I didn’t say THEY felt safe and secure, only that their obvious fear is irrational. North Korea isn’t and has never been Iraq or Afghanistan. There was zero way that GWB would have or could have invaded and conquered North Korea the way he did in Iraq. As you note, they always had their insurance policy. Not only were they holding a gun to the head of South Korea, but China was much more supportive and wouldn’t have stood by a US invasion. It would have meant WWIII and everyone, including the North Koreans, knew it. So, their nuclear program has done dick for them wrt security…in fact, it’s actually been a negative, since the one country that was their friend (if we don’t count Russia) is moving away from them BECAUSE of their program and their provocations. The irony…it’s ironic.
No, it’s not. Hard to believe that anyone can sit here and say this, to be honest. It’s a total disconnect from the reality of the history of the situation. No way would China have allowed a US decapitation strike. No way it would have worked to prevent the NK’s from retaliating and destroying Seoul. You are projecting the situation as it is today along with their irrational fears and combining it into a connect the dots kind of theory that bears no resemblance to the reality of the situation.
Chicken, meet egg. Cart, get thee in front of horse. Prophecy…self-fulfill!
I believe we’re still at the stage where with a massive strike on NK, NK won’t be able to do much more in retaliation than attack Seoul. We will not be at that stage long.
Yes, but the chances of North Korea striking Japan or the US with a nuke - absent a war or major casus belli - are low.
The chances of North Korea striking Seoul, if attacked first, are ~99%.
An attack on Seoul isn’t just something that affects South Korea; it would have spillover effects and cause a great deal of ripple harm to the US economy as well.
Suppose you’re right. Have you given consideration to the aftermath? Are there no lessons learned from US imposed regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan?
You don’t think wholesale decimation of NK military, heavy civilian casualties, will ultimately result in a regime change? And even if not, any thought to the, “you break it, you bought it” consequences?
It may result in regime change, but it would not be the goal. Let North Koreans have any regime they want. Or let China come in and impose a regime if they want.
I’m not sure about them pulling off a coup. No matter how many Chinese agents are in Pyongyang, surely they are heavily outnumbered by the North Koreans. How does one remove a leader under constant guard by people who have spent their entire lives competing to show their loyalty?
And if not for nukes (or, especially and specifically, nukes on ICBMs), I’d not have a problem with letting them have that regime for as long as they want.
Are they rational to fear US regime change? Maybe not, but the fear isn’t totally unfounded. But that’s not the rationale I’m speaking to. I am saying it’s evident that NK does believe they’re facing a very real threat of regime change. If they hold this belief, then it makes good sense for them to build a powerful deterrent and make sure everyone knows about it.
The flip side of the coin… and the reason it’s dangerous to assume NK is an irrational actor… is that rational actors don’t want to die. If we recognize that they don’t want to die, then a policy of containment is obviously the way to go. On the other hand, if we paint them as unpredictable mad dogs, then we have to attack pre-emptively.
That would be a massive economic and humanitarian loss, not to mention a forfeit of international support and moral leadership. So we had better think very carefully when we assess whether Kim is a rabid dog or a paranoid schoolyard bully.
If US&Co. strike preemptively and destroy NK’s current nuke capacity, we’ll have given truth to the lie that the west wants to destroy NK. The current regime, if it survives, or potentially a future hard line regime, will spend every waking moment plotting revenge and they will actually do what you fear the most - they will sell nuclear material and dirty bomb technology to every terrorist group who can pay them and promises to detonate these weapons in western democracies.
Do you see now how short sighted a strategy you propose is?
I don’t believe it though. I’ll give you my reasons, FWIW. Basically, if you were REALLY afraid of the big bad US and its allies in an existential way, why would you continuously antagonize them? Why send commandos into South Korea to kidnap and assassinate people if you are really, truly afraid you will be invaded? Why shell South Korean villages? Why sink a South Korean warship? All of these could, and probably would be causes of war in most places. Why continually threaten these countries that supposedly are plotting to destroy you? This is nothing new, any of this…it’s been going on for decades. The only thing that has actually changed is that their current provocations are so far over the top with all these underground nuclear tests, threats of nuclear war and ICBM tests over countries they have threatened that they have made it so that even China has to, officially at least, censure their conduct and at least pay lip service to increased sanctions.
