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If the United States' military posture was not so depleted at this point, I would say that it is time to seriously consider a conventional first strike. Right

by s_q_b 10y ago

If the United States' military posture was not so depleted at this point, I would say that it is time to seriously consider a conventional first strike. Right now, North Korea cannot deliver a nuclear payload anywhere. It's one thing to create a nuclear test device, but it's another matter entirely to miniaturize it for delivery. However, if allowed to progress unimpeded, North Korea will soon have missile technology that can reach Japan consistently. Around the same time, their miniaturization project will likely be complete. At that point, other nations will lose the option of intervention. North Korea's government is simply... unstable, in both senses of the word. There is simply no other way to put it. The more closely one examines the country, the more disturbing the picture becomes. They cannot be allowed to have a permanent nuclear deterrent.

gaius 10y ago
I would say that it is time to seriously consider a conventional first strike. NK has its estimated 10000 conventional artillery pieces in range of Seoul - they will pound it to rubble the old-fashioned way. You can (theoretically) intercept a single ballistic missile, but there is no defence against a mass artillery bombardment.
- taneq 10y ago
  Sure there is: Conventional artillery is slow. It'll pound Seoul into rubble given time but if they actually tried it, after the first 30 minutes, one of the superpowers would glass them. Edit: Hmm. You lot make some good points about just how many 'small' hits they could pull off, assuming that each gun emplacement has ammo etc. so I did a bit more research. Seoul Capital Area has an area of ~11,000 kilometers square[0]. Assume a generous affected blast area of roughly a hectare per shell (we're talking about shelling a population center here so you don't have to level every building to have a serious impact) and that's 1.1 million shells (if they're firing with uniform distribution, which they won't be) to seriously damage the city. Assuming a normal distribution where they all aim haphazardly for the CBD and let fly, it's even worse, call it 500k shells at a guess. 10k emplacements, if they have 50 shells each, will deliver this in (as per post below) 8.3 minutes. So yeah, even if it can't "pound Seoul into rubble" it would be a highly undesirable outcome for the South Korean people. I take it back. Conventional artillery isn't slow if you have enough of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seoul_Capital_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seoul_Capital_Area
  - sspiff 10y ago
    10000 conventional artillery pieces shelling for 30 minutes is a lot of shells.
  - finid 10y ago
    That is exactly why they're justified in seeking a nuclear deterrence. Imagine if Saddam, Assad, and Gaddafi (he stupidly gave whatever he had away to the country that later killed him) all had nukes and the capability to deliver them.
  - bhickey 10y ago
    Estimates put their artillery deployment at 13,000. Even assuming they fire for a minute before being completely destroyed by counter battery fire, we're still talking 65,000 shells coming over the border. Push it out to 30 minutes and you've got 2m inbound shells.
    - unprepare 10y ago
      is it safe to assume they would have 2 million shells available at once? Given their extreme poverty, i would think their stockpile of ammo is rather skimpy (surely better invested in than other things in the country, but 2 million shells in 30 minutes sounds like it would be quite an economic outlay for them)
      - arethuza 10y ago
        Their spending on armaments is probably one of the causes of the poverty in the general population.
  - gaius 10y ago
    If you can put literally thousands of HE shells on a target per minute - and if the NK gunners are even semi-competent, they can - you don't even need nuclear weapons. Let's do the maths - I don't know about NK weapons but a NATO 155mm shell contains about 11kg of TNT. 10000 guns can deliver 110 tons of explosive in a single salvo. A British AS90 gun can deliver 6 rounds a minute, so assuming a similar rate, that's a kiloton in 90 seconds or 20 kilotons in the 30 minutes you suggest, or a Hiroshima in just over 20 minutes. And don't forget artillery will be well dispersed and dug in, and the leadership will be in deep bunkers anywhere in the country. Who and where will you "glass"?
