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North Korean missiles land in Japanese waters
- the-dude 5y agoI am obviously not a sailor : EEZ, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone
- fomine3 5y agoI thought EEZ is common knowledge but maybe only on island country. (I educated in Japan)
- newaccount2021 5y agowhat can NATO + Japan do? Sanctions don't work, scorn doesn't work, diplomacy doesn't work, and China isn't going to allow a military response basically NATO + Japan can pound sand and little else
- HenryKissinger 5y agoWar. War is the only thing that could still work. Of course, advocating for war, even against a country as dangerous as North Korea, is a huge taboo in our public discourse. But it is the only solution left to the North Korean problem.
- SonicScrub 5y agoThis "solution" means Tokyo and/or Seoul gets nuked. That's hardly a solution.
- monocasa 5y agoOr even if it happens before NK is a credible nuclear threat, Seoul is in range of thousands of heavy artillery emplacements that'll get at least one shot off. There's not really a counter to artillery shells like you can use for rockets like the iron dome, so Seoul would be pretty much guaranteed to be leveled, with countless dead.
- flyinglizard 5y agoSince WWII, US never fought a war with the stated goal of winning at all costs. Modern wars are limited scale conflicts designed to have soft outcomes (e.g regime changes) rather than hard outcomes (annihilation of your adversary).
- FpUser 5y ago>"War. War is the only thing that could still work." Yeah, let web developers decide our future.
- yongjik 5y agoIt's unclear that NATO + Japan need to do anything. What is North Korea going to do, hit Tokyo? That would be the surest way to get Pyongyang "liberated" ASAP ...
- flyinglizard 5y agoLet’s say they don’t attack with nukes but just shoot small conventional warheads every now on then, like Israel and Gaza. It’s not enough justification to go for an all out war, being that NK have nukes.
- colechristensen 5y agoIsrael and Gaza et al is a civil war, an internal matter much different from sovereign nations from different global treaties attacking each other.
- flyinglizard 5y agoNot a civil war at all. Gazans aren't citizens of Israel, they have their own elections and government. But if you insist, you can switch "Gaza" to "Lebanon" which fires missiles at Israel every now and then as a nuisance (just did a few weeks ago).
- colechristensen 5y agoIt's a struggle for sovereignty over disputed land which has largely been under both sides at one point or another in recent history. "What about <pedantry>" doesn't need to apply here. The definitions and situation is fuzzy. The point is that it is a vastly different situation than China-supported DPRK firing missiles at Japanese population centers.
- numpad0 5y agoSeoul is like 35mi from NK borders, or like 1.5 tiles in Civilization hexmap. It’s actually too far for IRL howitzers to set up and bombard the city but not comfortably. So it’s not a good idea to set them off when retaliation is expected.
- adventured 5y ago> what can NATO + Japan do? There is a solution to North Korea as it stands today. Chaos will take care of the regime eventually. Chaos is undefeated when it comes to wiping out totalitarian systems (quick, name a couple dozen 100-300 year old totalitarian regimes that are thriving today). That system won't stand forever. Plan as best as possible for what to do whenever the Kim dynasty finally implodes, whenever it inevitably gets toppled from within. The primary concern is a Myanmar style military junta, backed by China, taking over. Then you're more or less just back to square one. Unfortunately that's by far the most likely scenario. China has zero interest in seeing a unified Korea, in the model of South Korea, on its border - they will not allow it, and they have the capability to easily prevent it.
- dmurray 5y ago> (quick, name a couple dozen 100-300 year old totalitarian regimes that are thriving today) That seems an unfair bar to set. There aren't dozens of liberal democracies with that long a history, either. The flagship oldest democracies (Athens, Revolutionary France) didn't last any longer than that. Arguably the USA is doing the best at 250-ish years. I don't dispute that NK's juche seems less likely to be stable in the long term than, say, Switzerland, but this seems the wrong way to go about the argument.