To me, these actions don’t scream ‘I’m scared you are going to invade me anytime and I really, REALLY need nuke to prevent this!’. Instead, as I said, I think you are getting cause and effect completely mixed up and turned around. I think it’s a load of horseshit that they are trying to gain nukes to keep the big, bad US from invading them…I don’t believe that THEY believe that (well, the ‘they’ that is the actual leadership and elites).
Again, I disagree. Well, I agree that, to THEM it seems rational. They want nukes, IMHO, as leverage to attempt to extort more stuff from the west. They aren’t afraid they will die…they think they can keep pushing things until they get the outcome they want. It’s completely rational, to them, to do what they are doing. However, the reality is that what they are doing is alienating the last country that really supports them, further putting themselves out on the ledge with even less of a support, while ramping up the rhetoric to epic levels and painting themselves further and further into a corner, from which they might eventually not be able to back down and keep face…and more importantly, keep power. And if it’s starting to slide (and it might already be doing that for all we know), I’m not sanguine about the political elite going gently into that good night. If Kimmy thinks, deep down, that things are going completely pair shaped…well, I don’t know what he’ll do. Or if someone puts a bullet in his head, I don’t know what their system will do, or whether whoever gains control will be any more rational an actor from the rest of the world’s perspective.
He IS a rabid dog and paranoid schoolyard bully. Absolutely. Just because, from his perspective what he’s doing is rational doesn’t make it rational. Some people think it’s rational to do mass murder or vote for Trump after all.
I agree with the risk assessment, though I think a lot of you are overplaying the nuke angle. Myself, I’m actually more worried about the NK conventional weapons wrt death toll and damage than the nuke potential. Basically, even if (and this is a big if IMHO) the NK’s actually have more than a handful of nukes miniaturized for use on their current medium-range missiles AND they have those missiles ready to receive them, the odds of any of them actually getting into the air and getting to the target and working are, to me, pretty low. Those 10’s of thousands of artillery tubes though and those mountains of shells along with all the other conventional stuff they have? Those will almost certainly work and with the way those are dug in it will be days before they are neutralized…days while the troops along the DMZ and, more importantly, the folks in Seoul are getting pounded to scrap. In addition, while the NK navy is pretty sad, I could definitely see them trying some sort of trade interdiction thing and sinking some trade ships…and this in a sea lane that has trillions of dollars a year going through it.
OK, so you agree that they’re playing a game. Your take on their game is different from mine. I’m just saying that dealing with a game-player is different from dealing with a totally irrational actor.
A game player is following some internal logic… we can’t know exactly what, but it certainly involves not getting wiped off the map. That’s something you can work with. OTOH if he’s completely irrational, then he has to be taken out immediately because nobody has any idea what he’ll do with an H-bomb tipped ICBM.
Sure, they are playing their own game. They always have been. And sure, they have some sort of internal logic that makes sense to them at least. But the thing is, the game can change…in fact, the game has changed. For them. And neither we nor, I suspect they know how that change will be met in the future or play out. They are painting themselves into a corner, and because of the internal game they have been playing, the rules they have used limit their ability to change their own actions in a lot of cases. Their population is and has been on the edge for a long time now, and that edge gets finer over time. Part of this is just the fact that communications and information to get into North Korea, despite all efforts to keep that to just the elites. China plays a big part. You know something is wrong when your people look at China and say, man, I really wish I could live that life!
That said, I’m definitely not advocating some sort of US/allied first strike. The biggest reason for that, aside from the unbelievable death toll and economic disruption it would cause is really we have no idea how China would jump if the US or its allies attacked North Korea first. A sizable part of the CCP is still in the NK supporters camp, and while a large number of actual Chinese citizens are against Kimmy’s recent actions they also wouldn’t like such a move by the US. And those in Northern China especially wouldn’t like either the fallout or the refugees if it went that far.
What I’m saying, though, is that folks should prepare themselves or at least be realistic…when Kimmy 3.0 and the NK elites regime finally bites the dust it’s going to be incredibly ugly, and depending on how that goes down I can definitely see them lashing out in their death throes. In addition to that warm and fuzzy thought, the regime could paint itself into such a corner that attacking South Korea, Japan, and the US is their only viable alternative. This isn’t fantasy paranoia, it’s how they have set up the game and how the game has played out to this last stage.
