North Korea Mega Thread

[GeorgiaModerate]

Oh Christ I'm going to be sick

Don't panic.  At present this is just talk.

[TheSaint250]

We need to let the North Koreans know that any direct attacks on civilians will result in some sort of retaliation (we kinda did already). Hopefully military bases in Guam are ready for anything.

[JA]

Oh Christ I'm going to be sick

Don't panic.  At present this is just talk.

Yeah, North Korea loves to talk a lot of trash. It's nothing new. I mean, that could always change, but so far I'd be more worried about American leadership getting an itchy trigger finger first.

[Matty]

This board is literally insane right now. North Korean is threatening Americans and you shameless people are still complaining about trump

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

Gotta love how our President keeps instigating a conflict with North Korea

[TheSaint250]

This board is literally insane right now. North Korean is threatening Americans and you shameless people are still complaining about trump

It never ends

[Tintrlvr]

We need to let the North Koreans know that any direct attacks on civilians will result in some sort of retaliation (we kinda did already). Hopefully military bases in Guam are ready for anything.

There are well over 100,000 civilians in Guam, American citizens. You think North Korea has the ability to tactically strike military bases but not civilian population centers over a distance of thousands of miles?

[TheSaint250]

We need to let the North Koreans know that any direct attacks on civilians will result in some sort of retaliation (we kinda did already). Hopefully military bases in Guam are ready for anything.

There are well over 100,000 civilians in Guam, American citizens.

I know that. That's why I said based on Guam should be ready to retaliate if an attack happens.

[Yank2133]

This board is literally insane right now. North Korean is threatening Americans and you shameless people are still complaining about trump

What part of he made it worse do you lackeys not understand?

[JA]

This board is literally insane right now. North Korean is threatening Americans and you shameless people are still complaining about trump

Yes, North Korea is threatening us and they have been for how many years now? A competent President would disregard their crying wolf and approach the issue through a process of attempted conflict resolution or at least ignore them. Instead, Trump has escalated the situation by engaging them in their absurd and childish antics. Now they've escalated their threats to threats of pre-emptive strikes on American territory. That's what people on this board are complaining about in regards to Trump.

[BudgieForce]

This board is literally insane right now. North Korean is threatening Americans and you shameless people are still complaining about trump

They're threatening Americans because of Trump...

[TheSaint250]

This board is literally insane right now. North Korean is threatening Americans and you shameless people are still complaining about trump

Yes, North Korea is threatening us and they have been for how many years now? A competent President would disregard their crying wolf and approach the issue through a process of attempted conflict resolution. Instead, Trump has escalated the situation by engaging them in their absurd and childish antics. Now they've escalated their threats to threats of pre-emptive strikes on American territory. That's what people on this board are complaining about in regards to Trump.

These strike threats are nothing new. 2013 was one of the worst that I remember.

Trump just essentially fought fire with fire by telling them to stop the threats.

This will most likely go away as usual

[Matty]

This board is literally insane right now. North Korean is threatening Americans and you shameless people are still complaining about trump

They're threatening Americans because of Trump...

Holy crap I am out of here for the time being. Just shut up you partisan hack. For 2 years we have sat by and let NK develop dangerous weapons and when they start threatening us it's because of trump?

This hours simply can't function as a news source when it is populated by people who are party hacks

[#TheShadowyAbyss]

This board is literally insane right now. North Korean is threatening Americans and you shameless people are still complaining about trump

They're threatening Americans because of Trump...

Holy crap I am out of here for the time being. Just shut up you partisan hack. For 2 years we have sat by and let NK develop dangerous weapons and when they start threatening us it's because of trump?

This hours simply can't function as a news source when it is populated by people who are party hacks

Enough of your utter trash marty, we're sick of it. There are better ways to handle this crises than to threaten an unstable regime and you know it.

[DrScholl]

Whether or not it goes away is not the point. The point is that the President of the United States should be the rational one and not play tit for tat with threats.

[Classic Conservative]

I'd rather we'd get rid of their nuclear weapons now before they actually launch them. It's just a matter of time at this point. Trump just sped it up, probably, I agree with his statement but it wasn't anything new. People are just overreacting as always. We can't let them launch a strike no matter what, and if they do I don't really care what happens to everybody in the country. We should've gotten rid of the reds in the 1950's but we didn't and we are living with the consequences. Pray to God, that the scourge of communism will disperse from this planet soon.

[Yank2133]

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No.

He basically said he will bomb the **** of them if they continue to make threats.

It is an utterly foolish statement because the US will not see it through.

[BudgieForce]

This board is literally insane right now. North Korean is threatening Americans and you shameless people are still complaining about trump

They're threatening Americans because of Trump...

Holy crap I am out of here for the time being. Just shut up you partisan hack. For 2 years we have sat by and let NK develop dangerous weapons and when they start threatening us it's because of trump?

This hours simply can't function as a news source when it is populated by people who are party hacks

No you dummy. Trump threatened North Korea with a nuclear attack so North Korea threatened Guam.

