We have to strike NK now, with everything short of nuclear weapons. It might cost 10 million lives now, but
the alternative is 20 or 40 (or 100) million lives lost later.
Well, that's the question. Is the little fat kid suicidal?
That answer is not a definite no, which is the heart of the problem. You can't say what crazy people are going to do and when those crazy people have nuclear weapons, they actually become a legitimate threat. You can't even say that he would view launching a nuke as a suicidal move on his part, since it's not a definite that his thought processes end in logical conclusions.
Being able to say that he has a nuclear deterrent is his only play and the fact that he might actually use that deterrent means that the threat is actually a real one.
What evidence is there that he is insane? We are repeatedly told he is by the media, but I'm not sure what the evidence is
Either way, we should strike NK now and put an end to this threat.
If he's NOT insane, then he's playing a smart game of developing nukes for use as a future threat to intimidate other countries (mainly U.S.) to gain concessions. In which case we either have to put him down now, to prove that this doesn't work, or we have to recognize that all other small countries, and even some non-nations (terrorist groups, corporations) will use this same tactic some time in the future -- because if it worked for NK, it will work for them too.
Or, if he's wacked-out, we have to put him down before he starts a nuclear war. So, insane or not, he has to be crushed.
One could argue he is sane. America carpet bombed North Korea and killed at least 20% of the population in relatively recent history. America has continued to commit war crimes by launching wars of aggression around the globe.
Past history -- or lies about past history -- are irrelevant here. What matters now is preventing dozens of small countries from developing nuclear weapons. If NK is allowed to continue this, then in 50 years from now we'll have several more small countries threatening us with nukes and threatening to blow up L.A. or Chicago or New York if the U.S. doesn't meet some demand they make.
Kim says he wants nuclear weapons as self defense.
We must not allow every other country to have nuclear weapons for "self defense" or whatever jargon they use. The world will not be safe if Myanmar and Cuba and Venezuela and Taiwan and Yemen and Sudan and Libya etc. etc. etc. all have nuclear weapons ready to fire at Miami and Houston and Atlanta to protect their "self defense" -- that kind of "self defense" cannot be allowed to them. They will forego this if we make an example out of NK and show them that nukes are not the solution for them.
Sounds reasonable when you are being threatened to have some option to deter an attack.
This means giving every small country nuclear weapons to threaten every other country with, claiming it's for deterrence only, and trusting that all of them will use it for deterrence only. We are already trusting Russia and Pakistan and China etc. to use their nuclear weapons for deterrence only. Are we obligated to give nuclear weapons to every small country, so we have to trust 100 of them, or 200? Each additional nation having these weapons is one higher degree of risk. Isn't it best to keep that number as low as possible?
If we let NK do this, the number we have to trust will multiply probably without limit.
I think that if the shoe was on the other foot Americans would be claiming they need nuclear weapons for self defense, don't you?
translation: every country must have nuclear weapons -- Egypt, Sierra Leone, Uzbekistan, Philippines, Honduras -- and not only nations, but also organized crime syndicates and corporations and terror groups. They're all entitled to "self defense" against their perceived aggressors.
