Well, that, and that and too strategically important to China to fail. However frustrated the DPRK makes them, they still don't want an American-allied Korea on their border.
Serious question: why? What do they envisage happening in that scenario? Korea invading them seems unlikely, they trade with the US all the time, and there have recently been massive American forces on their border in Afghanistan with noone batting an eyelid.
But China is a strategic nuclear power - the idea that a unified Korea would risk violating their territorial integrity is far-fetched, they are far more likely to be attacked by the North out of desperation!
China tends to think extremely long term, both in then past and future.
For example: one of the most criticized of China behavior, that is the occupation of many parts of mongolian and related lands, is a way to prevent another Khan starting another Yuan dynasty.
Similarly China had many wars with Korea, and don't trust them (neither do the Japanese, thus why they don't move a finger to get rid of North Korea either, nevermind blatant racism in Japan, like the fact that nonasians can expect to get citizenship after about 20 years trying, while many second and third generation Koreans still aren't allowed to be citizens)
China wants a blue-water navy, and they want to keep US military bases far enough away that a pre-emptive strike is difficult. Their Pacific coast is blocked off by opposed states: South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are protected by the United States, and while the Philippines has slipped into a more complicated situation recently, they're still quite hostile to China. It's stated Chinese military doctrine to work towards securing this "first island chain," and disable US military bases and aircraft carrier groups in the area. This prevents the United States from exerting control through potential pre-emptive strike capability, and in the long run ensures them an easy path to the Pacific.
Although I'll note that as of WWII that strategy was pants for Imperial Japan. We peeled off their 3 or so defensive island chains, and nowadays we're a lot more mobile, we have all sorts of things than can all but completely ignore such like ballistic missiles, stealth planes and stealthy nuclear subs, etc. Maybe we couldn't stop them from taking Taiwan, especially if they're willing to pound it into rubble† with the ... more than a thousand IRBMs they've got pointed at it, but we could make that very expensive.
†Which would then crater a lot of everyone's economies as foundry chips, computers and their components get super scarce to unavailable for a long time....
And you don't think the Japanese didn't know that? (On the other hand, anyone pointing that out would have been assassinated, so...). And note we were likely to be committed to the European theater as well.
A lot of this comes down to quality, which by and large neither the Japanese had at the time, e.g. an ability to built reliable airplane engines significantly more powerful than the one the Zero started out with, and as for the PRC, the latest tidbit in this area is their embarrassment that for all the billions of ball point pens they manufacture each year, they have to import the ball bearings, since they can't produce them in the quality required, at least not at the volumes required.
(On the other hand, their Long Lance torpedoes were an unpleasant surprise, and their torpedoes actually worked, or at least they quickly fixed whatever problems theirs' had (I've read in passing that all the naval power's torpedoes had problems at the beginning of the war, unfortunately the US Navy bureaucracy's total inability to believe field reports resulted in very bad results for more than a year). Then again, you didn't really need such fast and long range torpedoes, and they weren't decisive.)
And quality matters a lot in warfare. Just our nuclear attack subs alone could make an invasion of Taiwan ultimately impractical, unless they somehow figure out how to find them (and even espionage isn't going to be enough to target weapons).
Sure, but I'm just pointing out that saying some strategy didn't work for Japan in the Pacific nearly a hundred years ago has little bearing on what that would mean for China, given the differences in technology, industrial strength, and military strategy.
For one thing, the de facto state of the world right now is that the US controls all the oceans. Being able to secure island chains and put area denial weapons on them would increase China's capabilities and also reduce the US ability to project power easily. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be swept aside in a real war, but they would impose a real cost on the US to get rid of, and that's the entire point.
Is there any way the world could become more peaceful, and we could get rid of the seemingly eternal gun-pointing happening between the USA (+ NATO), China, Russia etc? Curious to hear what possible steps can be taken to calm the worlds warmongerers down further. What are possibilities for the future.
>is there any way the world could become more peaceful
The world is becoming more peaceful.
And in theory, nuclear weapons make the world more so, which is why these countries pursue them. Despite what the mainstream news likes to report, there's a microscopic probability that the DPRK would attempt to use a nuke offensively.
The number of casualties in conflicts has going down FAST in the second part of the 20th century. We are in a historical worldwide period of unprecedented peace.
The most recent aberrant point in that downward path has been the Iraq war. But even this one pales in comparisons of the horrors of the past.
If you're going to watch that video (and you should, it's great), I would suggest watching it on the source website[0]. It has a better interactive version where you can move around the charts, and I'm sure they would prefer to get the traffic directly rather than some intermediate site that's just embedded the video.
Don't pin me down on this one. Statistics differ because they count differently. However, overall they will agree that the number of conflicts is declining.
On a side note, the number homicides is also constantly declining in most developed countries.
Despite what the mainstream news likes to report, there's a microscopic probability that the DPRK would attempt to use a nuke offensively.
I would like to believe that, but I'm not so sure I do. There have been plenty of people in history who have advocated a nuclear first strike: MacArthur and 'Che' Guevara being two examples. I don't feel that Kim Jong Un or the North Korean government are particularly rational.
True, and my two examples did not have the authority to push the button, but Kim Jong Un does. That, and I don't trust North Korea to implement sane nuclear control structures. I certainly hope I'm wrong, but I am unwilling to discount the possibility of North Korea doing something totally crazy.
"Doing something crazy" is NK's fundamental foreign policy. Its been described as, they want to be the crazy uncle who makes unreasonable, irrational demands to get concessions but doesn't go so far as to be committed.
Exactly. This is a country that has sunk ships, shelled civilians, and abducted foreign nationals (Japanese, mostly), forcing them to work for the regime. Every time, they have pretty much gotten away with it. It may all be coldly rational brinkmanship, or they may be as crazy as they look. I would not put it past them to explode a nuclear warhead on Japanese territory as a big, "Don't mess with us," message if they thought they could get away with it. Remember, reality does not matter, it is what they believe that matters. You might say that would be national suicide, but I don't need to understand the motivation to understand that suicide bombers exist.
Honestly, I don't know how the U.S. would respond to such an event, especially if they were not certain that they could prevent another launch.
>Honestly, I don't know how the U.S. would respond to such an event, especially if they were not certain that they could prevent another launch.
The US is obligated by treaty to defend Japan against imminent military threat[0]. As far as I know, that doesn't allow for a preemptive strike by the US, but landing a nuke on Japanese territory would probably require the US to respond in kind.
I find the idea of nuclear retaliation rather unlikely. Even ignoring civilian casualties in the North, it is too close to population centres in the South not to mention Chinese and Russian territory.
I think a large conventional attack (with the blessing of China and Russia and possibly also their assistance) is far more likely. That is what I would do. However, you need to be reasonably confident that you can take out their ability to make further nuclear launches not to mention conventional attacks against the South. Remember that Seoul is within artillery range.
At this point, the consequences of not acting are probably greater than the consequences of attacking, but I don't see a scenario where it really ends well for anybody. Would the North take that risk? I certainly hope not, but as I said, I don't trust them to be rational.
Probability of nuclear war before nuclear weapons were invented: 0
Probability of nuclear war after nuclear weapons were invented: > 0
No matter what you say, fact remains that by simply developing nuclear weapons, we've dramatically increased the chances of a nuclear war in the future.
The original commenter was talking about war in general, not nuclear war. Having nuclear weapons makes certain sorts of war (eg. all US/Russian total war) insane, although by no means impossible. Whereas before nuclear weapons it was a lot more thinkable.
Yes, those regimes - as Iran's - are looking for the nuclear weapon to protect themselves, as we do. That's not really fair to prevent other countries to gain access to it just because we disagree with their political views. In no way can we pretend our perspective to be "enlighten" by fair principles.
As sadly as it sound, the H-bomb seems to promote peace through the status-quo : developped country (eg. USA, UK, France, ..) send troops but wheres there is no nuclear threats. Damocles Swords like that (nuclear / bio weapons) prevents us to go to traditional war against each others. Without them, we will end fighting each others, with fists and stones if needed.
It might be due to the lack of this equlibrium weapons that terrorism arise : they can't fight traditionally on their land, neither can't they protect their ideology, so they aims at our weakest part.
* Oh and, as a side note, it only seems to prevents physical war. Nowadays we fight and kill rather through our economy than our bullets.
It isn't just to protect yourself. It is for countries to be able to gain leverage in negotiations. Not everything is done with peace and the greater good in mind.
I think part of the nuclear equation is there is a bit more rationality involved. It's not a couple hot-headed gangbangers or drunk rednecks shooting it out. It's heads of state, generals, etc. At first glance that comparison might seem relevant but the situations are so vastly different I don't think it holds much water.
As an aside, on the topic of American violence itself, I recall reading a study a while back that America has always had much higher levels of violence than European nations, but I cannot seem to find it now. Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?
