A North Korea thread

Politics International Politics
161

Yes, he abides by the One China presently, it isn’t set in stone. Trump is only 6 months in, we haven’t seen the last of this issue.

Trump isn’t a populist, others trying to understand him and failing to do so have put that label on him, but he hasn’t put that label on himself. He is willing to take on the professional elites and undo the damage Obama has done in socializing and Europizing us, and the people didn’t have faith anyone else could.

Trump hasn’t called the Constitution a disaster, you’re exaggerating or misunderstanding something, I don’t know what you’re referring to.

I totally understand international relations and foreign policy as Obama sees it, and as Trump, Reagan, and others see it, American, British, or other.

Trade has already been disrupted very much when the dollar sank under Bush. The trade dynamic is very, very different since 2000. You don’t understand how much more disruptive China would feel it much more than the US. The Communist Party has to keep the rural people occupied with foreign factories or risk a revolution against them. China is very aware of economic realities.

Yes, it may take years to get a factory up, but not decades. Economics works that way. Economic chaos often results in the near-term but sews itself up as economic dynamics work together to bring balance. I wish Trump would make chaos by raising interest rates to 5% as quickly as possible. Then the chaos caused by market forces would all be contained in one year and very rapidly, instead of 5 years to correct the market. Because I want to see good economics now, not 5 years down the road.

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Why would that be great to bring China down? It isn’t necessary, China will back down once they realize how real Trump is when he says something. They’re still used to Obama and Clinton who just draw red lines in the sand and then change their stance when it might mean commitment. They don’t respect that, nor should they.

163

The Soviets already understood that China was fighting us. For us to defend ourselves, and practically fight the war by taking the war to our attacking enemy isn’t provocative or exotic and rare. It’s normal, and it’s smart. It wouldn’t be as though we were taking it to China unprovoked. We didn’t get a better position, we lost so many soldiers on that front fighting for 2 years, and they lost much more relatively, the carnage was vast. It would have been cut short with an American victory to boot had Truman listened to MacArthur’s sage advice, or had Truman fought wars like wars ought to be fought and not politically.

The Soviets were hardly a military strength to be compared to the US in Afghanistan.

Vietnam was lost by a Democrat President. We won all the battles but lost the war, because Johnson was like Truman, not having a clear military goal for victory, but rather playing politics like Democrats do. We would have won Vietnam easily and with fewer casualties had Nixon been executing it from the first and avoided all the peace riots.

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Trying to apply the same methodology that helped bring down the Soviet regime, to that of Eastern regimes is dangerous. You are trying to cut different materials with the same saw. It will not work. Different players, different mindsets, different situations. The Chinese are not engaged in an endless insurgency that is draining their resources, and a billion other reasons. The fighter was already out, Reagan just swept the leg.

The arms deal doesn’t include the F16 upgrades that Taiwan has so desperately sought, nor does it include the THAAD system they wanted as well. So, he sent a ship through the SCS, so did Obama. Obama landed 2 F-18s in Taiwan. Bush sent a destroyer group through the Straits. The sanctions on the bank were never imposed.

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Anyone else want to take this?

Again, going to China risked turning it from a proxy war, to a real one. While the Soviets at the time did not pose a direct threat to the US mainland, they did have nuclear technology and they could have simply wreaked havok on Western Europe. Could also have brought them to Japan, and Korea as well. War is not some romantic weekend getaway. Whether MacArthur was right or wrong, we will never know. Speaking against your boss will get you fired. Try it sometime.

You make it sound like the US were supplying the Muj with state of the art weaponry and tactics. They did no such thing. They funneled money and arms, but it was not the up-to-date weaponry fantasized about.

Again, trying to paint different pictures with the same brush. Vietnam was lost as soon as it began. Have you read about the fall of Dien Bien Phu? The VC had resolve and purpose, the US did not. How do you fight an enemy that will not die? The US was winning. But the Vietnamese would not give up. There is the tired rumor that either general Giap or Ho himself wanted to give up after the failure of the Tet offensive, but after seening the negative reaction of the US press decided to stay with it. This is nonsense. As general Giap himself has said there was never any discussion of surrender. Asians fight differently than Westerners. And it was Nixon who negotiated withdrawing.

Funny you use Vietnam as an example of democratic failure. You clearly support the usurper in 1600, and he dodged out due to…what…bone spurs? Oh, and then he called one of the veterans of that war a “loser” and a “traitor” for getting shot down and tortured to the point that he has lost full use of his arms and legs? That is rich.

