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Major war imminent?
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Famousguy
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Jul 8, 2009, 12:00 PM
 
On the 4th of July a cyber attack began against American and South Korean government websites began that is suspected to be the work of North Korean pro-pyongyang extremists, if this is true, major tensions will follow between the North Korean government with the United States and South Korea, this could possibly lead to a major conflict, and possibly World War 3 depending on the major superpowers of the world Russia and China, and how they react, it's obvious that members of NATO will be on our side, and the likelihood of a nuclear war is now higher than ever, pray to god.
     
turtle777
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Jul 8, 2009, 12:01 PM
 
Attack North Korea ? Yes, please.
World War 3 ? Hell now. NK will falter like nothing.

-t
     
SpaceMonkey
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Jul 8, 2009, 12:03 PM
 
Run-on sentence alert. Also, ridiculous.

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ShortcutToMoncton
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Jul 8, 2009, 12:31 PM
 
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ghporter
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Jul 8, 2009, 01:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey View Post
Run-on sentence alert. Also, ridiculous.

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Ridiculous? Not at all. NK doesn't have much in the way of staying power, nor much in the way of resources to start out with. They could start out and make a bloody mess, but they'd crumple under the not inconsiderable weight of the combined SEATO forces. They're tiny, they overstate their capabilities, and they have very little capacity to maintain any sort of combat action. With the overwhelming might of a number of countries' forces, they WOULD go down, and quickly.

The problem is that fallout could cause problems for major parts of South Korea if anyone has to nuke the north, and that sort of thing. Plus I don't blame the serfs under Whack Job Jr. (aka Beloved Leader Kim) for being misled for several generations, and it would be sad if they had to pay for Beloved Leader's psychotic idiocy.

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SpaceMonkey
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Jul 8, 2009, 02:06 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
Ridiculous? Not at all. NK doesn't have much in the way of staying power, nor much in the way of resources to start out with. They could start out and make a bloody mess, but they'd crumple under the not inconsiderable weight of the combined SEATO forces. They're tiny, they overstate their capabilities, and they have very little capacity to maintain any sort of combat action. With the overwhelming might of a number of countries' forces, they WOULD go down, and quickly.

The problem is that fallout could cause problems for major parts of South Korea if anyone has to nuke the north, and that sort of thing. Plus I don't blame the serfs under Whack Job Jr. (aka Beloved Leader Kim) for being misled for several generations, and it would be sad if they had to pay for Beloved Leader's psychotic idiocy.
Sorry, I should have used quotes. I was responding to the OP, not turtle.

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ghporter
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Jul 8, 2009, 05:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey View Post
Sorry, I should have used quotes. I was responding to the OP, not turtle.
Yeah, that would have helped. So would my actually grasping your whole post.

Still, I don't think even Whack Job Jr. is quite that crazy. He's playing brink games when his ledge is pretty darn narrow.

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Chuckit
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Jul 9, 2009, 01:23 AM
 
Oh no, they briefly DOSed the Federal Trade Commission's website! How will the country survive if we can't obtain instant Web-based access to the FTC's list of adjudicative proceedings?
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ctt1wbw
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Jul 9, 2009, 05:51 AM
 
A war with North Korea? They would get raped faster than Iraq did during Desert Shield/Storm. North Korea is full of arrogant pricks who can't shoot a simple missile straight. Much less over the horizon.
     
Taliesin
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Jul 9, 2009, 06:24 AM
 
Originally Posted by ctt1wbw View Post
A war with North Korea? They would get raped faster than Iraq did during Desert Shield/Storm. North Korea is full of arrogant pricks who can't shoot a simple missile straight. Much less over the horizon.
Yeah, but they could shoot some nukes to South-Korea, Japan and Hawaii and make everyone really feel sorry.

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ctt1wbw
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Jul 9, 2009, 07:22 AM
 
Oh I doubt that. I don't think they're nukes are weapons grade nukes, and some of their tests have blundered badly. Besides, you have to have a delivery vehicle for them, which they don't have. And furthermore, we can shoot them down. And furthermore, one of our cruisers has more nukes than they're entire inventory, and ours are accurate to within a few feet. Plus, whatever power grid they have would be knocked out in a minute. Ever see North Korea at night from the satellites? There's maybe one or two light bulbs going off.

A war with North Korea would be a joke. A bitch slap. A comedy routine. It wouldn't even rate a half hour slot on Lifetime at 2 in the am.
     