- ssijak 5y agoWell, I would not call US before 13th amendment a democracy and that was 150 years ago. But to your point, liberal democracies are a new phenomenon.
- sudosysgen 5y agoThe US couldn't even be called a democracy until the end of Jim Crow.
- 7952 5y agoGive the N Korean leadership some assurance that the next president isn't going to do a u turn on a peace deal. N Korea just wants to survive. And America is an unreliable partner in peace.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y agoThat's the point that is never spoken about in complaints about NK's "belligerence". And that's how every country that did away with an WMD program that wasn't in the pocket of the West eventually became the target of Western aggression. Libya, Syria, Iraq all had some sort of nuclear weapons programs. And all were eventually attacked by the West because nuclear backed sovereignty is the only sovereignty respected by the West.
- elefanten 5y agoOh, is it different elsewhere? Pray tell, where is sovereignty respected in its own right?
- sudosysgen 5y agoThat is completely besides the point. It's a historical fact that countries with enimity to the west were much more willing to give up WMD programs before the downfall of those that did than nowadays.
- x86_64Ubuntu 5y agoI'm not sure what the point of this question is. I stated that "nuclear sovereignty is the only sovereignty respected by the West" and then you ask "where is sovereignty respected in its own right". I'm not sure how that follows.
- junon 5y agoI feel like we're inching our way toward waking up one morning to find North Korea wiped off the planet. Perhaps not as drastic but I can't imagine they're going to withstand a barrage of counterattacks. But I'm not a military person whatsoever so what do I know.
- sigzero 5y agoYeah, I don't doubt someone is going to try "regime change" there.
- droptablemain 5y agoPeople say things like this and then wonder why DPRK clings so tightly to its nuclear program.
- thescriptkiddie 5y agoEspecially after what happened to Gaddafi.
- nemo44x 5y agoRight. What NK is doing is rational and in their best interests to maintain their regime. At this point I’d say it’s time to forget the post WW2 world and just recognize it makes no sense today to have the types of agencies and structures we’ve built in that world. Normalize relations with them, open up trade, and try and build trust. It’s literally a pointless policy today. We do business with communists. We do business with despots.
- kklisura 5y agoWould it be moral to invest in defense/military contractor companies (Lockheed, Boing, Raytheon, etc.) to profit from such events?
- SonicScrub 5y agoThe goal of North Korea is not to build a self-defense that could withstand US/NATO invasion. It's to pose a credible enough retaliation so any outside invasion attempts would never be worth the cost. Demonstrations such as this are just North Korea declaring "we can nuke Tokyo if we want, are we really worth that?". Thereby North Korea's ruling class are insulated from being externally overthrown, and can focus all their efforts on suppressing internal threats. Unless something dramatic changes, North Korea is not going to be "wiped off the planet" anytime soon.
- HenryKissinger 5y agoControversial opinion: the United States and South Korea should have gone to war with North Korea during the 1990s, when North Korea was at its weakest, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. North Korea did not have nuclear weapons then. Doing so might have cost the lives of thousands of South Korean civilians, but North Korea would not have nuclear weapons today, or an army of cyber criminals, and the future peril of war with a nuclear armed North Korea would have been staved off forever. The US and SK could have handed over NK to China as an industrial colony for all we care, as long as NK ceased having a national government and armed forces of its own. Most reasonable people will agree that having one fewer nuclear power would be a gift for global peace and stability. They say to give peace a chance. Maybe, in some situations, it is war that should be given a chance.
- gjs278 5y agowe should have nuked every single country besides the united states after we did japan. including our allies.
- droptablemain 5y agoUsername checks out.
- Spellman 5y agoBut what about China backing the sovereignty of NK? Or if they decided once we left to just reestablish a sovereign power within NK?
