Forum: War With North Korea? What Would You Do?

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North Korea

Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the WoW! Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question: War With North Korea? What Would You Do?

Snoopy The Goon: If I may be allowed to speak up on the subject: I’ve always admired the famous “Speak softly, and carry a big stick” as a golden standard in the foreign policy.

Behavior of the current POTUS is so far from that standard, I dare say, that it opens a totally new vistas in the said policy.

The military option is sometimes inevitable, but I am hopeful that careful handling of that case, with a modicum of synchronization between US, China and Russia, could do the job without military option being inevitable.

Rob Miller: I tend to agree with President Trump on this one. He’s entirely correct that this has been bungled for the past 25 years by 3 awful presidents at a huge financial cost to the American people as well as a major national security risk. Few people talking about this realize how serious this situation is. And it simply can’t be kicked down the road any longer.

In the case of both Iran and North Korea, we’re talking about rogue regimes who brutalize their own people and are simply not rational actors, but instead are driven by their own ideology and ambitions. And that ideology and ambition, in both cases, does not include peace.

So what’s at stake? Aside from having nukes in the hands of unpredictable rogue regimes with no qualms about using them, there’s also the danger the problem metastasizing. North Korea has already sold nuclear technology to the Assad regime in Syria and to Iran. Does anyone remotely doubt they would sell it to ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusrah or other groups of that ilk for the right amount of cash? If you think we have a problem now, just wait until the Norks start peddling their nuclear wares in the market place. And the ransom demanded for not blowing up Chicago is a cool $20 billion, small bills only ala’ Barack Obama’s payoff to Iran.

Just for giggles, let’s recap the ‘solutions’ that have been tried:

Bribery and ‘diplomacy’ with the Kims hasn’t worked. It didn’t work with the ayatollahs either. Since such negotiations between vicious totalitarian governments and democracies hardly ever do, what a surprise eh? The result is almost always that the totalitarian government figures that the democracy lacks the spine and/or the power to do anything about the situation at hand, and keeps right on doing what its been doing. In fact, the usual reaction is to increase the aggression. You simply can’t make deals with unreasonable people who hold you in contempt.

Depending on someone else to handle the problem hasn’t worked. And it won’t.

Russia and China have been asked to deal with this situation. They can’t or won’t, take your pick. In Russia’s case, they have relatively few dealings with the Kims but a lot of dealings with Iran, and frankly, the Russiams need the money. Russia’s economy is in bad shape, and their top products for sale break down into three categories…energy in the form of oil or gas, various kinds of computer and nuclear technology and military weaponry.

China has a lot of dealings with the Norks. Some of that trade going toChina is in disgraceful items like human organs, narcotics, gold mined from the Kim’s gulags by slave labor and sex slaves for forced prostitution in China. More to the point, both the Chinese and the Russians like the idea of a nuclear armed pit bull on their borders who creates a distraction from their own nefarious doings.

The UN? Don’t make me laugh.

So the next step is probably a preemptive military operation, since I don’t see any of the above changing, and this can’t be left to fester..

So let’s examine this from a risk versus cost/benefit position:

“Russia and China will declare war! They said so!”

Ummm,no. For one thing, neither of them can afford it. Gazprom and the rest of Russia’s energy sector no longer have their monopoly over the pipelines to Europe. Aside from shipments of LPNG from other sources (including the U.S.) the price is way down, and another set of U.S. sanctions in the event of a war could shut them down completely. And there are also a lot of foreign suppliers for military hardware at competitive prices. Also, a war would involve Article 5 of NATO. Some of us may remember the times that various Soviet leaders threatened war over various causes. But being rational actors, they backed off whenever it really came down to it. Theywon’t go to war for the Kims.

China, for all the flashy military hardware they have is still very much a developing nation outside their more developed East Coast and adjacent regions. China has a huge economic bubble, the Renminbe is literally backed up by very little, and America remains their biggest customer and trade partner. Going to war would be economic suicide for China, and being rational actors, they realize that.

