North Korea News

[Smitty-48]

I’m down for taking out the regime or telling them to fuck themselves.

Everyone else is like “If we just talk to them and they promise to stop nuke testing ...”

Because sixty five years of that charade has worked out great for us, but THIS year it’s finally going to bear fruit.

It’s like living on a planet of goldfish where the 3-second memory reigns supreme.

So what do ya say Smitty...

Are you hopping on DB's regime change bandwagon?

Nah, it's Mexican standoff indefinitely until such time as somebody screws the pooch and launches on false warning, could be tomorrow could be a hundred years from now, same as every other nuclear standoff on earth.

Even if there was a new regime, that regime would inherit these weapons and so the standoff would carry on with a new regime as well.

[DBTrek]

I think it’s Mexican stand-off in two years or so.

I think this is the last fragment of time where we can take NK out conventionally and knock down the single-digit number of primitive nukes they have that can reach us.

After this though, nuclear blackmail from here forward and no garauntees the regime won’t nuke us all anyway in the event that an insurrection or outside agitator is going to destroy it.

[Smitty-48]

Counterforce doesn't actually put the genie back in the bottle, but using conventional weapons is not going to be sufficient for a comprehensive counterforce, you need to make sure you get their bombs, and I don't think even B61's could get it done, you'd need B83's for bunkerbusting the sorts of bunkers they have in the DPRK.

They are dug in deep, way beyond the penetrating capacity of even the MOP, to get at them down in those mountains, you're going to need nukes, and relatively big ones actually.

[Smitty-48]

I mean, the whole "we're going to shoot the nuclear gun out of their hands with conventional bullets" thing, that's not going to happen, too dangerous, counterforce is a high risk gambit, you have to make sure you get it and get it on the first pass, and shooting the gun out their hands is not how it works, rather you basically have to burn both their arms off right to the shoulder.

[Smitty-48]

Also, I'm not seeing why you think it would take them 24 months to disperse and conceal road mobile IRBM/MRBM/ICBM, that's more like 24 hours to do that.

[DBTrek]

Don’t have to shoot it out of their hand if the regime falls and is replaced by something sane. So there are two paths to victory, destroy the nukes and nuclear facilities, and/or replace the crazy regime with a more trustworthy one.

That’s two more chances at resolving the problem than “talk some more” offers.

/shrug

[Smitty-48]

The Soviet regime fell, but notice that you're still at 15 minutes notice to launch with their nuclear arsenal, regime change = genie back in the bottle? Yeah, ah, no, don't think so.

Whoever ends up in charge in Pyongyang, it's not going to be George Clooney, the new regime would have no more reason to surrender its deterrent than the current regime does, in fact, they would have exponentially less reason, in the wake of an incited regime change.

[DBTrek]

You may not have noticed the quantitative difference between the NK nuclear arsenal and Russia’s, but it’s siginificant. Significant enough to make any analysis based on a comparison between the two laughable.

[Smitty-48]

You may not have noticed the quantitative difference between the NK nuclear arsenal and Russia’s, but it’s siginificant. Significant enough to make any analysis based on a comparison between the two laughable.

Regardless of the number of hydrogen bombs, just because you topple a regime, it does not follow that you disarm the new regime of the hydrogen bombs, and the new regime is no more likely to be friendly with them than the old regime was.

In fact, since you just incited a regime change, the new regime is extremely unlikely to be friendly with them, since clearly they would be in as much peril as the old regime was, when feckless America decides the new regime must be toppled as well.

[Smitty-48]

The reality of nuclear politics, is that there is only one regime which America can rely upon to be friendly with its hydrogen bombs, and that regime resides in Buckingham Palace, and the way America has made that so, is by drawing the British into a joint deterrent which is dependent on the American deterrent, every other country on earth with hydrogen bombs must ultimately be treated as potentially hostile, to include the French in fact.

Merely possessing hydrogen bombs and the means to deliver them, is an existential threat which is inherently hostile by its very nature.