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Tangent, but I've always wondered what the cost of dropping rice (or similar) into country to disrupt it is. I'd guess that you can drop enough rice to feed th

Tangent, but I've always wondered what the cost of dropping rice (or similar) into country to disrupt it is. I'd guess that you can drop enough rice to feed the population of NK for around $1-2bil/mo. The cost of the Iraq war was around $8-10bil/mo. So you're talking about 10-25% of the cost of a war effort. (I'd guess towards the higher side.) But! There's a lot of goodwill to be earned by dropping a steady supply of food across the country during the conflict. At the end of the day, starving people usually care more about food than kings. (Also, for marginally more you can include other kinds of supplies.)

planteen 9y ago
The regime will simply say the rice is a tribute that the enemy is paying. Or that is is poisoned, etc.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  I don't know if anyone is still watching this, but: It's kind of hard to hide that there's also bombs being dropped, so it doesn't seem like claiming it's tribute would be effective. Claiming that it's poisoned might be viable -- but with enough starving people, someone is going to try it, and some number are going to decide (when it doesn't kill that person, because it isn't poison) that a slow poison is better than fast starvation. It just seems that NK (and a number of other places) keep large segments of the population in near starvation and/or slavery, and suddenly throwing surplus food across the whole country does a lot to disrupt the economics of that. How many people are putting up with NK bullshit because it's the only way to survive? I'm not saying "rice not bombs", I'm saying "25% less bombs, 100% more rice" is probably an effective trade-off in warfare, even in wealthy areas, because many citizens aren't prepared for serious, sustained armed conflicts and you save yourself a lot of trouble if the populace doesn't hate you for generations when the bombing stops.

planteen 9y ago

The regime will simply say the rice is a tribute that the enemy is paying. Or that is is poisoned, etc.

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
I don't know if anyone is still watching this, but: It's kind of hard to hide that there's also bombs being dropped, so it doesn't seem like claiming it's tribute would be effective. Claiming that it's poisoned might be viable -- but with enough starving people, someone is going to try it, and some number are going to decide (when it doesn't kill that person, because it isn't poison) that a slow poison is better than fast starvation. It just seems that NK (and a number of other places) keep large segments of the population in near starvation and/or slavery, and suddenly throwing surplus food across the whole country does a lot to disrupt the economics of that. How many people are putting up with NK bullshit because it's the only way to survive? I'm not saying "rice not bombs", I'm saying "25% less bombs, 100% more rice" is probably an effective trade-off in warfare, even in wealthy areas, because many citizens aren't prepared for serious, sustained armed conflicts and you save yourself a lot of trouble if the populace doesn't hate you for generations when the bombing stops.