- s_q_b 10y ago
  It's interesting. I had written up a few potential objections that I ended up cutting from my post. This was one of them: "The first objection is that South Korea is right there, and thus is conceivably within range of a nuclear strike. In particular Seoul is directly next to the border with the North. However, there are already more than two thousand North Korean heavy artillery pieces ready to shell the metropolis at any time. The damage to Seoul is going to be significant under any military intervention scenario. But if action is not taken, the threat from North Korea will become permanent."
- bitL 10y ago
  This is precisely the reason why NK still does exist (alongside being used by China as a buffer).
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Suspicious this is like the 'missile gap'.
- 67726e 10y ago
  If we're assuming a first-strike, how about we assume our military planners are also competent enough to deal with NK artillery?
- GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
  Well, the US and ROK would establish air superiority more or less instantly. And air power combined with counter-battery radar means that the North Korean artillery would be degraded with extreme rapidity. Plus, I'm sure the US and ROK forces are aware of a large number of the North Korean artillery positions already, and those would be among the first targets in any conflict.
coldtea 10y ago
>North Korea's government is simply... unstable, in both senses of the word. Not so sure. Never had a problem with North Korea here in Europe. Of course we're far away, but other governments also far away have indeed dropped nuclear bombs (and at Japan which you're concerned about), and have started wars all over the planet, including meddling in Korean affairs, and sponsoring some dictatorships around the world. Heck, a far away government once ruled both Koreas as a colony they called Indochina, and another one gathered European citizens to go fight against Koreans in the fifties... So not so sure why countries that actually did that shit should have the moral high ground or be considered less dangerous UN-wise than countries that merely want to protect their actual borders and haven't harmed anybody yet.
- s_q_b 10y ago
  ... First, North Korea is not a nation defending borders. It is a personal fiefdom that deserves neither the name "nation" nor the respect it entails. Second, past colonialism does not establish a moral equivalency with the mass-scale starvation, systemic imprisonment, and wholesale torture occurring right now in North Korea. This is an unfortunately common trope trotted out by countless dictatorships over the years. See And you are lynching negroes!"[0] Third, even assuming for the sake of argument that those events were every bit as terrible as the current nightmare in North Korea, the events which you reference occurred in the past. The North Korean government is committing atrocities now. We can't do anything about the past. But we can damn sure do something about the future. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
  - merraksh 10y ago
    While the post you're replying to is a little tongue-in-cheek, it made very valid points. What you are proposing is to forget all lessons we should have learned from the past: that meddling with sovereign states is very short-sighted (see Libya, Iraq, Egypt, both before and after the recent wars); that we should not use weapons just because we have the impression we have more than the others; that attacking a country generates hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees, which neighboring countries have to manage afterward; and that the long-term implications are unknown but usually very painful (see Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria), including for neighboring countries. Plus, your mention of the lynching has little to do with the reply and the subject. And there are other countries that practice unjust imprisonment and torture, I might mention a few in the West. We can't do anything about the past except remembering it and practicing its teaching. If by "doing something about the future" means bombing NK, then the future will have millions of refugees pouring into China, Russia, and South Korea. At least we should ask an opinion to the "reasonable" countries that border NK.
SCHiM 10y ago
There are also credible reports of genocide. That'd be reason enough don't you think?
bhickey 10y ago
