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North Korea Announces 3rd Nuclear Test, Anti-US Aims
As reported by Reuters, The New York Times, and Fox News, among others, North Korea's nuclear saber-rattling has reached a new peak. North Korean officials have made clear their intent to conduct a third nuclear test (earlier tests were in 2006 and 2009), as well as further rocket launches specifically designed to demonstrate missile reach extending to the U.S. From Reuters' story: "North Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States, although its December launch showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range, according to an intelligence assessment by South Korea. 'We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States,' North Korea's National Defence Commission said, according to state news agency KCNA."
I understand the monetary interest North Korea has in appearing to be a credible threat to peace. But someone over there needs to look at the end of this game.
If they launched something no more damaging than a dishwasher at San Francisco, their great defenders, the Chinese, would tell them "you're on your own." They have to know they wouldn't last 3 weeks against a U.S. military onslaught. Hundreds of thousands of good people on both sides would be dead, for nothing. No one in the US wants any resources North Korea has. There isn't even the weak excuse of fighting over oil (sorry, "energy security").
It's just so tragically pointless.
If they really wanted to deliver a nuke, they'd ship it in on a tramp freighter or submarine, land on some remote area of the coast, and walk the thing in somewhere. The whole missile thing is a national prestige exercise for domestic and regional consumption.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Hey North Korea,
That country holding the other end of your leash just voted for the Security Council resolution against you rather than abstaining as they have done in the past. Maybe before you talk a bunch of shit about lobbing a nuke at the US, you should worry about China giving that leash a big yank.
Also, don't you guys only have enough nuclear material for 7-8 weapons? Please continue nuclear testing in your own country and use up all of your weapons grade material as fast as possible on making holes in the ground a lot bigger.
Cordially,
The Rest of the World.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Not sure why news articles say things like this, but Alaska and Hawaii are much closer to North Korea than San Francisco. Do you think a nuke hitting Anchorage would be taken less seriously than one hitting in San Fran?
The potential power to reach the stars, yet all anyone wants to do is point it at their neighbor and make threats. We will never escape these "Dark Ages" we're all living in.
"North Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States, although its December launch showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range."
And Portland and Seatle are closer than San Francisco. And all in the continental US, last I checked. And I know-- warhead + rocket, but last I checked, belief was unclear on their ability to pair a warhead various rockets, but they could likely come within 30 miles of Portland. Or Portlandia.
they had a blast.
The problem with the first strike idea is that Seoul is within easy range of a vast number of dug-in North Korean artillery and rocket emplacements. They might be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people in the time it would take to destroy them. Of course, the US and South Korea will have been mapping and targeting those emplacements for the last fifty years and may have found them all. Maybe.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
When Kim Jong-Un came to power, I was soundly modded down for expressing skepticism about his being a reformer. I was insulted for being an "old man" stuck in a cold war mentality. Now he is dancing Pyongyang Style.
You know, those Weapons of Mass Destruction? They were in North Korea all along!
Its a pretty good bet South Korea and China won't step up. We simple broadcast in Korean on Voice of America that we are cutting off the assistance and why.
The North Koreans can then do something about their government or stave. I think we should try hard to no care which they choose.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The only way the civilized world is going to limit the cost of dealing with the ultimate war with N. Korea is to prepare S. Korea, with the help other friendly countries, to do a massive surgical strike to take out the entire N. Korean military and its facilities and have S. Korea able and supplied and armed with its own people who can move in to supplie staples and organization to the society.
I am not convinced the military which is ultimately in control of everything, will ever give up its power, no matter what the "Glorius Leader" says or does, as he can be replaced.
You let the cancer grow or you cut it out and deal with the consequences. Of course this could never happen within the next 4 years because of leaders in power now who have no vision other than their own personal power.
We certainly have battle plans ready that would allow us to militarily unify Korea under the south. There would be nothing "surgical" about it, though. North Korea has massive numbers of troops, rockets, artillery, etc., and South Korea's capital is only 35 miles from the border, within range of the larger NK guns. Here's a map of what could happen. Seoul would be a pawn in the battle, and it would destabilize the entire area for some time.
I think the fundamental question here is whether this is a show of strength being done because North Korea wants to talk but has nothing else to negotiate with. If so, perhaps you meet them, acknowledge their big scary threats, trade around for some perks (maybe make Kim Jong Il the equivalent of the British Royal family in the new Korea, with a figurehead role), and unify them peacefully with everyone coming out ahead. On the other hand, maybe they want to remain independent and hold a nuclear threat over the United States' head... in which case better to strike sooner, before they have the capability. I don't have any of that information, so I'm not going to second-guess the decisions.
