Why Is North Korea Our Problem?
Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,
For Xi Jinping, it has been a rough week.
Panicked flight from China’s currency twice caused a plunge of 7 percent in her stock market, forcing a suspension of trading.
Kim Jong Un, the megalomaniac who runs North Korea, ignored Xi’s warning and set off a fourth nuclear bomb. While probably not a hydrogen bomb as claimed, it was the largest blast ever in Korea.
And if Pyongyang continues building and testing nuclear bombs, Beijing is going to wake up one day and find that its neighbors, South Korea and Japan, have also acquired nuclear weapons as deterrents to North Korea.
And should Japan and South Korea do so, Taiwan, Vietnam and Manila, all bullied by Beijing, may also be in the market for nukes.
Hence, if Beijing refuses to cooperate to de-nuclearize North Korea, she could find herself, a decade hence, surrounded by nuclear weapons states, from Russia to India and from Pakistan to Japan.
Still, this testing of a bomb by North Korea, coupled with the bellicosity of Kim Jong Un, should cause us to take a hard look at our own war guarantees to Asia that date back to John Foster Dulles.
At the end of the Korean War in July 1953, South Korea was devastated, unable to defend herself without the U.S. Navy and Air Force and scores of thousands of U.S. troops.
So, America negotiated a mutual security treaty.
But today, South Korea has 50 million people, twice that of the North, the world’s 13th largest economy, 40 times the size of North Korea’s, and access to the most modern U.S. weapons.
In 2015, Seoul ran a trade surplus of almost $30 billion with the United States, a sum almost equal to North Korea’s entire GDP.
Why, then, are 25,000 U.S. troops still in South Korea?
Why are they in the DMZ, ensuring that Americans are among the first to die in any Second Korean War?
Given the proximity of the huge North Korean Army, with its thousands of missiles and artillery pieces, only 35 miles from Seoul, any invasion would have to be met almost immediately with U.S.-fired atomic weapons.
But with North Korea possessing a nuclear arsenal estimated at 8 to 12 weapons and growing, a question arises: Why should the U.S. engage in a nuclear exchange with North Korea, over South Korea?
Why should a treaty that dates back 60 years commit us, in perpetuity, to back South Korea in a war from the first shot with Pyongyang, when that war could swiftly escalate to nuclear?
How does this comport with U.S. national interests?
In 1877, Lord Salisbury, commenting on Great Britain’s stance on the Eastern Question, noted that “the commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.”
Is this not true today of America’s Asian alliances?
North Korea’s tests of atomic weapons and development of land-based and submarine-launched missiles should cause us to reconsider strategic commitments that date back to the 1950s.
President Nixon, ahead of his time, understood this.
As he began the drawdown of U.S. forces in Vietnam in 1969, he declared in Guam that while America would meet her treaty obligations, henceforth, Asian nations should provide the ground troops to defend themselves. Gen. MacArthur had told President Kennedy, before Vietnam, not to put U.S. foot soldiers onto the Asian mainland.
Now that we have entered a post-post Cold War era, where many Asian nations possess the actual or potential military power to defend themselves, something like a new Nixon Doctrine is worth considering.
Take all of the major territorial quarrels between China and its neighbors — the dispute with India over Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh, the dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands, with Vietnam over the Paracels, with the Philippines over the Spratlys.
In none of these quarrels and conflicts does there seem to be any vital U.S. national interest so imperiled that we should risk a clash with a nuclear power like Beijing.
Once, there was a time when Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Tojo ruled almost all of Eurasia. And another time when a monolithic Sino-Soviet Communist bloc ruled from the Elbe to the Pacific.
As those times are long gone, is it not time for an exhaustive review of the alliances we have entered into and the war guarantees we have issued, to fight for nations and interests other than our own?
Under NATO, we are committed to go to war against a nuclear-armed Russia on behalf of 27 nations, including tiny Estonia.
One understood the necessity to defend West Germany and keep the Red Army on the other side of the Elbe, but when did Estonia’s independence become so critical to U.S. security that we would fight a nuclear-armed Russia rather than lose it?
