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Comment by panglott | Hacker News Reader

"Allowing the regime to continue to exist" is a backwards way of looking at things that serves to legitimate invasions. The US is a superpower, but that doesn't mean that other nation-states exist because we deign to suffer their existence—that's a very colonialist way of looking at the world. Invading the north (or provoking it with special operations) would be a positive action for which the US would be responsible. North Korea is a bad state, and bad for its people, but the unspeakable carnage that would result from major ground warfare on the Korean peninsula is something else entirely.

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>The US is a superpower, but that doesn't mean that other nation-states exist because we deign to suffer their existence—that's a very colonialist way of looking at the world.

This is a question of international consensus, not US will. Under the definition of sovereignty agreed upon by the international community, DPRK has forfeited its' right to sovereignty by repeated human rights abuses, WMD development, and aggression toward it's neighbors. Essentially, if a state fails to uphold it's responsibility to its' citizens, sovereignty is forfeited. Admittedly this is a hard thing to judge, but a line must be drawn somewhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingent_sovereignty

It is Trump making the decision now, not the international community. I'll also remind you, that the only country in the entire world that has extensively used WMDs is the US. The US has used Nukes (WWII), and is also responsible for the most extensive use of chemical weapons of any county (Vietnam). NK has never used a WMD.

Lots of countries had widespread Chemical weapons usage.

Iraq used chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program

Israel used white phosphorous till 2013: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-22310544

the Soviet Union was accused of using chemical weapons in afghanistan: http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/afghan/report.pdf

The UN stated that Cuban units used VX as well as Sarin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_warfare#Angola

even the vietnamese used chemical weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_border_raids_in_Tha...

None of these examples include the use of chemical weapons in WWII or WWI. During these wars most major european countries used chemical weapons of some kind.

these instances don't excuse their usage, But I don't believe much is gained by pretending the rest of the world is blameless.

My point was, that OP was saying that countries that have and use WMDs are not legitimate. I agree. I don't think most governments are legit. But it seems NK is rather mild when it comes to WMDs. The US has far far more of them than NK and actually uses them.

Let's add some context.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 129-226k dead

Nazi Holocaust: 4.9-11m dead

Soviet Holodomor: 1.8-7.5m dead

Cambodian Genocide: 1.7-3m dead

Armenian Genocide: 800k-1.5m dead

Vietnam War (all deaths, US period): 1-3m dead

In terms of human death, WMDs have historically been the least of conflict-affected people's worries, compared to starvation and drawn out total war.

"It is Trump making the decision now, not the international community."

It may not be "the international community", but it is certainly not just Trump. South Korea, China, and lately Japan all have an interest and are actively attempting to steer results.

I mean, I'd bet if you consult your model of Trump that you think is acting it will tell you that being a crazy madman unconstrained by rationality or morality he unilaterally nuked Pyongyang last month. That model applied consistently, instead of piecemeal whenever cynically convenient, is clearly not predictive. (If that is not your personal model, timthelion, I am sure this message reaches many people for whom that is their unexamined model, so still not a waste.)

That's a subjective value call. It depends on how many North Koreans are being brutalized/dying right now. We don't have that number, but it's likely that tens of thousands of the hundreds of thousands of political prisoners will die of starvation or execution within a few years. So unspeakable carnage is already the default state, and we already have a situation here that is comparable to Khmer Rouge or Stalinist Russia levels of human-rights violations.

Regardless, the colonial past of Western powers is not relevant here. I am not suggesting a policy of Imperialism. I am just pointing out that North Korea's very existence comes with a serious cost in human life. This might be something we should at least factor in when weighing the heavy costs of destroying the Kim regime.

I don't want to minimize the North Korean regime, but you're talking about some of the world's largest armies engaged in a total war to the death in an area half the size of California with twice the population. You're talking about rocket artillery bombardment of a city of 30 million people, major tank warfare in population centers, and a serious risk of the use of nuclear weapons. This is warfare at a scale we haven't seen in generations.

"Allowing it to exist" is a negative action (in that we don't have to do anything for it to happen), whereas invading North Korea is a positive action. Framing "allowing it to exist" as a positive action makes it seem like a choice between two positive actions, which makes invasion seem more palatable. I'm sure there's a trolley problem about this, but people tend to view the ethics of positive actions more seriously than negative actions.

Oh, here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/

Wars are very rarely (read as never) fought as total wars to the death. Nobody can predict what exactly would happen if the conflict turns violent. The range of outcomes is huge. The regime may not be able to sustain itself if a war breaks out. There could be mass surrender/defections. Certainly it's hard to see how NK can sustain a war for any length of time given the state of its economy and the resources it has. The worst case scenario is indeed very ugly but IMO not very likely. As crazy as the regime appears to be, self preservation must be one of its objectives.

Are you trying to argue that there is a moral difference between action and inaction, or just a political difference? It's certainly something that historic philosophers have spent a lot of time discussing, but that doesn't mean their moral confusion needs to be taken seriously.

Any use of power against other people is necessarily both a moral and a political question. I wouldn't take someone seriously who ~hasn't~ thought hard about the moral question involved.

What does it matter who is responsible if many 100s of thousands of lives can be saved. Blame is just a social construct, death is a bit more permanent. NK is killing thousands in labor camps and will continue to do so. This is all without consider what happens if they get a nuke on missile into civilized cities.

Blame doesn't matter if stops a nuke in downtown Seoul or other Major city.

The flip side of your argument is it accepts the Kims' ownership over North Korea's land and population. The concept of legitimacy is fuzzy. There is gray area between defense and colonialist conquest.

It's implicit in your statement that the moral repugnancy of the Kim regime makes any acceptance of its existence intolerable. But that clearly implies we should remove the Kim regime; but invading countries is also generally immoral and the consequences of Korean War II are also morally repugnant.

> that clearly implies we should remove the Kim regime

No, it just means we can discuss it without moral censure. There have been lots of multilateral and unilateral interventions, covert and overt, since World War II. Global stability is built on great powers not warring with each other.

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