What about the artillery that the DPRK has trained on Seoul? A conventional strike means the complete destruction of a city of 10m. On top of that, where does a conventional strike leave China? Any intervention that isn't Chinese led will necessarily renew PRC support for Kim.
finid 10y ago
> They cannot be allowed to have a permanent nuclear deterrent. Why not? Your reasoning and posture is precisely why the North Koreans are justified in seeking nuclear weapons. They have a right to it.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Maybe for the same reason that the US restricts felons' access to guns?
cmdrfred 10y ago
>If the United States' military posture was not so depleted at this point, Compared to whom?[0][1][2] We are first or second in most measures of military strength globally. We currently likely have the most powerful military ever to exist in human history.[3] [0]http://www.globalfirepower.com/aircraft-total.asp http://www.globalfirepower.com/aircraft-total.asp [1]http://www.globalfirepower.com/navy-aircraft-carriers.asp http://www.globalfirepower.com/navy-aircraft-carriers.asp [2]http://www.globalfirepower.com/active-military-manpower.asp http://www.globalfirepower.com/active-military-manpower.asp [3]http://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp http://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp
- throwaway2016a 10y ago
  Exactly! We could realistically decrease our military funding by the 20% Gary Johnson has suggested and STILL be the largest and strongest in most measures. The only place we are weak is that we are stretched thin. But we did that to ourselves through interventionist policies.
throwaway2016a 10y ago
First, that is not the US's decision to make. This whole idea of the US being the world police is absurd at face value, there are many other countries in this world and just about all of them are more threatened and geographically closer to North Korea. At the very least South Korea needs to be involved. A strike against North Korea will put South Korea immediately into an expensive all out war even if they didn't start it. Second, even if the US military was "still" mighty[1] we would need the blessing of Russia and China or at least their promise not to retaliate and start World War III. To the person who said... > There are also credible reports of genocide. That'd be reason enough don't you think? NO! Many times no! This is one of the reasons the world hates us. We think it is our position to unilaterally police everyone in the world. Everyone should universally decry genocide, absolutely and aggressively. But we are citizens of the world not dictators. We should not be pre-emptively striking. We should not be sending money and weapons to other countries (or at least only send them to one side of the fight for god sake so we don't have two sides fighting each-other with our own weapons!). Every time we have been interventionists either overtly or covertly it has caused unintended consequences and often disastrous ones. When will we learn that it hurts more than helps? * I say this as a born American. [1] We spent more on our military than any other country by a huge margin. I really don't understand
- s_q_b 10y ago
  >Every time we have been interventionists either overtly or covertly it has caused unintended consequences and often disastrous ones. When will we learn that it hurts more than helps? That is patently false. The United States alone has a long history of successful humanitarian intervention, beginning with Tripoli and running through World Wars I and II. Even within our lifetimes, there was the NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I believe you may be looking at this through a post 9-11 lens, which is causing you to place too much emphasis on blowback. Obviously Operation AJAX, the alliance with Baathists, and funding of the mujahideen in Afghanistan had significant negative unintended consequences. However, that is by no means an ironclad rule. For further information I'd suggest A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power and Freedom's Battle by Gary Bass.
  - 10y ago
morsch 10y ago
What's your estimate of the death toll of the path you're advocating? Not just the first strike, but the ensuing carnage... My first thought when I read the news was that the current way of dealing with NK -- condemnation, shunning, embargoes -- seems to be a dead end. What is it even accomplishing anymore? Escalating seems to be a path to hell, for everyone involved. What else is there besides appeasement? I hasten to add that I don't know enough about the various international relationships involved to really have a solid opinion.
