The Korea Situation; It's Very Serious

[CanOfCorn]

There is no good solution to this. This is a weak man, who wants to be noticed and will do anything to do it. He has brainwashed his people and been brainwashed by his father/grandfather. They are crying out to be noticed.

 

The problem with that is...if you don't pay attention, then you never know what they are going to do.

 

You can't elevate him to the position in the world where he thinks he is, for many reasons, but you also can't ignore him.

 

So what do you do? I sort of agree with Greg (yikes), the US has to go to China to discuss. Not to take him out, not to invade, but to discuss options. Then they can go from there.

 

Unfortunately, and I also agree with Greg, that Trump is not the guy to do this. Not sure who I would send. Tillerson is the guy who should go, but I wouldn't send him. Maybe a third party that is more rational. Someone the GOP can trust but isn't a Trump-protege.

 

Honestly, I have no idea who that would be.

[StrangeSox]

There is no good solution to this. This is a weak man, who wants to be noticed and will do anything to do it. He has brainwashed his people and been brainwashed by his father/grandfather. They are crying out to be noticed.

 

The problem with that is...if you don't pay attention, then you never know what they are going to do.

 

You can't elevate him to the position in the world where he thinks he is, for many reasons, but you also can't ignore him.

 

Wasn't sure if this is about Kim or Trump to be honest

 

 

[Quin]

Wasn't sure if this is about Kim or Trump to be honest

 

Dude, same.

 

You have two thin-skinned, can't stand the heat, cult of personality leaders.

 

Armed with nukes.

[Balta1701]

I basically can't say anything better than this. Paragraph 1 is my comment on the person in this thread who says we should do something and then won't say what we should have done. Paragraph 3 is the reply on the other notes.

First, the US dispute with North Korea has been on the edge of crisis now for two decades. My own belief is that George W. Bush’s administration wrecked a not great but workable formula in 2001-2003. After the nuclear breakout that made possible, everything changed. But the larger issue is that we’ve now seen a repeated practice of totalizing threats from the US without a viable policy to back it up. To be more concrete, we’ve threatened that all options are on the table and hinted at solving the crisis by military means when it doesn’t seem like we have any viable path to do so. So we walk away from diplomacy without a viable alternative, thus losing the advantages of diplomacy while gaining none of the advantages of force. Don’t threaten won’t you won’t or can’t do.

 

Second, President Trump is an impulsive egotist with a lot to prove and he’s generally surrounded by yes-men. His threat of “fire and fury like the world has never seen” sounds very much like the nutball threats which the current leader of the Kim family and the North Korean state news agencies frequently make – various rage-and-threat-speak about seas of fire and other such nonsense.

 

This is a really bad and dangerous situation to start with. It was bad when President Obama left office. It’s gotten much worse since – through some mix of US threats and North Korean testing out the new administration. The worst possible thing is a President who is stupid, impulsively emotional and has something to prove, which is exactly what we have. (You think his litany of failures as President so doesn’t make him eager for a breakout, transformative moment?) At the risk of stating the obvious, threats like this from a country that has the ability to kill everyone in North Korea at close to a moment’s notice can set off a highly unpredictable chain of events. What if North Korea issues more threats? Presumably Trump fails to respond with a nuclear attack and reveals his threats as empty or – truly, truly unimaginably – he launches a nuclear attack. These are not good choices to face.

[Sonik22]

This has gone from being a "yeah it'll never happen though" situation to "this is f***ing scary" rather quickly...

[Jenksismyhero]

I like how that person first cites this as a problem that's been in existence since Clinton, and then blames Bush, ignores Obama's 8 years of failure, and then concludes with concern for Trump.

 

I also like how he blames Trump for the US having faulty intelligence about the sophistication of their ICBM program....as if they accelerated the program only in the last 6 months of Trump being in office.

 

edit: I mean, don't get me wrong, Trump is a disaster and has been a disaster with NK (and everything else), but to pretend like this is some Republican-only issue, or even a recent issue, ignores history.

Edited August 8, 2017 by JenksIsMyHero

[greg775]

This has gone from being a "yeah it'll never happen though" situation to "this is f***ing scary" rather quickly...

I must pat myself on the back here since everybody thinks I am never spot on any issue. I've been worried about this a long time and expressed my worries on this board. This is the powerderkeg, folks. This is the issue that figures to start the end of the world as we know it. Only solution believe it or not, is China and Russia and they don't seem too concerned at all.

[illinilaw08]

I like how that person first cites this as a problem that's been in existence since Clinton, and then blames Bush, ignores Obama's 8 years of failure, and then concludes with concern for Trump.

 

I also like how he blames Trump for the US having faulty intelligence about the sophistication of their ICBM program....as if they accelerated the program only in the last 6 months of Trump being in office.

 

Wasn't the point re: GWB about the problem with rhetoric that pushes war (see the Axis of Evil comments) when you don't have the capacity to actually push that threat? The rhetoric pushes the other side away from the table and further isolates them. The rhetoric removes diplomacy as an option.

