The Korea Situation; It's Very Serious

[RockRaines]

Let's assume that Saddam actually was pursuing nuclear weapons, then. How well has the invasion and going-on-two-decades occupation gone? How well do you think things will go in Korea?

 

eta: but you did support the previous rounds of US military interventionism in any case, right?

Well, I look forward to the radical terrorist groups we will spawn. What has become clear is nobody has a plan, and thats not good.

 

 

[RockRaines]

Bulls***. Bush got NK to the table with the regional players for 5 years worth of talks, culminating in NK agreeing to halt its nuclear weapons program and shut down their facilities and normalize relations with Japan and the US. And it was Obama who ruined the agreement by condemning their "satellite" launch in 2009.

 

I know you can't blame Obama for anything, so fine, we'll call it NK reneging on their agreement, something they continue to do because they have no desire whatsoever to end their military progression.

 

But keep dreaming guys. Maybe this time it'll work!

So whats your plan?

[caulfield12]

And why did Iran agree to work together with the Obama administration?

 

They were supposedly irrational actors as well.

 

Oh, yeah...Obama negotiated "a bad deal," one so bad that Trump has said nary a word about it for weeks and weeks while singlehandedly trying to dismantle every remaining initiative of the Obama administration...

[Chicago White Sox]

How many people currently advocating for mass death on the Korean peninsula also enthusiastically supported invading Iraq because Saddam was a Bad Man who was looking for yellow cake and aluminum tubes to definitely build nuclear bombs to attack the US or sell to fundamentalist Islamic groups?

So your answer is to be held hostage by a madman forever? And put the mainland US at risk? Is that really what you're saying? I don't think you're taking this threat seriously. The day Kim feels his days are numbered, whether driven by us, or China, or another vested party, who is to say he doesn't launch some nukes at the US assuming he has the capability? This guy is not a rationale human being living in a rationale world. He kills on the regular to retain his grip on power and he just may want to go out in a blaze of glory assuming he knows that power will soon be lost. Under no circumstance should we allow him to further develop his nuclear capabilities.

[Jenksismyhero]

Explain to me how/why foreign invasion and occupation will work this time, when the same moves have failed across the globe over the last 25+ decades.

 

 

 

NK wants military progression so that they have an ability to tell the rest of the world to f*** off. And I still haven't seen any arguments as to why Kim is any less rational than Trump.

 

Well, first, you don't have the religious/cultural problems you have in Iraq with three different groups hating each other. So I think this rebuild would be vastly different. I'm not under any illusion that it would be easy. It would obviously be difficult and a huge challenge but the positives outweigh the negatives.

[GoSox05]

Bulls***. Bush got NK to the table with the regional players for 5 years worth of talks, culminating in NK agreeing to halt its nuclear weapons program and shut down their facilities and normalize relations with Japan and the US. And it was Obama who ruined the agreement by condemning their "satellite" launch in 2009.

 

I know you can't blame Obama for anything, so fine, we'll call it NK reneging on their agreement, something they continue to do because they have no desire whatsoever to end their military progression.

 

But keep dreaming guys. Maybe this time it'll work!

 

It's not BS, the Clinton agreed framework was a good idea, much like Obama's Iran nuclear deal. Republicans just hated it and did everything they could to torpedo it, just like the Iran deal.

[Jenksismyhero]

So whats your plan?

 

Turn Rodman into a double agent.

[caulfield12]

Bulls***. Bush got NK to the table with the regional players for 5 years worth of talks, culminating in NK agreeing to halt its nuclear weapons program and shut down their facilities and normalize relations with Japan and the US. And it was Obama who ruined the agreement by condemning their "satellite" launch in 2009.

 

I know you can't blame Obama for anything, so fine, we'll call it NK reneging on their agreement, something they continue to do because they have no desire whatsoever to end their military progression.

 

But keep dreaming guys. Maybe this time it'll work!

 

 

And what exactly should Obama have done then instead???

 

By the time Obama took office in 2009, the North Koreans had already conducted their first nuclear test, and two nuclear agreements had already collapsed amid mutual accusations of cheating. But Obama quickly reached out to North Korea in hopes of resuming talks. Pyongyang’s response: a second nuclear test.Obama then adopted a hard-line approach that essentially echoes the stringent policies of President George W. Bush. Obama refused to engage in direct talks with Pyongyang until the regime first demonstrated it was willing to give up its nukes. In the meantime, the U.S. tightened sanctions against North Korea, believing the poor, isolated country would eventually collapse or agree to denuclearize.Two years later, famine forced Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. In early 2012, Obama and Kim reached an agreement that required the North to freeze its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in return for 240,000 tons of U.S. food aid. But soon afterward, that deal fell apart when Pyongyang fired a missile to launch a satellite. In 2013, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test.