- throwaway2016a 10y ago
  What is your evidence that "my" path ensures carnage? There is certainly a chance. And that chance is certainly less than 100%. The chance of carnage if we attack first IS 100%. I don't think the sanctions, embargoes, and shunning are working either. But those first two hurt the people who are already too weak to revolt not the dictator. And the third one is just posturing. I don't know the answer. I just know that attacking preemptively has proven to create power vacuums, solidify international public opinion against the US, and cost thousands of lives. Not just American soldiers but civilians too. But some off the top of my head suggestions... - Propaganda war - Let another country like South Korea take the lead (and support them of course) - Do nothing. If (granted a big if) North Korea is not suicidal. They are just saber rattling and don't pose a real threat. But I hope that all the smart people in our state department are collectively smarter than me.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    > Let another country like South Korea take the lead (and support them of course) I'd say South Korea and China. Tell them to figure out, between them, what they think the world's strategy on North Korea should be. (China has a lot of potential harm from North Korea falling apart or going to war.) Tell them if they agree on how to approach NK, the US will back them (presuming we think their approach to at least be sane), including with force if needed. That would make it South Korea and China's problem (which it really is, much more than the US's problem, despite NK continuing to utter threats at the US). And it removes "US vs. China" as one of the problems that makes the NK situation so intractable.
kbart 10y ago
Such attitude is precisely why countries that are not in favor of USA (Nort Korea, Iran etc.) are actively seeking nuclear weapons -- currently it's the only deterrence from carpet bombing your "democracy" in.
anupshinde 10y ago
What you are asking is to proactively affirming national security interests. Every nation has the right to place their national security first, including NK (if it can be called a sovereign nation) . But there is a point where the larger nations end up bullying just because they can do that. > North Korea's government is simply... unstable, in both senses of the word. > They cannot be allowed to have a permanent nuclear deterrent. Yeah yeah, that has been said about quite a few countries in the past. Based on what - flawed mathematical models? The sole purpose of those was to create new war grounds. If the country has such great prediction powers, let's first use it in economics. I don't mean to support North Korea here. It might be an irresponsible, undemocratic state. But non-proliferation cannot be done by saying "I'll keep my gun but you are not allowed to keep yours because I think you are an irresponsible unstable person". Whereas history since WWII clearly shows who has been the trigger-happy entity.
Someone 10y ago
"Right now, North Korea cannot deliver a nuclear payload anywhere." Are you sure? It is only 35 miles or so from the North/South Korea border to Seoul. That border is well-defended, but I'm not sure South Korea would gamble on being able to stop a single nuclear missile (or even a device fired from a gun) in a barrage of smaller ones.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Nuclear weapons are so extremely damaging, it doesn't require precision in the delivery system. Tie one to a horse and send it over the border. Put it in a Volkswagen and put it in gear, send it over the border. Mail a package. Put it in a speedboat, duct-tape the throttle and jump out.
pushamaku 10y ago
This is exactly how they want the populous to think. Therein the propaganda. I'm calling it now. When the proverbial shit hits the fan, and it will, you'll be begging to change your stance.
yongjik 10y ago
Then I invite you to examine the country closer. Like, really closer. How about moving to Seoul and live within an artillery range of North Korea. I mean, other than atrocious air quality, it's a decent city with good night life and streets that are so safe that you can walk around in 2 am. It's amazing how much sacrifice people are prepared to make for the good of mankind, when it's someone else's lives... Not to mention there's no guarantee that the "liberation" of North Korea will improve the lives of North Koreans. One word: Iraq.

