North Korea
 

This is the first time sort of that the North Koreans have come right out and said they would no longer engage in the 6-way talks and that they now got nukes(Uranium) for defense purposes. So, what do peoepl think should be done about it? Do we go after them militarily? Let them be kind of status quo? Get the UN on it? Rely on the Chinese and our ....ahem....allies the South Koreans to push to encourage them back to 6 way talks?

N. koreans confirm having nukes.

Let's get WW3 started with a BANG! :mad:

It called a Nuclear Deterent.

Once a country HAS a nuclear weapon the US will gladly look the other way and even give you "Most favored Nation status"

Like a Bully, the US will only pick on the little, defenseless guys.

I would say North Korea is now home free. And it probably explains why we have been looking the other way for the last couple of years.

That is the wrongway of looking at things.

But seriously, I wouldn't say they are home free to do anything they want.

Its not like they have ICBM's...

No, but they have missles that could strike Japan. If they attacked Japan, we would be forced to defend them and invade NK

Actually, thanks to the Clinton administration they now have China's American guidance system that can circumnavigate the globe.

I have a feeling that this is still saber rattling from NK. It has been their MO in the past. Whenever they felt like they had the upper hand, they went all out to try and press the situations. This is from an article that I read this morning.





Its the same thing that they have been doing for years. I would still doubt that they had any at all, given their penchant for big talk.

Could be talk, or it could be the truth. We aren't in a position to do anything about it anyway. Well, at least alone. Any military conflict would have to be done with lots of international help.

Strategy page just had 2 interesting articles related to nuclear weapons. The first one talked about the relatively short shelf life of the weapon, which keeps a nuclear power tied to refeshing the system. The second article talked about a suspected high "dud" rate for the weapons, especially true if the system has not yet been tested.

As someone completely out of the loop, would you be able to give some details about this?

why would the north koreans attack a globe?

Not that we really want to test this though, right?

I don't think he was talking about the NK attaking a globe, just circumnavigating it, ya know, like Magellen.

lmao! :)

I'm still of the mindset that if things got really bad over there, an "accident" would be arranged. One of our tactical nukes would be smuggled in, detonated, and it would be passed off as an accident while NK was handling one of their own.

right. I guess I am just saying that a) I don't think the NKs can produce something that goes boom when they want it to, and b) even if they can, I am not sure they can launch it.

That said, they probably have a long narrow tunnel to Tokyo they can run it down.

Kidding right? Too many James Bond reruns my friend.

Isn't there a point when the world will have to accept the fact that every power has nuclear capability?

I mean fine, freak out about NK but it's inevitable that countries we don't necessarily trust develop the means.

Hmm... what kind of a scenario are you envisioning here? Why would we go to all the trouble to do something elaborate like that? If "things got really bad over there", I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese would take matters into their own hands. But that all depends on your definition of "things getting bad".

Seriously though, the nukes aren't such a big deal. Almost everybody considers nuclear weapons as deterrents, with limited usefulness as an offensive weapon.

I have often thought that if North Korea really had become a threat and we no longer could tolerate them we might behind the scenes trade out taiwan card for North Korea with the chinese. Just a thought. I don't think we could afford a nuke war with China over Taiwan anyways and it is starting to sound like Taiwan might want to go the way of Hong Kong eventually.

If NK was to strike Japan I think they would have many more countries to worry about other then just the US.

Tenet: North Korea has ballistic missile capable of hitting U.S

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapc.../12/us.nkorea/

Maybe we will get a lot more stuff made in North Korea now...

After all, which country imports the most from China? You've got it, it's the United States. We might think they are horrible to their people, but we sure love that Made in China price. As of 2003, we get 12.5% of our imports from China (21.1% of their total exports) which was second to Canada's 17.4%. China sends 21.1% of their exports to the U.S., with Hong Kong second at 17.4% (2003).

No, you are probably right. A nukewar would "probably" but unaffordable. :eek:

Im of the opinion that most advanced countries have or will have nuclear capabilities and trying to stop them is not likely to happen. We are going to have to use diplomacy to make sure that theyre never used but keeping them from having them is a fruitless and dangerous endeavor.

But we can't let countries in the Axis of Evil have them!!!!
I mean, they're evil!

What we must do, though, is "liberate" the non-advanced countries that make any attempt to acquire that technology. From what I have read, the State Department thinks North Korea will sell anything to anyone. If that doesn't pose a clear risk to the United States and the rest of the world, I don't know if anything does.

So then the admin. is lying when it says that there are no plans to invade NK? So then NK is right in trying to deter us from invading by pursuing their nuclear goals?

If they want to get into a nuclear throwing contest with the U.S. then so be it. If they strike us first I wouldn't be surprised if we used enough to wipe out more then 2/3 of their population. Including going after all their politcal leaders.

