Stefan Molyneux on North Korea

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31 minute post.

I think he's right about a lot of this - ie. we've had nukes pointed at them for years, they're an atheistic regime who doesn't have afterlife concepts as a fuel for behavior, and if its true that they've made no attempts to switch back on the war to retake South Korea even through two South Korea military coups - we really have to watch our posturing if we want to resolve the issue and I'd worry that the saber-rattling we're doing right now is making matters far worse. What Stefan brings up, WeAreChange brought it up too, about the lesson that despots around the world learned from what happened to Gaddafi after he gave up his nuclear program makes the 2011 series of airstrikes that Obama and Clinton orchestrated even more worrying with respect to the effect that this might have had on the 3rd-world race for nuclear deterrents.

Lol, and a completely different POV - Styx suggesting that Southeast Asian politics and handling is polar-opposite to European politics and that macho bluffing (ie. Trump's current behavior) is what that region runs on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz2eddg9dfU

What a mess....

Message from Planet Earth:

Korea is not located in "Southeast Asia".

The DMZ that splits the country in two is on the same latitude as Richmond Virginia. The two Koreas are as far north in Asia as you can go without being in Siberia (in the Russian Republic). And the coldest (not hottest) temperatures that American soldiers ever had to fight in were in an engagement in the Korean War. Colder than Bastogne, and colder than Valley Forge.

"Korea" (both the war, and the country) are not the same thing as "Vietnam" (two different wars, and two different countries) if that's what you're confused about. Vietnam IS in "southeast Asia", and also IS in the tropics. Korea is completely in the temperate zone.

I know.

I am cruel bully who brutalizes the geographically impaired. But I just cant stop myself from! Lol!

The moderators should just march me off in handcuffs. Lol!

Just because someone expresses an opinion about Korea doesn't mean that they have to know what Korea is!

I am such an unfair bully.

But I just cant stop myself.

At least that longhaired guy you linked to correctly stated it as "East Asia" and not "southeast asia".

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But about the topic.

We have already been "locked and loaded" and ready to flatten north korea for over fifty years. We are a superpower with enough nukes to flatten another superpower in our own weight class (ie Russia). North Korea is a pipsqueak country that only just now built a handful of nuke warheads. So we could snuff them out like a Lucky if they tried to nuke Guam. And the Norks have always known it, and everyone knows that the Norks know it. So everyone knows that the Norks would never try to nuke Guam because everyone knows that Kim knows that doing so would be their national suicide.

So its not so much what Trump said, as its the way he said it. I would prefer he had said it the way I said it above -low key, and less flamboyantly. Just stated the obvious. You don't need that fire and fury stuff. But Trump's domestic base wants to hear tuff talk, but the stock market and the world doesn't want to hear provocative emotional language. Its hard to say. We Americans voted Trump because he "doesn't talk like a Politian" but it takes a politician knows how to talk to multiple audiences at the same time. So we wanted a guy who speaks ineptly, and that's what we have.

I think I understand why you had to preface your opinion with a half-page tirade about geography.

The next country to 'flatten' another country with nukes would likely be destroyed by the rest of the world at this point - and rightly so. Even above the horrific stupidity of that motion I'm not sure why we'd ever want to dutch-oven South Korea, China, etc.. in nuclear fallout. Seems like the modern world 'gets' that using nukes is social suicide and it would take situations of a truly unusual extreme to justify their use. Japan was probably the only one-off forgiveness in history because it was the first time they were ever used, so far the last time, and it's generally assumed that anyone who would use them has full clarity on the consequences - both to the country they're attacking and to the world at large.

I think Stefan's right that they're a failing state, that they're due to fall in their own time of their own mismanagement and irrelevance, and if anything serious plans for war with the US would be a major stimulus of Chinese and Russian capital to their economy which they probably badly need. They're also absolutely in their right minds to think that we wouldn't 'flatten' them with nukes - it's just not an acceptable motion and couldn't even be a potential solution unless they hit Guam with a full-sized nuclear warhead, which it sounds like they have no capacity do anyway.

what makes you think NK is atheist? I'm pretty sure Kim Jong Un is the god of North Korea... or at least the grandson of the god of North Korea.

That's a good point, and to some extent they have the holy emperor role that Japan used to have, but it's tough to say how functional it is, whether it grants the common people salvation for good service, or whatever else. Maybe someone here has more familiarity with it's contents.