America could conceivably get along without Chinese imports. The Chinese economy would shrivel and collapse without access to American markets and other foreign markets affected by the accompanying sanctions war would bring.

The only thing that might drive China to hostilities would be a U.S. occupation of North Korea which shouldn’t be necessary. China has always been very sensitive about its ‘near abroad’ and most of its wars have been on its borders, especially in modern times, with Tibet being an exception.

“Oh. the humanity! think of all the casualties!”

Given a tough choice, I vastly prefer dead Norks to dead Americans. Had this been handled properly by the Clintons, George W. Bush or Obama, none of this would be necessary. As far as I’m concerned, any blood spilled is on their hands, particularly Bill Clinton’s. In terms of South Korean casualties, an EMP attack prior to bombing and taking out North Korea’s military and nuke facilities as well as any place we thought Kim was hiding would probably do a lot to lessen danger to people living in Seoul.

Benefits? Here’s one. Aside from freeing the North Korean people from a despicable despot, this would send a very beneficial message to bad actors like Iran that they’re not dealing with Obama and John Kerry anymore, And that there are consequences for bad behavior.

Dave Schuler: I’ll divide my response into three sections: what we should (or shouldn’t) do, what our objectives should be, and how we should proceed in the event of war.

We should not engage in preventive war against North Korea. If we were to do that, it would precipitate World War III and tens or hundreds of millions of Americans would be killed. The Chinese have said that if we attacked North Korea, they would enter into the war on NK’s side and I believe them.

However, they have also said that if North Korea attacks us, they’re on their own. I believe that, too. If North Korea attacks the U. S. or our interests or allies, we should respond with devastating force.

The objectives of our response should be:

1. Eliminate North Korea’s ability to attack us or produce nuclear weapons.
2. Prevent North Korea from attacking either South Korea or Japan.
3. Discourage other countries from producing their own nuclear weapons by debunking the belief that nuclear weapons provide them with enhanced security.
4. North Korean casualties should play no role in our calculus.

The way we should proceed is as follows. We should launch as stiff a cyberattack against North Korea as we can muster and, as closely to concurrently as we can manage, attack North Korea using an EMP attack. The tactical objectives of these moves would be to reduce the North’s ability respond.

As quickly thereafter as possible we should attack and destroy as many of North Korea’s nuclear development and testing sites and command and control facilities as we are able.

Under no account should we use any ground forces although they might follow after a safe interval had passed to assess the damage. The entire matter could be over in hours. The tally would be estimated at 25 million North Korean dead.

We should not wish for or seek such an action but we should be preparing ourselves mentally for it.

Well, there it is!

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the ‘net. Take from me, you won’t want to miss it.

White House Press Briefing (09/15/2017)

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Ambassador Nikki Haley, H. R. McMaster, North Korea, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, United Nations, White House press briefing

WoW! Forum:What Do you think of Trump’s handling Of North Korea?

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Donald Trump, North Korea

Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s Question: What Do you think of Trump’s handling Of North Korea ?

Don Surber: The United Nations (at our urging) has been at war with North Korea since 1950. This is a sign of failure by the politicians. Enter the amateur, Trump, to cut a deal.

China is using North Korea as a cudgel to beat us with over trade. China will rein in North Korea for a price. China – through North Korea — is aiding Iran in building its bomb.

The American elite are cool with this. But the American people are not.

Trump had Chairman Xi in for a meal at Mar a Lago in April. Between courses of the meal, he matter of factly bombed Syria.

Thus, China knows he’s no pushover. Look for Trump to prevail where the politicians could not.

Rob Miller: President Trump was left to deal with a great many problems created by his predecessor, especially when it comes to foreign policy and national security. North Korea is only one of them.One of the things about this that makes me really angry is the way the press, particularly the WAPO has exploited this situation, misrepresenting it as a brand new development (perhaps to get the bogus Trump Russia story off the front opages for awhile). The intelligence showing that the Norks had warheads small enough to fit on their ICBMs was first received by the White House in 2013, when a certain Barack Hussein Obama was president. He ignored it in favor of cranking out a few more vacations, improving his golf game, giving Iran a clear path to nuclear weapons on the American people’s dime and weaponizing US intel against his political enemies.

