Talk about Godwin-ing a discussion.
I am going to make this bold prediction: you are utterly ignorant of North Korean history, even in broad strokes. And this has allowed you to form utterly irrational and indeed insane opinions of that country.
Please stop commenting about the subject until you correct your ignorance.
Or do you wish to challenge my assumptions by producing extensive evidence that you are actually in fact supremely well informed about the North Korean regime and its history?
Go read my other posts in this thread. If I had one wish it would be that the DPRK regime would step down so that the rest of the world would have the "opportunity" to dig the North Korean people out of the positively savage hell-hole they are living in right now. The best case scenario is that that happens and then it costs tens of billions of dollars to fix North Korea and put them on a level of, oh, say Yemen or Bangladesh, let alone South Korea. For that I'll be happy to see an increase in my taxes.
In the meantime millions of North Korean citizens are living in a stalinist police state, many of them a hair's breadth away from conditions of starvation. Oh, and their country is under the tyranny of a megalomaniac who is happy to continue the traditions of squandering his nation's few resources to build weapons to terrorize the rest of the world (to add to the long list of efforts in the same vein using everything from terrorism, such as when they downed Korean Air Flight 858, to espionage to exporting missile technology) rather than try to dig his country out of brutal, crushing poverty.
If there was a way to get rid of the North Korean regime without causing millions of civilian deaths on the Korean peninsula I'd probably be supportive of it, even if it meant an otherwise horrifying number of civilian deaths. Every year an unknown number of North Koreans are killed by the regime, perhaps as many as tens of thousands. Some estimates are that as many as 1.5 million North Koreans were killed in gulags during Kim Il Sung's reign. This is one of those rare cases where bringing up the Nazis and Hitler does not "Godwinize" the thread and is instead a fully apt and sobering point of comparison. A holocaust of North Koreans has happened, and the only reason it hasn't received the attention it deserves is because the country is very closed off and people are more concerned about what horrible thing to the world outside of North Korea the regime is likely to do next.
Nope. This is pathological:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...
They use to have nukes in sk, now they don't, but can still strike nk anyway.
So that leaves the hyperbole that NK and SK could negotiate a peace if the US withdrew. Why don't you think that is possible?
How about you respond to the inaccuracies rather than being a jerk and insulting the GP?
The fact that they are conducting tests is also rather interesting. The simple devices they have developed do not require any testing and given their limited plutonium stockpile they are reducing the amount of deployable weapons by conducting their third test in six years.
I assume you would have supported South Africa's nuclear program?
India and Pakistan may have a beef with each other, but they weren't a destabilizing force in the region, or maybe more accurately, if they were, it wasn't a huge concern of the superpowers at the time.
So who is the destabilising force in the region? I'm pretty sure "stability" isn't the goal (for the US) it's "Democracy".
Uh, maybe if you ignore the magnitude of severity?
Ideologically opposed nations that were once a single nation (to over simplify a bit)
Regardless this has nothing to do with whether sanctions should be applied for testing weapons.
No, I don't think that.
> Nobody wants an unstable, belligerent, nasty dictatorship to have the ability to nuke other countries.
The US opened this can of worms and created an imbalance in the world. North Korea is surrounded by nuclear enabled countries (China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan).
As an aside:
What exactly is 'unstable' about North Korea... it's been the same ruling family for 50 years... I realise propaganda has permeated all of our views and it's difficult to see through the fog of misinformation but think about the words you use as you write them.
North Korea (from all credible reports) is a mess, and quite horrible for A LOT of people, THAT needs to change. I would not rate it any more "belligerent" than the US. It is definitely not unstable and its Nastiness extends only as far as its borders...
The North started the Korean war, not the US.
US troops maintain a balance of power in the region, which has allowed South Korea and Japan to develop into wealthy, stable industrialised democracies.
Regardless of the longevity of the Kim family, North Korea has an unsustainable and fragile economic and political system which is widely suspected to be susceptible to imminent collapse, with unknown consequences. They have also frequently staged unprovoked fatal military attacks on Southern territory in the last few years. They were caught trying to smuggle probable nuclear components to Burma. They were caught trying to smuggle an enormous shipload of drugs into Australia.
They are not in any way equivalent to the US in terms of odious behaviour in the region.
US was expecting 0.5 to 4 MILLION casualties (just on US side) to invade japan as WW2 was nearing the end. Casualty on Japan would be many times bigger (most of them civilians).
The 200,000 deaths (mostly civilian), however regrettable, by the 2 nukes was considered a 'deal' compared to what an actual invasion of japan would've been.
Seems a little unfair to Japan.
