It's no secret that North Korea is starving. It's also no secret that they have nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately, military planners know that the nuclear sites are often in the middle of a large civilian populace.
Maj. Gen. Bill Hix, director of the Army’s Concept Development and Learning Directorate, told reporters at a recent war game the best bet was to "use humanitarian assistance as a form of maneuver."
The combination of the nuclear technology and a starving populace was problematic for military planners involved in the game:
[A major problem] was that a large number of nuclear sites were in populated areas, so they had to try to perform humanitarian assistance operations while conducting combined arms maneuver and operations.
The best weapon in this case is a tandem between dropping food and special operations "counter-Weapons of Mass Destruction" guys.
That means literally baiting the civilian populace: dropping prodigious amounts of food outside the area of these nuclear sites to distract noncombatants (possibly even combatants) away from the target.
An excerpt which illustrates how effective this tactic would be come from an ABC news report on troop build ups:
At a border checkpoint, it is easy to tell where the North begins because there are no trees.
The people chop them down for firewood to keep warm and eat the softer roots. The lack of food and nutrition is so bad in North Korea that UNICEF estimates 28 percent of the children have stunted growth. One study found that on average North Koreans are a full two inches shorter than South Koreans.
In the case of a people so hungry, food is a good motivator to leave an area (even to abandon a post). If open war broke out, that food would be even more motivating.
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