The rhetoric that has the press wetting their footy pajamas as well as Rex Tillerson and General Mattis’s more measured language aren’t addressed to Kim Jong-un. They’re addressed to China, and are classic ‘good cop/bad cop.

China created the Kim regime with the idea of having an aggressive pitbull on its borders they would control as a border guard and most importantly, as a distraction for the US when needed. They probably laughed and shook their heads in disbelief when Bill Clinton actually ended up financing North Korea’s nuclear program with money that was supposed to bribe them to end it! And the Russians, seeing how well it worked with China decided to do it themselves with Iran. Especially since Iran and North Korea were already trading illegal nuclear technology.

What the Chinese want is quiet and a return to the status quo. That’s exactly why they voted for the increased sanctions in the UN instead of vetoing them as a gesture, especially since they could always violate the sanctions anyway later if they need to.

What the President is telling them in no uncertain terms is that this scenario is inadequate, and if the Chinese don’t put this vicious junkyard dog to sleep, America will. An unsaid aside is that China’s economy being as vulnerable an intertwined with America’s as it is, both parties know that the China can’t afford a war, especially over Kim Jong-on

The central issue here is quite a simple one. Kim Jong-on, is a rogue actor like the Iranian regime. Both have dangerous toys they only were able to obtain because of three weak and dysfunctional presidents who allowed this to metastasize on their watch. Both regimes would happily sell nuclear weaponry to terrorist groups and the world’s bad actors without a qualm. Any solution that would allow them to hang on to nuclear weapons is no solution at all.

The short answer? President Trump, so far, is doing exactly what he should be doing in my opinion.

Patrick O’Hannigan: I don’t have a standard against which to measure President Trump’s handling of the situation in North Korea, but as a general rule, I think it’s better and more effective than the breathless reporting of crisis might suggest. Trump has talked tougher than Deep State operatives prefer, as Don Surber alluded to in his own answer to this question. Most of the U.S. media seems bent on a reporting ethos that amounts to “Let’s you and him fight,” and one side effect of that attitude is that it makes both Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump seem like a pair of crazies who deserve each other. That clumsy attempt at moral equivalence won’t withstand even a moment’s worth of fair-minded scrutiny, not least because Donald Trump, despite his outsize ego, was not raised to believe in his own divinity, whereas Kim Jong-un was. It’s also worth remembering that missile programs don’t bear fruit overnight, and Kim Jong-un has run North Korea since 2011.

All I have to back my own opinion is anecdotal evidence. But a caller to a local talk show early this week mentioned that his wife and daughter are both in South Korea, and they’ve told him that the South Korean press is not sounding apocalyptic. A local (North Carolina) TV station also carried network footage of an interview with some residents of Guam, including its governor, and found that Guamanians allegedly in the crosshairs of North Korean missiles do not seem to blame President Trump for “escalating tensions.” It’s only hard-left ideologues and “Status Quovians” who fault our president for what’s going on, deliberately forgetting what Barack Obama and Bill Clinton before him did to make the North Korean regime think it would only ever face sanctions from the United Nations. President Trump’s words (and simultaneous outreach to China) have at least as good a chance of curbing “Nork” saber-rattling as anything we’ve tried before.

Mike McDaniel: In any discussion of North Korea we have to keep in mind we have been at war with them for the last 64 years. The Korean War never ended, and we’ve been proceeding, haphazardly, under an armistice ever since, an armistice the North Koreans declared nullified in 2013. During those 64 years, we have honored the terms of the armistice. North Korea has not.

