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Originally posted by 1kiki:
I've wondered if the response might not be to make North Korea pay, but to make China (its biggest supporter) pay. To that end, putting sanctions on anyone who does business with NK as Trump says he will do, makes sense.

Personally - and no, I'm not recommending it, I'm just pissed-off enough to think it - I would tell China that if NK does anything untoward, the US will take out a Chinese city of our choosing. I think that the biggest problem is the Chinese lack motivation.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
In most asian cultures, saving face is a major component.
DPRK does not reside in the real world.
Those 2 combined result in dramatic disaster.

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Originally posted by 6stringJoker:

Well... yanno.... whatever.

Maybe he is crazy. Maybe he'll back himself in a corner and and fire a nuke anywhere there is people and doom himself and whatever the population of Korea is?

Maybe I have an aneurysm 5 minutes after writing this post and nobody finds my body for weeks?


Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.......

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6stringJoker:

Well... yanno.... whatever.

Maybe he is crazy. Maybe he'll back himself in a corner and and fire a nuke anywhere there is people and doom himself and whatever the population of Korea is?

Maybe I have an aneurysm 5 minutes after writing this post and nobody finds my body for weeks?


Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.......

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Vladimir Putin’s analysis of North Korea is very different from Trump’s or 6stringJoker's "analysis", but similar to what you hear from American experts.

When Putin talked about the US-North Korea nuclear standoff in a press conference on Thursday night, his assessment of the situation matched far more closely with what you hear from US experts on North Korea than anything that the Trump administration has said.

Putin’s core point is that the central strategy of US policy under Trump, Obama, and Bush — attempting to pressure North Korea into giving up its nuclear program — has now conclusively failed. North Korea now believes that its nuclear arsenal is its best deterrent against an American invasion, and hence will not give it up no matter how much the United States tries to push them.

“They see nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction as the only way for them to protect themselves,” the Russian president said during the Thursday presser, held at an economic forum in Vladivostok, Russia.

That isn’t the Trump administration’s view. Just this week, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley called for “the strongest sanctions” to pressure North Korea into giving up nukes “before it's too late.” Yet the consensus position among America’s North Korea experts is that it is, in fact, too late: that nothing the US can do to Kim Jong Un could offset the deterrent value of his nuclear weapons.

“There is very little chance that we are ever going to talk this guy out of his weapons, and none of us who have been watching the situation closely for years really thought we were going to,” as Mira Rapp-Hooper, a scholar at Yale Law School who studies North Korea, put when I spoke to her this week.

Putin also noted that harsh American rhetoric — like Trump’s promise to respond to inflict “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on the North — serves only to escalate the situation. “It’s counterproductive to inflate this military hysteria. This leads nowhere,” he said.

This, once again, dovetails with what American experts told me in interviews. They believe that threats tend to inflame the North’s fears of invasion, causing them to respond with provocations and further development of their nuclear program.

“They’re responding to our threats, it’s tit-for-tat,” Dave Kang, the director of the Korean Studies Institute at the University of Southern California, says. “Our policies are designed precisely to provoke the outcome we’re trying to avoid.”

Finally, Putin argued that the best way to handle the nuclear crisis going forward is through negotiations — for the US and North Korea to develop better lines of communication in order to avoid a crisis escalating into a war that no one wants.

“All the competing sides have enough common sense and understanding of their responsibility. We can solve this problem through diplomatic means,” the Russian president said.

If you guessed that this is what most North Korea experts believe, then congratulations, you’ve got the pattern.

The United States has backed itself into a pretty obvious corner. The aim of denuclearizing North Korea is out of reach, which is tough to admit when America has spent decades warning of the consequences of Pyongyang’s program. Conceding defeat is very hard for anyone, and especially hard for people making policy for the world’s most powerful country.

www.vox.com/world/2017/9/8/16276122/north-korea-putin-trump-comments

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

Any word on when was the tipping point, the point of no return, when we should have stopped NK from pursuing their nuclear program?

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Originally posted by second:
Vladimir Putin’s analysis of North Korea is very different from Trump’s or 6stringJoker's "analysis", but similar to what you hear from American experts.

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Originally posted by 6stringJoker:

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Originally posted by second:
Vladimir Putin’s analysis of North Korea is very different from Trump’s or 6stringJoker's "analysis", but similar to what you hear from American experts.

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What's my analysis other than "don't give a shit"?

Whether there is or isn't a problem there isn't anybody in this country less equipped to do anything about it and over 300 million Americans who aren't any better equipped to do anything about it than I am.

Have fun worrying about it. I won't be.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6stringJoker:

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Originally posted by second:
Vladimir Putin’s analysis of North Korea is very different from Trump’s or 6stringJoker's "analysis", but similar to what you hear from American experts.

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What's my analysis other than "don't give a shit"?

Whether there is or isn't a problem there isn't anybody in this country less equipped to do anything about it and over 300 million Americans who aren't any better equipped to do anything about it than I am.

Have fun worrying about it. I won't be.

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You just washed your hands of all responsibilities for everything, not just N Korea or voting for Trump, haven't you? Must be nice being the human equivalent of zero and yet you're alive, conscious and a sort of capable adult. Have you achieved Buddhist enlightenment and purified yourself of all attachments to Earth?

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China Warns Trump: "We Will Back North Korea If The US Strikes First"

Meanwhile, South Korean nuclear experts, checking for contamination, said on Friday they had found minute traces of radioactive xenon gas but that it was too early to link it to Sunday’s explosion. The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) said it had been conducting tests on land, air and water samples since shortly after the North Korean nuclear test on Sunday. There was no chance the xenon “will have an impact on South Korea’s territory or population”, the agency said.

