War Drums: North Korea edition

[Fez]

20 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 

I prefer:

And I say that as a millennial.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

And it looks like China has pushed in its' chips...

http://www.newsweek.com/china-north-korea-preemptive-strike-649802

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

And it looks like China has pushed in its' chips...

http://www.newsweek.com/china-north-korea-preemptive-strike-649802

This was reaffirming their general posture and commitment to the status quo:  If the US attacks first, we'll back North Korea.  But if North Korea strikes first, they're on their own.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

11 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

This was reaffirming their general posture and commitment to the status quo:  If the US attacks first, we'll back North Korea.  But if North Korea strikes first, they're on their own.

Sure, nothing out of the ordinary for sure. 

[Maithanet]

Nonetheless, I find China's consistent and clearly understood policy to be comforting. Which is pretty sad.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Nonetheless, I find China's consistent and clearly understood policy to be comforting. Which is pretty sad.

Yeah, I was going to say something similar. It is strangely comforting.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 Sassy Trump is En Fuego...

 

/And frankly, power. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

54 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

And it looks like China has pushed in its' chips...

http://www.newsweek.com/china-north-korea-preemptive-strike-649802

China will do f'all if the US bombs North Korea. As much as they lose something small if North Korea falls, it pales in comparison with what they will lose if they attack US forces directly. It is simply not worth it.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

5 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

China will do f'all if the US bombs North Korea. As much as they lose something small if North Korea falls, it pales in comparison with what they will lose if they attack US forces directly. It is simply not worth it.

Uh yeah, I wouldn't bet the mortgage on that. This is their backyard we are talking about. Let's just say I wouldn't want to test that theory out.

[James Arryn]

12 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Nonetheless, I find China's consistent and clearly understood policy to be comforting. Which is pretty sad.

Oh, absolutely. Everyone else comes off as much more reliable and reasoned. Still, he may stupidego us into WWIII because, well, he can. This is why US Presidential elections are so scary to the rest of the world...because it's not like watching someone with a problem and you just hope they get help before they do too much damage to themselves. No, it's more like drunk drivers, in that your 'mistakes' often cause other people so much more harm than yourselves...and several studies have shown that Americans are largely quite fine with that pattern, only really getting concerned when US victims start to pile up. So, self-centred drunk drivers with a nuclear arsenal and a big chunk of the populace raised on the belief that starting wars with much less powerful nations equates to 'strong leadership'.

I'm starting to read so many armchair quarterbacks using pop-realpolitik rationale to explain how preemption is the only smart thing to do, it's making me nostalgic for the 90's. The fact that this...all of this, even the how, why, and where...and the Tom Clancy fans chorus of approval...has been predicted by 'chicken little' lefties since Trump won seems to be completely irrelevant. Many of us have been discussing it in here since forever, but no...isolated incident, NK is the prime mover here, Trump is just playing or misplaying the hand he's been dealt by fate. It's depressing that not only have the illegal wars and torture camps and untold dead been basically footnoted because both 'sides' of America agreed with itself at the time...do not have the words to describe how that rationale sounds to outsider ears, btw...but the fact that zero lessons in national self-awareness have been learned from all the deaths, destruction, illegal incarcerations, etc...just really feeling shitty about our Southern neighbours ATM. 

Sorry I'm coming off like an asshole, I just can't believe how quickly we've gone from Cold War nostalgia to nukes being back on the menu just because Americans elected a guy who'se always been very open about wanting this to happen...and that anyone is somehow buying that this is happening TO him/the US rather than him doing exactly what he's always said he'll do. Do you remember back when we'd read him in interviews talking like Reagan and the CW were still on, and how funny/weird that sounded, but obviously he couldn't seriously mean to...and now, a year later, here we are.

[Free Northman Reborn]

4 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Uh yeah, I wouldn't bet the mortgage on that. This is their backyard we are talking about. Let's just say I wouldn't want to test that theory out.