E pluribus unum
I mean, really, there's one or two countries rather close by North Korea who don't like them either. How about, instead of waving our allegedly big nuclear dicks all over the place, just plain ignore NK? Don't talk about them; don't talk to them. At some point they'll get bored and promise that their missiles are specifically targeted at $OTHER_COUNTRY.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
That's just what I was thinking.
You don't need a missile do deliver a nuke. Heck, you don't even need fission. Just grind up a bunch of radioactive material and use explosives to disperse it into the air. There you go, you've poisoned a city forever. Game over.
Plus, if you don't care about high efficiency you have lots of options. Airburst = maximum damage, but you don't need to use a nuke as a bomb if you don't want to.
personally, I'd load up the bunker-busters, get the Aegis cruisers out in the western Pacific, and overfly Nut Korea every half hour anybody starts scuttling around the missle fields there, fly over and dig until you find sanity.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
We should take off and nuke the site from orbit....it's the only way to be sure.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Seriously, there is NO CHECKING of incoming freight into the US. You put the bomb in a shipping container, have it offloaded and shipped to some random warehouse, then put the bomb in a panel park and park it downtown $victim_city. There is no mechanism whatsoever to catch you if you do this. I have done work in ports. If the paperwork is straight for it to be tennis shoes it will get where it's going with nobody the wiser. Of course if you're NK your bomb is a piddly fizzly Plutonium gun bomb that doesn't work all that well so it will only knock down a few square blocks and spray a bunch of contamination around, but that will be annoying enough that nobody will mind if we respond with one of our own slightly more effective systems, right?
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Even if you blanketed the area with nukes you're not going to make a sizeful dent in the amount of artillery deployed there. We're talking about an enormous number of hardened bunkers in a large mountainous area.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
If they have the capability to launch a satellite, then any point in the world is within their reach. Whether their aim is good enough to hit the target is another question.
Meanwhile, as soon as the fighting starts, the DMZ turns into a sea of fire. Seoul and Incheon, the capital and primary port for the South, both within easy gun/rocket range of the DMZ (you can bet those gun emplacements are already pre-sighted), are decimated within a day. 100,000 SK and 20,000 US troops hunker down to resume the WWI-style trench warfare that characterized the latter years of the Korean War, and nothing of value is gained. A fast amphibious force from the west could probably capture Pyongyang, given the current lack of Chinese support for NK and the fact that most of the NK forces are concentrated at the front, but then what? You'd still have the full stalemate at the most fortified military position in human history, and your quick-strike force would be left holding a town in the middle of a population so hostile it makes Iraq and Vietnam look like Kentucky.
The Chinese taught the N Koreans how to dig in. Dug in they are, culturally and militarily. There's a report floating around somewhere stating that the only possible way to reinitiate the Korean War without unacceptable losses, both military and civilian, is a first-strike with chemical weapons. Even with that, the report said it would take four times as much nerve gas as the US ever had on hand at any time.
Some tumors you just can't slice out. You can isolate them and try to prevent them from growing, but the surgery is just too dangerous.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
the big problem is that if we decided to instruct the Dear Leader in humility then SK would become a wasteland within minutes.
now if we could get enough "civilian contractors" in place to get everything sorted out then we would have a single Korea in hours/days.
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Seriously? You couldn't think of a third actual news source? Couldn't find a link to the National Enquirer, so you went with one of it's peers?
The only way the civilized world is going to limit the cost of dealing with the ultimate war with N. Korea is to prepare S. Korea, with the help other friendly countries, to do a massive surgical strike to take out the entire N. Korean military and its facilities and have S. Korea able and supplied and armed with its own people who can move in to supplie staples and organization to the society.