[TheSaint250]

From 2013:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/12/world/asia/north-korea-questions.html

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These threats of pre-emptive strikes happened under Obama as well. Nothing new.

[AN63093]

Given that the last three US administrations have all taken rather hard-line approaches toward North Korea, I've been wondering: if another candidate (Hillary, Sanders, Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, Carson, or Jeb) had won in 2016, would that person have taken an approach any different from Trump's current approach, and would the outcome have been any different?

Probably not.  I don't know that the phrase "fire and fury" would be used, and whoever was president would be less schizophrenic in the tweeting, but the basic geo-political picture would be about the same.

There are some long posts of mine in a back-and-forth with Beet on pg 4/5 in this thread, but we'd almost certainly be in the same position as we are today.  Kim's desire to accelerate the ICBM program pre-date the current administration and have little to do with who is in the White House.  Our response, likewise, has little to do with Trump, but rather, before this current round of increased tensions, our national interest was in mostly keeping the status quo while maintaining a forward presence in SK (this is actually preferred to re-unified Korea, and in fact, it was in every party's interest to maintain the status quo, I go into more detail why that was, on page 4 I think).

Since the tensions have gone up, however, and NK steps closer and closer to having a real delivery mechanism, our red-line has been somewhat vague, and our response as well, and that is because there isn't concensus right now among foreign policy analysts as to what it should be.  I posted a good article from the Atlantic on the main forum (in the "what happened if we bomb NK" thread), and it goes into all the current options.  There have been a lot of articles over the past few months on this same issue from the usual suspects (Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, etc.).  There are lots of options, from airstrikes, to surgical SOF operations in a 'decapitation' strike, to going all-out deploying BCTs full invasion style.  

To what degree we let NK continue in their ICBM development before launching a pre-emptive strike, and then what that strike consists of, are two things that do not have real consensus yet.

Of all the other candidates listed, I don't think we'd be in much a different place, except maybe with Sanders and Paul.  Consider that of all the candidates, Trump was arguably the least "interventionist."  Some of the other approaches Beet was suggesting on the previous pages in our debate (withdrawing our position in SK, ending exercises, offering security guarantees, treaties, etc), regardless if we think they are a good idea or not, I don't see any other candidate really doing them, since there'd be simply too much push back from the national security circles who consider those options unacceptable.  Maybe Paul would push the most, I dunno.

The tweeting probably wouldn't have happened, that may be true, but I don't put a whole lot into those tweets, to be honest.  McMaster, Mattis and Dunford are going to be primarily responsible for crafting the strategy and they'll be the most relevant people in Trump's ear in regards to this.  Especially since, before elected, I'm not sure Trump had much of an opinion about what to do with NK (other than perhaps, believing them getting an ICBM is not a good idea), and he almost certainly didn't have that sophisticated of a military course of action thought up in his mind, just because he doesn't have a background in national security.  But that's what McMaster, Mattis, and Dunford are for.

[JA]

This board is literally insane right now. North Korean is threatening Americans and you shameless people are still complaining about trump

They're threatening Americans because of Trump...

Holy crap I am out of here for the time being. Just shut up you partisan hack. For 2 years we have sat by and let NK develop dangerous weapons and when they start threatening us it's because of trump?

This hours simply can't function as a news source when it is populated by people who are party hacks

I'd rather we'd get rid of their nuclear weapons now before they actually launch them. It's just a matter of time at this point. Trump just sped it up, probably, I agree with his statement but it wasn't anything new. People are just overreacting as always. We can't let them launch a strike no matter what, and if they do I don't really care what happens to everybody in the country. We should've gotten rid of the reds in the 1950's but we didn't and we are living with the consequences. Pray to God, that the scourge of communism will disperse from this planet soon.

[Yank2133]

From 2013:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/12/world/asia/north-korea-questions.html

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These threats of pre-emptive strikes happened under Obama as well. Nothing new.

We know that.

So why the hell is Trump engaging them now?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

From 2013:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/12/world/asia/north-korea-questions.html

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These threats of pre-emptive strikes happened under Obama as well. Nothing new.

Except that Obama was, whatever his other faults, sane.

[Beet]

An intelligence estimate says that North Korea could have "up to 60" nuclear warheads. To me that says they don't even know for sure how many nukes North Korea has. So how could they all be taken out? And how do we know one won't get "lost" and be sold on the black market if the regime is collapsing?

The point is, this is an extremely dangerous situation and shouldn't be handled by emotions. As the more powerful party, we need to be the adults, and decisively deescalate the situation while strengthening our deterrent capabilities. Limiting military exercises would do a great deal to deescalate while costing nothing in terms of capabilities.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

From 2013:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/12/world/asia/north-korea-questions.html

You must be logged in to read this quote.

These threats of pre-emptive strikes happened under Obama as well. Nothing new.

We know that.

So why the hell is Trump engaging them now?

Trump's Razor: because he's a petty fool who is barely qualified to play President of the United States in a SyFy made-for-tv movie.