North Korea threatens to withdraw from summit with Trump

[Bengalzona]

(05-10-2019, 04:43 PM)Dill Wrote: LOL, Geez B, what is your attraction to massive land wars in Asia? 

Kicking the Chinese back turned out to be not very easy. MacArthur wanted to use nukes before we had ICBMs--and on a Soviet client state.


We did buddy up with India. Sort of. They valued non-alignment for decades though, as did China. I think it makes good sense now to get and keep them in our camp, as China climbs to super power status.



Maybe, but I guess our disagreement here is in estimation of the costs.



Yow! No B'zona. You cannot mean we could somehow invade and defeat China with conventional forces. Or what do you mean by a "do-able," especially one leading to a likely nuclear exchange? Could one even engage without reinstating the draft--while still engaged in the war on Terror?


It's not about being "afraid" of China. Their defense is to make the cost of invading them prohibitively high. 

I don't think we can keep pre-emptively striking countries and maintain an international system slanted in favor of the US and its allies, as we currently have.  The current administration is stretching that system to its limits, perhaps irreversibly damaging it, not proving we can get away with stuff.

Now we are trying to force 5 countries to bend to our will on Iran, against their national interests, and we just upped the stakes of our trade war with one.

But had we invaded NK back in 2003, I think that would have done more damage than the Iraq war and Trump diplomacy.  Also, you can't prove a negative in this case, so your arguments that we had prevented NK getting a nuke would not carry much weight. To the world we would be the international bully.  Would we still be occupying the North, as we remain in A-stan?

(05-10-2019, 04:49 PM)Dill Wrote: Surely military history shows us a scale here, from Grenada and Panama up to the Soviet Union in WWII.

While invading NK would not be like invading the USSR, invading NK AND China would move us to that end of the spectrum.  The domestic pushback for something like that would prevent it from happening.

We should have chosen our quagmires better, certainly. But I think that is what Clinton and Bush were doing when they chose not to invade NK.

Dude! Did I say "INVADE" China? No. I may be a warhawk, but I ain't crazy!!!

Just kick them across the Yalu. We are capable of doing that. Kick them off the islands in the South China Sea, etc. also. That would bring quite a few other nations to the cause.

Yeah, there may be some initial blowback. But once the Koreas are unified, we can skidaddle out of there and let South Korea do the occupying/unifying. Far easier for them to do it as fellow Koreans than us as outsiders. The fact that South Korea is advanced and stable makes it a far different situation than, say, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. Also, when they bring capitalism and Christ to those poor suffering godless commies in the North, they will welcome the South Koreans and their KIA's in droves. "Dear Leader Who?"!