- 5y ago
- phtrivier 5y agoYouTube Channel Polymater had a video about how NK would basically follow a' eternal cycle of "firing missiles to annoy everyone" / "get sanctionned" / "negociate with the Us by promising to stop launching missiles" / "get sanctions lifted" / rinse and repeat. The cycle would go on forever, as long as China would not ditch support for NK. And of course, China would never get rid of such a powerful way to annoy everyone else. NK would never actually attack, as it would kill their bluff and give everyone a good reason to convince China to wipe them out. So this would be yet another episode. It's not "Mutually Assured Destruction", but "Perpetually Assured Annoyance".
- Brave-Steak 5y ago> China would never get rid of such a powerful way to annoy everyone else It's not just this. China doesn't want a unified, Western-friendly Korea directly on its border. They also don't want the mass refugees if NK fails.
- kbenson 5y agoI don't think they were necessarily referring to getting rid of NK as much as NK's tactic of firing missiles. China could presumably influence to NK to not launch missiles at neighbors while still supporting it as a separate state, it's just not in their interest to do that either.
- Y_Y 5y agoMaybe that influence could take the form of not supplying them with fuel and materials and technology?
- michael1999 5y agoA guard dog needs teeth.
- pasabagi 5y ago>China could presumably influence to NK to not launch missiles at neighbors. Very questionable. If you read about the Rangoon bombing[0] the short of it is the Chinese passed on a note from the NKs to the Americans requesting trilateral talks, essentially vouching for them, just prior to the bombing. Apparently, Deng Xaiping said afterwards he'd never let 'that motherfucker' (Kim Jong Il) set foot on chinese soil as long as he lived, and apparently, KJI never did. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangoon_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangoon_bombing
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoDoes China authorize them to test ballistic missiles?
- colechristensen 5y agoWho knows what actually goes on in those meetings but it’s pretty clear that China sets the boundaries for NK, Kim wouldn’t alienate his lifeline too much. Doubtless China knows about them before they happen.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y agoI wonder how quickly North Korea’s nuke problem would be solved, if the US quietly let China know that if NK stays nuclear, the US will support Japan and Taiwan developing nuclear weapons. With Japan and Taiwan’s industrial sector and precision machinery, how long before they could develop nuclear bombs and ICBMs, maybe a few months?
- Sebguer 5y agoDo you want WW3? Because this is how you get WW3.
- the-dude 5y agoThis is the most stupid idea I have read in a while.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> With Japan and Taiwan’s industrial sector and precision machinery, how long before they could develop nuclear bombs and ICBMs, maybe a few months? Longer than the conventional invasion of Taiwan and destruction of its regime would take.
- numpad0 5y agoI believe they call this the “beheading” scenario - a small group of PRC ninjas could infiltrate ROC and surgically remove the government, causing the nation to de-exist, after which a swift invasion takes place. It won’t take a full week and they won’t last weeks afterwards. Only protection against that is American presence in the region.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Only protection against that is American presence in the region. No, the only protection is Chinese belief that the US is willing to engage in full-scale war to protect Taiwan; “presence in the region” but not specifically at risk in Taiwan doesn't necessarily acheive that (ask Ukraine!)
- hwers 5y agoI always find NK as a threat such a silly idea. The moment things escalated to anything real they'd be wiped out or even if they did manage to put up a fight they seem so resource constrained that it'd be over within weeks. I can only imagine the reason it keeps being hovered over our head is because the US needs an enemy and russia and china are too powerful to put in that position anymore (but what do I know I'm just speculating).
- contravariant 5y agoTheir main threat is that they can start a war that's incredibly prone to escalate.
- mrguyorama 5y agoIt's because even though North Korea would be destroyed, that wouldn't prevent millions of South Koreans dying before that happened.
- ketzu 5y agoI thought for a long time that the north korean government acts so "crazy" is to hide this fact. If they were acting "sane", they wouldn't be taken seriously because of the massive power imbalance and the extreme retribution problem regarding nukes.
