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Note: The linked article basically chronicles how the story took shape. This appears to be the actual story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/world/asia

by rl3 10y ago

Note: The linked article basically chronicles how the story took shape. This appears to be the actual story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/world/asia/north-korea-missile-program-sabotage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/world/asia/north-korea-mi... - In retrospect, invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice than Iraq. NK didn't have nukes back then, we'd have avoided destabilizing the Middle East, and the defense industry would still get its blood money. Not to mention North Korea continues to pose an actual WMD threat, they have concentration camps in dire need of liberation, their general populace is basically an ongoing humanitarian disaster, and they continue to pose an ever-increasing threat to global security. All the US had to do was say NK was in cahoots with Al-Qaeda and had provided material support for 9/11 or something. War fever would've done the rest. Granted, an estimated 100,000 civilian casualties from shelling in Seoul during the opening hours of the war is a hard pill to swallow. Today's threat however is the same deal plus nukes. Then again, we had no qualms blowing away about 6500 Iraqi civilians with our surgical "shock and awe" campaign.[0] Turns out when you drop 2,000lb GBU-31s on civilian targets in the middle of a densely populated urban environment, it tends to kill a whole lot of people. Who knew! The fireworks look pretty on CNN though.[1][2] Of course, enemy civilian lives tend to be far less valuable than allied civilian lives. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe#Casualties https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe#Casualties [1] https://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/4.htm https://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/4.htm [2] https://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/10.htm https://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/10.htm