166

The fighter was out because of Reagan. He actually competed with the Soviets on the arms race, forcing them to direct their scarcer resources to this while their own people were starving, and our economy was boosted by his economics and our people prospering. They could’t keep up, and they knew it. Then in 1985, Gorbachev asked him to give up Star Wars, but Reagan refused, knowing the strategic value, and Gorbachev stormed off in a huff. The media called him stupid and unskilled in diplomacy. But it gave us an advantage, we were no longer contained by mutual destruction, which had directed policy until then. Our technology would always be superior to theirs no matter how hard they tried, while they economic system couldn’t sustain their own people. That’s how Reagan took out the fight in them.

China is different, they aren’t trying to communize the whole world through planting officials subtlety in countries like the Soviets successfully did. Even so, the illustration of provocative stance was applied to NK, not China. Previous presidents have treated N Korea too passively, which is actively developing nuclear weapons, just as they did with the Soviets before Reagan. I think there can be made an apt comparison.

We don’t give Taiwan these top-secret systems because Taiwan always blabs its mouth. They are so lax, fickle, unreliable, and unsanctimonious about intelligence, we can’t really trust them.

Yes, the sanctions on the huge bank were imposed. There are new sanctions being threatened on many additional lower Chinese banks if China doesn’t help with North Korea. Those are the ones that haven’t been imposed yet.

I wasn’t comparing Trump with other presidents when referencing the destroyer. The situation is happening all at the same time, while North Korea issue is heating up, Trump isn’t trying to curry favor with China, like Obama might do in such a similar situation, but throwing everything all at once, the bank sanction, the military arms deal, and the recent incursion into the Spratley Islands, which might be deemed ill-timed or showing lack of diplomatic or negotiating skills by other presidents.

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What difference does it make whether we were fighting Chinese proxy or real? As for our fallen soldiers, all that mattered was that were were fighting China at all, and it took us a very long time to do it, and unsuccessfully, because we couldn’t get at their assets to make them stop. It was stupid what Truman was doing, killing our soldiers and their soldiers while not doing what was necessary to win, and stop the war with a quick American victory, which is not only the most reasonable thing to do, but the most compassionate.

Yes, we were winning Vietnam, but then we would allow the enemy to take back the battles we just won because of the way we were fighting the war. It wasn’t our goal to destroy the enemy, we should have gone up and taken North Vietnam, but Johnson just wanted to honor the North Vietnamese and honor an artificial political boundary that North Vietnamese were not honoring. It’s stupid.

By the time Nixon became president, he started engaging more smartly, but the war was already long and unsuccessful because of 10 or more years of Johnson and people demanded an end, and he did the best he could to end it on honorable terms. He really wasn’t given a chance to win the war.

When fighting in a war, you don’t let yourself get caught, you fight until the end. I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees. I remember in the Army, they showed us a film about the Pueblo, and commented very harshly how stupid it is to let yourselves be caught by the North Koreans. They should have fought it out and been heroes with dignity, than be treated like dogs by dogs. I think they are right.

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Choose one of the following:

a) The Soviet Union would have survived had it not been for Star Wars.
b) The Soviet Union would have survived had it not been for the inferiority of Marxism-Leninism.

You can’t have your cake and eat it.

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169

It sounds familiar: replace “North Korea” with “Taiwan” and “US and South Korea” with “China”.

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170

Actually, China IS trying to bolster support in the global community, playing the same field. An entire continent was abandoned by the west, and later the Soviets. China is there to fill the void. Lost opportunities.

Until it comes into direct conflict with his business interests. I guarantee he will put himself before his country, if push comes to shove. He already has.

Have you ever been to Taiwan? Do you really understand the situation? Taiwan is as credible as any other actor in Asia, or the world for that matter. If a piece of software or hardware is sold to anyone, it runs the risk of falling into adversarial hands. Between the TRA, Shanghai Communiques, and Six Assurances the US has made clear it does not support a unilateral change to the “status quo” of the relationship between both sides of the Straits. Yet, successive US presidents, republican and democrat alike, have watched idly as Beijing unilaterally alters the status quo. Trump, despite all his huff and puff, will be no different. He has direct business dealings within the People’s Republic. Hell, at least under W, fuses for nuclear missiles were “accidentally” shipped to Taiwan, and later “returned.” And Obama landed 2 “crippled” F-18s.