Well, the second amendment[0] says that weapons are necessary for 'the security of a free state', which is interpreted to mean security against standing armies of the federal government.[1]. Self-defense is the modern interpretation as of 2008.[2]
I don't think it's quite a MAD situation. Hopefully very few are so disillusioned as to think that packing heat is the only thing stopping this whole place from erupting into gun-fire.
There's some evidence if you read Pinker's stuff that the world is becoming more peaceful so we can keep doing what we're doing.
See also
>The Decline of War -
We are experiencing one of the least discussed, yet most remarkable cultural shifts of all time: war, one of our species’ most abiding and defining social practices, is at its lowest ebb ever
More generally, violence at large is declining (although perception of it keeps on increasing, possibly because of easier information sharing, or possibly because of a growing intolerance about it)
Perhaps humans, on average, are willing to accept a roughly constant level of perceived global suffering, and that the increasing ease of media documenting suffering is making it increasingly hard for governments to justify inflicting suffering on other countries?
I've seen a compelling argument (with backing citation) made elsewhere that violence in the first world is actually increasing, but has been masked by advances in trauma medicine. Will edit this post with reference if I can find it.
My worry is that median violence is down but in exchange for a small chance of destroying civilization each year. An average decline in war plus a (say) 1% chance of a global nuclear exchange per year is not a good situation in the long run, but would look great up until you hit that 1%.
The example of the turkey in The Black Swan is appropriate: it's fed every single day, right up until an "unexpected" event occurs on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
The annual chance of a global nuclear exchange has certainly declined since the 60s. I agree it's not zero yet but we're probably ok until skynet kicks in.
This video has a great explanation of what a nuclear war would do to the planet and the people on it, how such a scenario might take place (in all likelihood, during peaceful times it would be entirely accidental), plus what you can do about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug-DJtvHFE0
When you look at the top five weapons exporter in the world [1], then at the United Nation Security Council permanent members [2], you'll understand there is no easy solution to that problem as it is, politically at least.
No nuclear weapons makes the horrible possible again. Remember WWI, WWII? Those were possible because no one was worried about their entire nation being levelled in minutes. Nuclear weapons constrain the actions of their possessors to a degree that global war between large (read: nuclear) powers is almost impossible. Without nuclear weapons, I doubt we have an over 70 year period of more or less peace between the great powers.
When was the last time that happened before nuclear weapons? I can't think of a time without going back at least a millenium.
Man, don't say that. There's no point building a bigger bomb, true, but there's more to weapon "power" than the size of the bang it makes - precision, for a start. For example, a horde of autonomous killbots is a far more powerful weapon than a nuke; you could obliterate a country's populace without fallout and without touching the infrastructure. Do not think for a moment that the US military-industrial complex would not make these if they could.
"While private gunrunners continue to thrive, the world's biggest arms suppliers are the U.S., U.K., Russia, France, and China. They are also the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council."
Yuro Orlov: "I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of those men
are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss, the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year, sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So, you call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil."
> Is there any way the world could become more peaceful, and we could get rid of the seemingly eternal gun-pointing happening between the USA (+ NATO), China, Russia etc? Curious to hear what possible steps can be taken to calm the worlds warmongerers down further. What are possibilities for the future.
The continuous gun pointing has been some of the safest times in all of human history. Sure it's probably bad for your nerves if you think about the reasoning behind how it all works, but I'd much rather have this than go back to actually using conventional weapons on a regular basis.
We have gone 71 years without wars between great powers. While I am not a walking encyclopedia of wars, that is to my knowledge without precedent in the last millenium. Certainly, as far as I can reliably trace great powers (to the Thirty Years' War), it's the longest gap, the second-longest being between the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 and World War I (36 years), and the third-longest being the gap between Russo-Turkish war of 1828-1829 and the Crimean War of 1853-1856 (24 years). That change, largely precipitated by MAD, is nothing to sniff at.
The DPRK can be thought of as rational in that they follow reason and logic, it may not be the same reason and logic that other world leaders and states follow but that doesn't mean that it isn't there and isn't possible for Western strategists to try and factor that in.
I would agree that normally governments make geopolitical decisions in a rational ways. But due to governments being emergent systems you have rare events in which individual incentives can line up to make irrational decisions happen. Look at what happened with the Brexit vote for example.
What's not rational about it? The chances of an externally forced regime change in DPRK just went down by a lot, which is exactly what the regime wanted.
Sure they will say some aggressive things from time to time, but it's entirely rational for them to remind everyone that they have these nukes and are willing to use them.
It can be rational to appear irrational. It is a tactic that is widely used by extortionists; as an extortionist you want to impose as much fear as possible on your opponent that you will execute your threat. And if you're unpredictable that threat looks more scary so your victim might be more willing to pay.
>I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.
This is not a bad idea in spirit. However, one seldom mentioned fact is that anti-Han sentiment runs very deep in both Koreas.
Transforming North Korea into a true vassal state of China may be the solution, but there will need to be a serious governmental transition in North Korea first.
If the United States' military posture was not so depleted at this point, I would say that it is time to seriously consider a conventional first strike.
Right now, North Korea cannot deliver a nuclear payload anywhere. It's one thing to create a nuclear test device, but it's another matter entirely to miniaturize it for delivery.
However, if allowed to progress unimpeded, North Korea will soon have missile technology that can reach Japan consistently. Around the same time, their miniaturization project will likely be complete. At that point, other nations will lose the option of intervention.
North Korea's government is simply... unstable, in both senses of the word. There is simply no other way to put it. The more closely one examines the country, the more disturbing the picture becomes.
They cannot be allowed to have a permanent nuclear deterrent.
I would say that it is time to seriously consider a conventional first strike.
NK has its estimated 10000 conventional artillery pieces in range of Seoul - they will pound it to rubble the old-fashioned way. You can (theoretically) intercept a single ballistic missile, but there is no defence against a mass artillery bombardment.
Sure there is: Conventional artillery is slow. It'll pound Seoul into rubble given time but if they actually tried it, after the first 30 minutes, one of the superpowers would glass them.
Edit: Hmm. You lot make some good points about just how many 'small' hits they could pull off, assuming that each gun emplacement has ammo etc. so I did a bit more research. Seoul Capital Area has an area of ~11,000 kilometers square[0]. Assume a generous affected blast area of roughly a hectare per shell (we're talking about shelling a population center here so you don't have to level every building to have a serious impact) and that's 1.1 million shells (if they're firing with uniform distribution, which they won't be) to seriously damage the city. Assuming a normal distribution where they all aim haphazardly for the CBD and let fly, it's even worse, call it 500k shells at a guess.
10k emplacements, if they have 50 shells each, will deliver this in (as per post below) 8.3 minutes. So yeah, even if it can't "pound Seoul into rubble" it would be a highly undesirable outcome for the South Korean people.
I take it back. Conventional artillery isn't slow if you have enough of it.
That is exactly why they're justified in seeking a nuclear deterrence.
Imagine if Saddam, Assad, and Gaddafi (he stupidly gave whatever he had away to the country that later killed him) all had nukes and the capability to deliver them.
Estimates put their artillery deployment at 13,000. Even assuming they fire for a minute before being completely destroyed by counter battery fire, we're still talking 65,000 shells coming over the border. Push it out to 30 minutes and you've got 2m inbound shells.
is it safe to assume they would have 2 million shells available at once?
Given their extreme poverty, i would think their stockpile of ammo is rather skimpy (surely better invested in than other things in the country, but 2 million shells in 30 minutes sounds like it would be quite an economic outlay for them)
If you can put literally thousands of HE shells on a target per minute - and if the NK gunners are even semi-competent, they can - you don't even need nuclear weapons.
Let's do the maths - I don't know about NK weapons but a NATO 155mm shell contains about 11kg of TNT. 10000 guns can deliver 110 tons of explosive in a single salvo. A British AS90 gun can deliver 6 rounds a minute, so assuming a similar rate, that's a kiloton in 90 seconds or 20 kilotons in the 30 minutes you suggest, or a Hiroshima in just over 20 minutes.
And don't forget artillery will be well dispersed and dug in, and the leadership will be in deep bunkers anywhere in the country. Who and where will you "glass"?
It's interesting. I had written up a few potential objections that I ended up cutting from my post. This was one of them:
"The first objection is that South Korea is right there, and thus is conceivably within range of a nuclear strike. In particular Seoul is directly next to the border with the North. However, there are already more than two thousand North Korean heavy artillery pieces ready to shell the metropolis at any time.
The damage to Seoul is going to be significant under any military intervention scenario. But if action is not taken, the threat from North Korea will become permanent."
Well, the US and ROK would establish air superiority more or less instantly. And air power combined with counter-battery radar means that the North Korean artillery would be degraded with extreme rapidity. Plus, I'm sure the US and ROK forces are aware of a large number of the North Korean artillery positions already, and those would be among the first targets in any conflict.
