The era of strategic patience with North Korea
is now over, says Vice President Mike Pence. Let the era of unplanned impetuosity begin!
It’s more the Trump style, anyway.
Is anyone else beginning to feel that maybe we’ve elected a mob of crazypants wackjobs to run the country? I’ve been getting an inkling.
I’m glad we made it through the weekend alive.
“That strategy we followed for 40 years? We’re going to say ‘it didn’t work’ and try a strategy we call ‘shake things up'”
And now Pence is in South Korea visiting the DMZ. Awesome! (not) Let’s start threatening the most paranoid (except possibly for Trump) head of state on the planet, what’s the worst that could happen.
And do it at a time when South Korea’s government is also in a state of unrest , for those who haven’t been paying attention South Korea’s president was just impeached and has now been formally indicted for corruption and bribery.
I didn’t always love what President Obama did internationally, getting involved in Saudi Arabia’s proxy war in Yemen comes to mind, but he at least seemed to weigh all sides and possible costs of a situation. Trump seems just enjoy being a cowboy.
Having been in the military I wonder how the troops and military contractors stationed in Korea and their families feel about all the saber rattling…although every spring the dependents get to play “Let’s Bug Out”, just for practice…
anyone else beginning to feel that maybe we’ve elected a mob of crazypants wackjobs to run the country?
Um, from outside the USA this was understood as soon as the results were announced.
It was obvious a year or two before the actual election that the USA had shaken out the last of the crazies from the last remaining lunatic asylums. That includes most of the candidates from both main and minor parties though clearly the Republicans had scooped up the really bat**t crazies.
I have never understood the USA’s foreign policy approach of threatening the hell out of foreign regimes and expecting it to do any good. It almost certainly kept Fidel Castro in power for years after he would normally have been replaced or retired.
It seems to have kept Al Assad in power and probably did a lot to help keep Saddam Hussein in power after the US regime decided they were not surplus to requirements.
Of course the US policy of reducing states to failed states probably is not the best recommendation for US intervention either. It likely helps explain why Assad seems to have a plurality of support if not an actual majority; the North Korean Gov’t probably sees what happened in Libya and Iraq as a huge threat to them, personally, as well as to the country.
BTW, I believe I heard Pence saying if China does not cooperate in the offensive against North Korea then the USA and its allies will act. Just what allies are they?
I would much rather have “crazypants wackjobs” in office than what we do have: cold, calculating, capitalist oppressors and completely incompetent egotists.
jrkrideau, #4
Some European countries, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan and some others I’m sure.
Trump will do nothing to N Korea. That is, if his strategic thinkers agree with Mike Morrell.
(If you can find Mike’s latest visit on Charlie Rose, it’s enlightening as usual.)
All the bluster from Trump is just that; we just hope he doesn’t scare Kim Fatty into making a move.
All the bluster from Trump is just that; we just hope he doesn’t scare Kim Fatty into making a move.
That moment when you realize that all you can do is hope that the f*cking dictator of f*cking North f*cking Korea will be the rational adult in this situation.
This:Why You Should Take a Deep Breath Before Freaking Out About North Korea might be reassuring.
Ed Seedhouse @ # 9 – Link is foo.
Wait, Pence is in Korea right now?
He must be confident that Trump really likes him.
chigau #11:
Yes, this occurred to me too – there’s a heck of a lot of artillery pointed at Seoul, I wouldn’t fancy the VP’s chances if a shooting war does start up. Maybe Hair Furor really DOESN’T like him…
I agree with almost everything that has been said here. That leaves unresolved the question of how to keep North Korea from having nuclear weapons. I would hope everyone here would agree that the fewer crazy nutjobs with nuclear arsenals, the better, and I don’t agree that simply allowing North Korea to go nuclear is a viable option. So, with no really good solutions, what is the best choice of a bad lot?
thirdmill, #13
The North Korea question is tough, but the real challenge for the world is what can be done about the United States’s massive nuclear capabilities.
Saad, I’m an American, and I support getting rid of all nuclear weapons everywhere, including America’s. But it has to be something everyone does at the same time. You can’t have just one country unilaterally disarming, because all that does is leave that country wide open to the nuclear powers that would still exist. You think Russia or China would destroy their nuclear arsenals just because we did? Or hesitate to use them in a confrontation? The Russians already interfered in our last election; why wouldn’t they take advantage of having nuclear weapons if we don’t?
