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[Bohandas]

North Korea is a little different than most brutal dictatorships, since they quite possibly have functioning nuclear weapons. Seoul would be a crater if the US tried anything overt.

It always puzzles me that the US spends so much on it's military but either can't or won't develop really subtle ways to assassinate people.

Forget about subtle, they need to work on quick and effective. Splatter everyone in North Korea with the authority to pull the trigger into a red paste before any of them know what's happening

[Dutchling]

how many genocides were you planning on advocating today bohandas

[Eric Blank]

All of them. Although, does eliminating political and military leaders in quick succession count as genocide? It would probably lead to utter madness in the streets, but that's inevitable when you're talking about a power vacuum, unless you immediately fill it, which would result in a guerilla war...

[MetalSlimeHunt]

North Korea is a little different than most brutal dictatorships, since they quite possibly have functioning nuclear weapons. Seoul would be a crater if the US tried anything overt.

Not quite. North Korea doesn't have much of an interest in nuking South Korea even in the worst case scenario. For one, the fallout will all be blown north. Into North Korea. Secondly, it's suicide for all the other reasons nukes are suicide. And finally, North Korea's nukes are not exactly the epitome of reliable, nor are their delivery systems.

As for the artillery, its status is mostly unknown, but it's old artillery. Granted, as Guardian G.I. has pointed out many a time, ancient Soviet military pieces have a habit of remaining functional long past their rational lifespan, but the supply lines are undoubtedly bad and even the longest ranged artillery that they are known to have wouldn't reach beyond northern Seoul. Finally, it would take under a day for US-SK forces to overrun the DMZ, and any artillery forces would have to contend with that encroaching force.

The situation is not quite how it is typically portrayed.

Source: I run the Best Korea Appreciation Thread.

[Jopax]

Or they could just pre-emtively bomb the artillery into oblivion. We know there's a capability to do that without giving NK enough reaction time to do anything about it. After that it's just a matter of removing the loonies at the top while hoping the population hasn't been completely broken into believing they're gods or whatever they've been selling themselves as.

We need to bomb them with propaganda methinks, propaganda and food, get the people on our side beforehand.

[Reelya]

North Korea is a little different than most brutal dictatorships, since they quite possibly have functioning nuclear weapons. Seoul would be a crater if the US tried anything overt.

It always puzzles me that the US spends so much on it's military but either can't or won't develop really subtle ways to assassinate people.

There were many many attempts to kill Castro with various devious means worthy of any comic-book spy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro

"638 Ways to Kill Castro is a Channel 4 documentary film, broadcast in the United Kingdom on November 28, 2006, which tells the story of some of the numerous attempts of the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Cuba's leader Fidel Castro."

It's not a lack of devious plans. They're just very expensive and rarely work.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/aug/03/cuba.duncancampbell2

[smjjames]

We need to bomb them with propaganda methinks, propaganda and food, get the people on our side beforehand.

Haven't we been doing that since the fighting stopped*?

* The war is technically ongoing, it's been in a 60+ year truce, if you can call it a truce, and I think that might not be the right word to use. Armistice? no. cease-fire?

@reelya: Yea, it's no secret that the CIA were doing sheneinighans like that during the cold war. We're not into the business of trying to assassinate other (non-terrorist) leaders anymore.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Or they could just pre-emtively bomb the artillery into oblivion. We know there's a capability to do that without giving NK enough reaction time to do anything about it. After that it's just a matter of removing the loonies at the top while hoping the population hasn't been completely broken into believing they're gods or whatever they've been selling themselves as.

We need to bomb them with propaganda methinks, propaganda and food, get the people on our side beforehand.

Propaganda and food bombing happens all the time, both by governments and NGOs. Remember, the DMZ is only 2.5 miles wide, even a decent balloon can take something across it. Most food bombing stopped under the logic that it just went to the wealthy, though I can't confirm or deny this is actually the case.

North Korea is a little different than most brutal dictatorships, since they quite possibly have functioning nuclear weapons. Seoul would be a crater if the US tried anything overt.

It always puzzles me that the US spends so much on it's military but either can't or won't develop really subtle ways to assassinate people.

There were many many attempts to kill Castro with various devious means worthy of any comic-book spy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro

"638 Ways to Kill Castro is a Channel 4 documentary film, broadcast in the United Kingdom on November 28, 2006, which tells the story of some of the numerous attempts of the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Cuba's leader Fidel Castro."

It's not a lack of devious plans. They're just very expensive and rarely work.

Operation Mongoose is a-go.

[Grim Portent]

North Korea is a little different than most brutal dictatorships, since they quite possibly have functioning nuclear weapons. Seoul would be a crater if the US tried anything overt.

It always puzzles me that the US spends so much on it's military but either can't or won't develop really subtle ways to assassinate people.

There were many many attempts to kill Castro with various devious means worthy of any comic-book spy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro

"638 Ways to Kill Castro is a Channel 4 documentary film, broadcast in the United Kingdom on November 28, 2006, which tells the story of some of the numerous attempts of the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Cuba's leader Fidel Castro."

It's not a lack of devious plans. They're just very expensive and rarely work.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/aug/03/cuba.duncancampbell2

Sometimes I forget that the Cold War US tried shenanigans that would've fit into an episode of Wacky Races, when a suitcase full of cash and a silenced pistol in the hands of a subverted official would've sufficed.

[Reelya]

All of them. Although, does eliminating political and military leaders in quick succession count as genocide? It would probably lead to utter madness in the streets, but that's inevitable when you're talking about a power vacuum, unless you immediately fill it, which would result in a guerilla war...

