Ah yes, the Korean DMV zone that separates the two countries. 
It does not even say that. It says, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”
That’s not what it meant originally, but that’s how it’s typically used nowadays. It’s turned into exactly what it was created to criticize; a conversation stopper. I see more people shouting others down with accusations of Godwinization than I see people shouting others down with comparisons to Hitler.
Yes, you have this need to make it 100% the fault of the North Koreans because you can’t handle the notion our side could possibly ever do anything bad, mistaken, or misguided.
I prefer to deal with reality where sometimes, even with the best of intentions, actions do not have the intended results.
There really well could be problems with Kim Jong-Un holding on to power and this not first time countries will use propaganda to brainwash people the problem is not North Korea but the US.
Germany was blaming problem on Jaws ,homosexuality , race that none white so on.
The USSR blaming the problem on the US.
Fact this is happening almost everyday now could be Kim Jong-Un having problems holding on to power.:eek::eek:I’m sure Kim Jong-Un and high ranking generals know they cannot take on the US but most of the army and people going to be fed lies that North Korea is more powerful than US and US is weak to get support by people and army.
The USSR was more rational thinking than North Korea .No way USSR would be doing things North Korea in past month.
This guy is making fool of him self .And I would not be surprised if he did some thing stupid.
Or maybe not, if South Korea is suddenly overrun by tens of millions of refugees (actually, not terribly likely as crossing the northern North Korean border is much less hazardous than crossing the DMZ, at least at this point), or if while reducing North Korea to rubble Seoul is likewise destroyed, leaving no Seoul to be threatened by anything.
Are already mentioned, there are options like a “suicide sub”, or exploding shipping container. And probably other things none of us have thought of yet.
So far, that’s endured for 60 years. That’s a long moment. I’d be content if it lasted another 60 years.
In my limited understanding of the North Korean viewpoint they could endure an extremely long time with a siege mentality, with an ever-threatening external enemy. Unless the DPRK wants war this state of affairs could endure a very long time. As I said, I’d prefer a century of what we currently have to a nuclear war which will result in millions dead.
Most of those alternatives are not compatible with their current system. They see them as surrender to the enemy.
After Pearl Harbor the US could have chosen to isolate themselves further, cutting their losses and not getting involved in the war in the Pacific… except that’s incompatible with US society which demands vengeance for that sort of sneak attack.
We might think that but, again, they would regard it as surrender. From what I’ve read the only acceptable outcome to the Korean War is South Korea being brought under the rule of juche and the Kim dynasty.
Nothing has worked for us – for the North Koreans it has sometimes worked pretty well.
China viewed them as another socialist nation under siege from capitalists during a significant number of years. That was no different than the way the US supported their client states during the Cold War.
The other factor to consider is that if North Korea collapses China gets millions of refugees pouring over their border. You have to factor that in, which makes China’s actions much more understandable and reasonable.
In the latest 1990’s and onward into the 21st Century, however, China has not been nearly as generous.
Yes. They played the game and won. That chaps the ass of a lot of people on our side who don’t want to admit we were played by a third world backwater. Fact is, North Koreans are just as smart as anyone else, they fooled everybody, and yes, they won that round.
Other nations do the same thing. Nations can always be counted upon to act in what they perceive to be our their own self-interest. What they perceive as their self-interest may or may not be what we perceive to be in their interests. Sometimes the other side wins the diplomacy/deceit game.
The reality may be that there is no good solution.
Yes, we can talk about peaceful regime change but that is NOT tolerable to the current ruling crowd in that country. There are solutions that are theoretically possible but not possible on a practical or realistic level. War might, in fact, be inevitable in this case. I really hope not, but maybe there isn’t an alternative long term.
It doesn’t seem bellicose, it is bellicose. To us, it’s a warning. To them, they might actually see it as an act of war. Sometimes the message you send isn’t the one the other guy receives. Again, the Japanese viewed Pearl Harbor as a way to discourage the US from entering war in the Pacific. It backfired. That’s not the message the US got.
You see, the official line in North Korea (I have no idea if the true ruling cabal view it this way or not, it’s “merely” the official version) is that all the aid is NOT “blackmail” or given out of the goodness of everyone else’s heart, it’s tribute. It’s theirs by right. Everyone else either so fears or so loves Kim that they offer up these goods. Cutting the flow of tribute off might, in fact, be seen as an attack on North Korea, it might be explained that way.
