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North Korea Says War With South Would Go Nuclear
A reader writes "According to reports from the Uriminzokkiri, the official website of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a war with South Korea would involve nuclear weapons, and '[will] not be limited to the Korean peninsula.' The article goes on, 'The Korean peninsula remains a region fraught with the greatest danger of war in the world. This is entirely attributable to the US pursuance of the policy of aggression against the DPRK (North Korea).'"
literally insane.
Last I checked, the US could make all of the North's soil uninhabitable with just a handful of bombs.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
lots of tech in that region.
lots of PS3s, iPods and other toys that would not stand up well to nuclear war.
Is this really any different from the rhetoric they've been using for the past however-many years now?
I wouldn't be eager for the war to actually heat up these days, though. Hyundai's been making some pretty spiffy cars lately; be a shame to have their production interrupted.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Did they proxy their ghost academy or am I just blind?
I guess they know they can't win a full war so want to go out with a bang. Scary....nothing to lose but probably more than happy to leave an imprint on history.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I think you forgot the "stuff that matters" part. I don't know about you, but a story about a real case scenario involving nuclear warfare seems pretty worthy of attention.
right...
Strangelove: "the whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost...if you keep it a secret. Why didn't you tell the world, eh?" Perhaps North Korea understands this evil calculus.
a war with South Korea would involve nuclear weapons, and '[will] not be limited to the Korean peninsula.'
So what they're saying is if tensions rise the only safe response is to proactively nuke North Korea until they glow.
Well alllll righty then. B-bye now!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That sounds like more of a threat.
If it rhymes it must be true.
NK has been issuing statements like this for years. I take a peek at their news site every so often and there's always something that reads like this.
Not sure why Yahoo! or AFP or anyone else would suddenly consider this news. But I can take a few guesses.
About 30 minutes after the first artillery shells landed in Seoul, a nice mushroom cloud would appear over Pyongyang.
I think "Nuclear Launch Detected" is already a familiar phrase to South Koreans.
Didn't we (and by we I mean the US and the UK) just finish "liberating" 2 other countries on much flimsier pretexts than this. We've got a crackpot dictator AND genuine WMD's (although the phrase WMD seems to be getting applied to anything larger than small arms nowadays) surely in the spirit of not being hypocritical warmongering oil fetishists we must now "liberate" North Korea.
Somehow N. Korea got nuclear weapons before they invented the Internet (let alone the wheel)...HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?
I don't like how the concept of total annihilation of a country is so easily bandied about. Not just this post, but all over the place. There are 24,051,218 people in North Korea (says Wikipedia), and only a large handful of them are actually causing this problem. How is it even conceivable to murder 24 million innocents (brainwashed, maybe; evil, no) because we don't like the guys in charge. Maybe the North Koreans can talk like that because the people talking are totally insane, but anyone else in the world shouldn't even have this cross their minds. Godwin called, he'd like to remind you that 24 million is four holocausts.
Dear whoever made Stuxnet: I don't care who you are. I don't want to know. But please mess these guys up. Overspin some centerfuges. Junk up some technical schematics. Generally make them miserable and ineffective.
After you have cried wolf so many times that people ignore you then you need to move on to wolves with fricken laser beams, and then eventually wolves with ICBMs. After that maybe it's time to try something different. Maybe something with sharks.
Nuke 'em from orbit....It's the only way to be sure!
Yeah, I've been waiting for the expansion pack to this for years :)
That is probably the best way I can view North Korea now, simply crying wolf. We all know of their lack of abilities when it comes to nuclear armament. We also know that they lack the ballistics to reach the US or anywhere of real interest. I think the ballistic they test fired (which had the potential to reach Japan) failed miserably. I they have the potential to make something go boom, but in the end, no real means on delivering on it. In regard to the whole war games we (US) participated in, and the threat that followed. I predicted (correctly) what would happen. And I wonder if it will happen again. It is quite simple, NK hates to tarnish its own name. So when it makes a threat and does not follow through, it must distract the people with some news so they forget about the threats. For example, they threatened to initiate war and kill all of us (as usual). Well, obviously they did not follow through with the plan (especially suicidal since we had the Washington carrier there) so they needed a distraction. So what did they do, they announce they had nuclear weapons. It is like trying to hold something shiny in front of NK's people to distract them. I really hate NK though... I hate them because I have mix feelings and the blame is on them. I hate the idea of war and thousands if not millions of people dying. But at the same time, I really wish garbage like them would be wiped from the planet. We have like what, 60,000 troops over there now. They live there, that is there home. Imagine if we did not have to have them over there. Imagine if some of the troops in the middle east no longer have to go for another tour because of us bringing the troops back from the DMZ. In the end, I think a nuclear war would be bad against NK. They will have all the important people hiding like rats underground while the poor and rest of the people would suffer above ground. Bunker busters are the way to go! P.S. I curse Starcraft because when I read this, the first thing that went through my mind was: "Nuclear Launch Detected".
says what now?
Does anybody pay attention to those dipshits anymore?
I mean, we get it - you want to rattle your little cage and scare up some free shit. It's just that nobody takes you seriously anymore, North Korea.
You're the little twirp who gets all up in some guys face and then tells your buddies "hold me back, hold me back" because you know he'll beat you to death if you actually attack him.
...and as soon as possible. If force is needed, so be it.
For years the US let North Korea get whatever way they want. NK leaders learned from Mao that military might is what keeps people, both inside and outside the country, fear them. The military power is their only bargaining chips. The more nukes they have, the more likely they can get things their way. This is why talks will never work. The NK leaders know that giving up nukes will seriously undermine their negotiating power. Not even China can possibly convince them.
Right now they threaten to nuke if "provoked". In few years time, they will threaten to nuke if S.Korea refuse to ship them food.
What would you suggest we do? Preemptively attack? While China isn't exactly in love with North Korea, NK does serve as a valuable buffer zone for them and they aren't going to take any aggression from us in their backyard lightly. We must find a way to neutralize North Korea that China can get behind or we're in for World War III, or at the very least massive trade disruptions that would crater our economy, given how dependent we are on China.
