North Korea

we turn them into a crater

time to rethink my bucketlist.

i think no one has answered because no one knows. if they threatened to launch a nuke unless seoul joined NK and paid allegiance to kim jong-un? and there was only a military solution, i guess someone (the US i imagine tho you could maybe see China doing something here?) would try to tactically take out NK nuclear sites (prob the US has the best technology here, tho i don't know how complete their intelligence is).

Maybe if every country fired all their weapons at once into North Korea - but only at the bad guys! -until nothing was left, maybe that will finally bring about world peace.

i'd like to think we wouldn't use nukes first but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lol why would you think that

considering we're the only country that's actually done it

the world isn't the same as it was during ww2

otoh there is no precedent for destroying a nuclear program as sophisticated as NK's. iraqi and syrian nuclear ambitions were far more limited in scope during Operations Opera and Orchard.

The

The only a silver lining to any of this is knowing that it is ruining his golfing vacation.

Then again, he is such a lunatic moron maybe it's not.

my real concern is trump preemptively executing a "counter-attack" based on a false alarm. hopefully someone with some sense has ensured that the ultimate decision wouldn't be left to trump

what happens if or when North Korea uses its nuclear power to demand things rather than to repel potential threats?

Then they will discover what every other nuclear nation knows quite well, which is, that you can't actually use them without a retaliatory strike your nation could not survive. Which tends to limit their usefulness as anything other than as a defensive shield. This does ensure a kind of power, but not the power to make excessive demands on the basis of threatening to use them offensively.

Considering how the GOP reacted to the Iran Nuclear Deal, how they campaigned on it, I have no hope the current administration will go for a sound diplomatic solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TcbU5jAavw

Because of how nukes play out in reality, your threat to use nukes offensively against a nation under the US umbrella is either a bluff, which will be called, or else a death warrant for your nation. No other options. NK is nowhere near able to invoke MAD, because they have too small an arsenal, so it would simply be AD.

We really don't know what North Korea wants.

I mean, we suspect, or think we might know. But who can say if self-preservation truly is foremost on their agenda?

official KPA statement: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sq3j78

^^^via voice of america's bureau chief steve herman, assuming he's a reliable vector (kcna don't allowing linking to their own website apparently)

I would literally rather have anybody else in charge of our military at this point. please speed up the impeachment train

my real concern is trump preemptively executing a "counter-attack" based on a false alarm. hopefully someone with some sense has ensured that the ultimate decision wouldn't be left to trump

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, August 8, 2017 6:45 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is my biggest worry, too. especially if it's not a total annihilation and they are somehow able to retaliate.

seems like Kelly & McMaster are actually in charge, but I believe that Trump has the nuclear codes. Don't know what mechanisms are in place to stop him if his decision is deemed irresponsible.

im sure there is a way to distract him.

I mean it's not like they just hit a bright red button and up they go, it's an involved procedure, but then you remember the Able Archer incident in 1983 and that small sliver of confidence leaves

My own concern is that Trump initiates some kind of 'special forces' op inside NK, initiating a fairly rapid series of escalations that neither side feels able to back down from. Kim would strike back, because NK has always embraced the idea the best defense is a good offense, and Trump, because he is an insecure jerk who thinks power is just the ability to cause pain to your enemy.

exactly. we're fucked

trump himself isn't going to put together a special forces op. he doesn't know anything about anything. he could ask mcmaster to come up with a special ops plan but assuming he's a grown-up he'll come back with "we don't see a reasonable way forward."

the concern about nuclear launch is that he doesn't need any particular expertise to give that command

what seems more likely to me is that he follow through with what he said today which will create a huge power vacuum in the region that china will grab.

he will not follow through* my bad

Very much hoping for the "Trump backs down" scenario.

Useful thread

So it's 9:40 a.m. in Seoul, and still no real chatter about either NK nuke or Trump's "fire and fury." Zilch.