Keep in mind that the reverse applies: since the armistice if South Korea or the US invades or attacks North Korea then North Korea will be bombing and invading South Korea, starting with Seoul. IF the DPRK views cutting off aid as an act of war then that could start a war.
Is it going to? I doubt because aid has been cut in the past without triggering a war, but there’s a new Kim in power, there is slow turnover among the ruling elite, and there are some changes in circumstances.
It is also important to remember that the North Koreans will respond to what they perceive as an attack on their homeland. WE might not find it that provocative an action, but we can’t assume the North Koreans are using the same yardstick we are.
It’s important that we remember that starving people become desperate people. It’s important we not back the North Koreans into a corner where they truly have nothing left to lose.
If another famine occurs such as in the 1990’s would we really not give them any aid at all? On the flip side, could we give them aid knowing that anything we gave them would first go to their military?
^ I thought this was so well stated that it was worth repeating.
Sometimes there’s no realistic way to avoid war. However, attempting to understand the other side can help avoid war when avoidance is possible.
There’s an old saying that once you pay the danegeld you will never be rid of the Dane.
For a number of decades (not 60 years, but around 30) we’ve been paying danegeld in the form of humanitarian aid to North Korea. The DPRK has come to expect that, they depend on it whether they will ever admit it or not. Cutting it off from our viewpoint is ending blackmail. From their viewpoint might they view it as kicking one of the supports out from under their economy? That doesn’t mean we should keep paying danegeld… but we should be aware that ceasing to do so might have different consequences that what we might initially expect.
Or… what? What happens if they don’t give up being the “mugger”? They ARE a nuclear power now, regardless of anything else. The horse has left the barn on that. You talk as if we had the power to deprive them of that status and we don’t. Not unless we really are ready to start shooting again and are really willing to risk nuclear detonation.
That has always been the fear behind non-proliferation – that one day someone would get nukes we don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else. Well, that day may be here.
What if North Korea doesn’t want peace and prosperity as we understand it? Not everyone wants peace. For example, the pre-Columbia Aztecs had a society where constant chronic warfare was an absolute necessity to obtain sacrifices for their gods. They believed that if the sacrifices stopped the world would be destroyed. The notion of “world peace” was incomprehensible to them, or perhaps would be seen as an evil thing as it would result in the destruction of everything.
In North Korea much of Kim’s authority comes from him defending North Korea from external enemies. If they made peace with the world and those enemies disappeared/converted to allies then their power would diminish. Why would they desire that? On top of that, the rulers are quite prosperous enough for their own desires, do they care if the masses have more than a subsistence lifestyle? If they don’t care then saying “enjoy prosperity!” isn’t much of a draw for them, is it?
From your viewpoint “enjoy peace and prosperity” is quite an incentive. From the viewpoint of the rulers of the DPRK… maybe not so much.
True. Now how do we communicate that in terms they will understand?
Not at all. I’m certain the US could reduce North Korea to rubble. What I am not certain of at all is that the US has any desire to do that.
While I agree that I’d prefer to “deal with” North Korea before any nukes get dropped I must, once again, point out that they are NOT Marxist!. They were, even back in the 1950’s, only somewhat Marxist at best. They aren’t Marxist now, and haven’t been for a long time. The last time they revised their constitution they removed all references to Marxism. There is no notion of putting the masses in charge. Since the imposition of songun it is the military that is said to be the main revolutionary force, not the proletariat, whose role is to obey and provide for the military and the rulers.
What, exactly, they are now is somewhat debatable. Various suggested options include race-based nationalist, monarchist, and theocratic but that’s only a few of the possibilities. They are not Marxists, though.
I have no desire for war. Although the US and ROK would stop destruction when the regime fell, the death toll could nonetheless be immense.
But if the small ruling group in North Korea goes past our red lines, and war comes, there won’t be a need for nation building. Unlike artificial constructs like Iraq and Afghanistan, Korea already is a nation. There could be mild regional tensions as seen in many peaceful nations today, but northerners would not blow up Buddhist temples in an attempt to bring back forced atheism.
While people in North Korea are afraid to say it, large numbers, probably a majority, have heard rumors that life elsewhere is easier. Once the rumors are confirmed, and people see their children eating better, the brainwashing will turn out to have been less than thorough.
