My 2 cents, but one of the bigger developments in the NK containment strategy is getting China on board. Having China sign off on the latest round of sanctions was huge imo. Realistically the best chance of ever disarming NK, or at least making them less crazy, is having China use their influence as NK largest trading partner and supporter.
My 2 cents, but one of the bigger developments in the NK containment strategy is getting China on board. Having China sign off on the latest round of sanctions was huge imo. Realistically the best chance of ever disarming NK, or at least making them less crazy, is having China use their influence as NK largest trading partner and supporter.
LChoy
China always signs off (since 2006), they just don't enforce it. They sneakily help North Korea get around it. Fake flags, hiding stuff in cargos, etc...
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NK ruling party has nothing to win by disarming, and sanctions only affect the part of the population that doesn't get a say in anything anyway.
If you want to defuse the situation, you'd have to change the situation inside NK. More sanctions are not the way to do that, that's just fiddling with the status quo. Quite the opposite, what you'd want is a lot more trade. Offer chances for personal riches for the elite in exchange for making North Korea part of the global economy. Make them want to travel. Get the living standards to rise.
Rising living standards would change the power dynamics inside the country and inevitably expose the general NK population to the global entertainment culture, which in turn would break the hold government propaganda has over the population.Desire for western life style is what destroyed soviet systems one by one. This is what capitalism is really good at.
The threat of sanctions would also be a lot more powerful if North Korean economy would be more entwined with the global economy. People at the top would have a lot more to lose.
Trying to strangle North Korea with sanctions until it collapses is a strategy which would inevitably bring chaos. It's a big reason why China doesn't want that to happen, as it would be chaos on their borders. There's also a huge risk that if threatened with internal the government would start a war in an effort to unify the country.
Offer an appealing way out for the people on top. Let the next generation of the Kim dynasty become capitalist swine that own half the country instead of ruling the country with an army. It's a lot safer.
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NK ruling party has nothing to win by disarming, and sanctions only affect the part of the population that doesn't get a say in anything anyway.
If you want to defuse the situation, you'd have to change the situation inside NK. More sanctions are not the way to do that, that's just fiddling with the status quo. Quite the opposite, what you'd want is a lot more trade. Offer chances for personal riches for the elite in exchange for making North Korea part of the global economy. Make them want to travel. Get the living standards to rise.
Rising living standards would change the power dynamics inside the country and inevitably expose the general NK population to the global entertainment culture, which in turn would break the hold government propaganda has over the population.Desire for western life style is what destroyed soviet systems one by one. This is what capitalism is really good at.
The threat of sanctions would also be a lot more powerful if North Korean economy would be more entwined with the global economy. People at the top would have a lot more to lose.
Trying to strangle North Korea with sanctions until it collapses is a strategy which would inevitably bring chaos. It's a big reason why China doesn't want that to happen, as it would be chaos on their borders. There's also a huge risk that if threatened with internal the government would start a war in an effort to unify the country.
Offer an appealing way out for the people on top. Let the next generation of the Kim dynasty become capitalist swine that own half the country instead of ruling the country with an army. It's a lot safer.
Frankly I don't think this would work. The last thing that they would want is for North Korean people to become self sustaining or even a little bit satisfied or not struggling day to day to even find something to eat.
By keeping people hungry and endlessly laboring, they can't and won't be able to rise up and demand any kind of change.
By being able to buy people off with very little to inform on their family members or neighbors they can keep the fear of power in line with less then they would have to do then if people were well fed and somewhat satisfied.
There's also the narrative that they use that the people have it good compared to the other nations of the world thanks to the Kims. So if you suddenly opened things up to trade that illusion is shattered. If suddenly markets were filled with goods from the West, then that nebulous area over the fence isn't as badly off as we thought.
On top of it, all of the trade would be government controlled which means that all of that money would go towards arms, and their internal intelligence agencies and you would probably get a even more regressive and corrupt government while the people wouldn't benefit.
This isn't some benevolent leadership cult that wants better for their people, they barely see the people as anything above disposable labor and disposable troops that are a threat to the leadership.
The best way for this to work is for the Chinese to suborn the Internal security services to work for them, and possibly throw a coupe party where they kill every last Kim family member and friend including the ones on top of the security apparatus and gut the senior leadership of their military who have benefited greatly from Kim the Younger.
However having the Intelligence and security apparatus taking power might make it even more of a hermit kingdom fueled by paranoia then it is now.
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How about just putting dprk on ignore? Stopping news coverage. Stop responding. Sanction them and forget about it. They're never going to do anything.
I'm not sure that I agree.
Ignoring North Korea may very well provoke them even more, as their leadership will act-out in an attempt to retain/gain attention, much like a toddler.
But unlike a toddler who will, eventually, tire themselves out from all of the screaming and physical exertions, I think that North Korea would continually undertake more provocative actions, including firing off a missile and having it hit, whether intentionally or not, some remote US territory (say, Guam...).
And then what should the US do?
Simply accept a missile strike from an unstable regime, shrug, and say "nothing to see here"? I rather doubt it.
At some point, North Korea is going to poke the bear just a bit too hard, and the bear should, and will, bite back.
