Canada had a civil war!?
Without getting all Manchurian/James Bond, I can’t help but think China has ‘assets’ in place that’ll deal with chubby cheeks if he does totally off piste.
Okay, I swear I’m not trolling…but, gotta ask…
With all this nuclear talk about them restarting nuclear production (with a broken silo no less) I have 2 questions.
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Why not a pre-emptive strike on N.K.? Take out the one nuclear facility they have and call it a night…
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How honestly hard is it, from a logistical standpoint, to take out North Korea as a whole? Not the innocent starved civilians but the equally starved military folk. I’ve oft made the joke that North Korea in and of itself, could not even invade Disneyland, let alone a total invasion of another country like Homefront (video game), Red Dawn 2012 or Tomorrow When The War Began…but how hard are they to take out? If we eliminated Kim Jong Un, would the country literally just fall apart? Or what about funding a coup, like Libya?
We have single subs which could annihilate NK without using 1/10 of it’s missiles.
The problem that keeps arising in this debate is that we have no legal grounds for attacking. The obscene abusive of power by W in attacking Iraq notwithstanding, there is a concept known as causes belli (reason for war).
It is not just that attacking NK would ensure the destruction of Seoul SK, there is the matter that we don’t really get to destroy countries because we dislike their leaders. We have a mutual defense treaty (I’m reasonably certain) with SK - if anybody attacks SK, we are bound by treaty to defend it - don’t you feel proud to be an American? 28,000 troops in SK just waiting…).
If we get a real provocation, we can annihilate them in the course of hours.
I have never looked up the results of the 1950’s (tiny) atomic tests in the NV desert - or looked up the charts of blast/firestorm/radiation kill range of various sized weapons at what altitude - I’m guessing we have bombs which could take out 90% of the country with heat by dropping no more than 4 of them. See pics of Nagasaki and Hiroshima - we have artillery shells with that level of yield.
That would result in major damage to Seoul and a great many deaths, thanks to the thousands of artillery pieces they have aimed at the city. And that in turn would cause major economic effects across the world, inlcuding the US.
We’ve never cared about that. America attacks whomever it pleases, for whatever reason it feels like.
“legal grounds” LOL
paging Colin Powell
right, right. Remind me, who is “them”?
Well, it wasn’t Canada as we now know it at the time, more like the English and French deciding who was going to be top dog. The Canadian campaign was one theater of many in the Seven Years’ War.
Yep, General Wolfe and and all that … I just about remember it from school history books.
That’s only if North Korea chooses to respond. If the U.S. bombs the facility and keeps quiet about it, NK has the choice to keep mum as well; if the government is sane enough they will. They know that there is zero chance that they will remain in power in the aftermath of a full-scale war, after all, and remaining in power is all they care about.
If they don’t respond, then they are announcing that their threat is hollow; they can’t afford that. And they almost have to be set up for a quick response anyway, in case of attack. This would be like launching one ICBM at the USSR, and hoping they don’t decide to launch everything because a full on nuclear war would destroy both sides; rational choice or not, I wouldn’t bet on them choosing it.
I’m not sure. Syria could have started a full-scale war with Israel after the latter bombed its nuclear reactor in 2007; instead, both sides chose to deny that anything major had happened. I wager that that North Korea’s response would be no different.
In these days of satellite surveillance how could the US possibly conceal something of that sort?
All surveillance satellites are controlled by, what, 4 or 5 countries? Countries that the U.S. can ask not announce their findings. Besides, all the images will show is that there was once a building at a certain location, and now there isn’t. They won’t show what happened to it.
Remember, it’s not a matter of concealing, it’s a matter of maintaining plausible deniability. If the North Koreans can pretend that nothing happened, then the world will allow them to maintain the pretense.
I wouldn’t say anything definitive about how NK would respond to a strike on their nuclear facilities. They have driven the crises and been behind all the overt military belligerence for several decades now in this situation that I don’t know that there’s any strong indicator of how they’d respond.
There’s strong arguments to be made either way. If they allowed a strike to go unanswered, it undermines the regime in the eyes of the military leadership possibly being fatal for Kim. It also would probably be perceived by many of NK’s leaders as undermining NK’s legitimacy internationally as they’d be allowing themselves to get attacked without any response.
The other side of it is, if they respond with general war making it is a certainty that spells the end of the regime.
How do you decide between those two situations if you’re running North Korea? I’d probably personally go for a middle approach, I’d launch artillery at South Korean military targets but not do something that would guarantee an invasion (flattening Seoul, for example.) But there is no easy way to predict what the response would be, which is why I can’t really support bombing North Korea unless they’ve basically engaged in outright belligerence themselves.
Also, lack of casus belli is not why we haven’t gone to war with North Korea. It’s 100% because the war would kill a lot of South Koreans, a lot of American soldiers, and possibly result in other friendly countries like Japan getting bombed. Not to mention destabilizing all of East Asia. We’ve arguably had valid casus belli for awhile, like anytime the North has attacked South Korea (this has happened several times since the Korean War) or any time the North declared the cease fire null and void (also happened a few times since the Korean war.)
And also the fact that such a war might eventually involve the Chinese, which is far too dangerous to risk. It’s only been fairly recently that China’s support of North Korea has shown signs of waning. Had we fought a war with North Korea prior to their violating the no-nukes-in-echange-for-aid agreement, China would have been seriously pissed.
Did anybody even plug Yongbyon N Korea into google maps?
It’s about 100 miles from China. Yeah, nobody important will care if you blow up a reactor and spew plutonium around the area.
Not all photo satellites are run by governments - there ARE commercial versions up there (at least 38horth claims their images are from commercial satellites)
and: a high-level Chinese military type publicly stated that China’s arrangement with NK was “not a military alliance” .
That should have given Kim second thoughts about pursuing the “We’re at War and will mercilessly (can’t somebody come up with a better translation?) tear out their throats” bit. He didn’t.
but, in case you didn’t notice: he blinked first. Show’s over for another few years.
I’d like to know where they get their exotic metals? Ships would be the obvious, with roads a back-up.
If China maintains is enforcement of the embargo at it’s ports and both China and Russia block heavy trucks with contraband, NK’s missile program is going to hurt.
The other thing about the decision to restart a breeder reactor: they want plutonium even though they spent a ton of money on uranium enrichment - enough to enrich it to “weapons-grade”.
Was that last blast (which nobody has picked up any trace of anything) supposed to have been a uranium bomb? Did it fizzle, so they are desperately looking for more plutonium because their hideously expensive centrifuge cascade can’t produce a bomb?
usedtobe, what are you talking about?
Their last claimed nuclear test?
We have traces - the seismic readings. The seismographs picked up signals consistent with a nuclear explosion in an otherwise seismically inactive region and in the same vicinity as the two previous tests. No reason to think they didn’t actually test a nuclear device.
ETA: In case there are thoughts it was a conventional explosion, the yield was estimated to be at least 6 or 7 kilotons, which is a bit on the high side for conventional explosives.