05-02-2017, 10:54 PM
(04-18-2017, 03:24 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(04-18-2017, 09:32 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:(04-17-2017, 10:19 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(04-17-2017, 07:16 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(04-17-2017, 11:17 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Right now, he probably can't hit us. He can likely hit South Korea and Japan. So, if we go now, it's only(insert racial slurs here)Asians that get clobbered, rather than Americans.
You've been following Kinser's theory on tribes? If members of your tribe are OK, what happens to other tribes doesn't matter? More truth to that than I'd like, especially for those with red values. America First, Huzzah!
Right now, Aegis ships and THAAD can still make intercepts. If we wait for North Korea to develop more sophisticated nuclear weapons, South Korea will eventually lose millions of people instead of thousands.
But hey, given Kinser's theory, I can see why white people who talk about "only Asians that get clobbered" might not care about that.
Do you think North Korea and its Dear Leader would launch a nuclear attack against the South, even after what it considers a provocation, knowing that it would mean the certain end to his government and his life?
We should certainly make crystal clear to them that this would be the price.
You can't make that clear to him, not five or ten years from now when he has more sophisticated capabilities.
Let's say he nukes the THAAD batteries once he has nuclear cruise missiles, which is maybe a couple years off. Are you going to destroy him, knowing he'll use launch on warning capabilities to destroy Seoul? His history suggests that he will do it, gambling that you will not destroy him.
But if we destroy his nuclear capabilities now, leaving his regime in place, and we assume he is rational, he will most assuredly not launch an all out conventional war, because then we would destroy his regime. He would have to satisfy himself with symbolic retaliation.
I think that's our best choice.
That calculus doesn't seem correct to me. It's too hard to take out all his nuclear capabilities right now. If some remain, after we attack his nucs, he is likely to retaliate by sending a nuc missile to South Korea. Without his nucs, he feels unsafe from USA attack. So take that away, and he will probably go nuts and retaliate, in any way he can. He does know that this will be the end of his regime, when the USA retaliates. But it's a dangerous gamble to make with the lives of thousands or millions of South Koreans. And he may also have the delusion that he can win a war with the USA, as he has stated.
He will never have enough capability, on the other hand, to destroy the US nuclear capability to retaliate against any nuclear attack he may make on the USA.
The same reasoning applies to his launching a nuke as to his launching all out conventional war: if he does it, his regime will be destroyed, if he doesn't, he can survive. I think he's rational enough to see that.
However, we have THAAD as an insurance policy. There's a good chance that even if he has a couple nukes left and uses them, they'll be destroyed and South Korea will still not lose cities.
I think it's a bigger risk to wait let him get a much larger number of long range nukes that can reach the US. Then he has a deterrent that lets him launch an all out conventional war while deterring US intervention, which I think he's likely to do once he thinks it can work. Seoul won't fare any better under the conventional assault he can unleash than it would under a nuke.
There are no fully safe choices here.