ShortcutToMoncton
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Jul 9, 2009, 09:43 AM
 
Originally Posted by ctt1wbw View Post
Oh I doubt that. I don't think they're nukes are weapons grade nukes, and some of their tests have blundered badly. Besides, you have to have a delivery vehicle for them, which they don't have. And furthermore, we can shoot them down. And furthermore, one of our cruisers has more nukes than they're entire inventory, and ours are accurate to within a few feet. Plus, whatever power grid they have would be knocked out in a minute. Ever see North Korea at night from the satellites? There's maybe one or two light bulbs going off.
Viet...nam?

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Andy8
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Jul 9, 2009, 10:08 AM
 
Originally Posted by ctt1wbw View Post
A war with North Korea would be a joke. A bitch slap. A comedy routine. It wouldn't even rate a half hour slot on Lifetime at 2 in the am.
Yes, but where will you get the money to pay for it?

The wars maybe quick, but the clean up afterwards is what is expensive.
     
vmarks
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Jul 9, 2009, 10:25 AM
 
That cleanup cost is only an issue if you intend to perform the cleanup.

In the past the US has been extremely generous and done this. Before this century, the tradition was to let the loser have to reconstruct and cleanup on their own, as one of the costs of going to war.
     
Chuckit
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Jul 9, 2009, 10:43 AM
 
Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton View Post
Viet...nam?

If you're trying to use Vietnam as an example of the United States' weakness, I think that's a mistake. Our problem in Vietnam was not that we were trying with all our might and still not able to beat the Vietcong — the trouble was that we didn't really know what we wanted to do over there.
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Jul 9, 2009, 10:45 AM
 
Originally Posted by Chuckit View Post
If you're trying to use Vietnam as an example of the United States' weakness, I think that's a mistake. Our problem in Vietnam was not that we were trying with all our might and still not able to beat the Vietcong — the trouble was that we didn't really know what we wanted to do over there.
I agree, but it's unfortunate that Vietnam has not been the last time that the US got involved in a military conflict, w/o having a clear goal and exit strategy.

-t
     
ghporter
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Jul 9, 2009, 11:11 AM
 
Tearing the crap out of North Korea would be both the quickest and easiest part of the operation. Afterward there would be a bunch of people-most of them already half-starved-to properly educate and deprogram from Beloved Leader worship, and their land and economy left in devastation to rebuild. That would be MUCH similar than finding them jobs elsewhere, by the way, since they're currently stuck in a semi-industrialized agricultural paradigm and a pre-WWII manufacturing paradigm.

Also there would be fallout, whether nuclear or not, in the entire area. They CAN and would hit both South Korea and Japan, and they can do a LOT of damage with those home-brewed scud missiles. And who cares if they get a decent yield from their nukes? If they make a huge radiation hazard of Seoul, parts of northern Japan, and maybe even other parts of South Asia, that's a VERY Bad Thing.

A military action against North Korea would be no Vietnam. It would be with a very clear objective, "to prevent the government of the North from ever posing a military threat to anyone ever again," and a very clear exit strategy: "once the DPRK's military capability is utterly destroyed, disarm any militias and begin reeducating and rehabilitating the peasantry." Pretty simple. In this case, North Korea is neither an exaggerated threat, nor an ambiguous one. They're a hazard to EVERYONE, and there would be little in the way of most of the nations around them hammering them, and HARD.

Contrast that to both the Korean War and Vietnam-in both, the West's actions (the US was hardly the only Western combatant in Vietnam...) were highly constrained by the fact that both Communist China and the Soviet Union were BEHIND our adversaries, and it was in everyone's best interest to keep these conflicts localized because either Beijing or Moscow might just escalate the whole thing. In the early 1960s, it seems that Moscow was ready to do almost anything as a distraction while they prepared a conquest of Western Europe. Now, Moscow doesn't trust that flea in Pyongyang any more than we do, and China has almost no influence on him anymore. They'd probably love for him to evaporate at least as much as we would.

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Jul 9, 2009, 12:56 PM
 
If China wanted Kim out that badly, they could just stop sending him aid. He'd be begging to leave office in exchange for a loaf of bread within a month.

I don't think they'd be very ardent defenders of North Korea in the event of a nuclear war, though. China is kind of evil, but it's not anywhere near the level of crazy that North Korea is.
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Jul 9, 2009, 01:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by Chuckit View Post
If China wanted Kim out that badly, they could just stop sending him aid. He'd be begging to leave office in exchange for a loaf of bread within a month.