Even regardless of the China factor, it's hard to come up with a way we could neutralize North Korea, even with the element of surprise, that wouldn't end up being devastating to South Korea. By most estimates, for example, NK could completely level Seoul in about 2 hours with their massive artillery force. It's hard to come up with a way to stop that without irradiating the entire peninsula, which obviously would be bad for SK as well.
Even assuming we could somehow find ways around those problems, you still have the North Korean people to deal with, who have been indoctrinated from birth to believe their Dear Leader is a god who is the only thing keeping them from being devoured by the rest of the world. These people, of all ages, have literally been training for a war with the US for almost 60 years. We wouldn't exactly be greeted as liberators by the vast majority of them.
If this was an easy problem to solve, it would have been solved by now.
It's easy to be nonchalant about it when you don't like in Seoul. If war breaks out, Seoul will get hit by North Korean artillery nonstop. The other major concern is that China would get involved, and nobody wants to see the US and China going at it, either directly or via proxy. If it weren't for those two reasons, Kim Jong-il and co. would have been wiped out a long time ago. The only thing that could make those risks bearable would be if the alternative is an aggressive, uncontrollable nuclear state, and that's exactly what North Korea is becoming.
How can you launch a nuclear attack on your neighbour? What happens if the wind is blowing North that day?
"I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
When George Bush declared North Korea to be part of the "Axis of Evil", it was doing Kim Jong-Il a favor, making both Kim and Dubya sound like bad-asses that their populations should respect. Kim may be following in his family traditions of bat-shit insanity and sociopathic disrespect for the people he's ruler of, but he's still playing mostly for a local audience, and secondarily for other world leaders playing for their own local audiences.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The movie did explain that - the Doomsday Machine was to have been unveiled on the anniversary of some special state occasion, only a few days in the future. Not much help with the planes are already in the air.
I believe he's referring to the topic tags, under the story.
Right now they state: military politics wmd technology defense story
This is entirely attributable to the US pursuance of the policy of aggression against the DPRK (North Korea).
Is that even true? I'm not overly inclined to trust the US government, but shouldn't we have heard by now about a 'policy of aggression' if we were conducting one? From as unbiased a view as possible, is there any truth to this allegation whatsoever? Are we, or even - can we be construed to be pursuing a policy of aggression against North Korea?
I'm genuinely asking...
I mean don't you read the news?
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Rudolf the dead-nuked reindeer (reindeer)
had a very shiny nose (shiny nose)
and if you ever saw it (saw it)
you might even say it glows (like a nuclear reactor)
--
I do hope Santa doesn't choose the wrong moment to deliver sacks of fuel, er, coal, to the North Korean government.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I am sure if Korea so much as sneezes in the direction Chine will blast them before anybody gets a chance.
Instability in the region will risk huge investments.
They are just making noise to get attention.
The world should simply follow a simple legal route, what is happening in N Korea will come to pass. Help them when they are reasonable.
Ignosre them when they winge, follow international and spirint when they comit illegalities.
It may take time, and people will suffer in that country,
but illegal acts to hasten it will simply backfire and feed it.
G
It's not a treaty, it's a doctrine. Politician for "idea". It's just nations telling each other "If you hit me, I'mma hit you so hard your grandma feels it!" When heavily armed nuclear powers to that, you get MAD. No winners, so playing the game at all becomes a bad idea. Hey, someone should make a movie about that...
No, I rather doubt we'd turn the country into a parking lot. After all, a lot of civilians live there. I rather doubt there'd be much left of their military, however. They'd be neutered. Would we do so lightly? Of course not. Now, if NK were to directly attack the US with nukes, I suspect they'd cease to be a world power before they landed here.
"Please give us more money and aid!"
Those who can do. Those who can't sue.
Well, 2 good things happen in the long run if China and the US goes at it.
1) The US nullifies all bonds held by China and refuses to pay, or pay anyone that purchases said bonds from China, so a BIG chunk of our dept just vanishes
2) China stops exports of all goods to US. Short term US consumers hurt, long term, all the manufacturing jobs re-appear again in the US.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The whole thing with N. Korea is stupid beyond belief that all the other countries of the world AND the U.N. has let this continue (Zimbabwe, too).
Well, there is no cease fire from the early 50s, so lets go in and finish off all the big govt buildings in PY and demand surrender or else.
Nothing like stirring up war during Christmas in honor of the Crusades.
Lets see now. Who would come to the defense of North Korea...No one. Now isn't that dandy.
But Kim Jong Mentally Ill has been doing this for a long time, so we can wait until the time is good...or they just have a revolution. Either way it will be horrible, but KJM Ill has set it up this way and I don't see a way out without a lot of people dying of either starvation or war. That is his choice, because he won't abdicate & surrender.
I am not sure if this is true anymore or even if it were ever true; but I was told at the height of the cold war we had the capability to make the entire world uninhabitable in 8 seconds.
It was probably 8 minutes and based upon Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBM). ICBMs going over the north pole would take 20-30 minutes but SLBMs off the coast could hit their targets in as little as 3 minutes.
I think that some of those cables should have been released, but Wikileaks was extraordinarily irresponsible in deciding to release all of them. Some of this stuff is secret for a good reason, and a cable stating that China would like to see North Korea taken over by the South is exactly the kind of thing that could potentially destabilize an already unstable situation.
Conventional weapons have come a long way. A few MOABs and some well placed SSGN/DDG/CG launched Tomahawks would eliminate the majority of the problem without resorting to a nuclear attack.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
It's easy to be nonchalant about it when you don't like in Seoul. If war breaks out, Seoul will get hit by North Korean artillery nonstop. The other major concern is that China would get involved, and nobody wants to see the US and China going at it, either directly or via proxy. If it weren't for those two reasons, Kim Jong-il and co. would have been wiped out a long time ago. The only thing that could make those risks bearable would be if the alternative is an aggressive, uncontrollable nuclear state, and that's exactly what North Korea is becoming.
Nobody's on North Korea's side if they go to war, not even China. China's only interests in NK are, in order:
1) Prevent millions of North Korean refugees from flowing over the border to China (it's not like they're going to go to their other neighbor through all the robotic sentry guns.
2) Serve as a buffer between the pro-US South Korea and China's eastern border.
China will support Kim so long as he remains a posturing blowhard, but the moment he actually tries to invade--and triggers all those millions of refugees that China dreads flowing into their country--they'll turn their backs on him instantly.
