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North Korea, the Next Cold War?

FreeMason

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Over the years, it is often said "why haven't we done anything with North Korea"? My often reply was "are you crazy? You whine about 2,000 deaths in Iraq, imagine what fighting North Korea would be like!".

But this is actually a good question.

North Korea right now is unstable, they have no means to defend themselves, and they know it. Well they have a small means..."If you attack us, we'll damage South Korea!"

Kim Jong Il has been rather isolationist, that's somewhat a good thing concerning North Korea, it's better they just worry about being attacked, rather than worrying about attacking...however, when he goes, his legacy will be Nuclear Weapons.

The new leader will of course develope them further.

Eventually, it has to be hypothesised that North Korea would make a Nuclear Industrial Complex. This is more than their barganing chip.

With such a complex established, unlike now, they could freely sail the waters with no threat of attack.

This means they can import what they want, export what they want, and can threaten Nuclear War if this is not allowed.

It is learned from the Soviet Union, that a Conventional War would be possible without escalating to Nuclear War, but that no such Conventional War could be won by either side because they would resort to Nukes before losing...so some terms would be met or ... we'd have proxy wars, the latter was more common.

Thus, a North Korea, boldened by Nuclear Arms, might seek proxy wars to establish more control, probably motivated by their own needs of internal control than an idea of "global domination".

By causing communist revolutions, they can gain that region's resources through a trade agreement that exists outside UN sanctions.

Thus a new Cold War can begin.

The question then is, is there any other way than war before it is too late?

Post Script

In other forums I have already ran into tangential conversations concerning the extent of Soviet Doctrine, and Cuba's actual involvement of Africa. Since I'm for the evolution of discussion I'll leave my initial thread as is, but I'm aware of certain generalities in it that should be ignored or rather, not taken so absolutely. The premise of the thread is to begin discussion of future "what ifs" concerning North Korean foreign policy, where certain conditions are met.

These conditions appear to be met soon, possibly in the next few decades, and so the problem of a "Cold War" with North Korea is not a distant prospect in terms of nations, so it is our concern now to be able to deal with it while we can, in my opinion.

Other Sources

Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Known North Korea Missile Capabilities
North Korean Nuclear Weapons Statement
 
Excellent post & Wecome to the forum, FreeMason!...:2wave:

I only have three points about North Korea, but one of them is partisan, so I will lay silent on that issue...

The two points I WILL make...

1) I BELIEVE we are at a stalemate that is more livable to the US than to NK...Thus, nothing more than a waiting game to see who draws first...The only difference is that the perception is NK is "gung-ho" and the US is "yawning" with indifference...We KNOW they won't shoot, which leads us to point #2...

2) NK is different from the Cold War tactics because they can't obtain the necessary weapondry for MAD(Mutually Assured Destruction)...The US & USSR each knew that one button pushed means they are ALL pushed...

Not the case here...NK knows that if they were to throw one up, they would be signing their own death warrant and the result of their actions will NOT be "mutual"...
 
Valid points but the reason I don't agree with them is I'm projecting possibilities...

We know that North Korea can make Nuclear bombs (whether they've actually done so yet is still contestable but we think they've made 2).

We know they are having difficulties with their missile program (because they've shelved it for bargaining chips) but we know they can put a satellite into orbit because they've done so (albeit a short-lived orbit) thus they can put a payload onto an American city...just not with any of the weaponized rockets they have right now.

So in the future, depending on what they want to do, they can set-up a Nuclear state.

To the scale of the Soviet Union? They'd probably need to get very lucky to do that within a few decades (i.e. some nation with Uranium resources begins to openly trade with them).

I think that possibility is not far-flung, because North Korea can pose a technical solution to 3rd world problems.

That is...some dictator in Africa who has resources but nothing to do with them due to lack of technical knowledge of his people, and lack of infrastructure...numerous problems...could ship his resources to North Korea, who in turn constructs them into whatever the African nation wanted...in return the African nation gives them food and some spare resources...

This is what happend in Germany in 1920s-1930s, which is how the Nazis pulled out of their Inflation.

They had little resources at the time, but plenty of unused technical talent...they blocked-off the eastern nations from the west, causing them to give them raw materials.

In return, Germany made them farm equipment and other heavy machinery, and made some tanks and bullets for themselves on the side.

Scale is an issue, again, North Korea would have to be lucky, "Luck tends to be a factor so long as courage holds" is a true statement here.

Right now North Korea is being cowardly, pawning their Nuclear Weapons as a bargaining chip at the six-party talks....that's good for us.

But when they get enough Nukes, I hypothesize they'd say "OK...shut-up America, we're going to trade with whom we want, when we want, whatever we want, and if you don't like it, you can't stop us, because any attack on our shipping will be an act of war to which we will invade South Korea and Nuke Tokyo."

That'd effectively prevent us from stopping North Korean vessels, they'd not need to try and smuggle anymore...

The problem though still exists of who do they trade with.

More luck can be gained by the courageous move of proxy-wars. Wars that would not be tolerated by the Free World...but they can't do anything directly to the instigator...same reasons as we could not do anything directly against the Soviet Union in their proxy wars.

This could gain them allies.

And that's the root of my theory, thus...question.

The time-table, the plausibility...are all dependent on several things.

1) How fast until they have enough Nuclear Warheads to feel bold enough to put them on missiles.

2) How bold they are in actually executing a foreign policy, right now they are rather timid.

3) How bold they are in internal policy, right now they do half of what we say...such as not opperating their 50MW and 200MW nuclear power plants which together could produce about 50 Nuclear bombs a year...if I remember right, it might be 30 Nuclear bombs for the 50MW and 50 for the 200MW.

These things would make a difference...for now they aren't happening swiftly if at all...but like a snowball...after a few conditions are met, things could happen quite swiftly.

Especially with the impoverished condition of the 3rd world.
 
the impovershed 3rd world ! take a look in some states,
the 3rd world is in america today !

The remaining places where the 3rd world is kept at bay in America, the mexicans are hard at work on it.
 
The cold war between the US and USSR happened because neither side could directly act against the other due to the possibility of a general nuclesr exchange.

This possibility does not exist w/ N Korea, and so long as we make sure such a possibility never arises, we wont have to worry about a new Cold War with them.
 
M14 Shooter said:
The cold war between the US and USSR happened because neither side could directly act against the other due to the possibility of a general nuclesr exchange.

This possibility does not exist w/ N Korea, and so long as we make sure such a possibility never arises, we wont have to worry about a new Cold War with them.

theres no way the US would have a cold war with north korea. HOw could that tiny fked up country commit to that. I do believe that there could be a possible cold war between the US and China, and north korea would become one of those proxy wars or maybe a satellite state or something..i dunno
 
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