Nuclear War II: Trump v. Kim

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Wilshire

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« Reply #15 on: August 18, 2017, 12:32:39 pm »
Thoughts, SA noosphere?

Very little more than brinksmanship, really.  The NK nuclear program is designed to have the powers that be stay in power.  Actually getting into a war is the literal end of that regime.  So, they have to pretend to be willing to get into a war, but never actually ever fight one.

You win 100% of the fights you never get into.  That's the point of the nuclear arsenal.

(Terror issues addressed in the other thread.)

My only worry is that I have little faith in the leaders of either country to bail in this game of chicken. What happens when neither flinch and both go through? You end up with a lot of dead people, thats what. Some people would rather see the world burn than lose face.
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« Reply #16 on: August 18, 2017, 12:58:57 pm »
Thoughts, SA noosphere?

Very little more than brinksmanship, really.  The NK nuclear program is designed to have the powers that be stay in power.  Actually getting into a war is the literal end of that regime.  So, they have to pretend to be willing to get into a war, but never actually ever fight one.

You win 100% of the fights you never get into.  That's the point of the nuclear arsenal.

(Terror issues addressed in the other thread.)

My only worry is that I have little faith in the leaders of either country to bail in this game of chicken. What happens when neither flinch and both go through? You end up with a lot of dead people, thats what. Some people would rather see the world burn than lose face.

Fair, but for all the bluster, cowboy-ism, and machismo the fact of the matter is that both are actually extremely pragmatic.  Not one actually wants to trade their elevated terrestrial status and worldly pleasures.  Neither is suicidal, so we'll be fine.
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Wilshire

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« Reply #17 on: August 18, 2017, 01:23:38 pm »
You don't have to be suicidal to be an idiot, but I largely agree. I'm not terribly worried.
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Woden

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« Reply #18 on: August 18, 2017, 01:39:19 pm »
Anyway is Kim who have the all the odds to be obliterated if the war starts. Trump will be totally safe half the world away. So we have to wonder if the korean weirdo has suicidal tendencies to be sure that there will not be war.
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« Reply #19 on: August 18, 2017, 02:39:46 pm »
You don't have to be suicidal to be an idiot, but I largely agree. I'm not terribly worried.

But the entire point of NK having nuclear weapons is so that Kim can stay in power.  Using them would assure his destruction, regardless of who he takes out.  Whatever he would do, he would get obliterated in turn, invalidation the whole point of having the nuclear program in the first place.
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Wilshire

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« Reply #20 on: August 18, 2017, 03:23:49 pm »
So says the logical mind with logical ends.

I'm not sure a child-emperor raised from birth as the divine ruler of the country/world/whatever would come to the same conclusion. "If I can't have it, no one can" seems closer to what might happen then anything more logical.

Just as Trump has advisors, I'm sure so does Kim, but how much they are able to disreguard and do as they please I don't have a clear understanding of.
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« Reply #21 on: August 18, 2017, 04:00:57 pm »
So says the logical mind with logical ends.

I'm not sure a child-emperor raised from birth as the divine ruler of the country/world/whatever would come to the same conclusion. "If I can't have it, no one can" seems closer to what might happen then anything more logical.

Just as Trump has advisors, I'm sure so does Kim, but how much they are able to disreguard and do as they please I don't have a clear understanding of.

Well, I don't know how logical anyone really is (including myself), but NK's procurement, posture, and "un-use" of a nuclear arsenal so far seems plausibly logical so far...
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

Madness

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« Reply #22 on: August 19, 2017, 03:01:51 pm »
John Oliver had a quality segment on Last Week Tonight. As he said, I think if - big if - Kim is a "rational agent," he's seen how Saddam and Gaddafi were taken out (actual complexities may differ) once they stopped pursuing their nuclear programs.

In fact, by the metric of conserving parochial cultures while establishing a nuclear energy program, Iran is almost the high water mark.
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themerchant

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« Reply #23 on: August 21, 2017, 09:44:13 pm »
Madness here is mate on another forum speaking about it 2weeks ago


"Of course NK should disarm... only a fool would say otherwise. I mean look how well it turned out for Libya and Gaddafi and Iraq and Saddam and Syria and Assad...

The world will be a safer place if NK dont have nuclear weapons. Riiiiight. Not for NK it won't."



Folk forget what happened to North Korea in living memory as well, it was bombed into tiny pieces, every city destroyed. Till there were no viable targets left.

 Bombing of North Korea


The first major U.S. strategic bombing campaign against North Korea, begun in late July 1950, was conceived as similar to the major offensives of World War II.[305] On 12 August 1950, the U.S. Air Force dropped 625 tons of bombs on North Korea; two weeks later, the daily tonnage increased to some 800 tons.[306] Following the intervention of the Chinese in November, General MacArthur ordered increased bombing campaign on North Korea which included incendiary attacks against their arsenals and communications centers and especially against the "Korean end" of all the bridges across the Yalu River.[307] As with the aerial bombing campaigns over Germany and Japan in World War II, the nominal objective of the U.S. Air Force was to destroy North Korea's war infrastructure and shatter their morale. After MacArthur was removed as Supreme Commander in Korea in April 1951, his successors continued this policy and ultimately extended it to all of North Korea.[308] The U.S. dropped a total of 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, on Korea, more than during the whole Pacific campaign of World War II.[309][310]

Almost every substantial building in North Korea was destroyed as a result.[311][312] The war's highest-ranking U.S. POW, U.S. Major General William F. Dean,[313] reported that the majority of North Korean cities and villages he saw were either rubble or snow-covered wasteland.[314][315] North Korean factories, schools, hospitals, and government offices were forced to move underground, and air defenses were "non-existent."[310] In November 1950, the North Korean leadership instructed their population to build dugouts and mud huts and to dig underground tunnels, in order to solve the acute housing problem.[316] U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay commented, "we went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, too."[317] Pyongyang, which saw 75 percent of its area destroyed, was so devastated that bombing was halted as there were no longer any worthy targets.[318][319] On 28 November, Bomber Command reported on the campaign's progress: 95 percent of Manpojin was destroyed, along with 90 percent of Hoeryong, Namsi and Koindong, 85 percent of Chosan, 75 percent of both Sakchu and Huichon, and 20 percent of Uiju. According to USAF damage assessments, "eighteen of twenty-two major cities in North Korea had been at least half obliterated."[320] By the end of the campaign, US bombers had difficulty in finding targets and were reduced to bombing footbridges or jettisoning their bombs into the sea.[321]

As well as conventional bombing, the Communist side claimed that the U.S. used biological weapons.[322] These claims have been disputed; Conrad Crane asserts that while the U.S. worked towards developing chemical and biological weapons, the U.S. military "possessed neither the ability, nor the will", to use them in combat.[323] {/b]

 

Madness

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« Reply #24 on: August 22, 2017, 01:06:13 pm »
All good points, merchant.

Strange enough, I actually think Kim is more predictable than Trump is.
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Woden

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« Reply #25 on: August 22, 2017, 01:41:10 pm »
The two of them walk on conditioned ground.
Know what your slaves believe, and you will always be their master.