As FDR approved a project to investigate the Military Application of Uranium Detonation in October 1941. This was 2 months prior to the December 1941 Pearl Harbour attack. It seems unlikely that Japan, specifically, prompted the R&D that led to ...
In July 1945 the end result of the MAUD project came about in the Trinity tests of the first nuclear weapon, this was two months after the May 1945 German surrender, leaving the US with a weapon that needed testing and a Soviet frenemy that needed impressing.
As for the need to use nuclear weapons on Japan, well, the post war FDR FUD on that matter has obfuscated the extensive saturation bombing, using a mix of incendiaries and high explosives to burn Japanese cities to the ground that was already at play - from the Japanese perspective Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just another two cities levelled to the ground by the US, just two among the many others similarly destroyed.
There's an argument to made, and it's one for the historians, that the decisive factor for the Japanese was the fact that the Soviets were now free to invade Japanese territories. This is usually not part of the post WWII US narrative.
Well if it isn't a general principle you are defending then simply acquiring nuclear weapons is a good thing. Now if you think North Korea should have the ability to gain nuclear weapons then you certainly support any other country also getting access to nuclear weapons.
>The US opened this can of worms and created an imbalance in the world. North Korea is surrounded by nuclear enabled countries (China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan).
Hardly. Multiple states were developing nuclear weapons at the same time and the US developed them first.
>>What exactly is 'unstable' about North Korea...
A country that keeps 200,000 of its own citizens in camps doesn't exactly seem to scream stability. Now given that China is worried about a collapse of the North Korean economy and political structure your assertion is flatly ridiculous.
>>North Korea (from all credible reports) is a mess
so it is a 'mess' yet also not unstable. Countries that can't provide basic resources to their own citizens seem to be also be unstable. I wonder why that is...
>>and quite horrible for A LOT of people, THAT needs to change.
I'm not sure how getting nuclear weapons fixes that issue. In fact, North Korea spends upwards of 50% of its GDP on the military including its nuclear program.
How many citizens are in prison in the US does that make it unstable? What a strange connection to make...
Yes the country is a mess, but the government is stable... They aren't mutually exclusive.
It doesn't matter whether nukes are going to fix the issue or not, sanctioning them for making nukes certainly isn't.
This is not strictly true - for example in recent years there has been the sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island.
It is unstable not in the sense of "who is going to rule the country." It is unstable in the sense of they behave irrationally, have irrational beliefs and motivations. The same way that we, mostly, don't think that a paranoid schizophrenic should have unlimited access to assault rifles, any sane, knowledgeable person, would not want North Korea to have nuclear weapons. Wow, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
> It is unstable not in the sense of "who is going to rule the country." It is unstable in the sense of they behave irrationally, have irrational beliefs and motivations.
Oh sure, if we redefine what "unstable" means in the context of government, then sure, you are completely correct.
> Wow, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Jerk.
That's irrelevant. NK gaining nukes would clearly be a negative development.
Also, did you just call Japan a nuclear power? Or are you just talking about nuclear power?
They were involved in 2 wars that had no relevance to US security, purely for ideological reasons... They are still involved in one of those wars... They lost the other one...
Great stabiliser!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vietnam_War_casual...
But I like your attempt at hyperbole.
B.R. Myer's talk explains the motive behind NK's nuclear program pretty well.
http://www.booktv.org/Watch/11315/The+Cleanest+Race+How+Nort...
I'm referring to the inconsistency. The implication of what you are saying is: "The UN only intervenes when it suits the US". To me that makes me think LESS of the UN sanctions, not more.
On consistency: I don't think UN, as a group of nations with conflicting goals, tries to behave in a consistent way, although people are free to blame it for its inconsistency.
It is isn't it? Otherwise it isn't a union...
> That cannot explain veto power of five permanent members of UN security council, which no other country has.
That's completely true... turns out there are more problems with the UN than just being a veil for US aggression... colour me surprised.
Furthermore, as a member of the United Nations, North Korea has agreed to abide by binding decisions of the Security Council; UNSC resolution 1718 demands that North Korea not conduct any further nuclear test. This resolution was adopted under Chapter VII, meaning that the UNSC has identified North Korea's nuclear testing as a threat to the peace.
http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1718%2...
US intelligence was completely wrongfooted at the time of India's five Pokhran-II tests.
Firstly, no self respecting nation is ever going to wait for 'acceptance' and 'supervision' of some other nation. In fact that very thing implies some sort of master-slave relationship. Countries act in their own interests(just like every other country).
I agree NK has some human rights issues, that should be addressed, but testing nuclear weapons is no different to Pakistan or India, and there are no sanctions against them.