by s_q_b 10y ago

gaius 10y ago

I would say that it is time to seriously consider a conventional first strike. NK has its estimated 10000 conventional artillery pieces in range of Seoul - they will pound it to rubble the old-fashioned way. You can (theoretically) intercept a single ballistic missile, but there is no defence against a mass artillery bombardment.

taneq 10y ago
Sure there is: Conventional artillery is slow. It'll pound Seoul into rubble given time but if they actually tried it, after the first 30 minutes, one of the superpowers would glass them. Edit: Hmm. You lot make some good points about just how many 'small' hits they could pull off, assuming that each gun emplacement has ammo etc. so I did a bit more research. Seoul Capital Area has an area of ~11,000 kilometers square[0]. Assume a generous affected blast area of roughly a hectare per shell (we're talking about shelling a population center here so you don't have to level every building to have a serious impact) and that's 1.1 million shells (if they're firing with uniform distribution, which they won't be) to seriously damage the city. Assuming a normal distribution where they all aim haphazardly for the CBD and let fly, it's even worse, call it 500k shells at a guess. 10k emplacements, if they have 50 shells each, will deliver this in (as per post below) 8.3 minutes. So yeah, even if it can't "pound Seoul into rubble" it would be a highly undesirable outcome for the South Korean people. I take it back. Conventional artillery isn't slow if you have enough of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seoul_Capital_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seoul_Capital_Area
- sspiff 10y ago
  10000 conventional artillery pieces shelling for 30 minutes is a lot of shells.
- finid 10y ago
  That is exactly why they're justified in seeking a nuclear deterrence. Imagine if Saddam, Assad, and Gaddafi (he stupidly gave whatever he had away to the country that later killed him) all had nukes and the capability to deliver them.
- bhickey 10y ago
  Estimates put their artillery deployment at 13,000. Even assuming they fire for a minute before being completely destroyed by counter battery fire, we're still talking 65,000 shells coming over the border. Push it out to 30 minutes and you've got 2m inbound shells.
  - unprepare 10y ago
    is it safe to assume they would have 2 million shells available at once? Given their extreme poverty, i would think their stockpile of ammo is rather skimpy (surely better invested in than other things in the country, but 2 million shells in 30 minutes sounds like it would be quite an economic outlay for them)
    - arethuza 10y ago
      Their spending on armaments is probably one of the causes of the poverty in the general population.
- gaius 10y ago
  If you can put literally thousands of HE shells on a target per minute - and if the NK gunners are even semi-competent, they can - you don't even need nuclear weapons. Let's do the maths - I don't know about NK weapons but a NATO 155mm shell contains about 11kg of TNT. 10000 guns can deliver 110 tons of explosive in a single salvo. A British AS90 gun can deliver 6 rounds a minute, so assuming a similar rate, that's a kiloton in 90 seconds or 20 kilotons in the 30 minutes you suggest, or a Hiroshima in just over 20 minutes. And don't forget artillery will be well dispersed and dug in, and the leadership will be in deep bunkers anywhere in the country. Who and where will you "glass"?
s_q_b 10y ago
It's interesting. I had written up a few potential objections that I ended up cutting from my post. This was one of them: "The first objection is that South Korea is right there, and thus is conceivably within range of a nuclear strike. In particular Seoul is directly next to the border with the North. However, there are already more than two thousand North Korean heavy artillery pieces ready to shell the metropolis at any time. The damage to Seoul is going to be significant under any military intervention scenario. But if action is not taken, the threat from North Korea will become permanent."
bitL 10y ago
This is precisely the reason why NK still does exist (alongside being used by China as a buffer).
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Suspicious this is like the 'missile gap'.
67726e 10y ago
If we're assuming a first-strike, how about we assume our military planners are also competent enough to deal with NK artillery?
GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
Well, the US and ROK would establish air superiority more or less instantly. And air power combined with counter-battery radar means that the North Korean artillery would be degraded with extreme rapidity. Plus, I'm sure the US and ROK forces are aware of a large number of the North Korean artillery positions already, and those would be among the first targets in any conflict.

coldtea 10y ago

>North Korea's government is simply... unstable, in both senses of the word. Not so sure. Never had a problem with North Korea here in Europe. Of course we're far away, but other governments also far away have indeed dropped nuclear bombs (and at Japan which you're concerned about), and have started wars all over the planet, including meddling in Korean affairs, and sponsoring some dictatorships around the world. Heck, a far away government once ruled both Koreas as a colony they called Indochina, and another one gathered European citizens to go fight against Koreans in the fifties... So not so sure why countries that actually did that shit should have the moral high ground or be considered less dangerous UN-wise than countries that merely want to protect their actual borders and haven't harmed anybody yet.

s_q_b 10y ago
... First, North Korea is not a nation defending borders. It is a personal fiefdom that deserves neither the name "nation" nor the respect it entails. Second, past colonialism does not establish a moral equivalency with the mass-scale starvation, systemic imprisonment, and wholesale torture occurring right now in North Korea. This is an unfortunately common trope trotted out by countless dictatorships over the years. See And you are lynching negroes!"[0] Third, even assuming for the sake of argument that those events were every bit as terrible as the current nightmare in North Korea, the events which you reference occurred in the past. The North Korean government is committing atrocities now. We can't do anything about the past. But we can damn sure do something about the future. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
- merraksh 10y ago
  While the post you're replying to is a little tongue-in-cheek, it made very valid points. What you are proposing is to forget all lessons we should have learned from the past: that meddling with sovereign states is very short-sighted (see Libya, Iraq, Egypt, both before and after the recent wars); that we should not use weapons just because we have the impression we have more than the others; that attacking a country generates hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees, which neighboring countries have to manage afterward; and that the long-term implications are unknown but usually very painful (see Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria), including for neighboring countries. Plus, your mention of the lynching has little to do with the reply and the subject. And there are other countries that practice unjust imprisonment and torture, I might mention a few in the West. We can't do anything about the past except remembering it and practicing its teaching. If by "doing something about the future" means bombing NK, then the future will have millions of refugees pouring into China, Russia, and South Korea. At least we should ask an opinion to the "reasonable" countries that border NK.

