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Comment by Accipitriform | Hacker News Reader

"For the cost of a single death machine, the will for war could be bought: you just use it to deliver books and medicine and food, instead of death and mayhem and misery."

We've done that for decades with North Korea, and you see the result: North Korea armed with thermonuclear weapons and delivery systems that can reach most of the world.

Human nature, and competition for resources, guarantee war for the foreseeable future. Sorry to say, a strong deterrent is the only way to preserve the peace.

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We have not done that in North Korea.

The argument "food doesn't work, so we'll just kill them" is heinous. Not gonna bother with your other points for that reason.

We certainly have done that in North Korea. We've given NK billions in aid in the expectation that the quest for nuclear weapons would end and NK would turn towards prosperity.

No one said, "we'll just kill them". The good thing is that NK is unlikely to kill us, since if it tries it won't survive as a political entity.

That is called "deterrence".

Completely ignoring the fact that we contributed to the current situation by killing 20% of their population during the Korean War. Wonder if not doing that would have been a more effective deterrence?

Er, "The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border."

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

Perhaps NK shouldn't have been the aggressor and gotten a bunch of citizens killed... How many South Koreans do you suppose would rather NK had won?

I have trouble countenancing people using the Korean War as justification for North Korean belligerence today. Yes, many North Koreans died during that war, but many South Koreans did as well... and those at the hands of their North Korean brothers.

Not only was North Korea the aggressor in the Korean War, it was not the United States acting unilaterally that opposed it but the United Nations. This was one of the only times in history that the United Nations declared war on a nation acting as a clear aggressor. Had the United Nations not intervened, then we would see an entire Korean peninsula run as foolishly and cruelly as the North is.

The DPRK's mythologizing of the war has done nothing but dig the North Korean people in general and the Kim regime in particular, into an ideological hole that they can't really get out of.

Bill Clinton reached a deal with North Korea to supply them with oil, and normalize relations in exchange for them stopping their nuclear program. They did.

Congress then reneged on the deal. Three years later, Bush gave his famous axis of evil speech, and invaded one of the countries on the list.

Unsurprisingly, having taken one look at what happened to Saddam Hussein, and because it's not ran by suicidal morons, North Korea resumed their nuclear program.

Have we all collectively forgotten the past 19 years?

Your characterization of events seems to be a bit of a simplification: https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/dprkchron, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework

Major reasons for the breakdown of the Agreed Framework was that DPRK was never abiding by it to begin with. I mean it really shouldn't be up to the United States to bribe DPRK into not pursuing nuclear weapons; North Korea should just respect its preexisting agreements with South Korea and rely on its relationships with China and Russia for nuclear deterrence the same as South Korea relies on the United States. It's no coincidence that talks broke down at around the same time that the North Korean famine started to subside.

That speech by Bush, foolish as it was, was not given in a void. It was a response to decades of belligerence by the DPRK. The reason Saddam got invaded was because he deliberately mislead people about his weapons programs. If North Korea was a less belligerent entity, they would be having a much easier time dealing with the United States.

> I mean it really shouldn't be up to the United States to bribe DPRK into not pursuing nuclear weapons

The United States also should not be making demands of the DPRK at gunpoint. If some agreement could not be reached, it would have bombed the Yongbyon reactor.

The NNPT is a voluntary agreement - one that its key signatories are arguably in violation of.

> That speech by Bush, foolish as it was, was not given in a void. It was a response to decades of belligerence by the DPRK.

The belligerence was not in a void. The country underwent a devastating war, and was subjected to decades of economic and political marginalisation, with the constant threat of another war hanging over it.

If the United States was less belligirent towards North Korea, they would also have a much easier time dealing with them. This is, of course, not a notion that is even entertained by the Department of State.

Pretty much everyone involved in this cesspool is smeared in shit. No-one comes out looking good.

"The country underwent a devastating war, and was subjected to decades of economic and political marginalisation, with the constant threat of another war hanging over it."

If by 'decades of economic and political marginalisation' you mean it was on the Soviet side in the Cold War, then you are correct. But during that time DPRK had a strong alliance with the Soviet Union which provided them with enormous resources. Their economy was almost on par with the South. It wasn't until the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the 90s, that this changed and it was Korean belligerence in the 90s and 2000s that lead to the current state of affairs.

"The country underwent a devastating war"

Using the Korean war as justification for current North Korean foreign and domestic policies is as morally bankrupt as using the First World War as justification for Hitler's foreign and domestic policies. The DPRK has been the aggressor from the beginning.

"The NNPT is a voluntary agreement - one that its key signatories are arguably in violation of."

They signed other agreements... https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/KR%2...

"The United States also should not be making demands of the DPRK at gunpoint."

That strongly depends on the kind of demand being made. If the United States was demanding economic concessions, you'd be right, but that's the situation. The situation is that North Korea is making demands at gunpoint and is attempting to make even more devastating threats. In these negotiations, the United States has never threatened to attack North Korea's civilian population, nor has it threatened to use nuclear weapons. North Korea however, has done exactly the opposite.