That's less likely in a country like North Korea than it would appear from an American point of view. The USA is full of heavily armed people with an individualist mindset built-in over centuries, whereas in North Korea you have an administrative beareacratic state where everyone is conditioned to toe the one-party line. Most likely there would be a power struggle but only within the military, and probably handled behind closed doors.

Eastern Europe rebelling against the Soviets in the late 1980s / early 1990s was probably helped by the fact that the opressors were of a different race than the opressed: there had always been an undercurrent of resentment about being dominated by the Russians amongst the populace. You didn't see anything like that sort of rebellion in Russia itself, the battles were the army trying to oust reformist politicians in the coups.

For China's Tienamin Square massacre in 1999 we're often told that many students were massacred in the square because they wanted western free market and american-style elections. This version of the story is plain wrong on most grounds. Sure, the students wanted more say in government, but they actually were angry about the free-market reforms China had enacted from the late 1970s onwards, and wanted more accountability, plus a return to socialist values. Also no-one was actually killed in the square itself, and most of the fighting did not involve the student protesters. It was workers put out of work by free market reforms, who put up road blocks against government troops who entered the city to try and control the protests. Those workers were angry because the guarantee of a living wage offered by Communism no longer existed in the Chinese free market system. So the fighting and the protests were actually mostly because the government had strayed too far to a western capitalist system and had removed communist economic policies favored by the working class and students.

So, for North Korea, I don't see "madness in the streets" as a likely outcome of killing Kim Jong-un. The only two real power blocs are the Communist Party of NK and the Army. And the army have all the guns, so the Communist Party will definitely pick a leadership candidate that keeps the army happy. Civil war averted. The only way to have actual battles will be for the army to split into factions, but none of them are going to throw their life away over whether General X or General Y is the new president.

[RedKing]

in North Korea you have an administrative beareacratic state

All Hail Glorious Ursine Leader

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Reelya]

beareacratic is one word I can never spell properly so excuse me. But it doesn't come up much in my writings so I don't have a chance to memorize it. I blame the French, as always. Way too many vowels.

[Sheb]

Can't we just agree that invading North Korea is a bad idea?

[Frumple]

It's certainly not an idea that's particularly appropriate for discussion in the US politics thread, at least until said country is actually considering invading NK. Which it's not, currently. And probably won't in our lifetimes.

[misko27]

Spoiler: This *is* sort of off-topic (click to show/hide)

Can't we just agree that invading North Korea is a bad idea?

Yes, but perhaps not for the reasons you think.

North Korea is a little different than most brutal dictatorships, since they quite possibly have functioning nuclear weapons. Seoul would be a crater if the US tried anything overt.

Not quite. North Korea doesn't have much of an interest in nuking South Korea even in the worst case scenario. For one, the fallout will all be blown north. Into North Korea. Secondly, it's suicide for all the other reasons nukes are suicide. And finally, North Korea's nukes are not exactly the epitome of reliable, nor are their delivery systems.

One issue I have here is that there has never actually been the sort of senseless, spasmodic war between states in modern times where people just brutally flung their strongest weapons at the other and simply attempt to annihilate as much of the other as possible, which Armchair General-ing assumes. If we imagine an ahistorical timeline, we have to assume things that didn't happen, whereas if we imagine nations at war in the future that aren't currently at war, we have to imagine something in particular will happen that will change things from how they are now.

It's not like one day Glorious Un would wake up and be like "I'm going to nuke everyone". Obama's not going to waltz into his situation room tomorrow and say "You know, Gay Marriage and Healthcare are cool, but I think the most important part of my legacy should be wiping the DPRK off the face of the earth. Let's do that." Something has to happen. You know, we discuss "escalating into war" as if all war is all the same, but it really isn't. A Naval Blockade is an act of war. So is a land invasion. So is the use of tactical or strategic nuclear weapons. No one would ever use all three at once. They are all circumstantial. The danger of North Korea is not that, in an out-and-out fight they could wound the South (which they may not be able to do, as MSH points out), but merely that things are *uncertain*, and circumstances could lead to a situation with unacceptable costs; uncertainty is the greatest risk when dealing with an unstable, nuclear-armed, hermit kingdom. What would cause any US administration to decide that NK cannot be allowed to exist (no de-escalation, unlike every single time so far), no matter the costs (accepting the risk of a Nuclear Error), if it has already not done so? (Proof it hasn't done so: North Korea still exists). NK would have to have already done something beyond the pale; perhaps already wounding the South to an unacceptable level, or maybe US being very strongly under the impression that North Korea was intending to do so. But what would provoke the North to do that, since it is so obviously suicide? Whatever it is, it might just provoke them to use nuclear weapons anyway, regardless of the obvious costs, and there goes your argument.

The problem with using counter-factuals is simply that at a certain level, it's fundamentally wild speculation. And speculation does not good policy make. Invading North Korea easily could, in theory, go off without a hitch and be a great day for everyone; let no one say it couldn't. Or millions could be dead within hours. And it would be up to chance. Above all, North Korea is a risk, confronting it is risky. And as long as it remains on the course it has been, it will continue to be Satan's Coinflip. That is the danger of North Korea.

It's certainly not an idea that's particularly appropriate for discussion in the US politics thread, at least until said country is actually considering invading NK. Which it's not, currently. And probably won't in our lifetimes.

This is a solid point.

beareacratic is one word I can never spell properly so excuse me. But it doesn't come up much in my writings so I don't have a chance to memorize it. I blame the French, as always. Way too many vowels.

Bureaucratic.

I remember it as going "First B, then u for some ungodly reason, then all the real vowels, then -cratic". Or learn to spell Bureau and add the -crat ending.


So about this gay marriage thing. Seems sorta important.