— T.K. of AAK! (@AskAKorean) August 9, 2017

"Trump backs down" scenario

The man doesn't care what he says and certainly doesn't care about consistency. He does care about getting a lot of adulation and ego-boosts. His staff just needs to convince him that tough-talking and bluster are in themselves enough to Assert America's Greatness, without having to, you know, rain fire and fury on anyone for real.

that was a good thread, thanks for sharing ned

His body language was weird during that 'fire and fury' statement. Scared shirtless, er, shitless?

yeah that's definitely not one of the three or four strongman poses that he uses in every damn speech

i enjoy the trump is stupid and crazy material on ilx and i agree he doesn't understand the gravity of waging nuclear war on north korea. but i think some of the distortions here are as bad as the american right's (trump is turning up the heat on china, finally. trump scared the north koreans out of missile launches on key dates. watch out, kim jong un). i don't see it. even the tomahawk strikes and special forces operations seem impossible. there have been six decades plus of roughly status quo and trillions of dollars invested to keep it that way. some of the united states' largest trading partners and military rivals in the neighborhood. the u.s. and china have overlooked a lot of shit to keep things as they are--north korea having a nuclear / icbm program has been a problem for a long time (but it was probably more from exporting weapons tech and expertise to yemen, egypt, pakistan, iran and syria than actually sending missiles over guam or whatever).

attempts at regime change, even with ???somehow rok/prc/russian cooperation would be in nobody's best interest. as fucked up as north korea is, most of its violence is aimed inwards, keeping the lid on things. a hard strike with the assistance of regional allies and a quiet blessing from china would just fuck things up even more. probably, right now, the best bet is to leave it alone and keep north korea as a convenient buffer between u.s. / russian / chinese forces and let everyone go about their business as they have been. nobody in the neighborhood wants to be staring each other down over the yalu river.

i think it's sort of inaccurate to say that we don't know what north korea wants. three huge military and economic powers messing around on its borders, it wants to not be rolled over and occupied. the way north korea is being discussed here, it seems to follow the narrative of the american right, which has overblown the threat of north korea to the united states and imagines the kim regime as mentally ill stalinists that hate america for no reason.

Kim’s formulation was somewhat vague in the original Korean—does the qualifier “unless” modify the entire sentence, or only the second half? Yet the question arises, why would Kim have even raised the image of the “table of negotiations”? It’s not normally part of the North’s public discussion.

http://www.38north.org/2017/08/rcarlin080817/ - a close read of official remarks from the north and possible signs of possible negotiations.

But since 2010, the number of government-approved markets in North Korea has doubled to 440, and satellite images show them growing in size in most cities. In a country with a population of 25 million, about 1.1 million people are now employed as retailers or managers in these markets, according to a study by the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

Unofficial market activity has flourished, too: people making and selling shoes, clothing, sweets and bread from their homes; traditional agricultural markets that appear in rural towns every 10 days; smugglers who peddle black-market goods like Hollywood movies, South Korean television dramas and smartphones that can be used near the Chinese border.

At least 40 percent of the population in North Korea is now engaged in some form of private enterprise, a level comparable to that of Hungary and Poland shortly after the fall of the Soviet bloc, the director of South Korea’s intelligence service, Lee Byung-ho, told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing in February.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/world/asia/north-korea-economy-marketplace.html? -- i like this piece on unofficial and official market economy undermining state control - the number of north koreans that went over the chinese border during and after the 90s famines and what started to come across + black markets + new emphasis on economic growth. it's naive to think that market reforms = korean spring of liberal democracy and rule of law, but i think it shows that important changes are irreversible.

The headlines overseas have been just hysterical. I think you’d be surprised if you were to see the headlines and watch cable TV here in South Korea during the same period, because there was very little coverage of the rhetoric from North Korea. This peninsula has been in a state of war for 67 years, so the rhetoric is nothing new.

jean lee on the view from south korea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phqs3y6xQC0

soros is bankrolling a deep state takeover of the white house, led by mcmaster, who is calling for a preemptive strike.

the globalists have rigged the detonator for ww3. but kim jong un "can't wipe his own ass," maybe north korea is bad, so it might be okay.

tokyo is "a few hundred kilometers away" from pyongyang. clinton gave north korea fissile materials and icbm technology to ratchet up strategic tension.

extensive sketching of a plan to destroy north korea begins at 20:20.

but the japanese "have more nukes than santa clause. oh yeah, they're armed out the ass." but it might be a matrix simulation.

