His rhetorical spiral continues:
Just what we need! More nervous, twitchy governments, instead of calm, lucid ones…
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It does not help that the mango madman has yet to even nominate an ambassador to south korea (as well as a whole bunch of other high level jobs related to the korean pennisula) Also, the Chief of Staff and Comms Director for the Ambassador to the UN just quit yesterday..
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/10/politics/north-korea-trump-nominations-vacancies/index.html
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No wonder the South Koreans think right now we are a bunch of panicky dumbasses
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It doesn’t mean it didn’t play a role, but in those examples the US wasn’t the main cause of the famines. They could have helped more, yes.
But -
In all seriousness, what is the point of sanctions? I get it that in theory it could be used as leverage to get a state to behave the way one wants them too. This could be for good or nefarious means.
Has it ever really worked? It seems to me, in most cases, they find a different branch. Or they make do with out (at least the people do) and in the mean time give rational reason to further crack down within the state, and gives the state a tangible bad guy to rally against. Though I guess I see the point of partial sanctions, i.e. weapons or resources for nuclear programs.
IIRC when Iraq was under sanctions for certain things, they wanted to build a giant gun that could shell Israel. They ordered specially designed “oil pipe” from Britain to build it. I think that eventually lead to the tip off and Mossad killing the project leader.
They are used to NK bluster. Like I said above, previous policy was to “not feed the trollies”.I mean he really is like a high school kid in his mentality. SK isn’t used to anyone stoking the flames like that. SK has the most to lose if it escalates.
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Famines are often man made disasters, though (see, the Irish famine or late 19th century India, as talked about by Mike Davis in Late Victorian Holocausts). We have a great ability to feed everyone on this planet, but our food supply has been commoditized. It’s treated as a way to turn a buck, not a human right. In the modern age, when you can hop a plane and be anywhere in the world within a day or so, there is no excuse for food not to be evenly distributed. None at all.
That’s pretty much it - literally every other country on earth has to be on board. As long as alternative networks exist (in the form of either other states or the black market), then what the “western” nations call “rogue” states that they apply sanctions to are going to be able to find alternatives for weapons and the like. The question is, what are the alternatives? War? Diplomacy? Just ignoring the problem? It’s not easy stuff to figure out, and it’s far above my paygrade to be honest.
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Yes, completely agree with that.
So its like the war on drugs - if there is a supply and a buyer they will meet up.
Good question. Above my pay grade too. I think it is a weapon of diplomacy. If they can’t get what they need easily, it costs the leaders money and headaches too. Again I can see the point for certain things used for war, but a total ban of trade mainly just hurts the citizens. i.e. Cuba. Though the Cuban embargo was supposed to be temporary. IIRC Kennedy ordered like a years worth of cigars before putting it through. But no one at the time thought it would last decades.
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Hopefully a tool rather than a weapon. Using it as a weapon implies that diplomacy is a thing that must be ‘won’. And that isn’t really diplomacy.
If a country is prepared to bear the cost, and/or forego other stuff, they’ll always be able to get what they need. Germany, for example, was under a very robust sanctions regime in the early- to mid-1940s and yet still managed to get enough oil for their needs. Just like the rest of the wider autarky programme, the synthfuel project was super expensive, and super inefficient, but in their specific context it was reichsmarks well spent.
What you might be able to achieve is preventing them from getting what they want. Maybe they’ll have to buy shitty second-hand MiG-29s rather than shiny new F-16s, or download Linux and OpenOffice instead of using the Microsoft suite (ok ok, maybe a bad example 
), or perhaps they’ll have to sell their agricultural products at commodity prices to East Buttfuckistan rather than at premium prices to the EU. The key then becomes how much they really want those F-16s and Microsoft and access to the EU. What are they prepared to forego for that? When it’s a matter of regime survival - which Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc., have shown to be a genuine concern - then gaining nukes at the expense of pretty much everything else is a worthwhile trade. It’s worked for NK, and Iran.
TL;DR; they need nukes more than they want international trade.
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The trouble with lifeboats is that they don’t hold enough people.
“Don’t worry about war; we’re going to have a military coup instead, and everything will be fine”.
Has the US military at any time in history ever shown the slightest resistance to foolish and destructive adventurism? I can recall a few occasions in which politicians restrained bloodthirsty generals, but none of the reverse.
The closest I can think of is McClellan refusing to move against the Confederacy, and that was not a positive example.
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Many Christians of course don’t believe in it at all.
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Luke 21:11 - “dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.” Just sayin’…
Nope. Technically, the war has not ended yet. They are still negotiating, on and off, a peace treaty.
All there is right now is the 1953 armistice agreement.
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Guam: Where America’s Judgement Day Begins.
A lot of informed people consider the military’s officially declared non-action on trump’s order to kick out transfolk as passive resistance or more bluntly, disobedience. (The whitehouse has officially stated that what trump writes on twitter are official statements of the presidency.)
Opinion is split on whether or not it is actual disobedience. And obviously that’s not the same as refusing an attack order. But it is a good sign in the short term (and a bad sign in the long term as it could be a harbinger of a serious breakdown in civilian control of the military ).
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Well, I think when you get to sanctions that’s a weapon.
I’ve heard lots of people saying that sanctions on South Africa were successful in ending apartheid. I tend to think that ultimately it was generational shift and the people of South Africa themselves waking up to the realization that apartheid was wrong, but I’m sure people who know better than I do could argue that the sanctions were meaningful in the decision.
That’s a radically different situation than North Korea. In South Africa the sanctions weren’t just against the government, they were actually against the people (that is, 20% of the people). To be effective against South Africa sanctions had to impact white people. When you look at Russian sanctions, they seem to be designed to target the finances of oligarchs (I’m not saying I know whether they are effective or not). But to sanction North Korea, wouldn’t the sanctions need to impact Kim Jong-Un himself?
That’s a really big problem. If Kim Jong-Un cared about the people of North Korea starving, he’d be running his country differently.
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We haven’t made direct aggression against a large force that wasn’t horribly mismatched since WWII. Any place we invaded was against an inferior source with out any direct support from allies that we couldn’t also defeat. So while you had China support Vietnam, and Russia support several factions in proxy wars, Iran and various fundamentalist factions, we haven’t gone up against something like Russia and China directly. We won’t either (at least at this point.)
I think we might get away with an air strike or cruise missiles, but anything more than that, boots on the ground, mass invasion, or something absurd like nukes is out of the picture. Worst case is if we drew a line and they crossed it, China would have to intervene, lest the US does. China doesn’t want US troops there. They don’t want a war either. They have experience tremendous growth thanks to their growth as a world leader in manufacturing.
Keep in mind, NK has said worse things about the US, even videos of nuking US cities and it lit aflame. The difference is everyone expects that out of them, but not the US, we are SUPPOSED to be classier than that. Well, surprise, not any more.
I am not saying we should completely ignore this issue, but I also think most of it is smack talk. No one thinks X is really going to give it to them. You may be right about the Pentagon hasn’t reigned in politicians in the past - but then again they generally are on a similar page. I can’t conceive anyone in the Pentagon in charge could possibly think this is a good idea.
I’d say MOST. i.e. the largest sects, Catholics, don’t.
Agreed.
Of course most of those also don’t try and flood the armed forces of a nuclear armed country with their congregants…
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Yes, absolutely. I was just addressing the type of Christian Jeffries claims to be.
A nuclear threat against Guam is an act of a madman. Everyone knows what happens when pacific island reptiles are exposed to high levels of radiation.
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