Indeed, how many of the dozens of U.S. war guarantees we have outstanding would we honor by going to war if they were called?
(9 votes)
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Yankee wants to go home
The problem is not Yankee, but Yankee regime and Yankee banksters, that can never get enough of other people's stuff.
Manifest Destiny 3.0, the Global game (2.0 was the conquest of Europe and Latin America).
Uncle Sugar would run a mile before honoring a promise to defend an "ally" against invasion by a real army. The only likely exception is Saudi Arabia, and even Riyadh is no longer taking DC's aid for granted.
The contingent in South Korea are just for show. The House of Kim figured out decades ago that another attempt to invade the south would be their undoing. On the contrary--they got a nuke to discourage violent regime change that they were in no position to resist in any other way.
Nothing to see here, move along.
in spite of some compelling arguments here, i still believe that
There is more truth in what you say than you probably realize ..
Just not exactly in such manner as you phrase it ..
You have the key words, just need to rearrange them a bit ..
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/02/13/intel-dump-wednesday-february-13...
Denton Thank you for linking me to that cornucopia of conspiracy theory.
Like a good piece of meat, I don't like a ConTheo too rare or too well done and I'm afraid they were both in that VT piece.
While Israel, America's rent boy, would have a thousand reasons to worm its way in NK's nuclear program, NK would get nothing out of it except what Israel (and the US) wanted. Pakistan got it's nuclear technology from China and passed it on to NK.
Considering I am the first and only poster here to bring this reality to the light of day (I first mentioned it a few years ago), You would be wise, Denton, to allow me to tell you what it means.
Bye the bye, if Israel has never tested an H Bomb, does that mean they don't have one?
.
North Korea is a bankers problem because they don't have a Rothschild's owned Fractional reserve banking ponzi schem just like Iran!
"Why Is North Korea Our Problem?"
Because NK is China's stooge, and gives China "plausible deniability".
Ex1: NK ships nuke tech to Pakistan, causing problems for India (China's rival), and the US (China's rival). China didn't do it.
Ex2: NK exports missile tech to Iran, causing problems for Saudis (US ally) and US (China's rival). China didn't do it.
Ex3: NK fires test missle that directly overflys Japan (China's rival) and heads toward the US (China's rival). China didn't do it.
Ex4: NK pursues nuke and missle tech, and the US (China's rival), South Koreans (US ally) and Japan (China's rival) are powerless to stop it. China didn't do it.
US was also responsible in giving sensitive nuclear tech to pakistan because India had their own nuclear programmeand they were Soviet Union Ally thats why Pakistan did.
The Ride That Never Ends:
Reminds me of that John McKay quote: "We didn't block, but we made up for it by not tackling". :-)
I think S. Korea could easily defend itself. It would be like the USA Civil War. S. Korea has all the industry.
Probably, all the USA gets in return is votes at the UN. Too bad. Think of all the stuff the USA could sell to N. Korea. Food, at least.
P.S. Great song: "the road goes on forever and the party never ends"
Good reading!...
C/P:
{
About that NK H-bombIt is a really small H-bomb. I am going with my own independent estimate of 150 Kilotons. That would be a really big fission only bomb. And I think I might know why Kim Jong went for the small H-bomb
H-bombs are implosion bombs, which are difficult to make. But they have an advantage - when they are designed extremely well they do not need as much fissionable nuclear material as a standard gun type atomic bomb.
Here is why: All atoms have have electrons circling them in distinct rotational paths called valence shells. These "shells" increase in size as the atomic weight goes up, and are in layers, (not all electrons are on the same layer). These shells determine the actual size of an atom, the electrons and the nucleus are puny by comparison. But the rapid orbits of the electrons in the valence shells have enough force to give the atom a specific size, regardless of how much pressure is on them (up to a certain threshold). The valence shells keep the nuclei separated from nuclei in other atoms in a very predictable way. This means that even if you squeeze a fissionable material quite hard, the nuclear reaction characteristics remain the same, and you can predict how a nuclear material will behave because the distances between the radioactive nuclei remain the same.
