I45owl
Hall of Famer
Posts: 18,374
Joined: Jun 2005
Reputation: 184
I Root For: Rice Owls
Location: Dallas, TX
|
RE: How will North Korea play out?
(04-25-2017 09:16 PM)Hood-rich Wrote: (04-25-2017 10:32 AM)I45owl Wrote: North Korea is not led by a mad, irrational dictator. It is run by a cold, cynical, calculating, predictable, and consistent military class, of which Kim is part and parcel.
source?
Let me clarify... Kim Jong-Un is a spoiled little lunatic, but the leadership of North Korea does not act as if it were run by an immature, fat, little runt. It may be that he has family members killed with missiles and chemical weapons, but North Korea has been on a smooth trajectory for decades, and the drama that arises from it are just new tactics to achieve the same ends, not the wild, election-cycle by election-cycle swings that the US sees, going from Dixiecrat to neocon to post-Colonialist to out-of-his-league-city-councilman-wannabe from one president to the next.
But, here are your links...(I hope you don't mind blogs and fake news...)
North Korea, Far From Crazy, Is All Too Rational - The New York Times
Quote:But political scientists have repeatedly investigated this question and, time and again, emerged with the same answer: North Korea’s behavior, far from crazy, is all too rational.
The Use of Irrationality in Foreign Affairs - Geopolitical Futures
Quote:Your goal is to create a sense in others that you are an unpredictable soul, not out of calculation, but out of foolishness and carelessness. Each month there is going to be one magnificent hand, and you play poker to maximize the income from that hand. The rest of the time you try to stay even while building a pattern that is designed to undermine the other players, and let loose their greed and fear, so that, once a month, when the hand is dealt, no one knows what you are doing, and you clean the table’s clock.
...
The North Koreans have mastered the art of irrationality — or are simply irrational. It is the genius of the master when it isn’t known whether the irrationality is real or not. The North Koreans have built nuclear weapons in order to guarantee the survival of their regime against foreign intrusion. The uncertainty as to whether or not they would actually use those weapons, or even whether they have a deliverable capability, causes major powers to be very careful not to arouse North Korean insanity.
...
In the end, the North Koreans are not going to invite total annihilation by using nuclear weapons, but they are going to use uncertainty to manipulate the world. Or perhaps, in the short run, the North Koreans are actually irrational and the U.S. is assuming they are not. Or perhaps the U.S. thinks they are.
(not relevant to rationality, but interesting with regards to Seoul, air power over Korea, and unification...)
What a War with North Korea Looks Like - Geopolitical Futures
Quote:The North Koreans, therefore, appear to have an effective counter. Their artillery is dangerous and targets South Korea’s capital and largest city. Destroying the nuclear facilities while Seoul is devastated would raise questions about American military capability that would resonate. The United States needs a win for political reasons.
...
The artillery deployment north of the Demilitarized Zone facing Seoul has been in place for many years. Married to competent SAM systems and radar-guided guns, it seems to represent a formidable capability. This means that if the U.S. attacks the nukes, North Korea has the initiative to start a battle in the DMZ, posing unacceptable choices for the United States and catastrophic choices for South Korea. If you detect a lack of enthusiasm by the South Koreans to the idea of a U.S. airstrike on North Korean nukes, this is why. It’s not about the cost of integrating North Korea into South, although that matters. Rather, it is their fear of losing their capital. Japan, also at risk from nuclear weapons but not artillery, is much more enthusiastic about these strikes.
America’s New President Is Not a Rational Actor | Foreign Policy
Quote:As I’ve warned before, Trump & Co. seems to be operating straight from the Erdogan-Berlusconi-Putin playbook, and it remains an open question whether this approach will work in a country with many independent sources of information, some of which are still committed to facts.
...
Even more important, Trump seems to be blithely unaware that the United States is engaged in a serious geopolitical competition with China, and that this rivalry isn’t just about jobs, trade balances, currency values, or the other issues on which he’s fixated. Instead, it is mostly about trying to keep China from establishing a hegemonic position in Asia, from which it could eventually project power around the world and possibly even into the Western hemisphere itself.
[editorial... quoting Trump:]
“There are some losers who think I’m too fond of President Putin, and who believe he’s got something on me. That’s dumb, absurd, a crazy conspiracy theory that’s being promoted by the dishonest media. What these people don’t understand is that a better relationship with Russia is in our national interest. Russia is a major European and Asian power. It has thousands of nuclear weapons. Putin is a tough guy who really hates terrorists, and he doesn’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon. Putin also helped the world get rid of Assad’s chemical weapons. [editorial:...bombs Syrian airbase that hosts Russian troops because he claims Syria used chemical weapons against his people] As my really good friend Henry Kissinger told me, a bad relationship with Russia makes it harder to solve problems in lots of places.
...
I’m going to show the American people that I can get a better deal from Russia working with them than working against them. Trust me, it’s gonna be TREMENDOUS.”
IMHO, here is the situation: neither China nor Russia can tolerate an unconstrained US presence in Korea, and they do not care a whit about who suffers for their interests. Korea is one of a handful of natural allies that include Britain and Israel, and potentially a mullah-free Iran. The only way out that I see is to commit to all parties that the US maintain a limited 20-40,000 troop presence in Korea... not enough to pose a threat to China, not enough to even repel invasion from China, but enough to buy time and enough to demonstrate commitment to any existential threat to Korea. One of my favorite quotes from Owl 69/70/75 is to treat your friends better than your enemies. That is something that the US gets spectacularly wrong very often. If the US takes actions that result in casualties that exceed four figures, then it's hard for me to conceive how any American ally can trust the US again. The US can't make a calculus that results in > 10,000 civilian deaths of an ally in order to save millions of their brethren. That's hubris at a cost that someone else pays, and allies will see that in a different way that Americans ever will.
|
|