khuey 10y ago
Eh, it could have easily started World War 3 with China. Nobody cares what happens to Iraq.
- misja111 10y ago
  And, North Korea didn't have oil. If the US just wanted to invade a country to make the world a better place then there would have been plenty of easier countries to invade. How about Zimbabwe or Eritrea to mention just a few.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    North Korea is China's laboratory for orthodox communism. They need it to remind party faithfuls what it would mean to return to the iron rice bowl (which sometimes lacks both rice and iron). Having some 25 million people occasionally suffer from hunger is preferable to losing stability in a country of 1400 million. North Korea would collapse very quickly without China's support in fuels and food.
    - lisper 10y ago
      So why don't the Chinese reel them in a little more? They can't be happy that NK has nukes.
      - ptaipale 10y ago
        They do, actually. But them having nukes seems to be not much of a problem to China. If China wanted them to not have nukes, they wouldn't have.
        nl 10y ago
        Speaking in absolutes ("If China wanted them to not have nukes, they wouldn't have") is usually a mistake in geopolitics. China currently won't accept a unified Korea under South Korean rule (which they view as a US proxy). China also doesn't want a destabilized North Korea on its border. But it is likely that many outside China and the Koreas view China's influence as a lot more than it is. China had Kim Jong Un half-brother under their protection as a way of providing a credible threat of threatening regime change. That isn't an option anymore. I'd note this quote from a well-sourced FT article from last year: Beijing has often talked up its influence over its recalcitrant neighbour in its discussions with Washington, but when Pyongyang claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb this year, Beijing had no idea it was coming, according to several people with knowledge of the matter. and this: It may seem ludicrous to outsiders, but several close observers of North Korea told the FT that, given the choice, Mr Kim would prefer an alliance with America, the far-off superpower, than China, the ancient oppressor and emerging superpower. https://www.ft.com/content/551bb080-1c3c-11e6-a7bc-ee846770ec15 https://www.ft.com/content/551bb080-1c3c-11e6-a7bc-ee846770e...
malloryerik 10y ago
Invading North Korea in 2003 would have been an unimaginably bad mistake. 1. North Korean artillery could have done far more damage than 100,000 deaths in Seoul. It's said that one out of three rounds holds a chemical charge. 2. South Korea under the progressive Roh Moo-hyun gov't was firmly opposed. Socially, South Korea would be torn apart by pro and anti-US (war) sides. 3. What about China? At that time the PRC had just joined the WTO. Instead of coming close to the advanced world, Chinese nationalists would likely have gained the upper hand domestically, and a war with the US in North Korea would even be possible. 4. Who would control North Korea afterwards? This assumes that the US would be able to occupy North Korea long enough to create order. It would have then joined South Korea, though they would have been against the war from the start? The surviving voters, that's to say the original South Koreans, and the new North Korean citizens of the republic, might well elect a strongly anti-US gov't. Esp after the US unilaterally decided to launch a bloody war. Be careful what you wish for... If we're playing coulda shoulda woulda, it would have been better to keep and strengthen the Clinton nuclear agreement. The Bush Administration let it break down, and North Korea got nukes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework
- rl3 10y ago
  >Invading North Korea in 2003 would have been an unimaginably bad mistake. Probably. It's just infuriating that the Western world has allowed the entire situation to persist for so long. It's 2017 and there's people who are born, live and die in labor camps with conditions straight out of the Holocaust. >This assumes that the US would be able to occupy North Korea long enough to create order. I often wonder what occupation of North Korea would be like. Are there actually a sizable number of brainwashed individuals that would fight to the death? Or would their populace be largely sympathetic in face of new information, considering their past treatment? My gut feeling is the latter, considering what happens when western media is smuggled into NK. These people literally risk a fate worse than death to see a glimpse of the outside world. Either way, an occupation would be deeply weird in so many ways. I'd love to see whatever post-invasion psyops playbook the U.S. has prepared, and any associated assessments. Probably classified though. >Be careful what you wish for... Not wishing per se, just operating under the assumption that if we had to have a war to satisfy various monied interests and their war profiteering ambitions, North Korea would have likely been a superior choice over Iraq from a humanitarian and global security perspective.
senorjazz 10y ago
Add to the 6,500 the million or so children who died during the proceeding decade of sanctions. If only all those who were pro-war could see innocent children operated on without anaesthetic, if they could see the true brutality of war then perhaps we would live on a more peaceful planet. Unfortunately it is more likely to be more of the same as the war mongers can be heard quite loudly rattling their sabres ready to send the sons and daughters of others out to slaughter
- astine 10y ago
  If only all those who were pro-war could see innocent children operated on without anaesthetic, if they could see the true brutality of war then perhaps we would live on a more peaceful planet. I think you've misjudged a significant portion of human psychology. The torturous death of human children as a reason for peace? No! That's an injustice that demands retribution. It's a cause for war. Just look at the Spanish civil war. The Republican faction wanted to vilify the Nationalists bring people to their side so they published pictures of children killed in Nationalist shelling. In more recent years, Syrian rebels attempting to get the West to intervene against Assad published footage of dead children being mourned by their parents.
bpizzi 10y ago
> In retrospect, invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice than Iraq. This sentence sounds very alien to me, am I alone? It suggests that USA had to invade something, just for the sake of invasion. Maybe the scars of the two WW are still a little too fresh where I live (France) for me to understand such a point of view. I'm trying hard to put an adjective on that mentality, but all that comes is alien, as in inhuman.
- rl3 10y ago
  >It suggests that USA had to invade something, just for the sake of invasion. Correct, at least with the administration at the time. Iraq was invaded on the flimsiest of pretenses, and was done in a fashion to maximize profit. For example: Critical infrastructure was targeted under the pretense of rapid dominance largely for the purpose of creating incredibly lucrative reconstruction contracts for that administration's criminal friends. It's not like we needed to take out power and water for months. Not to mention lucrative private security contracts, privatized logistics for the military, munitions and weapon systems. Attempts at privatizing Iraq's oil that only served to further fuel the brutal insurgency. The list goes on. >Maybe the scars of the two WW are still a little too fresh where I live (France) for me to understand such a point of view. I'm trying hard to put an adjective on that mentality, but all that comes is alien, as in inhuman. It is inhuman, when the motivations are profit. On the other hand, there's people suffering in North Korean camps that endure Holocaust-like conditions right now, as we speak. Liberating those people would be a moral justification for war if I've ever heard one.
  - bpizzi 10y ago
    > On the other hand, there's people suffering in North Korean camps that endure Holocaust-like conditions right now, as we speak. Liberating those people would be a moral justification for war if I've ever heard one. You said yourself that it would be at the expense of hundreds of thousands casualties, not even counting the consequences of possible nuclear war. That's a pretty bad argument for a moral justification for an invasion, don't you think?
    - 10y ago
pps43 10y ago
> invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice This sounds just like the rationale for the Vietnam war or the recent annexation of Crimea.
- rl3 10y ago
  It does, actually. A cynical person might say the Vietnam War constituted payday for the defense industry. Crimea was about strategic resources (which ultimately boil down to money), and global posturing. Barely even a pretense of an underlying moral justification beyond nationalist rhetoric.
  - pps43 10y ago
    There are no strategic resources to speak of in Crimea. Black Sea fleet has no strategic importance for Russia because it is locked by Turkey, still a NATO country. All strategic ports are in the North and on the Pacific. It was more like "Wag the Dog" play. A little war to boost morale and avoid orange revolution in Russia. Cost a lot of money due to sanctions and tanking ruble, so clearly not driven by economic considerations.
    - rl3 10y ago
      https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/world/europe/in-taking-crimea-putin-gains-a-sea-of-fuel-reserves.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/world/europe/in-taking-cr... "When Russia seized Crimea in March, it acquired not just the Crimean landmass but also a maritime zone more than three times its size with the rights to underwater resources potentially worth trillions of dollars."
      - pps43 10y ago
        Key word here is "potentially". There's not much oil production in Black Sea. There are much better oil fields in Caspian sea nearby (which the linked article even mentions), let alone Siberia.
ythn 10y ago
> NK didn't have nukes back then They still had artillery pointed at Seoul, no?
tiatia 10y ago
"In retrospect, invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice than Iraq." Yeah. Sure. With Seoul in range of NK artillery and poison gas grenades. By the way, do you know why NK still exists and will exist for a very long time? Because it has 2 boarders with superpowers, China and Russia. And both powers have zero interest that the US soldiers, stationed in SK, move close to their boarders. Invading NK looks easy on paper. But the long tail risk is enormous. Do you know why 2 Korean states exits at all? It was not the North Koreans that brought the US army to halt. But yeah, for sure this time the Russians and Chinese won't bother.
- rl3 10y ago
  >Do you know why 2 Korean states exits at all? It was not the North Koreans that brought the US army to halt. Obviously. The Chinese and Russians wouldn't engage in direct combat with the US in this day and age, though. Proxy war or no proxy war. They would of course provide material support for any resistance, assuming there would be one. However, I suspect the North Korean populace's forced reverence for Kim Jong-Un isn't exactly on the same level as say, the Mujahideen's religious fervor. >But yeah, for sure this time the Russians and Chinese won't bother. Is that sarcasm? I genuinely can't tell. Direct conflict with the US is a terrible idea, and both countries know that.
  - tiatia 10y ago
    "Is that sarcasm? I genuinely can't tell. Direct conflict with the US is a terrible idea, and both countries know that." The US has not enough soldiers in South Korea to face CN or RU. RU could probably take out US carriers and planes "at will" with their unmatched rocket technology. The last thing I heard was that RU jamming technology is also far ahead of the curve. And they have a nuclear arsenal to match the US. At the same time, RU has a boarder with NK while the US supply lines would be far stretched. By the way, it was the end of the German Empire when the king decided to "kick the Serbs in the nuts"