I don't think they'd be very ardent defenders of North Korea in the event of a nuclear war, though. China is kind of evil, but it's not anywhere near the level of crazy that North Korea is.
I also kind of think that China would ultimately end up on the side against NK - if the United States and Western Europe turned against them, they'd be seriously hurting on their export business.
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turtle777
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Jul 9, 2009, 01:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
I also kind of think that China would ultimately end up on the side against NK - if the United States and Western Europe turned against them, they'd be seriously hurting on their export business.
Nah, the leverage the US had against China due to exports is gone.

Just look at China, their GDP is growing this year, although their exports to the US went down.
China is in the process of completely restructuring their economy. Their growth in the future will come from OWN consumption, not from overseas (US) consumption.
They also started allowing Chinese companies to trade in Yuan, not in $. So the decoupling from the US economy and currency is well under way.

-t
     
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Jul 9, 2009, 02:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
I also kind of think that China would ultimately end up on the side against NK - if the United States and Western Europe turned against them, they'd be seriously hurting on their export business.
As Turtle said, that might've been true at one point, but now that street runs both ways.

Originally Posted by Chuckit
If you're trying to use Vietnam as an example of the United States' weakness, I think that's a mistake. Our problem in Vietnam was not that we were trying with all our might and still not able to beat the Vietcong — the trouble was that we didn't really know what we wanted to do over there.
I agree in some respects - although it's interesting to note that however much "not trying with all our might" went on, you still bombed the place with more than Germany got in WWII - but I'm not so sure that you still wouldn't really know what you wanted to do over there, right?

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ShortcutToMoncton
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Jul 9, 2009, 02:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by vmarks View Post
That cleanup cost is only an issue if you intend to perform the cleanup.

In the past the US has been extremely generous and done this. Before this century, the tradition was to let the loser have to reconstruct and cleanup on their own, as one of the costs of going to war.
Sorry vmarks - and I don't know if this was made as a "serious suggestion" or just a side note - but this falls into the "dumb idea" pile, for me. That's just not how things are done in today's world, like it or not. Saying "we never used to do it this way so watch out that we don't change back" just doesn't work on these matters.

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Jul 9, 2009, 02:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by vmarks View Post
That cleanup cost is only an issue if you intend to perform the cleanup.

In the past the US has been extremely generous and done this. Before this century, the tradition was to let the loser have to reconstruct and cleanup on their own, as one of the costs of going to war.
Which is one of the reasons that Germany was ripe for Hitler's brand of socialism. We've learned our lesson, I think. Destroy your enemy's ability to fight, then build him up into a partner in trade, and you've not only neutered a threat, you've built an ally that's more strongly attached to you than one based solely on politics.
Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton View Post
Sorry vmarks - and I don't know if this was made as a "serious suggestion" or just a side note - but this falls into the "dumb idea" pile, for me. That's just not how things are done in today's world, like it or not. Saying "we never used to do it this way so watch out that we don't change back" just doesn't work on these matters.
I agree. Not only would not cleaning up and restoring the wasteland that this sort of conflict would produce be a dumb idea, it would give all those nations who badmouth us some ammunition to use against us on the world stage. It would be a very telling black eye that we'd earn by failing to clean up after we "cleaned up" Kim's threat.

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Jul 9, 2009, 02:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by Chuckit View Post
If China wanted Kim out that badly, they could just stop sending him aid. He'd be begging to leave office in exchange for a loaf of bread within a month.

I don't think they'd be very ardent defenders of North Korea in the event of a nuclear war, though. China is kind of evil, but it's not anywhere near the level of crazy that North Korea is.
Kim gets hard currency from somewhere, and a lot of that goes to China for food and fuel. Dry up that hard currency (like stopping his ships from delivering banned weapons to banned regimes), and Beijing's aid will also dry up. There is almost nothing ideologically linking Kim's Stalinist/Maoist, "cult of personality" command of North Korea to China today, so unless there's a commercial angle involved, I don't think China would hesitate to both cut Kim off cold AND help remove him from the peninsula. He's a thorn in THEIR side too-just look at how many refugees swarm into China to escape Kim's despotic rule. That's expensive for China to deal with, and it's difficult politically too.

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Jul 9, 2009, 02:57 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
Which is one of the reasons that Germany was ripe for Hitler's brand of socialism. We've learned our lesson, I think. Destroy your enemy's ability to fight, then build him up into a partner in trade, and you've not only neutered a threat, you've built an ally that's more strongly attached to you than one based solely on politics.