Some would suggest the armistice has been a success in that it has deterred a hot–all-out hostilities, shooting–war. By that limited measure, deterrence has worked, but it was based on three legs of a very wobbly stool: (1) We have been willing to accept unlimited covert and overt acts of war by the Norks, including: kidnapping, espionage, the murder of our, and our allie’s, soldiers and citizens, ransom schemes, counterfeiting, drug dealing, arms sales to terrorists and terror states, cybercrime, sinking of ships and the more or less constant shelling by artillery of other military and civilian assets. (2) The idea that deterrence works as long as the Norks have only conventional weapons, and old and rapidly aging conventional weapons at that. (3) Our willingness to do anything to avoid a hot war, including: allowing all of the acts of war mentioned in #1 with no meaningful reprisals, giving the Norks diplomatic cover for their aggressions, allowing them to build a vast communist gulag where their citizens are reduced to eating grass and tree bark for mere survival, and providing the Nork regime with the food, fuel, and money necessary to survive.

But we’ve imposed sanctions! Not enough, not of sufficient ferocity, and we’ve consistently mitigated any effects of sanctions by giving North Korea the goods and cash it needed to laugh at our sanctions. And now, our decades of appeasement and handing over billions have produced nuclear weapons, weapons we paid for. The North Koreans have proved, for 64 years, they cannot be deterred. With nukes in hand, the idea of deterrence is a dangerous, sick joke.

In Donald Trump we have a canny negotiator, and a man utterly result oriented. He determines what he wants, and does what is necessary to get it. His rhetoric is a refreshing change from the mealy-mouthed platitudes of Barack Obama. However, the danger is greater than most realize.

Ballistic missiles and gravity bombs are not the only way to deliver a nuclear weapon. Even a large, clumsy, WWII-tech weapon can be easily, covertly transported in a truck or ship, a danger we are not remotely prepared to defend against. There is every reason to believe they also have EMP weapons and are equally willing to use them. They are no less dangerous than nuclear weapons. In addition, the North Koreans have close ties with Iran and other terrorist states and organizations. They will sell them weapons of mass destruction. I’m sure, particularly with General Mattis as an advisor, Mr. Trump is aware of this, and of far more blood-curdling intelligence than we know.

Appeasement never worked, and it is now profoundly dangerous and unacceptable. All of our kicking the can down the road has brought us to the status quo. We have a simple choice: take out North Korea, or be willing to allow them to use nuclear weapons at times and places of their choosing. President Trump is willing to make that kind of hard choice, and the American public is behind him. The AINO press, Democrats and self-imagined elites never will be. One should never make the mistake of thinking they speak for anyone but themselves.

War is terrible, but there are worse things. Peace is not merely the absence of overt military conflict. Donald Trump understands this too. I pray when the time comes, Barack Obama has not so enervated our military we’ll suffer far more casualties than necessary.

Laura Rambeau Lee : The American policy towards North Korea has been one of “strategic patience” for decades, which brings us to the threat we face today. Reports are that Kim Jong Un has up to sixty nuclear weapons and now has the capability to launch long range missiles possibly containing miniaturized nukes which could hit our allies and even our west coast. He is threatening to launch four missiles to hit within twenty miles off the coast of Guam this week. What we have been doing has not worked and has only emboldened Kim Jong Un. His bullying and saber rattling is escalating. President Trump is meeting Kim Jong Un’s words with the same tough language. He must understand this new administration will be tougher than previous ones. He has seen that President Trump is willing to strike if necessary to send a message as he did with Syria in April after Bashar al-Assad launched a nerve gas attack on the rebel held town of Khan Sheikhoun.

We know for sure our policies in the past have not worked. We will soon see what happens with President Trump’s approach and if Kim Jong Un backs down on his threats. Dear Leader is crazy but I doubt he is suicidal.

Well, there it is!

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the ‘net. Take from me, you won’t want to miss it.

Forum: How Would You Fix The Problem Of North Korea?

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North Korea

Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question: How Would You Fix The Problem Of North Korea?