HERE IS THE KICKER:If you can crush a radioactive material enough, the electron valence shells get compressed enough to bring the radioactive nuclei closer together, which lowers critical mass and allows a nuke to function with less material. Kim Jong therefore has obviously gone with implosion nukes, where an explosive charge is so precisely detonated that it applies even pressure to the nuclear material at the core of the bomb to a level that is sufficient to lower the critical mass. That way, Kim Jong can make more nukes with less material. To make up for having less material, he is spiking the core with tritium and has a device that is precise enough to get temperatures high enough to cause the tritium to fuse. That makes it a hydrogen bomb, even if technically all he has is a boosted nuke. Same concept, both use fusion to get more boom and both go boom really good.
It is sort of a double edged sword - doing this proves he might have very little nuclear material, and has to get the best boom for his buck. So on one edge, it may reveal a weakness. But it also means Kim Jong has accomplished a major technological work, and it proves North Korea is not a stupid common core country. I'd challenge the common core crowd from America to re-invent the hydrogen bomb. FAT CHANCE. This also proves Kim Jong can sink the U.S. Navy, and when that only takes a few decent nukes, even a limited amount of nuclear material can produce quite a deterrent.
And yes, I know, despite the fact that Kim Jong "is a god," other people handled this, he most likely never picked up a calculator and could not have done this without the help of mere mortals.
If pressure becomes high enough however }
Good luck us Humans..
>I'd challenge the common core crowd from America to re-invent the hydrogen bomb. FAT CHANCE.
Well, maybe not the common core crowd, but this artist/sculptor given the right materials could.
http://jimsanborn.net/main.html#museuminstallations
North Korea bores me. There's no mystery to it. A gang of maniacs is holding their own population hostage. The world goes along with it because the underlying assumption, no nation has the right to interfere with the internal affairs of another sovereign state, shall not be violated, no matter how fucked up the shit gets. Then the gig is up and suddenly all states' fucked-up affairs deserve closer scrutiny, and then all bets are off. And that. Cannot. Be.
North Korea should have imploded in the 90s. But the international community decided it was good to have a fucked-up bunch of whack-jobs appear at UN meetings regularly to make the rest of the criminals seem reasonable by comparison. It's teetered on brink of collapse ever since. Basically the Chinese keep it propped up because they don't want a unified Korea, the Koreans don't seem to really understand what's going on and nobody seems to give a shit.
Yawn.... wake me up when the 4325th Regiment "Starved to Tears and Eating Rubber Soles" finally turns their weapons on their commissars, shoots them all and goes on a tear with their anti-aircraft guns.
The world goes along with it because the underlying assumption, no nation has the right to interfere with the internal affairs of another sovereign state, shall not be violated, no matter how fucked up the shit gets.
The "world" goes along with it because once you join the nuclear club, you are magically sovereign again. If a state does not possess nuclear weapons, they aren't really a state these days.
Once Iran gets nukes, everything will get better in the Middle East. Israel will be silent and Saudi Arabia will have its revolution.
"A gang of maniacs is holding their own population hostage."
So let the population rise up and change the system from within if they think it's not right for them. Who are we to say what's good for us is good for everyone else??
The more outsiders get involved by any means including sanctions and alienating a country from international trades, the worse the situation actually gets for the people (not the leader). And the poorer the people become =>the more dependent they are on the state => the more rogue the government becomes => the better justifications for a war by those outsiders who would profit from it.
+1
There are so many posters here who don't have a clue, or at least forgot to put a bold /sarc tag at the end of their sentences, but your posts stand out as someone who seems to know a thing or two.
"North Korea should have imploded in the 90s"
I'd have to agree with that and the current leadership of North Korea running the family business with fatboy Kim as the figurehead do appear to be batshit crazy. Predictable, but batshit crazy. Since I first noticed them in the 80's, they have been doing the exact same thing every decade: Having a tantrum by lobbing a few missiles into the sea and blowing shit up, then when anyone takes notice, demanding money in aid. Looks like they've run out of cash again so someone will have to write another cheque to quieten them down for another couple of years. It's a childish racket.
