3 ms·
>> MAD hasn’t prevented wars, If North Korea didn't have nukes, you bet we would have invaded them by now.
by 1024core 9y ago
>> MAD hasn’t prevented wars,
If North Korea didn't have nukes, you bet we would have invaded them by now.
- fragmede 9y agoBetween the close of the Korean war in 1953 (though no peace treaty was ever signed) and 2006, when North Korea's first tested an atomic bomb, the US did not invade North Korea for the same reason it has not invaded today, which is not due to DPRK's nuclear capability. Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is a scant 35 miles from the North Korean border, and North Korea has an unknown amount of conventional artillery pointed at South Korea, enough to kill millions of South Koreans. If the US were to invade North Korea, Seoul, and the surrounding areas would be obliterated. That North Korea now has nuclear weapons changes things a bit, but the nukes weren't previously the thing holding the US back from invading North Korea.
- rangibaby 9y agoI'm not so sure. The Korean war was an absolute disaster for all involved. Three years and a million dead people for nothing (or less than nothing if you consider the amount of sheer destruction). I think that has been the main rationale for avoiding another war in Korea since then. The "perfect" time to do it would have been in the 90s when China was still poor enough to ignore and Russia was still self-combusting. Things are different now. Compare Russia's non-response to the destruction of Yugoslavia to their direct role in Syria, both diplomatically (red line etc) and militarily. I think killing Gaddafi was NATO's biggest disaster in a long time (if not the worst so far). It was a clear example to DPRK that they must have a capable ICBM. It was also the last straw for Putin which spurred him onto more aggressive actions like taking Crimea and using "fake news" farms.