 

I don't know enough to speak to the validity of that argument, but that certainly distinguishes both GWB and Trump's approach to North Korea (to differing degrees) from Clinton and Obama's approaches (unless I'm just missing saber rattling quotes from either of those two).

[GoSox05]

GWB declared three countries the "Axis of Evil" and then went and invaded one of them. What did you think the other countries would do? One of which was a neighbor to the country that was invaded.

 

 

[Jenksismyhero]

Wasn't the point re: GWB about the problem with rhetoric that pushes war (see the Axis of Evil comments) when you don't have the capacity to actually push that threat? The rhetoric pushes the other side away from the table and further isolates them. The rhetoric removes diplomacy as an option.

 

I don't know enough to speak to the validity of that argument, but that certainly distinguishes both GWB and Trump's approach to North Korea (to differing degrees) from Clinton and Obama's approaches (unless I'm just missing saber rattling quotes from either of those two).

 

My point is rhetoric doesn't matter - under Clinton or Obama, did NK continue it's nuclear weapons program? Did they continue to make bombs and test them? Did they continue to work on delivery systems? Yes, yes and yes. Their first nuclear bomb test was in 2006 under Bush. Their 2nd was in 2009, third in 2012, fourth and fifth in 2016, all under Obama. Clearly Obama's laid back, anti-war rhetoric halted their research/testing.

 

And in fact, just looking at the wiki article, I forgot that from 2003-2007 the Bush presidency had six-party talks with NK and for a time they (allegedly) stopped their weapons program. So while Bush started out his Presidency calling them one of the Axis of Evil, by the end he was still trying a diplomatic approach and that still failed.

 

End of the day, NK is just playing the world. No one is going to stop them unless military options are on the table and no one is willing to do that, so this will just gradually progress until they have a nuke capable of hitting the US and Western Europe. What incentive do they have to stop? None. What do they have to gain? Insane leverage.

[Balta1701]

GWB declared three countries the "Axis of Evil" and then went and invaded one of them. What did you think the other countries would do? One of which was a neighbor to the country that was invaded.

Even at the time, they had guns pointed at Seoul, so threatening them was already stupid. Remember how Obama said that using Chemical Weapons in Syria was a red line then it turned out to not be a red line? That's been our strategy with North Korea since 2001 - "all options are on the table!" we insist, "we can't wait any more" we insist, but no one has any other ideas what we can do. So we make empty threats and then expect a country run by an egomaniac not to respond.

 

They're not going to give up the bomb now that they have it. So either we are going to vaporize them and kill most of the inhabitants of South Korea in the process, or every little bit of tough talk in this thread about how bad "appeasement" is, every word of it is bullplop.

 

Now our leader has issued a threat to nuke them if they threaten again. It's either going to be nuclear war launched by a madman or it's yet another empty threat, but at least people feel tough.

[Jenksismyhero]

Even at the time, they had guns pointed at Seoul, so threatening them was already stupid. Remember how Obama said that using Chemical Weapons in Syria was a red line then it turned out to not be a red line? That's been our strategy with North Korea since 2001 - "all options are on the table!" we insist, "we can't wait any more" we insist, but no one has any other ideas what we can do. So we make empty threats and then expect a country run by an egomaniac not to respond.

 

They're not going to give up the bomb now that they have it. So either we are going to vaporize them and kill most of the inhabitants of South Korea in the process, or every little bit of tough talk in this thread about how bad "appeasement" is, every word of it is bullplop.

 

Now our leader has issued a threat to nuke them if they threaten again. It's either going to be nuclear war launched by a madman or it's yet another empty threat, but at least people feel tough.

 

Um, haven't there been several options thrown out there in this thread full of non-experts? Pressuring China, assassination, inciting an internal revolt...

 

 

[Balta1701]

My point is rhetoric doesn't matter - under Clinton or Obama, did NK continue it's nuclear weapons program? Did they continue to make bombs and test them? Did they continue to work on delivery systems? Yes, yes and yes. Their first nuclear bomb test was in 2006 under Bush. Their 2nd was in 2009, third in 2012, fourth and fifth in 2016, all under Obama. Clearly Obama's laid back, anti-war rhetoric halted their research/testing.

 

And in fact, just looking at the wiki article, I forgot that from 2003-2007 the Bush presidency had six-party talks with NK and for a time they (allegedly) stopped their weapons program. So while Bush started out his Presidency calling them one of the Axis of Evil, by the end he was still trying a diplomatic approach and that still failed.

 

End of the day, NK is just playing the world. No one is going to stop them unless military options are on the table and no one is willing to do that, so this will just gradually progress until they have a nuke capable of hitting the US and Western Europe. What incentive do they have to stop? None. What do they have to gain? Insane leverage.

1. Why is it so much worse if they have a nuclear weapon that can hit the US as opposed to vaporizing Seoul or Tokyo? They've been able to do that to Seoul for decades.

