The Korean Dilemma

[citanon]

I can well understand China's reluctance to further pressure North Korea. China remembers well the situation when China itself developed nuclear weapons. Arguably back then the country was in a far worse state economically than NK is today, yet despite enormous pressure from the USSR China went ahead with acquiring the full arsenal anyways.

Putin stated over the weekend that the Norks would "eat grass" and still get the bomb. He's absolutely right. China did, literally, that.

Both of these sets of leaders understand that economic and diplomatic pressure, no matter how great, would not stop the North, but this lesson from history has been seemingly forgotten in the West.

[Oracle]

There is no Korean dilema. It's the failure of the successive governments of the US, and Chinese duplicity. I am not bringing in the UK and EU, because lately these countries are more concerned about human rights and climate change than do anything serious on the world stage.

NK please don't test a nuke. Nuke tested. NK, please, please do not test a nuke again. Nuke tested again. NK, we'll put sanctions and China please help. Nuke tested again. This is not the way to treat a rouge country. If Irans' nuke program was taken on an urgent basis, why not NKs? Because of Chinese assurance? Pak, China have been making a fool of the US administration for decades, so much that it's not even funny anymore.

Without spreading further afield, estimates of casualties in case hostilities break out

100k on the korean peninsula within the first 24h
300k over the next three months

Who is going to wage war with those figures ?

How many people died in the WWs'? How many people die everyday from road accidents? Malaria kills more every year.

There will always be casulties. The issue here is the right thing to do. Is bombing Nk the right thing? Maybe, I don't know. But I know this, when US drops the first bomb in NK, thousands will flee towards the border to SK and China. There would be many deserters among NKs' military too. We talk about casulty figures, do we even know if those NKoreans would hold ground and fight? The NKs have dug trenches all through and would use heavy artillery, ok, but how many would stay and load those shells, and fight for Kim knowing fully well they would be obliterated by US firepower?

The articles which come up with these kind of casulty figures and other epic BS urging for restraint is Chinese propaganda. Even yesterday the Pak FO said they do not have any terrorists on their soil, while Pak DM said the opposite. And if NK refugees flood the Chinese border, let China deal with it. The Chinese have made a lot of money ripping countries around the globe. It's time for the Chinese to take some damn responsibility, when the source of this tension is China itself.

[Double Edge]

Some history

Why Won’t China Help With North Korea? Remember 1956 | China File | Jul 9 2017

By pressuring China, Trump is challenging Beijing’s claims to greatness. Suddenly, for the Chinese, the issue is not whether a nuclear North Korea threatens peace, but whether the U.S. threatens China’s standing as the big kid on the East Asian block.

The pressure will do nothing to solve the North Korean problem, though it will worsen the Sino-American rivalry, just as Mikoyan’s 1956 intervention contributed to the Sino-Soviet rivalry. Mao resented Mikoyan’s “patronizing tone,” and, when China’s relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated later that decade, accused him of speaking to China like a father would to a son. Xi may well draw similar conclusions about Trump.

With Beijing preoccupied with its aspirations for global leadership, the U.S. has no recourse but to consider direct engagement with Pyongyang to gain the leverage that China won’t provide. Better this than indulging in unrealistic hopes that Xi will sooner or later “help” America bring Kim to his senses. He just won’t.

When's that hamburger date happening

[Double Edge]

Looking at this from China's pov and i find things i was unaware of. Thinking China's most successful proxy. Where did it all go wrong

North Korea Nuclear Test Puts Pressure on China and Undercuts Xi | NYT | Sept 03 2017

The confluence of North Korea’s nuclear testing and Mr. Xi’s important public appearances is not a coincidence, analysts said. It is intended to show that Mr. Kim, the leader of a small, rogue neighboring state, can diminish Mr. Xi’s power and prestige as president of China, they said. In fact, some analysts contended that the latest test may have been primarily aimed at pressuring Mr. Xi, not President Trump.

Mr. Kim has timed his nuclear tests and missile launches with exquisite precision, apparently trying to create maximum embarrassment for China. And on Sunday, a gathering in southeast China of leaders from Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa, members of the so-called BRICS group, was immediately overshadowed by news of the test, which shook dwellings in China and revived fears of nuclear contamination in the country’s northeast region.

“Kim knows that Xi has the real power to affect the calculus in Washington,” said Peter Hayes, the director of the Nautilus Institute, a research group that specializes in North Korea. “He’s putting pressure on China to say to Trump: ‘You have to sit down with Kim Jong-un.’”

What Mr. Kim wants most, Mr. Hayes said, is talks with Washington that the North Korean leader hopes will result in a deal to reduce American troops in South Korea and leave him with nuclear weapons. And in Mr. Kim’s calculation, China has the influence to make that negotiation happen.

And washington wants something else from Xi

Even the North’s claim that the weapon detonated was a hydrogen bomb that could be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile would probably not sway Mr. Xi, they said.

“This sixth nuclear test should force China to do something radical; this will be a political test,” said Cheng Xiaohe, a nuclear expert at Renmin University. “But the mood is not moving that way.”

