Regime change has worked so well for the US in the past...it's worth a try.
Are you sure you mean "regime change?" As an end unto itself, regime change has worked. The U.S. "interfered" and the regime changed more often than it didn't.
As part of nation building that includes the sub-goal of replacing a non-democratic regime with a democratic one, not so much.
While it may be nice to imagine nation building or regime change will produce new "Germanies and Japans," few well informed people actually these days expect that sort of outcome. Such triumphalist rhetoric grew especially pronounced in the post-Cold War world, but may have reached its zenith during
the Bush administration, which declared in the 2002 National Security Strategy that “freedom, democracy, and free enterprise” constituted the “single, sustainable model for national success,” a formula that is “right and true for every person in every society.” One cannot, however, merely look binarily at regime change and nation building processes and assert their success or failure accordingly. That assessment must be made in terms of where the outcome lands on a continuum of possible returns over periods of time.
Producing democratically controlled nations is not the only goal of regime change or nation building, though it is the ideal final outcome, at least from the U.S. government and corporate POV. Merely replacing one "dangerous" regime with a "less dangerous" one is also an aim of regime change efforts, and to the extent that happens, regime change can be viewed as successful even when it doesn't look that way when measured against the most ideal of ends. Establishing an environment in which the the intervening nation can more ably militarily exert its will is another.
No outcome like the two noted above is going to be openly admitted, but it'd be myopic for any strategist (or "arm chair" strategist) to conceive such morally decrepit goals as beneath the economically/financially driven wielders of global power, especially the Western powers for which the sun rises and sets on the financial cost-benefit calculus, not only that of absolute gains and losses, but also that of who bears the losses and who reaps the gains.
If one insists on defining that as the only way to declare successful a given regime change/nation building endeavor, well, sure, neither has a long track record of success. Seen through
the prism of maintaining continuous combat to provide for a continual stream of revenues, regime change assumes a very different end, one whereby fomenting and then managing it and its attendant conflict to a sub-nuclear level is the objective. North Korea with its nuclear rather than conventional sabre rattling is throwing a wrench into that paradigm.
The South Koreans may want to reunite the two Koreas, but the West and China is perfectly content to leave things just as they have been for decades. China because the DPRK provides a buffer against Western troops that China would sooner see farther from its border than closer. That's
no different now than it was
in the 1970s and '80s.
There's too much stupidity in this thread. None of you have a fucking clue what you are talking about.
Like you do? Mister... Tomahawk missiles can't do damage to "hardened bunkers" and they won't destroy a plane just do a little damage to it.
LOL....On this topic and with that member, it doesn't stop there...
The real governing body in the DPRK is the National Defense Commission.
The NDC is defunct. It has been since last fall. So just how current is the member's knowledge of the DPRK?
The Russian defense industry sells a lot of high tech military equipment to the KPA.
Russian exports to the DPRK don't even rate explicit mention in the detailing of North Korea's exports and it comprises 2.3% of the DPRK's imports.
There has been tension between Russia and North Korea lately, but they are still their second largest trade partner.
North Korea's second largest trading partner is India.
DPRK-Russian trade has seen huge increases:
- In 2015 the imports of North Korean made products in Russia experienced a significant rise .
- imports of manmade filaments rise by 8733%; the imports of railway, tramway locomotives, rolling stock, equipment- by 5283%.
In the overall scheme of the DPRK economy, however, Russia's role is minor, aside from the fact that the DPRK can't really afford to lose a single dollar of revenue and it's quite limited in to whom it can sell what it produces.
Looking at the details of what Russia buys and sells to the DPRK, one sees that North Korea is largely a politically captive/manipulatable source of
very, very cheap labor that's comparatively close and largely free of the
risk of pirating and easily managed-around bad ocean weather/conditions. According to the
Russian Exports National Information Portal:
North Korea exports the following to Russia:
- Fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatic invertebrates nes (29%)
- Articles of apparel, accessories, not knit or crochet (27%)
- Musical instruments, parts and accessories (17%)
- Railway, tramway locomotives, rolling stock, equipment (6%)
- Manmade filaments (5%)
- Electrical, electronic equipment (4%)
- Plastics and articles thereof (3%)
- Wadding, felt, nonwovens, yarns, twine, cordage, etc (2%)
- Rubber and articles thereof (2%)
- Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers, etc (1%)
- Cereal, flour, starch, milk preparations and products (1%)
- Tanning, dyeing extracts, tannins, derivs,pigments etc (1%)
- Milling products, malt, starches, inulin, wheat gluten (1%)
North Korea imports the following from Russia:
- Mineral fuels, oils, distillation products, etc (83%)
- Wood and articles of wood, wood charcoal (4%)
- Cereals (4%)
- Milling products, malt, starches, inulin, wheat gluten (3%)
- Fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatic invertebrates nes (3%)
- Pharmaceutical products (1%)
I mean really....Look at that. The DPRK almost exclusively purchases commodities from Russia and almost exclusively sells value-added goods that cost more to produce elsewhere. The only reasons that happens in such such dramatic proportions are:
- In an equitable "arm's length" exchange pattern between equals -- the "value-added" goods producer has an inordinately lower cost of "everything" -- labor, production facilities, and land.
