The Korea Situation; It's Very Serious

[greg775]

It might be time for anybody who wants to continue living to get out of Guam. Korea says it will attack soon.

 

Well, the war to end all wars is indeed coming. N. Korea deserves what it's about to get. Now, will China and Russia nuke the USA in response to what we do to Korea? Maybe. Wouldn't it be smart for those 2 to combine forces and blow us off the map after we blow the Koreas off the map? I would think a combined Russia/China team could indeed end civilized life in the USA as we know it.

Nobody knows how China and Korea are going to react to us dropping nukes on N. Korea. Think about it, though. N. Korea just today said they will bomb our bases in Guam. How can we not react? We can't just sit back and let thousands of Americans in Guam die. Korea says they are going to do it. I'm almost positive Trump will act on this and baby, the last war is about to begin.

Who would have thought during the petty election cycle that true crisis that threatens the future of the world was about to hit?

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/politics/nor...rike/index.html

[greg775]

Caulfield are u thinking of getting out of there soon and returning to mainland? Do the Chinese people hate us as much as North Koreans do?

 

p.s.: Not meant for you caulfield, but Thanks, Democrats for giving us such a bad presidential candidate that we have Trump in charge during possibly the most dangerous time in the history of the world, likely the most dangerous time in the history of the world. We could use a Biden in office right now for sure!!!

Edited August 10, 2017 by greg775

[Rowand44]

Why would Caulfield want to come back to the US if we're just going to get blown off the map?

[greg775]

Why would Caulfield want to come back to the US if we're just going to get blown off the map?

I forgot about that. He's pretty safe if he's in China. Now if he were in Japan, maybe not so much. Although if China and Russia decide to nuke us in response to us annihilating N. Korea they might take prisoner Americans living in China. I won't start a new thread, but I'd love to hear if people have any plans as what they'd do if they hear some morning that nukes are on the way about to hit Chicago. For some reason Chicago usually gets mentioned.

Edited August 10, 2017 by greg775

[caulfield12]

Nobody is attacking Wuhan, China.

 

Strategically, the closest thing to a target would be PLA Air Force bases and the Three Gorges Dam...

[GoSox05]

I forgot about that. He's pretty safe if he's in China. Now if he were in Japan, maybe not so much. Although if China and Russia decide to nuke us in response to us annihilating N. Korea they might take prisoner Americans living in China. I won't start a new thread, but I'd love to hear if people have any plans as what they'd do if they hear some morning that nukes are on the way about to hit Chicago. For some reason Chicago usually gets mentioned.

 

 

They should create something like bunkers, but really big, so they could fit like a whole community. We could call them "vaults". Have one person be like an overseer of each vault.

[caulfield12]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/politics/nor...rike/index.html

 

North Korea readying Guam strike plan (within days), four missiles to be launched over Japan

Edited August 10, 2017 by caulfield12

[Dick Allen]

What is so surprising is Trump hasn't been able to negotiate a diplomatic solution. He is after all, perhaps the greatest negotiator this earth has ever seen. That's what he does...makes great deals. So often, you kind of get sick of them. In fact, instead of being like Obama and on the golf course, he is just going to sit in the WH and make even more great deals. He's a treasure.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Dick Allen

[Chicago White Sox]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/politics/nor...rike/index.html

 

North Korea readying Guam strike plan (within days), four missiles to be launched over Japan

Hope everyone that didn't vote Hillary is happy now, because we now have good ole calm, cool, collected Donald to deal with this mess. If NK were to do this (which I doubt), I don't see how Trump doesn't respond with force.

[pettie4sox]

How many checks and balances are there with Trump doing risky military type stuff that could get us involved with a WW3?

[StrangeSox]

How many checks and balances are there with Trump doing risky military type stuff that could get us involved with a WW3?

 

Zero, short of the military disobeying direct orders from the Commander in Chief.

 

No one can stop President Trump from using nuclear weapons. That’s by design.

 

What if the president ordering a nuclear attack isn’t sane? An Air Force major lost his job for asking.

 

Maybe it wasn't the best idea to elect* an insane, extremely fragile reality TV star who lashes out at even the smallest things and has zero impulse control to POTUS?

 

Like any good student with a sensitive question, Harold Hering approached his teacher after class, out of earshot from his classmates.

 

“How can I know,” he asked, “that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?”

