"However, we want to make clear that we will regard sanctions as a declaration of war

dlofnep

I've been keeping tabs over the unstable position with North Korea over the last few months and it seems to be worsening. North Korea are planning a nuclear test and upon the US's recent state saying that they would go to the UN in regards to the issue - NK responded with "If the United States wants so much to drag the nuclear issue to the U.N. Security Council, it may do so, However, we want to make clear that we will regard sanctions as a declaration of war."

I see this situation only growing worse and worse. Since North Korea are 10 times the military force that Iraq are, The US is wise not to jump into the deep end on this and are very careful about what they say. North Korea continue to abandon any kind of talks with China & The US and all parties involved.

This is a war waiting to happen.. And not a pretty one. What are your guys thoughts on this?

Nuttzz

More sabre rattling by Kim I'd say. The NK's are on par with the Iraqi's (equipment wise) during the first gulf war. Kim is looking for conessions but less like to get them from a conservative US administration, however I dont think Bush would launch a strike against them, the US doesnt have the ability to fight on two fronts at the moment without serious banjaxing their economy

dlofnep

Nuttzz wrote:

More sabre rattling by Kim I'd say. The NK's are on par with the Iraqi's (equipment wise) during the first gulf war. Kim is looking for conessions but less like to get them from a conservative US administration, however I dont think Bush would launch a strike against them, the US doesnt have the ability to fight on two fronts at the moment without serious banjaxing their economy

North Korea are believed to have already produced 2 nuclear bombs. They have a 1 million man army.. I think this is considerably stronger than Iraq.

Nuttzz

Nobody really knows whats going on in NK

dlofnep wrote:

North Korea are believed to have already produced 2 nuclear bombs. .

Sadaam could deploy WMD at 45 minutes notice....

dlofnep wrote:

They have a 1 million man army.. I think this is considerably stronger than Iraq.

During the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, the Iraqi armed forces underwent many changes in size, structure, arms supplies, hierarchy, deployment, and political character. Between 1980 and the summer of 1990 Saddam boosted the number of troops in the Iraqi military from 180,000 to 900,000, creating the fourth-largest army in the world. With mobilization, Iraq could have raised this to 2 million men under arms--fully 75% of all Iraqi men between ages 18 and 34. The number of tanks in the Iraqi military rose from 2,700 to 5,700 and artillery pieces went from 2,300 to 3,700.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/army.htm

cdebru

perhaps if kim was sitting on a couple of billion barrells of oil the americans would be less willing to use the diplomatic route

of course they can have a million man army does not mean they would be willing to fight to uphold the current status quo in north korea

Bri

cdebru wrote:

of course they can have a million man army does not mean they would be willing to fight to uphold the current status quo in north korea

I was going to post something similar. I'm reading John Simpson's recount of Iraq pre-Iranian War till 2004 and the description of the Iraqi army and their lack of willingness to engage in various scenarios is fascinating stuff.

Enduro

Compared to NK, Saddam's Iraq was a free open country. Everything I've read about NK leads me to believe that the army would fight to the last. The brainwashing that goes on in NK is pretty comprehensive. A lot of defectors have confrimed this, and that they themselves were fully taken in by the mind control machine until they ended up as an enemy of the state, for whatever reason. Comparisons could be made to the way the Stalin ran Russia in the 30s (Brutal police state, organised famines, mind controlling propaganda machine), and you can't say that they didn't give 110% to their subsequent war effort.

Nobody really knows whats going on in the ruling echelons in NK. Its possible that Kim is only a figurehead for a ruling junta at this point.

While it seems that a catastophic war will happen sooner or later, it has looked this way for a long long time now, and we've still got away without it. If war does break out it'll be interesting to see if the anti-american looney brigade will stoop low enough to take the NK side in the war.

Boggle

While it seems that a catastophic war will happen sooner or later, it has looked this way for a long long time now, and we've still got away without it. If war does break out it'll be interesting to see if the anti-american looney brigade will stoop low enough to take the NK side in the war.

The opportunity for war here has been and gone. The yanks were too busy with bush's personal vendetta... If NK have testable nukes then its already too late...

dlofnep

More conflictions arise - "America's chief envoy to North Korea has warned that the US will not wait forever for Pyongyang to return to six party talks on its nuclear programme."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4484581.stm

I think it's nearing the make or break time for North Korea.