The thing about the 80's and 90's in North Korea which was unexpected during my research was the fact that the major financier of the North Korean regime was.....Japan. Not the Chinese. Which leads me to think that there is some merit to the idea that Japan fears a united Korea. I know a few South Koreans and along with the rest of Asia which suffered under their hands during the Japanese empire, they still loathe the Japanese with a passion. Not surprising if one reads about what happened to our POWs in Japanese internment camps. Looking at Abe, one can see that the Japanese facade of peace hides a seriously deranged monster.
Having agreed that the North Koreans are brainwashed and its leadership a family of criminals, there are some caveats. Namely, the brainwashed are waking up slowly thanks to the influences of the South Koreans and the recently converted-to-capitalism Chinese. Another caveat is the fact that South Korea is indeed a vassal state of America as the North claims every day. There's really no use denying it when there have been US military bases in South Korea since the 1950's and its entire economic, social, intelligence and political systems are intimately tied to the USA. Recently we had a glimpse into the Pentagon regularly Fedexing biological weapons to labs in South Korea and take a hand (Via Lockheed Martin) in creating the indigenous FA-50 Golden Eagle jet figher.
There's something odd about the FA-50 jet fighter which shows the relationship between S.Korea and the USA very well. The South Korean FA-50 program is a joint project between KAI and Lockheed Martin with restrictive terms and provisions. It's obvious that the US would push its products - the FA-50 uses GE's F404-GE-102 engine but what was unexpected were provisions to make sure that only American source code be used for flight control and key capabilities. Second provision limited the jet fighter's capabilities NOT to exceed the capabilities of the F16. A third provision banned South Korea from integrating any technology that the US did not already have. Basically they made the South Koreans deliberately design and build a jet fighter for the defence of their country which cannot be better than an American jet fighter. If that doesn't show the relationship between a self-aggrandizing empire and a vassal state, then I don't know what does.
There are so many posters here who don't have a clue, or at least forgot to put a bold /sarc tag at the end of their sentences, but your posts stand out as someone who seems to know a thing or two.
I should hope so. Only spent 20 years in Asia and know the DMZ like the inside of my back pocket. Rest of the time I was drunk or had some broad riding my face or possibly both, so some of the details might have escaped me.
The thrust of Pat Buchanan's article is correct. US has no business being in Korea anymore. That was true back in the 90s but even more true these days. The ROKs went on a spending splurge and went out and bought themselves a first rate military machine. They have robot sentries on the DMZ (lmao....). Even back in the 80s they had radar slaved Vulcan canons on fully automated systems. You just did NOT fuck around on the DMZ because someone somewhere had live systems pointed at you 24/7.
While the ROKs have been upgrading their systems the Norks systems have become a goddamned laughing stock. Their literally a rolling museum exhibition. I shit you not. That's the least of their worries. Troops have been systematically starved their entire lives. Have no gas for training, no ammo for serious combined arms exercises... it's an army of one million being run on mom's shoestring budget. It's a fucking laughing stock. I saw a brandnew North Korean Mig-23 simulator it looked like a fucking arcade game from the 80s. I'm telling you... they have some serious firepower in their field artillery, but they cannot deploy. The ROK-US air forces would own the skies within minutes. Their air force bases would be zapped, all known tunnels would be dammed up and anything that moved along the entire stretch of the DMZ would be fragmentation bomb fodder. I knew some army spooks who sat on some mountain tops in Kangwondo eavesdropping on the Nork army year-round and they told me their units were engaged in scavenging for food nonstop, doing field labor to help bring in more crops during planting and harvesting, and constantly whining on the radio about how depleted their supplies of everything are. OpSec baby lmao....
The Norks huff and puff and put up a big showing at their annual parades, but just putting on the parades depletes their resources lol... They're some hardcore tough as nails murdering motherfuckers, no doubt, and I wouldn't underestimate the resolve of inner agency security apparatus personnel, but their army is mostly conscripts from around the country forced to starve and freeze along the DMZ for the umpteen years they have to serve. They're virtually prisoners in the world's largest military museum.
