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I’m not sure about you, but I can’t imagine many Americans who would sacrifice Anchorage, Honolulu, or God forbid, Los Angeles in a nuclear strike in order to save the South Koreans.

In a mano-a-mano fight between the Koreas, with North Korea striking first and with WMD, North Korean leadership might believe they can win. It doesn’t matter what the facts are–they BELIEVE they can win.

If North Korea feels that it’s best strategy is to attack now before South Korea goes fully nuclear, they probably will. (and everyday South KOrea-North military force imbalance grows) After victory, they can then do a Deng Xiao Ming style reforms, and the hoopla about reunification can be enough to save the NK elite from mob death a la Mussolini.

My point is that, NK may not wait around until the final conclusion of a nuclear arms race with SK. We have to start to give KJI nice deals now. Like, if he starts a war, we recind any Geneva protection against torture specifically against HIM, but if he relinquishes power, he is given a billion dollars and a resort in the Swiss Alps, and a complete immunity from his crimes against humanity.

I’m not sure there is a need to start a war even if NK goes nuclear. In fact, the current Washington “redline” seems to take a nuclear-armed North Korea as a given. It’s just that at that point, Washington and Tokyo will most likely say that, well, if Pyongyang has the resources to develop a nuclear arsenal, then it has the resources to feed itself without outside assistance. And after Tokyo and Seoul go nuclear, it puts pressure on Pyongyang to develop a deterrent large enough to be credible when faced with the threat of a Japanese or South Korean first strike.

If SK is far along in nuclear weapons research (which we should all assume is something along the line of Israel’s current status) we can only assume Japan has a far more advanced one. They practically have the know-how and they already have the fissile material. Both of those nations have missile technology.

Japan is flipping about after the “discovery” of less than 20 Japanese nationals kidnapped by NK. If political maneuvering can accomplish this, then I can only assume that the same exact Hiroshima Peace Memorial can soon become a reminder of what can happen to Japan if they do not achieve nuclear parity with NK.

SK youth no longer remember the American GI giving out C rations to orphans. Likewise, Japanese youth have no memory of impaling peasant farmers with a bayonet. Neither side is probably too squemish about going nuclear.

No matter what we do, China ALREADY shares threat.

The real question we have to face is the same one we’ve always been facing and arguing over: Are we simply putting money down the drain in NK or should we start a war now?

I think it would be more correct to say ?€œIf our nightmare is a nuclear North Korea, China?€™s is a nuclear Taiwan. It?€™s time to share the nightmares.?€?

You make no mention of the current NorK possession of nukes (or is it your position that Nork nukes are only a fiction, one cooked up by the BU__SH__ administration for its own nefarious purposes?)

So the relatively stable democracies of ROK and Japan, finding themselves in possession of nukes, may decide to randomly drop one at any time ?€“ but you?€™re not worried that the DPRK won?€™t? I?€™d call that a classical case of ?€œprojection?€? on your part, but of course I?€™m no psychologist. ”

- Paul H

The significance of a nuclear arsenal is not only the warhead itself but the range of the delivery system. Possession of missiles by South Korea with a radius that encompasses the Korean Peninsula, while South Korea is still under the US protectorate, is to go down a road of no return. Anything with greater range than is a potential threat to China. South Korea would never possess strategic weapons aimed at either North Korea nor China. On the other hand, the full range of the Taepodong-2 missile is 8000 km. The newer, submarine based missiles have an estimated range of 2500 km. What does this mean?

Were they? Would anyone really have missed anything if Korea had been reunified in the 1950’s? Tens of thousands of American soldiers would have lived to see their grandchildren. And about a million Chinese troops would have lived to see theirs. The fear 50 years ago was that much of East Asia would become vassal states to the Communist behemoth to the north. Today, many of them are aligning with that same Communist behemoth. Fighting the Korean War was bad for American interests 50 years ago, and providing South Korea a security guarantee continues to be bad for American interests even today.