Fair enough.
(1) Is it OK with your relatives in Japan (and with you) if Kim keeps testing and building nukes and delivery systems? If “yes” then that’s that I guess. If it’s not OK…
(2)(a) What exactly is it that we want NK to do instead??
(2)(b) How do we get them to do it? (Please don’t suggest any policies which have already been proven to have no effect)
It’s possible that if we’d just evacuated the US Army and let Kim the first unify Korea, we might not be where we are now. But I really doubt that.
It’s also possible that Bill Clinton isn’t the reason behind post-Cold-War authoritarians being supported by their Cold War allies.
Other than the status quo, or letting NK take the South as I suggested, was there another way?
Edit - NK did not withdraw from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty until the early 1990’s. I don’t think that any presidents pre-Clinton can be blamed for not seeing NK nukes as a major problem.
And the nukes are the major problem. What NK does within its own borders is evil, but I do not think it justifies invading the country.
Yes, we could have not been so terrified of commies that we let NK become a vassal of the world’s second largest economy and military power. So status quo is the only option we have, ideally without the continued use of failed economic sanctions that only impact the citizens and not the government.
EDIT
1990 would not be Clinton’s watch, and by that time the US’s relationship with China was good enough to leverage diplomatic resolutions against NK.
I was perfectly content to let NK stew in its own paranoid fantasy juices until it started developing nukes and missile delivery systems for them.
Stalin of course would have recognized our change of heart and allowed the entire Korean peninsula to remain independent and democratic.
NK’s “paranoid fantasy” includes the recent memory of the very real famine, created and maintained by Western sanctions, that killed millions.
And the equally real memory of Bush the Lesser responding to 9/11 by listing North Korea in his “axis of evil” (none of whom had anything to do with 9/11). Followed by the US destroying Iraq, then doing the same to Libya (who unwisely gave in to US demands to stop developing nukes).
North Korea’s nuclear program is American made. The US didn’t leave them any other choice apart from surrender.
Very good questions that it seems no one has good answers to.
We are certainly able to identify some very bad answers, though.
I don’t know how to make cold fusion work, but I could make it not work pretty easily.
It’s so weird to think that: if some hermit in a cave on Patmos hadn’t been on an acid trip 70 years after jesus’ death; or, if he hadn’t written a pamphlet in a fit of pique at the Roman Empire; or, if his pamphlet, Revelation, hadn’t been disseminated widely and ended up being included in the Biblical canon, 300-400 years later-- Christians, and Christianity as we know it, in America would be completely different.
A nuclear war might be the result of a stupid hermit’s acid trip 2,000 years ago.
Spring Break 102 AD getting WILD out here
Insane inflammatory rhetoric from Trump and Jeffress. Great way to influence their $ investments in the military complex.
It’s been going on since before that
The second coming of Christ has been associated with bad things happening in the world since the Burning of Rome in 64 CE.
I mean, yeah, but abortion does play a role in nazi/white supremacists ideology. Don’t forget that Nazis are incredibly pro-natal, too. Racism and misogyny go hand in hand in their ideology. White womanhood is to be defended and protected at all costs, and that means defending it against any non-white man most especially. White women’s role is to provide as many children as possible for white men.
And abortion did provide an issue to rally people around, that allowed them to pull in people that weren’t specifically white supremacists, so that they could have a great political power in the American system.
2a) Stop trying to shake down their neighbors
2b) Have a serious sitdown with China, the only country which really do anything NK will take seriously.
The real goal of North Korea right now is to drive a wedge between the US and South Korea. A plan which Trump is falling for very easily. Cheeto’s “Fire and fury” rhetoric is pissing off South Korea as being indifferent to what can happen if military options are seriously considered. We may fire the shots, but South Korea will feel the response.
“They did it” is not a great excuse and it doesn’t make the role of western sanctions played in creating the famine any less true. Much can be said for the situation in Iraq under the no fly zones.
The problem with sanctions is that regimes wishing to get around them almost always can do so, and the people who are hurt are generally the ones who no control over the situation in the first place. Kim Jong-un never went a day in his life without eating well, while the majority of people of North Korea can’t say the same thing.
I am not pro nuclear weapons. But I notice that quite a few other countries have developed nukes and delivery systems over the past few decades, without the US losing their shit over it. The only reason why NK is an official enemy state compared to any other crackpot dictatorship is the US’s interest in using Japan as a proxy for their interests in Asia.
In short, the Korean War happened “because imperialism”, and that is still the underlying motivation for US interests there. It’s a strategic meddling point in an area where the US has never had any legitimate reason to be, solely rationalized by a vapid ideological stance against China and the USSR. It has always been an empty reactionary excuse.
Ironic, perhaps. But I think it’s crass to find humor in it. I think it’s “funnier” that some people lump the Americas in with Western culture.