The US can easily reduce the amount of nuclear weapons in its arsenal without going for total disarmament. Doing so would still result in the world becoming safer.
NK surrenders!
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/north-korea-offers-unconditional-surrender-after-mike-pence-angrily-squints-at-it
Fine, now that we’ve had the obligatory “but what about America,” does anyone have any thoughts on the question I asked, which is what to do about North Korea?
thirdmill @13 Not to be an ass but here goes…It’s a little hard to be the Great Decider about who gets to have nuclear weapons when we are the only country who has actually used them on anybody..twice. We sorta ceded the moral high ground there. We also did kinda, sorta human radiation testing on military people while we were doing numerous tests in the South Pacific. My moms first husband’s was one of those army guys who’s transport got to go to Bikini atoll to “observe” one of the bomb tests. He was dead 4 months after the wedding. He was what’s know as an “atomic” vet
Do I want North Korea to have nukes, no, their rulers have been despots and dictators backed by a military junta. On the other hand we have already invaded, killed tens of thousands of people and blown up the infrastructure of a country that did nothing to us (Iraq) and managed to create a nightmare of a terrorist group while we were doing that. So perhaps paranoia is not totally unjustified…
I don’t know what the answer is, possibly realizing that we aren’t necessarily the “good guys” or the moral authority in a lot of these situations might be a place to start.
It already does.
North Korean dictators have been pretty rational for the last fifty years or so; that’s why the country’s still on the map. They’re awful people, but pragmatic.
North Korea’s entire society is premised on the idea that someday the US will come back and try to finish what it started in the Korean War, so We Must Be Ready. The Kims need us to posture and threaten, otherwise they lose the biggest justification for devoting 99% of the country’s resources toward strengthening the military and glorifying the god-king who will save them all.
A Trump presidency is a dream come true for anti-American dictators everywhere. His blustering and bombing help them terrify their subjects into compliance, and the worst he can do is level their entire country, in which case, hey, no one else gets to rule it.
No 19, despite multiple opportunities since, the US last actually used nuclear weapons over 70 years ago, at a time when it wasn’t well known how destructive they were and to quickly end a world war. If I thought North Korea would show similar restraint (or for that matter Israel, Iran, Pakistan and India), I wouldn’t mind them having nuclear weapons quite so much. But I don’t have that confidence.
And that entire argument is the national equivalent of an ad hominem anyway. Just because the US shouldn’t have used nuclear weapons on Japan does not preclude it from trying to prevent their spread now.
You are making the assumption that North Korea is exceptionally evil and crazy among all the nuclear bomb states.
That is not at all obvious.
Look at Pakistan, a failed nation state with several ongoing civil wars. The place they store their nukes was attacked three times by the Taliban and near where Osama bin Laden lived for years.
India isn’t all that stable either and they and Pakistan have a long running conflict.
And of course, any nuclear bomb nation can be taken over by crazies and become unstable. Look what happened to Russia. Look what is happening to the USA.
A lot of people want certainty and a predictable, safe world. It hasn’t existed yet.
What keeps the nukes from flying is MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction. It’s not a great strategy but no one has come up with a better one.
I’d just do what has worked so far. Wait them out and set up anti-missile batteries.
Kim Jong Un and the NK commies aren’t all that secure either. He keeps killing the ruling classes, including his relatives which is not a sign of a secure leader.
1. thirdmill, IF your strategy is to attack North Korea, seems like you trade a possibility of using nukes by them for a certainty.
They already have nuclear weapons.
They can’t reach the USA by they could reach Japan and Seoul is right across the border.
We’ve never been able to stop any nation from getting nukes. Even South Africa had 4 of them.
2. So what do you want to do?
PS As already pointed out, Fascism and Totalitarianism needs internal and external enemies. They all do it. Today with the US administration, the internal enemies are “liberals” and Democrats and the external enemies are Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, and sometimes China.
As an unstable government, North Korea needs us to be their bad guy. Threatening them makes KJ Un stronger, not weaker.
Latest headline.