You're familiar with the charming phrase "Mutually Assured Destruction," I take it.
you had me at #!
And the category of the story... ie, this is at tech.slashdot.org. And right before the title it says "Technology:"
Short term US consumers hurt, long term, all the manufacturing jobs re-appear again in the US.
Those jobs will go to Vietnam long before they reappear in the US.
Why are manufacturing jobs a good thing? I never understood this. There is value in overpaying human beings do work that can be automated?
Kim Jong Il goes ballistic.
"Dead hand" is not what's being discussed. The GP was talking about a doomsday device situated on home soil set to contaminate the atmosphere with radioactive cobalt if a war broke out. Dead Hand was a fail deadly launch system for normal ICBMs. These are two different things, though I'll grant that Dead Hand is similar in concept and purpose.
If you want to know about the doomsday deterrent idea try this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_device
Scroll down to the bit with the "doomsday machine" proposed in the 1950s in the US, which in turn was the basis for the same idea that appeared in "Doctor Strangelove".
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Actually, they did build it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)
Also you could get the 8 second time if all the bombs were exploded inside their launchers / storage facilities. People in this thread are assuming the missiles need to be launched to cause world wide destruction.
That doesn't mention anything about the Cobalt Bomb, or any other specific weapon... It's about an automated general launch system of their standard weapons.
They are announcing this as the US and S Korean navies are resuming the naval exercises that prompted the North to commence shelling. The South Korean government ended up getting a lot of flack internally for not responding to the North in any meaningful fashion, and has announced that it will send Jets north if attacked again. The north knows it cannot win in a shooting war, and will be utterly crushed if this occurs. So they are playing the nuclear card in hopes of bluffing the south into not doing anything further.
The south's political leadership needs a strong show of force right now, to not get voted out of office by enraged voters. This is a smart bluff (IMHO) on the North's part, to discourage the South from lobbing a few shells over the border while a US carrier group is at their back and on full alert. Using the nuclear threat here is good because nobody really knows if they are crazy enough to do it, and they probably know this. (I am sure they know we think they are unpredictable and erratic, and are willing to play on those fears).
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
This is once again assuming that North Korea didn't already know that little bit of info that directly pertained to them and was visible to three million people.
This is tech news?
Well it does give you a chance to make a "would you like to play a game?" reference.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that only ~1k out of ~250k have been released right? That is less than one percent.
I for one would prefer for DPRK to know it won't have allies if push comes to shove. Generally speaking, when little guys realize their big brother won't help them in a fight, they act less aggressively. But of course posturing plays an important role in negotiating a better deal.
There is the risk that information might destabilize their control and lead to violence. There is also the risk that the US and China plotting in secret to overthrow a nuclear power would lead to violence as well. Which situation is more dangerous, who can say?
Why are manufacturing jobs a good thing? I never understood this. There is value in overpaying human beings do work that can be automated?
Manufacturing jobs includes building the factory, running it, maintaining the robots, etc.
Note that its not the "automatation of work" that makes china desirable to business. Its the fact that human assembly lines are cheaper than robots if you can pay them slave wages, no benefits, and maintain no regard for safety or pollution... espeically if its near a port so you can inexpensively float the finished product to market.
Actually, they did build it:
First, the article doesn't say that. Second, it uses the word "purportedly" a lot.
Unless the initial press-only Wikileaks docs were leaked to N. Korea, this most recent flare up, which started when N. Korea shelled S. Korea and S. Korea shelled them back, started before Wikileaks took its dump. It seems more likely that Kim's failing health and the transfer of power to his youngest son are responsible.
Also, starting a nuclear war in response to finding out you only (massive, nuclear armed) ally wants you to sit down and shut up seems counter productive. Not to say that anything N. Korea does is sane: but I doubt it was a secret to N. Korea that China wanted N. Korea to make like it wasn't there (though the kid might not have been happy to hear it). The Chinese have the most to lose by a destabilized East Asia, whereas the N. Koreans have virtually nothing to lose. I'm sure China has spoken to them directly about the matter. They probably said something like: swing your dick around a few times to save face about the shelling, then go back to barely being there.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
You're wrong on multiple counts here.
GWB ordered the US to prepare first-use scenarios for implementation in Taiwan and other potential conflicts, and first-use of so-called 'tactical' nuclear weapons remains a part of the US nuclear posture and of operational plans.
No-first-use only became a entrenched part of public US nuclear policy in the wake of the Cuban MIssle crisis, and even then, it's not as clear that behind the scenes policies (actual policies) every matched public statements; there is now evidence to the contrary.
The US _will_ initiate the use of nuclear weapons under defined circumstances, and I wouldguess that, on the Korean peninsula, the Pentagon planners have such scenarios.
I doubt they involve anything less than significant Chinese military intervention, however, which seems likely at this point.
And 'nobody wants to be responsible for a nuclear war?' You should read some of the Chinese generals.
If you've studied the situation you'd know that North Korea and China have had a love/hate relationship for a long time - China is one of these last best friends in the region but for the last couple years there have been reports of angry meetings and requests from China for North Korea to behave.
Publically speaking - yes China supports North Korea to keep the hard liners happy, but it should be no surprise they secretly wish the Kim family would just go far far away.
I think that some of those cables should have been released, but Wikileaks was extraordinarily irresponsible in deciding to release all of them. Some of this stuff is secret for a good reason, and a cable stating that China would like to see North Korea taken over by the South is exactly the kind of thing that could potentially destabilize an already unstable situation.
What's your reason for this opinion? Keep in mind that any beneficial change in the North Korean government is also going to be for a time more unstable than the current situation. Is it somehow better to have North Korea stay permanently a backwards totalitarian government to avoid destabilization? I don't think so especially given that destabilization appears inevitable anyway. And it's also worth noting that I and millions of other people have a better understanding of current international politics as a result.
Is it a coincidence that all this talk about nuking other countries is coming a couple of weeks after the release of that cable by Wikileaks?
This kind of rhetoric has been going on for years as have a number of dangerous military confrontations. You really can't pin this on Wikileaks.
I think that some of those cables should have been released, but Wikileaks was extraordinarily irresponsible in deciding to release all of them.
There have been many redactions in the documents to protect individuals. In recent years it has been the lies of governments that have cost so many lives. Now it's time for some truth.
