----- Original Message ----- From: "Matt Grimaldi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 12:32 PM Subject: Re: N. Korea Says Has Nukes
> I noticed how in both of your scenarios, the U.S. is > acting in a defensive/retaliatory role. That is the > way to get and keep the moral high ground and world > opinion. If something like that were happening with > Iraq, much of the debate and resistance to GWB's plan > we've been seeing would never have happened. That's true, but it does involve a lot more casualties. Let me put forth a fairly realistic scenario based on available equipment. It is unlikely that N. Korea can easily hit major US cities. However, Japan is not that far away. If N. Korea tells the US it will "liberate" S. Korea from US dominence, and that if the US acts to stop it, it will attack it's "partner in crime", Japan. If N. Korea really has nukes, then they can hit Japan with them. IIRC, they have demonstrated missiles that can reach Japan a few years ago. So, you are president, and are faced with this ultimatum. What will you do? Would the US keep the moral high ground by accepting a million dead in Tokyo? Would it keep the moral high ground by agreeing to N. Korea's demands, and stepping aside to let the two Koreas fight. Further, should the South Korean government fight conventionally, knowing that it might lose millions to nuclear weapons? We were extremely lucky, IMHO, to face a very conservative country in the USSR during the Cold War. We were even more lucky that they went gentle into that good night. I'm not sanguine about a future when many governments that are willing to do anything to their own citizens to keep power have nuclear weapons. I can certainly understand why the thought of the US preemptively attacking countries that it deems a threat can be disquieting, especially to people who are not citizens of the US. It is a system that only has internal political checks on the actions of the US government. However, as I stated in an early short post <grin>, the real solution to that is to have other countries become actors, not to have the US as the only actor but restrained by the vote of those that sit on the sideline. I think that the world, as a whole, cannot wait until a dictator decides to either attack or blackmail a major country. The difficulty with that is that either 1) The world will accept massive (i.e. millions) casualties in order to preserve this principal or 2) The world will accept the demands of the dictators as a better alternative than the massive loss of life. In my opinion, the answer to this problem is very difficult. I'm guessing that I will be mostly posting in response to posts that I view as underestimating the difficulty. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
