North Korea Invades South Korea in 1975

If it stopped the Soviets from sending ships past the Blockade of Cuba - it would certainly stop tanks from rolling into West Berlin.

M.A.D as a deterent was real.

It is if your opposite number thinks you're willing to pull the trigger over what's at stake.

Nukes in Cuba in theory threatened the US's ability to deliver MAD which is obviously critical. Soviet tanks rolling West doesn't directly. If the U.S. lets two allies go down, it isn't crazy to think they're not willing to swap American cities for European capitals.
 

nbcman

Donor
US Army readiness had been improving for a few years prior to 1975. A better time for the DPRK to attack would be soon after the draft was suspended in 1973 when the US forces were in the process of returning from Vietnam and being reorganized and retrained.
 
It is if your opposite number thinks you're willing to pull the trigger over what's at stake.

Nukes in Cuba in theory threatened the US's ability to deliver MAD which is obviously critical. Soviet tanks rolling West doesn't directly. If the U.S. lets two allies go down, it isn't crazy to think they're not willing to swap American cities for European capitals.

You're ignoring the fallout that "letting two allies go down" would have on the Western alliance system.
If you give up Germany and Korea just because you don't have "resolve" then NATO is utterly discredited. It's not just about trading cities for cities at that point, but cities for global hegemony and noone in the US is going to allow that to happen - even in the malaise of the 70s.

Also there's the fact that US forces were stationed in Germany and Korea. I guess the soldiers located there would be collateral damage when the Reds overrun their bases?
Absurd.
 
You're ignoring the fallout that "letting two allies go down" would have on the Western alliance system.
If you give up Germany and Korea just because you don't have "resolve" then NATO is utterly discredited. It's not just about trading cities for cities at that point, but cities for global hegemony and noone in the US is going to allow that to happen - even in the malaise of the 70s.

Also there's the fact that US forces were stationed in Germany and Korea. I guess the soldiers located there would be collateral damage when the Reds overrun their bases?
Absurd.

Well that was the assumption I was responding too. If the U.S. forces in Korea were overrun without response then what conclusions would you expect the USSR to make about American resolve?
 

James G

Gone Fishin'
The United States wouldn't, couldn't do nothing when their troops in South Korea and at the frontlines were killed/captured. Withdrawing from South Vietnam was one thing; just ignoring the slaughter of their own troops behind the DMZ - who the North Koreans couldn't avoid - was impossible.
 
If it stopped the Soviets from sending ships past the Blockade of Cuba - it would certainly stop tanks from rolling into West Berlin.

M.A.D as a deterent was real.

America of 1963 was a unified place on foreign affairs with a draft and a foreign policy consensus.

America projected strength to the world at the time. Image matters when it comes to a nations credibility that it means what it says.
 
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America of 1963 was a unified place on foreign affairs with a draft and a foreign policy consensus.

America projected strength to the world at the time. Image matters when it comes to a nations credibility that it means what it says.

That has nothing to do with it.
An attack is an attack
(ex. see isolationist lobby on December 8th, 1941)
and if the DPRK moves on South Korea in '75, the US will respond. period. And if the Russians come in to help - Everything is on the table.

Anything else is ASB.
 
That has nothing to do with it.
An attack is an attack
(ex. see isolationist lobby on December 8th, 1941)
and if the DPRK moves on South Korea in '75, the US will respond. period. And if the Russians come in to help - Everything is on the table.

Anything else is ASB.

Because we responded when the North Vietnamese Army attacked the South with air power? Nope Congress cut off funds.

The mindset in 75 was hard anti-war in Congress, and a bit less so the public, heck Carter was seriously considering pulling out of South Korea after his election and letting them fend for themselves.

Ford had little real legitimacy in the public eyes to stand up to Congress not having been elected President or VP.

US troops might or might not be overrun before the nation comes out of its funk and Congress writes a big check, if they are then there is a danger of war in Europe was my point as Moscow is going to be looking at America thinking Vietnam broke her national will.
 
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What's your source for this?

Carter campaigned on getting our troops out of Korea and finally 'ending the war' there. He even announced his decision to pull out as President as seen below, but under slow and building pressure he backtracked and we still have troops there.

Carter's Decision on Korea Traced Back to January, 1975

Jimmy Carter's decision to withdraw ground troops from South Korea goes back at least to January, 1975, and the earliest days of his campaign for President. His original idea was to pull out all U.S. forces - ground and air - and to negotiate assurances from China and the Soviet Union that North Korea would not invade the south.

The origins and evolution of Carter's ideas are of unusual importance because his campaign stand has been translated directly into U.S. policy with a minimum of official review. In order to avoid a battle within the government, a National Security Council study leading to the U.S. withdrawal plan did not question whether American ground troops should be removed but focused instead on how many should be removed.

As sent to the White House in mid-March, the council's Presidential Review Memorandum 13 acknowledged that there are differences of opinion about the troop withdrawal policy and that the impact of it is difficult to predict. At the explicit instruction of Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, however, the State-Defense-Central Intelligence Agency study accepted as its promise Carter's previous announced conclusion that the troops should be taken out.

Without making an overt recommendation, PRM-13 reported the carefully hedged view that the risk will be within acceptable limits provided that the withdrawal of ground troops is carefully managed, that essential U.S. support elements remain, that adequate compensation be supplied to South Korea for the reduction in its defense capacity and that other U.S. actions do not send the wrong signals to North Korea.

While after-the-fact justifications have been made public, there is no indication that the government review considered Carter's own reason for the pullout and some responsible officials have conceded that they do not know what they are.

Major Gen. John K. Singlaub, who was relieved last month as chief of staff of U.S. forces in Korea after publicly criticizing the withdrawal, told Congress that the Joint Chiefs of Staff never gave its Seoul command a reason for the planned withdrawal despite requests for an explanation.