I agree. Not only would not cleaning up and restoring the wasteland that this sort of conflict would produce be a dumb idea, it would give all those nations who badmouth us some ammunition to use against us on the world stage. It would be a very telling black eye that we'd earn by failing to clean up after we "cleaned up" Kim's threat.
This. Not to mention that it seems to me as though North Korea is going to absolutely need outside help - it's an entire country of weak, brainwashed people who have been conned into worshiping their Beloved Leader and all that. If they have any hope of reconstruction (were the communist regime to be dismantled), they are going to need help from stronger countries.
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Jul 9, 2009, 05:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
This. Not to mention that it seems to me as though North Korea is going to absolutely need outside help - it's an entire country of weak, brainwashed people who have been conned into worshiping their Beloved Leader and all that. If they have any hope of reconstruction (were the communist regime to be dismantled), they are going to need help from stronger countries.
Don't forget that they are also several inches shorter than their southern cousins due to being malnourished for the last several (four? five?) generations, with who knows what sort of other physical issues tacked on due to what can only be sketchy health care. They are all accustomed to serving Beloved Leader and the state, and apparently have little accurate knowledge of the outside world; they'll need both job training and significant education in how the world has progressed since 1949 or so. On the plus side, the North Koreans are very much used to hard work and sacrifice, so maybe they have it in them to adapt to a life out from under Kim. We can hope.

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Jul 10, 2009, 10:03 AM
 
But you also have to remember that they have 1 million ground troops in their army. Even if every one of them was a very poor soldier, 1 million people is a TON of people running at you with guns. If war broke out, and they sent the order to charge into South Korea, South Korea might be able to kill off a few hundred thousand without much difficulty right away, but the rest could overrun their cities and kill everyone in them. Though I don't know how they could supply ammo to all of those people.
     
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Jul 10, 2009, 10:15 AM
 
1 million people is a lot to run at you, yeah. But only if the invading forces do an amphibious assault.
     
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Jul 11, 2009, 09:40 AM
 
...how could they not?

Air attack doesn't win wars; we've known that for decades. It's a great strategic tool, but against what in North Korea, exactly? It's not like they rely much on strategic technological hubs I would imagine. And it's not a big country with limited transportation routes, like Afghanistan.

In that respect it's a little more like Afghanistan, except far more densely populated and with a better equipped, coordinated and centralized leadership.

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Jul 11, 2009, 09:51 AM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
if the United States and Western Europe turned against them, they'd be seriously hurting on their export business.
Given our dependence on Chinese exports, I think we'd be hurt more.
     
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Jul 11, 2009, 10:17 AM
 
Where's the surgical tactical weaponry that would be required to disable KJI permanently, and not a single bodyguard? If the military industrial complex is not developing it, perhaps they are rooting for the spark of a medium-to-big war in NK?
     
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Jul 11, 2009, 11:14 AM
 
Air attack CAN make it possible for a ground force to face FAR fewer defenders. We pretty well demonstrated that conclusively in Desert Storm. Strategically placing several 18,000 hole golf courses, focusing on places with massed troops, tanks, artillery or other important assets, can really cut down on that "million troop" defensive force. Sweep in from odd directions, take out air defense positions with hard-to-see assets, then drive in and decimate fighting capacity with conventional aircraft and munitions.

You cannot HOLD territory with air power, but you can sure make it a lot easier on your ground troops.

There ARE extremely accurate, "surgical" weapons available. But the intel to say "he's right here" is lacking, in part because Whack Job Jr. is in poor health and is paranoid to boot. We have laws against assassinating him, so that path isn't viable either. Our intel community is still smarting from doing an extremely BAD job at accurately assessing information about Iraq, and for goobering up the whole "interrogating prisoners" issue; the concept of humint (human intelligence) has been lost to CIA culture for several decades, but it's one of those crucial things that would let "someone" launch a small-yield HE weapon with an accuracy of say 1.5m at the right place and at the right time to do the job.

Here's the problem with decapitating NK: who would take over? Whack Job III? A military junta? Something else unpredictable and quite probably even worse than the above? No, I don't think a simple "one strike, no more Kim" operation would be effective at making North Korea no longer a threat to anyone. The entire society needs a shakeup to lose the Stalinist-based cult-of-Kim lock the government has on the people.