- tkojames 5y agoChina wants a buffer zone between them and south Korea. USA tells china make sure NK does not do anything to crazy. And yes if NK attacked south Korea they could kill lots of people.. but after that the USA would carpet bomb them until nothing was left. One of the above comments is very accurate. Basically NK Will not attack. And NK Will exist for as long as china sees value in it.
- soheil 5y agoYou realize NK is basically an offshoot of China, right? "They have a close special relationship and China is often considered to be North Korea's closest ally. China and North Korea have a mutual aid and co-operation treaty, which is currently the only defense treaty either country has with any nation." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93North_Korea_relations#:~:text=They%20have%20a%20close%20special,country%20has%20with%20any%20nation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93North_Korea_rela....
- soheil 5y agoI feel like most people don't realize how close China and NK are. This is probably because the media doesn't discuss this link much. China would never let NK attack another country let alone launch nuclear missiles any more than the US allowing a Nato state to randomly attack another country it didn't like.
- Symmetry 5y agoIf you want to understand more about the current situation with North Korea and its strategic forces I highly recommend the Arms Control Wonk podcast. Also lots of cool info about open source intelligence! https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1213259/boiling-fish-at-yongbyon/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1213259/boiling-fish... I assume they'll have a cast on this test coming out pretty soon.
- toufka 5y agoAnd they often provide technical walkthroughs for how they go from satellite imagery (often from Planet) to their geopolitical conclusions. https://www.planet.com/ https://www.planet.com/
- SiempreViernes 5y agoThey have one out about the 1500 km cruise missile test on Sunday now: https://armscontrolwonk.libsyn.com/not-lackin-lacms https://armscontrolwonk.libsyn.com/not-lackin-lacms
- yongjik 5y agoNorth Korea makes nice sound bites, but I won't be surprised if Japan is secretly more worried about South Korea. The same day, South Korea successfully tested SLBM[1]. These days, NK is pretty much a convenient excuse for South Korea and Japan to beef up their military. Of course there's very little chance they'll fight in near future (the US will never allow it), but either country will still want to have enough firepower as bargaining chip: even at the best of days, you can never completely rely on the US being your benevolent protector. [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/skorea-successfully-tests-submarine-launched-ballistic-missile-blue-house-2021-09-15/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/skorea-su...
- travisporter 5y agoPlease admonish me for an ignorant question if needed, but what are the tensions between South Korea and Japan?
- ojbyrne 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93South_Korea_relations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93South_Korea_re...
- yongjik 5y agoI wouldn't say there's a military tension - well, other than the island of Dokdo (aka Takeshima) that's stupidly blown out of proportion, but I hope nobody's stupid enough to go to war over it. However the two countries don't exactly have an amicable history. I hope we get along well with each other (and we kind of do, more or less), but Japan still has many right-wing politicians who downplay their past war crimes. On our side, some South Korean politicians love to use Japan as a convenient scapegoat and blame Korea's every social problem on past Japanese occupation. It's less about direct military conflict between the two, and more about who gets a larger voice in any kind of issues. With the two Koreas, China, Russia, and Japan crammed in such a small area, East Asia is a tough place. You need to be seen as someone others cannot ignore.
- michael1999 5y ago
- axpy906 5y agoDid anyone else click on this thinking the missle landed in Japan and not the “Sea of Japan”?
- Ekaros 5y agoWhere else would they shoot them to test them? They have to test them to be safe. They don't want to be an other Afganistan...
- SiempreViernes 5y agoLots of Korean missile activity lately, going back about a week you have: 2 DPRK KN23 launches 1 DPRK GLCM 1 ROK Hyunmoo-4-4 (-2B derrived) SLBM 1 ROK Supersonic AShCM 1 ROK Hyunmoo-4 SRBM 1 ROK ALCM Test
- mrtweetyhack 5y agoIt is time!
- dirtyid 5y ago>“What makes this test provocative is North Korea’s public statement that these cruise missiles are a ‘strategic’ weapon, implying an intention to miniaturize nuclear warheads to fit on them,” For headline readers, this is the real significance.