"Imminent" and "Harrowing"
- Thread starter MyTeamIsOnTheFloor
- Start date
And by nation you mean President as he is the only one with control over anything?
So what do you do with a deranged lunatic that is so desperate for notoriety that he's willing to sacrifice the lives of his people to further his nuclear program?
Nothing good. It's easy to criticize from the sidelines, but there are no policy answers. Hope that he's not totally suicidal.
This should calm your nerves
“We will handle North Korea. We are gonna be able to handle them. It will be handled. We handle everything,” Trump said.
This is the result of a global pacifist movement. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there are too many instances where pacifism and inaction (see Germany in the late 1930s) leads to larger and more deadly conflicts in the future. Maybe this will fizzle out, but I'd doubt it and it's just going to get more risky as NK progresses its Nuclear program and weaponry.
Huh? You want to flesh that one out in a little more detail?
Right. North Korea is a no win. It's a problem without an acceptable solution. That's why every administration has ignored it. Eventually someone will be in the Big Chair when the music stops. Sucks that it could be Trump.
you mean trump?
I haven't seen any evidence that KJ is anything other then a run of the mill dictator solely interested in self-preservation.
Germany in 1938 is an interesting conundrum, and why my avatar is what it is. We know what happened, which leads to the ability to point this out. There is an alternate universe where Britain and France declared war and lost*. Those people today use that as an example of why to be careful in declaring war.
* Yes, some of the German general staff had mutiny plans. We don't know if they would have succeeded, none of their other mutiny plans ever succeeded. But the reality for France and Britain was simple. France was shattered by WWI. Her population was 40 million when that war started and she lost more men in that war than the US has in all wars combined, to this date. Her birthrate was very low. She didn't have manpower, and economically the depression had her teetering on bankruptcy. Her military wasn't bad, but badly organized for an offensive warfare. Unlike Germany, she did not mass tanks but just added a few tanks into each infantry unit. As a result, the fastest any unit could move was the speed of her infantry.
Britain was in terrible shape. She always was totally dependent on her navy. In 1938 she had no real Royal Air Force. The German bombers were faster than Britain's fighters, which is why Germany built medium bombers instead of heavy bombers. Had Britain gone to war in 1938, she could not have stood up to the Battle of Britain.
Now to be fair to the counter, the west had two serious opportunities before Munich. One was the first time Hitler wanted to go into Austria. Mussolini mobilized his army and stopped Hitler. Britain and France were asked by Mussolini to assist in moving into Germany, they refused. Now, who knows if that would be more successful given no one is sure if Italy as an ally was a positive or a negative. The second was with Czech, Stalin wanted to move. Now the catch here is different. In order to get to Germany, Russia needed permission to move through Poland. Poland was not going to give it. And in WWI Britain had gone to war with Germany because Germany wanted to pass through Britain's protectorate of Belgium. Poland was also now protected by Britain, and Poland certainly did not want the Russian army passing through.
The decisions of the 1930s weren't easy. They may have been wrong. I just don't think people have completely looked at this from the view of Britain and France. Neither had an army or much of an air force. Germany's army was still small, but it had newer equipment and its air force dwarfed the allies and had experience in Spain. Britain and France could have declared war and lost. They could have declared war and lost Eastern Europe and parts of Germany to Russia. They could have declared war and scored a brilliant victory. We do not know what would have happened. But there was a serious risk to them.
Who do you think is/was more unstable - Hitler or Kim Jong-Un?
Or more likely to use a nuke?
Hitler had far and away the better overall military. Fortunately all the scientists that created our bomb left him. I do not know if he would have used the bomb, he didn't use Germany's gas supplies in combat. He was always fearful of retaliation. Civilians were unlikely to retaliate.
North Korea has the bomb. I would be amazed if they aren't afraid of retaliation. They talk as if they are not, but there have been a lot of people who talk the talk but cannot walk the walk. At the moment, I am skeptical he's willing to have a nuke land in his living room. BUT I do agree if he fears we will kill him then he has nothing to lose by conducting a strike. Which might be why ratcheting DOWN the tension is a way to go. I don't have a good way of doing that. But it is much like WWII. Once American soldiers knew that surrendering to the Japanese was death, there was no good choice but to kill as many Japanese as one could before dying. We need to make Kim believe there are alternatives. Invite him to take a billion out of petty cash and move to China and start his own religion worshipping him.
The math is pretty. We know war with him will cause tens of thousands of casualties. But letting him stay risks hundreds of thousands should war happen. What are the odds of that war happening? And of course, the big question, if we attack North Korea what does China do. China is moving into a dispute with India at the moment, maybe she is focused there and does nothing. Maybe us attacking North Korea makes China feel surrounded and she lashes out.
If our experts believe war is inevitable AND China won't do something stupid, I have no problems backing it now. I do however question if this president understands what an expert is.
"Global pacifist movement"? Peace is for pussies?
Should we just go ahead and kill everyone? I suppose it would save us a lot of future headaches.
At worst, he's spent the meager resources of his country on his military armament and nuclear research instead of food and basic Healthcare.
I'm more worried about Trump ordering a preemptive nuclear strike on NK than I am NK firing a nuke at us.