by rl3 10y ago

khuey 10y ago

Eh, it could have easily started World War 3 with China. Nobody cares what happens to Iraq.

misja111 10y ago
And, North Korea didn't have oil. If the US just wanted to invade a country to make the world a better place then there would have been plenty of easier countries to invade. How about Zimbabwe or Eritrea to mention just a few.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  North Korea is China's laboratory for orthodox communism. They need it to remind party faithfuls what it would mean to return to the iron rice bowl (which sometimes lacks both rice and iron). Having some 25 million people occasionally suffer from hunger is preferable to losing stability in a country of 1400 million. North Korea would collapse very quickly without China's support in fuels and food.
  - lisper 10y ago
    So why don't the Chinese reel them in a little more? They can't be happy that NK has nukes.
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      They do, actually. But them having nukes seems to be not much of a problem to China. If China wanted them to not have nukes, they wouldn't have.
      - nl 10y ago
        Speaking in absolutes ("If China wanted them to not have nukes, they wouldn't have") is usually a mistake in geopolitics. China currently won't accept a unified Korea under South Korean rule (which they view as a US proxy). China also doesn't want a destabilized North Korea on its border. But it is likely that many outside China and the Koreas view China's influence as a lot more than it is. China had Kim Jong Un half-brother under their protection as a way of providing a credible threat of threatening regime change. That isn't an option anymore. I'd note this quote from a well-sourced FT article from last year: Beijing has often talked up its influence over its recalcitrant neighbour in its discussions with Washington, but when Pyongyang claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb this year, Beijing had no idea it was coming, according to several people with knowledge of the matter. and this: It may seem ludicrous to outsiders, but several close observers of North Korea told the FT that, given the choice, Mr Kim would prefer an alliance with America, the far-off superpower, than China, the ancient oppressor and emerging superpower. https://www.ft.com/content/551bb080-1c3c-11e6-a7bc-ee846770ec15 https://www.ft.com/content/551bb080-1c3c-11e6-a7bc-ee846770e...

