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What could possibly go wrong?

As North Korea is reported to be preparing for yet another salvo in the form of a nuclear or missile test, diplomats foresee a warn of a chain of events they fear could escalate into a deadly new Korean War.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi warned Friday morning of “storm clouds” gathering over the Korean peninsula saying that “tit for tat threats between the United States and North Korea with daggers drawn has created a dangerous situation worthy of our vigilance.”

In Pyongyang, vice minister Han Song Ryol accused the United States of fomenting the trouble and vowed, “We will go to war if they choose.”

Threats and bluster are part of a familiar and long-running game of brinksmanship between Washington and Pyongyang, but this time it has been made more dangerous by two volatile new players — Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump.

The current incarnation of North Korea’s ruling dynasty, Kim Jong Un, is in his early 30s — a callow youth and a less predictable character than his father, Kim Jong Il. In little more than five years in office, he has executed his uncle, ordered the assassination of his half-brother and redoubled efforts to develop a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the United States.

Then, there is President Trump, often prone to impulse and almost always undiplomatic, only 12 weeks in office and, like other new presidents, still learning on the job. Through his tweets and his words, Trump has promised to stop North Korea’s progress toward becoming a nuclear power. “North Korea is a problem. The problem will be taken care of,” Trump said Thursday morning.

Trump’s order last week to launch airstrikes against Syria to punish President Bashar Assad’s government for a poison gas attack just 63 hours earlier signaled to supporters his decisiveness, to critics his impetuousness. The president’s penchant for action was also on display Thursday when the U.S. dropped its largest conventional bomb (nicknamed the “Mother of All Bombs”) on an Islamic State cave complex in Afghanistan.

“The most unpredictable part of this story is Trump, not North Korea. North Korea is doing what it always does,” said Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst who specializes in North Korea. She believes that Kim Jong Un, like his father, is essentially a rational player who will not launch a suicidal attack that would bring about the end of his regime. “There is a lot of brinksmanship going on, but people can miscalculate,” she warned. “And things could go very, very wrong.”

What might North Korea do?

North Korea has indicated that it will do something to mark the 105th anniversary on Saturday of the birth of the modern country’s founder, Kim Il Sung. Although Kim Jong Un in his New Year’s address warned that the country might test an intercontinental ballistic missile, military analysts believe that it isn’t ready for testing.

But North Korea could test another short or medium-range missile, a common enough occurrence, or a nuclear weapon. Satellite intelligence suggests that a nuclear test could be in the works. North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests since 2006, each of them followed by howls of indignation from the international community and fresh U.N. Security Council sanctions.

How would the U.S. respond?

The Trump administration has been signaling that this time it will respond forcefully to another North Korean nuclear test. No one knows if Trump would take take military action, but U.S. intelligence officials were quoted Thursday by NBC News as saying they were prepared to launch an airstrike with conventional weapons, mostly likely Tomahawk cruise missiles from one of two U.S. destroyers in the region. (Reuters quoted a senior Trump administration official as saying that report was “flat wrong.”)

Exactly what the U.S. would hit is unclear. North Korea’s nuclear tests are conducted underground and there is no obvious target that wouldn’t have the risk of nuclear fallout. Analysts say it would be possible to retaliate through other means such as attacking North Korea’s submarine fleet off its east coast, something that could be accomplished more discreetly through sabotage than airstrikes.

“Trump needs to make sure he does something different from [former President] Obama in response to a nuclear test. They can’t just go through the motions at the U.N. Security Council, but they have to be sure they don’t pursue a unilateral response that backfires or fails,” said Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations.

How might North Korea respond if the U.S. takes military action?

Given all its rhetoric, North Korea would feel hard-pressed not to retaliate against a U.S. strike. “Our revolutionary strong army is keenly watching every move by enemy elements with our nuclear sight focused on the U.S. invasionary bases not only in South Korea and the Pacific operation theater but also in the U.S. mainland,” North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper warned Tuesday.

Boasting aside, it is unlikely North Korea could target the U.S. mainland, but 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea and 50,000 in Japan are within striking distance. The most vulnerable are those stationed near the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea. The South Korean capital of Seoul lies only 30 miles away, making it vulnerable to conventional artillery dug into the mountainsides near the DMZ.

“There would be a great temptation for the North Koreans to throw a few artillery shells into Seoul. They might not be able to flatten the place, but they could do a lot of damage,” said Carl Baker, a retired Air Force officer who was stationed in South Korea, now with the Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu.

Military analysts have no doubt that combined U.S. and South Korean forces could beat North Korea. But a wounded North Korean regime could punish its adversaries with what strategists sometimes refer to as the last lash of the dragon’s tail.

During an earlier showdown with North Korea in 1994, the Clinton administration weighed airstrikes to prevent North Korea from reprocessing fuel rods from its Yongbyon nuclear complex. The plan was scuttled after computer simulations showed that up to 1 million people could be killed by North Korean retaliation. The casualties could be even larger today because of new real estate developments in the northern suburbs of Seoul, Baker said.

“The Trump administration now is relearning the same lessons that we learned in 1994. Trump needs to understand that all options are not on the table,” Baker said. `We hope that he will make good, rational decisions based on input from policy advisors.”

How would Asian neighbors react if the U.S. struck North Korea?

China would vociferously protest any U.S. airstrikes against North Korea, its traditional Communist ally, with the same type of language that Russia used in complaining about the American attack against its ally, the Syrian government. Analysts do not believe that China would retaliate against the United States, but Chinese leaders would position themselves in a more confrontational position. “I would expect they would move forces toward the border to prevent North Koreans from fleeing into China and to prevent the Americans from becoming more adventurous,” Baker said.

How would military action against North Korea be received in South Korea and Japan?

U.S. allies South Korea and Japan might be angrier than China if the United States took unilateral action because they stand to bear the brunt of North Korean retaliation.

Trump’s strong stance toward North Korea could alienate South Koreans at a time when they are poised to vote for a new president. A special election is scheduled for May 9 to replace impeached President Park Geun-Hye, and her successor is likely to be less conservative.

“The safety of South Korea is as important as that of the United States. There should never be a preemptive strike without South Korean consent,” Moon Jae-In, one of the leading candidates, said in a Facebook posting. Moon has also said he would try to solve the problem by heading to Pyongyang, not Washington.

Robert Gallucci, a professor at Georgetown University who was with the Clinton administration in 1994 when it considered striking North Korea, said Trump should not consider any military response without careful consultation with South Korea and Japan.

The question, he said at a Council on Foreign Relations discussion last month in New York, boils down to this: “Are we ready to go to war? And if we’re not, what the hell are we talking about?”

If we don’t want to go to war, what other options are there?

Trump said he offered Chinese President Xi Jinping better terms on trade if China would do more to rein in North Korea. Almost all of North Korea’s fuel oil, hard currency, construction material and imported food passes through the 850-mile border between the two countries. The United States could also apply pressure on China with so-called secondary sanctions, which would target Chinese companies and banks that deal with North Korea.

And then, the Trump administration could consider direct negotiations with the North Koreans. A North Korean delegation was supposed to come to New York last month for back-channel talks, but the administration canceled their visas after the assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, in Malaysia.

barbara.demick@latimes.com

@BarbaraDemick