Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
ok ok guys calm down let go back to the topic
Wise word from Atlantic .Korea is not Syria all these talk of preemptive strike is frightening. It is like opening Pandora box You don't know what come next
America Can’t Do Much About North Korea
But whatever it can do, it will need China.
North Korean special forces soldiers march and shout slogans during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father, Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea, on April 15, 2017.Damir Sagolj / Reuters
In the weeks that followed, the hostile standoff in Northeast Asia heated up. As a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier sped towards the Korean peninsula, the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un celebrated the “Day of the Sun” (the day before Easter Sunday) by standing on a platform for hours reviewing a parade of long-range missiles, scuds, and other hardware. The launch of a ballistic missile on that same morning, however, ended in failure, as the weapon blew up as soon as it took off.
The world is slowly adjusting to Trump's bluster. Often, he appears not to know what he is talking about. It may well be that a word in his ear from a U.S. admiral, or Chinese President Xi Jinping, or his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the real-estate heir put in charge of world affairs, could soften his bellicose tone. But words or tweets, however hasty or ill-conceived, coming from the White House, do matter. The last thing needed in the fraught situation in Northeast Asia, where military action could spiral into catastrophe, is more macho posturing. (Enough such bluster is already blowing in from Pyongyang: In a recent set of photographs, Kim Jong Un, dressed to resemble his grandfather Kim Il Sung, stands in front of nuclear warheads and threatens to unleash “pre-emptive nuclear strikes” against Japan or even the United States.)
America doesn’t know exactly what North Korea's nuclear capability is, but it is likely sufficient to kill millions of South Koreans or Japanese. That North Korea would be smashed in retaliation is no consolation. The fact is that there is nothing much America can do about Kim’s attempts to develop nuclear-tipped missiles, especially without China’s support. Even Trump, his brilliance notwithstanding, must realize that some problems just cannot be “solved.”
The litany of futile diplomatic overtures to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions reads like a history of failure. In 1994, President Bill Clinton promised aid to North Korea in exchange for a promise to freeze its nuclear program. In 2002, it became clear that the North Koreans had reneged on the deal. The thing is that Kim will not give up his nuclear arsenal, for it is all he has got. Without the bomb, North Korea would be no more than a small, impoverished dictatorship. With nuclear missiles, it can behave as a major power, or more importantly, hold other major powers at bay.
Clinton also once considered bombing North Korean nuclear installations, but, in the end, considered the risk too high. It would be even higher now. Not only are such installations now more dispersed throughout the country, making a clean hit very difficult, but the “collateral damage” inflicted by a cornered Northern regime would be horrendous: Seoul is a mere 35 miles from the North Korean border.
Empty threats from Washington are not just ineffectual; they play into the Korean dictator’s hands. Whether most North Koreans really worship the Kim dynasty as much as they seem to is hard to know, since most of “these gestures of idolatry” are coerced. But Korean nationalism can be very easily stirred up. One thing that holds North Koreans together is the fear, constantly stoked by the regime, of a wicked foreign attack.
China is the only power with any influence in North Korea, but the last thing Beijing wants is for its communist neighbor to collapse. The Kim regime may be annoying, but a united Korea filled with U.S. military bases would be worse, not to mention the potential refugee crisis on China’s borders.
Wise word from Atlantic .Korea is not Syria all these talk of preemptive strike is frightening. It is like opening Pandora box You don't know what come next
America Can’t Do Much About North Korea
But whatever it can do, it will need China.
North Korean special forces soldiers march and shout slogans during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father, Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, North Korea, on April 15, 2017.Damir Sagolj / Reuters
In the weeks that followed, the hostile standoff in Northeast Asia heated up. As a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier sped towards the Korean peninsula, the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un celebrated the “Day of the Sun” (the day before Easter Sunday) by standing on a platform for hours reviewing a parade of long-range missiles, scuds, and other hardware. The launch of a ballistic missile on that same morning, however, ended in failure, as the weapon blew up as soon as it took off.
The world is slowly adjusting to Trump's bluster. Often, he appears not to know what he is talking about. It may well be that a word in his ear from a U.S. admiral, or Chinese President Xi Jinping, or his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the real-estate heir put in charge of world affairs, could soften his bellicose tone. But words or tweets, however hasty or ill-conceived, coming from the White House, do matter. The last thing needed in the fraught situation in Northeast Asia, where military action could spiral into catastrophe, is more macho posturing. (Enough such bluster is already blowing in from Pyongyang: In a recent set of photographs, Kim Jong Un, dressed to resemble his grandfather Kim Il Sung, stands in front of nuclear warheads and threatens to unleash “pre-emptive nuclear strikes” against Japan or even the United States.)
America doesn’t know exactly what North Korea's nuclear capability is, but it is likely sufficient to kill millions of South Koreans or Japanese. That North Korea would be smashed in retaliation is no consolation. The fact is that there is nothing much America can do about Kim’s attempts to develop nuclear-tipped missiles, especially without China’s support. Even Trump, his brilliance notwithstanding, must realize that some problems just cannot be “solved.”
The litany of futile diplomatic overtures to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions reads like a history of failure. In 1994, President Bill Clinton promised aid to North Korea in exchange for a promise to freeze its nuclear program. In 2002, it became clear that the North Koreans had reneged on the deal. The thing is that Kim will not give up his nuclear arsenal, for it is all he has got. Without the bomb, North Korea would be no more than a small, impoverished dictatorship. With nuclear missiles, it can behave as a major power, or more importantly, hold other major powers at bay.
Clinton also once considered bombing North Korean nuclear installations, but, in the end, considered the risk too high. It would be even higher now. Not only are such installations now more dispersed throughout the country, making a clean hit very difficult, but the “collateral damage” inflicted by a cornered Northern regime would be horrendous: Seoul is a mere 35 miles from the North Korean border.
Empty threats from Washington are not just ineffectual; they play into the Korean dictator’s hands. Whether most North Koreans really worship the Kim dynasty as much as they seem to is hard to know, since most of “these gestures of idolatry” are coerced. But Korean nationalism can be very easily stirred up. One thing that holds North Koreans together is the fear, constantly stoked by the regime, of a wicked foreign attack.
China is the only power with any influence in North Korea, but the last thing Beijing wants is for its communist neighbor to collapse. The Kim regime may be annoying, but a united Korea filled with U.S. military bases would be worse, not to mention the potential refugee crisis on China’s borders.
