Threat from the DPRK (North Korea)

[Kinser79]

(09-23-2017, 09:04 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-22-2017, 04:25 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(09-21-2017, 09:46 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-21-2017, 01:11 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: As Kinser pointed out, rationality doesn't change from West to East.  The mathematics of game theory and Nash equilibria are universal.

As long as we knock out his capability to produce new nuclear weapons - which is the easy part - we gain hugely, even if he retains a few weapons.  For example, he currently has no counterforce capability, but at his current rate, he will in five or ten years, giving him first strike options.

That's the same thinking that we employed when we entered Vietnam, and you see how that went.

Not quite.  Vietnam was the result of not thinking really.  Ike and Kennedy both sought to keep the US out of it, but LBJ it seems could be impressed by Generals.

The theory at the time was that that if Vietnam went commie all of south east Asia would.  But the thing is I don't think Ho actually was a commie, Ho Chi Minh Thought as the CP of Vietnam has explained it amounts to little more than Vietnamese nationalism and state support of vital industries and services.

Rather the failure of Vietnam is that the US was not being rational, but rather acting irrationally to the fact that Ho Chi Minh sought out Soviet assistance after he had been already refused by the US in his mission to drive out the French.

You worked hard to make my point.  There's nothing inherently rational about the US of A, anymore than any other country.  We respond to our passions as do others.  You did get LBJ a bit wrong though.  LBJ believed that Ho and company would negotiate if he made the pain great enough.  They wouldn't.  Kim won't either.

Not really, you would need to have had a point first.  You didn't.  Your claim was that Western rationality and Eastern rationality are somehow different, whereas game theory indicates quite differently.

As to LBJ, I may or may not be wrong.  I wasn't alive then and I really don't want to think much about a third rate president who died before I was even born.  That being said you are right in that Kim won't negotiate reguardless the amount of pain, which is why the only solution is the absolute and utter destruction of North Korea and Korean Unification.

In many ways it is time to finish unfinished business.