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Jul 11, 2009, 11:15 AM
 
...what?
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Jul 11, 2009, 11:17 AM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
Air attack CAN make it possible for a ground force to face FAR fewer defenders. We pretty well demonstrated that conclusively in Desert Storm. Strategically placing several 18,000 hole golf courses, focusing on places with massed troops, tanks, artillery or other important assets, can really cut down on that "million troop" defensive force. Sweep in from odd directions, take out air defense positions with hard-to-see assets, then drive in and decimate fighting capacity with conventional aircraft and munitions.
Like I said Desert Storm is a great example, but it's a specialized example. I mean, it's a misnomer to call it the "Gulf War" in the first place - it simply wasn't a war. NATO was fighting Iraqi troops in another country with zero (!) plan to do anything other than run back to Iraq.

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Jul 13, 2009, 11:06 AM
 
Originally Posted by Chuckit View Post
If China wanted Kim out that badly, they could just stop sending him aid. He'd be begging to leave office in exchange for a loaf of bread within a month..
China sends North Korea aid because keeping the uneducated, brainwashed North Korean masses within their own borders is beneficial to China. China does not want to deal with North Korean refugees flooding over the border into its territory (and that is where they'd go -- not across the DMZ, certainly), and keeping Crackpot Kim in power is the easiest way to stem the flow of North Koreans into the PRC.

North Korea doesn't pose that big of a military problem for anyone. The nukes are a bargaining chip and a threat, aimed at scaring political and aid concessions out of the West. If he ever actually tried to launch one of those things at someone, North Korea would be a wasteland in minutes, and Kim Jong-il knows it. The main threat posed by North Korea is an economic one to China and South Korea if things should implode internally and send a flood of starving and confused refugees pouring out of its borders. Thus, for years, it has been in our best interest (and by "our" I refer to everyone but the North Korean people) to essentially ignore North Korea, providing the Kim regime with just enough aid to keep it intact.

Kim Jong-il should have been happy with this arrangement: he got to run his pathetic little country and abuse his citizens, and the rest of the world sent him some money every now and then to keep Kimtopia up and running. We'd even let him have his toy army and send them marching about the countryside doing drills and whatnot.

Sure, Western politicians complained about Stalinism and personality cults whenever it came time to get re-elected, and the UN, human rights activists, and all the other usual suspects "strongly condemned" just about everything North Korea did. But these were just empty words being brandished about; they never posed any real threat to Kim's delusions.

But, for some reason -- and perhaps this is where insanity comes in -- Kim Jong-il decided he was no longer content with this rather nice little arrangement. He needed to feel important. He needed something new to threaten people with. He needed nukes.

Unfortunately for Kim Jong-il, however, nukes could not be ignored quite as easily by foreign governments as inhumane prison camps and psychotic personality cults. We tried our best to convince him to give up his nuclear ambitions and just quietly go back to abusing his own populace so we could get back to ignoring him again. He wouldn't agree, and a few missile and nuclear tests later, we (both Kim and everyone else) find ourselves in this escalating mess.

This brings us back to China. China has been supporting Kim Jong-il's regime with aid primarily so that it can pretend that North Korea and its millions of pitiful inhabitants don't exist. But if the fall of the North Korean government becomes inevitable, Beijing is not going to want a crackpot, borderline-insane, militarily-weak dictator as its only ally against the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and just about everybody else. It will string Kim and his ilk out to dry in a heartbeat because it will want the world's help and sympathies in dealing with the massive refugee crisis that is sure to result.
     
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Jul 13, 2009, 11:14 AM
 
I agree with your assessment, but I can't help but find it weird that China is that scared of a few more underprivileged folk hanging around. It's not like it doesn't already have a ton of them that it's ignoring already.
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Jul 13, 2009, 11:16 AM
 
Here's a novel idea: how about China to give the aid to South Korea, so that hey can reunite the country and clean the mess up ?

-t
     
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Jul 13, 2009, 04:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
Here's a novel idea: how about China to give the aid to South Korea, so that hey can reunite the country and clean the mess up ?

-t
That wouldn't work. It would require South Korea and China to trust each other more than they really would.
Chuck
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ghporter
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Jul 13, 2009, 06:37 PM
 
Originally Posted by Chuckit View Post
I agree with your assessment, but I can't help but find it weird that China is that scared of a few more underprivileged folk hanging around. It's not like it doesn't already have a ton of them that it's ignoring already.
They're a few underprivileged folks who were brought up in a different system. One of Mao's legacies is that, despite the enormous variety of ethnic groups that make up China's population, they are all "Chinese," with the same school curriculum (at least nominally) and the same cultural norms (again, nominally). Koreans are, by definition, different. This alien quality scares Beijing because they don't know how to handle it. And truth be told, there's probably a significant racist bent in the Communist Party too.

