In retrospect, invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice than Iraq. NK didn't have nukes back then, we'd have avoided destabilizing the Middle East, and the defense industry would still get its blood money.
Not to mention North Korea continues to pose an actual WMD threat, they have concentration camps in dire need of liberation, their general populace is basically an ongoing humanitarian disaster, and they continue to pose an ever-increasing threat to global security.
All the US had to do was say NK was in cahoots with Al-Qaeda and had provided material support for 9/11 or something. War fever would've done the rest.
Granted, an estimated 100,000 civilian casualties from shelling in Seoul during the opening hours of the war is a hard pill to swallow. Today's threat however is the same deal plus nukes.
Then again, we had no qualms blowing away about 6500 Iraqi civilians with our surgical "shock and awe" campaign.[0] Turns out when you drop 2,000lb GBU-31s on civilian targets in the middle of a densely populated urban environment, it tends to kill a whole lot of people. Who knew! The fireworks look pretty on CNN though.[1][2]
Of course, enemy civilian lives tend to be far less valuable than allied civilian lives.
Invading North Korea in 2003 would have been an unimaginably bad mistake.
1. North Korean artillery could have done far more damage than 100,000 deaths in Seoul. It's said that one out of three rounds holds a chemical charge.
2. South Korea under the progressive Roh Moo-hyun gov't was firmly opposed. Socially, South Korea would be torn apart by pro and anti-US (war) sides.
3. What about China? At that time the PRC had just joined the WTO. Instead of coming close to the advanced world, Chinese nationalists would likely have gained the upper hand domestically, and a war with the US in North Korea would even be possible.
4. Who would control North Korea afterwards? This assumes that the US would be able to occupy North Korea long enough to create order. It would have then joined South Korea, though they would have been against the war from the start? The surviving voters, that's to say the original South Koreans, and the new North Korean citizens of the republic, might well elect a strongly anti-US gov't. Esp after the US unilaterally decided to launch a bloody war.
Be careful what you wish for...
If we're playing coulda shoulda woulda, it would have been better to keep and strengthen the Clinton nuclear agreement. The Bush Administration let it break down, and North Korea got nukes.
>Invading North Korea in 2003 would have been an unimaginably bad mistake.
Probably. It's just infuriating that the Western world has allowed the entire situation to persist for so long. It's 2017 and there's people who are born, live and die in labor camps with conditions straight out of the Holocaust.
>This assumes that the US would be able to occupy North Korea long enough to create order.
I often wonder what occupation of North Korea would be like. Are there actually a sizable number of brainwashed individuals that would fight to the death? Or would their populace be largely sympathetic in face of new information, considering their past treatment? My gut feeling is the latter, considering what happens when western media is smuggled into NK. These people literally risk a fate worse than death to see a glimpse of the outside world.
Either way, an occupation would be deeply weird in so many ways. I'd love to see whatever post-invasion psyops playbook the U.S. has prepared, and any associated assessments. Probably classified though.
>Be careful what you wish for...
Not wishing per se, just operating under the assumption that if we had to have a war to satisfy various monied interests and their war profiteering ambitions, North Korea would have likely been a superior choice over Iraq from a humanitarian and global security perspective.
> It's just infuriating that the Western world has allowed the entire situation to persist for so long.
It's usually lose/lose for whomever decides takes action. Does anyone ever get mad at Switzerland for always staying neutral, even if their neighbors are being herded away by the trainful and gassed? As soon as you get involved, you'll draw opponents even if you are doing it for The Right Reasons (which will be highly contested and you'll no doubt be accused of having ulterior motives)
Add to the 6,500 the million or so children who died during the proceeding decade of sanctions.
If only all those who were pro-war could see innocent children operated on without anaesthetic, if they could see the true brutality of war then perhaps we would live on a more peaceful planet.
Unfortunately it is more likely to be more of the same as the war mongers can be heard quite loudly rattling their sabres ready to send the sons and daughters of others out to slaughter
If only all those who were pro-war could see innocent children operated on without anaesthetic, if they could see the true brutality of war then perhaps we would live on a more peaceful planet.
I think you've misjudged a significant portion of human psychology. The torturous death of human children as a reason for peace? No! That's an injustice that demands retribution. It's a cause for war.
Just look at the Spanish civil war. The Republican faction wanted to vilify the Nationalists bring people to their side so they published pictures of children killed in Nationalist shelling.
In more recent years, Syrian rebels attempting to get the West to intervene against Assad published footage of dead children being mourned by their parents.
And, North Korea didn't have oil. If the US just wanted to invade a country to make the world a better place then there would have been plenty of easier countries to invade. How about Zimbabwe or Eritrea to mention just a few.
North Korea is China's laboratory for orthodox communism. They need it to remind party faithfuls what it would mean to return to the iron rice bowl (which sometimes lacks both rice and iron). Having some 25 million people occasionally suffer from hunger is preferable to losing stability in a country of 1400 million.