malloryerik 10y ago

Invading North Korea in 2003 would have been an unimaginably bad mistake. 1. North Korean artillery could have done far more damage than 100,000 deaths in Seoul. It's said that one out of three rounds holds a chemical charge. 2. South Korea under the progressive Roh Moo-hyun gov't was firmly opposed. Socially, South Korea would be torn apart by pro and anti-US (war) sides. 3. What about China? At that time the PRC had just joined the WTO. Instead of coming close to the advanced world, Chinese nationalists would likely have gained the upper hand domestically, and a war with the US in North Korea would even be possible. 4. Who would control North Korea afterwards? This assumes that the US would be able to occupy North Korea long enough to create order. It would have then joined South Korea, though they would have been against the war from the start? The surviving voters, that's to say the original South Koreans, and the new North Korean citizens of the republic, might well elect a strongly anti-US gov't. Esp after the US unilaterally decided to launch a bloody war. Be careful what you wish for... If we're playing coulda shoulda woulda, it would have been better to keep and strengthen the Clinton nuclear agreement. The Bush Administration let it break down, and North Korea got nukes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework

rl3 10y ago
>Invading North Korea in 2003 would have been an unimaginably bad mistake. Probably. It's just infuriating that the Western world has allowed the entire situation to persist for so long. It's 2017 and there's people who are born, live and die in labor camps with conditions straight out of the Holocaust. >This assumes that the US would be able to occupy North Korea long enough to create order. I often wonder what occupation of North Korea would be like. Are there actually a sizable number of brainwashed individuals that would fight to the death? Or would their populace be largely sympathetic in face of new information, considering their past treatment? My gut feeling is the latter, considering what happens when western media is smuggled into NK. These people literally risk a fate worse than death to see a glimpse of the outside world. Either way, an occupation would be deeply weird in so many ways. I'd love to see whatever post-invasion psyops playbook the U.S. has prepared, and any associated assessments. Probably classified though. >Be careful what you wish for... Not wishing per se, just operating under the assumption that if we had to have a war to satisfy various monied interests and their war profiteering ambitions, North Korea would have likely been a superior choice over Iraq from a humanitarian and global security perspective.

senorjazz 10y ago

Add to the 6,500 the million or so children who died during the proceeding decade of sanctions. If only all those who were pro-war could see innocent children operated on without anaesthetic, if they could see the true brutality of war then perhaps we would live on a more peaceful planet. Unfortunately it is more likely to be more of the same as the war mongers can be heard quite loudly rattling their sabres ready to send the sons and daughters of others out to slaughter

astine 10y ago
If only all those who were pro-war could see innocent children operated on without anaesthetic, if they could see the true brutality of war then perhaps we would live on a more peaceful planet. I think you've misjudged a significant portion of human psychology. The torturous death of human children as a reason for peace? No! That's an injustice that demands retribution. It's a cause for war. Just look at the Spanish civil war. The Republican faction wanted to vilify the Nationalists bring people to their side so they published pictures of children killed in Nationalist shelling. In more recent years, Syrian rebels attempting to get the West to intervene against Assad published footage of dead children being mourned by their parents.

bpizzi 10y ago

> In retrospect, invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice than Iraq. This sentence sounds very alien to me, am I alone? It suggests that USA had to invade something, just for the sake of invasion. Maybe the scars of the two WW are still a little too fresh where I live (France) for me to understand such a point of view. I'm trying hard to put an adjective on that mentality, but all that comes is alien, as in inhuman.

