Simple Question of International Import

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

What are the odds that this gets a LOT worse by the traditional spring time offensive season when a young general's fancy turns to invasion?

Brief timeline:

North Korea is accused of torpedoing a South Korean warship.

South Korea fires at North Korean fishing boats crossing the maritime border North Korea refuses to recognize.

North Korea is revealed to have highly modern facilities for nuclear material enrichment.

Not to mention, North Korea is facing the challenge of passing along the regime to a third generation of the Kim family.

North Korea is known for rattling its sabre and demanding to have attention paid to it when it is being ignored, but this is looking like a very different than recent years -- South Korea really has to retaliate...and half of South Korea's population lives in the Seoul metropolitan area within artillery range of the DMZ.

So a question -- is North Korea suicidal or are they betting that this behavior can get them some more winter grain shipments?

Comments

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

North Korea won't do anything because that would be going against China's interests and they know that China, unlike the US, has no scruples about killing every single one of them. No one will be wringing their hands about civilian casualties and international opinion in Beijing.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

Yeah, those Chinese are just subhuman. Only the specifically Western expression of political violence and genocide actually has within it a core of respect for human dignity.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That's not what he said. He said China's a dictatorship and like in the USSR when it invaded Afghanistan prior to Glasnost they really have no means to tell what's true or untrue about their invasion.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

"China, unlike the US, has no scruples about killing every single one of them."

You chauvinists have a unique penchant for completely disregarding the substance of your arguments.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think that if you aren't aware that the PRC is quite willing to use strategic bombing same as the West does to prevent a major refugee crisis that it knows is inevitable you obviously haven't paid attention to how the Chinese state solidifies its power. Tienanmen Square is the rule there, not the exception.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

+1

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

That doesn't make China worse than the US, though. The US will use the same tactics when it feels they are necessary. That was the issue at stake - we both know that China is a vile totalitarian regime.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

The fact that we have not placed automated gun towers on the US Mexican border shows just how false this statement is.

The US is far from a saint but in the last 40 years it has grown very squeamish about civilian casualties on either side and clearly does not have the stomach to actively commit genocide even on a small scale any longer.

If there ever is a WW3 you can rest assured that there will be no more Tokyo's or Dresden's.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

Vietnam and Pakistan are around the upper and lower limits of your time frame, and they both represent an explicit disregard for civilian casualties, coupled with extensive, civilian-targeted bombind campaigns.

I'm not sure what makes you think the Mexican border is the one measurable example here, though. If that were the case, we could just as readily measure China's lack of aggression towards N Korea and call it a day.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

He's naive I'll admit that, but then in any case if a war actually starts Seoul will be destroyed and the current economic recovery, limited as it is, gets a major setback. That's one elephant in the room nobody's mentioning here if North Korea decides to find its fitting place to die.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Has it? Civilian casualties are inevitable these days in a war. Sherman's maxim rings truer than ever, and it's one reason that wars need a damned good reason to start in the first place. Starting one for shits and giggles the way Bush did with Iraq is by the converse *un*forgivable for just that reason. Modern firepower is too deadly to be used in senseless wars. By the same token, it's something that applies to *all* combatants be they state or non-state. Ordinarily I loathe Curtis LeMay but he was right when he said all war is immoral.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

The fact that we have not placed automated gun towers on the US Mexican border shows just how false this statement is.

China does not place automated gun towers on its borders, either.

The US is far from a saint but in the last 40 years it has grown very squeamish about civilian casualties on either side and clearly does not have the stomach to actively commit genocide even on a small scale any longer.

But if the comparison is China, the US has still killed more civilians (in war).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And your point is what, exactly? That's modern war at its heart and has been since the March to the Sea. Sure, the USA is cruel in war, but then war is cruelty and it cannot be refined.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Who said they were subhuman? If the NorKs plunge the peninsula into war and threaten even nuclear war, then China will squash them like a bug. That seems to me to be supremely human. What has been subhuman is allowing North Korea to totter along in its increasingly sclerotic lunacy as a full on totalitarian nightmare. That inhumanity can be shared out among the major powers to various degrees.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The problem is that North Korea holds Seoul hostage, and any war will see Seoul, where the great majority of South Koreans live, wiped out by sheer Dakka even though the Dakka's very, very old, 50 years of accumulating it is too much for the USA and ROK to negate. Faced with the abyss of an economic catastrophe on the grand or the small powers, as you said the tendency to immorality took over among the major powers.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

As with most huge, monstrous and deadly international conundrums, dodging the tough issues just make things worse.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And as with most societies around the world, the PRC's leaders prefer to ignore them until the point of no return is reached. And any attempt to actually integrate North Korea into South Korea would be a lot more painful than integrating East Germany into West Germany was.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

At this point the PRC and the ROK have to weigh the pain of integrating DPRK on their terms versus allowing the DPRK to integrate itself on its own chaotic terms.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They've needed to do that well before this point, IMHO.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

+1

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

I don't really disagree with your expanded analysis here. What I take issue with is your characterization of China as "unique" from the US in disinterest in civilian life, and extending that to policy production.

For one thing, you assume a democratic model in both nations (or at least in the US, with your "uninterested" subject in China being the leaders who "wont be hand wringing"). But I don't think that liberal hand-wringing has done shit in the US. And the recent history of the US and its campaigns prove that bombing civilians and supporting Genocide are valid options.

I think you're right that the US has no political capital to be the invader in N. Korea. But this has very little to do with any difference in the relative treatment of human dignity, and everything to do with the particular characteristics of the region, its history, and the history of the US in the region.

[existentme.livejournal.com]

Lol, excellent./

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Would this not suggest that China has approved, or at the very least, acquiesced, to the current situation? This latest incident comes at a time when the United States and China are butting heads over currency policies and after the Democrats have suffered election reversals. This issue will distract and embarrass the United States and its allies in the region, possibly resulting in a new, humiliating round of appeasement toward North Korea. As long as the situation doesn't get out of hand, China stands to gain from it.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

China's involvement with N Korea is vague and China appears - outwardly - to have little control over the regime. But I think a lot of these political maneuvers are done in collaboration with China, if not to cause them, to schedule them around appropriate time-lines in the furtherance of providing value for both regimes.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I don't suggest anything. I assert it as an obvious fact. North Korea's existence is wholly predicated on PRC's complicity and whatever North Korea does is with the tacit approval of Beijing. As long as the situation doesn't get out of hand is, of course, the sticky question.