Another point about the alleged brainwashing: Some people in the North – those who live their whole lives in the camps – have barely heard of Juche. You have to have a certain social standing to be exposed to the cult of personality and deemed worthy of learning regime ideology.
The best thing we could do to achieve a peaceful outcome would be to grant North Korea’s leaders immunity from crimes against humanity prosecutions. Then they would have no need to fight to the death. Unfortunately, we can’t do this, as it is against our nature.
We kill them.
Everything in your above post (which is wonderful, by the way) demonstrates why this is such a dangerous situation. North Korea seems to be operating under some assumptions which are plainly counterfactual, and the regime seems to have backed itself into a corner (unable to make any concessions which would allow them to normalize relationships with other Pacific nations or modernize their teetering economy). And I’m not sure they understand just how detonating their first nuke changed their relationship with the other great powers (and especially China). Obtaining nukes of their own means China will no longer feel obligated to shield North Korea under its own nuclear umbrella. From China’s standpoint, what is North Korea bringing to their relationship now that makes it worth continuing? In the beginning they were useful as a buffer state positioned between China and an ideological enemy; now they appear more like a parasitic tick which plans to continue to suck on Chinese aid indefinitely while threatening to destabilize the Korean peninsula (if not the entire Pacific) and stir up a war with one of their biggest trade partners. I think China sees North Korea as a problem now, not an ally.
And that means that if North Korea makes a major misstep (such as one of the ones Martin Hyde mentioned in his posts above), North Korea can no longer count on a Chinese rescue. That leaves us free to do whatever is necessary (up to and including a full scale war) to protect South Korea, Japan, and ourselves - for it has always been fear of a direct superpower confrontation that has kept things from exploding on the Korean peninsula. That’s what I’m afraid the current Kim may not understand - he can’t just keep indefinitely upping the provocations to get the aid money flowing again, secure in the knowledge the US can’t attack him. We can, now - and if he makes the mistake of directly attacking South Korea, Japan, or the US, we most surely will.
The way to stop paying the danegeld is to kill the Dane. We know that, and so does China.
I hope we can wait things out until the current dysfunctional North Korean government collapses from natural causes, but I don’t see the current situation lasting another 60 years. It’s just too unstable. This may be one of those cases where everyone who isn’t blind can see a war coming, but no one can figure out a way to stop it.
It would be like War of the Worlds for the tank drivers. They can drop weapons from B-52’s at 9 miles up that breakdown into independent autonomous anti-tank bombs. They would simply see the tanks around them explode with no warning.
Now where exactly did I say that or anything like it? I didn’t, and this is a straw man.
You said plans, not intentions. Of course we don’t have intentions to restart the war, but we do have plans to attack and invade the north should war break out.
You’ve just contradicted yourself here. Right after saying it would be up to the ROK to do the clean-up, you say we’d be obligated to pour billions of dollars of aid to help the process and that it would be a horrific mess. That is my point; you were painting the destruction of the North Korean state as having no consequences. As North Korea does present a credible threat to South Korea unlike Iraq or Afghanistan and their neighbors, a war would cause heavy damage to the South Korean economy and a great many of them would die in the fighting. The destruction of the North Korean state will create a huge power vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum. South Korea is going to have to deal with the damage the war has caused to them, trying to incorporate 24 million destitute North Koreans who have been subjected to propaganda painting South Korea as the enemy and dealing with the wreck that is the North Korean economy as it stands made worse by all the destruction caused to it by the war and our destroying the North Korean state.
Their actions have gone far beyond mere posturing, I posted just a few of the hostile actions they have conducted over the past 60 years up thread. The DPRK official news site here has all of its articles dating back to 1997, its chock full of threats and bellicosity and Stalinist/Marxist agitprop. It’s hard to find anything South Korean referred to without the word puppet in front of it.
Those born in the camps have barely heard there are nations other than North Korea. They are raised in a “society” that destroys social bonds, where children turn in their parents who commit infractions in hopes of getting a little more food. Those who manage to survive to adulthood would be, by outside standards, severely disturbed individuals.