It's a tempting thought, but it's not going to happen unless a nuclear attack on S. Korea, Japan, or the U.S. is imminent. The people of North Korea may be impoverished, but the country has the fourth-largest active military in the world:
China 2.285M
United States 1.458M
India 1.325M
N. Korea 1.106M
Russia 1.027M
(Everyone else in the world has a military roughly half the size of N. Korea's or smaller. Other members of the security council listed below)
France 0.353M
United Kingdom 0.198M
If you look at military reserve, which would be called up in the event of a strike against N. Korea, you add 8.2M people to the fray. That's nearly 10 million people who have been cut off from the outside world for generations and taught that the world is out to get them and their glorious leaders protect them. A lot of people will die, on both sides, and no one has the stomach for that -- and rightly so. Alternatively, saving our side casualties by using nuclear weapons would be unthinkable. So the people in power (the military) sabre rattle to maintain their grip on the country and to try to force aid from the rest of the world. It's not in their interest to attack us, because we would stop feeding them. But we can't afford to let them get in a position where a nutjob or nervous, clumsy individual accidentally launches a nuclear strike. Our job (as the rest of the world) is to ensure they don't gain the ability to threaten us with nuclear weapons, even if that means cutting back our aid to their poor impoverished citizens who think the aid comes from their leaders and don't know any better.
But don't think for a moment that we're going to send two helicopters full of seals into Pyongyang, dump the glorious leader's body at sea and suddenly N. Korea will become a sunny land of welcoming people with a big rainbow over it. If the military leadership ever fails there, it's going to be chaos, and the people won't want our help.
The real news here is this:
so now they are aiming for the USA?
watch out Russia!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
International politics and child development are not even close to the same thing. It's scary that you even make a comparison.
that's cute
but the temper tantrum of a child and the calculated provocations of a cult of personality dictatorship are slightly different
try again
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
America cannot win a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan! Why on earth do you think they would be able to win one of the biggest military forces on the planet that actually BELIEVES in what they are doing after almost a century of brainwash?
Then just take out the communication capabilities. The gunners in remote areas won't know what's happening for weeks.
will never happen
china hates the idea of a united korea allied with the USA on its border. it prefers unstable mad dog north korea to that possibility
but as time goes on, china is going to have to make peace with the possibilty
in fact, if north korea does go full bore wackjob, and action becomes inescapable, china would involve itself actively and militarily as well, it's not foolish. any action in north korea is dependent on chinese involvement and acquiescence, obviously
but what i see happening is china going for regime change, but keeping the countries separate
simply because it hates, hates, hates the idea of a united korea allied with the USA
germany reuniting was really made possible by a sinking USSR
china is not sinking. it's rising. therefore, the prospects of a united korea in my estimation is doomed
any koreans dreaming of a united korea: i'm sorry, the geopolitical agenda of china is not going to let it happen
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
NK's little kingdom of retards is run entirely by fear and has a sell by date. Not everyone is a brainwashed tool of the state. Policy should be to offer a counterweight to NK propoganda thru all possible modes of communication.
Then cut off the head!
The solution to war is war. Yup, sounds 'civilized' to me, well, USA civilized at least.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
and in a war that can be drilled real fast.
"Bombing would almost certainly destroy the world's economy."
U.S. unemployment rate during year 1938 - 1945:
1938: 19.0%
1939: 17.3%
1940: 14.6%
1941 - 9.9%
1942 - 4.7%
1943 - 1.9%
1944 - 1.2%
1945 - 1.9%
Hint: a couple of military conflicts occur during these years.
New Economic Perspectives
The US, and Japan for that matter, have the ability to shoot down NK missiles as they are in the ascent stage. Now that NK has formally stated that it is their intention to create missile technology that can deliver nuclear weapons to the US mainland, the US has the excuse we've needed to formally state that we will shoot down ALL NK missiles whether they are military or civilian in nature.
This leave NK with the next move. They can shoot a missile. We shoot it down. NK's next move?
Well, they might start shelling Seoul, but if they do, they are basically violating the cease fire, and it's the Second Korean war. But will they do that? My guess is no, they won't. Because as bloody as it might end up, the Kim clan knows where this leads, as does their military. They end up dead. Or in prison. Or in prison and then dead. And their country is subsumed by SK and the world is a better place.
Is it a gamble? Sure. But this would send a message to all like minded states, like Iran. Build a weapons capability that threatens the US with nukes and you lose your missiles at the very least. If you escalate after that, you end up dead. Even "madmen" like Kim and I'madinnerjacket will understand that. End result? Bad guys in a worse place, good guys don't have to worry about nukes raining down. Win Win.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Hey USA! Did it ever occur to you that China holds no threat for the NK way of life but the USA way of life is anathema? It wouldn't be the first time a bully has been taken down by the bullied.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
No threat. Look, let's compare this number I made up, to this other number I made up, and it's plain as day.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
And how would you do it? They have been sitting there preparing themselves for a "surgical strike" for sixty years. They have the most extensive tunnel and bunker system known to man.