All of this always makes me think of an article that ran a few years back (not on slashdot) that was interviewing several people who had managed to defect/escape from NK into China and other places. These were average citizens...
One of them told how her job was to collect the pamphlets that were dropped by US planes, and how she feels so incredibly foolish now, because she and all of her coworkers had to use sharpened sticks to pick them up. They did this because they had been told that the US pamphlets which espoused democracy and freedom were covered in some kind of an acidic solution that would eat away their skin if they touched them.
She acknowledged how (in the light of having escaped and seen the world around her for the first time in a more impartial manner) very silly it was to believe such a thing, but reiterated that everyone who worked with her truly believed this to be true.
This sort of thing makes me very nervous about the idea of invading North Korea. The people are so incredibly ignorant of the world around them and we know so little about them besides the fact that they're not well educated and starving, that it seems dangerously possible that going to war with them would mean going to war with an entire country of zealots...this does not seem like a good option.
yes, but the next one may not fizzle and they don't need an working ICBM... just a "cargo" ship and a skeleton crew
http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk02200&num=5696
Is a good example of what I said above ;).
Kim made a trip to Beijing a couple of months ago. Not something that normally makes the news, if it even happens.
Could be one of three things:
1. Nothing, just business as commie-usual.
2. The fix is in, NK knows China wants it to stop being a shithole and find a way to reunite with SK, and heating things up a little and starting real negotiations won't look like just bringing the same book to the table and capitulating on things you've been holding your ground on for nearly 60 years. Maybe heating things up enough to start a minor war and losing. Losers get pretty good handouts in this modern world. But so do open capitulators, if we're smart (cf. Libya).
3. NK and China, or NK without China's OK, is really trying to start some shit so it can use its nuke and hopefully overrun the south in the aftermath of taking out SK's biggest city and military command center. Good luck with the second move in that chess game, short-round.
It's easy to solve once the shooting starts. It's unlikely we don't actually know where their nukes are. But just in case, we shell everything they own.
As for how we'll be greeted, how were we greeted by Russia after they spent decades being taught to hate us?
The open-arms thing usually works. Just not when Bush43 was in charge. I think it was him, not us.
I for one would prefer for DPRK to know it won't have allies if push comes to shove.
Yes, let's corner a nuclear armed animal and make him very afraid.
Kim Jong * will not survive any governmental change. They know it.
Its a well known fact that North Korea is within artillery range of Seoul - they can hit one of their biggest population centers and centers of government with standard run of the mill conventional arms and turn that entire area into a sea of fire within minutes.
No your right its not nuclear weapons you need to worry about - its conventional arms - at least for that initial volley.
Someone send N Korea a copy of War Games (Please purchase it legally so that the RIAA doesn't start a Nuclear War)..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Start here:
"K section of ccTLDs in the IANA human readable database.
Human readable delegation record.
IANA report on the assignment of the North Korean TLD.
Click some links to clear up any misunderstandings you may have about whether the assignment (rather late) of the TLD automatically means that they have fiber lit and active into the DPRK. Especially, click on the link on the delegation record to the URL for registration services.
BTW, what the AC who talks about North Koreans residing in Japan (Zai-nichi kita chousen-jin) says is fairly accurate, if incomplete. Most of the Korean residents living in Japan are quite aware that supporting the current North Korean government is not in their own best interests.
Unfortunately, there are still many who are afraid to formally register as residents of Japan, and many who are afraid of what the DPRK government could do to their families.
In addition, much of the legitimate effort to send money and aid back to family in North Korea gets siphoned off to the DPRK government.
And, no, cynical as it all seems to say it, the DPRK government is not in any hurry to even have very much of their military connected to the outside world by the internet.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Yeah, and we'll be greeted as liberators, right? It'll only take six months, tops.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Everything that gets published on the site has already appeared in a newspaper, so technically Wikileaks has not "released" anything.
>Have you, or anyone you know, ever bought a device with components made by Samsung?
I think a better question might be, "did you live before there was such a thing as Samsung, and how did you get by?"
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
...to cause decades long nuclear winter.
How long can you go without food?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Actually most people believe that NK will not use an ICBM to deliver a nuke. NK just doesn't have too many of either, and the risk of failure is high. Delivery by a ship or a truck, or just hidden in a sack of heroin, is much easier. Or if you like books of Clive Cussler, check the A/C unit on those imported cars that are delivered by hundreds of thousands every year. I'm pretty sure nobody X-rays them.
Those nukes may be already on US territory, in hands of sleeper agents. Unlikely, sure, but it's possible, and there is no defense against that (not with those borders, at least.) So a war in a faraway land may end up on the US territory.
I was about to post everything you just said, but now that I've read your post, I have to say this is all spot-on. At this point any alliance between China and North Korea is purely symbolic. It's like that part in Redvsblue when Tucker says, "It's Blue, we're Blue..." I'm pretty sure the CCP is basically going, "We gotta stick up for North Korea! It's Red, we're Red..." and that relationship is more about the show of bolstering China's communist credentials at a time when it seems more and more capitalist than any actual strategic gain China thinks it's getting out of the deal.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Stable or unstable is not by itself an argument. Most abusive relationships are pretty stable, for example. Sometimes, shaking up a fucked up situation is exactly what needs to be done.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"And the rest of us won't need nukes to bomb that crap hole into the stone age."
Due to the preference for precision guided weapons which are effective against modern forces fighting conventional wars, air forces are now much smaller than in the days of the Korean War. Bombing on that scale with conventional weapons is not possible.
We don't have enough airframes to haul that much ordnance. Most of our conventional bomber fleet went to Davis-Monthan to get chopped up for scrap, along with vast fighter-bomber fleets which were not replaced airframe-for-airframe.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
North Korea is all bark and no bite. It makes them a joke to the rest of the world. Maybe if they threatened to send their starving people out as immigrants it would make other nations scared. Funny thing is, I am fairly liberal.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Is it somehow better to have North Korea stay permanently a backwards totalitarian government to avoid destabilization?
Yes. So we Americans have something to point at and say "at least we don't have it as bad as over there", as we line up for our mandatory pre-commute cavity search.
How awesome it is that we ignored North Korea to invade Iraq.