The biggest concern for China’s leadership is the possibility of North Korea turning on China, the country’s only ally. “If cornered, North Korea could take military action against China, given the relationship has reached a historic low,” Mr. Zhao said.

There were also some doubts whether severing oil supplies would make much a huge difference to the North Korean regime. “The economic effects will be substantial but not regime crippling,” said Mr. Hayes of the Nautilus Institute, which specializes in the North’s energy needs. The hardships, he said, would be most felt by ordinary people, with less food getting to market and fewer people able to travel between cities in buses.

The North’s army has oil stockpiles for routine non-wartime use for at least a year, Mr. Hayes said. “They can last for about a month before they run out of fuel in wartime, at best; likely much earlier,” he said.

North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal Threatens China’s Path to Power | NYT | Sept 05 2017

The Trump administration has bet on China to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, shunning talks with Mr. Kim and gambling that Beijing can be persuaded to use its economic leverage over the North to rein it in.

But in doing so, the White House may be misreading the complexity of China’s relationship with North Korea, one that successive generations of Chinese leaders have struggled to manage.

There is growing resentment against Mr. Kim inside China, both in the general public and the policy establishment. China keeps North Korea running with oil shipments and accounts for almost all its foreign trade. But to many Chinese, the young leader seems ungrateful.

A three-day academic seminar in Shanghai last month brought together some critics, who question North Korea’s value to Beijing as a strategic buffer against South Korea and Japan — and warn that the North could prompt them to develop nuclear weapons of their own.

“The cost is to continue to alienate Japan, enrage the United States and irritate South Korea,” said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University. “If Japan and South Korea feel forced to go for radical options like nuclear weapons, it will badly affect regional diplomacy.”

The spread of nuclear weapons, he added, would thrust China into “a new Cold War” in Asia, perhaps with a beefed-up American military presence. That would frustrate Beijing’s ambitions for regional supremacy while also leaving it vulnerable to being labeled an enabler of nuclear proliferation, tarnishing its international reputation.

“A balance of mutually assured destruction in Northeast Asia will not be a satisfactory situation for anyone,” said Bilahari Kausikan, a former foreign secretary for Singapore. “But it will not necessarily be unstable, and it may be of some small consolation to Washington, Tokyo and Seoul that the implications for Beijing are somewhat worse.”

President Xi Jinping is said to be aware of such risks and to have privately expressed disdain for Mr. Kim.

But like his predecessors, he has resisted punishing sanctions that might cause North Korea’s collapse and lead to a destabilizing war on its border, a refugee crisis in China’s economically vulnerable northeast, or a unified Korean Peninsula controlled by American forces.

All these possibilities could pose as much a problem for China’s plans for ascendancy in Asia as an arms race in the region. And if North Korea somehow survived, it would remain on China’s border, angry and aggrieved.

From Mr. Xi’s perspective, a hostile neighbor armed with nuclear weapons may be the worst outcome.

[Amled]

Great to have you back Sir. Hope you can pop in now and again on those good days.

Ditto

[Bigfella]

Great to have you back Sir. Hope you can pop in now and again on those good days.

[Officer of Engineers]

hope your health is fine.

Good days and bad days. More bad than good lately.

I suspect the NK will collapse to a combination of psyops and naked force.Just bomb them with canned food and they'll change sides.

On the other hand,I've seen a Nork martial artist that cried his tears out when Fatty's daddy passed out.He was safe from any watching eye,having escaped somehow to the beloved Motherland.But the reflex was so ingrained in him he still did the ritual.

The good guys need to really bomb the crap out of comms and that includes cutting wires between frontline troops and their Rgt,before showing them the goodies of capitalist life.I doubt is possible to find potential defectors before the shooting starts,so it will be exploiting the gaps with agility.

Looking things over, I don't think the NKs can do anything better than battalion level. Yeonpyeong was battery level.

Rendering the DMZ inconsquential is relatively easy for the SKs. Rendering the DMZ harmless is another matter. Despite the lack of training, the NKs still have one tactic that would be costly for the SKs to overcome, Die-In-Place. The SKs will have to take and kill each gun in order to silence them. Those guns may not be co-ordinated and hence relatively ineffective targetting solutions into Seoul but they will be firing into Seoul

[Toby]

Switzerland mostly.

Figures......

[snapper]

in what.......meglamania?

Switzerland mostly.

[Toby]

Some of Trumps twitter remarks are priceless

[S2]

"Kim Jong Un is smart. He has had a very expensive education."

You've been "whooshed". Your response was actually to a comment about Trump-not tiny Kim.

The Donald hurts America far more than the DPRK could by targeting those nations on that list.

[Toby]

Kim Jong Un is smart. He has had a very expensive education.

in what.......meglamania?

[hboGYT]

Par for the course by a mental midget... roll eyes

Kim Jong Un is smart. He has had a very expensive education.

[tbm3fan]

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41144687
You all better do as I say or I’ll shoot myself in the foot!!!

Par for the course by a mental midget... roll eyes

[Amled]

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41144687
You all better do as I say or I’ll shoot myself in the foot!!!