You don't follow a snake in the grass back to its nest. You take out all observable rocket launch pads, factories, landing strips, bunkers, buildings of leadership...etc with nothing but cruise missiles. Lots of them!!! Then, you wait until every man north of the border comes running into the meat grinder of weaponry just waiting for them at the line.
Let them come to you. No need to put boots on the ground. They will either starve to death, go thirsty, or spark an internal civil war from all the mass confusion.
Life is not for the lazy.
Sounds like that kid needed a bit of spankanol. This is also why I would be a bad grade school teacher.
Time to offend someone
We don't have that many A-Bombs, we do have a pile of F-Bombs. Ie. Fission vs, Fusion. Do note that a fusion warhead is 1,000+ times more powerful than a fission warhead.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
We're entering an era where more countries have nuclear weapons. They've become too easy to make. Isotope separation used to take huge gaseous-diffusion plants. Entire cities were built just to enrich uranium. Centrifuge plants are now medium sized industrial park installations. That's URENCO's plant in New Mexico. It produces enough enriched uranium to power a sizable fraction of US reactors, and it's being expanded. A much smaller plant could enrich enough uranium for a few bombs.
Once you have enriched uranium, making a nuclear bomb isn't a huge job. As a build, it's roughly comparable to making an auto engine from scratch, a job that some auto racing shops can do. Machining uranium isn't that hazardous. Here's a how-to guide from Union Carbide from the 1980s. (Plutonium is a totally different story; there you need glove boxes, remote manipulators, and huge precautions against dust escaping.) There aren't many secrets left about how ordinary atomic bombs work. It's been almost 70 years, after all. (Some of the tricks of fusion weapons still haven't leaked out.)
We've been very lucky that this was a hard thing to do. But it's not that hard any more, and it keeps getting easier.
Radiation detectors at ports are gamma detectors, primarily for detecting radiologically contaminated scrap. I have actually worked next to those detectors and seen them go off. The principal material in an atomic bomb is plutonium, which is an alpha emitter. A piece of paper will stop an alpha particle, much less a bomb casing or even the skin of a shipping container. A finished, functional atomic bomb is not all that radioactive compared to some steel that you stupidly alloyed with cesium from an old cancer therapy machine, which is what the ports are looking for.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Only a suicidal country would nuke the Untied St... oh wait, nevermind.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That was likely MacArthur. Patton was dead well before the Soviets withdrew from N. Korea.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
4th huh? Didn't Iraq have the 4th largest military in the world before 1991?
So we just happen to schedule our interceptor test at the same time they schedule their rocket test?
As I keep saying, as long as the US is still testing, creating and updating their nuclear arsenal, ANY other country has it's right to test and create their own, even if the country seems to be a 'villainstate'.. It doesn't mean I like it, but the US should shut their mouths as long as they have theirs and keep threatening other countries..
It will be 2 million people needing food, shelter, and likely medical attention. In one place, at the same time. I'd expect that it would test the logistics of any well organised country.
Plan My Week for iPhone
Once this tiny country has a nuke with 6,000 miles of range, it could turn on China.
China couldn't even invade if the country had more than one nuke. Any concentration of force is toast for a nuke.
This would be like letting cuba develop a nuke because they were currently angry at France.
What are the chinese thinking letting this nuke program complete RIGHT ON THEIR BORDER???
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
No, but I did make it through Quantum.
Try https://www.google.com/search?q=nuclear+bomb+detection+ports&oq=nuclear+bomb+detection+ports
.
(maybe make Kim Jong Il the equivalent of the British Royal family in the new Korea, with a figurehead role)
Shouldn't Kim Jong Il be, you know, alive for that scenario to work?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Or this is how they will become more like china - with their "communism" meaning the same people are in power forever.
We should tell North Korea if they continue we will test a couple minuteman ICBMs on their capital, invade from the South, and just end this silliness.
Gather all the people who did the Gaza flotilla thing
Sail into North Korea with food and medicine.
Film the entire trip.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
But someone over there needs to look at the end of this game.
When you're only looking at two pieces, you aren't seeing the whole game.
You are not seeing for example the possibility of the leaders of NK authorizing an attack, then bugging out to some other country as NK is nuked a few times. Any number of other countries could probably arrange compelling payment to make NK a proxy for such an attack. And lots of other countries benefit economically or just spiritually by the US suffering a few million causalities and crippling economic disaster that would result.