There is no parity between North Korea's and the United States' actions here.

If we had this news announced in 1946 then I don't think that everyone at the United Nations would think this was in keeping with what had been agreed.

North Korea is not what you think it is or how people in North Korea see things. The goal for both Koreas is the same as it was for 'both Germanies' - unification. However, North Korea sees the war as very much imposed by America. The USA is the country seen as keeping the two Koreas apart. The arrangement sought by North Korea in this united kingdom is very much like how the deal goes for Scotland in the UK - devolution of sorts, albeit 'Juche' flavoured.

The leadership gig in North Korea is very much like what the Japanese imposed with a holy emperor type of person having absolute god like authority. This was the model for the Kim dynasty to follow.

So what is wrong with a united Korea?

In a matter of a generation a united Korea would be a GDP powerhouse with ample natural resources and great people. Korea would be unstoppable to become bigger than everyone except one or two others when it comes to global clout. Really there would be no excuses for not giving Korea a seat at the UN, plus their currency could be up there with the Euro as a currency to trade in.

So it serves the interests of everyone else on the UN to have Korea divided. And occupied in the South by good old 'global policeman' Uncle Sam.

We live in a Western world of Full Spectrum Dominance, discussion of North Korea is skewed so that we imagine these hordes from the North flattening all those big cities in the south with their cruddy armaments and dirty bombs. However, any understanding of the North Korean position and any appreciation of their goals puts out of mind these silly Western fears. It is just propaganda, a shaping of Western minds, a filter bubble that has been going on for 75 or so years, inescapable.

Anyone in the West that attempts to read the words of the North and try to understand their position is to be scapegoated and regarded with suspicion. In the West our views have to be suckled from the teat of the TV news, there is no scope for listening to the other side. We have our news journalists to not do that for us so we don't have to either.

You think the Kims genuinely want to unify Korea under a single, democratic government? That they would give up power to a unified Korean government elected by the people? I just don't understand how the Kims could keep their god-emperor status and unify Korea, except if they conquered the South. And I don't see the Kims willingly giving up absolute power.

I also think you're kind of glossing over the fact that the DPRK is a profoundly brutal totalitarian regime that holds hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in concentration camps, along with numerous other human rights violations. You don't think that might be the reason the country is hated globally? Or at least contribute to it?

> We live in a Western world of Full Spectrum Dominance, discussion of North Korea is skewed so that we imagine these hordes from the North flattening all those big cities in the south with their cruddy armaments and dirty bombs.

Have you read up on the DPRK military? They have thousands of artillery positions throughout the country, most of which are capable of reaching Seoul, along with key military installations. It's crappy artillery, but there's a lot of it and they can really make it rain down on civilians. Studies have suggested that even if the US devoted the entirety of its air power in the Pacific to destroying those artillery positions, it would take a week to remove all of them. During which time they could fire indiscriminately at population centers. Even an Iron Dome-like defense system wouldn't be able to handle that volume of artillery.

North Korea wouldn't win any war with the US, but they could take a lot of South Koreans down with them.

> In a matter of a generation a united Korea would be a GDP powerhouse with ample natural resources and great people. Korea would be unstoppable to become bigger than everyone except one or two others when it comes to global clout

[citation needed]

> Really there would be no excuses for not giving Korea a seat at the UN

North Korea has been a full member of the UN since 1991

> In the West our views have to be suckled from the teat of the TV news, there is no scope for listening to the other side. We have our news journalists to not do that for us so we don't have to either.

This sort of ad hominem attack on the abstract concept of "the West" really doesn't add anything to your argument.

> We've done that for decades with North Korea, and you see the result: North Korea armed with thermonuclear weapons and delivery systems that can reach most of the world.

I mean, at the same time we convinced Gaddafi to quit his nuclear weapons program and then pounced on him as soon as we could without international backlash. We sent a clear signal that we only respect the sovereignty of nuclear powers.

NATO planes enforced a UN resolution for the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya during its civil war because the Libyan government forces were attacking civilian targets. Both Russia and China had unilateral veto power over that order and declined to do so. UN Security Council Resolution 1970 (condemning Libya for war crimes, creating sanctions, and referring them to the ICC) passed unanimously, and UNSC R 1973 (establishing the no-fly zone) passed with 10 votes for and 5 votes abstaining.

We also directly funded the rebel groups while enforcing the no fly zone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/world/africa/weapons-sent-...

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/03/in...

In the first link, the Qataris were arming the rebels with their own money, the US just wasn't stopping them. Though I take your point that the US, to a certain extent, favored the rebels. The second link is a hypothetical: reporting that some members of government are considering funding the rebels.

Fair enough, how about this?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-usa-order/exclusive...

We just need a death star.

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