Well, I haven’t heard of planes shot down since 1969. And aircrafts since 1994. (Ok, I admit I had to look that up.)
My point is: this is escalating quickly, and a country’s spokesperson declaring that it takes a tweet as an declaration of war is something very new even in a relationship as tense as the US/Korean one.
Yes it does.
“The B-1 threat definitely escalates,” Mira Rapp-Hooper, a North Korea scholar at Yale University Law School, tells me. “We’re in first strike instability territory.”
“Again, this does not mean a US-North Korea war will break out tomorrow. It does not even mean a war is likely. But it does suggest that North Korea’s threat this morning is not its typical bluster, but may be a qualitative shift in the nature of US-DPRK tensions — one that moves us from a vague war of words to having a very specific scenario in which a hot war could start. And that should trouble everyone.”
Aint that something where me and popo are in agreement on matters political!
The DPRK has done this same kind of routine in the pre-Twitter era over newspaper headlines and come to think of it did this same kind of routine over far lesser headlines in Japanese newspapers even during the Twitter era.
The article you linked there does not really support that point. Basically sensationalism designed to stir up fear in the reader with just enough qualifiers and back pedaling words. I’m curious as to the definition of “first strike instability territory” and what that means to Rapp-Hooper today as opposed to a week or a year ago. Also curious as to what the “very specific scenario” is here since it isn’t explained in the article.
Paranoia and anxiety is kind of excusable but fear mongering and shit stirring not so much.
Spell it out: do you think that speaking of “total destruction” at the UN and tweeting that the dictator “won’t be around much longer” DOESN’T change the likelihood of war, and that a minister saying they would take this as a declaration of war DOESN’T change the likelihood of war?
Of course the exchanges between North Korea and the US, South Korea, and Japan have been full off shit before. But claiming “this does not change anything” does not only seem half right to me. It sounds wrong. And apologetic.
Also, a newspaper headline is still something different than a tweet. That’s a new quality of stupid.
Well since I’ve been following this sort of thing for many years and as I’ve been saying all throughout this thread and even with this set of events, no greater likelihood of war than last week or the week before. If you’ve been following along in the thread you’d see I’ve even offered to put my money where my mouth is on this matter.
Back when even the Asahi Newspaper (closest thing the DPRK has to a friend in the Japanese press) was covering where the Japanese govt wanted to know the fate of the Japanese citizens kidnapped by the DPRK, the DPRK official press (oddly enough website hosted in Japan at the time) reacted with almost the same words that this was a “declaration of war”.
If you think I’m apologetic about any of this you have not been paying attention.
To be clear, it’s not you who was apologetic, but you came to the aid of Popa.
We can agree to disagree on the question whether this is a new quality of “diplomacy”. To call it shit-stirring to be of outspokenly different opinion, however… Well. No.
Agreeing with is now coming to the aid of?
Did you realize I was commenting on the VOX article linked by @anon48584343? Did you read the article?
Apologies, I took your last line as a general comment on all the posts you quoted.
And no, I chose not to read that link, for $reasons.
The difference between agreeing and weighing in to support a statement (which reads this clusterfuck does not change anything, which we disagree on) might also be a matter of perspective. I certainly read it as support of the does not change anything statement.
In 1962 we came close to a nuclear war with a sitting President who actually read diplomatic history and was a veteran. Now we have a president* who seems to have difficulty reading anything longer than 140 characters, entirely rejects the concept of diplomacy and dodged the military service that might have taught him that war is something to be avoided.
Of course, that’s just me being an alarmist liberal, because really what’s the worst thing that can happen? It’s not like the office of POTUS has any involvement in starting wars.
Just be grateful that the USA doesn’t have a very large military or history of constant aggression.
It does if it starts hostilities again. While the war is technically still on, the peace has largely held since the 1950s. NK shooting down an American or SK plane might change that.
Opinion within the military is not monolithic:
https://twitter.com/punkproletarian/status/912414218762285056
“Peace” besides the occasional flareup of the DPRK breaking that peace from time to time with kinetic action.
Was waiting for that.
As a side note, he’s provoked a lively debate within the DSA about the ethics of leftists serving in the military.
The consensus appears to be along the lines of “it’s okay if he figured it out after signing up, but if he was already woke he should’ve just gone to a gun range instead”.
I can see that would be an interesting debate.
Germany went a different route. This paper sets it out fairly well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a561468.pdf
The idea was to try and stop the military becoming a self-defining echo chamber and particularly keep the army integrated with mainstream society and stop it being a hive of right-wing fascists.
Not an idle concern when the Bundeswehr was set up in the 50’s.
So they went with a few basic principles:
Conscription - to try to ensure that the armed forces are made up of a cross section of society.
Political education - to enshrine the democratic values encapsulated in the constitution and especially to remind soldiers that they do not have to follow improper orders and how to recognise improper orders. Lessons on the relationship between the armed forces and the state and so on.
and running through both - the concept that soldiers are simply ‘citizens in uniform’ and that any restrictions on their rights (freedom of speech for example) should only those which are absolutely required.
As the linked paper says, it wasn’t always particularly successful and given that conscription went out the window a few years ago there are considerable difficulties continuing that approach.