Why are manufacturing jobs a good thing? I never understood this. There is value in overpaying human beings do work that can be automated?
Only if you have an economic system that does not spread the wealth gains from automation to a large enough fraction of the population. If everything was automated with today's systems, we would have +50% unemployment and a pretty restless group of hungry and angry people - the the best recipe for utopia unfortunately.
Too bad there was not some form of regulation or taxation in place since the turn of the century so that half of every increase in efficiency and productivity translated into decreased workload and increased pay for the workers with the other half going towards increased profits for the owners. Perhaps we would only have "advanced" to the technological level of the 1960s by now, but we could have something like a ten hour work-week. Unfortunately I can't think of any such system that wouldn't be very easy to cheat or game and without worldwide buy-in it wouldn't work well either.
People who run entire countries, even a third-world disaster like North Korea, don't get to that point by believing crazy shit like "China has my back". They'll feign shock if it's convenient, but anyone in NK dumb enough to actually believe it would have long been weeded out by the old "yeah, you should vote against Dear Leader, he thinks unanimous votes look too fake" prank.
Log in or piss off.
I purportedly have a friend who purportedly likes to the word "purportedly" a lot.
Well, it's on the internet, must be true!
China didn't actually say that it wanted a unified Korea under Seoul's control. What it said was that it didn't mind the idea, but also was OK with North Korea being there as a buffer state.
China's leadership seems OK with the status quo, largely because it defers having to deal with a few million people rushing across its border terrified that the South Korea military is about to skewer and eat them alive. South Korea is OK with the status quo for right now because it doesn't want to foot the trillion-dollar cost of unification.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Another thing that might be worthy of attention- one of the revelations to emerge from Wikileaks was the revelation that China was open to the possibility of a united Korea, under the control of Seoul.
Eh, the cable says that some dude in South Korea talked to some dude at the Chinese Embassy, and the dude from the Chinese Embassy said that he and a couple other people in the Chinese government would prefer a unified Korea under Seoul's government, but with certain economic and military concessions toward China. The Chinese dude also, IIRC, expressed regret that some guy who was dealing with the situation on China's behalf was a gung-ho old guard communist who disagreed with it.
There are factions in China that support reunification under southern rule. There are factions that don't. The question is which are going to win this one.
Are you adequate?
3 weeks of training, hand them a gun and send them out. China does it, N.Korea does it, Russia does it.
What exactly were you smoking when you wrote that?
Cause, you seem to be mistaking world's largest armies for some African warlord's "army" of "child soldiers".
Russia - 12 month draft, mandatory for all male citizens age 18-27. 18 months until couple of years ago. And those are just your civilians - there are over a million in active service and almost as much in reserve.
China - 24-month service obligation. But they don't enforce it as they have way too many soldiers already.
About 7.5 million in total.
North Korea - 42 months and longer. And their army is the 4th largest in the world.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yes, because one of the largest up and coming countries in the world are far too stupid to figure out what's going. Even more so since we'll have told them.
So your idea that they'd just start a global world-ending war for no good reason makes you a moron.
and a cable stating that China would like to see North Korea taken over by the South is exactly the kind of thing that could potentially destabilize an already unstable situation.
Or it could make NK behave and abandon its brinkmanship antics, because it realizes that china will not back it in a shooting war. It is entirely possible that NK's intelligence services were not aware how irritated china was was. Just because secret information was leaked, does not mean that a negative outcome will result when it is revealed.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I think doing nothing is the correct response to this.
Seriously, why does anyone take Li'l Kim serious anymore?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When was it demonstrated that North Korea actually had nukes? I only remember a failed test and a lot of posturing. Googling turns up nothing, although I may not be looking correctly. What am I missing?
Not if it goes nuclear. If it goes nuclear, NATO will retaliate nuclear as well. There is a strong chance that a second major conflict in Korea would result in a total nuclear war.
The way it works in the US, and indeed many countries, is that WMD is WMD. They do not differentiate nuclear, chemical, biological. If you attack them with a WMD, they'll respond in kind. However most of those nations only have nuclear weapons, or at least only have nuclear weapons in any sort of state to deploy. That means the response WILL be nuclear.
That policy came up because most nations don't maintain big stockpiles of the other kinds of WMDs. The US dismantled it's bioweapons program in the 70s and destroyed what it had, not it only has small research quantities and scaling that up for any sort of offensive system would take years, never mind developing the delivery system. The US still does have some chemical weapons, but they are int he process of being destroyed and are in no state to be delivered, even supposing the destruction stops.
Well, they don't very well want to get caught in a situation where someone launches a massive bio and/or chemical attack on them and then says "You can't use nukes, your policy says only the same kind of WMDs are allowed!" While that might sound a little silly, remember that altering policy in time of war after a massive attack could be a problem. So the policy is "A WMD is a WMD, we don't care what kind. You unleash a bioweapon, we nuke you since that's all we have."
Nope. More like the deranged provocations of a maniac who knows that the US fear ONE nuke in his hands more than he fears a million nukes in the hands of the US.
Let's face it. What happens to him if you blanket NKor with nukes? Not much, probably he'll be out of town before the first bomb hits the ground. You'll wipe out everyone else in NKor, but who cares? You? Doubt it. He? Even less so.
What happens if one single nuke lands in Los Angeles? I kinda do not want to imagine, I have seen what two planes hitting just two skyscrapers started. That was a few houses blown up and 3,000 people dead. Do I want to imagine what a whole city gone and about 3,000,000 dead would cause? I doubt it.
So what do you think will have more of an impact? Li'l Kims single nuke or your, say, 2,000?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The NK Army never lost a war, just battles. Don't forget that bit either.
No, the UN forces flat-out defeated the North Korean Army in 1950. The war only lasted beyond that because the Chinese took over. Just look at the strengths of the top 5 combatants (Wikipedia numbers, yeah):
Yes, Communist China fielded 3.5x as many troops as the North Koreans. On top of that, right before the war they gave the North Koreans 70,000+ ethnic Korean soldiers from the Chinese People's Liberation Army, including two already-organized, experienced ethnic Korean divisions that had fought in the Chinese civil war. Kim Il Sung invaded the south only after Mao promised to send forces if the USA intervened. The Chinese Communists really, really threw their support behind North Korea.
Are you adequate?
