The Glade 4.0

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/06/asia/nort ... d=21982718

Time for a Seal Team 6 strike. This joker needs a bullet.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I'd rather not sacrifice a lot of SEALS on a suicide mission. Threatening war is pretty much what North Kore does any time they get bored or need to distract from something internal.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The question then becomes what if they actually do it?

Noone seems to be able to put the muzzle on this whackjob. He's supposed to be China's probrem.

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Holy shitsnacks!

If they do what? Launch a missile?

We just put THAAD batteries in SK and I believe Japan already has PAC-3. I very much doubt that any of their long-range missiles can actually reach the U.S. or that they have nuclear warheads small enough to fit on them if they do.

If they do flip one our way, and it doesn't break up somewhere in its boost out of the atmosphere, we've got more than enough GMD interceptors to stop any missile attack NK is capable of conducting. I would be absolutely astounded if North Korea could get 3 missiles to reach the continental U.S. based on their track record.



Probably because it's vastly more complex than that.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm not particularly concerned for the west coast of the US. That's a balls hard target for them and their current weapons tech.

SK and Japan and Taiwan etc though... they're close enough to get the short end of the stick.

And yeah, I can imagine it *is* complex, but I don't understand why China hasn't taken a harder line on their insane little puppet state.

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Holy shitsnacks!

China is no longer in control of the little ****. They'd much rather have SK on their border at this point. I think they keep thinking that if they pretend they don't notice NK, it will go away.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

They are, but by the same token the shorter-ranged systems you'd use to attack targets like those are much easier to defeat with THAAD, PAC-3, or SM-3. The last is especially important because it launches from ships, which are easy to reposition as-needed, and Japan has destroyers capable of launching SM-3.

As to the behavior of China, the reasons fundamentally go back to why they got involved in the Korean War in the first place, and how they see the situation in Korea. The Chinese worldview is simply fundamentally different from ours, much like the Russian one is. It's influenced by their geography, their language, their history, and cultural norms just like ours is for us.

It's probably impossible for us to truly understand why Chinese leaders make the decisions they do, but I will say that it is not because they are crazy or stupid. What they are doing certainly makes sense to them in terms of their own assumptions, beliefs, and what they know and don't know. That last is especially important because they are just as human as we are and just as subject to irrationality and incorrect or incomplete information as we.

That makes understanding what they do even harder; not only do we not understand how they think, we don't know what THEY know, don't know, or erroneously believe. In particular, they are just as subject to not understanding our way of thinking as we are theirs.

This is what makes understanding our opponents so hard - when they do something that doesn't seem to make sense it may be because they don't have full information, have wrong information, are acting emotionally, have misunderstood us, have incorrect or incomplete information about what WE know or don't know, are misunderstanding how WE see the situation - or any combination of any or all of the above!

Maddening, isn't it?

A good example is the common sentiment of "China wants trade, not war". This is true insofar as they're fundamentally rational and driven by self-interest. They recognize the costs of war. However, they also understand its utility and they have their own views on how hard power can be used to get what they want without actually fighting - just as we do.

More importantly, "China" doesn't want anything. It's not a hive mind. They have their own internal politics and factions, and who is in charge and has what influence matters a lot. If they do one thing in a given situation one year and do something totally different the next year in a very similar situation it may be simply that different people are making the decisions.



It's vastly more complicated than this. NK is a pain in the *** for them, but they have fundamental misgivings about SK that date back to MacArthur's bellicose rhetoric.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Time to call in Dennis Rodman.

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The Dude abides.

Mus, if I understand correctly, the primary concern for China is the fact that any destabilization of NK will send millions of poor, starving, uneducated people north to China.

Russia to Norks: "Dude, not cool."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/m ... ?CMP=fb_gu

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Holy shitsnacks!

This is, indeed, a significant concern for the Chinese.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

eh, just cover the world in an ashen cloud and be done with it. Human's have outlived their purpose.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

What a shitty attitude, lol.

Humanity has achieved all it can, guys! Guess it's time to die off.

Reality: this is the best time to ever be a human.

What purpose would that be?

Humanity is not obligated to live up to vague and arbitrary standards of behavior set by random members of the species - certainly not because those members have decided they are personally in a position to decide everyone else is somehow behaving in an unacceptable fashion because reasons.



It's way cooler to just be disgusted at everyone and everything.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I would argue humans have never had any purpose to outlive. As to covering the world, we could be on our way in the sense of destruction of ourselves as well as environment. I think we are at a crossroads in this era. Humans are continually growing in numbers in a system that isn't likely able to sustain us. We will either have to restrict population growth in some way, or the system in which we live will have to be altered.

As to the Norks.....I would like to believe the leaders of the world take the stance: Better to know who the enemy is, than to kill that enemy and have them replaced by an unknown. In other words, they know the guy and his tendencies and capabilities, so leave him there. They know how to knock him down if the need arises. Unfortunately, we didn't take that stance in the past with some other "bad guys" and it has been trouble ever since.

Nobody can tell us what our purpose is-- there is no greater cosmic purpose. As individuals, we make our own purpose.

Find yourself a worthy goal.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I am; quite honestly, trolling hard there. I have many many opinions and all of that on why humanity should continue and prosper: but my browser went goofy and lost it, so I figured "**** it, I will just troll now"

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I was once told ( a bit paraphrased, it was awhile ago) by an Army Colonel that the real reason that the United States remains in South Korea is to protect North Korea from their southern cousins. If Dictator Kim ever gets foolish enough to send his armies across the border all bets are off and Hellfire will rain down on them. This Hellfire will not be provided by the United States Army but by the people the Norks want to, well lets call it unify with as a nice term.

North Korea is not a world power, is not even a major player in Asia. They do not have the resources to feed their people, much less wage war. What they have is a very vocal dictator who wants to wank off on the world stage.

Any modern resurgence of the Korean War, which has never been declared over, would be sad and short. That is why we stay there, to insure the response by South Korea does not go overboard and kill millions of North Koreans.

(Pretty much in line with what DE said) North Korea is not even a hundredth of the threat they claim to be, and we will endeavor to keep them that way until the ruling branch of the Kim family is extinct. We would much prefer that to come from inside North Korea than from a Western Assassin's bullet.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

[/quote]

This is a conclusion that is very much in question - and the attempts to insist that it is not are deeply suspicious. While science (as discussed in the other thread) is objective, scientists are not immune from confusing their scientific ideas with questions that are not for them to answer. The Doomsday Clock is the classic example of scientists trying to lend scientific authority to political hogwash.



Well, that rather brings up the question of why the people of North Korea should have to suffer the situation they are in indefinitely. It is far less sustainable than the world's overall situation.

That said, your point about replacing enemies and having them replaced with unknowns is not without merit. However, NK is not the middle east. The factors that have created ISIS in the middle east do not obtain in NK - what would replace the regime is the SK government. That has its own issues and costs, but they are not the same as those in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Still, there is no reason to rush into it.



There is considerable truth here, but be careful. Desperate men, especially those that may believe their own propaganda, may take desperate actions. NKs death spasms could result in tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties. While I am pretty confident we can stop a limited missile attack, things can go wrong - it's unlikely, not impossible. Much more likely is some sort of spiteful attack on Seoul with gas.

If either of those situations occurs, I imagine we will hear no end of lecturing on why it's all our fault for some reason or other - from people not very likely to have to actually deal with either the situation or its aftermath themselves.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."