There's something odd about the FA-50 jet fighter which shows the relationship between S.Korea and the USA very well.
I think you're taking things out of context. The Chinese have been on a tear copying and pasting their entire military build-up from our defense catalogue and the last couple of years defense contractors have finally started to get indignant. Not that they're taking active steps to stop any of it, they're getting upset. Defense contractors extend similar contracts to foreign countries on a regular basis when requests are made under license, but they've gotten weary dealing with Korea becuase Korea has expressly stated they want to get into the business of airplane building and exporting. So, there's America again handing over the keys to the house and shooting ourselves in the foot in yet another field. I don't see anything out of the ordinary in those contracts. The defense contractors are attempting to maintain their monopoly of tech it cost them hunderds of billions and 30 years to develop. As a taxpayer, I sympathize...
Anyhow, getting into the South Korean side of the house is a whole different can of worms. Suffice to say, it's complicated. All the Koreans I ever met think the CIA runs Korea. That always makes me laugh when you know how fucked up the American side of the house is. Americans are subject to the same rotation policies in Korea as the rest of the bureaucracy, that means that US forces in Korea, including State Department, Christians In Action, No Such Agency always have people with expertise leaving, and clueless dumbasses rotating in. I studied Korean, patrolled the DMZ and started understanding how the place works and they send me to Germany. Brilliant. Applause from the cheap seats. You know, if it weren't for our high tech, we'd be in a world of hurt, because the American military is otherwise a mediocrity if you consider dollar-for-dollar what you're tax money is getting you.
Anyhow, yeah, the Koreans and the Japs are loyal allies. I think referring to them as "vassals" goes a bit far, since they're the ones who've reaped most of the benefits of the relationship. Anyhow, look at me, I'm the biggest critic of the system and I was a part of the machine. I'd go out there and shout Yankee Go Home! with all the Korean radicals and have a good time doing it, and I'd mean it to boot.
Damn, went on a long ramble.... oops. Thanks for reading, sorry if it doesn't make much sense.
No, it was good and very interesting thanks. Your experiences say a lot about the duality of living in the 21st century and insights few ever express.
This is all bullshit. In January 2014 North Korea offered to stop its nuclear programme if the USA and South Korea would stop their annual wargame exercises. They would not. It is more important to the USA to have enimies they can demonize than neutral relationships with other countries that are independant of their all encompassing hegemony. Fuck'n cunts. Never let an oportunity for war go by.
This is all bullshit. In January 2014 North Korea offered to stop its nuclear programme if the USA and South Korea would stop their annual wargame exercises.
No, your statement is pure bullshit. There isn't a treaty the Norks haven't signed or an agreement they weren't a party to that they haven't violated. Quite aside from the fact the Norks are a bunch of backwardass NeoConfucian hillbillies with guns who've never mastered the fine art of the contract, they reject the American world order and everythng in it in the first place. And through a bizarre quirk intertwining those two ideas the Norks refuse to negotiate with the South as equals, because while they reject the US world order, they see the Southern government as US puppets, and so instead of talking to the puppets they prefer to talk to the puppeteer. See how culture and politics intertwine there to create two mutually exclusive ideas that nevertheless exist side-by-side? The Norks aren't inscrutible. All you have to do is stand on the DMZ long enough and fuck around with them long enough to get the picture. They're a gang of criminal thugs. And if there ever was a gang of criminal thugs that deserved a good whacking, it's them.
Let's keep it real.
You are right its bullshit I got the date wrong. The correct date was January 2015
http://yournewswire.com/us-had-rejected-north-koreas-offer-to-stop-nucle...
As for talking to the puppeteer rather than the puppet. Sounds pretty sensible to me. I don't suggest North Korea is a state to be admired in any way what-so-ever but the USA is worse as they have the real power and they misuse it.
We reached out to them .... with a bouquet of nuclear fuel rods .... we've tried your liberal approach ?
Clap, clap, clap, clap.
