US propaganda is shifting to NK, at least for the weekend. Trump has been encouraged by using ‘his’ military for surgical strikes. The public is being prepared for a pre-emptive attack.
The prospect is becoming less absurd.
Crane
Considering NK’s options and results:
- Attack South Korea -> Annihilation
- Attack Japan -> Annihilation
- Attack China -> Annihilation
- Attack Russia -> Annihilation
- Beg for help from China -> Denied
- Beg for help from Russia -> ?
I suspect that China and Russia have some form of loose understanding the NK is in China’s domain. On the other hand, the US and China have been steadily growing closer over the last couple of decades, with fairly intertwined economies. Even if we don’t care for each other too much, it’s difficult for us to completely go against one another.
Russia could decide that it’s on its own already, so they may as well back NK just to piss us off and maybe gain a resource for threatening mainland China indirectly.
But I suspect that Putin will realize that, while they’re doing a pretty decent job of punching above their level, Russia simply won’t win against China. While the US is constrained by ethics, China generally isn’t, and they’ve got a lot more muscle than Russia.
And, given that it’s already Friday and we haven’t heard about any Russian military ships diverting, it’s probably safe to assume that Putin has turned them down already.
Which takes us to:
- Kill their own people.
I’m not sure exactly how this would work, but maybe strap bombs to everyone and set them running into South Korea and China, blowing themselves and everything they see to kingdom come?
If the humanitarian pushback doesn’t stop the American aggression, they’ll just keep the floodgates open while the NK leadership flees to Iran or somewhere.
As my post above says, China has indicated that if NK gives up the nuke program they will guarantee it’s defense. A rational person would take that offer, lets see if lil kim is rational or not.
It’s quite rational for Pyongyang not to trust China on that offer, either. The CCP has hardly been, eh, the most trustworthy of governments.
I doubt that Kim Jong-un is crazy. He wouldn’t have been able to take over from his dad unless he was able to convince enough of the leaders to back him, for him to be able to successfully assassinate the ones who didn’t.
But after several generations of labor to work towards nuclear capability, and that work starting to prove successful, I suspect that it would be largely politically infeasible to put it all away again. Maybe before, when Korea settled down on their nuclear aspirations, it was reasonably evident that they weren’t really getting anywhere with all of the technology they needed. But now, with so much information available on the Internet, probably it’s difficult for even the most incompetent engineers to not start making some forward progress.
When he started the job, Jong-un was building hotels and trying to bring in tourists. But then he put that all away and got real with the bomb and scare talk. I think, with nuclear capabilities coming into fruition, there’s too much history among the leadership and among the people to turn away from it. Maybe some of them are true believers, others will simply think that the US won’t really do anything, so they just need to hold the line until the full arsenal is completed, and others are ready to compete for control of the country, by using any cowardice on the part of Jong-un as proof that he is unfit to lead.
I doubt - based on the business with the hotels and ski runs - that Jong-un really wants to go down this path. As said, I don’t think that he is crazy. And his initial instinct to go with tourism and foreign business makes me think that he’d probably be a good influence on North Korea if given full freedom. But he wouldn’t have stepped away from that pathway if there weren’t strong obligations - e.g., fear of death - to make him change his tune.
So ultimately, it comes down to the question of whether he saves his people or saves himself. He probably cannot feasibly do both. Hopefully he can, of course. It’s possible that if there’s enough sincere belief that Trump is ready to charge in, even if it means the mass slaughter of almost everyone on the Korean peninsula, that might shake the military leadership hard enough that Kim can back down without loss of face and threat of death. But if there is sufficient hope, among the leadership, that we will back down, that they can scare us off, or that they can outlast anything we would be willing to throw at them, then it’s likely that the 6th test will take place and Trump will have to decide what to do about it.
ETA: @Velocity
No sensible government completly trusts the blandishments of its treaty allies.
e.g. It was real impolitic of candidate Trump to question the US/NATO commitment to e.g. Estonia. But rest assured the Estonians had already thought of that years ago; it wasn’t news to them that article 5 might not withstand the strain if push came to shove.
Kim may not be highly rational. But for damn sure he’s not assuming everything the Chinese say in public or in private is bankable.
**The enemy and his allies will never do xyz. Said before every military disaster in history. Also see the enemy does not have the capability to do abc.
Sure most likely the NORKS don’t as yet have the ability to mount nuclear warheads on Long range missiles. Do you want to take that bet? Only your cities to lose.
ETA: LSLGuy, it will not be news to the Russians either. During the cold war they had no doubt the US would fight for W Germany, after all the US has twice in a generation entered a European war to prevent domination of the continent. Reading up on Russian writings these days, they are not so sure about the Balts. Of course, this confusion can only lead to happiness as the first part of my post illustrates.
Agreed on all counts.
It’s basically the deal we have with Japan and Japanese / US relations haven’t always been friendly.
Up to age 5, Muslim kids are innocents and worth protecting. You can save them by converting them to Christianity and putting a nice MAGA hat on their heads.
After age 5, they become hardened Radical Islamic Terrorists at which point you have no choice but to keep them out of the USA and drop as many MOABs on them as you can.
It’s TrumpLogic. Get used to it.
That is especially true of the US and NK. The leaders of both countries are eager to believe their own bullshit.
So:
Russia is keeping quiet and watching.
China has cancelled airline service to NK and says conflict is imminent.
NK says they are ready for war.