North Korea would collapse very quickly without China's support in fuels and food.
Speaking in absolutes ("If China wanted them to not have nukes, they wouldn't have") is usually a mistake in geopolitics.
China currently won't accept a unified Korea under South Korean rule (which they view as a US proxy). China also doesn't want a destabilized North Korea on its border. But it is likely that many outside China and the Koreas view China's influence as a lot more than it is.
China had Kim Jong Un half-brother under their protection as a way of providing a credible threat of threatening regime change. That isn't an option anymore.
I'd note this quote from a well-sourced FT article from last year:
Beijing has often talked up its influence over its recalcitrant neighbour in its discussions with Washington, but when Pyongyang claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb this year, Beijing had no idea it was coming, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
and this:
It may seem ludicrous to outsiders, but several close observers of North Korea told the FT that, given the choice, Mr Kim would prefer an alliance with America, the far-off superpower, than China, the ancient oppressor and emerging superpower.
We have a similar view on NK's raison d'etre. I think neither China nor SK want to be neighbors, and NK makes for a perfect buffer state, with the exception of the nuclear (and other WMDs, hypothetically) wrinkle.
> In retrospect, invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice than Iraq.
This sentence sounds very alien to me, am I alone?
It suggests that USA had to invade something, just for the sake of invasion.
Maybe the scars of the two WW are still a little too fresh where I live (France) for me to understand such a point of view. I'm trying hard to put an adjective on that mentality, but all that comes is alien, as in inhuman.
>It suggests that USA had to invade something, just for the sake of invasion.
Correct, at least with the administration at the time. Iraq was invaded on the flimsiest of pretenses, and was done in a fashion to maximize profit.
For example: Critical infrastructure was targeted under the pretense of rapid dominance largely for the purpose of creating incredibly lucrative reconstruction contracts for that administration's criminal friends. It's not like we needed to take out power and water for months.
Not to mention lucrative private security contracts, privatized logistics for the military, munitions and weapon systems. Attempts at privatizing Iraq's oil that only served to further fuel the brutal insurgency. The list goes on.
>Maybe the scars of the two WW are still a little too fresh where I live (France) for me to understand such a point of view. I'm trying hard to put an adjective on that mentality, but all that comes is alien, as in inhuman.
It is inhuman, when the motivations are profit. On the other hand, there's people suffering in North Korean camps that endure Holocaust-like conditions right now, as we speak. Liberating those people would be a moral justification for war if I've ever heard one.
> On the other hand, there's people suffering in North Korean camps that endure Holocaust-like conditions right now, as we speak. Liberating those people would be a moral justification for war if I've ever heard one.
You said yourself that it would be at the expense of hundreds of thousands casualties, not even counting the consequences of possible nuclear war. That's a pretty bad argument for a moral justification for an invasion, don't you think?
>You said yourself that it would be at the expense of hundreds of thousands casualties...
It's probably a worst-case estimate. It really depends on the efficacy of allied counter-battery fire and air capabilities versus enemy artillery positions.
There's also room for creativity. Park a carrier battle group off the coast of Seoul and fake a serious reactor event during a period of easterly winds, with mandatory evacuation southward in the days prior to the invasion.
>...not even counting the consequences of possible nuclear war.
If you're referring to North Korea: I'm not advocating invasion presently, merely lamenting that NK was not confronted prior to acquiring nuclear weapons. Invasion today only works with absolute assurance you can neutralize NK's nuclear capability, and that's extremely difficult if not impossible.
If you're referring to China and Russia: I'm pretty sure that to them, North Korea is squarely not worth risking nuclear confrontation with the United States over.
>That's a pretty bad argument for a moral justification for an invasion, don't you think?
No, I don't. There is an almost equal number of people languishing in hellish prison camps—some their entire lives—with a far greater amount in the general population living meager, miserable existences.
The very nature of it should transcend simple body count calculations in all but the most extreme cases of disparity. The civilized world has a moral obligation to wield its power in such a manner that doesn't allow such suffering to exist, even if doing so incurs a heavy cost.
Can you imagine if World War II had a different outcome, with Nazi Germany contained yet retaining its statehood? The term "Holocaust survivor" probably wouldn't be present in the modern lexicon. Such fiction isn't too dissimilar from the plight of North Korea's political prisoners today. By and large the civilized world doesn't give much of a shit about them.
When airmen go down behind enemy lines, the forces available to rescue them don't say "Well, we ran the numbers and it's not worth the potential cost of a rescue mission. So, we're just going to forget they exist instead." Esprit de corps ensures a moral obligation to do the right thing regardless of the risk.
I'm simply advocating for the same ideal on a basic humanitarian level.
However I will stick to thinking that NK is a problem that must be handled by SK/China/Russia/Japan. If the humanitarian crisis is really that bad in NK, then it's the role of their neighbors to see that it ends.
If said neighbors don't act, then the role of the rest of the world is to apply sufficient pressure on them.