rl3 10y ago
>It suggests that USA had to invade something, just for the sake of invasion. Correct, at least with the administration at the time. Iraq was invaded on the flimsiest of pretenses, and was done in a fashion to maximize profit. For example: Critical infrastructure was targeted under the pretense of rapid dominance largely for the purpose of creating incredibly lucrative reconstruction contracts for that administration's criminal friends. It's not like we needed to take out power and water for months. Not to mention lucrative private security contracts, privatized logistics for the military, munitions and weapon systems. Attempts at privatizing Iraq's oil that only served to further fuel the brutal insurgency. The list goes on. >Maybe the scars of the two WW are still a little too fresh where I live (France) for me to understand such a point of view. I'm trying hard to put an adjective on that mentality, but all that comes is alien, as in inhuman. It is inhuman, when the motivations are profit. On the other hand, there's people suffering in North Korean camps that endure Holocaust-like conditions right now, as we speak. Liberating those people would be a moral justification for war if I've ever heard one.
- bpizzi 10y ago
  > On the other hand, there's people suffering in North Korean camps that endure Holocaust-like conditions right now, as we speak. Liberating those people would be a moral justification for war if I've ever heard one. You said yourself that it would be at the expense of hundreds of thousands casualties, not even counting the consequences of possible nuclear war. That's a pretty bad argument for a moral justification for an invasion, don't you think?
  - 10y ago

pps43 10y ago

> invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice This sounds just like the rationale for the Vietnam war or the recent annexation of Crimea.

rl3 10y ago
It does, actually. A cynical person might say the Vietnam War constituted payday for the defense industry. Crimea was about strategic resources (which ultimately boil down to money), and global posturing. Barely even a pretense of an underlying moral justification beyond nationalist rhetoric.
- pps43 10y ago
  There are no strategic resources to speak of in Crimea. Black Sea fleet has no strategic importance for Russia because it is locked by Turkey, still a NATO country. All strategic ports are in the North and on the Pacific. It was more like "Wag the Dog" play. A little war to boost morale and avoid orange revolution in Russia. Cost a lot of money due to sanctions and tanking ruble, so clearly not driven by economic considerations.
  - rl3 10y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/world/europe/in-taking-crimea-putin-gains-a-sea-of-fuel-reserves.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/world/europe/in-taking-cr... "When Russia seized Crimea in March, it acquired not just the Crimean landmass but also a maritime zone more than three times its size with the rights to underwater resources potentially worth trillions of dollars."
    - pps43 10y ago
      Key word here is "potentially". There's not much oil production in Black Sea. There are much better oil fields in Caspian sea nearby (which the linked article even mentions), let alone Siberia.

ythn 10y ago

> NK didn't have nukes back then They still had artillery pointed at Seoul, no?

tiatia 10y ago

"In retrospect, invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice than Iraq." Yeah. Sure. With Seoul in range of NK artillery and poison gas grenades. By the way, do you know why NK still exists and will exist for a very long time? Because it has 2 boarders with superpowers, China and Russia. And both powers have zero interest that the US soldiers, stationed in SK, move close to their boarders. Invading NK looks easy on paper. But the long tail risk is enormous. Do you know why 2 Korean states exits at all? It was not the North Koreans that brought the US army to halt. But yeah, for sure this time the Russians and Chinese won't bother.

rl3 10y ago
>Do you know why 2 Korean states exits at all? It was not the North Koreans that brought the US army to halt. Obviously. The Chinese and Russians wouldn't engage in direct combat with the US in this day and age, though. Proxy war or no proxy war. They would of course provide material support for any resistance, assuming there would be one. However, I suspect the North Korean populace's forced reverence for Kim Jong-Un isn't exactly on the same level as say, the Mujahideen's religious fervor. >But yeah, for sure this time the Russians and Chinese won't bother. Is that sarcasm? I genuinely can't tell. Direct conflict with the US is a terrible idea, and both countries know that.
- tiatia 10y ago
  "Is that sarcasm? I genuinely can't tell. Direct conflict with the US is a terrible idea, and both countries know that." The US has not enough soldiers in South Korea to face CN or RU. RU could probably take out US carriers and planes "at will" with their unmatched rocket technology. The last thing I heard was that RU jamming technology is also far ahead of the curve. And they have a nuclear arsenal to match the US. At the same time, RU has a boarder with NK while the US supply lines would be far stretched. By the way, it was the end of the German Empire when the king decided to "kick the Serbs in the nuts"