Their nuclear bomb fizzled and their ICBM fell in the sea well short of its target.
You want to know what I think about their ICBM? I think the US shot it down. North Korea relies on a good deal of foreign aid from sales of its ICBM tech to countries like Iran. I think the US would have shot it down purposefully to trick the world into thinking that North Korean missiles are unreliable.
How could you do this when several nations plus North Korea are reading telemetry and tracking this using radar/OOH methods? Stealth missiles or lasers.
The Chinese will side with NK if we dare enter the North Korea territory. In the Vietnam War no American would dare cross the parallel as China would get involved if they did. In 1953 they only cared if we were at their borders. Today they have made the new line at the border with NK.
Besides if China got involved we can't fight for SK. Walmart and many companies would go out of business. All of our goods are made in China and China owns all of our debt. They have us by the balls and Obama knows this. Imagine if they cancelled all exports to the US and then called us to repay the debt? We would be broke and our military would starve and we would ceist to exist anymore as a nation. Ahhh the joys of outsourcing to communist countries.
I think China is smart here and was planning to do this all along
http://saveie6.com/
"Is it a coincidence that all this talk about nuking other countries is coming a couple of weeks after the release of that cable by Wikileaks?"
Maybe I'm just rational, but if I just found out my ally doesn't really have my back against my enemy, I would have to re-think the whole enemy thing and reassess why my enemy was still my enemy and see if I could use this to my advantage rather than threatening nuclear war.
I see no advantage of threatening nuclear war, if I was North Korea I would ask China and South Korea for a few trillion in aid and open the borders.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
....Rain is wet. Film at eleven. Piffle. Must be a slow news day, for everyone to want to listen to the psychotic rantings of a pathetic little dwarf.
Regards;
This is where China could really save the day. If the North Korean people saw Chinese soldiers crossing into the country, well, I think they'd be so confused about the propaganda they've been fed for 5 decades that they would offer minimal resistance. I don't think the North Koreans are brainwashed enough to believe in a Chinese led invasion force, it would create serious cognitive dissonance for every one of them.
"the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
I think that pretty much sums it up.
Reading your scenario fills me with a swell of patriotic pride. I think I'll sleep better tonight, knowing we are so well prepared.
lets take out china. They are a PITA with all their pro-china economic stance and shit. Once NK is surrounded, they'll capitulate pretty quickly.
When one has a tool, which costs a trillion per year, one wants to use it to get a return on the investment. A lot of words could be woven to justify it, but a trillion is still an elephant in the room.
So does that mean Hitler wasn't genocidal, because there were other Jews?
Please don't respond that the Kim would have brought it upon himself.
We're discussing whether it would be genocide, not if it would be justified.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
That DPRK would use nukes in an all out conflict with ROK was always a "duh" thing. NK still exists as a country for two reasons only: first, they can deal a lot of damage to SK in a war before going down, and second, they don't start a war. If they did, it is certain that they would get steamrolled very quickly by combined militaries of pretty much everyone else in the region except China, backed by NATO. So once the war starts, they might as well use everything they have. More importantly, before it starts, they'd better make sure everyone understands that.
So, really, I do not see any news to speak of here. Much less relevance to WL.
We should wipe the earth clean of these assholes. Nuke em from Orbit don't leave anything to chance! They are soo poor they don't care if they get nuked because the land would improve! I know I would sleep better if they got carpet bombed into eternity! Civilians should run to the south while they can!
Say what?
Hussein made exactly that kind of mistake. Think for a minute (which you have obviously not done yet): Kim's only reason for being is his power over his country. If you take that country away from him, he is nothing. Literally nothing. A peasant with bad hair.
Do you honestly think he is so stupid that he doesn't realize this? Regardless of how he feels about this or that, or his political posturing, do you HONESTLY think he is THAT stupid?
Just curious.
1. Some people's only other ability is crime.
2. Engineering jobs follow, to be closer to the factory. After that goes management jobs. Oops, there goes the whole economy.
North Korea in its current form must cease to exist. North Korea is a country that needs to be invaded. Not to suit our (the USA) greedy interest, but to protect our allies and stabilize the region for starters. From what is in the "media" over the last month or two, it seems to be clear this is a very real option and is likely to happen.
I am not pro war by any means. I would love to see another realistic option.. Wait them out for another 10 or 20 years and hope nothing too big happens. Stop screwing with them, let them build all the bombs they want, give them the land they claim is theirs, that isnt, and wait for them to get stronger and hope they do not bomb an ally? I don't know much about anything, maybe I am missing an option.
Look at the satellite images of North Korea at night if you have not seem them, that is one of the most messed up things I have ever seen. South Korea all lit up, China lit up quite well, and darkness in between besides their capital..
s/©//g
Nazi Germany. Fascist Japan. East Germany.
How many of these "culturally incorrigible" countries did we have to obliterate again?
Oh, that's right, none.
At least I am reassured that the Westerners that made these kinds of stupid arguments back then lost the argument... as hopefully they will today.
China's only interests in NK are, in order:
You missed one. NK is like China's Pit Bull, the scary looking dog you own so nobody messes with you. Or the slightly unbalanced "bad cop" which the good cop has to apologise for while it's all part of the play. However these days China doesn't need NK as much, and I'm sure NK knows that. That isn't a good situation for anyone, and I'm sure China has wanted to remain reassuring. Post Wikileaks, that's now an even more interesting situation.
NK has made China confident enough to be a player, letting in US commercial interests knowing it has bargaining power while NK lays on the crazy. China uses them at times to negotiate, though it's certainly a two-edged sword for them. With that in mind, you can be sure that China is at least partly responsible for NK's behaviour. The Chinese are very good chess players, and I think we'll see just how good they are in the next few years.
The premier's birthday, IIRC.
He loves surprises...
kmem russian roulette: Aquillar> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/kmem bs=1 count=1 seek=$RANDOM
What I'm wondering about these cables is if they were that sensitive, and had to be kept secret at all costs, why did they leak them so readily? Not only did they give the data to the military, they left it on a computer where some rank and file private could walk it and lift it all.
Oh, yes, nukes have tech in them. Let's just post the whole Reuters newswire because that is delivered with technology!
It's not an unreasonable point, because this is going to be all over non-tech news sites anyway, so can be discussed there - why add more noise to Slashdot and push down the actual tech news?
