Politics Is North Korea Really a Threat?

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Stevenson

Stevenson

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As we seem hurtling towards a devastating war, it is worth asking.

Personally, I think not. Deterrence worked against the Soviets for 50 years and they had a few more nukes. The North's bellicose nuclear program is really defensive in nature - as insurance against invasion (although that does seem to be backfiring.)

I say, warn them that any actions will have dire consequences (as Trump rightfully did with Guam) and that's that. The real risk of their nuke program is that they can then be more aggressive towards their neighbors and it would be harder to stop them. But, as to a threat to the U.S.? I think not.

Not worth a war, that's for sure.
 
Stevenson said:
As we seem hurtling towards a devastating war, it is worth asking.

Personally, I think not. Deterrence worked against the Soviets for 50 years and they had a few more nukes. The North's bellicose nuclear program is really defensive in nature - as insurance against invasion (although that does seem to be backfiring.)

I say, warn them that any actions will have dire consequences (as Trump rightfully did with Guam) and that's that. The real risk of their nuke program is that they can then be more aggressive towards their neighbors and it would be harder to stop them. But, as to a threat to the U.S.? I think not.

Not worth a war, that's for sure.
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Its not North Korea that worries me, its China.
 
If North Korea was a threat, Russia would've sacked America a long time ago.
 
Is a threat and could become a threat are two different things. But I don't think we can legitimately stop everyone anymore as tech advances. We need to find a way to not let the threats boil over.
 
Depends on who the NKoreans give nukes to.

MAD assumes both sides are sane.
 
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
 
Denny Crane said:
Depends on who the NKoreans give nukes to.

MAD assumes both sides are sane.
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Yes, countries who give nuke tech to fucked up countries become our allies and receive billions in aide.

See Pakistan for example.
 
SlyPokerDog said:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
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Ya, I've been getting some bullshit fortune cookies lately too.
 
I don't think they are. How many years have we heard that they are a threat or were gonna do this or that? nothing has happened. They are so poor over there, they would be stupid to attack and knowing the US we would just destroy them which I am anti war but in a hypothetical situation. It's all talk. Nothing more
 
I extremely doubt that N. Korea would do anything certifiably crazy like launch non nuclear missiles at Japan or S. Korea, or sink a US ship. Their Nuclear program is first and foremost an anti regime change program. NK is playing chicken though, and calling the US's bluff every time. It's a combustible situation, but nothing will happen as long as NK keeps their matches locked away in a safe place.
 
I'm worried about them, but in probably different terms than many.

Their aggressiveness has been unchecked too long. I mean, how many other countries in the world get to sink a military platform from another sovereign state--as an act of war--and are allowed to let it stand? Gateway behavior. They haven't had any real repercussions of any of the illegal things they've done in decades. Sure, sanctions. KJU seems like he's still living large, he is still arming his military, still running his nuclear tests, and still oppressing any grassroots criticism of the government.

KJU is also a one-man show. Dude assassinated his brother and killed members of his military staff for not showing enough remorse at his dad's funeral. He doesn't have to have the backing of Congress, the Diet, the Central Committee, Parliament or anyone else to make an act of war. He doesn't need to have Two-Person Concurrence in order to launch a missile at someone, nuclear or not. There is no "Supreme Soviet" in NK. Khrushchev couldn't have fired missiles just because he had a bad day or went slightly crazy or "felt provoked". (Now, Stalin/Beria, had they had it....)

Our gov't, R's and D's alike, both executive and congressional, have not taken seriously the firepower and sheer destructive capacity that are in the hands of one man, with his megalomania and lack of morality just being icing on the cake. And if/when we have to respond, it will be because something horrible has happened. The current world isn't ready to see 100,000 people die in one day, which is a very optimistic scenario if a) a nuclear missile is launched near any population center or, b) NK invades the south, for whatever reason. It's much more likely that over a million "good guys" and "civilians" die, and we don't have enough bullets on the Korean peninsula to just "humanely" kill all of the invaders if it happens. There will be Tomahawks out the wazoo, B-52s and stealth bombers dropping everything in our inventory, death and destruction on a level not seen in a long time. And that's just the military aspect. Internally Displaced Personnel in SK (think of all the worst parts of Maria in Puerto Rico, except that there are 50M people in SK vice 3M), refugees from SK and NK into China and Japan, opportunists snatching up land/resource rights from failed government entities, the normal rape and pillage that occurs when society has fallen temporarily...yeah, I worry about NK.
 
Years ago Nikita Khrushchev scared the hell out of me with his bellicose talk. This Korean is just as bad, but there is a big difference, the Russian did have a system of government which had control of Big mouth Nikita. I don't think anyone has control of the Big Mouth Korean nor do I think he will go down without raising all the hell he can first.

If there ever was a time to know your enemy, this is it. I do hope we have the smartest people we have reading this guy. Is he all mouth, and we don't need to sweat the guy? If not, and he is a threat to do as he says, you can't let him go first, unless we can shoot down everything he brings. I don't know! I hope we have people that have read Sun Tzu and do know the enemy.
 
MarAzul said:
If there ever was a time to know your enemy, this is it. I do hope we have the smartest people we have reading this guy. Is he all mouth, and we don't need to sweat the guy? If not, and he is a threat to do as he says, you can't let him go first, unless we can shoot down everything he brings. I don't know! I hope we have people that have read Sun Tzu and do know the enemy.
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We surely do have those experts.

