North Korea Mega Thread

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

"Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/911789314169823232

And Rocket Man’s thoughts are of attacking the US.

Nah, North Korea won't start a war it can't win.  Kim Jong-Un is behaving like a rational actor in the sense that dictatorships which gave up their WMD programs (ex: Saddam, Qaddafi, etc) were ultimately overthrown with military intervention by the West.  Iran and Syria kept theirs and both regimes are still in power.  So if you're Kim Jong-Un, the logical thing is to keep your nuclear weapons program going and adjust your saber-rattling to whatever volume is necessary to match the West's tone.  Honestly, the risk of North Korea pre-emptively attack the U.S. or any of our regional allies is negligible at most.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

"Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!"
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/911789314169823232

And Rocket Man’s thoughts are of attacking the US.

Nah, North Korea won't start a war it can't win.  Kim Jong-Un is behaving like a rational actor in the sense that dictatorships which gave up their WMD programs (ex: Saddam, Qaddafi, etc) were ultimately overthrown with military intervention by the West.  Iran and Syria kept theirs and both regimes are still in power.  So if you're Kim Jong-Un, the logical thing is to keep your nuclear weapons program going and adjust your saber-rattling to whatever volume is necessary to match the West's tone.  Honestly, the risk of North Korea pre-emptively attack the U.S. or any of our regional allies is negligible at most.

I agree with you on that. He probably won’t but that’s probably what he would like to do.

And I'd like $100 million, but that ain't happening any time soon either

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Russia Provides New Internet Connection to North Korea

"A major Russian telecommunications company appears to have begun providing an Internet connection to North Korea. The new link supplements one from China and will provide back-up to Pyongyang at a time the US government is reportedly attacking its Internet infrastructure and pressuring China to end all business with North Korea."

http://www.38north.org/2017/10/mwilliams100117/

Blaming Russia for the Democratic party sucking was sure a brilliant move here.

Obvious troll is obvious

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Rumors of a launch and/or above ground nuke test for possibly the 18th.

NK rejects diplomacy with the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkKZZ3ckbwo

I mean, let's look at the third-world dictatorships widely condemned for their WMD programs.  Gaddafi and Saddam ended their WMD programs and were overthrown due to U.S./western military action.  Iran negotiated with us, kept their end of the deal, and we broke a treaty we'd made with them less than a year ago for literally no reason.  In other words, we proved that America can no longer be trusted to honor it's treaty obligations even if the other country does everything it agreed to do.  Now let's look at Assad who not only refused to abandon his WMD program, but gassed his own people after the U.S. basically threatened him with military action if he did so.  Assad is still going strong and now has a superpower (Russia) backing him while the U.S. has simply washed its hands of the whole conflict. 

If you're a rational actor in Kim Jong-Un's position, the logical thing for you to do is to refuse to even negotiate about your WMD program and bet that you can either keep the game of chicken going until Trump loses in 2020 or simply scare Americans badly enough with your saber-rattling that war of any sort with North Korea is politically unfeasible for Trump's administration.  Honestly, I think Kim Jong-Un is far more of a rational actor than Trump.  Kelly, Mattis, etc are rational actors, but Trump clearly isn't.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Implication of the amendment to executive order 13223?

Worth keeping an eye on, but we’ll see... that USA Today article suggested the AF shortage had been ongoing for some time

It's the AF shortage but could also be used in the case of war for all branches. Was talking about this with some retired officers yesterday. The thing is that if war were to occur, it would be a lot of quick and massive strikes using assets in theater and the surge of personnel really wouldn't be necessary unless we invade NK which is a non-starter to China.

So they are going to start a war while ruling out invading the North before it even starts? What if invading the North becomes the best military option to save our troops and/or civilians? This is a huge self-handicap.

Don't worry! Invading Afghanistan back after 9/11 was done with lots of airpower and had hardly any non-local troops on the ground, and look how well that turned out! And that was with Bush and his crew. Imagine the difference with Trump in charge!

<goes and vomits>

That's not really the best example, since invading Afghanistan after 9/11 was pretty obviously the right thing to do.  It'd have been beyond batsh!t insane not to have done so.