I’m unconvinced by these arguments. By the time we got a force ready to attack North Korea, they might have usable nukes. The war could be horrendous, since NK has a big military. We would never get UN support for an attack. I doubt we’d have many allies. There would be a risk that China would get involved, leading to a world war. We didn’t win the first Korean War 50 years ago. I have no desire to fight another one.
OTOH Park’s pessimistic predictions may come true. Negotiations probably will not prevent NK from developing nuclear weapons. They probably will sell their weapons and their technology to Iran and other customers. They probably will use their weapons to threaten nearby countries, such as Japan and South Korea. They might acquire long range missiles which would allow them to threaten parts of Europe or even North America. So, failing to attack NK might lead to disaster.
This is reminiscent of Woody Allen’s essay, “My Address to the Graduates”. It begins:
Let’s see here, we’ve got troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, are looking to send troops to Liberia, and now someone wants us to go to North Korea. Does the phrase “divide and conquer” mean anything? We’d probably over extend ourselves, and America would collapse (not sure how the rest of the world would handle it, but it wouldn’t be pretty).
I’d be suspicious of info from any defector. Sure it’s good input, but that person may have his own agenda and political axe to grind.
I’ve always considered NK more of a threat to the US (and the rest of the world, for that matter) than Iraq, but it’s unclearl that invasion is the right answer. Especially now, with our armed forces stretched to the limit. I like the idea of pressuring China to handle this situation.
But we do need to be ready, at a minimum, to react quickly to any strke from NK.
If you understand anything about the situation in the Korean peninsula, you realize that the only thing that military intervention will get done is turning the Koreas, Japan, and Alaska into huge craters. The reality is that Kim Jong-il may be a paranoid (and with damn good reason), however he knows very well he can’t make the first move.
This is much like a mini Cold war. Nobody will do anything so long as both have the destructive capability to kill each other. Not only that, but you have to factor in that NK has the capacity to launch chemical warheads into Japan, perhaps even as far as Australia depending on the actual range of the Taepo-don class B missiles.
The only way a real solution will be reached is if the US allows to do South Korea what IT considers good for the way of unification. Let’s be honest, South Korea is a puppet government of North Korea, and just about every move they’ve tried to make to reach agreements with the North Koreans have been stifled by the US administration.
There are only two ways to break this stalemate: either going agressive and spilling god knows how many tons of chemicals and nukes over the peninsula and adjacent areas, or backing off and trying to reach an agreement. The reality is that the North Koreans have simply far too much to lose by doing anything other than saber-rattling. And if I were in Kim Jong-il’s position, i’d think three times over about doing anything that might anger a country with a policy that they describe as “imperialist to the very end” by a leader plagued by “moral leprosy”.
I’m assuming that you meant that South Korea is a puppet of the ** US** rather than a puppet of North Korea, but I’d like to see some support of that. One could try to make something of a case that South Korea was a puppet of the US when Sigmund Rhee was in charge, but it’d be pretty hard to support the charge today.
War is hell. Strike while the iron is hot. Ping Ping Pee Pee or whatever his holiness, the righteous butcher/dictator of N. Korea is referred to needs to be called. I’d like to see a lot more diplomacy but we need to be aware that these radicals are not interested. Having nutjobs loose in the world with nukes is actually a sobering thought that Hollywood and Pollyannas can’t resolve. Hopefully, it’s not necessary but capitulating to lunatics waving nukes isn’t a viable option. Something MUST be done.
I think that if left to its own devices N-Korea will rot from the inside or merge with S-Korea on amicable terms. Pushed and they will fight to the bitter end and remember they dont need nukes or WMD’s to devistate S-Korea.
I dont think going in is worth the risk. They do have decent subs that allows them to blow up just about anything if they have nukes.
What I don’t get is that US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons, and has since threatned to use them many times but can’t fathom why others want to acquire them.
I certainly could see why certain nations would want to have them, especially if the’re on the outs with Washington. With the ominous preemption policy, having nukes seems like the only way to prevent an arbitrary US invasion.
What would happen if US attacked NK? Well, the few nukes they have would probably decimate SE Asia. It may also have the unintended consequences of having other countries that already have nuke programs to expedite their efforts, or some countries to start developing nukes.
Wasn’t that exactly what they were looking into doing just a year or so ago, before all that “Axis of Evil” crap? I recall some talks about reunification that seem to have died at that exact same time…
I must go and mark this day off on my calendar, not because I disagree with december (as usual), but I disagree and actually think we/someone should use military action against NK (unless december once again tried to claim he is against something he’s actually favoring). I didn’t support a war in Iraq because IMO there was no aQ connections, no WMD & delivery system - none of the “immediate threat” kind anyway, - and because Iraq were definitely vulnerable to sanctions as the tribe society they are.
But NK has WMDs and advanced delivery systems, and is not likely to subdue to sanctions. I don’t think NK will rot from the inside, NK is not a union of tribes or semi-independant states (like the USSR).
The problem with NK is that the situation only will get worse because on the one hand China will not allow NK to grow strong, on the other hand China will try to avert NK from crumbling because a democratized NK could attach to the US, possibly allowing the US military to build bases in the country. So there’s a vacuum here where NK possibly could continue to develop nuclear weapons.