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With that statement, you have just taken a class-A shit all over POWs from every conflict in US history. And you actively support a “man” who actively avoided military service, and then shit all over those who did. Clinton avoided the draft, yet he never spoke ill of those who served. W made it into the Guard, but at least he served and he never spoke ill of those who did. What are they teaching kids these days? Hell, my generation is trying to defend the country, yours is actively trying to destroy it.

172

The inferiority of Marxism lacked innovation, they couldn’t come up with Star Wars. Just like they couldn’t nuclear weapons. They had to steal it from us, the Rosenbergs and others. Capitalism did this, and fed and prospered our people to boot.

173

There are many Chinese spies and getting Taiwanese to talk about covert intelligence isn’t hard to do; they hardly have an austere, sober bone in their body; they have a selfish predilection for finding and engaging in deals that give them advantages, and unable to contemplate causes bigger than themselves; many secrets have been compromised in the military particularly in Taiwan. What’s more, Chinese sympathy among Taiwanese is still a factor.

Taiwanese security authorities catch a number of Chinese spies every year, making this year no different; however, as the military balance tips ever in China’s favor, every secret bought or stolen by China further diminishes any remaining advantages Taiwan has for its self-defense. The last three years of Chinese espionage against Taiwan reinforce the notion that retired Taiwanese officials doing business in China remain the island’s greatest weakness.

With at least 20 distinct cases of espionage in the last decade, Taipei’s friends in the United States have justifiable concerns about the security of U.S. defense systems sold to Taiwan. Former American Institute of Taiwan director Bill Stanton summed up these concerns at a conference last year when he said China’s intelligence successes “undermine U.S. confidence in security cooperation with Taiwan”

It isn’t like South Korea, where the North is treated like a real enemy and take intelligence lapses seriously.

174

There are times someone becomes POW without the opportunity to fight, but if you have the option of fighting and choose to get caught, I don’t sympathize.

I was tasked with briefing soldiers on how to behave if caught, and I stressed that you always resist, you always scheme to escape, you don’t let up no matter how they try to bend you.

I related the story of one Vietnamese POW who would never bow to his captors. They tortured him endlessly to get him to bend, and he would not. He was the only one in his group and eventually the Vietnamese gave up and let him be independent. This is the model I recommended to soldiers who were caught. You’re much more better off and successful fighting before you get caught than after.

175

[quote=“jotham, post:49, topic:158959, full:true”]

No it isn’t. Marxism is not a nationalist ideology. Which nation did Marx support, exactly?

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Ok, then everything must be produced in the Communist system, whether that be a nation or nations. Is it necessarily nationalist to deny trade?

177

Quick, call the exorcist! I hear the ghost of Solzhenitsyn laughing. :rofl:

So, Star Wars and capitalism are one and the same? Without capitalism, there could be no Star Wars, and without Star Wars, there could be no capitalism?

Capitalism managed to exist for quite a while without Star Wars, so it stands to reason that they’re not the same thing. Was SW an investment that “paid off big time”, as I seem to recall Rowland saying? Or was it unnecessary because the SU was doomed anyway?

178

The road not taken, as expressed by Ike in October 1952:

There is no sense in the United Nations, with America bearing the brunt of the thing, being constantly compelled to man those front lines. That is a job for the Koreans. We do not want Asia to feel that the white man of the West is his enemy. If there must be a war there, let it be Asians against Asians, with our support on the side of freedom. [italics added by me]

Schnabel, James F, and Robert J. Watson. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, 1951-1953: The Korean War, Part Two. Washington, DC: Office of Joint History, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1998.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a350172.pdf (Clicking this link will most likely produce a large PDF document.)

179

Star Wars is just symbolic. It represent the leading edge of technology at the time, and only capitalism puts you on that edge. When the Soviets tried to compete with us, they failed, it was unsustainable.

If you remember, it was a big deal when they were shooting rockets and men into space before we were. Even so, they were still stealing our space shuttle designs in the 70s and 80s. Earlier successes on their space program were made possible by captured German engineers, and early Soviet experts and engineers were experts and schooled under previous capitalism. But as socialism began taking its toll, and the capitalism of yesteryear increasingly exhausted, it reached all spheres of life, including academia, and they were running out of steam.

180

Wow, so the soviets were a lot more technically capable back in the 70’s or 80’s with stealth, intelligence and resources, as compared to today, 40 or 50 years later when apparently they are like an elephant in a china shop, gaining access by perhaps the least subtle method known to man, phishing.

Whats your opinion jotham, an exaggeration of their abilities in the 70’s and 80’s? They lost their mojo and are now resorting to thug ransom ware software, or DNC and Podesta hacks are not what the MSM is projecting?