>North Korea's government is simply... unstable, in both senses of the word.
Not so sure.
Never had a problem with North Korea here in Europe. Of course we're far away, but other governments also far away have indeed dropped nuclear bombs (and at Japan which you're concerned about), and have started wars all over the planet, including meddling in Korean affairs, and sponsoring some dictatorships around the world.
Heck, a far away government once ruled both Koreas as a colony they called Indochina, and another one gathered European citizens to go fight against Koreans in the fifties...
So not so sure why countries that actually did that shit should have the moral high ground or be considered less dangerous UN-wise than countries that merely want to protect their actual borders and haven't harmed anybody yet.
First, North Korea is not a nation defending borders. It is a personal fiefdom that deserves neither the name "nation" nor the respect it entails.
Second, past colonialism does not establish a moral equivalency with the mass-scale starvation, systemic imprisonment, and wholesale torture occurring right now in North Korea. This is an unfortunately common trope trotted out by countless dictatorships over the years. See And you are lynching negroes!"[0]
Third, even assuming for the sake of argument that those events were every bit as terrible as the current nightmare in North Korea, the events which you reference occurred in the past. The North Korean government is committing atrocities now.
We can't do anything about the past. But we can damn sure do something about the future.
While the post you're replying to is a little tongue-in-cheek, it made very valid points. What you are proposing is to forget all lessons we should have learned from the past: that meddling with sovereign states is very short-sighted (see Libya, Iraq, Egypt, both before and after the recent wars); that we should not use weapons just because we have the impression we have more than the others; that attacking a country generates hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees, which neighboring countries have to manage afterward; and that the long-term implications are unknown but usually very painful (see Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria), including for neighboring countries.
Plus, your mention of the lynching has little to do with the reply and the subject. And there are other countries that practice unjust imprisonment and torture, I might mention a few in the West.
We can't do anything about the past except remembering it and practicing its teaching. If by "doing something about the future" means bombing NK, then the future will have millions of refugees pouring into China, Russia, and South Korea. At least we should ask an opinion to the "reasonable" countries that border NK.
>First, North Korea is not a nation defending borders. It is a personal fiefdom that deserves neither the name "nation" nor the respect it entails.
That's like, your opinion man. Other fiefdoms, especially rich in oil and fundamentalism, seem to be respected just fine, with their monarchs et al.
>Second, past colonialism does not establish a moral equivalency with the mass-scale starvation, systemic imprisonment, and wholesale torture occurring right now in North Korea.
Isn't some other country the number one in the world in terms of imprisonment? That has like 5% of the world's population, but 25% of it's prison population? And where blacks are disproportionately imprisoned?
Another sadly all too common trope is for people in glasshouses to throw stones, or even worse to look at "the speck of sawdust in their brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in their own eye".
And of course it's "all in the past" (as if colonialism is ancient history),and hundreds of thousands have not died and whole countries been destabilized in the past 15 years, with BS offensives and pretexts like WMDs and such.
>Third, even assuming for the sake of argument that those events were every bit as terrible as the current nightmare in North Korea
What "nightmare" that's any different than any run of the mill dictatorship supported and sponsored by "holier than thou" countries (not to mention beasts like Pinochet)?
There's imprisonment, hunting of dissidents and other stuff, but nothing beyond the ordinary. And if it wasn't for embargoes there wouldn't be much starving either.
Suharto's Indonesia was sponsored to hunt down and kill 1 million or so dissidents -- but those were lefties, so it doesn't count. Plus it was 40 to 20 years ago, ancient history.
Most of the "nightmare" seems to be the same kind manufactured truth used time and again to install dirty lackeys in yet another place (like the dictator's uncle being thrown to the dogs and other inanities). Libya and Iraq today are worse than with their dictators, and as for Syria, their legitimate guy looks like a bargain compared to the fundamentalist madmen that control those parts now.
I've never seen those mocking the "and you're lynching negroes" argument doing it for anything else than to defend their double standards.
It's always: "Sure, we do X bad thing, but it doesn't matter, because it was in the past, or because what's important now is to fight the Y bad thing, or because that doesn't absolve Y".
And, yes, it doesn't absolve Y, but it bloody puts it in perspective. And it also doesn't absolve X, so why those mocking the "and you're lynching negroes" line never seem to have a problem with the X, e.g. the negro lynching but always with what the other side does? Maybe they should begin by fixing their own glass house instead of telling others how to fix their?
Most of it, yes, but the British had their own hands there too. After the French left though, it was the US who pursued their "strategic interests" in the area.
True, mixed the names. Indochina was Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc, which the French coming out of WWII tried to keep, but ended up passing control over these to the US to fight the "good fight".
The Korean war was another Cold War play-field in Asia the coincided and happened to draw, among other US and "UN" forces, the French, who couldn't be bothered to fight Hitler in their own turf, but wanted suddenly to help fight communists 10.000 miles from their borders.
>If the United States' military posture was not so depleted at this point,
Compared to whom?[0][1][2] We are first or second in most measures of military strength globally. We currently likely have the most powerful military ever to exist in human history.[3]
Exactly! We could realistically decrease our military funding by the 20% Gary Johnson has suggested and STILL be the largest and strongest in most measures.
The only place we are weak is that we are stretched thin. But we did that to ourselves through interventionist policies.
First, that is not the US's decision to make. This whole idea of the US being the world police is absurd at face value, there are many other countries in this world and just about all of them are more threatened and geographically closer to North Korea.
At the very least South Korea needs to be involved. A strike against North Korea will put South Korea immediately into an expensive all out war even if they didn't start it. Second, even if the US military was "still" mighty[1] we would need the blessing of Russia and China or at least their promise not to retaliate and start World War III.
To the person who said...
> There are also credible reports of genocide. That'd be reason enough don't you think?
NO! Many times no! This is one of the reasons the world hates us. We think it is our position to unilaterally police everyone in the world. Everyone should universally decry genocide, absolutely and aggressively. But we are citizens of the world not dictators. We should not be pre-emptively striking. We should not be sending money and weapons to other countries (or at least only send them to one side of the fight for god sake so we don't have two sides fighting each-other with our own weapons!). Every time we have been interventionists either overtly or covertly it has caused unintended consequences and often disastrous ones. When will we learn that it hurts more than helps?
* I say this as a born American.
[1] We spent more on our military than any other country by a huge margin. I really don't understand
>Every time we have been interventionists either overtly or covertly it has caused unintended consequences and often disastrous ones. When will we learn that it hurts more than helps?
That is patently false. The United States alone has a long history of successful humanitarian intervention, beginning with Tripoli and running through World Wars I and II. Even within our lifetimes, there was the NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
I believe you may be looking at this through a post 9-11 lens, which is causing you to place too much emphasis on blowback. Obviously Operation AJAX, the alliance with Baathists, and funding of the mujahideen in Afghanistan had significant negative unintended consequences.
However, that is by no means an ironclad rule. For further information I'd suggest A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power and Freedom's Battle by Gary Bass.
World War II was not an intervention. Even if you are talking our limited pre-Pearl Harbor involvement, the war was an immediate threat. And if you were talking after Pearl Harbor, that by definition is not an intervention, it is a retaliation.
I'm not familiar enough with Tripoli to comment on it.
So scratch the word "every" from that statement and replace it with "most"
I'm also don't consider it an intervention when our allies are being attacked and our allies ask explicitly for our help.
Edit: let me make this very crystal clear. I am not a pacifist. I'm a non-interventionists. There is a difference. If we are attacked or there is an imminent threat (I'm talking a battle ships with guns pointed at us right at our or our allies border kind of threat not "credible intelligence" from a "confidential source") we can and should respond with overwhelming force. This is not one of those situations.
All your link that you added proves is that we have intervened. It does not prove that those did not have "unintended and often disastrous consequences"
Heck, some of the ones on the list are on US soil and many others are rescue missions not aggressions. I think it was implied when I said intervention I was talking about offensive posturing.
Also, that poem is nice and all but I didn't say I don't know what Tripoli is. I said I don't know enough about it to comment on it. I make sure I know what I'm talking about before I write on it.
Edit: From YOUR OWN ARTICLE:
> U.S. demonization of an enemy leader, or military action against him, tends to strengthen rather than weaken his hold on power.
Literally the whole "Common Themes" section of the article you yourself cited speaks about how intervention doesn't work.
You posted a source that defends my point. Thank you.
This isn't about the US acting as the "world police", intervening in some conflict in which its interests aren't threatened in order to protect some supposed moral order. North Korea has made explicit threats against the US and its allies, and is pursuing a nuclear programme with the purpose of being able to carry them out.
Every nation has an inviolable right to defence under international law, and North Korea has explicitly threatened the US, and its allies, continually and belligerently, for years. A country does not have to sit around and wait for its enemies to strike before it acts.