 

Newsweek.com/Ed Perry

[StrangeSox]

So your answer is to be held hostage by a madman forever? And put the mainland US at risk? Is that really what you're saying? I don't think you're taking this threat seriously. The day Kim feels his days are numbered, whether driven by us, or China, or another vested party, who is to say he doesn't launch some nukes at the US assuming he has the capability? This guy is not a rationale human being living in a rationale world. He kills on the regular to retain his grip on power and he just may want to go out in a blaze of glory assuming he knows that power will soon be lost. Under no circumstance should we allow him to further develop his nuclear capabilities.

 

We survived the Cold War.

 

Killing people on the regular to consolidate power is a time-honored tradition around the world and not necessarily irrational. Kim does appear to be particularly stupid and probably buys into DPRK's propaganda in ways his father and grandfather didn't, though.

 

What is the size and scale of the invasion force you're willing to go with to stop their nuclear development?

[Chicago White Sox]

In the past 69 years, how many countries has NK bombed and or invaded?

 

How many countries has the U.S bombed and or invaded?

You said you'd be ok with NK having nuclear weapons just as much as any country. That is the single dumbest statement I have ever read on this message board.

[Jenksismyhero]

It's not BS, the Clinton agreed framework was a good idea, much like Obama's Iran nuclear deal. Republicans just hated it and did everything they could to torpedo it, just like the Iran deal.

 

Clinton's would have been a good deal IF he required that NK dismantle it's nuclear program.

 

Look, again, i'm not claiming that any US policy over the last few decades has worked. They've clearly all failed.

[StrangeSox]

Well, first, you don't have the religious/cultural problems you have in Iraq with three different groups hating each other. So I think this rebuild would be vastly different. I'm not under any illusion that it would be easy. It would obviously be difficult and a huge challenge but the positives outweigh the negatives.

 

How many other US foreign interventions have gone well? how'd the last one in Korea go? (it's still going on, technically!)

[Jenksismyhero]

And what exactly should Obama have done then instead???

 

By the time Obama took office in 2009, the North Koreans had already conducted their first nuclear test, and two nuclear agreements had already collapsed amid mutual accusations of cheating. But Obama quickly reached out to North Korea in hopes of resuming talks. Pyongyang’s response: a second nuclear test.Obama then adopted a hard-line approach that essentially echoes the stringent policies of President George W. Bush. Obama refused to engage in direct talks with Pyongyang until the regime first demonstrated it was willing to give up its nukes. In the meantime, the U.S. tightened sanctions against North Korea, believing the poor, isolated country would eventually collapse or agree to denuclearize.Two years later, famine forced Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. In early 2012, Obama and Kim reached an agreement that required the North to freeze its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in return for 240,000 tons of U.S. food aid. But soon afterward, that deal fell apart when Pyongyang fired a missile to launch a satellite. In 2013, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test.

 

Newsweek.com/Ed Perry

 

Clearly he should have tried the diplomatic approach!

 

Again, just proving my point that talks with NK are fruitless, as they have been for decades.

[GoSox05]

How many other US foreign interventions have gone well? how'd the last one in Korea go? (it's still going on, technically!)

 

 

In the last Korean war we killed 20% of the North Korean population. Today that would be over 5 million people.

 

[StrangeSox]

In the last Korean war we killed 20% of the North Korean population. Today that would be over 5 million people.

 

Apropos of nothing in particular, the US is going to start bombing another country soon!

[Jenksismyhero]

How many other US foreign interventions have gone well? how'd the last one in Korea go? (it's still going on, technically!)

 

Germany and Japan worked out pretty well. We've been less successful since. Doesn't mean we can't be successful here.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

Germany and Japan worked out pretty well. We've been less successful since. Doesn't mean we can't be successful here.

 

So total war that kills off tens of millions of people and leaves an entire continent in ruins can lead to better rebuilds, but everything else we've tried before and after has failed spectacularly. Hmm.

 

 

[GoSox05]

In the past 69 years, how many countries has NK bombed and or invaded?

 

How many countries has the U.S bombed and or invaded?

 

I'll answer my question here.