SCHiM 10y ago

There are also credible reports of genocide. That'd be reason enough don't you think?

bhickey 10y ago

What about the artillery that the DPRK has trained on Seoul? A conventional strike means the complete destruction of a city of 10m. On top of that, where does a conventional strike leave China? Any intervention that isn't Chinese led will necessarily renew PRC support for Kim.

finid 10y ago

> They cannot be allowed to have a permanent nuclear deterrent. Why not? Your reasoning and posture is precisely why the North Koreans are justified in seeking nuclear weapons. They have a right to it.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
Maybe for the same reason that the US restricts felons' access to guns?

cmdrfred 10y ago

>If the United States' military posture was not so depleted at this point, Compared to whom?[0][1][2] We are first or second in most measures of military strength globally. We currently likely have the most powerful military ever to exist in human history.[3] [0]http://www.globalfirepower.com/aircraft-total.asp http://www.globalfirepower.com/aircraft-total.asp [1]http://www.globalfirepower.com/navy-aircraft-carriers.asp http://www.globalfirepower.com/navy-aircraft-carriers.asp [2]http://www.globalfirepower.com/active-military-manpower.asp http://www.globalfirepower.com/active-military-manpower.asp [3]http://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp http://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp

throwaway2016a 10y ago
Exactly! We could realistically decrease our military funding by the 20% Gary Johnson has suggested and STILL be the largest and strongest in most measures. The only place we are weak is that we are stretched thin. But we did that to ourselves through interventionist policies.

throwaway2016a 10y ago

First, that is not the US's decision to make. This whole idea of the US being the world police is absurd at face value, there are many other countries in this world and just about all of them are more threatened and geographically closer to North Korea. At the very least South Korea needs to be involved. A strike against North Korea will put South Korea immediately into an expensive all out war even if they didn't start it. Second, even if the US military was "still" mighty[1] we would need the blessing of Russia and China or at least their promise not to retaliate and start World War III. To the person who said... > There are also credible reports of genocide. That'd be reason enough don't you think? NO! Many times no! This is one of the reasons the world hates us. We think it is our position to unilaterally police everyone in the world. Everyone should universally decry genocide, absolutely and aggressively. But we are citizens of the world not dictators. We should not be pre-emptively striking. We should not be sending money and weapons to other countries (or at least only send them to one side of the fight for god sake so we don't have two sides fighting each-other with our own weapons!). Every time we have been interventionists either overtly or covertly it has caused unintended consequences and often disastrous ones. When will we learn that it hurts more than helps? * I say this as a born American. [1] We spent more on our military than any other country by a huge margin. I really don't understand

s_q_b 10y ago
>Every time we have been interventionists either overtly or covertly it has caused unintended consequences and often disastrous ones. When will we learn that it hurts more than helps? That is patently false. The United States alone has a long history of successful humanitarian intervention, beginning with Tripoli and running through World Wars I and II. Even within our lifetimes, there was the NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I believe you may be looking at this through a post 9-11 lens, which is causing you to place too much emphasis on blowback. Obviously Operation AJAX, the alliance with Baathists, and funding of the mujahideen in Afghanistan had significant negative unintended consequences. However, that is by no means an ironclad rule. For further information I'd suggest A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power and Freedom's Battle by Gary Bass.
- 10y ago

morsch 10y ago

What's your estimate of the death toll of the path you're advocating? Not just the first strike, but the ensuing carnage... My first thought when I read the news was that the current way of dealing with NK -- condemnation, shunning, embargoes -- seems to be a dead end. What is it even accomplishing anymore? Escalating seems to be a path to hell, for everyone involved. What else is there besides appeasement? I hasten to add that I don't know enough about the various international relationships involved to really have a solid opinion.

