Posted on 07/25/2017 7:32:46 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
The time for pious American lectures is over.
North Korea North Korea seeks respect on the cheap — and attention and cash — that it cannot win the old-fashioned way by the long, hard work of achieving a dynamic economy or an influential culture.
Over the last quarter-century, it has proved that feigned madness and the road to nuclear weapons (Pakistan is another good example) provide a shortcut to all three goals: It is now feared, in the news, and likely to receive another round of Western danegeld.
Setting off a bomb (as opposed to merely bragging that it soon will do so) seems to stave off a Western-style preemption of the sort that eventually liquidated Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi.
Unlike both Iraq and Libya, North Korea had two other indemnity policies that so far have ruled out Western preemption: 1) a nuclear neighboring patron like China, and 2) a nihilistic conventional artillery and missile arsenal aimed at a nearby rich Westernized South Korea. An outmoded, conventional, short-ranged asset would be largely irrelevant in most military landscapes, but it is not when based just 35 miles from Seoul (which exchanged hands five times from the beginning to end of the Korean War). Consequently, the unpredictability of Beijing and the possibility of an attack within hours on Seoul — which would end up like Dresden in 1945 — enhanced North Korea’s small nuclear arsenal.
What then is North Korea’s ultimate objective?
Most obviously, a permanent landscape of crisis, in which it can periodically test a more sophisticated bomb than the last, threaten to incinerate a Western city, and launch a missile into Western airspace. If done symphonically, periodic “crises” are then created...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
If we look back at how countries have “improved’ once having fought with American’s, one would see a revitalized nation provided by American’s, take Japan for example. The US all but eliminated Japan only to rebuild it. Look at Japan today. I rest my case.
Hanson needs to read more Hemingway. He tries too hard to impress with flowery oratory and sometimes gets clumsy with it.
I feel like we are not going to do anything because we don’t want Seoul to be damaged. And therefore we will allow the situation to drift until North Korea has ICBMs with nuclear warheads that can reach NYC.
I’m crazy. I’d give China a deadline (6 months? 1 year?) and if North Korea doesn’t clearly change in the way we want, then we will collapse the country. China doesn’t want that.
Yup. Seoul might be devastated. But Seoul is not NYC. Gotta choose one of those cities. It’s not hard.
World War I was a pisser.
Lets get pissed.
That was funny.
Hanson writes like the academic that he is.
I say bring India, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea in for a pow-wow. Let them know they have a very common adversary and we really think they should do something about it including going full nuke. We should let the Chinese know this in advance. China does not want a nuked up Japan, let them chew on that as they play dumb on North Korea...
That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. We need to form a Coalition that doesn’t include China and start making major strategic decisions about the future of Asia. China isn’t invited, because China isn’t managing North Korea. China want a say in the future of Asia? Well ... deal with North Korea. Or else the coalition will.
China is much weaker than people suppose. They don’t want anything to “get real”.
Yep, managing China’s decline which is rapidly approaching is actually going to be much harder than managing her ascent. Just let the Chinese know we are really listening to little Kim and take seriously his targeting American cities and since they will not deal with the problem, maybe a nuked up Japan will balance it out.
I imagine Mattis is developing a plan which prevents any or, at least, much damage to Seoul.
I'm thinking that in order to fully understand the implications of what is going on in North Korea, China, and the surrounding area that much more should be expected of the reader.
Very cool. Thanks!!!
China is following the same route Imperial Japan did in the 1930s.
Their barking, snarling dog is NK...
I like VDH.
Sure would be nice if I could read the article.
All the advertising keeps crashing my computer.
Cool word:
Dane·geld
noun: Danegeld
land tax levied in medieval England, originally to raise funds for protection against Danish invaders.
I agree. We did that in Afghanistan. Why not North Korea? B2s taking out communications, radars, power grids, dropping MOABs, daisy cutters, napalm on dug in artillary installations. THAAD protecting the South from incoming.
They still made at least one mistake:
‘None saw him except me,” not “none saw him but me.”’
It really should be “None saw him except I”, because that is proper subject-object composition. You would not say “Me saw him”, if you were to state the sentence slightly differently, you would say “I saw him”.
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