At present, only one person born into the total control zone camps has ever successfully escaped. That’s too small a sample to draw really significant conclusions, but between his testimony and that of former guards at the camp I’m not sure you can count on the camp-born to react as normal people would if suddenly liberated. Shin Dong-hyuk didn’t escape for freedom or because the beatings became intolerable, he escaped because he wanted to, for just one day in his life, have enough to eat (and to taste chicken, apparently). He not only had no concept juche, he had no concept of freedom.
Beyond that – it’s somewhat questionable just how much the ruling elite actually believes in Juche. juche is actually for the masses, and for external propaganda. The more I’ve read about it the more it seems to be an elaborate smokescreen. I think the regime’s primary philosophy is “keep the army happy so it can keep the current situation stable”, or songun.
While I realize that we may come to that point I really can’t rest content with that answer. Not because the answer is flawed, or that I disagree with you, but because that implies the death of millions. Even if that becomes necessary I can’t see it as anything but horror and tragedy.
Sure. The only problem is the collateral damage, which has the potential to be immense.
That’s not contradictory. The US has a history of kicking the crap out of another country then pouring money and effort into rebuilding, whether we are obligated to do so or not. Heck, we give aid to our enemies when we’re not actively at war with them!
IF the US kicked the crap out of North Korea, or nuked them, yes, the US would then turn around and insist on helping to rebuild. We’re nuts like that. That’s what we did after WWII for both Japan and Germany. We tried to do that for Iraq and Afghanistan. We might let the ROK lead the way but yes, we would most certainly be included in the rebuilding, and it’s likely our contribution will involve lots of money.
That can be managed, IF there is a will to do so on the part of the participants. Personally, I could live with North Korea being incorporated into China. There are already a substantial number of Korean-Chinese living in China, and have been for generations, that would simply make a province where that ethnic group dominates. For the North Koreans it might be more comfortable becoming part of their former ally, in a socialist system, then trying to do a 180 and join with the South at this point. Whether the Koreans see it that way is an entirely different prospect. There are substantial cultural and language differences between the two Koreas at this point (the South has adopted quite a few foreign words and phrases the North has not, as one example, the two dialects are diverging even if at this point they’re still mutually intelligible). Should such a war occur the South will also be heavily damaged, absorbing the North may not such an easy prospect.
However, regardless of how I feel, I think the decision should rest with the Koreans.
If war breaks out there will be less than 24 million refugees. Last time the North suffered 200,000+ fatalities, over 300,000 if you count deaths among their allies as well. I can only assume next time would be worse. If nukes are used it will be worse, with a death toll into multiple millions, and likely most of them on the North side (though certainly the South will also suffer).
Some of the North Koreas might opt to go elsewhere rather than join with the South.
And that’s assuming there is a clear victor and it’s the South. There’s no guarantee that that is the way the cards will fall, it just seems most probable with our current information and assumptions.
Just like it’s nearly impossible to find any reference to Americans without “bastard” in front of it. Or worse.
This is actually perfectly rational when looked at from the position of stability in the region, it would do little good to take out the current government only to leave someone else to grab power and infrastructure and start the whole thing up over again. Remember NK has some nuclear capability, The USA and China and others in the region are going to want to know what happens to it.
Wouldn’t nuking North Korea drop fallout directly on Japan? Not politically acceptable and probably unnecessary given US air power.
The Final Solution to the Shark Question.
[QUOTE=Broomstick]
Nothing has worked for us – for the North Koreans it has sometimes worked pretty well.
[/quote]
This is obvious and goes without saying.
Also obvious, and had already been said by me, and a few others.
Yes, nations act in their own self-interest. I took a 100 level polisci class once as well. No one is talking about getting revenge for being duped by North Korea. Our two countries have issues, period. We negotiated with them in the past to come to an agreement we perceived to be in our self-interest and we assumed they were happy with so they perceived it to be in their self-interest. It turns out their self-interest is very different than our perception.
We assumed North Korea would want a lot of things that other countries want (freer economic associations with the world, increased trade, more aid etc.) Aside from the more aid, I think we all now understand North Korea does not want normalized relationships with the international community because it would most likely undermine the ruling authority of the regime. That means going forward we have to recognize they have no particular interest in ever disarming themselves from a nuclear perspective. They have no particular interest in doing anything but getting more aid in exchange for ending crises they themselves start.