On Jan. 16, 1975, a month after declaring his condidacy for President and two weeks after leaving the governorship of Georgia, Carter told a meeting of the editorial page board of The Washington Post that he favored taking U.S. troops out of Korea and would be prepared to begin as soon as he became President.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...ef9-bcac-25b8fc999559/?utm_term=.d245f6ec1ca8
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Carter campaigned on getting our troops out of Korea and finally 'ending the war' there. He even announced his decision to pull out as President as seen below, but under slow and building pressure he backtracked and we still have troops there.
Thanks. :)

Also, though, such assurances from China and the Soviet Union might have been fickle, no?
 

James G

Gone Fishin'
Carter campaigned on getting our troops out of Korea and finally 'ending the war' there. He even announced his decision to pull out as President as seen below, but under slow and building pressure he backtracked and we still have troops there.

This is something I didn't know and actually rather useful for something I have plans for in the future. I thought it was a misconception that Carter was weak on foreign affairs.
 
Unless PRC itself starts sending in the troops, it is highly unlikely that ROK would lose a conflict. The Vietnam War had help to greatly modernize the ROK military, million and millions had been pumped into the country by the remittance from the troops in Vietnam, anti-Communist sentiments were at an all-time high, population difference is large, etc.
 
Wouldn't the US be able to establish air superiority rather quickly on the peninsular which would put an end to the NK offensive rather quickly.

The question of popular will comes up with what will the US and SK and their allies do once the tide is turned.

Return to the status quo or demand concessions.

While reunification is not likely the US/SK forces would at the very least demand reparations.

Perhaps South Korea joins SEATO and that organization is reenergized
 
Wouldn't the US be able to establish air superiority rather quickly on the peninsular which would put an end to the NK offensive rather quickly.

The question of popular will comes up with what will the US and SK and their allies do once the tide is turned.

Return to the status quo or demand concessions.

While reunification is not likely the US/SK forces would at the very least demand reparations.

Perhaps South Korea joins SEATO and that organization is reenergized[QUOTE

What NK would do is break the armistice so like it or not, I suspect not, China would be on NK's side and the US would continue it's UN action. Remember this is when US "opened" relations with China and they had very bad relations with the USSR. Plus it would show how weak China really was!
 
Mao was an old man by this time would he support NK, grab a shot for something he couldn't get done 20 years ago? Or was he too far gone? The Gang of Four might come out of the background sooner.
 

The Yom Kippur War was a much less serious threat to U.S. interests than the DPRK reinvading the ROK would be and Nixon still had no shortage of political support in pulling out all the stops to support Tel Aviv, including going to Defcon 3. The class of '74 made things more liberal than they had been before but not so much so that the U.S. wouldn't immediately stand to if the ROK were attacked.

If Kim il-Sung did invade he would find things far more difficult than in 1950. The ROK Military during the OTL Korean War was comically disorganized and the American garrison at the beginning was tiny. The U.S. literally was deliberately skimping on equipping them because they thought it would help prevent conflict by keeping them from starting stuff up with the North. As a result, the ROK Army in 1950 did not have a single tank or heavy artillery piece and anti-tank weapons were almost non-existent. Boy, did we get that one wrong...

By 1975 though, nobody was making that mistake. South Korea had a Navy and Air Force that not only actually existed but were top of the line, and the army was very well-equipped. The whole military was full of combat veterans from both Vietnam and the original Korean War. The politics had also changed in the South's favor. China intervened IOTL because they were worried that the U.S. could intervene on the mainland in support of the Kuomintang. Remember that the Korean War started literally eight months after Chiang Kai-Shek retreated to Taiwan and there was still tons of amphibious warfare over islands off the coast between the two sides and tens of thousands of KMT insurgents were still operating within the country. By 1975 that had changed. The Communists were securely in power, had become anti-Soviet, had nuclear weapons, and were actively trying to build better relations with the U.S., who in turn had gained more of a respect for their willingness to intervene and would have tread lighter as a result. They weren't going to intervene again.

There's an off-chance the North Koreans would get to Seoul but they wouldn't get much further than that before the U.S. intervened in force and the whole wide world came raining down on them.
 
on google earth, about a Km south of the munsan train station, you can see FEBA Alpha. zoom in to see the barriers(note the 'dragons teeth' in the river bed). keep in mind, the infrastucture of the time was a fraction of that seen now. the only highway(4 lane, undivided, all access) was MSR 1(where you can see the relatively small block drops(they are actually huge), everything else was pretty much dirt roads. none of those high rises and big blue roofed buildings existed. there were only two bridges in the area; freedom bridge, an old single lane railroad, northwest of munsan and libby bridge, concrete, at changpa-ri 11Km NNE of munsan; there are cliffs there. this area was covered by ROK 1st infantry division and 3rd brigade u.s. 2d infantry division, (2-9 infantry, just across the imjin, by freedom bridge; 1-32 infantry and 3d brigade hq at cp. howze, 12 Km SSE of munsan; 4-7 cav at camp gary owen and stanton AAF, 6 and 9Km SE of munsan. about 2Km east of munsan was camp pelham, 2-17FA(m102, 105mm howitzers, in gun pits), MP platoon and E company 2d engineers(pontoon bridge) and a vulcan battery at RC4. ROK 1st division was scattered throughout the area in small company/battalion sized camps. M47 tanks and F86 fighters were regularly seen. also, just about everyone was part of some type of militia. there was a small police station/box outside our camp gate, basically an arms room full of M1s, maybe M14s for the local 'militia'(farmers, bar girls and what not). not much military use, but would be a problem for infiltrators, when they started beating the local hills and 'bush'. just some on the scene information from 77 thru early 80s; though there were a lot of changes from 80 on.
 
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