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World War 3
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Post by
baradiel
So, what are your thoughts about this "World War 3", North Korea vs United States i guess, also, i still don't understand why should we fight?
What are we doing that they get mad about?
This thread is just for you guys to post your opinions on it. If there is a problem please remove this topic from Wowhead.
Post by
Haxzor
It's North Korea, not 'Korea'.
Post by
Rankkor
So, what are your thoughts about this "World War 3", Korea vs United States i guess, also, i still don't understand why should we fight?
What are we doing that they get mad about?
This thread is just for you guys to post your opinions on it. If there is a problem please remove this topic from Wowhead.
What Haxzor said is very true, there's a huge difference between North Korea and South Korea.
Plus, a "war" between North Korea vs Anyone else (specially the US or any other first world country) wouldn't be so much of a war, more of a "
Curb-stomp Battle
".
The main reason North Korea has been able to get away with their crap is because they've been backed up by China all these years, and nobody really wanna mess with them. However, and this is a biggie, China has said that they'd only intervene in NK's behalf if THEY are hit first. If NK is the one who attacks first, then they're just gonna step back and let the world devour NK whole.
Therefore, without the backing of the world's biggest army, North Korea is one laughably weak country. I honestly think even MY army (Venezuela's army) is stronger than North Korea's army. First off, the malnourishment in there is terrible, their equipment is ridiculously obsolete, there's a rather long list of why they'd suck in a war.
Sure they spend a large chunk of their GDP on its army, but its GDP is tiny -- which shouldn't surprise you, considering the chief exports are requests for food aid and passive-aggressive threats. In actual dollars, North Korea's military budget is only five to eight billion dollars. By comparison, South Korea's military budget is over triple that. Actually, South Korea spends more on its army than North Korea has in its entire budget. Hell, I think South Korea's Starcraft players get paid more than North Korea's Generals.
Their most advanced weapons are based on technology from the '60s, and some of that cutting-edge equipment probably isn't functional because of fuel shortages and poor maintenance.
Of course, you could have an army of a dozen paraplegics with Nerf guns and still be a threat if you had nuclear weapons. But while it's true that North Korea does have a nuclear program, they lack the technology to effectively deliver a warhead.
They wouldn't last even a month without the backing of China, so they're not gonna do anything to jeopardize that, instead, they bark, and they taunt, and they provoke, and make empty hollow threats, to try and get others to shoot at them first, so they can play the victims, and essentially coerce china to bail them out. If they're the ones to shoot first, they're goners.
Their army is laughable, their weapons are laughable, their nuclear program is laughable. And we're supposed to fear them because.......?
OMG Look at their flags,
THEY'RE HUGE!
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240140
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Thror
Looking forward to new seasons of
M*A*S*H
.
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240140
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Post by
baradiel
Of what Rank said, i never thought North Korea is soo weak, i'll have to look some more information about North Korea.
I always though North Korea was more strong than China, South Korea and Japan...
Post by
Rankkor
Of what Rank said, i never thought North Korea is soo weak, i'll have to look some more information about North Korea.
I always though North Korea was more strong than China, South Korea and Japan...
On paper they do sound strong, they have the fourth largest army in the world, but numbers don't mean a thing when your equipment is so terrible, and outdated.
Think of it like this, Korea is like Willy E Coyote. Sure the coyote has all those connections with Acme, and an endless supply of anvils to try and use against the roadrunner, but does he has the methods to deliver those anvils? he does not, and more often than not, he ends up hurting himself rather than someone else every time he tries to use his gadgets.
Regarding their nuclear program,
this
is an interesting read.
Regarding the crappastic state of their military,
this
is another interesting read. (Warning: this one is a long long LONG read)
Of course, I'm not *that* worried because it's not clear to me that NK has ICBMs, even though they have warheads. Yes, their program is a joke and their tests fail as often as they succeed, but it only takes one success...
Here's the thing sis, not only they lack the means to deliver a nuclear attack (their ICBMs crash shortly after launch, their bombers are soviet era pieces of junk that can be shot down with BB guns, and vans, boats, etc, are too risky. But the biggest reason you have to not fear a nuclear attack from them is that no nation would dare use a nuclear device against a nuclear-armed state, because the certainty of retribution would far outweigh whatever benefit might be gained.
North Korea does everything they do because they have the backing of China, but China has said very firmly, that if NK is the one to start an attack, they're NOT gonna move a finger to help them.