If we attacked everyone who threatens us we would be at war with half the entire world. Ever been bullied at school? Acknowledging the bully shows your own weakness and gives the bully power.
From your own quote:
> put it at risk of creating a legal basis for an attack by the US and South Korea
Exactly AT RISK. Let's wait until there actually is legal basis first rather than talk about attacking with no legal basis what-so-ever.
Ignoring the bully is a great way to signal weakness to him and everyone around you, and tends to end with getting stuffed into lockers, laughed at by even weaker kids, and waiting on the tarmac for someone to roll a staircase out for you. Punching him in the face is, in the long run, a much better way to protect yourself and earn respect.
But in that scenario the bully is being actively aggressive. I guess to carry on the analogy, what other posters are suggesting is to punch the bully for threatening to beat you up with a baseball bat. First, the bat is not a threat to you yet and second if you do punch the bully you can be pretty sure that unless you knock him out permanently he's going to come back swinging, and his friends will be with him.
In fairness, I did punch my bully in the face in high school and it did effectively get rid of him in my case. But it certainly could have gone differently. And one possible reason it went that way is because my allies were stronger than his (my friends were on the football team and his were potheads). But Russia and China are not weak.
Edit: On the tarmac comment. So? It's politics. You need a thicker skin than that. The best way to handle that is to show you don't give a shit what they think. If you show them that doing something that stupid and petty hurts you it only encourages more. Let them have their laugh and let them push harder if they want. Stay strong. And one day they will either give up or push too hard, and when they push too hard you destroy them. Part of being strong is knowing when to use your strength and when to use restraint.
>his is one of the reasons the world hates us. We think it is our position to unilaterally police everyone in the world.
You are being incredibly naive. The US is the de facto hegemon on Earth. We have been living in Pax Americana for close to 100 years and knew about it for around 70. All pretenses fell around 30 years ago.
When it comes to military power, the US is in a league of its own with one empty league between it and everybody else. The US is an empire (and the mightiest one yet) and will act like that until it isn't capable to do so any more. Historically, that's around 100 more years but I'm not sure history is predictive here.
Assuming we can hold our alliance system together, we've got a good 15 years before anyone can think about direct military confrontation with the US. As long as 30. Of course, that assumes China's trajectory remains the same and doesn't change. If China fails in some way, then the US remains sole hegemon for the foreseeable future.
> You are being incredibly naive. The US is the de facto hegemon on Earth. We have been living in Pax Americana for close to 100 years and knew about it for around 70. All pretenses fell around 30 years ago.
"Incredibly", eh? Sounds like hyperbole. Also, let's not result to personal attacks shall we?
Right now we are seeing a para-military terrorist group that is a global threat. We have that because the US created a power vacuum that started by intervening in the middle east. Which both Bush AND Obama contributed to. And for that matter the first Bush and Clinton as well. And there is a strong argument to be had that the 9-11 attack was because of prior middle east interventions especially with Israel and Saudi Arabia.
But by all means let's create another vacuum in Asia too that will destroy our ally South Korea and create a vacuum that will probably be filled by China not South Korea as much as we'd like that to be the case.
> We have been living in Pax Americana for close to 100 years and knew about it for around 70. All pretenses fell around 30 years ago.
I'm not sure this is not the point you are actually making so I might actually be agreeing with you. But before we were in this place we didn't assert our power like we do now, yet -- just an observation -- all the sudden we have all these problems. Not to be treasonous but when the "de facto hegemon[sic]" comes into power and the world falls to shit maybe the world and Americans are better off with a more even power balance.
> When it comes to military power, the US is in a league of its own with one empty league between it and everybody else.
Yet somehow we are weak according to many Americans.
I don't know what else to call you since you continue to write incredibly naive things.
Many Americans? Many Americans are dumb as a brick like most people in every other place.
The world falling to shit? How much history have you read? Because the world is better than it has ever been. War activities are at an all-time low.
I won't even start with the middle east. That issue was started at the start of the 20th century. It sort of got solved and then the SU opened it up again.
If you think people hate Americans, you live in America or in one of very few America-hating countries. The US is a very new country with no bad blood running deep. Japan and China? China and Korea? Japan and Korea? India and Pakistan? Iran and Saudi Arabia? Now that is hate.
> I don't know what else to call you since you continue to write incredibly naive things.
So it's naive to say that intervention has often negative consequences that are often worse than the problem we're trying to solve when it is demonstrably true? Because that's all I said.
I might even gloss over the naive part. But the fact you put "incredible" in front of it I take exception to and you did it again. I gave you an out yet you doubled down. That is not a positive signal of civil discord.
> Many Americans? Many Americans are dumb as a brick like most people in every other place.
I was disagreeing with those people so I'm OK if you call them dumb as bricks.
> The world falling to shit? How much history have you read? Because the world is better than it has ever been. War activities are at an all-time low.
Mea culpa. I used hyperbole. I apologize. The world has absolutely not fallen to shit in the historical scale. However, I do ask for a citation on the "all time low" part for my own education. And what statistical buckets are you using, all time by year / decade / century?
> If you think people hate Americans, you live in America or in one of very few America-hating countries. The US is a very new country with no bad blood running deep. Japan and China? China and Korea? Japan and Korea? India and Pakistan? Iran and Saudi Arabia? Now that is hate.
Do they have demonstrations in China where they shout "Death to Japan?" The hate might be there but at least the government isn't breading extremist.
Also, hate is such a strong word. I regret using it. Disrespect would be a better one. And I'm not sure "Other countries hate each other" is a good argument. It is giving up. I have hope and think we can do better. If having hope makes me naive than I guess I'm naive and I will take it as a compliment.
> Do they have demonstrations in China where they shout "Death to Japan?" The hate might be there but at least the government isn't breading extremist.
I'm calling B.S on my own statement. There are many times in history where cultural hate has breed terrorist besides our current situation. But I stand by my final statement. Just because other things are messed up does not mean we can't strive for better.
> The US is an empire (and the mightiest one yet) and will act like that until it isn't capable to do so any more. Historically, that's around 100 more years but I'm not sure history is predictive here.
Agreed, but one thing that has been a constant throughout history is that empires eventually become complacent and buckle under their own weight, and have to face smaller contenders that don't have the inertia to maintain the status-quo.
It's telling that there really isn't any empire that has endured "forever", probably because this is simply not possible.
Portugal was the first global empire and ostensibly lasted for 600 years, but its decline started much sooner than it's total lifespan (around the 200 year mark). The country is now a shadow of what it once was, and the US will also be one day.
Yes, I commented on that. However history is not predictive of future events. In this case, there are no hostile neighbours and the empire does not rely on long term invasions and occupations. Instead it relies on economic and financial dominance. With the massive brain drain going towards the US having no signs of slowing down, I don't think that's gonna end soon. Additionally there hasn't been such a complete military domination ever.
But what is most important is that (most of) the nations are content with this situation. The complete hegemony will probably end soon-ish but the US will probably be the leader for the foreseeable future.
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
> When it comes to military power, the US is in a league of its own
Against NK, which would probably the last "conventional" war in history (unless we started a war with Russia)... we'd be a force to reckon with. After that, though, the state of war today are unconventional forces with unconventional tactics. The US then has a disadvantage. We're too big, too traditional, all we have is a hammer to solve problems, when what we need is a tiny screw driver.
What's your estimate of the death toll of the path you're advocating? Not just the first strike, but the ensuing carnage...
My first thought when I read the news was that the current way of dealing with NK -- condemnation, shunning, embargoes -- seems to be a dead end. What is it even accomplishing anymore? Escalating seems to be a path to hell, for everyone involved. What else is there besides appeasement? I hasten to add that I don't know enough about the various international relationships involved to really have a solid opinion.
What is your evidence that "my" path ensures carnage? There is certainly a chance. And that chance is certainly less than 100%. The chance of carnage if we attack first IS 100%.
I don't think the sanctions, embargoes, and shunning are working either. But those first two hurt the people who are already too weak to revolt not the dictator. And the third one is just posturing.
I don't know the answer. I just know that attacking preemptively has proven to create power vacuums, solidify international public opinion against the US, and cost thousands of lives. Not just American soldiers but civilians too.
But some off the top of my head suggestions...
- Propaganda war
- Let another country like South Korea take the lead (and support them of course)
- Do nothing. If (granted a big if) North Korea is not suicidal. They are just saber rattling and don't pose a real threat.
But I hope that all the smart people in our state department are collectively smarter than me.
> Let another country like South Korea take the lead (and support them of course)
I'd say South Korea and China. Tell them to figure out, between them, what they think the world's strategy on North Korea should be. (China has a lot of potential harm from North Korea falling apart or going to war.) Tell them if they agree on how to approach NK, the US will back them (presuming we think their approach to at least be sane), including with force if needed.