However, we also have a president who thinks he knows better than all the experts, so he doesn't consult them.

That might turn out to be a big problem.

barfo
 
The good news is North Korea will totally believe we will honor any treaty we enter into them with.
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outl...0e2e1d41e38_story.html?utm_term=.8047404aaf39

The case for brinksmanship with North Korea
Trump’s threats against Pyongyang could work.


By Michael Hirsh
October 6

Michael Hirsh, the former foreign editor of Newsweek, is the author of “At War With Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World.”


When President Trump publicly slapped down his beleaguered secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, last weekend, tweeting that America’s top diplomat was “wasting his time” trying to talk to North Korea about its nuclear and missile program, establishment types greeted the president with the usual yelps of outrage. “This is life-or-death presidential malpractice. How could any diplomat (or human) tolerate being treated as Tillerson is?” former United Nations ambassador Samantha Power tweeted. “Can never remember a president publicly undercutting a secretary of state as Trump just has. Ever,” tweeted Susan Glasser, Politico’s chief international affairs columnist. It was the same tone reserved for the time Trump promised in his U.N. speech to “totally destroy ” North Korea if necessary, and the time he threatened to meet Pyongyang’s threats with “fire and fury.”

Trump, supposedly, is sowing confusion, rendering his diplomats impotent, robbing his administration of credibility and, worst of all, bringing the world to the brink of war without any concept of the danger he is creating. (At a bizarre news conference Wednesday, Tillerson responded to a report that he had called the president a “moron” and pledged to stay in his job.) And it’s true that there are good reasons to wonder whether the president is pursuing any real policy or is impulsively venting his anger over the behavior of “Little Rocket Man,” his epithet for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who hit back by calling Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”

But there may be a method to the apparent madness in Trump’s approach, even if he has not done a coherent job of explaining it. Nuclear experts agree that North Korea’s weapons program, and its threat to U.S. soil, is advancing every day. “Go back three or four years, and no one thought they would be able to do an ICBM this decade, let alone put a warhead on it,” says David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. Now they have the missile, and “it’ll take maybe within six months, 12 months” to put a nuclear warhead on it. Trump’s answer appears to be the bad-cop routine. It comes with certain risks, but it is one of the only strategies for containing Pyongyang that has not yet been tried. And for all we know, it could work.
 
I don’t see the harm.

You only find peace if you talk with the enemy.

Trump has been putting the heat on NKorea, that’s the stick. You know the rest.
 
The first country ever to hand us a defeat in a full-blown war, now led by a sociopath who starves his people and feeds them to dogs, who has said repeatedly he will destroy us and every other country within reach, now armed with nukes and the missiles to deliver them...go ahead and stop me when you feel threatened.

Unless rocket man and his evil entourage are eliminated with some magical Seal Team surgical strike, we will need to pretty much destroy NK. Otherwise, a dozen other countries will accelerate their plans to nuclearize., and nuke strikes will become commonplace. Like his father, even more so, he will never abide by any agreement so stop the wasting of time and kill him and his military, It is unavoidable if we wish to avoid many larger catastrophes in the future.

20 years from now the loss of a few million Koreans today might be considered the missed opportunity to have saved hundreds of millions of people in 2037.
 
MARIS61 said:
The first country ever to hand us a defeat in a full-blown war, now led by a sociopath who starves his people and feeds them to dogs, who has said repeatedly he will destroy us and every other country within reach, now armed with nukes and the missiles to deliver them...go ahead and stop me when you feel threatened.

Unless rocket man and his evil entourage are eliminated with some magical Seal Team surgical strike, we will need to pretty much destroy NK. Otherwise, a dozen other countries will accelerate their plans to nuclearize., and nuke strikes will become commonplace. Like his father, even more so, he will never abide by any agreement so stop the wasting of time and kill him and his military, It is unavoidable if we wish to avoid many larger catastrophes in the future.

20 years from now the loss of a few million Koreans today might be considered the missed opportunity to have saved hundreds of millions of people in 2037.
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Nobody is going to like this Maris. I am waiting to see who says your are wrong. Better yet, who has a better plan?
No, doing nothing is not a plan!
 
A better plan would be they disarm, we engage in tradition relations as we do with other countries.
 
Everybody knows why there is a North Korea and a South Korea in the first place? Seems like people seem to think squashing NK would be a cinch. Yeah, they thought that at the time, too, and they had nukes and the North Koreans didn't. Why, after Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan do so many Americans still think the US can just trample other countries underfoot if it wants?
 
Rastapopoulos said:
Everybody knows why there is a North Korea and a South Korea in the first place? Seems like people seem to think squashing NK would be a cinch. Yeah, they thought that at the time, too, and they had nukes and the North Koreans didn't. Why, after Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan do so many Americans still think the US can just trample other countries underfoot if it wants?
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Well......in our defense, look at how many centuries it took for the Brits to figure that out...
 
MARIS61 said:
The first country ever to hand us a defeat in a full-blown war, now led by a sociopath who starves his people and feeds them to dogs, who has said repeatedly he will destroy us and every other country within reach, now armed with nukes and the missiles to deliver them...go ahead and stop me when you feel threatened.
Click to expand...

Wow, I didn't know that King George IV was still alive.
 
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