And having a North Korea missile land on any US lands (including any portion of the ocean within its jurisdiction) would qualify, in my view, as reason enough to annihilate North Korea.
I can't help but appreciate the audacity of this tweet considering his lazy ass did nothing to help get anything done so far, and he's on vacation while tweeting this.
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It's a pretty clear that he's responding to McConnell's comments a few days ago,
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Originally Posted by Mitch McConnell
Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before. I think he had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process. Part of the reason I think people think we're under-performing is because of too many artificial deadlines unrelated to the reality of the legislature which may have not been understood.
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McConnell is correct in identifying Trump's lack of understanding on legislative protocol and checks and balances. I am just not sure he is the right guy to lecture anyone on, you know, legislative protocol and checks and balances.
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The US always thought that North Korea would collapse after 1990 like East Germany did. But they underestimated nationalism. They underestimated it with North Vietnam too. East Germany was a made up country with no history. North Koreans view their country as the legitimate/historical Korea and they view South Korea as the US-backed made up illegitimate country. The US is controlling and corrupting the people down south! We need to save them!
And they are not wrong or brainwashed. Even in the Korean language, North Korea is called Choson and South Korea Daehan. Choson is the historical term for Korea dating back to the mongols while Daehan is a made up word after the 1950 partition.
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Oh, they're definitely brainwashed. It's not hard to brainwash people, but it's incredibly easy where you have total state control over the media. Hell, even in a country with total press freedom, you have millions of people who willingly consume propaganda to the point that they think Donald Trump won the popular vote, despite easy access to accurate information debunking that narrative. Imagine if all you had was news networks saying exactly what the administration wanted the people to hear. Of course they're brainwashed.
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There were tougher sanctions passed by the UN recently. And yes Trump is doing it louder but I want to see if North Korea threatens more, will those sanctions stick this time or will the regime still find a way to slip around them.
I don't think it really matters, even if the sanctions were fully enforced it wouldn't dissuade them from building their weapons. I don't think unrest from shortages will happen when they see him as a god.
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I don't think it really matters, even if the sanctions were fully enforced it wouldn't dissuade them from building their weapons. I don't think unrest from shortages will happen when they see him as a god.
It really depends on the effect of the sanctions. When the North Korean people were starving in the 1990's owing largely to drought, the "government" had to effectively allow a sort of unofficial capitalism in the form of the black market to take hold, in order to avoid catastrophe.
So if you squeezed tight enough, it's possible that the people would revolt. There are two wrinkles there. One, it's pretty easy to galvanize your people against a foreign oppressor like the USA if they're actually the ones causing you to go hungry. Two, the international community is understandably hesitant to exert pressure on the North Korean government by causing its citizens to suffer and die.
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Trump says he's drafting up paperwork to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency. The task force actually came up with some sound proposals for what needs to be done, but I fully expect this to get totally bungled. I expect him to latch onto the 'fund more research for non-opioid painkillers' recommendation, package it as a massive handout to pharmaceuticals, and call it a day.
The problem with uttering military threats against North Korea is that there is no military option.
If there was a military option to deal with North Korea it would've been freakin' used at some point in the last 50 years. The most militaristic nation on Earth is not going to just sit on a military solution to an antagonistic foreign power that threatens an ally, it just makes no sense.
The people that understand this the most ARE the North Koreans. Trump is playing poker with his cards facing the wrong way.
I find it somewhat concerning that I actually agree with Trump's approach on this one. At some point somebody needs to change the rhetoric that has only allowed the country to strengthen both its capabilities and it's resolve over the last several decades. People need to stop being hypersensitive to anything even slightly assertive - this is the country that is violating human rights at will, publishing threatening propaganda videos for all to see and shooting nuclear capable misses into international waters.
The N. Korean dictatorship is never going to risk being obliterated to simply launch one or two ICBM's that would be destroyed long before reaching their intended targets. The problem is that sooner or later one of these 'test' launches is going to go wrong and actually smack into Japan or Guam and we're going to have a full on conflict whether anyone is ready for it or not.
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Last edited by Hot_Flatus; 08-10-2017 at 02:40 PM.
I find it somewhat concerning that I actually agree with Trump's approach on this one. At some point somebody needs to change the rhetoric that has only allowed the country to strengthen both its capabilities and it's resolve over the last several decades. People need to stop being hypersensitive to anything even slightly assertive - this is the country that is violating human rights at will, publishing threatening propaganda videos for all to see and shooting nuclear capable misses into international waters.
The N. Korean dictatorship is never going to risk being obliterated to simply launch one or two ICBM's that would be destroyed long before reaching their intended targets. The problem is that sooner or later one of these 'test' launches is going to go wrong and actually smack into Japan or Guam and we're going to have a full on conflict whether anyone is ready for it or not.
This isn't exactly a new approach though. Remember W and his "Axis of Evil"? N.Korea has been under threat, either real or imagined, for decades. They understand that Trump is bluffing and it's only strengthening their resolve. I'm not 100% sure what the solution to the North Korea problem is but I'm 100% sure "Fire and Fury" isn't it.