What does China gain by shooting down a US plane or bombing a US base after North Korea has been attacked? Do they think it will scare America off? Of course not. It will lead to China's destruction. It gains them nothing. But talking a big game before such an event gains them a lot, by contrast.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 minute ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

What does China gain by shooting down a US plane or bombing a US base after North Korea has been attacked? Do they think it will scare America off? Of course not. It will lead to China's destruction. It gains them nothing. But talking a big game before such an event gains them a lot, by contrast.

China's destruction? How does that come about absent our destruction? 

[Maithanet]

14 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

China will do f'all if the US bombs North Korea. As much as they lose something small if North Korea falls, it pales in comparison with what they will lose if they attack US forces directly. It is simply not worth it.

You remember the last time the US invaded North Korea?  Plenty of Americans dismissed Chinese warnings that time too.  The Chinese did not stand idly by then and I wouldn't count on them doing it this time either.

And the Chinese are MUCH closer in military strength to the US now than they were in 1950. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

Just now, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

China's destruction? How does that come about absent our destruction? 

Even if that is the case, which I don't necessarily believe to be inevitable, that becomes the choice China faces in such a situation. In other words, once the US has bombed North Korea, China has the choice:

Do we let North Korea fall, or do we cause the destruction of both China and the US (your scenario. My scenario is that the US may have counter measures to China's inferior nuclear arsenal, but let's ignore that for now). The point is, China's choice is then between losing North Korea and losing everything.

Why would the rational Chinese choose to lose everything just because their unstable little buffer state is about to fall?

[James Arryn]

10 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

What does China gain by shooting down a US plane or bombing a US base after North Korea has been attacked? Do they think it will scare America off? Of course not. It will lead to China's destruction. It gains them nothing. But talking a big game before such an event gains them a lot, by contrast.

Of course there are Chinese armchair qb's mansplaining how the US would obviously back down if China defended against US aggression in Korea using the exact same rationale as we speak. What, are the Americans going to push the Armageddon button because one plane was shot down? Etc.

[Free Northman Reborn]

2 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Of course there are Chinese armchair qb's mansplaining how the US would obviously back down if China defended against US aggression in Korea using the exact same rationale as we speak. What, are the Americans going to push the Armageddon button because one plane was shot down? Etc.

Well, pacifist positions like that is why we always end up kicking that proverbial can down the road to a nuclear armed North Korea.

EDIT

Kennedy could have taken that position too, but he did not.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

8 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

You remember the last time the US invaded North Korea?  Plenty of Americans dismissed Chinese warnings that time too.  The Chinese did not stand idly by then and I wouldn't count on them doing it this time either.

And the Chinese are MUCH closer in military strength to the US now than they were in 1950. 

On top of all that, I couldn't take another 11 seasons of M.A.S.H. 

[James Arryn]

6 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Well, pacifist positions like that is why we always end up kicking that proverbial can down the road to a nuclear armed North Korea.

And?

If this guy had been in the OA when Iran's program was front burner we'd have seen what we're seeing now. And sooooo many folk like yourself would have been agreeing/explaining how it was a hard but absolutely necessary truth that needed facing. Remember Chamberlain, et fucking cetera. 

But instead the 'can' was kicked and, hey, not so much millions of people killed...more important still, not so much hundreds of Americans killed. In spite of what Kissinger liked to say, statecraft is absolutely an operation in the grey, and the belief in sophomorisms and r-p slogans creates their own 'necessary ultimatums' rather than just being more frank about their existence. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

29 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Uh yeah, I wouldn't bet the mortgage on that. This is their backyard we are talking about. Let's just say I wouldn't want to test that theory out.

Not to mention the fact that it was China's intervention in the original Korean war that prevented Korea from being unified in 1950.

[Free Northman Reborn]

It's quite simple. However unpleasant a war today with North Korea might appear to someone, the question is whether that is a worse option than facing a North Korea with nuclear warheads on a couple dozen ICBM's in a decade or so. To me, the former option is preferable to the latter. To some, the latter appears to be an acceptable trade off for a few more years of peace.

And that, really, is what this entire difference of opinion is about. It's not about just wanting to bomb North Korea for the sake of some entertainment in an otherwise boringly normal life.