 

NK - 0

 

USA - 39 countries (although some of them were twice and three times, not sure how to count that)

[caulfield12]

What military plan doesn't get Incheon/Seoul and the majority of the South Korean economy obliterated in the process?

 

 

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view...._newsidx=234480

North Korea should never be accepted as a nuclear state

 

William Brown, adjunct professor at Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said that it is important to understand Pyongyang’s objective in building nuclear weapons is not just to stay alive but are designed to force unification with the South.

 

“A bitter rivalry for the peninsula and, in time, one will win over the other,” Brown said, noting that the Kim regime perceives that North and South Korea are in a zero-sum game.

 

“So this would be like accepting East Germany as a nuclear state,” he said. “If they could rewrite history, these pundits might have given nuclear weapons to East Germany to keep it from disintegrating.”

Edited August 9, 2017 by caulfield12

[StrangeSox]

I'll answer my question here.

 

NK - 0

 

USA - 39 countries (although some of them were twice and three times, not sure how to count that)

 

Does that count CIA-backed coups like Iran, Nicaragua and Chile?

[GoSox05]

Does that count CIA-backed coups like Iran, Nicaragua and Chile?

 

Yeah. I counted Iraq a couple of times. I mean we've been bombing them for the past thirty years, but we've had two separate invasions. Hard to count that. Actually if you think about that, it's really quite insane.

[StrangeSox]

Bulls***. Bush got NK to the table with the regional players for 5 years worth of talks, culminating in NK agreeing to halt its nuclear weapons program and shut down their facilities and normalize relations with Japan and the US. And it was Obama who ruined the agreement by condemning their "satellite" launch in 2009.

 

I know you can't blame Obama for anything, so fine, we'll call it NK reneging on their agreement, something they continue to do because they have no desire whatsoever to end their military progression.

 

But keep dreaming guys. Maybe this time it'll work!

 

This is also not quite accurate, by the way. NK was already at the table and part of the NPT prior to the "Axis of Evil" stupidity. North Korea didn't take kindly to being called part of the Axis of Evil and then seeing one of the other two countries on that list invaded. They and Iran both believe or believed that a nuclear deterrent was the only guarantee from US intervention.

 

For years, the United States and the international community have tried to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear and missile development and its export of ballistic missile technology. Those efforts have been replete with periods of crisis, stalemate, and tentative progress towards denuclearization, and North Korea has long been a key challenge for the global nuclear nonproliferation regime.

 

The United States has pursued a variety of policy responses to the proliferation challenges posed by North Korea, including military cooperation with U.S. allies in the region, wide-ranging sanctions, and non-proliferation mechanisms such as export controls. The United States also engaged in two major diplomatic initiatives to have North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons efforts in return for aid.

 

In 1994, faced with North Korea’s announced intent to withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which requires non-nuclear weapon states to forswear the development and acquisition of nuclear weapons, the United States and North Korea signed the Agreed Framework. Under this agreement, Pyongyang committed to freezing its illicit plutonium weapons program in exchange for aid.

 

Following the collapse of this agreement in 2002, North Korea claimed that it had withdrawn from the NPT in January 2003 and once again began operating its nuclear facilities.

 

The second major diplomatic effort were the Six-Party Talks initiated in August of 2003 which involved China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. In between periods of stalemate and crisis, those talks arrived at critical breakthroughs in 2005, when North Korea pledged to abandon “all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs” and return to the NPT, and in 2007, when the parties agreed on a series of steps to implement that 2005 agreement.

 

Those talks, however, broke down in 2009 following disagreements over verification and an internationally condemned North Korea rocket launch. Pyongyang has since stated that it would never return to the talks and is no longer bound by their agreements. The other five parties state that they remain committed to the talks, and have called for Pyongyang to recommit to its 2005 denuclearization pledge.

 

The following chronology summarizes in greater detail developments in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, and the efforts to end them, since 1985.

https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron

[bmags]

So your answer is to be held hostage by a madman forever? And put the mainland US at risk? Is that really what you're saying? I don't think you're taking this threat seriously. The day Kim feels his days are numbered, whether driven by us, or China, or another vested party, who is to say he doesn't launch some nukes at the US assuming he has the capability? This guy is not a rationale human being living in a rationale world. He kills on the regular to retain his grip on power and he just may want to go out in a blaze of glory assuming he knows that power will soon be lost. Under no circumstance should we allow him to further develop his nuclear capabilities.