1. This is typical bullying behavior. A threat.
2. It’s so weak as a threat that it is laughable.
Sure we can bomb North Korea. Then what?
We bombed Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos for many years every day. And we still lost the war!!!
We’ve seen this movie before. I grew up during the Vietnam war. And lost two friends in Iraq.
It never ends well.
Good job that war monger Hillary didnt get elected….eh?
No, my strategy is not to bomb North Korea, though if we could drop a single bomb that would surgically kill the Dear Leader I might be open to that. And Raven, No. 23, I don’t want Pakistan, or Russia, or China having nuclear bombs either. In fact, I’d be glad for the US to get rid of ours too so long as everyone else does it at the same time.
But I think the reality is that the US is far less likely to actually use nuclear weapons than the Dear Leader, as evidenced by the fact that we have not for the past 70 years. And I also think the Dear Leader is unlikely to bomb Seoul or Tokyo since he knows that at that point we would empty our nuclear arsenal on him, and whatever else may be true of him, he’s not suicidal.
I do think the Dear Leader is acting like a petulant, spoiled child, and you don’t deal with spoiled children by caving in to them. Whatever our strategy should be, that’s not it.
thirdmill @27:
This contradicts everything else you’ve been saying. Which one is what you actually believe?
That sounds like a more justifiable option for our domestic policy.
Which one is Dear Leader in this context? I suspect for a lot of people both are acting like petulant, spoiled children.
If you are the literal parent of a literal child who’s living in your literal house, that’s good advice. Kim Jong-Un, on the other hand, is an adult who has near-absolute power over his own citizens and a considerable amount of military influence over his neighbors. Parenting analogies kind of go out the window at that point.
Sorry about the failed link, but if you google the words that did get in you will find that the article I attempted to link to is the top link. Anyway here is the text for the link:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a54522/north-korea-threat/
The main reason not to do anything rash to N.K. is that they have many millions of rounds of perfectly conventional weapons pointed straight at Seoul and several million people are within range. Seoul is right on the border. That is the main and very real threat to South Korea and you can bet that no one there wants the U.S.A. to trip that wire, trust me.
The current bluster from the new administration is, we all hope, just that. The boats and submarines they are currently sending there are not equipped with offensive weapons that could take out North Korea’s conventional weaponry in any event, as explained in the article pointed to above.
Assassinating the “Dear Leader” runs too high a risk of setting all those guns with explosive rounds pointed at Seoul firing and lead to the deaths of many many people. Not worth the risk.
Microraptor, No. 28, sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant one of those statements in the short term and the other in the long term. In the short term, he’s not going to bomb Tokyo because the cost would outweigh the benefits. Not sure that holds over the long term though; sometimes the cost/benefit analysis changes.
# 6 Saad
Just what allies are they?
Some European countries, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan and some others I’m sure.
I’m Canadian and it seems unlikely we would be interested and that’s my reading of Australia and the UK after the Iraq fiasco, the Afghan fiasco, and the Libyan fiasco. Perhaps if the North Koreans were clearly the aggressors and even then I suspect you would see successful votes of non-confidences in several parliaments if the incumbent governments tried to support some hair-brained US attack.
I think the UK came very close to a successful vote of non-confidence over Iraq. Certainly the UK does not seem to have a religious fanatic like the one who seemed to think invading Iraqi was some kind of holy crusade. Well I don’t think David Cameron is such a person.
You need to take into consideration that no one is likely to believe the USA’s line since Iraq and the general intelligence failure/lies of the USA. Plus the general opinion, everywhere I can think of. that Trump and cohorts are nut-jobs.
# 8 Sarah A
Actually, at the moment, I think the North Korean leadership is, at least, marginally more mature and rational than Trump & Co. And yes this is frightening.
The chance of a nuclear weapon use is dependent on the least stable national leader who has control over one. So, which nation has an unstable, aging vindictive injury collector as a leader ?
DLC @35:
One who’s expressed not only interest but outright excitement at the thought of using nuclear weapons, even.
jrkrideau:
Alas. When the USA says ‘jump!”, Australia says “How high?”.
In our National broadcaster (which has been savaged by the current Government):
[Pullquote]
North Korea’s nuclear weapons program poses serious threat to Australia, Julie Bishop warns
Correction “Theresa May not David Cameron. Arrgh stupidity!