I've been at the DMZ, the NK side is very grim, you don't even need a telescope to see the difference.
You mean like the one where they would stop if the South provided food and fertilizer to ease their famine in 1996?
But they didn't stop did they?
Or the same deal in 2000?
But they didn't stop did they?
Or when they said they would stop ICBM development in 2005 if the 50,000 US troops were reduced by half?
Troops are 25,000.
But they didn't stop did they?
Won't have to fight for ROK. Just need announce that US considering withdrawal from non proliferation treaty due to NK proliferation and in light of SE Asian needs for nuke deterrence. Considering... Then China will sort out NK.Those American service people are dead man walking if war breaks out. They will be the first to go. They need to be withdrawn and S.Korea need to man up and defend themselves.
Same goes for Europe if America gets the war it wants with Russia.,Americans will likely be the first to die.
We have serious economic and debt problems. We need to return our war machine to home and shut it down except for "real" defensive purposes.
We are broke,,, flat busted.
Those American service people are dead man walking if war breaks out.
Errrr... no. The "tripwire" idea is dead dude. The Americans have been relocating units further and further south since the 90s. We stopped actively patrolling the DMZ in the early 90s and removed units outright and decommissioned other units. The US is keeping a presence in Korea, but this "dead man walking" thing is a throwback to the 60~80s when we were actively on the DMZ.
If the Norks ever seriously attempted anything they'd get a clobbering that would make the Iraq air war look like a weekend of drunken plinking. ROK-US air forces could dominate the North Korean air space in less than an hour and lay waste to the entire country and not a goddamned thing a single fucking commie piece of shit peoples' army cocksucker could do about it. After that it's just a matter of dissecting them like a frog on a lab table.
The idea that a Korean War would be this epic WWII like affair that we have to avoid at all costs is greatly greatly overstated. The ROK forces have become so modernized over the last 20 years they've left the Norks in the dust. The Norks are fielding a completely depleted 1950s era field army that's more like a fucking museum piece it's so pathetic.
Nork air force is a non factor, once we control the skies it's just a matter of psyoping them into surrendering and bombing the fuck out of the rest from a safe distance. Considering most Norks are on the brink of an insurrection anyhow, none of this should be hard.
ALLLLL that said, we have no dog in this fight anyhow. I'm just sayin... the tripwire idea is a Cold War holdover that hasn't been applicable since the 90s.
Yep.
All NK has is a lot of artillery that would come close to destroying Seoul (metro area population: 25 million).
Other than that, SK would annhilate the North, and it would not take long.
Agree that the USA does not have a dog in this fight.
"After that it's just a matter of dissecting them like a frog on a lab table."... sounds like something some pervious Yank idiot might have said would happen after the US 'won' the air war in Iraq, Afghanistan, VietNam. And that is without considering that Yanks grunts simply can't get that shit done, even while slaughtering tens of thousands of non-combatants.
Air power is a fucking farce: unless you nuke a place, air power just makes the locals determined to kill your ground troops when they turn up, and to keep killing them - 4G style - until they fuck off.
'American Foreign Policy' means never having to learn from history, even when you've literally just finished taking it up the arse form some bunch of raggedy-assed tribesmen who are too poor to afford an airforce or a guided missile frigate, but fought the Yanks to a standstill (which, in 4G terms, is a win).
Yanks still think they won WWII (and WWI FFS) - failing to understand that if FDR and Churchill hadn't sold Eastern Europe to the Soviets in exchange for 10 million Soviet men-at-arms attacking Germany from the East, there was a very good chance that Germany would have held Western Europe to this day. The USSR was the sole reason that the Allies won WWII, on any objective measure: it got territory and population under its control, it bore the losses, and the US has strutted about like the proverbial chicken on a chessboard ever since.
I like how your illteracy got in the way of posting a meaningful reply. Let me rephrase for someone with reading comprehension impairment:
North Korea poses no real military threat to South Korea, and hasn't since the 90s. The only real threat from the North is their field artillery which could inflict some damage on the northern stretches of Seoul for about an hour.
