North Korea and the United States traded escalating threats, with President Donald Trump threatening Pyongyang "with fire and fury like the world has never seen" and the North's military claiming Wednesday it was examining its plans for attacking Guam.Two things about that last statement. First, I suspect the Norks don't have a death wish, so a pre-emptive strike is unlikely. Second, reverence toward the the leadership isn't necessarily a given. I'm not worried. Yet.
The comments follow reports that North Korea has mastered a crucial technology needed to strike the United States with a nuclear missile.
Despite regular North Korean threats against Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) from the Korean Peninsula, it is extremely unlikely that Pyongyang would risk the assured annihilation of its revered leadership with a pre-emptive attack on U.S. citizens.
Wednesday, August 09, 2017
You Dropped the Guam on Me
Getting all bellicose up in here:
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3 comments:
The Un is simply following in the family tradition of being bellicose in order to shake loose more Western aid or more favorable terms. Worked for daddy, but the last three administrations have pretty much seen through that and haven't responded, which may account for Kim's heightened rhetoric.
Kim may think there's some benefit to being thought to be a madman; he doesn't realize that he has an opponent who is comfortable with the same assumption.
It's not diplomatically correct to call someone a "pissant", but that's pretty much what is needed with the Norks patriarchy. LBJ would have done it.
If they launch at Guam, they've just told us their launch site. Something in me thinks that if we're clever about the matter, we could just happen to have a few hundred missiles whose sole purpose is to destroy each and every long-range artillery piece and rocket emplacement. Given that the thing that gives you more range is a longer, heavier barrel (artillery) or a longer, heavier fuel tank (rockets), I'm guessing that the mobility of the artillery that we really need to fear is low.
Neutralize that, and any aggressive actions by the North Koreans would then give way to "oh s**t, they have long range artillery and air power and we do not."
As I think about this, I am getting less scared of them. Rattling the saber tells you where it is, and that's half the battle.
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