North Korea there will be blood?

Of course I understand that the US has a trade and financial interest with South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, but is a financial interest sufficient justification for war or invading another country?And of course the US values not just the lives of US citizens but even the enemy which is why the US uses drones and other forms of limited response instead of carpet bombing, but that is irrelevant to anything I have posted.The issue is "What value do the leaders of North Korea put on the lives of their citizens and of non North Koreans?"North Korea invading or more likely simply destroying South Korea would disrupt trade with South Korea certainly, but that is not a real threat to the continued existence of the US.North Korea has no real chance of invading Japan or Taiwan or of seriously threatening the continued existence of Japan or Taiwan so trying to drag them into this thread is simply a vacuous attempt to avoid what I have been saying.

In an effort to actually pin down your position (something like trying to pick up mercury with my fingers) I used trade interests as a blatantly obvious example of the interest that the US has in S Korea. So I don't know how your calculus works. Is $50b in trade worth 1 US soldier? Should the US put their flag down anywhere and make a stand? Should they have any allies or come to the aid of anybody? Is that the issue now? Was the German invasion of Poland in 1939 a threat to the US? What about the invasion of Kuwait in 1991? Was Bin Laden a threat to the continued existence of the US? What if Iran attacks Israel? No nation is an island unto themselves and this applies to the US more than most. See we can't even keep them out of a discussion about a conflict let alone a conflict itself.You suggested that the US might be best served by pulling out of S Korea to avoid any US casualties should a war break out ( I think). If this is the approach then why should the US worry about Taiwan or Japan. Again, N Korea has 000's of missiles that can easily reach Japan and cause them serious problems. Should the US be interested at that point?I am not trying to avoid anything jar. I certainly might be misunderstanding your position and so I am engaging you with responses designed to illuminate the implications of what it looks like you are saying.

A major component of decision making should be that value is mutable. Not everyone places the same value on a given object.There's no indication that North Korea has "000's" of missiles that can reach Japan or that they could carry warheads sufficient to cause damage to the extent that it would destroy the Nation State of Japan.Any real solution on the Korean Peninsula will come from the Koreans themselves. The US presence there only serves as a deterrent if the leaders of North Korea believe that US intervention will threaten them personally.North Korea cannot really threaten the US, so the people most threatened are North Korea, South Korea, China and Russia. It is really up to them to work something out, but as long as the US continues to play Big Brother it seems that they ain't gonna do it.Maybe the US should announce that it is going to stop playing Big Brother and that the kids just need to work it out. We can dawdle on actually leaving but need to make it clear that pretty soon it will be their problem, not ours.

If Safeway doesn't have any apples, then why should you think about oranges?

The problem is that any of those kids can blow up New York City or LA or Washington. Not just directly with a missile, but through other means.Or my home, the Pretoria/Johannesburg area, with one bomb, if they really wanted and set their minds to it. They've got the technology.I don't think that there's an easy solution to the problem of North Korea. In my view, the US presence and threats are seen as the most effective deterrents for any violence in that area. The US can annihilate North Korea quickly and effectively with a missile or two.Not that I'm advocating it at all, it's just a fact.China still is a key as a solution in ending the problems peacefully. But nobody knows what the plans are in China.The US government is so much more transparent.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Even if that were true and there is no indication they have the capabilities yet to destroy a whole city, it would not pose a threat to the continued existence of the nation state known as the United States of America. And should a nation state take such action the US would respond, would totally over react and likely totally destroy that nation state; and the US would do it with the full approval of the rest of the nation states and under the legal authority of a State of War.A nation state needs to behave as a nation state. It has the rights to respond to such an act of aggression but it does not have the right to respond to only the threat of such an act.

Sure that's true. How is that particularly relevant to this topic? The important question is what do we value. That is why I used all zeros . I really do not know what specific ability they have. They do have a 1.1 million man standing army with another 4 million in reserve. They do have thousands of old Soviet scud type missiles that could reach Japan with conventional or chemical warheads. Perhaps they can not send an atomic warhead to Japan on a missile but they could certainly float one into a port city on a fishing boat. They have no love for the Japanese and why should they stop if they are unopposed in S Korea?I am trying to get you to define how far you think the US should go with a policy of not intervening in the local affairs of allied foreign nations. What constitutes local when you are talking about atomic weapons and the global economy? Even though the N Korean leadership may be bat-shit crazy I would guess that they fully believe that the US presence threatens them personally.I agree that the Koreans have to be the key players but I do not see how they can be the only ones. How do you suppose that they would work it out if the US was not there?----------------I can not fathom how the N Korean leadership, or anyone else, can look at the living conditions in the 2 countries and believe that they are on the right track. N Korean GDP is $506/capita. S Korean GDP is $23,020/capita. Sure that is not the only measure of success but it has to figure in there somehow.Isn't 60 yrs of trying to make something work enough time to figure that it is not going to work? Do we not know with absolute conviction that our political system is better than theirs? Can we not support this conviction with evidence?I disagree with the idea that what the N Korean leadership is doing to the N Koreans should not be of great concern to the US and the rest of the world. Don't we owe them something just by virtue of the fact that they are starving for reasons that are completely avoidable? Has history not taught us that there is something wrong with keeping millions of people in forced labour camps?and hey wait a minute... don't our iphone parts come from S Korea?!!!

The North Korean standing army is not a threat to the US.The old Russian scuds do not have the range to reach Japan but the newer North Korean developed Rodong can reach Russia, China, Alaska, Japan, most of south east Asia, but it's accuracy and payload capacity make it a very limited threat, certainly no threat to either hardened military targets or the existence of a Nation State.Of course many Nation States have the capability to move a moderate sized nuclear, dirty. chemical or biological weapon into almost any city in the world. But Nation States operate from the major disadvantage of being identifiable and localized. It is possible for a Nation State to respond to attack by another Nation State. Since North Korea does not have the capability of destroying the Nation State known as the US it would be silly for it to attack the US directly. More likely iPhone stuff is made in China, but iPhones are just a bad joke anyway.Sure we can be very sure that our system is better than theirs. but so what? That does not give us any rights to impose our system on anyone else. We owe the North Koreans sympathy, understanding, help if they ask for it.We tried intervening directly in North Korea once before and it was a total disaster.BUT times are somewhat different.Today South Korea is China's third largest trading partner.
Today China is South Korea's largest trading partner.
Today, China, Japan and South Korea are negotiating creating a free trade zone.Today China has a vested interest in not allowing North Korea to destroy South Korea.Maybe it's time for the US to step back and let China, Japan, Russia and South Korea deal with the petulant child on the playground.

I am not so sure that I would classify it that way. Didn't our intervention make it possible for S Korea to become China's 3rd largest trading partner? ( A fact that is news to me.) This is likely the thing that will keep the most peace and I think that the US and the UN deserve to take the credit for enabling this situation to exist because they interfered and gave S Korea a chance to get up on their feet. China especially has to step up and the world should pressure them to do so.

I don't see how the US intervention into North Korea enabled South Korea to become China's third largest trading partner, economics, time and reforms in China did that. The problem was not the US defending South Korea and driving the North Koreans out of the South but rather when the US went further and invaded North Korea. That was when the Chinese and Russians entered directly into the conflict.As long as the US keeps it forces in South Korea those forces are as much a threat to China as to North Korea. The US presence there has long been a key irritation to China.As I have said several times in this thread, those most threatened by North Korea are China, Russia, South Korea and Japan. It's time for them to take the lead in securing peace in that area but as long as the US is the major player that is unlikely to happen.

Agreed. I don't think anyone in Asia wants to see NK take over SK.