Enduro

Boggle, do you not realise that the Americans do not have a monopoly on starting wars. The North Koreans are perfectly capable of, thinking of a wild conjecture, invading south Korea. They can do this whithout any say-so on whether the Americans think they've missed an opportunity or not. They have a certain amount of "form" in this regard.

mycroft

Enduro wrote:

Boggle, do you not realise that the Americans do not have a monopoly on starting wars. The North Koreans are perfectly capable of, thinking of a wild conjecture, invading south Korea. They can do this whithout any say-so on whether the Americans think they've missed an opportunity or not. They have a certain amount of "form" in this regard.

And that'd be sucidial for the country. While I think NK would happily go down in flames and take a chunk of the region with them if they were invaded, i don't see them starting a fight.

It's a double edged sword similar to the one Saddam was using with WMD, don't appear weak, and make veiled threats constantly, to diswade war, and make the potential conflict look like it will be much worse, that the unfortunate necessity that is reality.

Boggle

Boggle, do you not realise that the Americans do not have a monopoly on starting wars. The North Koreans are perfectly capable of, thinking of a wild conjecture, invading south Korea. They can do this whithout any say-so on whether the Americans think they've missed an opportunity or not. They have a certain amount of "form" in this regard.

You may have misread my post - or I'm mis-reading yours. What I was getting at was that the americans (The UN actually) should have been more interested in NK than Iraq as it was more likely that they were a genuine threat to other nations. The fact that they now have nukes means it is now a really messy situation. (even if they cannot deliver them to america, they could get SK or even us troops who were stationed in NK for an invasion...)

Instead, they took the easy option and invaded an already defeated enemy of the presidents daddy...

Lemming

mycroft wrote:

It's a double edged sword similar to the one Saddam was using <snip> and make the potential conflict look like it will be much worse, that the unfortunate necessity that is reality.

To be honest, any conflict will result in massive casualties for both sides, with SK taking a lot of civilian casualties since, if I recall, Nk has some tens of thousands of artillery pieces lining the border with some major urban areas (including Seoul) well within reach.

Any conflict on the Korean peninsula will be bloody. Very bloody. Nobody won the last one .....

mycroft

Lemming wrote:

To be honest, any conflict will result in massive casualties for both sides, with SK taking a lot of civilian casualties since, if I recall, Nk has some tens of thousands of artillery pieces lining the border with some major urban areas (including Seoul) well within reach.

Any conflict on the Korean peninsula will be bloody. Very bloody. Nobody won the last one .....

Not to mention the border being the most densely mined strip of land in the world.

I think we're both in agreement here, NK won't start a fight, they just like to tell the world they're capable of one, now and again.

Enduro

First of all, apologies to Boggle, I did mis-understand your post, and I agree with you that NK should have been a higher priority than Iraq (Although I do think that both should have been tackled).

Secondly,

I have to dissent from the consenus that NK will not start a war just because it will cause massive damage. They have already done it once. They also have no problem accepting massive casualties amongst their own population to gain any sort of politcal advantage. The conditions they put on famine relief efforts for their own population, and the fact that they do not take any non-ideoligcally safe option to relieve their own regular and predictable famines show that this is the case.

The NK leadership are very dangerous and unpredicatable bunch. The world would be a much better and safer place without them. The problme is finding a safe way to get rid of them.

mr_angry

It appears that Japan and China aren't on the best footing in terms of diplomatic relations at the moment either. I can't see them forming a coherent policy on North Korea at the moment. And IIRC, South Korea were pretty displeased at the Japanese text-books too. In fact, the only diplomatic party with any kind of stability at the moment is the Russians. :rolleyes:

The South Koreans are currently in an awful state at the moment. The government are trying to push through the building of a new capital city 1000 miles south of Seoul so it will be out of the North's missile range.

Abdiel

mr_angry wrote:

The government are trying to push through the building of a new capital city 1000 miles south of Seoul so it will be out of the North's missile range.

The entire peninsula is only 1000km long - that would put the new South Korean capital in the sea somewhere ? Maybe they're actually the remnants of a lost civilisation of Atlantis.

mr_angry

Sorry, typo. That should have read "100".

Thanks for the flippant response though. :rolleyes: