I suspect Russia is a far more serious threat in practical terms. They can inflict much more damage to the US than NK. Mutually assured destruction has prevented such a scenario when tensions were high. What makes you think NK isn’t capable of the same calculation for self preservation? Particularly since the balance of power and destruction is overwhelmingly in favour of US&Co.
I reject as immoral any calculations that assume that millions of innocent foreign lives are acceptable collateral damage.
Russia is an existential threat to the US that NK (or China) simply isn’t. The downside, though, is that Russia IS a rational actor, while North Korea isn’t. North Korea is also a lot less stable than Russia (which isn’t exactly the most stable nation-state on Earth at this point either), and far more likely to self-destruct and take everyone it can down with it than Russia ever was.
Do you consider Kim to be more dangerous than Mao?
NK regime is desperate enough for money that high enough price will be quite tempting. And terrorists nowadays have a lot of money. So do terrorist regimes such as Iran.
No, they really aren’t. They have ways of getting hard currency if they really, really need it, and frankly…they don’t, by and large. Even if they did, however, there is no way they would sell one of their nukes to anyone. You need to understand the mindset of the North Korean people to understand how ridiculous even suggesting something like this is.
Then why act is if NK is a far greater existential threat than it really is?
The genie is already out of the bottle. NK has nukes. ISTM attacking them would greatly increase the chance of them using one on SK, Japan, or even attempting to hit us.
As far as I know, from reading analyses, if we attack NK now, Seoul won’t be destroyed. The “end of the world” scenarios are overblown, NK artillery capabilities are not that great. It will be damaged, not destroyed. And yes, the cost/benefit analysis would weigh maybe a hundred thousand casualties in Seoul vs. millions in SK, Japan and the US later. But as I said above, political/emotional considerations rule this kind of thing out. So we will have millions of casualties later.
Why indeed. I assume you mean far less of an existential threat to the US, but I’ve said numerous times that the best of a bad lot of choices is to kick the can down the road. If you don’t know what that means, basically it means to continue with the sanctions and pressure both other than that do nothing unless and until the NK’s finally pull the trigger. I’m pretty sure that, if the regime collapses, as seems almost certain at some point, they will pull the trigger. My hope is that the disaster is containable at that point. That there will be a disaster sometime though? I have no doubt there will be if nothing else a humanitarian disaster for the North Korean people. It’s sad that this is the best case scenario I can think of.
No, NK still doesn’t have the nuclear missile capability. This genie WILL be out of the bottle shortly, though. Could be within a year.
I’ve seen reports that NK has between 2 dozen and around 60 nukes. Those would mostly be in the range of the bombs the US used during WWII. They don’t, currently, have the means of putting those on an ICBM. They just haven’t worked out all the engineering to do that reliably (really, at all at this point). However, they DO have medium-range missiles and they have at least some of their nukes with a footprint to go onboard…and those missiles are more reliable. So, even if we suck it up and say that Seoul would merely take 100k casualties (and billions or even trillions in damage, disrupting regional trade and having a worldwide economic impact), and assuming China stays completely out of it, you still have to deal with the possibility of nukes headed to other parts of South Korea and possibly Japan…and the ramifications of that wrt the retaliation, which would impact China and broaden the economic AND humanitarian crisis.
Cite, please. Unless you just mean ICBMs. There are lot of other types of missiles (including many that could reach Japan or SK), and other delivery systems as well.
Strange that the “China could solve NK tomorrow” POV is being repeated several times here and not being challenged.
Yes China trades more with NK than the rest of the world combined but it’s still absolutely peanuts compared to how much two neighbouring countries would typically trade. China has signed up to sanctions, and NK is already under a considerable squeeze mostly affecting the general population. I don’t buy the idea that we just need to squeeze a teeny-weeny bit more and problem solved.
And if that’s not the proposed way that China solves this, what is?
To be clear, I’m not endorsing that line of thinking either. What I’m trying to say is, even if we were to take the perspective that it’s worth sacrificing millions of Korean lives to save American ones, I still don’t think the “cost/benefit analysis” holds up. Because Okrahoma is talking about paying a definite cost, for an uncertain benefit – possibly no benefit.
“Maybe you can make the case…” was my effort to sidestep that point. Because I suspect Okrahoma would think the destruction of Seoul was acceptable collateral damage is it saves L.A., and I wanted to instead make the point "But you wouldn’t even know if you’re actually saving L.A. or not.
I’ve challenged this assertion several times in this thread. Just sayin’. 
If the NK regime prioritizes self-preservation, then they are absolutely behaving in a rational fashion. Looking to what happened with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi when they gave up their WMD programs… captured and executed by their political opponents. No way in hell is Kim going out like that. Likewise the nuclear tests and missile overflights are completely rational. Nobody is going to retaliate against NK for actions that aren’t actual impacts on foreign territory. In fact, even if NK does a repeat act of sinking a SK cruiser or shelling an island, nobody is going to do jack shit about it as far as military response.
On the other hand, everyone now knows that attacking NK will result in catastrophic damage reaching as far as Guam or the US west coast. You, me, God, the Kims, and everybody knows that nobody is going to fuck with North Korea unless they initiate with a huge attack. Kim’s holding all the cards and he knows it. This is as stone-cold rational as it gets.
I think we are in agreement in that NK having nuclear weapons does not warrant a preemptive strike at this time, and likely not ever. So in that sense, the world has to come to terms that there is another nuclear powered nation and it almost certainly won’t be the last.
I don’t agree that collapse of the Kim regime will necessarily trigger a nuclear strike against its perceived enemies. I think the collapse makes it even less likely because it will almost certainly mean a coup.
And yet, through all this time NK hasn’t been attacked even when they didn’t have nukes, or when they did but had no delivery system. Sorry, I’ve heard this argument before and it’s not compelling to me at least. Kim et al know that they aren’t going to be invaded. Hell, what has put this situation on the edge for them is the fact that they have managed to annoy Xi’s faction in China enough to actually take the incredible step to officially endorse the UN sanctions. That’s huge, even if in practical terms it means less than a lot of people seem to realize. Symbolically, though it’s huge.
China has almost certainly been telling Kim et al for years now to back off. There is zero need to push things like this…no rational need if regime survival is the actual goal. It’s counterproductive in every way.
You misunderstand. I’m saying the BEST case is that the regime collapses and doesn’t launch a nuclear strike…and that this will still be a humanitarian disaster for the North Korean people. A coup would bring about a systemic collapse of North Korea, IMHO, which would trigger a host of really bad things, including an attempt at a mass migration from North Korea into China and South Korea…something neither country is prepared for or wants in an uncontrolled way. With how fragile things are in North Korea right now wrt the latest harvest (never all that great even at the best of times) and infrastructure, it would be really, really bad. Hell, even if we weren’t’ looking at a Korean winter it would be grim.
And, of course, I’m not convinced that in its death throes, that Kimmy wouldn’t push the button and launch an all-out attack on the South and maybe Japan as well. Whether or not he uses nukes it would be pretty horrific.