Suppose North Korea is credibly in a position to nuke Washington. Suppose further that through diplomatic channels it states that it will use this capability (and also against London, Moscow, Paris, Geneva, Bejing, Johannasberg and Canberra) unless it receives $10 for every Nork Citizen a year as tribute from the worldwide community. In other words a pathetically tiny amount of money for everyone to come up with.
Do you think that governments would give in? Do you think that they should? Please also state if you consider yourself left wing or right wing.
I’ll withold my opinion to begin with, except to say that I expect that left wingers will have a different view to right wingers and I think I know which way around it will be too.
So what you are saying is if North Korea asks nicely to be wiped off the face of the planet would we still oblige?
Left or right you aren’t going to find many Americans that would be willing to cave to the demands of someone willing to blackmail us with the use of nuclear weapons.
Makes me think of the bit in Bablyon 5 where Emperor Molari quietly evacuates the island where the Shadows have their ships hidden. So he can blow up the entire damned island when they refuse to leave.
So, keeping that in mind;
1> Pretend to negotiate for a couple of hours (ie, stall)
2> Quietly evacuate as many people as you can.
3> Pull out the nuke sniffers in force.
4> Program all the necessary nukes to sufficiently glaze North Korea.
5> Ok, we’re done. Nuke DC/NY/Wherever and you cease to exist.
Yes, their demands would be met, while those governments would immediately work for the complete dismantling of the nuclear capabilities and power structure in North Korea.
I’d be fine if our response was to glass them out of existence for even making the threat.
But, in reality, the UN would be in control of the response and I’d hope it would entail sending in 1,000,000 inspectors and news reporters to crawl so far up their bum for so long that English becomes the primary language of the country’s management staff.
Not necessarily. If they figured that they would get away with pathetic demands but would be annihilated with more serious demands, then it could be rational for them to stick to pathetic ones.
That sort of demand is tantamount to a terrorist demand, and I just can’t see anyone, liberal or conservative, being in favor of giving in, especially for trivial demands. I don’t necessarily see us pre-emptively nuking them, but we definitely have no reason to take them seriously. Unlike the Soviets during the Cold War, there’s just no way North Korea could posture a credible mutually assured annihilation scenario. Thus, they’d have to be bluffing because they’d certainly be nuked in retaliation, if not by the US, certainly by Russia or China, and so it’s just not a respectable bluff. It’s like going all in a hand in Poker when you’re pretty sure the other guy has the nuts and you can’t even represent a hand that can beat a bluff.
I’d expect there’s be some stalling to give people time to get important people to safety and prepare a retaliation if they were stupid enough to follow through, but I don’t think anyone would actually listen to them. If, however, someone did meet their demands, why would they not get bolder and press a little harder in a few weeks or months?
The problem is there would be nothing to stop them from making more serious demands. They’re threatening to blow up, say, 50 million people unless they get $250 million - that’s the approximate real figure for $10 per North Korean - with no promise they won’t demand another $250 million tomorrow or next week. Since you said blackmail- it’s like saying “If you don’t give me $1 million, on Monday I’ll give your wife proof you had an affair.” There’s no assurance the blackmailer won’t make the demand again Tuesday. If you’re having DPRK offer to dismantle their nuclear capability for $250 million, it becomes a different question.
If we didn’t have time to evacuate NYC in time, we should give in to their demands. Meanwhile, make plans to put a nuclear bomb on every square mile of North Korean territory.
Why would the UN be in control of the response? The General Assembly is as toothless as a sponge, and the Security Council wouldn’t be able to act without US assent.
Sure. But for such a plan to work, they must avoid explicitly threatening any specific target, or at least any specific great power. The NK government’s policy relies on the restraint of every other power and the fact that it’s impractical to remove them without doing great damage to their people, which is not acceptable to the US and not in the logical self-interest of China & Russia.
One credible threat to Beijing and the rest of the world won’t have to lift a finger. The Chinese would pave NK in a heartbeat if they felt even the slightest bit threatened by them.
It’s true that the country would get a lot less attention if it weren’t heavily militarized and right next to South Korea. But if North Korea were threatening to nuke 7 major cities and kill tens of millions of people, that would be treated differently than the current situation. Say it’d be a more urgent problem.
Whether or not we “give in” is immaterial. We’d do whatever it took, including giving them the money, in order to stall long enough to put into action an appropriate military response. That response may include a nuclear strike, but probably would not, since it would cause severe collateral damage to our allies in South Korea and to the Chinese and Russians. If the Chinese and Russians feel threatened enough to consider a nuclear strike, we’d be much better off allowing them to do it and then issuing sever and meaningless chastisements. That way we keep our hands clean and don’t antagonize anyone. The US using nuclear weapons in any military capacity whatsoever, even a purely retaliatory strike, would be extremely destabilizing to global politics and almost certain to cause more problems than it solved.
All of that is to say nothing, of course, of the millions of innocent civilian lives in North Korea that would be spared by a non-nuclear response. That may not factor directly into our decision, but if the deaths caused by a nuclear weapon are even partially avoidable, not avoiding them would open the US up to justifiable and extremely harsh criticism from the rest of the world and from a sizable portion of the people of the US. However justifiable a nuclear attack might be from a realpolitik perspective, deliberately causing mass numbers of unnecessary civilian deaths is universally regarded as immoral and as the very definition of war crime. Even countries that agreed tacitly with our action would feel compelled to make us a pariah state to save face.
I don’t think anything would have to be arranged. silenus makes a good point: the Chinese government helps prop up the Kim government in part because they don’t want to deal with the chaos that will follow if/when the North Korean government falls apart. If the DPRK government collapses, a lot of refugees will rush into China, and China would rather avoid that. If North Korea changed from a regional pain in the ass to a threat to tens of millions of Chinese citizens, they would act quickly and probably flatten Pyongyang and take control of the country. They don’t want to have to do that but it becomes the best outcome instead of maybe the worst.