 

 

What he hasn't done in all of this is actually invade another country. He antagonizes. He retains power by antagonizing. North Korea is only relevant through using its military as a threat, if it did not it would be a forgotten country.

 

In the leadup to pre-emptive wars, it is always this increasing hysteria of danger. North Korea, as an antagonizing, militaristic state, was always going to be on the shortlist for regime change from global powers. It got a bomb, and it got it to make it legitimate and prevent regime change.

 

The idea that NK would send an atomic bomb to the US as an offensive measure is greater now than it was a week ago, but still incredibly unlikely. It depends on building up the madness of NK so high that they would judge the annihalation of their entire country as an acceptable cost in order to just get one big swing at the US.

 

But North Korea has had just as much contempt for South Korea as the US, which is an understatement. And ahs been capable of launching a nuclear attack for years. The bluster toward them has been consistent and unending. Military buildup, miltary flybys, naval movements to frighten. But despite all that, nothing.

 

If they invaded SK they would be met with the forces of too many countries to count, and CHina would likely come down on them in an effort to ensure that it does not lose it to western influence.

 

North Korea is not holding us hostage. They are not and cannot stop the US from doing anything the US wants to do in foreign policy with the possible exception of *invading and changing regimes* in North Korea. They aren't that strong.

 

Pakistan meanwhile holds nukes, and could start a global war with india on the regular or lose those nukes to terrorism it funds. Why are we not frothing with fear there?

 

Russia/China. These are legitimate militarys and countries with nuclear weapons to fear because they could legitimately destroy US ability to act globally and even actually take land from US.

 

North Korea is just another Qaddhafi libya. A country that seems on a collision course to kill millions of americans and then 30 years later you look back and realize they were nowhere near the existential threat they seemed.

 

But there is one way to vastly increase the likelihood of a North Korea attack, and that's to actually invade them, which is one of the main reasons they got the bomb to begin with.

[RockRaines]

Turn Rodman into a double agent.

I'm being serious. Lots of attacks being thrown around from everyone on here and I just want to know the meat of the answer, whats the plan?

[StrangeSox]

What he hasn't done in all of this is actually invade another country. He antagonizes. He retains power by antagonizing. North Korea is only relevant through using its military as a threat, if it did not it would be a forgotten country.

 

In the leadup to pre-emptive wars, it is always this increasing hysteria of danger. North Korea, as an antagonizing, militaristic state, was always going to be on the shortlist for regime change from global powers. It got a bomb, and it got it to make it legitimate and prevent regime change.

 

The idea that NK would send an atomic bomb to the US as an offensive measure is greater now than it was a week ago, but still incredibly unlikely. It depends on building up the madness of NK so high that they would judge the annihalation of their entire country as an acceptable cost in order to just get one big swing at the US.

 

But North Korea has had just as much contempt for South Korea as the US, which is an understatement. And ahs been capable of launching a nuclear attack for years. The bluster toward them has been consistent and unending. Military buildup, miltary flybys, naval movements to frighten. But despite all that, nothing.

 

If they invaded SK they would be met with the forces of too many countries to count, and CHina would likely come down on them in an effort to ensure that it does not lose it to western influence.

 

North Korea is not holding us hostage. They are not and cannot stop the US from doing anything the US wants to do in foreign policy with the possible exception of *invading and changing regimes* in North Korea. They aren't that strong.

 

Pakistan meanwhile holds nukes, and could start a global war with india on the regular or lose those nukes to terrorism it funds. Why are we not frothing with fear there?

 

Russia/China. These are legitimate militarys and countries with nuclear weapons to fear because they could legitimately destroy US ability to act globally and even actually take land from US.

 

North Korea is just another libya. A country that seems on a collision course to kill millions of americans and then 30 years later you look back and realize they were nowhere near the existential threat they seemed.

 

But there is one way to vastly increase the likelihood of a North Korea attack, and that's to actually invade them, which is one of the main reasons they got the bomb to begin with.

 

Something to keep in mind that right now is the lead-up to the annual US-SK joint exercises in the region, which always leads to NK saber-rattling. It's just that now there's an equally incompetent, stupid, and egotistical man on the other side.

 

Oh and re: Pakistan/India, our gutted state department recently decided to recognize disputed Kashmir territories as explicitly Indian territories. I'm sure that will go over well with Pakistan and the assistance we need from them in combating some Islamic groups.

Edited August 9, 2017 by StrangeSox