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What to do about North Korea?
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| Spacey Orange |
Unilateral dialogue? Sanctions? Military action?
The multiparty talks haven't worked (duh). The people are eating stone soup, what the hell are sanctions going to do? THe NK have the US by the balls and probably the best alternative is to talk to them unilaterally and consider a mutal security agreement. The present administration really fumbled this one. Yet one more reason to toss out the republicans from power. |
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| star-traveller |
Don't you think that as long as this problem existed everybody was trying do something everyday single day with it?
Maybe its worth just leave it as it is and do nothing ? at least for a while ?
I mean to stop all these flacky threats from the US or Japan and just live.
Do they (NK) harm anybody right now ? |
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| Audigy7 |
| quote: | Originally posted by star-traveller
Don't you think that as long as this problem existed everybody was trying do something everyday single day with it?
Maybe its worth just leave it as it is and do nothing ? at least for a while ?
I mean to stop all these flacky threats from the US or Japan and just live.
Do they (NK) harm anybody right now ? |
Did Hitler HARM anyone when he remilatarized the Rhineland in 1935? No, but if he'd been stopped then, he sure wouldn't have hurt anyone later on.
But as for what I think we should, I haven't yet decided. But, I think that sanctions aren't going to be effective. The only thing that sanctions will accomplish is to further hurt the North Korean people because the government will then have less resources to spare outside of their military program, which is really all they care about.
I'm also beginning to think that diplomacy isn't going to be effective in North Korea's case. Of all the summits and meetings so far, there really hasn't been much if any progress. Perhaps diplomacy would be effective if it was handled differently than the way the current administration is handling it? I can't quite say.
It's going to be interesting to see how this all pans out, regardless of the response. |
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| St_Andrew |
| China is the key. As soon as China is starting to put some serious pressure on NK something will happen. Good thing they seem to be "with us" this time. And war is out of question, not only because it would be insane but because it would actually be really really hard to win with their massive militairy forces. |
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| Renegade |
| quote: | Originally posted by St_Andrew
China is the key. As soon as China is starting to put some serious pressure on NK something will happen. Good thing they seem to be "with us" this time. And war is out of question, not only because it would be insane but because it would actually be really really hard to win with their massive militairy forces. |
More or less what I was going to say. Dialogue with the threat of sanctions, as toothless as it might seem, really is the only option at the moment. We need China onside for it to work and their reaction was positive:
| quote: | Beijing departed from its normal restraint in dealing with North Korea on Monday when it accused Pyongyang of "flagrantly" conducting a nuclear test in defiance of universal international opinion.
"The Chinese government is totally opposed to this act," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its Web site. "The Chinese government strongly demands that North Korea honor its commitments towards a non- nuclear Korean Peninsula and cease all actions that make the situation worse." |
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10...ws/security.php
This is a difficult situation with no obvious solution, but if there is a hope, it lies with the Chinese. |
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| Magnetonium |
Chinese are fed up with this regime already - NK has increased the tension and instability in the region that threatens Chinese interests. China must now pressure NK with sanctions and political pressure, I know its extreme, but - thats the only way.
And also the regime has to go. But then ask yourself this question - would a pro-American leader of NK make the region more stable? Certainly debatable, but China will as a result build up on arms and/or interfere, which can create another Korean war.
Basically North Korea needs a new leader. |
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| ShadoWolf |
| quote: | Kim Jong-Il's explosive mistake
National Post
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
There are two kinds of rogue dictators: the successful kind, who stay in office by playing major powers off against each other; and the failures, who overreach, unite the world against them and thereby summon the forces of regime change.
Until Monday, Kim Jong-Il seemed to fit into the first category. But things have now changed. As Con Coughlin of the Daily Telegraph notes, thanks to Pyongyang's underground nuclear test, "The world's leaders have finally found something on which they can all agree."
For the first time since North Korea's uranium enrichment program was discovered in 2002, we may now see a complete and crippling set of sanctions imposed on North Korea, and an end to the coddling provided by Russia, China and South Korea. In the best case scenario, the reaction to North Korea's belligerent provocation would be so strong that it would discourage North Korea's Middle Eastern counterpart, Iran, from going down the same route.
The civilized world now faces three choices in regard to North Korea -- none of them good, but one of them better than the rest.
The first option is a U.S.-led military strike against North Korean nuclear sites. Such an action would almost certainly unleash a catastrophic North Korean rocket and artillery attack against South Korea, incinerating whole neighbourhoods and plunging one of the world's largest economies into total chaos. Absent a direct North Korean attack on South Korea or one of its allies, this is not in the cards.