:D
;)
However, your comment reminds me of the famous remark from Bobby Fischer, the brilliant and mad chess player, who arrived at this chess club one morning to find everyone discussing Russia placing nuclear missiles in Cuba and the prospect of nuclear war. Apparently he stood this for about five minutes before erupting in anger: "Gentlemen, what has this got to do with chess?"
I'm not objecting to your voicing annoyance - far from it, I can relate. I feel the same every time a Star Wars or Star Trek story appears as I don't understand why, as a C programmer, I am required to share a social overlap with a bunch of comic geeks. However, Slashdot is a community of sorts and discussion is one of the main attractions of this site (we all know it's not the editing). When something is big enough, it's interesting to know what a community you belong to feels about it.
True, it doesn't have much to do with chess, but I'm not Bobby Fischer.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Somehow failed but still with a probable nuclear reaction. And they have equipped with nuclear enrichment facilities that would make Iran jealous.
But I also am of the opinion that NK is not ready to make nuclear war. They could kill millions in Seoul and Osaka with a few nukes but they would lose and be destroyed very quickly in retaliation. Their nukes stocks is not enough to have a credible M.A.D doctrine.
By the way, these are only saber rattling because of the power changing hands. It will probably calm down.
However, the recent south Korea exercice to protect civilians from artillery shelling in Seoul indicate that the South may be considering taking serious steps.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Hussein didn't have the nuke. That's exactly the reason why he was kicked out. Do you think the US would have dared to if he had one?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have no problem with this at all. Let's first strike their dumbasses out of existence. They probably wouldn't be able to launch any real type of response and anything they did launch would probably have a very low success rate of functioning properly. I'm sure there are some nuke loaded Tomahawks on a carrier or Tridents on a sub nearby. Target every possible government building and end this nonsense in one day.
I'm pretty sure the CCP is basically going, "We gotta stick up for North Korea! It's Red, we're Red..." and that relationship is more about the show of bolstering China's communist credentials at a time when it seems more and more capitalist than any actual strategic gain China thinks it's getting out of the deal.
I think it's more a question of realpolitik. The Chinese doesn't want the entire North Korean population as refugees if the border was to come down. That's pretty much what they'd end up with. Even now it's the major route out of NK and the Chinese are already not that happy about it.
Stefan Axelsson
And cheaper. And have higher yield. Cobalt was a very early speculative idea that never left the drawing board. By the time there were thermonuclear devices it was long forgotten.
Stefan Axelsson
So North Korea & South Korea blow themselves off the map? Sounds good to me.
Or we could just go ahead and blow North Korea off the map. It's like, what? The most useless country ever?
Seems to me this would be doing us a favor, a way of getting rid of a problem.
Or look at it this way. There is too many people on the earth, so this would help with that problem?
I'm sorry I have no empathy for the Korean people. I'm sure the south is a bunch of great people. They like video games, which is cool.
So ya, lets just bomb north korea into a landfill, give it to south korea, call it korea, and then we have a united korea, got rid of the imbreeds, i mean, the north, and everyone is happy.
I know we'll lose some of the great comedy routines of Jae Kim Too. Or whatever his name is. Dude made an invisible cellphone, so he is dangerous.
Be seeing you...
After 9/11 all of the US government agencies pointed at each other and said 'we could have stopped it if we had that piece of info over there' while pointing at all the other agencies.
So the solution was to put everything on a giant intranet so everyone could see everything.
Not such a good idea, really.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
When was it demonstrated that North Korea actually had nukes? I only remember a failed test and a lot of posturing. Googling turns up nothing, although I may not be looking correctly. What am I missing?
In 2006 they announced a test, and there was considerable proof that it was a real nuclear bomb. See wikipedia or google for it.
I always assumed an intersection symbol, not union.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sorry, but what the fuck is wrong with you (and the lunatics that moderated a post advocating genocide as "insightful")?
You surely don't know enough about the situation in North Korea to support your conclusion. I bet it's a lot more complicated than you know, and probably more complicated than you could understand even if it was explained to you SLOWLY.
But yes, as in most totalitarian regimes, there is enormous cultural inertia because the only way to oppress that many people all the time is to grind them down until they are all collaborating in oppressing each other out of fear of being singled out. That takes time and creativity to reverse, and trying to do it right doesn't make anyone a pussy.
While bombing the fuck out of them would no doubt make it all seem simpler to you, that's not actually a relevant outcome.
Having said that, the *government* of North Korea is clearly dangerously insane. It's just that neither standing up to them militarily nor negotiating is likely to have predictable results. Let's hope Kim Jong Un is less of a lunatic than his father, and Kim Jong Il doesn't decide that a crazy all-out assault on everyone else will be a good legacy to leave before he steps down.
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
In my defintion, tough control on all workers, attempted extinction of individuality and free enterprise - or even personal property no matter how small - could very well be called "Communism". The one-party rule, the forced labor camps, the singular appointed chairman ruling the rabble with an iron fist are very much like the other "Communism" we've seen before, including the ubiquitous display of hammer, sickle and the chairman. Troop parades and countless faceless mooks goose-stepping before The Party adds a final touch, although we've seen these from a number of other rather unpleasant regimes.
If you want to define it further, call it National Communism. Just like National Socialism, but with even less individuality, less private property and more hive-mindedness.
If it weren't for those two reasons, Kim Jong-il and co. would have been wiped out a long time ago.
Kim Jong-Il wasn't wiped out a long time ago because there isn't any oil in North Korea so it's not worth risking US lives.
China will not side with North Korea.
If North Korea attacks Seoul, I'm sure the USAF and South Korea will have plenty of ordnance dropped on North Korea's military targets before you can say, "I so ronrey."
What is very depressing is that innocent lives will be lost for the dictators of North Korea to shake a feeble and withering fist at the rest of the world.
If North Korea does fire a nuke, you can rest assured that the West will not retaliate with a nuke. We're not that bloody-minded, and we wouldn't want to be seen to be stooping to their level.
Stick Men
Wikipedia says that their only successful nuclear test had a yield estimated 2.4 - 20 kT, with consensus pointing at the low end of the range. Their missile delivery systems are of questionable accuracy. How efficient is the industrial production they'd need to build significant numbers of their bombs and missiles?