There are many dictators around the world. Not too many have created the bizarro world that is NK.
I see Tillerson is trying to get North Korea to sit down to talks. I am happy someone is trying to get dialogue going.
I just hope Trump doesn't undermine him before he has a chance to accomplish something.
1. He didn't create it.
2. It's like a combo of the old soviet union and a medieval kingdom.
3. Most autocrats do not have absolute rule/citizen idolatry to the extent of KJ.
From the cheap seats, his behavior appears perfectly rational if self-preservation is the end goal.
The problem is that from everything I've read is that NK has no incentive to give up their nuke program. They don't need the $. Their economy is booming by all accounts.
Actually, there was a story this week that South Korea estimated the North's economy has been growing at a very fast clip as of late, confirmed by night satellite pictures showing a noticeable increase in lighting.
Of course, they are still basically a medieval feudal state with nukes, but improvement is improvement.
not as difficult as some problems imo.
all you have to do is take out 1 individual, and if the CIA doesn't have a team headed there now, it's defense policy incompetence.
once you take him out, you start speculation that the US has heard a disgruntled N Korean did it, MI6 hears it was the Chinese, Mossad has heard that it was a middle eastern group that feared him selling nukes to ISIS.
you hope the N Korean military reacts like the guards did when Dorothy threw water on the WWOTW.
regardless, got to be done, and the time is not getting better..
that said, that solution doesn't exactly do anything good for Boeing's or Northrup Grumman's bottom line, so possibly that's the hold up.
no telling how many tens of billions Kim Jong-un, alive and in power, is worth to those companies alone, let alone the Navy budget and all missile defense contractors.
why would you eliminate a potentially trillion dollar golden goose.
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You somewhat made my point though Marvin. There are several issues, with the core problem being lack of enforceability of the treaty by the entire League of Nations. Why should it have only been France and Britain if many other countries signed on? There was no teeth to stopping Germany from remobilization and remilitarizing, much like diplomacy has proven ineffective with Iran, NK, Russia, etc.
USAToday (I think) has an article about Kim online today. According to people who have defected and others who study North Korea, he isn't insane. Cruel yes, insane no. What he realizes is that if Saddam had nukes, we wouldn't have attacked. So he views that program literally as his lifesaver. But because he is sane, he largely can be counted on to do the sane thing. I guess the comparison there again is Hitler, who never authorized chemical use on the battlefield. They didn't make that comparison.
Our problem is we have bought into the insanity idea and too easily dismiss him. I don't know what openings exist for improved relations. I am very skeptical we will ever get him to give up his nuclear weapons. Our sanctions are no longer destroying their economy, China buys enough from them. I think we need to come to the reality on the ground, he's there and he has nukes and that isn't going to change.
As to the idea of killing him, it sounds good. It isn't easy. He's aware he is a target. His movements are highly secret. He has many underground lairs. Look at how hard we found it to be to find Saddam, or OBL. Or our successes in killing Castro. Inserting teams is very tough, his people are very paranoid about the state so they report everything as anything might be a test by their security services.
We may need to start negotiations with "you get to keep the bomb but ...".
Our problem is we have bought into the insanity idea and too easily dismiss him. I don't know what openings exist for improved relations. I am very skeptical we will ever get him to give up his nuclear weapons. Our sanctions are no longer destroying their economy, China buys enough from them. I think we need to come to the reality on the ground, he's there and he has nukes and that isn't going to change.
As to the idea of killing him, it sounds good. It isn't easy. He's aware he is a target. His movements are highly secret. He has many underground lairs. Look at how hard we found it to be to find Saddam, or OBL. Or our successes in killing Castro. Inserting teams is very tough, his people are very paranoid about the state so they report everything as anything might be a test by their security services.
We may need to start negotiations with "you get to keep the bomb but ...".
What made WWII a little different is by 1935 or so a lot of people came to the conclusion the WWI armistice was too hard on Germany. Whether it was or not is a debate*, but by the point of WWII it had become largely accepted and today it is almost universally accepted. So the countries found themselves thinking they didn't blame Germany for wanting the Rhineland back as a full Germanic area or wanting an air force. To an extent, Germany had become a sympathetic figure. North Korea doesn't have that.
* Germany had been VERY hard on France after the Franco-Prussian War. The indemnity leveled against France was more in real dollars than leveled against Germany. Bismark told the German leadership that if they went ahead with those terms they would be at war with France within 50 years, and they were. The WWI sanctions were too harsh, but Germany actually has themselves to blame by inviting retaliation from France after their previous war.
other than the Cuban missile crisis days ,if we'd wanted to kill Castro or Saddam, we could have. (and we're a lot more sophisticated now than 40 yrs ago).
does Kim not make public appearances?
not buying we couldn't infiltrate NK and take him out.
that said, and as i said before, you'd be taking out a trillion dollar golden goose for the defense industry.
so who associated with the defense industry, or who receives wads of money from the industry, is going to recommend that.
it's not just Kim having nukes that's an issue, but also who Kim might provide nukes or components to.
should have taken him out yesterday, and every day we wait is a colossal clusterfk.