Apart from many dead, NK wouldn't even be that hurt by any attack (having very little infrastructure to harm anyway) and as a bonus they get to fry South Korea as a byproduct of any attack on them. For the highest echelons of NK leadership, it all looks pretty compelling.
Look at the pictures of Obama from first to second term; they detail quite well the level of shit that the world is stirring up against the U.S.
Within ten years the U.S. will probably be hit by some kind of nuclear attack; it's just a matter of where or how big. There are too many people itching to do so regardless of consequence because for them there is no consequence personally.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think N. Korea is just crazy enough to use their nuclear weapon/s to try to blackmail S. Korea into "giving up". N. Korea ultimately needs S. Korea's resources & people.
The sooner people in government wake up to the long term goals of this warlike state the better. There is no good outcome from these people and it all has to do with the retention of power totally in the hands of the military in N. Korea where the "glorius leader" is just a glorius mouthpiece for the military to which everyone bows.
Uh... talk about denial.
Didn't NK only just last month just make an attempt to launch a satellite?
Granted, its orbit wasn't stable and they lost control of it within only 24 hours, but if they even do that much, how on earth do they think that NK does not have a delivery system capable of hitting a country the size of the USA?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
They're not showing off aim, they're showing off range.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
A nuclear missile consists of the launcher, the payload, and the reentry vehicle. They haven't done any reentry tests, and as far as we know their payloads can't fit on anything near the size of the missiles they have tested so far. So you're, at the moment, very much mistaken. Clueless, even. I do agree that the Russian Federation isn't a rogue nation, and that neither was USSR, to an extent.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
It's the buffer nation strategy. If you can't overrun them, load them up with weapons and force the guy next door to waste time and resources on them while you go about your business. Same thing Pakistan did with Afghanistan (turning it into a fundamentalist backwater nightmare).
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
NK has been preparing for bombardment for 60 years. You really imagine they haven't considered communication?
This reminds me of the book "The Mouse that Roared" Where the Duchy of Grand Fenwick tries to go to war with the US in order to get out of bankruptcy.
All nations have the right to self determination and also self defense. If they want to build nukes and rockets they can. However just like any right, if exercising it causes injures to someone else then you are fair game for retribution. Let them play with fire but if they launch on anything owned by another country then they should pay for it. Let them know if the they ever launch a nuke at the US or any of our allies that they will be annihilated.
It all starts at 0
which is not at all important when you are launching missiles or satellites or nuclear bombs
lol!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So this little country is bankrupting itself so they will have the capability to lob a nuclear weapon at us? They need to up the ante a little bit and build up a huge stockpile of weapons and delivery systems. Then I'll show you bankrupt - morally and economicaly.
Dealing with North K. is like watching Pinky and the Brain.
Pinky: "Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"
The Brain: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky--try to take over the USA!"
Table-ized A.I.
Existing radiation portal monitors, as well as new advanced spectroscopic portal machines, cannot reliably detect weapons-grade uranium hidden inside shipping containers. They also set off far too many false alarms.
I'd say having faith in finding a bomb is misguided.
Man, you really need that seminar!
See the Clinton administration policies, that's exactly what they tried. And N. Korea promised to stop their nuke program in response. You know what, they did. Except that they then started another in secret. When Bush got into office, the Clinton admin people sheepishly explained that N. Korea still had a nuke program and Bush realized the Clinton policies were not going to work. Been there, done that. N. Korea is not the U.S.'s fault. N. Korea is N. Korea's fault.
Yeah, I read that one. Then I read the WikiPedia article. Randomly quoting random crap off the internet, does not yield truth.
Nice list. Saddam used to be number 4 on that list in 91.
And yet, surprisingly, interpersonal relationships can make a huge difference in international politics. An example is Churchill's excellent skills at working with Stalin.
If I were working a president working with North Korea, I would do everything I could to make two things clear:
1) America does not want to fight N Korea, and will not make a pre-emptive strike.
2) If we are forced to fight N Korea, we will destroy them. There is no way that scenario ends well for N Korea.
With people like that, they need to understand what their options are, and how to make good choices. If they are stuck constantly expecting an attack from the US, then they will continue to make bad choices.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Too many people in this thread have been watching too many Michael Bay films, and not enough time reading how international relations actually works.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
All this hubbub is in response to a UN vote censuring them for the December rocket launch. The vote was unanimous - China did not back them up or even abstain.