That means it is not in the interests of the United States to continually play that game. We cannot position ourselves as a country to be a tributary state to a third world country on the other side of the pacific ocean that’s smaller than the state of Mississippi. That’s not a viable option and is not in the self interests of the United States.
My solution is most likely the one we’re going to follow: we make it clear to the regime in North Korea what actions will lead to war with us. If they choose to view training activities and other things allowable under international law as an act of war, we need to make it clear to them if they try to respond with force we’ll be at war. I think if they understand that they are not that likely to engage in war with us.
We stop buying into these crisis cycles and stop giving aid to end them. How North Korea ends up will then be up to them and whatever other countries in the world feel like giving them money. But I don’t see how it is in the geopolitical interests of the United States to engage in further crisis cycles with North Korea. I think we’ve stated our position clearly, and the leadership of the DPRK should know what they can do to either start a war or avoid a war. We’ve given them the information they need, it’s not our decision how they use it.
It doesn’t matter what they think or what their perceptions are. It’s always been the case if they attack us, or try to invade the ROK war will happen. It’s important we communicate to them what will lead to war. It doesn’t really matter if they view that communication as an act of war, because it’s still better to make them pissed and view something as an “act of war” than it is for them to start attacking things thinking it won’t lead to a wider conflict.
Tribute is a good description of what our aid has been, and as I said it isn’t in the interests of the United States to pay tribute to a third world power across the Pacific ocean. Since it furthers no valid national security interest it now needs to stop.
Again, why point out that us invading them would result in them attacking the ROK? That’s too obvious to even merit mentioning. Again, it doesn’t matter how the DPRK view cutting off of aid. All that matters is is there any benefit to continual giving of aid in response to crisis cycles. The answer is simply no. If they really start a war because we won’t give them aid/tribute, then better now than 20 or 30 years from now when they have far more sophisticated nuclear weapons and more nuclear warheads. Ideally they just come to realize they won’t be getting more aid and deal with it, we didn’t give them aid throughout most of the Cold War and they handled it fine (although they had other major backers.) I doubt they actually go to war because we refuse to pay them.
If they actually were going to go to war over training exercises or anything we’ve done it would have happened by now, or any of the many other times we’ve done such things.
We can’t control the actions of others. We’ve given them options and they’ve backed themselves into a corner. I don’t know what else we could do to change that.
We’ve cut it off and turned it back on often enough we know what the consequences are: temper tantrums. We’ve had it turned off for long periods in the past without it leading to war. It’s unlikely it leads to war now. But if it does, then it’s better we war now than war later.
Martin Hyde is making a lot of sense here. I’ve said a few times that in the past, North Korea has been rewarded with aid for acting out- and that’s no longer working for them. As a result they’re acting out in even bigger ways. If that continues, bad things are going to happen. So you have to hope they listen to the message everybody else is sending them: get rid of the nuclear program and this crisis can end, or at least ease.
Possibly depending on the weapons used, and how they were used. I once sat for a great presentation a nuclear submariner was giving when I was in the Army (this was a talk at Johns Hopkins sponsored by the political science department IIRC) about how many of the nuclear weapons we’d use these days don’t cause tons of fallout all around a region. It’s something that has always been strong in the popular consciousness but isn’t terribly accurate.
When the U.S. was doing a lot of atmospheric tests in the 1950s and early 1960s, it caused a decent bit of pollution in the form of fallout. However fallout is directly related to how weapons are used.
I’ll explain, an air burst explosion (the only two uses of nukes in war were air burst) produces far less fallout because there is no cratering. If you launch a nuclear warhead directly at a ground based target so that it explodes at ground level the resulting fireball and explosion will create a crater. The larger the explosion the larger the crater. The materials ejected from the Earth to create that crater are all radioactive and fall back down as nuclear fallout. The effects of fallout vary based on how far you are from the crater and how much material is falling in your area. Technically some tests we did in the United States before we fully understood the risks lead to trace amounts of the fallout landing all over the continental United States, but in such low concentrations it isn’t believed to have caused what I would call “major health issues.”
So let’s get back to the specific situation. If we chose to use air burst attacks, fallout would be minimal. Air burst would be highly effective against North Korean troop concentrations and anything not deeply underground in a bunker. The question is of course if somehow war broke out with North Korea and we were using nukes, what would we be nuking? If for some reason the war went nuclear (I imagine it would, but won’t speculate on the specifics), we’d probably be trying to hit sites in North Korea that we felt would be most likely to limit their ability to use any more nuclear warheads (assuming they had already used one, or assuming they didn’t use the entirety of their small warhead collection at the onset of the war.) These sites would most likely necessitate bunker-targeting type explosions, which means ground detonation and cratering, and fallout.