I’m pretty sure China would veto any miltary action against NK in the UNSC. In fact this could get extremely ugly if the US were to have a go at it. The US has been building new military bases at several locations in South Asia during the last decade. Every one of these countries would be a possibe target, in addition to the American homeland itself. Unlike Iraq, NK does have both medium- and longrange missiles. And if I remember correctly, I’ve read that NK has to ability to launch more than 12.000 artillery rounds on SK within the first few hours of an attack. Puh. (sorry, no cite, any confirmations?)
And of course, unilateral action outside the UN would be the final blow to the strained America-Europe relationship, and maybe to NATO as we know it today.
But unlike Iraq I don’t see any longterm advantages with containment. Maybe someone here knows more about the inner workings of NK and NK politics than I do and can enlighten us about possible scenarios?
Whether or not the US should, Georgie has quite a bit on his plate right now. I dont see it happening.
NK would be a MUCH better case for a pre-emptive strike than Iraq was, but as long as GWB is president – and probably afterwards, too – the US is going to have an extremely hard time justifying such a strike anytime in the foreseeable future.
What if NK starts pushing its luck? With such a huge chunk of its military in the ME and central Asia, the US would really have to make a choice: allow Iraq to spiral out of control (and potentially lose out on all of that oil revenue), or ignore it and hope someone else will take care of the problem.
My apologies on my last post; I composed it before your reply, and I didn’t mean for it to look like I was responding to you in such a snarky way.
I don’t claim to know about the inner workings of North Korean politics, but I can’t imagine that the DPRK’s government is doing very well at the moment. Its people are starving en masse, and probably none too pleased with the situation. Its recent experiment in the Sinuiju Economic Zone implies an increasingly desperate situation in the North Korean economy (and the People’s Republic of China’s arrest of the man Pyongyang picked to lead that experiment implies that Pyongyang may not be able to count on one of its longtime benefactors as readily as it might like).
The DPRK is essentially a hollow shell of a state. If we give it time, it will probably collapse on its own. If that happens, we will have to deal with a new crisis - anarchy on a nuclear-armed Korean Peninsula - but I think we will be in a better position to handle that situation than the current impasse. Such a situation would certainly be preferrable to a new Korean War in my book.
A war on the Korean Peninsula would not be quick or pretty. Tens of thousands of US soldiers could easily be killed. The Republic of Korea would be absolutely devastated. To make matters worse, Pyongyang probably already has several nuclear weapons (cite, paragraph 13), and would have every reason to use them faced with an all-out US attack.
Now, I concede that it is possible that the DPRK will, in its death throes, lash out against its neighbors and the United States if we maintain a policy of containment. I would argue, however, that this possibility is preferable to the certainty of equal or greater destruction if the United States strikes first. If there must be war on the Korean Peninsula, let the North Koreans start it - the outcome will be no different in the long run, and the suffering will be just as great.
What’s the point if we launch a preemptive strike against Pyongyang? We’d be destroying the Republic of Korea and stability in Northeast Asia in order to save them.
The United States has the only navy that really matters any more. We can control practically any waters we wish, at least temporarily. Therefore, in theory, the United States could invade North Korea from three directions at once: the west coast, the east coast, and the DMZ. That’s not even mentioning our air superiority. We could win. The butcher’s bill would be a lot higher than it was in Iraq, but we could win.
However.
One point nobody has really discussed yet on this thread: Can we invade North Korea without provoking China?
Remember, the US/UN almost won the first Korean War – they had the Communists pushed back to the Chinese border. Then the Chinese intervened, pushed the US/UN forces down to the tip of the peninsula, and they had to fight their way back to the line north of Seoul that became the present DMZ. And all this was before China was a nuclear power.
Now, one point I’m not clear on is the present state of relations between the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese are still nominally “Communist” but they are no longer committed, not even rhetorically, to world socialist revolution. Do the Chinese still regard North Korea as their client state and protege? Would they intervene to save Kim Jong-Il’s regime, or would they be just as relieved as everybody else to see it gone? Probably the latter. On the other hand, is it possible the Chinese would intervene to protect a regime they don’t like, rather than see the United States win a war in their region and increase its power and influence in East Asia?
One other relevant point: There is an ethnically Korean region on the Chinese side of the border. (Why it was not included within Korea’s borders, I don’t know.) North Korea never tried to make any claim on it, for obvious reasons – but a United Korea might! Do the Chinese want to risk that possibility?
And – suppose we can’t invade NK without provoking China. Does anyone care to argue the case that we should not let that stop us? Does anyone believe the U.S. taking on China is a thinkable or realistic alternative? I don’t. There are more than a billion Chinese. We can exterminate them but we can’t defeat them. And who wants to exterminate the world’s oldest civilized nation?
Exactly. Talking about invading NK without involving China is like talking about invading East Germany and not getting the USSR involved. Not that the relationship is the same, but you can’t ignore it. However, Brain Glutton I fail to see the point in bringing up “extermination” … are you really thinking that anyone is advocating genocide?
Surely the best bet would be to get China to do our work for us? They very much want to establish themselves as a regional power, and they have a very clear stake in all this: NK with nukes makes Japan nervous. Thus a subtle hint that if nervous, Japan might just decide to get their own nukes, and that the US, gosh darn it, can’t stop them … and the real pressure on NK is to straighten up and fly right might be coming from Beijing.