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what 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 +
by newaccount2021 5y ago
what 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.