"even the liberals" admire hitler even though "he looks like he just blew ten guys outside a gas station."

the clintons gave reactors to north korea because they "resonate on the same evil demonic wavelength."

pray for america. pray for north korea.

the average video game-playing american thinks kim jong un is a hero and trump is bad.

thanks for gathering all that, dylannn! i remember reading the NYT article on the growing marketplaces and black markets.

i think a lot of the hysteria comes from two things. first, the development of the NK nuclear program seems to be proceeding faster than expected. as a casual observer of the issue, my understanding was that as of a couple years ago, most experts believed that it would take several more years for NK to develop a ICBM which could actually reach most of the united states (actually, hysteria reason 1 subpoint: as pointed out upthread, a lot of the hysteria comes from the fact that the US is just now getting used to being within range of a NK attack, whereas east asia has had longer to acclimate to that reality). the expansion of the ICBM range seems to have been much faster than anticipated. Ditto with shrinking the size of the warhead so that it could be used on an ICBM. i could be totally wrong on that, but that seems to have been the popular understanding here in the US. so part of it is just the pace at which this has all happened, faster than expected

the second reason for the hysteria is that we don't have a normal person in charge, and he sometimes/frequently improvises, contradicts his own staff, and inadvertently creates new antagonistic situations just by his pure ignorance and impulsiveness.

This peninsula has been in a state of war for 67 years, so the rhetoric is nothing new.

during those 67 years, our presidents have been truman, eisenhower, jfk, lbj, nixon, ford, carter, reagan, bush, clinton, gwb, and obama. say what you want about any of them, but i can't imagine any of them being so dumb that they accidentally escalate nuclear tensions out of sheer ineptitude. i hate the shit out of gwb but i would rather have him calling the shots in this situation than trump, like 100000x more. trump is not only completely out of his league, but he doesn't know enough to just stfu and defer to others. so that makes a lot of people here extremely nervous, i think.

but anyway, i think your overall critique is probably otm, at least on the NK side. i see NK as rational actors in a highly fucked up closed off universe. i see trump as a giant farting flaming battleship rolling down a mountain

i wrote all that before you posted alex jones. i don't think alex jones represents any sort of mainstream american view. he represents people like my parents, that's for sure, but the amount of people completely off the deep end like that is probably limited to only 20 to 30% of our entire country, no big eal

Karl otm, hysteria stems from the speed at which their nuclear capabilities are supposedly progressing. I remember reading that first report on July 4th they had successfully tested an ICBM that could reach Alaska, and my blood went cold. Americans that don't remember the Cold War or were born after it ended have never lived under threat of possible nuclear war - except in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when anything seemed possible, when anthrax was sent out, etc.

The headlines overseas have been just hysterical. I think you’d be surprised if you were to see the headlines and watch cable TV here in South Korea during the same period, because there was very little coverage of the rhetoric from North Korea. This peninsula has been in a state of war for 67 years, so the rhetoric is nothing new.

It has to be somewhat difficult to miss the point by such a distance. it is not the rhetoric from North Korea that anybody cares about. It is missile tests, and the fact that the WH is occupied by a person who is unfit for the job.

like lol that's why we're upset it's those DPRK talking points

what a surprise

Trump’s Threat to North Korea Was Improvised

Mattis not helping much

A statement threatening mass slaughter of civilians is praised as "tough" https://t.co/zf5ZhEnJQz

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) August 9, 2017

In the Topsy-Turvy Land of the WH, publically praising Trump for saying incredibly stupid shit is probably more sensible than publically undermining him. The undermining must be done quietly and out of sight.

distressingly otm

I've been following Jeffrey Lewis recently who's said to be a NK nuke expert. He keeps stressing how though a US strike on NK is talked of in preventative terms (by both media and govt) it sounds like we're past the preventative stage. Anyone else familiar with this guy?

About one percent of what would be necessary. https://t.co/xg7lBsuuUB

— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) August 8, 2017

maybe we should just leave them alone