North Korea News

[Martin Hash]

This is a case of "bomb the shit out of them, good luck to the new guy."

[The Conservative]

This is a case of "bomb the shit out of them, good luck to the new guy."

Just find out where "Rocket Man" is, and bomb the shit out of that spot without any notification. Make it look like the Russians, or China did it, and call it a day.

[Smitty-48]

Ron Paul weighs in, continues to speak sensibly.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/fe ... ea-crisis/

One World Kumbaya? "Pull US forces out of Korea and turn it over to the Russians and Chinese"? I don't think that would be very stabilizing at all, and I don't think that "solves the crisis", so Ron Paul just seems to be pandering to a certain simplistic ideological position, but doing so with a naive and unrealistic lack of realpolitik.

Elaborate. How would that matter to our interests?

Well, contrary to the myopic isolationist worldview, the northwest Pacific is not really "over there", it's not actually far away across the seas where America is not deeply entrenched and heavily invested, so pulling out of the Korean peninsula is not actually going somewhere else, you're not pulling out the Pacific and ceding it all to the Chinese, so all you would be doing is creating an unstable power vacuum, while at the same time you're still there for all intents and purposes, deeply entrenched and heavily invested, and so any instability drags you into the situation by default, and so a power vacuum is not a safer option for the United States, it's not Afghanistan, you're not walking away from it, so better just keep a lid on it, in terms of containment at this juncture.

[SuburbanFarmer]

North Koreans would expand their nuclear weapons program. They would eventually conquer South Korea. Then they would begin threatening Japan and probably escalate war with them. By the time we are dragged back into it, North Korea will be sitting on plenty of ICBMs they can drop all over CONUS.

Ron Paul is a fucking moron and always has been. You can't just walk away from shit like this without it coming back to kick you in the ass later on.

I'd LOVE for China to do something about it, but good luck convincing them. They LOVE watching North Korea get armed with fusion bombs and threatening the United States with EMP strikes. They won't change a thing. Neither will the Russians.

China is exactly the issue with your scenario.

If the norks ever had designs on Japan, they'd be quashed immediately by the Chinese.

Unless you see the Chinese as their ally, in which case, we're already lined up for WW3, and there's no advantage to being posted in North Korea when it happens.

[SuburbanFarmer]

One World Kumbaya? "Pull US forces out of Korea and turn it over to the Russians and Chinese"? I don't think that would be very stabilizing at all, and I don't think that "solves the crisis", so Ron Paul just seems to be pandering to a certain simplistic ideological position, but doing so with a naive and unrealistic lack of realpolitik.

Elaborate. How would that matter to our interests?

Well, contrary to the myopic isolationist worldview, the northwest Pacific is not really "over there", it's not actually far away across the seas where America is not deeply entrenched and heavily invested, so pulling out of the Korean peninsula is not actually going somewhere else, you're not pulling out the Pacific and ceding it the Chinese, so all you would be doing is creating an unstable power vacuum, while at the same time you're still there for all intents and purposes, deeply entrenched and heavily invested, and so any instability drags you into the situation by default, and so a power vacuum is not a safer option for the United States, it's not Afghanistan, you're not walking away from it, so better just keep a lid on it, in terms of containment at this juncture.

We shouldn't be "entrenched and invested" there in the first place. Pulling out of South Korea would just be a first step to reigning in our absurd overreach of military power.

Not that any of this will actually happen, of course. We'll probably just double down and go to war with Asia, because Jawbs.

[Speaker to Animals]

The problem with your analysis is that the Chinese themselves want Japan incinerated. The only things holding them back are American alliances with Japan and South Korea.

There's also Taiwan, and to a lesser extent a lot of SE Asia.

It seems to me that North Korea is just doing what China wants to do but without the direct blowback on China.

[SuburbanFarmer]

The problem with your analysis is that the Chinese themselves want Japan incinerated. The only things holding them back are American alliances with Japan and South Korea.

There's also Taiwan, and to a lesser extent a lot of SE Asia.

It seems to me that North Korea is just doing what China wants to do but without the direct blowback on China.

Then GTFO of there, and make them face the consequences of their actions.

[Smitty-48]

Elaborate. How would that matter to our interests?

Well, contrary to the myopic isolationist worldview, the northwest Pacific is not really "over there", it's not actually far away across the seas where America is not deeply entrenched and heavily invested, so pulling out of the Korean peninsula is not actually going somewhere else, you're not pulling out the Pacific and ceding it the Chinese, so all you would be doing is creating an unstable power vacuum, while at the same time you're still there for all intents and purposes, deeply entrenched and heavily invested, and so any instability drags you into the situation by default, and so a power vacuum is not a safer option for the United States, it's not Afghanistan, you're not walking away from it, so better just keep a lid on it, in terms of containment at this juncture.

We shouldn't be "entrenched and invested" there in the first place. Pulling out of South Korea would just be a first step to reigning in our absurd overreach of military power.

Not that any of this will actually happen, of course. We'll probably just double down and go to war with Asia, because Jawbs.

Well again, that's an ideological position which is totally detached from realpolitik; America should go back to being an agrarian society of yeoman farmers which ends at the waterline of the CONUS and has no foreign entanglements whatsoever, is a kind of utopian fantasy rather than a viable foreign policy, so it would be dangerous for America to make policy based on these ideological utopian fantasies rather than the realpolitik of how America actually is and the situation that America is actually facing.

Once the United States is getting dragged into a theater conflict which is spinning out of control, no doubt you would say "America shouldn't be doing that", but that doesn't keep the United States from getting dragged in by realpolitik.

[Speaker to Animals]

The problem with your analysis is that the Chinese themselves want Japan incinerated. The only things holding them back are American alliances with Japan and South Korea.

There's also Taiwan, and to a lesser extent a lot of SE Asia.

It seems to me that North Korea is just doing what China wants to do but without the direct blowback on China.

Then GTFO of there, and make them face the consequences of their actions.

What?

What part of North Korean ICBMs falling on CONUS do you not understand? Do you think these people won't actually do it??

[SuburbanFarmer]

Well, contrary to the myopic isolationist worldview, the northwest Pacific is not really "over there", it's not actually far away across the seas where America is not deeply entrenched and heavily invested, so pulling out of the Korean peninsula is not actually going somewhere else, you're not pulling out the Pacific and ceding it the Chinese, so all you would be doing is creating an unstable power vacuum, while at the same time you're still there for all intents and purposes, deeply entrenched and heavily invested, and so any instability drags you into the situation by default, and so a power vacuum is not a safer option for the United States, it's not Afghanistan, you're not walking away from it, so better just keep a lid on it, in terms of containment at this juncture.

We shouldn't be "entrenched and invested" there in the first place. Pulling out of South Korea would just be a first step to reigning in our absurd overreach of military power.

Not that any of this will actually happen, of course. We'll probably just double down and go to war with Asia, because Jawbs.

Well again, that's an ideological position which is totally detached from realpolitik; America should go back to being an agrarian society of yeoman farmers which ends at the waterline of the CONUS and has no foreign entanglements whatsoever, is a kind of utopian fantasy rather than a viable foreign policy, so it would be dangerous for America to make policy based on these ideological utopian fantasies rather than the realpolitik of how America actually is and the situation that America is actually facing.

Well, now I'm going to ask you to justify our thousands of military bases across the globe.

No pork there? Nothing unnecessary? All needed to maintain 'free trade'?