Don Surber: Not really sure what to do. I was in South Korea over Easter (Passover) when Matt Drudge had us on the brink of war. Nobody told the South Koreans who continued to do what they always do: build things and bow.

China buying more American coal from my home state of West Virginia could starve the North Koreans, but Kim Jong Un has years of blubber left and cares not about his people. Our proxy war with the Chinese is a bad tooth that occasionally aches.

Perhaps the South Koreans know what they are doing. I mean they are there are they not?

Rob Miller: I think there are a couple of solutions.

China has always used the Kims as pit bulls, with the idea of having them act up whenever a distraction for the West is needed. The problem now is the same one that occurs if you encourage a dog to be vicious. Eventually, the dog starts behaving that way on his own.

That’s pretty much where things are now. Kim Jong-um is doing this on his own without consulting China per se.

My preferred solution would be a secret protocol with Russia, China, The U.S. and perhaps South Korea based on the following principles:

1) The Kims and their cronies would be given a choice – to relocate to a pleasant asylum in China or to face total sanctions on everything from China and Russia. North Korea cannot feed itself, and is dependent on China for a great many things besides foodstuffs.

2) Korea would become a unified country…but would disavow any formal security treaties with the West although they would still be free to have commercial ties, etc. This is similar to the arrangement Finland had with the Soviets and now has with Russia. China has only ever fought wars on its ‘near abroad’, the lands bordering it.. A neutral Korea would give the Chinese confidence in the arrangement.

3) The Yong-biyon reactor would be deactivated along with all other nuclear facilities, and North Korea’s ballistic missile program would be ended. Technicians and inspectors from all 4 countries would oversee this.

The Chinese have already signaled that they’re getting tired of Kim’s antics and the necessity of U.S. anti-missiles THAAD batteries to counteract them. Given the vastly improved diplomatic climate created by President Trump and SecState Rex Tillerson, I think this is a definite win win for all concerned except the Kims. And frankly I don’t care about them at all.

The second solution is military. We would have to knock out North Korea’s nuke facilities, missile sites, air force and navy. An important part of that would be assuring the Chinese that we had no intention of moving U.S. forces beyond the DMZ.

In this scenario, it would also be important to kill off the Kims to slow up North Korea’s large conventional army. In a totalitarian regime like North Korea, military people in particular are reluctant to make that first move without orders from up high. That delay would prove extremely useful.

We would also have to be prepared to beef up our conventional forces at the DMZ and have our air power ready to strike if the North Korean army tried moving south.

There are a number of drawbacks to this solution, the most poignant being the amount of civilian casualties involved. But given a choice between civilian casualties here and civilian casualties there, I’d reluctantly say ‘there.’

Laura Rambeau Lee : The only way the North Korean problem can be fixed would be to eliminate Kim Jong-un. He has kept his country and the people so isolated and so indoctrinated it seems unlikely that anyone within the country would stage a coup. His mental instability and notorious purges and executions of his enemies keep the population in fear and paralyzed to act. Perhaps our best hope at this point is to engage China to put economic pressure on the Supreme Leader to stop his increasingly aggressive actions in missile testing and nuclear threats. If that fails and he continues to saber rattle we will have no option but to act militarily to protect our allies South Korea and Japan from his warmongering.

Mike McDaniel: NOTE: I’m writing this at 0430 Tuesday morning, having just arrived home after an 18 hour drive, so I missed the Monday deadline. This one will be brief. There are only two options: Apply the usual sanctions and make the usual stern pronouncements. In this case, we end up waiting until Kim dies, in the hope whoever replaces him will not be a lunatic Communist and might actually give a damn about his people. In the meantime, Kim will lob some artillery shells here and there, sink the occasional South Korean military vessel, and in general behave like an insane dictator. The danger here is if he is pressed too hard–and Mr. Trump just may do that–he may try to use more indiscriminate military force than usual on the theory the Americans will do what they’ve always done: give the Norks more money and engage in some tongue clucking. This might–might–be a serious miscalculation with Trump in the White House.