The second option is to appease North Korea by fulfilling the long shopping list it has provided the West in recent years -- including food, oil, uranium and security guarantees. Such an option would produce peace in the short-term but, like all other efforts at appeasement, would simply generate more extensive demands in the future. (Recall that Bill Clinton sought to buy off North Korea with the 1994 "Agreed Framework." But all that did was delay the inevitable for eight years.)
The final and best option is for the major powers with a stake in North Korea -- Russia, China, the United States, South Korea and Japan -- to jointly create a strategy for regime change in North Korea, including a plan for managing the massive humanitarian fallout that such regime change would bring.
Prior to Sunday's nuclear test, such co-operation would have been unthinkable: Russia, China and South Korea were all paralyzed by their fears about what a North Korean meltdown would bring. But things changed drastically this week, and a consensus may be possible.
Kim Jong-Il would have been wise to avoid taking this step: There's nothing like a nuclear explosion to focus the mind.
© National Post 2006 |
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| Purple |
| We should assasinate Kim Jong, no need to invade whole country and stuff.. just get him killed with one bullet from a North Korean itself (preferably a farmer from rural north korea, who is the victim of his rule and poverty) .. regime change will happen on its own ... |
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| metalgearsolid |
| We need to start a new war. This time instead of corporations, that build construction etc, making big bucks, it should be the gravedigger. Cuz their will be so many dead. |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by Purple
We should assasinate Kim Jong, no need to invade whole country and stuff.. just get him killed with one bullet from a North Korean itself (preferably a farmer from rural north korea, who is the victim of his rule and poverty) .. regime change will happen on its own ... |
I am leaning towards that too. A different leader will definitely change the retoric. Kim is an idiot, he wants to be strong and influential in the region (LOL!), and have massive military to protect against a possible South Korean / American invasion.
He is deeply mistaken in pursuing nuclear weapons. Why? Now the West will pursue him more, and China, Russia, Japan, and others will be forced to play a tougher game, because noone's happy with NK's selfish and self-defeating ambitions.
What North Korea should have done is instead ally itself more with China or Russia (like Russia/Venezuela relationship, or Russia/China), and these countries will help and support NK. Now, noone will support NK. Kim is ed. What's worse, is that his people are now going to suffer even more ... |
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| Sunsnail |
| quote: | Originally posted by Purple
We should assasinate Kim Jong, no need to invade whole country and stuff.. just get him killed with one bullet from a North Korean itself (preferably a farmer from rural north korea, who is the victim of his rule and poverty) .. regime change will happen on its own ... |
lol, they've probably been working on this for a while now anyway |
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| DJ Shibby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Purple
We should assasinate Kim Jong, no need to invade whole country and stuff.. just get him killed with one bullet from a North Korean itself (preferably a farmer from rural north korea, who is the victim of his rule and poverty) .. regime change will happen on its own ... |
North Koreans are fiercely nationalistic, just like any other human in any other country.
The United States has millions upon millions of people living in third world conditions and in trailer parks, but they're still nationalistic. Same deal with North Korea: they believe the bull they're fed by their leaders (whether it be because they're forced to, or a situation like in America where many people are jaded, apathetic, and ignorant).
China won't do anything about NK, because NK isn't going to be threatening China *yet*. NK is saying that they're building nukes solely because of the United States. This may be true, and I can understand why a country would be intimidated into doing so by the United States, or it may be a scapegoat, since no one likes the United States right now and it will give them a reason to build their nuclear arsenal with less worry than if their enemy had been a less common enemy and a more regional one.
Assassination is not an option; their country is CLOSED. Even if it was an option, you would only be replacing him with another just like him.
This is IF NK even detonated a nuke.
As of right now, I'm guessing that they are doing what they do best: bluffing.
If they're not bluffing, and they actually detonated a nuke, then the test must have failed. Even the cheapest uranium core would have caused a much greater magnitude of force and we would be able to roughly calculate its deterioration over distance to determine the power (in TNT/ton) of the weapon.
As of right now, all the data is saying that its no stronger than a stockpile of conventional weapons, and we'll have to wait and see if any gamma radiation is detected (not that we have good enough tools to do this from a distance and in secret...)
UPDATE:
"The U.S. believes North Korea tried to detonate a nuclear device and "something went wrong," a government official told CNN Tuesday."
There we go then. =) |
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