 

It was 1973. President Richard M. Nixon was seriously depressed about Watergate. Hering, an Air Force major who rescued downed pilots in Vietnam, was training to be a missileer — the guy who turns the keys to commence nuclear Armageddon.

 

“I assumed there had to be some sort of checks and balances so that one man couldn’t just on a whim order the launch of nuclear weapons,” Hering, now 81, told Radiolab in a remarkable interview earlier this year.

 

Hering was wrong. And decades later, so is anyone who thinks President Trump, having recently threatened “fire and fury” for North Korea, can’t order a nuclear attack anytime he darn well pleases, even from a fairway bunker on the golf course.

[pettie4sox]

Zero, short of the military disobeying direct orders from the Commander in Chief.

 

No one can stop President Trump from using nuclear weapons. That’s by design.

 

What if the president ordering a nuclear attack isn’t sane? An Air Force major lost his job for asking.

 

Maybe it wasn't the best idea to elect* an insane, extremely fragile reality TV star who lashes out at even the smallest things and has zero impulse control to POTUS?

 

I think Trump is dumb, but I don't think he's that dumb. Time will tell, but that is some scary stuff.

[Chicago White Sox]

Zero, short of the military disobeying direct orders from the Commander in Chief.

 

No one can stop President Trump from using nuclear weapons. That’s by design.

 

What if the president ordering a nuclear attack isn’t sane? An Air Force major lost his job for asking.

 

Maybe it wasn't the best idea to elect* an insane, extremely fragile reality TV star who lashes out at even the smallest things and has zero impulse control to POTUS?

That's the exact problem. The lack of impulse control was my greatest fear with him to begin. If NK strikes within distance of Guam action would be needed, but such action must be planned out and throughly vetted by a broader team. I just don't see Trump waiting to respond after such an event, in his mind it would make him look like a p****. And impulsive action would likely lead to much greater consequences for the entire world.

[GoSox05]

I think Trump is dumb, but I don't think he's that dumb. Time will tell, but that is some scary stuff.

 

I don't think it's a question of smart or dumb. I think trump is mentally unstable.

[Dick Allen]

I don't think it's a question of smart or dumb. I think trump is mentally unstable.

I think he thinks he the smartest guy ever, but really is dumb, which, in his current position, is a dangerous mix. And he also seems to be unstable, in need of constant praise.

 

A smart person, thinking they are smart, is no big deal, unless they think they can't possibly not know everything. They can be full of themselves, but at least they can back it up. Trump thinks he knows it all. Why didn't he hammer out a health care bill? He said he learned all there is to know about heath care in a very short time because he is so smart.

[TaylorStSox]

Where the f*** is Dennis Rodman when you need him?

[GoSox05]

Where the f*** is Dennis Rodman when you need him?

 

 

You know normally I would just laugh off the Rodman stuff as funny, but Trump is such a mental case and loves gratitude so much. I think Rodman could come back and be like "no, NK loves the Donald, they think you are the best" and Trump would be calling NK to tell them how great everything is.

[southsider2k5]

Starting in 1994, the United States was to begin funding 2 light water nuclear reactors in North Korea, the sort that could not be used for weapons construction. Japan and South Korea were to assist. The President could agree to that, but Congress refused the funds. Therefore, an absolutely straightforward case is that the United States broke that deal first.

 

The North had what was still a rudimentary uranium enrichment program in 2002. They admitted it when challenged, and then got to work reprocessing their plutonium for bombs. The plutonium route was vastly easier - the Uranium route was not even as far along as Iran's at the time and Iran needed another 15 years to get close. In 1994 Bill Clinton stated he was willing to go to war if North Korea attempted to reprocess that plutonium. That was the red line. In 2003, we had other priorities when they started reprocessing it. Literally all of their bombs are plutonium bombs - it would have taken another decade+ of work for them to get anywhere near a uranium bomb. They did not make any worthwhile progress from 1994-2002, and then made rapid progress from 2003-2005, because the deal would have worked. We could have traded those fuel rods for the reactors and we broke that agreement. If we got those rods out of the country they would not have a bomb today, regardless of their uranium program attempts. That is what negotiation does - you don't have to agree about everything, but you say "here's a red line we'll do this if you don't cross this".