That would make it South Korea and China's problem (which it really is, much more than the US's problem, despite NK continuing to utter threats at the US). And it removes "US vs. China" as one of the problems that makes the NK situation so intractable.
Such attitude is precisely why countries that are not in favor of USA (Nort Korea, Iran etc.) are actively seeking nuclear weapons -- currently it's the only deterrence from carpet bombing your "democracy" in.
What you are asking is to proactively affirming national security interests. Every nation has the right to place their national security first, including NK (if it can be called a sovereign nation) . But there is a point where the larger nations end up bullying just because they can do that.
> North Korea's government is simply... unstable, in both senses of the word.
> They cannot be allowed to have a permanent nuclear deterrent.
Yeah yeah, that has been said about quite a few countries in the past. Based on what - flawed mathematical models? The sole purpose of those was to create new war grounds.
If the country has such great prediction powers, let's first use it in economics.
I don't mean to support North Korea here. It might be an irresponsible, undemocratic state. But non-proliferation cannot be done by saying "I'll keep my gun but you are not allowed to keep yours because I think you are an irresponsible unstable person". Whereas history since WWII clearly shows who has been the trigger-happy entity.
"Right now, North Korea cannot deliver a nuclear payload anywhere."
Are you sure? It is only 35 miles or so from the North/South Korea border to Seoul. That border is well-defended, but I'm not sure South Korea would gamble on being able to stop a single nuclear missile (or even a device fired from a gun) in a barrage of smaller ones.
Nuclear weapons are so extremely damaging, it doesn't require precision in the delivery system.
Tie one to a horse and send it over the border. Put it in a Volkswagen and put it in gear, send it over the border. Mail a package. Put it in a speedboat, duct-tape the throttle and jump out.
This is exactly how they want the populous to think. Therein the propaganda. I'm calling it now. When the proverbial shit hits the fan, and it will, you'll be begging to change your stance.
Then I invite you to examine the country closer. Like, really closer. How about moving to Seoul and live within an artillery range of North Korea. I mean, other than atrocious air quality, it's a decent city with good night life and streets that are so safe that you can walk around in 2 am.
It's amazing how much sacrifice people are prepared to make for the good of mankind, when it's someone else's lives...
Not to mention there's no guarantee that the "liberation" of North Korea will improve the lives of North Koreans. One word: Iraq.
China needs to put this particular Genie back in it's bottle. Having a mad dog on a leash is a reckless and juvenile diplomatic strategy and we're starting to see that China doesn't have as much control over NK as it pretends to.
One way or another that's pretty well established, when the Khan network fell apart after Gaddafi saw the light after Saddam's capture and surrendered his WMD program to us (and note how we rewarded him...), a key artifact was the plans for a Chinese designed highly enriched uranium implosion device, down to the factory floor level of detail, like apply this much torque to this nut, and use this kind of thread locker (e.g. Loctite in the US).
Maybe the PRC counterintelligence guys screwed up, but....
Common sense (which probably is not worth much when it comes to international relations) suggests that without China's aid DPRK would quickly collapse.
Presumably China does not want to see this happen because re-unification with South Korea would be a possible outcome (although I suspect the South Korean economy would have trouble absorbing the North Korean population without significant aid from the US and "international community"), and that would put a strong US ally right on China's border.
In my mind the only peaceful resolution to this situation is a diplomatic agreement with China, which would seem to be exceedingly difficult to achieve without a massive effort on the part of the US. Unfortunately, given the level of rancor and demagoguery against China that is showing itself in US politics at the moment, not to mention provocative actions such as the TPP and Abe's desire to change Japan's constitution to arm itself, the aforementioned peaceful outcome seems unlikely to me.
I'm working on a research base in Antarctica and we have one of the very few Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) detectors in the Southern hemisphere on our station. It's pretty interesting how fast the detection network can sense and locate a nuclear blast above a certain yield. North Korea is frequently discussed when referencing the effectiveness of the system.
Pretty varied! I'm the station's network engineer but because of how small it is, we spend a lot of time wearing different hats. I'm also assigned to the Glacier Search and Rescue team, the firefighting SCBA team, and the trauma team. About 60% of my time is spent doing IT work.
My oh my ... Look at the double standards of Americans ... Having the largest nuclear arsenal in the world with push button start and they call names when a tiny state, half way around the world, tries to make it's own nuclear deterrent.
No surprise that the only country to use Nuclear weapons ever in history is ... drumroll.. USA.
Edit: why all the down votes .. Americans scared of facing the truth ... Better hide it under a barrage of down votes ...
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The US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons casually and rationalized it like all other things later. This was a crime against humanity and nothing can change that. It an act of barbarism and savagery unprecedented in human history. Why the second one?
And to confirm its absolute disregard for human life since then has proceeded to stir up trouble in dozens of other countries and destroyed millions of lives in pursuit of its own financial interests, the latest victims being Iraq, Libya, Syria and with Iran in crosshairs.
Entire regions some just coming out of hundreds of years of destructive colonialism found themselves head first in old world politics of violence and self interest couched in the modern language of human rights, democracy and peace.
That's a tally easily of hundreds of millions of lives in disarray or extinguished just from the latest meddling in the middle east purely because of financial interests. But yet all these blatant crimes against humanity for some reason are all ok. Because?
Nobody's human rights have been protected, democracy has not been advanced, but 'interests have been secured' on the back of entirely fictional narratives and fabrciated intentions. This is mind boggling.
This is perhaps the same kind of self serving rationalization and reckless disregard for human life that advocates first strike against North Korea. If these are the good guys who are the bad guys?
I can't help but detect a weird affectation (a combination of proud and pushy) in the voice of the newscaster. I don't know Korean or any Asian language, so I can't tell, is that a normal newscaster voice for North and South Korea?
I can't help but detect a weird affectation (a combination of proud and pushy) in the voice of the newscaster. I don't know Korean or any Asian language, so I can't tell, is that a normal newscaster voice for North and South Korea?
reply
(1) NK eventually attacks a sovereign nation. Most likely, their nukes will be used as a threat to back up their aggressive actions rather than being actually used.
(2) China, at first perhaps tentative and apologetic, eventually joins in with strong anti-NK policies and pressure.
(3) NK doubles down, building up its offensive capabilities and maybe launching more attacks.
(4) Very sad day for the innocent North Koreans living under the regime. The US, or China, or the UN, or all of the above smash NK into the dirt.
Since the comparison between North Korea and other dictatorships keeps arising, I feel compelled to note that North Korea is truly an edge case.
Nothing in Western democracies, Middle Eastern theocracies, or even African dictatorships comes close to the horror that is North Korea. They torture people for entertainment, without even a pretext. They kidnap children to serve as sex slaves for their leadership. They starve families to the point that parents beat their own children over single grains of rice.
North Korea is such an extreme outlier that no other extant nation compares.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-korea-ban...
Japan invaded through Manchuria in WW2 so it makes sense for China to have as big a buffer zone as possible in that area.
The border between china and afghanistan is very mountainous and very far away from Beijing.
For example: one of the most criticized of China behavior, that is the occupation of many parts of mongolian and related lands, is a way to prevent another Khan starting another Yuan dynasty.
Similarly China had many wars with Korea, and don't trust them (neither do the Japanese, thus why they don't move a finger to get rid of North Korea either, nevermind blatant racism in Japan, like the fact that nonasians can expect to get citizenship after about 20 years trying, while many second and third generation Koreans still aren't allowed to be citizens)
†Which would then crater a lot of everyone's economies as foundry chips, computers and their components get super scarce to unavailable for a long time....
China's industrial output is actually above the US's now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_secto...
A lot of this comes down to quality, which by and large neither the Japanese had at the time, e.g. an ability to built reliable airplane engines significantly more powerful than the one the Zero started out with, and as for the PRC, the latest tidbit in this area is their embarrassment that for all the billions of ball point pens they manufacture each year, they have to import the ball bearings, since they can't produce them in the quality required, at least not at the volumes required.
(On the other hand, their Long Lance torpedoes were an unpleasant surprise, and their torpedoes actually worked, or at least they quickly fixed whatever problems theirs' had (I've read in passing that all the naval power's torpedoes had problems at the beginning of the war, unfortunately the US Navy bureaucracy's total inability to believe field reports resulted in very bad results for more than a year). Then again, you didn't really need such fast and long range torpedoes, and they weren't decisive.)
And quality matters a lot in warfare. Just our nuclear attack subs alone could make an invasion of Taiwan ultimately impractical, unless they somehow figure out how to find them (and even espionage isn't going to be enough to target weapons).
For one thing, the de facto state of the world right now is that the US controls all the oceans. Being able to secure island chains and put area denial weapons on them would increase China's capabilities and also reduce the US ability to project power easily. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be swept aside in a real war, but they would impose a real cost on the US to get rid of, and that's the entire point.