Trump says North Korea is looking for trouble
Crane
Which part is bullshit? Totally confused here. China HAS canceled airline service (as well as halted the last of the coal purchases which was essentially the only hard currency going into NK). I suppose saying that conflict is ‘imminent’ might be BS, though hard to say really…China might really believe that at this point. Not sure I don’t, to be honest. Russia IS keeping quiet on this…mostly because they don’t really have a dog in this fight and are more focused on their own issues with Syria, Ukraine and the like. NK probably IS ready for war…or as ready as they can be. Again, they might actually believe that war is imminent at this point. As for Trump, well, pretty much everything he says is bullshit…but, in this case, NK is ALWAYS looking for trouble. It’s pretty much their default setting and has been for years. Kind of why they do underground nuclear testing and test ballistic missiles by firing them generally towards Japan, as well as all the other crazy crap they do to get attention.
The possibility never even entered your mind that maybe he’s not quite the mindless racist his opponents have made him out to be, did it?
And Mike Pence has been told to be in South Korea this weekend. So he’s in position to be the reason we go to full-on hot war:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pence-asia-idUSKBN17G08X
Presumably Pence hasn’t volunteered to sacrifice himself; perhaps it will be merely a Close Call. ‘This attack on our Vice President, who thankfully survived, will not be tolerated…’ and so on.
I think China is just entertaining the idea that Kim Jong Un could be stupid enough to do something so provocative that it couldn’t reasonably involve itself in a war against the United States over. China is probably willing to use some level of force to stop us just rolling an invasion into North Korea unprovoked, but I think it’s basically communicating to Kim “hey, we’ve been telling you for a few years now to knock your bullshit off, you’ve repeatedly embarrassed us, and we have spent and continue to spend a lot of money basically keeping you afloat–keep acting like a shit head and we aren’t going to be there when America responds in some way.”
At the same time they’ve made the very public offer to guarantee North Korea’s integrity and Kim’s regime if they abandon their nuclear program. This situation is honestly bigger than Trump, China has been on a “slow simmer” toward North Korea for years. China really doesn’t want American forces on its border, which it views as an inevitability if North Korea collapses and is unified with South Korea, but it also is tired of being the guarantor of an ally that has, on many occasions gone around and ignored Beijing’s instructions while Beijing has tried to smooth things over in the wake of some North Korean provocation.
China has never been in an easy place here, because it has the most to lose if North Korea collapses–potential American forces on its border, not to mention potential refugee waves crossing the Yalu to get into mainland China. I think China has started to hedge its bets against at least some of these possibilities–there was a significant increased deployment in Chinese troops to the North Korean border, I suspect probably 70% as a further message to Kim to stop making constant problems for Beijing, but maybe also to pre-position them in case they need to run heavy border security to try and stem an unmanageable refugee wave.
Now, don’t get me wrong, China massively prefers there is no military conflict here at all. That’s why I don’t think they’ll go any further than they have and do something that might actually topple Kim; but I think the Chinese regime is just literally tired of cleaning up the Kim’s messes, and isn’t willing to do certain things to protect them any longer–and they’re communicating that pretty clearly.
FWIW I don’t think Kim would be irrational to accept China’s offer, China has no desire to rule North Korea, it’s super poor, undeveloped, and integration with China proper would be a nightmare, that’s ignoring the geopolitical ramifications. I genuinely think there’s little logical reason to expect Kim wouldn’t be safer under Chinese protection than constantly arriving at the brink of war with the United States over a nuclear program.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
At the same time they’ve made the very public offer to guarantee North Korea’s integrity and Kim’s regime if they abandon their nuclear program. This situation is honestly bigger than Trump, China has been on a “slow simmer” toward North Korea for years. China really doesn’t want American forces on its border, which it views as an inevitability if North Korea collapses and is unified with South Korea, but it also is tired of being the guarantor of an ally that has, on many occasions gone around and ignored Beijing’s instructions while Beijing has tried to smooth things over in the wake of some North Korean provocation.
China has never been in an easy place here, because it has the most to lose if North Korea collapses–potential American forces on its border, not to mention potential refugee waves crossing the Yalu to get into mainland China. I think China has started to hedge its bets against at least some of these possibilities–there was a significant increased deployment in Chinese troops to the North Korean border, I suspect probably 70% as a further message to Kim to stop making constant problems for Beijing, but maybe also to pre-position them in case they need to run heavy border security to try and stem an unmanageable refugee wave.
[/QUOTE]
There is another aspect to this as well. Xi’s faction verse Jiang Zemin’s faction and the old guard. Xi’s faction seems to be ascendant at this point. But it was Jiang’s faction and the old guard that really supported (and continue to support) North Korea. While the old guard folks aren’t completely out of the picture, it’s pretty clear that Xi and his faction are winning…and that has had a lot to do with the changing attitudes in China towards North Korea. Several of the biggest supporters of North Korea in China have been purged at this point under Xi’s ‘anti-corruption’ campaign, and this has definitely had a tangible effect on China’s interactions with North Korea. Couple that with what you are saying here, i.e. how China has tried to demonstrate they have some control over NK only to have NK basically flaunt the fact that it doesn’t, and you have the current situation where China seems, at least publicly, to be backing away from NK and saying it’s not on them to defend NK if they do stupid stuff like continue to test nuclear weapons or toss ballistic missiles in the general direction of Japan.
So, you have a US battle group in the area under the control of a notoriously unpredictable President.
Pence is in SK for emergency communication since we do not have an ambassador there.
Whatever NK does, there is the expectation of a response by the US.
Crane
Evidence to the contrary would be enlightening. Nothing yet has been presented.
Trump is being surprisingly Presidential about NK.
Crane
There’s a random Twitter user and a couple of Russian articles (here and here) claiming the US is sending two additional carriers to the Korean peninsula. Here is the original South Korean report, but I don’t speak Korean and Google Translate had a hard time turning it into anything intelligible. I haven’t found anything yet that I’d consider really credible, but any time we gather three carriers in any one neighborhood, I’d say the odds of a really big fireworks show go up considerably.