 

As long as we are ok with a nuclear armed North Korea, we should continue treating any negotiation as appeasement. The end result is what we see here.

 

lol. The Koreans just moved their program underground during this time. They never really stopped working on the nuke. They just lied about it. And we spent nearly a decade trying to reward them for that.

 

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

 

October 16, 2002: The United States announces that North Korea admitted to having a clandestine program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons after James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, confronted representatives from Pyongyang during an October 3-5 visit. Kelly later explained that the North Korean admission came the day after he informed them that the United States was aware of the program. North Korea has denied several times that it admitted to having this program.

 

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher states that "North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program is a serious violation of North Korea's commitments under the Agreed Framework as well as under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, its International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreement, and the Joint North-South Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

Boucher also says that the United States wants North Korea to comply with its nonproliferation commitments and seeks "a peaceful resolution of this situation."

 

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/10/northkorea1

 

 

 

 

The focus of the latest North Korea-US dispute is the nuclear reactor in the North Korean town of Yongbyon.

 

The facility was the centrepiece of a weapons programme until it was frozen in a 1994 energy deal with the United States. But US officials said that North Korean negotiators acknowledged in October that they had another clandestine nuclear programme.

 

Pyongyang said it was reactivating the Yongbyon facilities to retaliate for Washington's decision to suspend oil shipments after the North revealed the existence of the other clandestine nuclear programme.

 

The North is suspected of already having at least one or two nuclear bombs, and experts say it could make several more within six months if it extracts weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon facilities.

 

 

[RockRaines]

lol. The Koreans just moved their program underground during this time. They never really stopped working on the nuke. They just lied about it. And we spent nearly a decade trying to reward them for that.

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/10/northkorea1

SO invade them is your solution?

[southsider2k5]

SO invade them is your solution?

 

Fuel oil for everyone!

[RockRaines]

Fuel oil for everyone!

You never can give an answer can you.

[caulfield12]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/10/politics/tru...orea/index.html

Meanwhile, Trump doubles down on "tough guy" rhetoric on NK

[Balta1701]

lol. The Koreans just moved their program underground during this time. They never really stopped working on the nuke. They just lied about it. And we spent nearly a decade trying to reward them for that.

 

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

Apparently i need to back off on this and go to the basics because you posted something that literally agrees with this phrase in what I wrote:

The North had what was still a rudimentary uranium enrichment program in 2002. They admitted it when challenged, and then got to work reprocessing their plutonium for bombs. The plutonium route was vastly easier - the Uranium route was not even as far along as Iran's at the time and Iran needed another 15 years to get close.

.

 

Uranium has 2 radioactive isotopes. Uranium occurs naturally on Earth, and decays over time. Uranium 235 is much more rare than Uranium 238. It has fewer neutrons and is less stable than Uranium 238 - it decays more rapidly so there is less of it on Earth.

 

To build a bomb with Uranium requires isotope separation. This process is extremely complicated. It took the U.S. the construction of the entire Oak Ridge laboratory to do it - we had huge rooms built to gassify the stuff and then separate it gradually. In the modern age, this can be done in smaller facilities using centrifuges, but that technology must be extremely precise. You have to take 2 things that have the exact same chemistry and separate them quantitatively by mass. If you have a single centrifuge out of alignment that could be enough to make your bomb fizzle and you may not be able to tell you had an error.

 

The materials the Pakistanis were hawking was expertise on how to build those centrifuges, but those efforts took them decades. Look at Iran - they were accused of having a bomb program for 20 years and because they were building a uranium bomb they were still years away when the deal was signed with them.

 

Uranium processing is exceptionally difficult. Saying "they just went back to work" pretends that this is not the case. They did work on this path, but don't forget that at the same time the U.S. also had failed to keep up its part of the 1994 framework. Furthermore, the nonproliferation treaty gives countries a right to enrich uranium to low degrees to operate nuclear power plant facilities - lowly enriched uranium and highly enriched uranium start at the same place.

 

 

Now, let's go to plutonium. Plutonium is a different element than Uranium. It does not occur naturally on Earth. The only place it is found is created in nuclear reactions starting with lowly-enriched uranium. But, because it is chemically different from uranium, it is comparatively easy to separate. The hard part is generating it - to do that, you need a running nuclear power plant. The North Koreans had that.

