Did North Korea sink the South Korean navy ship

News reports today indicate that it is most likely that it was a North Korean torpedo that sank a South Korean ship last month with the loss of many South Korean sailors. Salvage crews raised the front end of the sunken ship and preliminary indications are that it sank as a result of an external explosion outside the hull. While these conclusions are preliminary, they do raise the riddle of how to deal with the North if it was responsible for the sinking and all of the death.

Right now, the South Korean president is assuring the world that South Korea has no plans to respond militarily to this attack. The preliminary nature of the findings give him that luxury. If the final conclusion drawn from the salvage operation is that it was a North Korean attack that led to the sinking, many of the options disappear. Will the president be able to just condemn the attack an go on with business as usual? Will the South Korean public allow its navy to be attacked with no retribution? these are very important questions for the USA since we still have 28,000 troops in South Korea, with nearly all of them stationed near the border with North Korea. Any military action in Korea places all of the troops in danger.

Of course, to make matters worse, the North Koreans have nuclear weapons. One strike on Seoul could kill many millions of people. Hopefully, it will never come to that, but one does have to wonder how the North Koreans view President Obama and his likeliness to use US nukes to avenge a North Korean attack on the South. The fruits of a weak and apologetic foreign policy may soon have the consequence of further emboldening the North Koreans. Indeed, I wonder if the North Koreans would have taken the risk of attacking the South Korean navy were Bush still the US president. That is something we will never know for sure.