USA is not the de facto leader of opinion you seem to be suggesting that it is (no offense intended, I just try to state my mind). It has the military/economical power, yes, but as a country it stands as equal to others. It has no legitimate mandate to solve the NK humanitarian crisis.
If you really want USA to be a benevolent dictator, then you should wish for USA to take on the third world problem (give an end to extreme poverty and uncontrolled population growth), or tackle the energy equation (seek unlimited/low-cost/co2-neutral sources).
That would be applauded and praised (but this is clearly not the path chosen right now...).
USA going into NK (deterrent/mass-destruction weapons or not) would simply repeat Vietnam, Afghanistan and Irak: a even more divided world where more and more humanitarian crisis will emerge.
It suggests that USA had to invade something, just for the sake of invasion.
After 9/11 the public found it therapeutic to have an evil enemy they could go to war against. Powerful people in the Bush administration wanted an excuse to invade Iraq again, and the public's psychological need made it very easy for them to sell the war. North Korea never would have worked because they weren't the right race and religion for the U.S. public to conflate them with the 9/11 attackers. Going to war with North Korea wouldn't have served the psychological drive to "strike back."
"In retrospect, invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice than Iraq."
Yeah. Sure. With Seoul in range of NK artillery and poison gas grenades. By the way, do you know why NK still exists and will exist for a very long time? Because it has 2 boarders with superpowers, China and Russia. And both powers have zero interest that the US soldiers, stationed in SK, move close to their boarders. Invading NK looks easy on paper. But the long tail risk is enormous. Do you know why 2 Korean states exits at all? It was not the North Koreans that brought the US army to halt. But yeah, for sure this time the Russians and Chinese won't bother.
>Do you know why 2 Korean states exits at all? It was not the North Koreans that brought the US army to halt.
Obviously. The Chinese and Russians wouldn't engage in direct combat with the US in this day and age, though. Proxy war or no proxy war.
They would of course provide material support for any resistance, assuming there would be one. However, I suspect the North Korean populace's forced reverence for Kim Jong-Un isn't exactly on the same level as say, the Mujahideen's religious fervor.
>But yeah, for sure this time the Russians and Chinese won't bother.
Is that sarcasm? I genuinely can't tell. Direct conflict with the US is a terrible idea, and both countries know that.
"Is that sarcasm? I genuinely can't tell. Direct conflict with the US is a terrible idea, and both countries know that."
The US has not enough soldiers in South Korea to face CN or RU. RU could probably take out US carriers and planes "at will" with their unmatched rocket technology. The last thing I heard was that RU jamming technology is also far ahead of the curve. And they have a nuclear arsenal to match the US. At the same time, RU has a boarder with NK while the US supply lines would be far stretched.
By the way, it was the end of the German Empire when the king decided to "kick the Serbs in the nuts"
It does, actually. A cynical person might say the Vietnam War constituted payday for the defense industry.
Crimea was about strategic resources (which ultimately boil down to money), and global posturing. Barely even a pretense of an underlying moral justification beyond nationalist rhetoric.
There are no strategic resources to speak of in Crimea. Black Sea fleet has no strategic importance for Russia because it is locked by Turkey, still a NATO country. All strategic ports are in the North and on the Pacific.
It was more like "Wag the Dog" play. A little war to boost morale and avoid orange revolution in Russia. Cost a lot of money due to sanctions and tanking ruble, so clearly not driven by economic considerations.
"When Russia seized Crimea in March, it acquired not just the Crimean landmass but also a maritime zone more than three times its size with the rights to underwater resources potentially worth trillions of dollars."
Key word here is "potentially". There's not much oil production in Black Sea. There are much better oil fields in Caspian sea nearby (which the linked article even mentions), let alone Siberia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/04/world/asia/north-korea-mi...
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In retrospect, invading North Korea in 2003 would have been a far better choice than Iraq. NK didn't have nukes back then, we'd have avoided destabilizing the Middle East, and the defense industry would still get its blood money.
Not to mention North Korea continues to pose an actual WMD threat, they have concentration camps in dire need of liberation, their general populace is basically an ongoing humanitarian disaster, and they continue to pose an ever-increasing threat to global security.
All the US had to do was say NK was in cahoots with Al-Qaeda and had provided material support for 9/11 or something. War fever would've done the rest.
Granted, an estimated 100,000 civilian casualties from shelling in Seoul during the opening hours of the war is a hard pill to swallow. Today's threat however is the same deal plus nukes.
Then again, we had no qualms blowing away about 6500 Iraqi civilians with our surgical "shock and awe" campaign.[0] Turns out when you drop 2,000lb GBU-31s on civilian targets in the middle of a densely populated urban environment, it tends to kill a whole lot of people. Who knew! The fireworks look pretty on CNN though.[1][2]
Of course, enemy civilian lives tend to be far less valuable than allied civilian lives.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe#Casualties
[1] https://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/4.htm
[2] https://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/usa1203/10.htm