The other danger is that Kim’s nuclear weapons have dramatically changed the status quo.

The second option is “surgical” but overwhelming military strikes to so badly damage the Nork military capability any war will be brief and minimize civilian casualties. This would take some time to build up our forces to the necessary levels. Absent waiting generations in the hope of sane leadership in the Hermit Kingdom, that’s the only other option. Take out their nukes, or face the real possibility they’ll use them, or provide them to lunatics that will.

The rest, including China, is details.

Well, there it is!

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere. Take from me, you won’t want to miss it.

It Was A Ransom!

Tags

American prisoners, iran, Iran nuclear arms deal, North Korea, Obama Administration, ransom

 

While we are now learning that the United States paid a ransom to get our prisoners back, I have no doubt that Barack Obama would prefer to label it the “redistribution of wealth.”
Independent Sentinel by S. Noble

The U.S. Treasury Department wired the money to Iran around the same time its theocratic government allowed three American prisoners to fly out of Tehran on Sunday aboard a Dassault Falcon jet owned by the Swiss air force. The prisoner swap also involved freedom for two other Americans held in Iran as well as for seven Iranians charged or convicted by the U.S. and another 21 under investigation.

“Based on an approval of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and the overall interests of the Islamic Republic, four Iranian prisoners with dual-nationality were freed today within the framework of a prisoner swap deal,” the office of the Tehran prosecutor said.

Brigadier General Hassan Naqdi, the head of the Iranian regime’s notorious Basij militia, claimed on Wednesday that Iran had received $1.7 billion from the U.S. in exchange for the release of imprisoned Americans.

Immediately after, an American student from the University of Virginia was arrested in North Korea […]

Continue Reading — It Was A Ransom!

Go figure, North Korea is never one to be left out. Kim Jong-un wants some of the action as well.

 

 

North Korea is purging the disabled, mentally ill.

Tags

Atrocities, Human Rights violations, North Korea

 

Ghastly tales are surfacing from North Korea’s defectors that the government is methodically purging its disabled, dwarfs and mentally ill population from the public by subjecting them to castration and chemical and biological weapons testing.

Beginning with the very young, the North Korean government will offer to purchase the children from the parents.

If that fails, the family is threatened.

Left to die, the government justifies their actions by accusing the disabled of “hurting the dignity” of the ruling elites.

DailyMail.co.uk

Ji Seong-ho, 32, who escaped after he himself suffered horrific treatment after losing a leg and hand, said the Kim Jong-un’s regime felt ‘humiliated’ by them.

He claims babies with mental and physical disabilities are routinely snatched from hospitals and left to suffer ‘indescribable things’ until they die.

Two other defectors also told him of a village in a remote mountain region that had been effectively turned into an asylum to house people with dwarfism…

Read full article

In addition, babies are ripped from the arms of their mothers, taken away and left to die.

As reported by the Telegraph.co.uk,

A United Nations commission said in February that it had heard allegations that medical experiments are performed in “closed hospitals” on “persons with disabilities”. But it added that it had not managed to confirm the claims.

In a separate study, conducted in 2013 by the Citizens’ Alliance on North Korean Human Rights, some 40 per cent of defectors said they believed that infants with disabilities are killed or abandoned and 43 per cent claimed to know of “an island” on which the disabled are forced to live. …

Read full article

The dissection and amputation of body parts, biological and chemical experimentation, tortured and left to die are those individuals ordained by their torturers as unworthy to live. Yet, the world has forgotten the sins of our past and/or is turning a blind eye to the horrific acts as it did in the past.

The North Korean government would tell the world that the lives of the disabled, mentally ill are treated well but those lucky enough to escape a fate laid out for them says otherwise.

 

LINKS:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2869792/Dwarfs-castrated-babies-left-suffer-horrific-deaths-Defector-claims-North-Korea-purging-disabled-population-humiliate-regime.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/11286517/North-Korea-leaves-disabled-to-die.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/10/politics/north-korea-defectors-share-stories/index.html