Betcha I know why.
If war were to break out and China supported NK, we would technically be at war with China. Or at the very least consider them hostile and sever ties. Which wouldn't be in China's best financial interests at all, seeing as how they own over a trillion dollars of US debt. If things went that way I think they would have a hard time collecting on a single penny of that debt. And that's a lot of money to flush away.
So for purely financial reasons alone, China wouldn't get involved. There are other good reasons, sure. But a trillion dollars in the balance probably trumps a lot of them.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Oh yeah, isn't he that Gangnam-style guy? Dorky, yes, but great sunglasses.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Well, one tragic consequence is that, when Seoul gets blowed up, the collusion in the flat-panel display industry will evaporate. Prices in that market will definitely collapse!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Actually, the actions make perfect sense.
First, I am fairly certain the new leader knows about Macroeconomics as he was educated in the West. If had to bet on anything, I would bet he is trying to open up the country, while keeping his leadership secure.
To make long story short, the saber rattling is wholly for the consumption of internal NK and Chinese politics. In order to liberalize policies he has to appear to be a hard liner militarily.
First, you have to understand the North Koreans really do hate the U.S. with a passion. The Vietnamese were able to forgive the U.S. (kind of) because they won. The NK experience was much more awful. The casualties on all sides were pretty high, on par with the casualties in the Vietnam war, but happening over 3 years rather than 20! And the outcome was the worst imaginable for the long term, all those people died and nothing changed! So anti U.S. propaganda sells well.
NK leadership has to know full well they are no threat to anyone besides SK. So why would they want to alienate China.
Let's ask a different question. Let's say one day, by a miracle, everyone in NK woke up and thought "this sucks, let's just surrender to SK, reunify our people and start making a better life". Seems like the smart thing to do right? Well, so what does China do? Does China, also a country that made a huge investment in lives in NK, say "Yeah, cool, enjoy yourselves. Oh, and NP if U.S. military personnel are now walking around our border."
OK, maybe they don't all wake up one morning and do this, but instead the leader starts a plan that seems to have an end game of effective Korean reunification. Is China cool with that either?
So NK is kind of between a rock and a hard place. Don’t destabilize or China comes in to “clean up”, don’t appear to be on the way to reunification with SK or the Chinese come in to “prevent U.S. expansion”.
Throw into the mix the real bad blood on all sides and you have a real problem.
So, who can NK really use its nuclear weapons on. The U.S.? Not really, not for a long time. Japan? Why? SK? Yes, they could kill a bunch of Koreans is they wanted. U.S. forces in SK? Well, yes, but they are fairly intermingled with SK population and military bases. The Chinese? Wait, they would never do that, right, I mean they are allies, right?
OK what does everyone want?
NK – to continue to exist as nation, perhaps to better their lot
SK- Security, possibly improve NK out of charity (they ARE family, literally in many cases)
U.S. – Bases ON the Chinese border would be nice, but in the meantime SK security and excellent justification for U.S. bases in SK
China – Buffer between China and close U.S. ally and no U.S. bases on border.
NK is threatening us, because we have the least skin in the game, are least likely to attack them and care least about what is going on. It sells well internally and with China, certainly sells better than threatening China. None the less everyone in the area gets the message loud and clear, “don’t F with us!”
OTOH China and the U.S. find the situation right now very good for our geopolitical interests. China gets its buffer and the U.S. gets its bases. Sure, each side might want more, but it is as nice deal as they could hope for under the circumstances. The only reason to want to change anything is humanitarian, and which of those normally win out in your experience.
Next, if NK wanted to be come closer (absorbed?) into China maybe they could. Invite in Chinese investment, let in lots of Chinese businesses, kind of like Tibet is right now. But what if they want to get closer to SK? Kind of sounds like a path to reunification to me, sort of a no go.
So what to do? Maybe, just maybe, if you are a big enough pain in the butt, the U.S., but more importantly China, will decide the status quo isn’t such a good deal after all. Attacking isn’t such good option, what with the nuclear weapons and all. But maybe letting NK open up will make the situation less bad for everyone. And as a bonus, you appease hard liners.
That is how Communism will really fall in North Korea, not with bombs but through sound economics.