@ John Morales
RE “Jump how high.
I realize that this has been Australian policy since WWII, and in many cases a reasonable strategy but I had thought my rather casual following of the Australian situation indicated much less enthusiasm for military adventures since Iraq.
And the other thing is, what are Turnbull’s majorities in the upper and lower houses?
Given that May has just called a general election for June 8, the UK situation is likely to be really confused there for a while so my early thoughts there may not be anywhere close to sensible.
jrkrideau, when we get involved in one of the USA’s little wars, we (Oz) generally send in logistical support, Special Ops and airplanes. We’re an important token.
It doesn’t impact ordinary life one whit. Only the politically-aware care.
As for Turnbull, well… he is already compromised as a conviction politician, and he’s being white-anted. But yet another coup is would be political poison, so… he stays for now.
it has looked to me for some time now that the only motivation and the only real use of Atomic weapons is their deterrent value. They just say do not attack or invade us or we will kill some of your cities. As was said MAD is still a thing and is the main season the cold war was cold in the first place. It is why we even had to talk with Russia over the Crimea it is why they had to disguise the invasion and annexation in the first place. It is why their has not been a major war between India and Pakistan, it is why we have not invaded Iran years ago.
Korea is fucked up and the people are suffering but the Great leader wants to stay in power not die a martyr along with all his people.
As for petulant spoiled unruly kids you do not get them to do better and be better by beating them into submission any more than you tame and train an animal with a 2 x 4.
I thought paranoia was a delusion that everyone or some secret group was after you, in the case of Korea it may not actually be delusional seeing as how the US has been stationing a substantial arm right next to you for almost your whole existence and declared you an enemy.
uncle frogy
And really, can we stop calling the Kim dynasty “spoiled?” Kim Il-Sung was the child of a rural lower-middle-class famiIy who became an underground political activist and guerilla fighter. His son and grandson grew up in relative luxury, but they also grew up battling their siblings for political dominance, and as we’ve seen the cost for the loser is anything up to death. Even once they’re in power, they face periodic assassination attempts, or so say defecting officers.
The Kims’ behavior does not stem from the fact that eveyone’s been too nice to them, is what I’m saying. And certainly not from America being too nice to them. Likening them to “spoiled children” who just need a good firm hand for a change is nonsensical.
We do not need to prove to North Korea or its people that we’re strong, or resolved, or aggressive, or belligerent. We don’t need to worry about them thinking that we’re spoiling them or caving to them. We need to convince them that we’re not going to try to kill them all, because that’s been their default assumption since 1950.
And so far as I can see, the only tactic that has ever worked to stall or slow the North Korean nuclear program is to offer them things–food aid, power stations, stuff like that. Their nuclear development slowed down significantly under the Clinton Administration’s Agreed Framework–albeit briefly, partly because the Republican congress refused to honor half of our obligations under the deal. Then Bush II came in, the Framework was officially scrapped, North Korea was a “rogue state” and part of the “axis of evil” and guilty of mass money-laundering and so forth, and whaddyaknow, their nuclear program’s been very prominently in high gear ever since.
Nothing actually persuades the Kim dynasty to play nice; they oppress their own people and cheat on international agreements no matter what we do. But they play nicer when they’re getting more Western aid, because then the regime can claim credit for North Koreans’ improved quality of life. When we freeze all the aid and offer nothing but threats, our only propaganda utility to the Kims is as a bogeyman and they go back to their old standby of constant military dick-waving.
And, again, the Korean War. The US military killed 10-20% of North Korea’s population, and destroyed virtually every permanent aboveground building in the country. We destroyed dams and power stations. By the end of the war, our bombers were bombing fields and footbridges and dumping ordnance straight into the ocean because there was literally nothing more worthwhile to attack. And then we spent most of the next 60 years threatening to come back and do it again.
To the North Koreans, we are Godzilla, the Antichrist, the Galactic Empire, the aliens from Independence Day. The United States is the legendary all-destroyer and Kim Il-sung and his heirs must be gods, because it’s a literal miracle that anyone in the country survived our assault. So, yeah, they’re paranoid, but they’ve also got very good historical reasons to fear us. Even the South Koreans are more worried about America pulling the trigger than they are about another attack from the North.