Tell me why this is the land of confusion.

If only we had some sort of system that would blow up incoming missles with a laser or something.
*sigh*

Kim has a long way to go, and a lot of bombs to buy, if he wants to get on the MAD train with the US.

However, if for some unknown reason he did launch a nuke at a US city, it's highly doubtful that we would unleash a full on barrage at them, unless the president could justify revenge as being a factor. That and pissing on a Chinese ant hill...

I really don't care about North Korea enough to trade LA for it.

But, if he has a missle aimed at Redmond........

attached to a shark

The Bush administration is a bunch of hypocrites. We launch an attack in a country LOOKING for weapons of mass destruction while we have no intentions of launching one in a country that ADMITS to having weapons of mass destruction. You bet we're being a bully and picking on the little guys.

This is why I'm saddened to see our troops dying in Iraq over some b.s. cause. Unfortunately all of this fighting for our freedom stuff in Iraq is all just an excuse to increase military spending. If our president really believed in all the excuses he's pushing on us Americans, his stance against North Korea would need to echo that of Iraq.

I love this answer: "We invaded Iraq, so now must invade everyone else that's bad to be consistent" (imagine a "Nanny-nanny boo-boo" in the background).

My response to this line of thinking is fairly simple: the moment that North Korea launches multiple attacks on its neighbors, systematically slaughters its own people, shows no progress with diplomatic means over a decade and violates over a dozen UN resolutions related to aggression and weapons development, I agree that we should invade. But, until that point, I see no reason why we should leap to that conclusion with exausting other means.

The first rule in diplomacy (which could involve military action) is to tailor your methods to each individual situation. Think of world diplomacy as a big toolbox. The solution to every problem is not a hammer. It could be a socket wrench, screwdriver or even a small amount of electric tape.

Come on. This is North Korea we are talking about. We're going to at least need Duct Tape.

Korea has been doing this for over 50 years now

It was called the Korean War,
which technically hasn't ended yet, there is no peace treaty only a case fire.

The KIm dynasty is infamous for its human rights violations.
And I would say developing nuclear weapons violate a few UN resolutions.

They've been starving and murdering their own people for decades, has spurned any diplomatic talks, thrown out weapons inspectors and violated non-proliferation treaties... so I don't really see the difference.

North Korea wouldn't millitarilly be a walk in the park to overthrow. I think it would be foolish to not include that criteria as making a difference.

That is the problem, isn't it.

That wasn't a criteria in the posts listed before me. I think the far larger thing is that in one corner (Iraq) there are terrorists while in the other corner (North Korea) there is China... As many people as terrorists can hurt, I would think China has the ability to do far worse. The chances of China saying "sure, feel free to handle this" is far lower than Saudi Arabia doing the same.

However, I also don't think the size of the army equates to its strength. I know NK has one of the larger world armies, but we don't know if they're strong or just numerous. It's also fairly well isolated, as China probably wouldn't let us base there, who knows what SK will do, and Japan may also say no if they fear SK would shoot nukes at them in retaliation (unless they think it is inevitable anyway).

But I also don't have any real grasp on military or international happings, only an offhand knowledge from old classroom memories (and even then I was half asleep)

Problem isn't North Korea. We could level the country in a few months of gloves-off invasion. Problem is China bitchslapping those who fuck with North Korea.

I'd like to sit back and let China, Japan and South Korea handle this one. In fact, I'd like the US to withdraw entirely from that area of the world.

Not to be an isolationist, but since China shows signs of wanting superpower responsibility, I think it would make the world more stable to give them that responsibility. We're never going to have any peace until we stop trying to be the entire world's police.

China has changed so much in the last ten years alone. Why can't we acknowledge that and trust that they don't want to take over the world any more than we do?

I am stunned that it took 36 posts to get to the "IT'S ALL GEORGE BUSH'S FAULT!" post. The bloggers are slippin'... :)

One of the biggest changes that China has made is to move away from the mindset that international presence only comes shows of military might. They are much more concerned with growing their trade surplus then proving to the world that they can make the North Koreans heel.

I would love to see us walk out of Korea. From what I can tell in the media, most of South Korea does not trust us and even hates us. Let's pack up and leave.

The way that it's going, with our ever increasing budget deficits, the only country that has enough surplus cash to buy that debt is China. Currently Japan is the biggest buyer of US government debt instruments, but they are being caught quickly by the Chinese.

So instead of taking us on with armed forces, they are simply gonna let us spend our way into subservience.

We would need quite an expansion of combat power in the region to even come close to this outcome.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita.../dprk/army.htm


But I agree that China would frown on any military action on our part.