For the ones interested, TVTropes has a fabulous read on North Korea here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/NorthKorea
Post by
ElhonnaDS
@ Baradial- No- North Korea is technologically fairly far behind, and they are completely culturally and informationally cut off from the rest of the world in order to create this cult of personality around their leader with no dissenting viewpoints. They have an army, but not anything the US or almost any other country would ever have to worry about. Their largest national export is requests for foreign aid, and while they may have something in the way of warheads, they don't have the resources to have amassed much of an arsenal. They are a poor nation, and a nation that has willfully resisted integration into the rest of the world.
From what I understand, their hatred of the US is based on their belief that we are supporting Japan, whom they hate, and that we have tricked South Korea into being our puppets rather than an independent nation. Japan has a very bloody and sordid history when it comes to the invasions of other countries. If you look up some of the practices of Japanese soldiers when they invaded China and Korea, it will make you sick. Japan officially denies it to this day, but the eye-witness accounts and evidence are overwhelming that their army's reputation as butchers and rapists was well earned. I have read accounts that are too graphic to link here, but they detailed systematic and allowed human rights abuses during those invasions that are hard to even read about.
Because of this history, North Korea is fiercely Independent. Their entire country is designed around repelling and resisting an invasion, and the population is cut off from non-government approved sources of information. They don't have access to the internet, western movies, books about our culture, current events, except at the highest levels of government. The government uses the US as a boogeyman to keep people in line, and they think that the US's greatest desire is to reconquer them.
North Korea is not a country that is ever going to be a threat to the US as a whole. If and when they do launch an attack, the counterattack will obliterate them. Kim Jong Il knew that, because the fiction that the people are fed was something his regime came up with. What worries me, is that Kim Jong Un might not understand how little effect North Korea can have on the US militarily, and what the relative power of the two nations are, and what a complete lack of interest the US has in occupying North Korea.
There are two ways that I worry that this will play out:
1) North Korea, now led by a man who has been brought up on his father's delusions of grandeur, will attack us on some level. It will cost hundreds or thousands of American lives. The reprisal will wipe out the North Korean government and open up the country to the rest of the world, but because of the state of delusion that the propaganda has created, a very large percentage of the North Korean civilian population will end up dying in an attempt to defend their country. And that's really sad, because it will be a result of these people having been told that they are fighting against the mass rape, torture and murder of their wives and children, and so what they will be fighting for will in their minds be a desperate and valid cause.
2) Our government will strike preemptively, launching China against us and causing an actual war of scary proportions. In previous pre-emptive actions, the US has not gotten the full wrath of the UN because the targets were small and relatively unimportant economically and politically, and so while it caused a lot of tension and clearly violated UN charters we had signed, it was not in their own self-interest to take any kind of military stand against it. If the US preemptively attacks North Korea, and China goes to war over it, I think it will be a different story. I think we've used up our international leeway based on our economic importance, and many countries would side with China in the form of aid, or even military support. Many more would embargo the US, confident that their trading partners in other parts of the world would do the same. I think that while we may have the capacity to win such a war, it would cripple our economy and cost many, many lives.
My hope is that the heads of state behind all of this political posturing are thinking with cool heads about what the long term repercussions will be, but considering that the US has been very liberal in the last 10 years with throwing their military weight around when there may or may not have been a legal reason to declare war on a country (per UN charters), I worry that it may have gotten to our heads and made our leadership too cocky, or that in the quest for votes they'll do something foolish.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##ElhonnaDS##DELIM##
Post by
Rankkor
Yep, well said sis. The real reason to be afraid is if anyone actually dares to preemptively attack NK; because that will unleash the wrath of China, and China............. damn, lets just say you DON'T want a war with them.
And yes, their people live under constant brainwashing from their government, Like Christopher Hitchens noted: "You almost get the feeling that Kim Il-sung was handed a copy of 1984 in Korean and asked, 'Do you think we could make this work?' And he thought, 'Well I don't know, but we can sure give it the old college try.'" North Korea is probably the closest any society has ever come to realizing a real life Oceania.
As for this bit:
1) North Korea, now led by a man who has been brought up on his father's delusions of grandeur, will attack us on some level. It will cost hundreds or thousands of American lives. The reprisal will wipe out the North Korean government and open up the country to the rest of the world, but because of the state of delusion that the propaganda has created, a very large percentage of the North Korean civilian population will end up dying in an attempt to defend their country. And that's really sad, because it will be a result of these people having been told that they are fighting against the mass rape, torture and murder of their wives and children, and so what they will be fighting for will in their minds be a desperate and valid cause.