NK is such a failed state that we keep on propping up its failed regime because no one knows what to do with its 25M citizens
The world is becoming more peaceful.
And in theory, nuclear weapons make the world more so, which is why these countries pursue them. Despite what the mainstream news likes to report, there's a microscopic probability that the DPRK would attempt to use a nuke offensively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...
Now where's your citation to the historical increase in violence?
Skip to 14:00 for the relevant part.
The number of casualties in conflicts has going down FAST in the second part of the 20th century. We are in a historical worldwide period of unprecedented peace.
The most recent aberrant point in that downward path has been the Iraq war. But even this one pales in comparisons of the horrors of the past.
If they had the means to fight back like the Vietnamese did, it would have been a whole different ball game.
[0] - http://www.fallen.io/ww2/
(I love wait but why, and Tim Urban writes some fantastic stuff, but this particular page is just an embedded video)
https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace-after-1945/
Don't pin me down on this one. Statistics differ because they count differently. However, overall they will agree that the number of conflicts is declining.
On a side note, the number homicides is also constantly declining in most developed countries.
I would like to believe that, but I'm not so sure I do. There have been plenty of people in history who have advocated a nuclear first strike: MacArthur and 'Che' Guevara being two examples. I don't feel that Kim Jong Un or the North Korean government are particularly rational.
[Edited for spelling]
Honestly, I don't know how the U.S. would respond to such an event, especially if they were not certain that they could prevent another launch.
The US is obligated by treaty to defend Japan against imminent military threat[0]. As far as I know, that doesn't allow for a preemptive strike by the US, but landing a nuke on Japanese territory would probably require the US to respond in kind.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_a...
I think a large conventional attack (with the blessing of China and Russia and possibly also their assistance) is far more likely. That is what I would do. However, you need to be reasonably confident that you can take out their ability to make further nuclear launches not to mention conventional attacks against the South. Remember that Seoul is within artillery range.
At this point, the consequences of not acting are probably greater than the consequences of attacking, but I don't see a scenario where it really ends well for anybody. Would the North take that risk? I certainly hope not, but as I said, I don't trust them to be rational.
Probability of nuclear war after nuclear weapons were invented: > 0
No matter what you say, fact remains that by simply developing nuclear weapons, we've dramatically increased the chances of a nuclear war in the future.
As sadly as it sound, the H-bomb seems to promote peace through the status-quo : developped country (eg. USA, UK, France, ..) send troops but wheres there is no nuclear threats. Damocles Swords like that (nuclear / bio weapons) prevents us to go to traditional war against each others. Without them, we will end fighting each others, with fists and stones if needed.
It might be due to the lack of this equlibrium weapons that terrorism arise : they can't fight traditionally on their land, neither can't they protect their ideology, so they aims at our weakest part.
* Oh and, as a side note, it only seems to prevents physical war. Nowadays we fight and kill rather through our economy than our bullets.
As an aside, on the topic of American violence itself, I recall reading a study a while back that America has always had much higher levels of violence than European nations, but I cannot seem to find it now. Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?
I don't think it's quite a MAD situation. Hopefully very few are so disillusioned as to think that packing heat is the only thing stopping this whole place from erupting into gun-fire.
[0]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/second_amendment [1]: http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/freestate.pdf [2]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html
See also
>The Decline of War - We are experiencing one of the least discussed, yet most remarkable cultural shifts of all time: war, one of our species’ most abiding and defining social practices, is at its lowest ebb ever
https://medium.com/@angushervey/the-decline-of-war-8760f9a5b...
https://youtu.be/sjT4HlNJNgI
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_larges...
[2] http://www.un.org/en/sc/members/
tl;dr those who protect peace also nurture war.
When was the last time that happened before nuclear weapons? I can't think of a time without going back at least a millenium.
And the cold war peace have not been that much different from the colonial times.
IOW mankind reached such astounding levels of destruction potential that it just obliterated the possibility of war between potent parties.
Case in point, I'm confident we could build even more powerful weapons, but we don't, because it's useless.
Yuro Orlov: "I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of those men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss, the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year, sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So, you call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil."
Lord of War. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399295
The continuous gun pointing has been some of the safest times in all of human history. Sure it's probably bad for your nerves if you think about the reasoning behind how it all works, but I'd much rather have this than go back to actually using conventional weapons on a regular basis.
Sure they will say some aggressive things from time to time, but it's entirely rational for them to remind everyone that they have these nukes and are willing to use them.
>I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.
If they do try to launch a nuclear attack (or even a conventional one), they will forfeit the cushy setup they've created for themselves.
Transforming North Korea into a true vassal state of China may be the solution, but there will need to be a serious governmental transition in North Korea first.
Right now, North Korea cannot deliver a nuclear payload anywhere. It's one thing to create a nuclear test device, but it's another matter entirely to miniaturize it for delivery.
However, if allowed to progress unimpeded, North Korea will soon have missile technology that can reach Japan consistently. Around the same time, their miniaturization project will likely be complete. At that point, other nations will lose the option of intervention.
North Korea's government is simply... unstable, in both senses of the word. There is simply no other way to put it. The more closely one examines the country, the more disturbing the picture becomes.
They cannot be allowed to have a permanent nuclear deterrent.
NK has its estimated 10000 conventional artillery pieces in range of Seoul - they will pound it to rubble the old-fashioned way. You can (theoretically) intercept a single ballistic missile, but there is no defence against a mass artillery bombardment.
Edit: Hmm. You lot make some good points about just how many 'small' hits they could pull off, assuming that each gun emplacement has ammo etc. so I did a bit more research. Seoul Capital Area has an area of ~11,000 kilometers square[0]. Assume a generous affected blast area of roughly a hectare per shell (we're talking about shelling a population center here so you don't have to level every building to have a serious impact) and that's 1.1 million shells (if they're firing with uniform distribution, which they won't be) to seriously damage the city. Assuming a normal distribution where they all aim haphazardly for the CBD and let fly, it's even worse, call it 500k shells at a guess.
10k emplacements, if they have 50 shells each, will deliver this in (as per post below) 8.3 minutes. So yeah, even if it can't "pound Seoul into rubble" it would be a highly undesirable outcome for the South Korean people.
I take it back. Conventional artillery isn't slow if you have enough of it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seoul_Capital_Area
Imagine if Saddam, Assad, and Gaddafi (he stupidly gave whatever he had away to the country that later killed him) all had nukes and the capability to deliver them.
Given their extreme poverty, i would think their stockpile of ammo is rather skimpy (surely better invested in than other things in the country, but 2 million shells in 30 minutes sounds like it would be quite an economic outlay for them)
Let's do the maths - I don't know about NK weapons but a NATO 155mm shell contains about 11kg of TNT. 10000 guns can deliver 110 tons of explosive in a single salvo. A British AS90 gun can deliver 6 rounds a minute, so assuming a similar rate, that's a kiloton in 90 seconds or 20 kilotons in the 30 minutes you suggest, or a Hiroshima in just over 20 minutes.
And don't forget artillery will be well dispersed and dug in, and the leadership will be in deep bunkers anywhere in the country. Who and where will you "glass"?
"The first objection is that South Korea is right there, and thus is conceivably within range of a nuclear strike. In particular Seoul is directly next to the border with the North. However, there are already more than two thousand North Korean heavy artillery pieces ready to shell the metropolis at any time.
The damage to Seoul is going to be significant under any military intervention scenario. But if action is not taken, the threat from North Korea will become permanent."
Not so sure.
Never had a problem with North Korea here in Europe. Of course we're far away, but other governments also far away have indeed dropped nuclear bombs (and at Japan which you're concerned about), and have started wars all over the planet, including meddling in Korean affairs, and sponsoring some dictatorships around the world.
Heck, a far away government once ruled both Koreas as a colony they called Indochina, and another one gathered European citizens to go fight against Koreans in the fifties...
So not so sure why countries that actually did that shit should have the moral high ground or be considered less dangerous UN-wise than countries that merely want to protect their actual borders and haven't harmed anybody yet.
First, North Korea is not a nation defending borders. It is a personal fiefdom that deserves neither the name "nation" nor the respect it entails.
Second, past colonialism does not establish a moral equivalency with the mass-scale starvation, systemic imprisonment, and wholesale torture occurring right now in North Korea. This is an unfortunately common trope trotted out by countless dictatorships over the years. See And you are lynching negroes!"[0]
Third, even assuming for the sake of argument that those events were every bit as terrible as the current nightmare in North Korea, the events which you reference occurred in the past. The North Korean government is committing atrocities now.
We can't do anything about the past. But we can damn sure do something about the future.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
Plus, your mention of the lynching has little to do with the reply and the subject. And there are other countries that practice unjust imprisonment and torture, I might mention a few in the West.