 

2. The Koreans did not stop their weapons program any time between 2002-2006. They popped the seals off of their plutonium generating reactor and removed the UN Monitoring equipment in December of 2002 and withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty in January of 03. They had a uranium enrichment program, but that was never anywhere close to generating a bomb. It took them about 2 years to complete one, during which time the 6 party talks happened.

 

3. In the six-party talks, the Koreans demanded what we're deriding as "appeasement". Per this website:

North Korea proposes a step-by-step solution, calling for the United States to conclude a “non-aggression treaty,” normalize bilateral diplomatic relations, refrain from hindering North Korea’s “economic cooperation” with other countries, complete the reactors promised under the Agreed Framework, resume suspended fuel oil shipments, and increase food aid. Pyongyang states that, in return, it will dismantle its “nuclear facility,” as well as end missile testing and export of missiles and related components. North Korea issues an explicit denial for the first time that it has a uranium-enrichment program.

Would that have worked and held up? God only knows. But I can tell you this - every single time we've decided to talk tough to them, every single time we've derided deals like that as appeasement...it has pushed them the other way. Every single bit of tough talk has failed and will continue to fail because the U.S. Cannot do anything to back it up short of vaporizing the entire peninsula. The tough talk in this thread contains the same basic flaw. It is guaranteed to fail because there is nothing to back it up.

 

So either we sit around and do tough talk and watch their capabilities increase, or we appease, or we vaporize Seoul. Take your pick.

[Balta1701]

Um, haven't there been several options thrown out there in this thread full of non-experts? Pressuring China, assassination, inciting an internal revolt...

What exactly is Pressuring China going to do? They don't care if their people starve. Their people aren't going to revolt, they've got millions of people more conditioned to hate us than anything else. Which means you have to get an assassin into that country and then have them not lash out after the trigger is pulled. Congrats. Great plan.

[StrangeSox]

It's a shame we have a barely-functional State department run by a clueless oil executive, could really use a solidly staffed diplomatic agency right now

[Jenksismyhero]

1. Why is it so much worse if they have a nuclear weapon that can hit the US as opposed to vaporizing Seoul or Tokyo? They've been able to do that to Seoul for decades.

 

Because I'm a citizen of this country and unlike many I value our country more than others. Our allies also need protection, and people of the world generally need protection, but a direct attack on US soil or of US interests is a more direct cause for concern. But you again misunderstand my point - this is a general failure of US diplomacy over many decades that's not party specific or rhetoric specific.

 

 

2. The Koreans did not stop their weapons program any time between 2002-2006. They popped the seals off of their plutonium generating reactor and removed the UN Monitoring equipment in December of 2002 and withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty in January of 03. They had a uranium enrichment program, but that was never anywhere close to generating a bomb. It took them about 2 years to complete one, during which time the 6 party talks happened.

 

Right, and advancement of those weapons and the delivery of those weapons continued despite Obama's world apology tour. So i'm not sure what you're arguing. Tough talk is pointless but the alternative is what? I'm telling you it's also pointless, as proven by the continued advancement of their technology.

 

3. In the six-party talks, the Koreans demanded what we're deriding as "appeasement". Per this website:

Would that have worked and held up? God only knows. But I can tell you this - every single time we've decided to talk tough to them, every single time we've derided deals like that as appeasement...it has pushed them the other way. Every single bit of tough talk has failed and will continue to fail because the U.S. Cannot do anything to back it up short of vaporizing the entire peninsula. The tough talk in this thread contains the same basic flaw. It is guaranteed to fail because there is nothing to back it up.

 

So either we sit around and do tough talk and watch their capabilities increase, or we appease, or we vaporize Seoul. Take your pick.

 

So you have no solution. Thanks for the input.

Edited August 8, 2017 by JenksIsMyHero

[Jenksismyhero]

It's a shame we have a barely-functional State department run by a clueless oil executive, could really use a solidly staffed diplomatic agency right now

 

Because the competent state department the last 8 years did so much to solve this problem?

 

 

[Balta1701]

So you have no solution. Thanks for the input.

Making a deal with them that at least cuts down the threats in exchange for a nonaggression treaty and food aid has probably always been on the table.=. They won't give up their nuclear weapons in exchange for that, nor should they, but at least it would stabilize the situation. But of course, that's appeasement. So, as long as that is worse than where things are right now, you are correct.

[StrangeSox]

World apology tour are you seriously still going to try to go with that one

[StrangeSox]

Because the competent state department the last 8 years did so much to solve this problem?

Rhetoric and threats on both sides have ramped up under Trump.

[southsider2k5]

This is fine.

[StrangeSox]

What is the argument against Kim having nuclear weapons that doesn't apply to Trump, a man who has questioned on multiple times why we don't use them more freely?

 

Imagine Trump being in charge during the Cuban missile crisis. Imagine him responding to 9/11.

[StrangeSox]

This is fine.

What do you think should be done? What is the cost you're willing to pay?

[southsider2k5]

What do you think should be done? What is the cost you're willing to pay?

 

Did we offer them the Rhineland yet?

[RockRaines]

Because I'm a citizen of this country and unlike many I value our country more than others.