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Much more recently, you saw North Korea go through famine and economic development to build the bomb
by radicaldreamer 2y ago
Much more recently, you saw North Korea go through famine and economic development to build the bomb
- XorNot 2y agoSure but that's keep the Kim family in power. It has nothing to do with the plight of the North Korean people. Edit: fixed family name
- Qem 2y agoOne can argue they are faring better than Iraq, Libya, Ukraine or Lebanon.
- ygra 2y agoIs that due to fear of an atomic bomb or more because of the artillery pieces aimed at Seoul as well as surrounding countries being unwilling to take in large amounts of North Korean refugees?
- Qem 2y agoNK sold a lot of its artillery supplies to Russia, probably because they aren't that important anymore, after they got nukes. See https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/nkorean-artillery-saved-russia-6million https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/nkorean-artillery-... SK probably wouldn't mind receiving some NK refugees, to make for their ~0.7 fertility rates.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jjk166 2y agoNo one could possibly say for sure. But undoubtedly if the west was apprehensive about war with North Korea then, they are more so now.
- hollerith 2y agoThe regime in NK persists because a great power (namely, Beijing) does not want an ally of the West on its border and is willing to spend the lives of 100s of 1000s of its soldiers to prevent that from happening (as illustrated by Beijing's choices during the Korean War). Iraq, Libya or Lebanon don't have that advantage (and Kiev would get that advantage only if switches to being pro-Russian).
- njarboe 2y agoI don't think Russia would have invaded Ukraine if it still had nuclear weapons.
- krisoft 2y agoToday it wouldn't. Because it would have invaded them sooner as they tried to acquire those nuclear weapons.
- hollerith 2y agoI tend to agree (without having thought about the question much) but I hope you don't think that contradicts or supports anything I wrote.
- zerkten 2y agoThis episode of Arms Control Wonk is worth a listen if you think this true: https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1215097/deterrence-in-ukraine/ https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1215097/deterrence-i....
- etangent 2y agoThe episode starts with a strawman (that Ukraine never had nukes) and proceeds to beat it up. It's a strawman for reasons I will not go into for long, but ones that should be obvious to a fourth grader: physical possession of an object as well as of factories used to make it (which Ukraine also had) are far more important than electronic systems of control. This now classic 1993 paper by Mearsheimer is a much more clear-eyed take, his recent positions notwithstanding. https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mearsheimer-Case-for-Ukrainian-Nuclear-Deterrent.pdf https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mears... Aside from either, how many nuclear states have been invaded in the past 80 years? Apart from Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk oblast last summer, the answer is a big fat zero. Finally (and this also applies to my post), social media is the worst place for any foreign policy discussion because it offers asymmetric returns to a foreign actor attempting to subvert a country's policy who happens to speak the country's language, and English is a very popular international language spoken by many people abroad at this point in history.
- sorokod 2y agoThe Kim clan is definitely doing ok, could you present the argument for the rest of the population?
- 4gotunameagain 2y agoHow can you know, when every single piece of information about North Korea that you have comes from western media ?
- CamperBob2 2y agoGood point. Has Russian media acknowledged the presence of North Korean combatants in the Ukraine theatre? I've only heard that from Western sources.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI don't see why they wouldn't. They signed a mutual defense hacked with North Korea last year and the Korean army is fighting to expel the Ukrainian army from it's counter offensive incursion into Russia
- s1artibartfast 2y agoSeems safe to say they're doing better than Gaddafi
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> One can argue they are faring better than Iraq, Libya, Ukraine or Lebanon How? Are you saying the median person in any of those making an informed decision would swap places with a random person in North Korea?
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI assume they are speaking from the perspective of the regime. Is the regime that makes decisions such as prioritizing nuclear development over food and commerce and international relations
- Yeul 2y agoCan you blame them really? American regime change is real and Koreans have a... complicated past with China. Besides nukes are cheap compared to fielding 20 tank divisions as the Europeans did for 50 years in West Germany.