What is more concerning, however, is a Friday report on NBC, according to which Trump is readying a package of diplomatic and military moves against North Korea, including cyberattacks and increased surveillance and intelligence operations, after the nation's sixth and largest nuclear test.

Trump's top national security advisers walked him through a range of options over lunch in the White House on Sunday, just hours after North Korea's latest test, officials said.

According to NBC, Trump is also seriously considering adopting diplomatically risky sanctions on Chinese banks doing business with Pyongyang and upgrading missile defense systems in the region, administration officials said. In addition, the administration is not ruling out moving tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea should Seoul request them, a White House official said, though many consider such a move a nonstarter. It would break with nearly three decades of U.S. policy of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

U.S. officials have also made the case to China that if Beijing doesn't take stronger steps against North Korea, such as cutting off oil exports, South Korea and Japan are likely to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs and the U.S. won't stop them, the official said. "It's more a message for China than North Korea," the official said.

The U.S. has adopted sanctions aimed at Chinese entities that conduct business with North Korea, but has so far held back on broadly targeting China's banking system. China has told U.S. officials it would protest such a move diplomatically and retaliate, according to the senior administration official.

So what happened on Sunday? According to NBC, Trump's national security advisers presented him with U.S. military options, including pre-emptive strikes, and nuclear capabilities should America be called on to abide by its treaty obligations in the region, White House and defense officials said.

The president's advisers have made the case, however, that military strikes on North Korea could have serious repercussions, senior defense officials said, and the most glaring among these is that China has told administration officials that if the U.S. strikes North Korea first, Beijing would back Pyongyang, a senior military official told NBC.

This is not the first time China has warned the US not to escalate: on August 11, Beijing, through the state-owned media, cautioned the US president on Friday that it would intervene (militarily) on North Korea’s behalf if the US and South Korea launch a preemptive strike to “overthrow the North Korean regime,” according to a statement in the influential state-run newspaper Global Times.

"If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so," it said.

At the same time, the Chinese regime made it clear that its preferred outcome would be a continuation of the status quo, warning Kim Jong Un, or perhaps Trump, that it would "remain neutral if North Korea were to strike first."

As we said almost one month ago:

"not surprisingly, analysts have compared the standoff between the two nuclear powers (the North is a recent, if untested, member of this club) to a modern day Cuban Missile crisis. "This situation is beginning to develop into this generation's Cuban Missile crisis moment," ING's chief Asia economist Robert Carnell said in a research note. "While the U.S. president insists on ramping up the war of words, there is a decreasing chance of any diplomatic solution."

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

Any word on when was the tipping point, the point of no return, when we should have stopped NK from pursuing their nuclear program?

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The tipping point was back when China, India and Pakistan got their first A-bombs, but the U.S.A. didn't do a damn thing. N Korea saw how the game was played: the U.S.A. has not the courage to do more than talk you to death. Or there was the example of Israel and its bomb: again, the U.S.A. did nothing. I see a trend!

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

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
It's kind of a deal.

Does no one have an opinion?

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Originally posted by Oonjerah:
As I understand it so far:

North Korea began to test nuclear weapons. Continues to do so.
The neighbors, in general don't like it: S. Korea, Japan, Guam.
China's an NK ally, so maybe OK with the testing.

The USA objects. Kim Jong Un is offended. Our war planes are flying
around over there, close to NK but not invading. Kim, unless he is
an idiot, knows we can wipe him out. But he must save face, so he
demands we back off & he threatens war.

Simple answer. Put our planes back in their hangars & use diplomacy
to work things out. Trump can change direction easily; change his
mind & his opinion on the spur of the moment. He's not constrained
by consistency or logic. Using the Art of the Deal, he can say what
people want to hear and then go on to the next item that catches his
attention. He's unpredictable and very flexible that way.

Let Trump spend a little time & attention saving Puerto Rico while
the N Korea problem blows over. Cooler heads may prevail.



I've got a pal in Puerto Rico. Haven't heard from him since the 19th. :(

... oooOO}{OOooo ...

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
If Congress FINALLY does its duty and insists on its exclusive authority to wage war, as the Founding Fathers planned, that would be a good thing.

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If Congress FINALLY does its duty and insists on its exclusive authority to wage war, as the Founding Fathers planned, that would be a good thing. - SIGNY

The last time Congress declared war was June 4, 1942. With Rumania. What? That is what the U.S. Senate website says and there are pdfs of all the documents!
www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_and_teasers/WarDecl
arationsbyCongress.htm

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Good grief. I knew that Congress had abdicated its responsibility, but I didn't realize it was THAT bad!

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Originally posted by 1kiki:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41754307

"President Barack Obama maintained that the laws gave him the authority that he needed for the campaign against the Islamic State (IS) group, an organisation that didn't exist when the laws were written.

Mr Trump has continued to carry out an aggressive campaign against the militants, whether in Niger or other countries.

Obama and Trump, says Ohlin, have both "shoehorned" their military efforts into the antiquated authorisations."

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*Bad: setback for their nuclear missile program ... not to
mention it demonstrates their incompetence.

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U.S. Is Ready to Talk to North Korea ‘Anytime,’ Tillerson Says

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. is prepared to negotiate with North Korea without preconditions, but the Trump administration would first want a “quiet period” without nuclear or missile tests for discussions with Kim Jong Un’s regime to begin.

“Let’s just meet. We can talk about the weather if you want," Tillerson said in a speech Tuesday at the Atlantic Council in Washington. "We can talk about whether it’s going to be a square table or a round table if that’s what you’re excited about."

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Is this a change in policy? Or just a change in wording?

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