It may take many generations to do it, but the damage done to these poor people CAN be undone.
Post by
Gone
I wouldn't exactly call it World War 3. Even if China got involved it wouldn't be as globally devastating as people seem to think. People overestimate China's military strength, they're an economic power, not really a military power. The United States has four times their number of air based weapons, three times their number of naval based weapons, 11 air craft carriers to their 1, and (here's the biggy) 38 times their nuclear arsenal. Not to mention that by striking against the U.S. is tantamount to striking against all of the western world.
The big danger with China lies in the fact that the U.S. economy is so tied up in theirs, that of they cut off trade, both countries would be hurt a lot by it, the U.S. more so though.
Some people worry about a Russia/China/NK alliance, since Russia and China are closer to each other than either of them are to the U.S. But Russia has condemned NKs actions against SK in the (recent) past.
Post by
MyTie
If it came to outright war, Russia China Iran and North Korea would form that side, although Russia and China don't want war, and are pushing against North Korea, they would support them in the event of war. China sent war planes to the border of North Korea. Let's not forget, that although the Soviet Union has fallen, Yeltsin was the hardliner that pushed back against Gorbachev at the end, and won power. Putin is very much Yeltsin's "political child". I believe that Putin is a hardliner. That political climate in Russia is extremely unlikely to change, which is especially highlighted by their actions in Georgia in 2008.
Do Russia/China support North Korea in their war mongering? No. If bullets started flying, would they fight with the US? No.
Post by
Adamsm
Do Russia/China support North Korea in their war mongering? No. If bullets started flying, would they fight with the US? No.
Could easily see both of them just waiting on the border for the fighting to be over then move in and take NK for themselves.
Post by
MyTie
Do Russia/China support North Korea in their war mongering? No. If bullets started flying, would they fight with the US? No.
Could easily see both of them just waiting on the border for the fighting to be over then move in and take NK for themselves.
Oh yeah. Even if they aren't involved in a war to support North Korea, there could be another war for the land immediately after the fall of North Korea. More than likely, though, if the US fights North Korea, they will be there to support a South Korea takeover of North Korea. A unified Korea, under the old South Korean government.
Post by
Gone
The only way there would be a war would be if Russia or China supported NK, the only way it would be a world war would be of
both
of them supported NK, anything short of that would be the U.S. bombing NK into submission and installing a more sympathetic government.
EDIT: If it came to a world war with Russia/China/NK the deck still wouldn't be very stacked in their favor compared to America/Western Europe alone, not even including other eastern allies.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
That's supposing we would in fact have Western European support. The US has been involved in number of military conflicts in the last decade that many nations, and many people in Europe, consider to be unwarranted or not justified as a reason to invade a sovereign nation. I don't think that making a pre-emptive strike on North Korea, who everyone pretty much considers to be loud and obnoxious, but not much of a threat, would do much to counter those sentiments. If we agree that the only way a war would happen would be if the US struck the first blow, then we should consider the very strong possibility that we would not have very many allies in such a conflict. I think that eventually, the world will have to take a stand against one country continuously invading others based on WMD evidence that they cannot show to exist, based on the non-government sanctioned actions of some of their citizens, and based on empty posturing that other countries are in no position to back up. Eventually our money, and our personal military force will not be enough to counter the unease in the international community at how frequently and on how illegal a premise (per the UN charters we've signed), we invade other countries, and we'll find ourselves alone against the world, with probably only Israel at our backs.
Even if the withdrawal of support is economic, rather than them actually taking arms against us, the USA cannot survive having supply lines cut off without a major economic collapse. We are a service based economy. We import most of our raw materials and manufactured goods. We would be in an enormous world of hurt if we were the object of widespread embargoes.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##ElhonnaDS##DELIM##
Post by
Gone
For the record, the U.S. could probably wage and even win an effective war against Russia/China/NK by itself. It just wouldn't be the utter curbstomp it would be if it was the entire western world. But I digress.
Half of my family grew up in the eastern half of Western Europe. There is a lot of anti U.S. sentiment in that part of the world, but if it came down to another world war there is no question where their loyalty would fall. The United States and Western Europe are intimately tied to one another both economically and militarily.
Would they support us in making a preemptive strike on NK? Maybe not. Would they support us if it came to a global war with China and Russia? Unquestionably, yes. As much as Europeans talk $%^& about America, that doesn't change the fact that their way of life is infinitely better with the current power structure in effect.
Post by
MyTie
I think that a US/China, US/China+Russia, or US/Russia war would include nuclear weapons, Ryjacork.
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