Looks like they've got just enough power to kill a bunch of people in a city or two or to slow down an armored division IF the missiles land anywhere around the target.
Tech Public Policy stuff
In my defintion, tough control on all workers, attempted extinction of individuality and free enterprise - or even personal property no matter how small - could very well be called "Communism".
I hate to say this, but that sounds like what Multi-national corporations are going for. No individuality (get back to work, you lazy fuck!), no free enterprise or even personal property (*we* own the planet, you ungrateful fucks! now, get back to work!)
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Is it a coincidence that all this talk about nuking other countries is coming a couple of weeks after the release of that cable by Wikileaks?
This was more likely a response to the recent turmoil which happened just before the leaks. If there is a relation I think its more likely that it is because the US wanted to divert attention from the leaks.
I more or less agree, but I think there is another issue China thinks it must contend with. If S. Korea takes over N. Korea, and S. Korea remains tied to the U.S., then China will find it harder to make their claims to control the seas around their country. So I think China is always going to be looking for a way to keep the U.S. out of their neighborhood, and if that means sticking by N. Korea, they'll do that.
Now wrap your 100+ megaton bomb with a few tons of cobalt. Is it now "cleaner" than it was before? I somehow doubt it.
Nothing in its constitution mentions communism. It's simply a dictatorship.
But impressions are more important than fact to China, and just about everyone else, I guess.
If I recall we are at war now. There has only been an armistice, not a peace treaty.
China is sitting pretty on this. They want to eventually acquire North Korea (NK) but without the cost of a modern war. So China will let the U.S. do their dirty work for them, then move into NK en masse. We couldn't stop them easily.
Our best tactic would be, should hostilities begin, to destroy the overland supply routes in NK leading to China, thereby cutting off NK's supplies and guaranteeing the NK regime a limited lifetime. The Chinese would bitch about it and, in a worst case might send in repair teams. But consistency pays off, and repeatedly bombing the supply routes would eventually starve the regime.
Question is, once they fell, would China stay out or march in again as they did in 1950. My bet is they would go in. Sometimes it is useful to own even a trashyard. They could use NK as a nuclear waste dump, a weapons testing facility, a farming region, a national park and a huge set of port cities. It would give China a much increased coastline from which to prod Japan and project and develop sea power.
The only way to thwart China would be for the NK military to remain intact, so that no Chinese invasion could easily occur. That requires a peaceful change of regime with no significant war. In any case, despite political posturing, I don't believe China will allow NK to be turned over to South Korea.
So I think I speak for everyone when I say:
"Are you gonna bark, all day, little doggie...or are you gonna bite?
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
North Korea has Internet for highly privileged people and sneakernet-aware viruses cross air gaps quite well.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The USA won't stoop to this not because we aren't capable of it but because it would be a home-front PR disaster and in the typical case it's actually counter-productive. I like to think we learned this lesson in Vietnam.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if American forces used "unfair play targeting civilians" in warfare from 1776 (or earlier, if you count colonial times) until the press decided (correctly IMHO) that upholding the human-rights principles American stands for is more important than winning a war and started publishing American human-rights abuses knowing full well it could hurt the war effort.
Now, I wouldn't at all be surprised if America used TARGETED poisoning to kill or injure a particular person or group. But I doubt very much they would poison leaflets or rig children's toys to explode unless they knew that only their intended (adult) target would be killed.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The North Korean government says they have nukes, and since what the North Korean Government says must be true, they have nukes.
At least that's what my friend in Pyongyang says, assuming our mail wasn't tampered with.
*checking for steam marks* um nevermind, I think our communication has been compromised.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Possible, yes, but it would take pre-planted nukes over the entire inhabited part of the earth to do it. The closest I've heard of this happening using technology the earth has now was an episode of Babylon 5 when The Shadows claimed to have planted weapons of mass destruction in every major city. Unlike The Shadows, no single government on Earth has the capability of seeding the populated parts of the planet with nukes. Not yet anyways.
At one time we probably had enough nukes to seed the major cities and wipe out 70-90% of the world's population in 8 seconds assuming all governments cooperated in a worldwide suicide pact. With the limited disarmament over the last 30+ years we may not have that anymore. I hope we don't.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Once you take out every known military installation, cripple their infrastructure, and kill or capture anyone capable of mounting a serious resistance effort, there's not much point in killing everyone else.
If you have the luxury, the right thing to do when the enemy is reduced to small-arms combat is to shower them with humanitarian goods like air-drops of food and pro-peace propoganda then shoot anyone who points a gun in your direction AFTER you warn them to drop it or anyone who actually fires in your direction.
Yes, you'll still lose a few soldiers to people who manage to fire off a shot or two before getting killed but you'll win the hearts and minds of those who you just conquered.
Then like the Japanese before them in a generation or two they'll be undercutting you in the capitalist marketplace :).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If it goes nuclear, NATO will retaliate nuclear as well.
NATO is not that stupid.
Stick Men
Multiple nations have colluded to get some pretty shady nations the bomb. We now have:
1) North Korea (a totalitarian) with the bomb,
2) Iran (a religious totalitarian) close to having a bomb,
3) Burma actively working on a nuke (a 'medical' reactor that is 10x what is needed and buried more than 100' below ground) with North Korea and China,
4) Venezuela who as of last night became a totalitarian nation (willingly, imagine that) who supposedly got China and North Korea to agree to help them develop a nuke,
5) And Syria is said to be fairly quietly working on it as well.
And these are JUST the nations that the public KNOWs about.
Now, do you really think that these nations are getting the bomb to sit on it? Not likely.
But if you really think that you would like to see these go, please, go to somalia or pakistan and tell them that you are there to convert them to Christianity and ask that they not use the nuke in Christ's name. I am sure that your doing that will take care of things and the west can just ignore what is going on.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Riiiiggghhhhttttt,... just like last time eh?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Yes NATO not - with the US I'm not so sure. They are very hateful people with to big guns...
It's what all economic systems go for, if they don't have explicit regulation of wealth and power in the ruling cadres. It's the natural effect of money on humans and human organizations. And while it's natural, it's not a good thing at the levels of excess practiced by laissez-faire capitalism or single-party-rule (or single-family-rule) socialism.