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What if President Clinton had opted not to strike the Yongbyong nuclear facility in June 1994, thus averting the Second Korean War?

For one, I doubt that North Korea would have been able to survive much longer than it did, war or no war. It’s primary backer, the USSR, had collapsed three years prior, and it was already in the beginnings of a major economic crisis. Assuming they aren’t somehow butterflied away, the floods of 1995 would have probably pushed it over the edge. Maybe a nuclear-armed North Korea would have been able to blackmail the world into sending it aid, but then I doubt they would have been able to develop a bomb in time.

I also doubt that we’d have avoided the nuclearization of Iran, Iraq, and Libya, as all those nations had been actively seeking nuclear weapons prior to the war with North Korea. Perhaps in this ATL, without the specter of Korean War II hanging over it, the US may have instead intervened to prevent one or more of these nations from developing nuclear weapons (and thus likely averting the nuclear exchange that ended the Second Iran-Iraq War in 2003).

On the other hand, without Korea Clinton would certainly have run again in 1996, and may have even won despite some of his more controversial policies like the AWB. South Korea and Japan would probably have continued to be prosperous nations without the war; the destruction of Seoul and the failure of reunification ultimately crippled the former, while the latter never really recovered after the July 4th chemical bombardment of Tokyo and Osaka.


Finally, while the collapse of the post-Cold War unipolar world order was probably inevitable, the US might have been the unchallenged top dog for much longer than IOTL were it not for Korean War II. Fear of the US in the wake of Korean War II was a major motivation for the Russian military coup of January ‘95 and the signing of the Manzhouli Pact.

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