncontrollable escalation creating appalling casualties on both sides of the DMZ (demilitarized zone) and promise at best a Pyrrhic victory, "he said.
Translation by Dailycensorship section
War with North Korea poses nightmare scenarios - By Dan De Luce ,
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