 

They had the plutonium in fuel rods. Those things should have never been allowed to be touched, but hey, it's partisan to note that we let that happen while we were invading Iraq and that's still the greatest idea ever.

 

North Korea had the hard part done. They had a working nuclear reactor. They could do the work of building a plutonium bomb that way in a year, or they could do the work of building a uranium bomb by the time global temperatures have risen enough to make North Korea uninhabitable.

 

We were close enough to an agreement to get their fuel rods out of the country that we could have stopped this, but we got "distracted". How did that happen? It happened literally because we refused to negotiate. They were "Evildoers" and you can't talk to people like that. We see the same rhetoric here - you can't talk to people who are bad people. The exact end result of that mistake, of refusing to understand this situation and declaring that negotiations with bad people were also bad, is where we are right now.

 

So now we have a choice again. They are not going to give up their nuclear weapons. They shouldn't. I wouldn't in their case, there is no reason at all to trust the United States not to invade if they don't have the deterrent. What would the red line be now? Their missile technology. That is what sparked this latest round.

 

No one will like it. You will be negotiating with "evildoers" rather than heroically making the world a better place. It will make you less of a man. But you sit down and say "This is our red line. What will it take for us to get you to give up this missile program, to crush the ones you have, and to allow inspections to verify it". You then bribe the suckers and walk away alive.

 

Yes, it strengthens their regime. Their regime is likely to last decades anyway. Yes they will continue causing problems the rest of the time. They will occasionally rattle the saber with the south for domestic consumption or to extract more concessions. We are sending billions of dollars in military aid to a military dictatorship in Egypt right now that they use to then jail their own people and somehow that's ok, but we can't send food and oil to north korea because oh they're actually the bad ones?

 

That is how the game is played. Understand the issue, identify what your side needs, and it doesn't matter if they are standing in the U.N. hitting a shoe on the table saying "We will bury you!", you make deals to keep everyone alive and then work to bend the arc of history towards justice in other ways.

[Jake]

There's a fundamental problem that if you care about the lives of South Koreans, you have very little leverage. Seoul is home to 10 million people, with another 15 million living in that metro area. It is about 40 miles from the DMZ. North Korea has conventional (non-nuclear) weapons ready for immediate use that could easily flatten that entire area. The death toll could be higher than World War 1's in a matter of minutes without a single nuclear weapon. We have an important responsibility to not play around with these people's lives just in the service of assuring everyone how tough and manly we are.

 

What does NK want? They want legitimacy and security. To them, the nukes ensure security because one does not attack nuclear states. Though they are not perfectly rational actors, they understand how ruinous it would be to use nukes offensively. But they know there's no ground war to be had in Korea when their defensive capacity is so deadly. That means the regime survives, which is priority number 1. Legitimacy means they don't want to be treated like a pariah state. They rarely elaborate since we so rarely have serious negotiations, but the big starting ask of us from NK is always an "end to hostility" which presumably entails an elimination of economic and diplomatic sanctions, thereby further enhancing the longevity of the regime. That's not unfathomable even if maybe we don't feel they deserve that.

 

But it isn't clear that there is anything they'd trade the nukes away for now. The question is whether we're willing to negotiate without a promise that the nukes eventually get traded away rather than a suspension of certain programs. Compared to Iran, this regime is less trustworthy, less sensitive to internal pressure from its citizens in response to sanctions, and has more leverage thanks to the credible threats they pose to our allies, especially Seoul.

[Balta1701]

But it isn't clear that there is anything they'd trade the nukes away for now. The question is whether we're willing to negotiate without a promise that the nukes eventually get traded away rather than a suspension of certain programs. Compared to Iran, this regime is less trustworthy, less sensitive to internal pressure from its citizens in response to sanctions, and has more leverage thanks to the credible threats they pose to our allies, especially Seoul.

They would not trade them away nor should they. They would be at risk of the United States deciding that a few shells lobbed into Seoul while we destroyed their conventional positions from the air was an acceptable loss. Eventually, if they didn't have those bombs, the U.S. would probably decide exactly that.

 

The only way you'd ever get rid of the nuclear weapons under the current regime is to have them trust our word enough that they'd believe a non-aggression pact if signed. The only way to get to that point would be to negotiate with them and keep our word over decades, or to have the regime collapse.

 

The best way to achieve the latter - the Soviet strategy. Containment and negotiation.