We can't do anything about the past except remembering it and practicing its teaching. If by "doing something about the future" means bombing NK, then the future will have millions of refugees pouring into China, Russia, and South Korea. At least we should ask an opinion to the "reasonable" countries that border NK.
That's like, your opinion man. Other fiefdoms, especially rich in oil and fundamentalism, seem to be respected just fine, with their monarchs et al.
>Second, past colonialism does not establish a moral equivalency with the mass-scale starvation, systemic imprisonment, and wholesale torture occurring right now in North Korea.
Isn't some other country the number one in the world in terms of imprisonment? That has like 5% of the world's population, but 25% of it's prison population? And where blacks are disproportionately imprisoned?
Another sadly all too common trope is for people in glasshouses to throw stones, or even worse to look at "the speck of sawdust in their brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in their own eye".
And of course it's "all in the past" (as if colonialism is ancient history),and hundreds of thousands have not died and whole countries been destabilized in the past 15 years, with BS offensives and pretexts like WMDs and such.
>Third, even assuming for the sake of argument that those events were every bit as terrible as the current nightmare in North Korea
What "nightmare" that's any different than any run of the mill dictatorship supported and sponsored by "holier than thou" countries (not to mention beasts like Pinochet)?
There's imprisonment, hunting of dissidents and other stuff, but nothing beyond the ordinary. And if it wasn't for embargoes there wouldn't be much starving either.
Suharto's Indonesia was sponsored to hunt down and kill 1 million or so dissidents -- but those were lefties, so it doesn't count. Plus it was 40 to 20 years ago, ancient history.
Most of the "nightmare" seems to be the same kind manufactured truth used time and again to install dirty lackeys in yet another place (like the dictator's uncle being thrown to the dogs and other inanities). Libya and Iraq today are worse than with their dictators, and as for Syria, their legitimate guy looks like a bargain compared to the fundamentalist madmen that control those parts now.
I've never seen those mocking the "and you're lynching negroes" argument doing it for anything else than to defend their double standards.
It's always: "Sure, we do X bad thing, but it doesn't matter, because it was in the past, or because what's important now is to fight the Y bad thing, or because that doesn't absolve Y".
And, yes, it doesn't absolve Y, but it bloody puts it in perspective. And it also doesn't absolve X, so why those mocking the "and you're lynching negroes" line never seem to have a problem with the X, e.g. the negro lynching but always with what the other side does? Maybe they should begin by fixing their own glass house instead of telling others how to fix their?
I've never heard of Indochina referring to anything but SE Asia which is far away from Korea. What am I missing?
The Korean war was another Cold War play-field in Asia the coincided and happened to draw, among other US and "UN" forces, the French, who couldn't be bothered to fight Hitler in their own turf, but wanted suddenly to help fight communists 10.000 miles from their borders.
And you know that the Soviets insisted on dividing Korea?
And you know that the North Korean regime was basically a Soviet puppet through 1991?
And that the North Koreans initiated the Korean War?
Just checking.
On top of that, where does a conventional strike leave China? Any intervention that isn't Chinese led will necessarily renew PRC support for Kim.
Why not?
Your reasoning and posture is precisely why the North Koreans are justified in seeking nuclear weapons. They have a right to it.
Compared to whom?[0][1][2] We are first or second in most measures of military strength globally. We currently likely have the most powerful military ever to exist in human history.[3]
[0]http://www.globalfirepower.com/aircraft-total.asp
[1]http://www.globalfirepower.com/navy-aircraft-carriers.asp
[2]http://www.globalfirepower.com/active-military-manpower.asp
[3]http://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp
The only place we are weak is that we are stretched thin. But we did that to ourselves through interventionist policies.
At the very least South Korea needs to be involved. A strike against North Korea will put South Korea immediately into an expensive all out war even if they didn't start it. Second, even if the US military was "still" mighty[1] we would need the blessing of Russia and China or at least their promise not to retaliate and start World War III.
To the person who said...
> There are also credible reports of genocide. That'd be reason enough don't you think?
NO! Many times no! This is one of the reasons the world hates us. We think it is our position to unilaterally police everyone in the world. Everyone should universally decry genocide, absolutely and aggressively. But we are citizens of the world not dictators. We should not be pre-emptively striking. We should not be sending money and weapons to other countries (or at least only send them to one side of the fight for god sake so we don't have two sides fighting each-other with our own weapons!). Every time we have been interventionists either overtly or covertly it has caused unintended consequences and often disastrous ones. When will we learn that it hurts more than helps?
* I say this as a born American.
[1] We spent more on our military than any other country by a huge margin. I really don't understand
That is patently false. The United States alone has a long history of successful humanitarian intervention, beginning with Tripoli and running through World Wars I and II. Even within our lifetimes, there was the NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
I believe you may be looking at this through a post 9-11 lens, which is causing you to place too much emphasis on blowback. Obviously Operation AJAX, the alliance with Baathists, and funding of the mujahideen in Afghanistan had significant negative unintended consequences.
However, that is by no means an ironclad rule. For further information I'd suggest A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power and Freedom's Battle by Gary Bass.
I'm not familiar enough with Tripoli to comment on it.
So scratch the word "every" from that statement and replace it with "most"
I'm also don't consider it an intervention when our allies are being attacked and our allies ask explicitly for our help.
Edit: let me make this very crystal clear. I am not a pacifist. I'm a non-interventionists. There is a difference. If we are attacked or there is an imminent threat (I'm talking a battle ships with guns pointed at us right at our or our allies border kind of threat not "credible intelligence" from a "confidential source") we can and should respond with overwhelming force. This is not one of those situations.
Heck, some of the ones on the list are on US soil and many others are rescue missions not aggressions. I think it was implied when I said intervention I was talking about offensive posturing.
Also, that poem is nice and all but I didn't say I don't know what Tripoli is. I said I don't know enough about it to comment on it. I make sure I know what I'm talking about before I write on it.
Edit: From YOUR OWN ARTICLE:
> U.S. demonization of an enemy leader, or military action against him, tends to strengthen rather than weaken his hold on power.
Literally the whole "Common Themes" section of the article you yourself cited speaks about how intervention doesn't work.
You posted a source that defends my point. Thank you.
Every nation has an inviolable right to defence under international law, and North Korea has explicitly threatened the US, and its allies, continually and belligerently, for years. A country does not have to sit around and wait for its enemies to strike before it acts.
Even Russia, one of North Korea's allies, has warned it that its continued threats of nuclear strikes put it at risk of creating a legal basis for an attack by the US and South Korea: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/08/russia-warns-n...
From your own quote:
> put it at risk of creating a legal basis for an attack by the US and South Korea
Exactly AT RISK. Let's wait until there actually is legal basis first rather than talk about attacking with no legal basis what-so-ever.
But in that scenario the bully is being actively aggressive. I guess to carry on the analogy, what other posters are suggesting is to punch the bully for threatening to beat you up with a baseball bat. First, the bat is not a threat to you yet and second if you do punch the bully you can be pretty sure that unless you knock him out permanently he's going to come back swinging, and his friends will be with him.
In fairness, I did punch my bully in the face in high school and it did effectively get rid of him in my case. But it certainly could have gone differently. And one possible reason it went that way is because my allies were stronger than his (my friends were on the football team and his were potheads). But Russia and China are not weak.
Edit: On the tarmac comment. So? It's politics. You need a thicker skin than that. The best way to handle that is to show you don't give a shit what they think. If you show them that doing something that stupid and petty hurts you it only encourages more. Let them have their laugh and let them push harder if they want. Stay strong. And one day they will either give up or push too hard, and when they push too hard you destroy them. Part of being strong is knowing when to use your strength and when to use restraint.
You are being incredibly naive. The US is the de facto hegemon on Earth. We have been living in Pax Americana for close to 100 years and knew about it for around 70. All pretenses fell around 30 years ago.
When it comes to military power, the US is in a league of its own with one empty league between it and everybody else. The US is an empire (and the mightiest one yet) and will act like that until it isn't capable to do so any more. Historically, that's around 100 more years but I'm not sure history is predictive here.
"Incredibly", eh? Sounds like hyperbole. Also, let's not result to personal attacks shall we?
Right now we are seeing a para-military terrorist group that is a global threat. We have that because the US created a power vacuum that started by intervening in the middle east. Which both Bush AND Obama contributed to. And for that matter the first Bush and Clinton as well. And there is a strong argument to be had that the 9-11 attack was because of prior middle east interventions especially with Israel and Saudi Arabia.
But by all means let's create another vacuum in Asia too that will destroy our ally South Korea and create a vacuum that will probably be filled by China not South Korea as much as we'd like that to be the case.
> We have been living in Pax Americana for close to 100 years and knew about it for around 70. All pretenses fell around 30 years ago.