My entire post addressed why the North Korean "threat" is greatly overstated. The PRINCIPLE reason is because North Korea has no fucking air force, and while an air force is certainly an unwieldy tool to terrorize random ragtag bands of goatherders for the sole benefit of boosting shares in Raytheon and Westinghouse, the air force is an EXCELLENT option to gain, claim and maintain air superiority and then proceed to dam up and completely eradicate a field army of one million starved midgets and 3500 pieces of field artillery and 3000 tanks from the 1950s with near empty gas tanks, all bunched up on less than 250 square miles of real estate right up against the DMZ. That's what's called the North Korean People's Army Order of Battle.
LMFAO.
You fucking people........
This, and why is Germany still occupied? Why does the ridiculous NATO still exist? Why is the Middle East a fucking crater? Why are there any US forces anywhere but in the US?
Why do people still believe in "banks"?
Because the country is run by CIA neocon.
If North Koreas is considered an enemy of the USA , it is all the fault of the USA adminstrations . Who blackballs North Korea trade and ecnomy ? Who puts the sanctions ? Who wants to chamge their governemnt ? Who describes the current and previous leaders of North Korea as crackpots when the USA if governed by a true crackpot called Obama and before him other pscychopaths like the Bushes , Clinton , Reagan and the rest ?
Who F..cks the USA administration deserves a medal . Long life to North Korea !
To have long life, you need FOOD, dimwit! It also helps when you don't subject 1% of your population, men, women and children, to slavery in death camps.
Simplistic rah-rah.
In 1940 every major State power combatant had large stocks of chemical and biological weapons in artillery and bombs, all ready to go. That was the 'deterrent' capability then - and it did not work.
No one dared to use them, so there were no bio/chem battles in WWII. But there could have been! But no one wanted to do that, under any conditions. No matter how bad things got, no one dared use them. It just wasn't worth it.
Same can happen with nukes now, no one will want to use them, so all we get is intense regional or global conventional war once again. That's far more likely to be the outcome than nukes being used.
So don't kinding yourself about this, nukes are very over-rated and basically useless in warfare, as countries won't dare use them, no matter what they say or threaten prior to war.
We unilaterally reduced our nukes .... we should have hammered all those old nukes .... into tactical nukes ?
One of the US W54 versions made in the late 1950s had a yield as low as 10 to 20 tonnes equivalent. Don't need tritium, just solid-state neutron injectors, so light simple low rad flux and low maintenance, with actually useful military yields that will fit into almost anything. The problem though is that real wars against real militaries are won by destroying cities to eliminate capacity to generate, field and sustain forces, hence big nukes, for big cities.
I watched this documentary very recently. My Dad served in Korea and his shadow box and dog tags are in full view of anyone near our dinner area. It is a good question as to why it is all our fault. It was a UN action. It was not a unilateral U.S. action and was not intended to be aggressive.
This documentary is called The Propaganda Games and I believe it to be well done. I think it is fair because it is done by a non-belligerent regarding whole affair. You be the judge.
The Confederated States of South Korea ---- look away, Dixieland ?
Are you trying to piss on my father's grave? Choose your next words wisely.
Not surprising that you're already on my shitlist Monetas.
Hey mate. We lost a lot of good people and so did they. But I don't think any of our losses compare to the losses the Korean folks took - around 2.5 million civilians were killed - they might be the only blameless innocents in the struggle between the great powers, the Soviet Union and the USA after WWII which led to the Korean war.
The real fault lies first with Imperial Japan which invaded Korea in stages from 1876 to 1945. Almost 70 years of occupation during which I could write an entire encylopaedia of terror visited upon the Korean people who resisted every minute under the yoke of the Japanese invaders. By the end of WWII, every vestige of a once prosperous and highly educated (Albeit socially stratified) culture that invented the moving press was shattered and torn, robbed of everything by the Japanese, including their own language. (The Japanese nutjobs even forbade the use of the Korean language under penalty of death).
