Monday, August 14, 2017

Jon Schwarz — We Can Stop North Korea From Attacking Us. All We Have to Do Is Not Attack Them.

North Korea is not going to launch a first strike on America or its allies with nuclear weapons.
To understand this, you don’t need to know anything about the history of U.S.-North Korea relations, or the throw weight of intercontinental ballistic missiles, or even where North Korea is. All you need to know is human history. And history says that small, poor, weak countries tend not to start wars with gigantic, wealthy, powerful countries — especially when doing so will obviously result in their obliteration.
So what exactly is the “crisis” involving North Korea?
The answer is simple: We’re not worried that we can’t deter North Korea. We’re worried because a North Korea that can plausibly strike the U.S. with nuclear weapons will likely be able to deter us from doing whatever we want. For example, we might not be able to invade North Korea.…
One lucid example can be found in “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” a well-known paper by the Project for a New American Century. The U.S., it explained, “must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action. … In the post-Cold War era, America and its allies, rather than the Soviet Union, have become the primary objects of deterrence and it is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities.”... 
The Intercept

2 comments:

Kaivey said...

An unnamed person who escaped from NK was in the news today saying that the North Korean regime will kill the whole family if someone does something wrong. They even say there are public executions. A report a few years back said that 80 people were tied up in an arena and shot to pieces by a firing squad there bodies unrecognisable afterwards. The report also said you ca be sentenced to death for owning a bible or for watching South Korean TV. It went on to say that a group of women dancers were sentenced to death for doing a video where they looked sexy. They were accused of making a porn video.

I have real trouble believing any of it, it seems like the typical propaganda to me. But anyway, they have public executions in Saudi Arabia and the Western media hardly ever mentions it. Even if NK is a tough place, does exterminating all of the people who live there, and all the people in SK too, and spreading radioactive poison over half the planet worth it? Ask the North Koreans whether they want the US to go in and defend them with their nukes?

John said...

Like the Soviet Union, the North Korean regime will eventually disintegrate. Every decent intelligence analyst knows this. The question is, given this, what is the US playing at? Trump's an ill-informed madman and can be discounted, but US policy towards North Korea seems to be a waiting game. The waiting game is not to wait until the regime collapses, but rather to wait because the US is caught in a dilemma of its own making. If North Korea continues to exist, it'll have nuclear weapons that can hit the US mainland. As such, North Korea is untouchable. If North Korea collapses and is integrated with the South, this poses worse problems: a united Korea with millions of starving peasants is a capitalist's wet dream: cheap labour and a new country to industrialise; a Korea that would probably be willing to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation; and a Korea that will then be in a position to import Russian energy. A united Korea also poses a military problem: will South Korea be willing to give up its newly acquired North Korean nuclear deterrent? And why should the massive US presence be further tolerated? Korean Salafis? China? Some pretext will be made up, but the pressure the US empire will be under to put an and to its military presence in Korea and Japan.