I'm not sure this is not the point you are actually making so I might actually be agreeing with you. But before we were in this place we didn't assert our power like we do now, yet -- just an observation -- all the sudden we have all these problems. Not to be treasonous but when the "de facto hegemon[sic]" comes into power and the world falls to shit maybe the world and Americans are better off with a more even power balance.
> When it comes to military power, the US is in a league of its own with one empty league between it and everybody else.
Yet somehow we are weak according to many Americans.
Many Americans? Many Americans are dumb as a brick like most people in every other place.
The world falling to shit? How much history have you read? Because the world is better than it has ever been. War activities are at an all-time low.
I won't even start with the middle east. That issue was started at the start of the 20th century. It sort of got solved and then the SU opened it up again.
If you think people hate Americans, you live in America or in one of very few America-hating countries. The US is a very new country with no bad blood running deep. Japan and China? China and Korea? Japan and Korea? India and Pakistan? Iran and Saudi Arabia? Now that is hate.
So it's naive to say that intervention has often negative consequences that are often worse than the problem we're trying to solve when it is demonstrably true? Because that's all I said.
I might even gloss over the naive part. But the fact you put "incredible" in front of it I take exception to and you did it again. I gave you an out yet you doubled down. That is not a positive signal of civil discord.
> Many Americans? Many Americans are dumb as a brick like most people in every other place.
I was disagreeing with those people so I'm OK if you call them dumb as bricks.
> The world falling to shit? How much history have you read? Because the world is better than it has ever been. War activities are at an all-time low.
Mea culpa. I used hyperbole. I apologize. The world has absolutely not fallen to shit in the historical scale. However, I do ask for a citation on the "all time low" part for my own education. And what statistical buckets are you using, all time by year / decade / century?
> If you think people hate Americans, you live in America or in one of very few America-hating countries. The US is a very new country with no bad blood running deep. Japan and China? China and Korea? Japan and Korea? India and Pakistan? Iran and Saudi Arabia? Now that is hate.
Do they have demonstrations in China where they shout "Death to Japan?" The hate might be there but at least the government isn't breading extremist.
Also, hate is such a strong word. I regret using it. Disrespect would be a better one. And I'm not sure "Other countries hate each other" is a good argument. It is giving up. I have hope and think we can do better. If having hope makes me naive than I guess I'm naive and I will take it as a compliment.
> Do they have demonstrations in China where they shout "Death to Japan?" The hate might be there but at least the government isn't breading extremist.
I'm calling B.S on my own statement. There are many times in history where cultural hate has breed terrorist besides our current situation. But I stand by my final statement. Just because other things are messed up does not mean we can't strive for better.
Agreed, but one thing that has been a constant throughout history is that empires eventually become complacent and buckle under their own weight, and have to face smaller contenders that don't have the inertia to maintain the status-quo.
It's telling that there really isn't any empire that has endured "forever", probably because this is simply not possible.
Portugal was the first global empire and ostensibly lasted for 600 years, but its decline started much sooner than it's total lifespan (around the 200 year mark). The country is now a shadow of what it once was, and the US will also be one day.
But what is most important is that (most of) the nations are content with this situation. The complete hegemony will probably end soon-ish but the US will probably be the leader for the foreseeable future.
All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.
As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
Against NK, which would probably the last "conventional" war in history (unless we started a war with Russia)... we'd be a force to reckon with. After that, though, the state of war today are unconventional forces with unconventional tactics. The US then has a disadvantage. We're too big, too traditional, all we have is a hammer to solve problems, when what we need is a tiny screw driver.
My first thought when I read the news was that the current way of dealing with NK -- condemnation, shunning, embargoes -- seems to be a dead end. What is it even accomplishing anymore? Escalating seems to be a path to hell, for everyone involved. What else is there besides appeasement? I hasten to add that I don't know enough about the various international relationships involved to really have a solid opinion.
I don't think the sanctions, embargoes, and shunning are working either. But those first two hurt the people who are already too weak to revolt not the dictator. And the third one is just posturing.
I don't know the answer. I just know that attacking preemptively has proven to create power vacuums, solidify international public opinion against the US, and cost thousands of lives. Not just American soldiers but civilians too.
But some off the top of my head suggestions...
- Propaganda war
- Let another country like South Korea take the lead (and support them of course)
- Do nothing. If (granted a big if) North Korea is not suicidal. They are just saber rattling and don't pose a real threat.
But I hope that all the smart people in our state department are collectively smarter than me.
I'd say South Korea and China. Tell them to figure out, between them, what they think the world's strategy on North Korea should be. (China has a lot of potential harm from North Korea falling apart or going to war.) Tell them if they agree on how to approach NK, the US will back them (presuming we think their approach to at least be sane), including with force if needed.
That would make it South Korea and China's problem (which it really is, much more than the US's problem, despite NK continuing to utter threats at the US). And it removes "US vs. China" as one of the problems that makes the NK situation so intractable.
> North Korea's government is simply... unstable, in both senses of the word. > They cannot be allowed to have a permanent nuclear deterrent.
Yeah yeah, that has been said about quite a few countries in the past. Based on what - flawed mathematical models? The sole purpose of those was to create new war grounds. If the country has such great prediction powers, let's first use it in economics.
I don't mean to support North Korea here. It might be an irresponsible, undemocratic state. But non-proliferation cannot be done by saying "I'll keep my gun but you are not allowed to keep yours because I think you are an irresponsible unstable person". Whereas history since WWII clearly shows who has been the trigger-happy entity.
Are you sure? It is only 35 miles or so from the North/South Korea border to Seoul. That border is well-defended, but I'm not sure South Korea would gamble on being able to stop a single nuclear missile (or even a device fired from a gun) in a barrage of smaller ones.
Tie one to a horse and send it over the border. Put it in a Volkswagen and put it in gear, send it over the border. Mail a package. Put it in a speedboat, duct-tape the throttle and jump out.
It's amazing how much sacrifice people are prepared to make for the good of mankind, when it's someone else's lives...
Not to mention there's no guarantee that the "liberation" of North Korea will improve the lives of North Koreans. One word: Iraq.
Maybe the PRC counterintelligence guys screwed up, but....
Presumably China does not want to see this happen because re-unification with South Korea would be a possible outcome (although I suspect the South Korean economy would have trouble absorbing the North Korean population without significant aid from the US and "international community"), and that would put a strong US ally right on China's border.
In my mind the only peaceful resolution to this situation is a diplomatic agreement with China, which would seem to be exceedingly difficult to achieve without a massive effort on the part of the US. Unfortunately, given the level of rancor and demagoguery against China that is showing itself in US politics at the moment, not to mention provocative actions such as the TPP and Abe's desire to change Japan's constitution to arm itself, the aforementioned peaceful outcome seems unlikely to me.
I try to put detailed descriptions on each photo.
No surprise that the only country to use Nuclear weapons ever in history is ... drumroll.. USA.
Edit: why all the down votes .. Americans scared of facing the truth ... Better hide it under a barrage of down votes ...
Ignoring historical and current context isn't going to do your argument any favors.
For the record, a good amount of us aren't excited that we have them either.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
And to confirm its absolute disregard for human life since then has proceeded to stir up trouble in dozens of other countries and destroyed millions of lives in pursuit of its own financial interests, the latest victims being Iraq, Libya, Syria and with Iran in crosshairs.
Entire regions some just coming out of hundreds of years of destructive colonialism found themselves head first in old world politics of violence and self interest couched in the modern language of human rights, democracy and peace.
That's a tally easily of hundreds of millions of lives in disarray or extinguished just from the latest meddling in the middle east purely because of financial interests. But yet all these blatant crimes against humanity for some reason are all ok. Because?
Nobody's human rights have been protected, democracy has not been advanced, but 'interests have been secured' on the back of entirely fictional narratives and fabrciated intentions. This is mind boggling.
This is perhaps the same kind of self serving rationalization and reckless disregard for human life that advocates first strike against North Korea. If these are the good guys who are the bad guys?
(1) NK eventually attacks a sovereign nation. Most likely, their nukes will be used as a threat to back up their aggressive actions rather than being actually used.
(2) China, at first perhaps tentative and apologetic, eventually joins in with strong anti-NK policies and pressure.
(3) NK doubles down, building up its offensive capabilities and maybe launching more attacks.
(4) Very sad day for the innocent North Koreans living under the regime. The US, or China, or the UN, or all of the above smash NK into the dirt.
(5) Profit.
(1) Continued rattling and blackmail for international aid
(2) Eventually becoming a nuclear state that nobody wants to touch cementing itself in perpetuity
Nothing in Western democracies, Middle Eastern theocracies, or even African dictatorships comes close to the horror that is North Korea. They torture people for entertainment, without even a pretext. They kidnap children to serve as sex slaves for their leadership. They starve families to the point that parents beat their own children over single grains of rice.
North Korea is such an extreme outlier that no other extant nation compares.