This, and the comment earlier by smiling bandit beg the question: Are you willing to bet millons of innocent lives on whether or not we could intercept/foil a plan to move nukes to the highest bidder?
Soviets managed to move a few nukes to our doorstep in Florida, and IIRC, we found out only after U2 overflights of the island. I realize technology in the spygame are better today, but it’s not infallable.
Also, the earlier mentions of arms races in the region are valid. Will Japan and SKorea sit idly by if the North develops nukes? Hoping like hell that US will somehow protect them? I would think not.
NK wants their cake and to eat it too. They need the energy aid, and they want political clout (read: fearsome nukes). When this is all over, we’ll be right back to where we were a year ago: US supplying energy, NK secretly working on weapons programs. The status quo can be very appealing to some people.
I don’t think anyone knows where it might extend - predicting the future is not easy. No, at first I think the main worries of escalation would center around South Korea and Japan. But none of the countries within range of North Korean missiles would be ecstatic about the thought of being seen as unable to retaliate.
But here’s a more likely way things would turn out - Japan and South Korea would threaten to build nukes, and the U.S. would possibly deter them by agreeing to be their nuclear proxy. The U.S. could sign an agreement with these countries pledging nuclear retaliation against anyone who attacked them. Then it’s possible that other countries in the regiion would demand the same protection.
And that will put the U.S. in a real pickle, because it would elevate all kinds of disputes into potential nuclear brinksmanship. That’s not the path to a stable world.
You know, if 30 years from now a nuclear bomb goes off in Tokyo, or Seoul, or Tel Aviv or New York, we’re going to be judged awfully harshly by history for sitting around and allowing it to happen. People are going to look back and say, “The U.S. was the overwhelming power in the world. Why didn’t they prevent this?”
I very much doubt that Japan would start developing nuclear weapons in response to threats from N.Korea; as the only country to have been bombed, the Japanese people (including politicians) are very much against the use of nuclear weapons. I think any politician who tried to push for their creation wouldn’t be very popular. Besides, I doubt the US administration would like Japan to have so much power at its disposal.
And as for creating some kind of opposition in North Korea…most of the population is starving and dying. I doubt they’d have the strength to mobilise, even with aid from outside.
My family is seriously considering moving back to Australia earlier than planned. I don’t think Japan is one of the safest places to be at the moment (especially with it exerting pressure on N.Korea to return all the Japanese citizens who have been kidnapped, as well as any families they may have made in N.Korea).
NK threatens the US with a “sea of fire” if we “challenge them.” What a strange set of facts and statements. NK pulls out of the non-prolif agreement, begins refining uranium, threatens us with a “sea of fire,” yet denies that they stated that they are resuming their nuclear program. Um, OK, in Bizarro World.
This is a huge crisis. Maybe McArthur had the right idea. He once noted that “in war, there is no substitute for victory.” With the situations in Iraq and NK right now I am beginning to understand what he was driving at. Both potential conflicts would be renewals of wars that were never truly won by either side.
What ticks me off is all the very strong anti-US war rhetoric, and then they say that the US must deal with them or get it. Apparently it is working though. I do think that blinking is better than a war in this case. I just hope it oesnt set a precident. NK already tried this schtick twice before. I see no reason why they wont in a few more years. But then I guess another pres will have to deal with it.
Cite please ? This factoid is currently at about the same level of confidence as the story about Iraq importing aluminum tubes in order to build gas centrifuges for their putative uranium enrichment program. Here’s assistant secretary of state Kelly’s press briefing on the North Korean’s admission to get you started.
All we know is that NK has kicked the UN out of its nuclear refining facilities. It is not much of a leap to think that this was done for a practical reason.
As is usually the case, only in hindsight will the facts come out.
America has a huge number of nukes, the members of the UN Security Council have a huge number of nukes. What makes you think America or the UN Security Council are in an ethically justifiable position when the squeal about other powers, such as NK, having a ‘nuclear deterrent’? I am opposed to all nuclear proliferation; this means I need identify the greatest force driving nuclear proliferation. It is what we call “the arms race”, so long as America and her allies hold on to their stock piles, their will always be one country after another trying to get up onto that equal footing militarily.
As for sanctions equalling war, in a world where countries are increasingly dependent on foreign markets due to the globalisation of capital, economic strangulation is typically part of military campaign. Particularly protracted campaigns such as that in Iraq now, Iraq has been routinely bombed ever since the first gulf war in conjunction with economic sanctions. The west actually buys oil for food from Iraq, demand for food means Iraq is forced to barter oil cheaply to the west.
You should not equate a foreign country not wanting to let ‘you’ know the details of its army, with that country wanting war. America has already declared Korea part of its ‘axis of evil’. The US government has already stated it was prepared to invade two countries at once, meaning Iraq and the rest of Korea. You must see that North Korea is justified in thinking the US might want to invade it, just look at Iraq! Absolutely no justification for invading put forward yet can hold water. The UN weapons inspectors have found NOTHING NEW, because if there is something new it is gone. America sells weapons to Iraq one decade, then tries to invade it because it has weapon the next. It does not take a genius to see American hegemony throughout all of their current foreign policy decision making, while Korea is developing nuclear capabilities American companies are further undermining Koreas State Capitalist/Communist system by selling to Korea and thus opening up the capitalist market in the region. America is not the only country trading with Korea of course, but they do have about thirty thousand troops base in Sol, South Korea.
The clarity of your post would be much improved if you didn’t write sentences like, “while Korea is developing nuclear capabilities American companies are further undermining Koreas State Capitalist/Communist system by selling to Korea and thus opening up the capitalist market in the region.” There is North Korea and South Korea, and as much as people on both sides of the border harp on the Koreans being one people on one peninsula, there is a huge gulf between the two countries. North Korea is a rogue state that has mounted acts of aggression against South Korea (asssinating Park Chung Hee’s wife in 1968, blowing up Chun Doo Hwan’s ministers visiotng Myanmar in 1984. blowing up a KAL jet in 1987, innumerable minor skirmishes on both sea and land) since the armistice began. America’s presence in the peninsula over the past half-country has ensured that these provocations did not become open war.
Are you suggesting that if the U.S. and other nations in possession of nukes give them up, that nations like NKorea and Iraq will simply abandon any and all aspirations to possess them?
So, if we liberate the people of Iraq from the Stalinist dictator, they’ll be able to sell us oil at fair market value. Which, of course, negates the whole “war for oil” theory. At any rate, theres plenty of good debating of this subject in other threads.
The U.S. military “two theater campaign” policy of readiness has been a benchmark of readiness since WWII. And very public knowledge at that. This is nothing new. If NKorea is surprised by that answer to a reporters question, then they haven’t been paying much attention the last few decades. A reporter at a pentagon briefing brought this up, and applied it to NKorea and Iraq. To my knowledge, the current administration never implied they intend to invade NK.
No, I don’t see it, actually. And I’d be willing to bet NK doesn’t, either. It’s clear to me that all this saber rattling on the part of NK is an attempt to get their extortion oil flowing again.
There are plenty of other existing debates on this at the moment.
Um… I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at here, could you clarify this part?
Overall, what are you stating is the problem here? I already get the part where you think the U.S. is evil, all these problems are of our own doing, blah blah blah… but how about NK specifically? Are you suggesting this is our fault? NK bears no responsibility for their claims to bring about WWIII and turning us into a sea of fire? They are completely justified in seeking nukes? What?