So during Vietnam Nixon tried to use a strategy called the Madman theory. Basically the idea was to convince the North Vietnamese that Nixon was crazy and that he might do anything to stop them and they should really just give up. It seems to me that Trump might be trying a similar strategy with North Korea right now. He’s got everyone convinced that he might decide to nuke NK at any moment in an attempt to get them to back down and give into American presssure.
I have seen plenty of evidence that Trump might CLAIM that that was his plan all along, in the off chance that it seems to work out that way. But I have also seen plenty of evidence that Trump simply blurts out whatever he thinks a lot of people around him are going to cheer about when he does so, and then pretends he never said anything of the kind, when he gets called on it forcefully.
By the way, IF Nixon really had that plan, it was a failure. I don’t think he did, based on what I remember directly. Because he never once tried to sell anything he did, as being “crazy.”
Others speculate that what Kim has been doing.
I think it has reached a point where it doesn’t really matter. Kim is not getting better he is getting worse. One way or another it has to come to a head and be solved. Could be a nasty outcome but probably better now than later.
♬ *‘Go nuclear,’ The Cowboy told us
And who am I to disagree?
For when the madman flips the switch
The nuclear will go for me
The lunatics have taken over the asylum…* ♬
Because we were so successful in this approach in Viet Nam?
There is a difference between pulling off the Band Aid™ and stabbing the patient in the chest to distract them from a broken leg. “A nasty outcome” may well be hundreds of thousands or millions dead in South Korea, and the potential for multilateral regional warfare, of even better (for China) embarrassment for the US in not being able to effect change, leading to reductions in US stature as allies in the region look to other nations to restore some measure of stability. And the potential for such a conflict to grow into a three-cornered global conflict between the world’s largest nuclear powers is not that improbable.
Answer this question: what possible game plan is there for the United States which would result in regime change in North Korea with the possibility of reunification of the Korean Peninsula, and clean exit for US military operations leaving a strong, self-sustaining democratic government in place? Do you think China is going to accept US military campaigns on its border, or a US-friendly unified Korea?
Stranger
I don’t think anyone knows how loyal his military is. I would imagine this is what is being looked into as we speak. Taking out just Kim could conceivably be enough, but I doubt we know for sure. Korean culture puts a premium on stubbornness and ego.
[ol]
[li]How would we target only Kim Jong-un?[/li][li]The North Korean leaderhsip is an entrenched power bloc in a nation which has been run on strict autocratic lines for nearly seventy years. The military leadership is not simply going to collapse because the “Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradeship” slipped in the shower and died of a totally accidental cerebral hemorrhage that happened to leave a 9mm diameter hole in his skull.[/li][li]Regardless of what outcomes may occur internally in the North Korean leadership, China is not going to accept regime change or unification which favors the US or has a non-patron government on its border.[/li][/ol]
The United States has gotten involved in numerous conflicts to various degrees in Asia since WWII, and it has rarely gone well for us. There is no reason to believe intervention in North Korea–a regime which has defied world opinion and efforts at moderation for decades–would go better, especially when the person making the ultimate decisions about how to confront North Korea has not only a tenuous grasp on international relations and military operations, but is often unclear as to which countries have been bombed on his direction and the ramifications of such action.
Stranger
It was successful in Vietnam. A ceasefire had been agreed to by both sides and the United States had ceased operations in country. Congress then closed the door on any futher involvement and cut back funding to support the south. This gave the north the oppertunity it wanted to invade and destroy the south. In effect it was the removal of the mad dog image that Nixon was creating that emboldened the north to restart the war.
To make us back down from… what, exactly?
Uh huh. That’s a nice theory with the flaw that it isn’t actually supported by fact. Nixon himself began troop withdrawals and redeployment of US troops away from the front lines, and while his many bold pronouncements may be viewed as attempts to intimidate the North Vietnamese into capitulation, the reality is that the people of Viet Nam, having been occupied by one power or another for a good portion of the last two millennia and brutally colonized by France since 1858, were not about to adopt what was viewed as a US-installed puppet regime even though Diệm and Thiệu were really using the United States for military aide and support as much as the US was using them as a proxy agent.
And anything called “madman theory” predicated on behaving in an unstable manner belongs nowhere near nuclear deterrence strategy, which by its nature requires the participants to behave as if they are rational actors. Trump, of course, understands none of this. All he knows is that “I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.”
Stranger
To make us think he’s crazy enough to use nukes if the US invades or tries to topple him, so the US better not invade or try to effect a regime change or really interfere internally at all.
Come on, it’s not at all unprecedented for the US to take an unfriendly out of power and put a friendly in power (even if that friendly is just as horrible to their people).
There’s a great deal of logic to having nukes as self-preservation/deterrence. But only if other parties think you’ll use them. It’s a great bulwark against invasion.
Not saying I agree with the pretends-to-be-a-madman theory (or rather, that the behavior we perceive as mad is both deliberate to affect a certain goal and not madness). Just saying it exists. My biggest problem with it is that I think it makes tons of sense to have nukes and test nukes, but less sense to appear aggressive enough that the US becomes willing to actively attack (and risk those nukes/artillery locally), to stop you from getting enough nuclear missiles advanced enough to do major harm to the US mainland.
But then you have to address what benefit those statements might have internally. Especially if he thinks the US will just sanction but not take actual aggressive military action.
Here’s an article on him not being a madman
Another that mentions rational irrationality.
Again, I’m not saying I definitely agree. I’m just saying it’s an belief that does exist, even among some quite educated/informed people. But I will say there’s a lot we don’t know (and many of the professionals espousing this view don’t know), about what goes on inside NK. The other governments of the world may have a lot more info, but if they do, they (of course) aren’t telling us.