- One party to the exchange is manipulating the other, be it willfully or because the "compromised" party is so "thirsty" it has no real choice but to countenance the manipulation.
Comparative advantage is what it is, but the picture one sees in the trade relations between Russia and the DPRK is abnormal. (It's that way between the PRC and DPRK too.) Apparently, KJU is happier being used and "tilting at windmills" at his people's expense (along with manipulating them), than he is evolving to have a mutually more beneficial relationship with South Korea and the rest of the world.
At any rate, that member seems keen to assert everyone else is clueless, yet I've seen nothing -- no facts, not data, no credible or even plausible analysis from him and that would support the notion that he is to any materially relevant degree "clued in" on the DPRK.
My solution....
Create a phony crisis in Seoul that would necessitate an evacuation of the entire city and surrounding areas. Make it large enough to get people scared. A crisis on the order of a nuclear breach of highly toxic radioactive material. I don’t know if Seoul has a reactor near it, but it could be a type of military accident where the entire city had to be evacuated.....
Wow! Notwithstanding what I wrote in response to IDB this post, that's taking "manufactured conflict" to a whole new level.
Tom Clancy's novels because he researched every aspect of the spycraft in his books down to a gnat's ass. That is why they are such good books
OT:
Yes, he did, and he incorporated ideas and plot lines based on every bit of that research into this novels, thus making the later ones often enough Tolstoyic in length. LOL I am not the only one who noticed. Over time, I began to notice fewer and fewer of my fellow passengers cruising through a Clancy novel while on a long flight, most opting for something considerably shorter and that could be started and finished in the course of the trip. LOL
Un and the NK leaders are fanatics. And fanatics want to be heard and treated as relevant. They are incensed at the idea of their self proclaimed military might being ignored as though it were a flyspeck. So Un issues these crack pot statements about going to war, attacking South Korea, etc.
Again, these people are fanatics. There is no possible diplomatic reconciliation with fanatics. So the best way is to ignore them. But with a vigilant eye.
I would tend to agree with you; however, "rattling" a nuclear "sabre" moves things to a wholly different realm. KJU is just the sort of dude who, IMO, would, in the face of international ignominy "act out" by actually launching a nuclear weapon in so-called retaliation for or to preempt threats/offenses real or imagined. I think the time for relegating him to the nation-state equivalent of an "ignore list" has passed.
Send in an assassin. Dude needs to be off'd....then his people might wake up and fight for their freedom instead of being lemmings while they starve.
If by "his people" you mean the DPRK masses, one wonders whether they would or not. The place seems ripe for just about anything other than that happening. It's hard to know just how paranoid DPRK masses are. One hopes that proportionately there are fewer conspiracy theorizing paranoiacs than in the U.S., but how can one be sure of that? Hell, even among the U.S. masses, or even the membership here, look at how few people actually avail themselves of the great wealth of very high quality information available on myriad topics and instead prefer to dwell in the land of innuendo and irrationality. Among the even more poorly and inaccurately informed/educated DPRK citizenry, I would expect a vastly greater share of that sort of willfully ignorant conjecture. Thus, "waking up" is not likely what they'll do, at least not anytime soon.
if it wasn't for China there would be no N Korea
That's quite so.
- Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy
- China’s Last Ally: Beijing’s Policy toward North Korea during the U.S.–China Rapprochement, 1970–1975
- The China-North Korea Relationship
- China's foreign policy toward North Korea: the nuclear issue
How has it failed? Every April they have a Natiuonal Unity Day and bellow threats and loudly fart kimchee. And then every May they go back to doing nothing.
Over the years, there have only been empty threats.
The stated objective has been to prevent North Korea from developing a nuclear ability. Going back to former President Bill Clinton, we have been assured by them that they are not developing them. Now they have them and are developing ballistic missiles. Best estimates seem to be that by the end of President Trump's first term, they will have the ability to reach our West Coast with a nuclear device.
I'd say our ONLY solution is to get China involved Anything we might do could very well end in disaster
See the content at numbered link #3 just above and either of the
last two links here. Barring any actual bellicose acts by the DPRK, I can't see any reason for thinking China will become any more involved that it already is.