So, a broken country whose glories were left behind in the 19th century entered the 20th a broken shell, then was occupied once again by two emerging super powers in 1945 which both had their own ideas about which political philosophy should reign supreme in Korea. Down from the Russia/China Northern peninsula came Kim Il Sung (Who was of Chinese-Korean peasant origin and taught by the Soviets in political theory) and up from the South came SyngMan Rhee (Who was of aristocratic descent and after a short career as a newspaper editor and activist he left Korea for America where he attended George Washington University, then Harvard, then received his doctorate at Princeton - typically Korean). Two very different men from two very different worlds who would later split and rule their respective nations which longed to be whole again.
The second fault, if one could call it that in the context of the time, was the interference of these two super powers hungry for control of this strategic land at the nexus of Russia, China and Japan. These proxy governments installed by the Soviets and USA by 1948 were bound to fight for control and were encouraged at every opportunity to be belligerent along the North/South, Communist/Capitalist border. On 25th June 1950, the communist North invaded the South supported by China and Russia.
The Korean war (1950-1953) may be the exception in the long history of America-led wars in the world that cannot solely be blamed on America. Arguably, although there are some parallels with the Iraq-Kuwait war, it was perhaps the last real UN war against aggression in the world. 21 countries sent their brightest and best to fight communism, including Britain under the command of the American general Douglas McArthur. So you make a good point when you say that perhaps the war was not intended to be aggressive, but defensive. What has transpired since the war is another matter altogether, but at the time, I think you would be correct.
Under Shariah law .... steal an apple .... lose a hand .... in Norkia .... fall asleep when dear leader is speaking .... anti-aircraft gun firing squad in a soccer stadium .... or fed alive to dogs .... naked ?
Why is America still at war with N Korea? How many years has it been? 60 years. Are you colonizing the place? Why don't you tell N Korea you are not at war with them and piss off home. I'm sure Samsung can look after its self.
Oh I know you want to have a little proxy war with China.
Good questions raised by the author.
We should let South Korea start to spend their fucking money on us weapon, and reduce our fucking trade deficit , and close useless base. , Trump said the same some days ago. Be smart! Trump 2016!
Lol, the author seems to miss a very important point. The US cannot be the "world leader" without garrisoning it's far flung outposts.
Yes, SK needs parity with NK, so that means the same kind of standoff as the US/USSR Cold war? SK get's nukes to counter NK and we have MAD on the Korean Penisula, all dependent on the whim of a 3rd generation despot that kills his enemies with dogs or starves surplus population while dining on steak.
Pull back US troops to the mainland, then what? Maintain a million man army within the US and how soon do you think that they will be used to "restore peace and order"? Did you realize that we already have a "Federal Police Force" and it's NOT the military?
What need for a deep water navy if we are isolating and do you really think the world is going to let us be? Nature abhores a vacuum and you can bet that China and Russia and others would love to "flex their muscle" and you really think they give a tinkers damn about the planet? Or unfriendly states that don't want to be run by communists? If the pacific goes nuclear, Japan, SK, Phillipines, Malaysia and even Australia and New Guinea will stock up for protection.
Face facts, we are a thin, Blue (and Red and White) line allowing everyone to go about business without having to expend blood over which dictator decides time is right to bring everything into a Co-Prosperity Sphere under their guideance and direction (while they skim the cream off).
The US pulls out and China will rape Taiwan which will allow Kimmy to play Mussolini and fuck things up at which point China will play savior and "annex" the devestated penisula and turn it's attention to those other problems in the South CHINA sea. And the US will be blamed for "abandoning" it's friends.
The president and senate make treaties but the congress has the power to declare war. Any treaty that commits the US to war is unconstitutional and null and void.
I said more or less the same thing to my wife. Pyonyang wants a bomb for one reason, 'So the USA will leave it alone". An atomic bomb is the ONLY thing that America respects. Look what happened to Khadafy and Saddam when they gave up their weapons programs? And you think the Mullahs in Iran and little Kim didn't take notice?
They have their bomb, fine, now let them starve in peace.
Squid
Zero Hedge or the history sold a dollar per ton.
LMFAO. ZH just got good. Now we have North Korean trolls. Oh my sides.....