But how much fallout? The size of the explosion obviously affects this, some of the U.S. pacific nuclear tests that lead to lots of fallout were with extremely large detonations over the 1 Mt range. It is, in my opinion, extremely unlikely we detonate anything approaching 1 Mt in a war against North Korea.
Most likely what we’ll use are submarine launched missiles (tridents) carrying W76 or W88 warheads. These warheads range from 100 Kt to just under 500 Kt yield. I suspect we’d probably use more of the W76 (older model of the W88 with lower yield), because 100 Kt is a big explosion and if you’re just trying to blow up say, a nuclear facility it will more than get the job done.
There are some studies released on the effect of hitting some dozen or so important hardened military targets in the Moscow area with a barrage of 48 W76 warheads. The result of these detonations was projected to kill just under 3m civilians out of around just under 9m in the area. The fallout effects were projected to lead to direct death/injury as far away as 23 km from Moscow. (Based on wind by the way, 23km is how far it would affect people downwind of the detonation, people upwind would be spared the fallout at much closer distances.)
That’s bad, but it also suggests a W76 or two detonated on hardened targets inside the DPRK would be extremely unlikely to cause serious fallout problems in Japan or China.
Also, I don’t want to minimize nuclear weapons. I don’t want anyone to ever use another nuclear weapon ever again. I’d be very happy if all countries agreed to destroy all of their nuclear weapons and committed to conventional war no matter the outcome. The reality is different. I’m just saying if war did happen in North Korea, which I do not expect nor desire, I think nuclear weapons would probably be used by North Korea resulting in our using nuclear weapons.
I’m just trying to give a clearer picture of what that would be like, because many people equate nuclear weapons with the massive, 10-20 Mt+ super weapons developed during the height of the Cold War. This is partly the fault of the press, as during the Cold War newspapers would publish images showing how far away from NYC would everyone be dead from a Soviet missile strike and things of that nature, and how far away fallout would poison the water and kill people etc. Those scale weapons are simply not likely to ever be used in a war between the United States and a small nuclear power. Those are really “end of days” style weapons that would only be used in a full scale complete nuclear exchange between one of the nuclear “superpowers” (basically US/Russia/China.)
The lion’s share of our submarine arsenal which are most likely what we’d use against North Korea are sub 500 Kt weapons and many are around 100 Kt in yield and the regional affects of using one of those wouldn’t expand all the way to Japan or anything like that.
I also don’t want my response to Broomstick to be seen as me renouncing the concept of trying to see things from the other side’s eyes. That’s an important thing in international relations, but it isn’t a cure-all. There are a few really good books out there about the hours and minutes of the Cuban Missile Crisis. One of the things Kennedy wanted to do in that crisis was avoid a lot of the management and analysis problems that lead to the Bay of Pigs boondoggle.
He got opinions from everyone and tried to make sure they were individual opinions and not groupthink. This specifically is what enabled him to receive advice that was couched in the perspective of the crisis from Khrushchev’s perspective. That allowed Kennedy to understand how the crisis could be resolved in a way that allowed Khruschev to save face with the rest of the Soviet leadership. That was essential to the crisis ending peacefully. [Total aside, but later on SecDef McNamara in the Johnson era noted that the total failure by the United States to understand the conflict in Vietnam from the perspective of the Vietnamese is why it was such a clusterfuck, why we made the mistake of getting involved, and basically why it ended up so terribly…this is something he himself didn’t realize until the 80s.]
But with Khrushchev and Kennedy there was common ground for a negotiated settlement, it just had to be seen by Kennedy and to see it he had to think of things from the perspective of a Soviet Premier and not an American President. Unfortunately, I don’t see such common ground with Kim. I see a situation where Kim wants to remain in absolute power, and continue to receive aid in exchange for not attacking other countries. That’s not a common ground where we can work with him, so I think our best hope is we stop paying aid and North Korea gets really mad but not mad enough to start a war. If they choose to start a war, I see it as unfortunate but unavoidable in that scenario.