What decade did you write that statement in? Communism failed in North Korea in the 1990s at the latest, an argument could be made that it never really existed there at all. Just because someone calls themselves a communist doesn't mean they actually reflect communist ideals, any more so than someone who calls themselves a libertarian actually reflects liberty.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Yes, I get that. But Pakistan did not give Afganistan nukes.
Today's friend could be tomorrows psycho enemy.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
China helped North Korea with their acquisition of nuclear tech so that NK could harass us at will, and the Chinese likely enjoy watching the US threat over the not-entirely-sane actions of the NK leadership. It's just like when a President allows the VP to go on the attack -- the guy at the top keeps his hands clean. I'm not certain we need to step in to protect South Korea any more than I think we need to help out Israel. Our defenses should protect the US, no more no less. We could strike NK100 or 1000 times for each of their attacks on us; at what point does it stop being comical and become tragic? Diplomacy has not helped us in our efforts to pin down the North Korean hostilities or nuclear program, and GWB (worst president ever) went to war against Iraq (who didn't have weapons of mass destruction) instead of North Korea (who did), allowing NK to transfer nuclear tech to the Pakistanis. [my GOD bush was an idiot] in any case, we don't have anything to fear from NK, and I'd prefer that our state department be rougher and more aggressive in our approach to their threats and histrionics. kissing their ass hasn't gotten them to dismantle their nuclear program. we would gain nothing from an invasion. so really we should just focus on humiliating their leader to encourage the population to take a stand against communism.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Most of you seem to be caught up in NK's propaganda. While yes, appearing threatening and capable of inflicting injury on the U.S. is part of their game, it's not the endgame. They want to build nuclear missiles so that they can sell the technology to whatever nasty state has the money. The leadership realizes they need more economic activity, but doing it on the West's terms is not acceptable to them. So, they're doubling down on the black market.
Now, for those of you who Hate America, can you perhaps see why North Korea attaining nuclear missiles is a worldwide threat? Imagine every crazy dictator or extremist group out there gaining nuclear launch capability.
That's a good point. All the talk on this thread is about the strategies needed to launch a large-scale military attack on NK without SK incurring too much artillery damage. But I wonder what would happen if you simply took out the leadership and the senior military figures, a few ranks deep?
Not that I question the loyalty of the citizenry and the rest of the military to their leaders. They would without a doubt keep fighting. But they might be so used to simply following orders from the top, that without that familiar hierarchy, things would be so chaotic and disorganised that the country would just fall apart within days...
In 1991? You better check your history again.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
If the wikipedia article is more informative you should have linked to it. You provided a google search link that refuted your claim. If you have such little faith in quoting random crap off the internet, please refrain from giving links to random crap on the internet.
Man, you really need that seminar!
As Charles Krauthammer once pointed out, one trump card that the US has vis a vis China is Japan. The last thing that China ever wants - for historical reasons - is to see Japan go nuclear, and they know that since Korea (both) too is a tradiitonal rival of Japan, if North Korea went full nuclear (in terms of launching abilities), the US could simply let Japan know that they have no problems w/ ending the WWII requirement that Japan never re-militarize. The last thing that China wants would be a re-militarized, nuclear Japan, which is why they are doing what they can to rein in Pyongyang. Let's see to what extent that works.
Yes I get that.
But why would you give your psycho neighbor next door an AK-47 just to annoy the guy down the street?
A missile that puts LA in range puts ALL of china in range.
Given a half dozen nukes on missiles like this, all of china could be held hostage. I'm wondering if china is thinking this one through.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Well be prepared for the idiot mad dog nation you helped create
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I have to ask......am I the only one that, when I see the "Dear Leaders" picture, hears Tommy Chong say "hey man, who cut your hair?"
And put something very subtle in it that affects birth-rate. Perhaps something that disables the "Y" chromosome (or perhaps the other way, something that would cause predominantly male births instead).
Nothing contagious etc mind you, this isn't something that you'd want to mess with passing on. Just something that's persistent so long as people are eating the food.
It's a long-term solution. But as I'd imagine those "in-favour" will consume most of the food-aid, suddenly you're going to have a population with a huge female-male ratio. I'd imagine that while the few remaining males would enjoy that ratio for awhile, over time it's going to eventually significantly reduce the ability to increase population through internal procreation.
Oh hell, perhaps if they could match for aggression, spread something that will eventually lead to a population that is very passive and non-warlike.
Saw the article was by timothy
Stopped reading.
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"