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ApeInTheShell
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Jul 15, 2009, 07:29 AM
 
I think the majority of Americans are brainwashed by the legislative and executive branches. We will have war because our government wants to control the oil in Iraq (oops I mean Iran). Hey remember the war in Iraq and Afganistan? Oh yeah we are still at war with them. Now they want to spend more money on an unnecessary invasion in Iran. All because they have developed nuclear weapons to defend themselves. This issue is not entirely off topic because North Korea is doing the same thing.
Of course, we have our good old pal Israel who has committed war crimes but we just look the other way because it is the holy land. Well I've read the Old Testament and the Israelites were punished almost as often as their enemies. I am sure South Korea is no shining star here either. I'm tired so I hope you excuse the disorganization. I just know war is coming but I hope Americans will wake up and realize it's not our only option like George W Bush has in the past.

p.s. Yes I voted for the former President. Sorry if that creates a bias opinion towards me.
     
mattyb
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Jul 15, 2009, 02:40 PM
 
Originally Posted by ApeInTheShell View Post
I think the majority of Americans are brainwashed by the legislative and executive branches. We will have war because our government wants to control the oil in Iraq (oops I mean Iran). Hey remember the war in Iraq and Afganistan? Oh yeah we are still at war with them. Now they want to spend more money on an unnecessary invasion in Iran. All because they have developed nuclear weapons to defend themselves. This issue is not entirely off topic because North Korea is doing the same thing.
Of course, we have our good old pal Israel who has committed war crimes but we just look the other way because it is the holy land. Well I've read the Old Testament and the Israelites were punished almost as often as their enemies. I am sure South Korea is no shining star here either. I'm tired so I hope you excuse the disorganization. I just know war is coming but I hope Americans will wake up and realize it's not our only option like George W Bush has in the past.

p.s. Yes I voted for the former President. Sorry if that creates a bias opinion towards me.
I think that the THC counts against you more than your previous voting.
     
SpaceMonkey
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Jul 15, 2009, 03:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
One of Mao's legacies is that, despite the enormous variety of ethnic groups that make up China's population, they are all "Chinese," with the same school curriculum (at least nominally) and the same cultural norms (again, nominally). Koreans are, by definition, different. This alien quality scares Beijing because they don't know how to handle it. And truth be told, there's probably a significant racist bent in the Communist Party too.
China's ethnic concerns are based on experience:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/wo...6china.html?hp

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ghporter
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Jul 15, 2009, 07:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey View Post
China's ethnic concerns are based on experience:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/wo...6china.html?hp
I interpret the fuss in that story somewhat differently. The experience China is having with internal minorities is based on Party practice, not inherent ethnic differences. The Party has basically settled on one (fairly broad) ethnic group as "real Chinese," and everyone else is by default considered "different." In the NYT story, major violence occurs because of stories circulated about how "those people" might have misbehaved. In the US, African-Americans were often targeted and persecuted (hanged, burned, beaten, etc.) based on similar, almost always completely fictional rumors.

For context, I'll point out that one way China became so huge was by a combination of conquest and integration: the emperor's troops took over a region, and after the fighting was over everyone became "Chinese." Imperial government, basic taxation, rules and laws, all pretty much the same for everyone, followed. Regionalism was not a problem because of the distances involved. Today, Beijing is actively moving workers around, and allowing rural people to migrate to large cities looking for work. When large numbers of people who have been taught for generations that they're "different" from each other, this sort of friction and violence is almost bound to occur.

Now look at how even more alien Koreans would seem to the Chinese people. It would be a Very Bad Thing for China to have to deal with more Korean refugees than they already do. Beijing will almost certainly do anything possible to keep from having to take in North Korean refugees in any appreciable number at all.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
SpaceMonkey
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Jul 15, 2009, 09:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
I interpret the fuss in that story somewhat differently. The experience China is having with internal minorities is based on Party practice, not inherent ethnic differences. The Party has basically settled on one (fairly broad) ethnic group as "real Chinese," and everyone else is by default considered "different."
No, I think we interpret it the same way. I don't see the Chinese Communist Party's practices changing anytime soon, so I agree that they want to do everything they can to limit the number of North Korean refugees they need to deal with.

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ghporter
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Jul 15, 2009, 10:25 PM
 
I guess I was interpreting the story differently from the apparent way the writer was.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
moonmonkey
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Jul 20, 2009, 08:36 AM
 
Screw NK, what about a war with the Frenchies?
     
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Jul 24, 2009, 12:48 PM
 
The french don't have wars, they have surenders
     
   
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