throwaway2016a 10y ago
What is your evidence that "my" path ensures carnage? There is certainly a chance. And that chance is certainly less than 100%. The chance of carnage if we attack first IS 100%. I don't think the sanctions, embargoes, and shunning are working either. But those first two hurt the people who are already too weak to revolt not the dictator. And the third one is just posturing. I don't know the answer. I just know that attacking preemptively has proven to create power vacuums, solidify international public opinion against the US, and cost thousands of lives. Not just American soldiers but civilians too. But some off the top of my head suggestions... - Propaganda war - Let another country like South Korea take the lead (and support them of course) - Do nothing. If (granted a big if) North Korea is not suicidal. They are just saber rattling and don't pose a real threat. But I hope that all the smart people in our state department are collectively smarter than me.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  > Let another country like South Korea take the lead (and support them of course) I'd say South Korea and China. Tell them to figure out, between them, what they think the world's strategy on North Korea should be. (China has a lot of potential harm from North Korea falling apart or going to war.) Tell them if they agree on how to approach NK, the US will back them (presuming we think their approach to at least be sane), including with force if needed. That would make it South Korea and China's problem (which it really is, much more than the US's problem, despite NK continuing to utter threats at the US). And it removes "US vs. China" as one of the problems that makes the NK situation so intractable.

kbart 10y ago

Such attitude is precisely why countries that are not in favor of USA (Nort Korea, Iran etc.) are actively seeking nuclear weapons -- currently it's the only deterrence from carpet bombing your "democracy" in.

anupshinde 10y ago

What you are asking is to proactively affirming national security interests. Every nation has the right to place their national security first, including NK (if it can be called a sovereign nation) . But there is a point where the larger nations end up bullying just because they can do that. > North Korea's government is simply... unstable, in both senses of the word. > They cannot be allowed to have a permanent nuclear deterrent. Yeah yeah, that has been said about quite a few countries in the past. Based on what - flawed mathematical models? The sole purpose of those was to create new war grounds. If the country has such great prediction powers, let's first use it in economics. I don't mean to support North Korea here. It might be an irresponsible, undemocratic state. But non-proliferation cannot be done by saying "I'll keep my gun but you are not allowed to keep yours because I think you are an irresponsible unstable person". Whereas history since WWII clearly shows who has been the trigger-happy entity.

Someone 10y ago

"Right now, North Korea cannot deliver a nuclear payload anywhere." Are you sure? It is only 35 miles or so from the North/South Korea border to Seoul. That border is well-defended, but I'm not sure South Korea would gamble on being able to stop a single nuclear missile (or even a device fired from a gun) in a barrage of smaller ones.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Nuclear weapons are so extremely damaging, it doesn't require precision in the delivery system. Tie one to a horse and send it over the border. Put it in a Volkswagen and put it in gear, send it over the border. Mail a package. Put it in a speedboat, duct-tape the throttle and jump out.

pushamaku 10y ago

This is exactly how they want the populous to think. Therein the propaganda. I'm calling it now. When the proverbial shit hits the fan, and it will, you'll be begging to change your stance.

yongjik 10y ago

Then I invite you to examine the country closer. Like, really closer. How about moving to Seoul and live within an artillery range of North Korea. I mean, other than atrocious air quality, it's a decent city with good night life and streets that are so safe that you can walk around in 2 am. It's amazing how much sacrifice people are prepared to make for the good of mankind, when it's someone else's lives... Not to mention there's no guarantee that the "liberation" of North Korea will improve the lives of North Koreans. One word: Iraq.