It’s not at all clear that North Korea would be allowed to follow the same path that China did. However, the point is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Again, we are not evaluating the North Korean government or their domestic policy, we are evaluating whether they pose a credible military threat, both in terms of their aims and their capabilities, and the answer to that is a resounding “No,” by your own admission.
In any case it’s incredibly hypocritical to lecture another country about their military spending while the US is spending more than the next 9 countries combined. You can’t pretend that you have some principled commitment towards deescalation if you’re just focused on getting weaker countries to put down their arms so that powerful countries can dominate them. That is just imperialism, plain in simple. You might as well be a British colonizer calling for Zulus to not be so militaristic and to put down their bows and arrows, as they slaughtered them with machine guns.
NK doesn’t pose a credible military threat to the US. It poses a credible military threat to SK. That’s why the US acts as a deterrent.
The difference being: the US can afford to spend that money on the military much easier than NK can. There really isn’t shit to dominate in NK, by modern standards.
NK doesn’t pose a credible military threat to the US. It poses a credible military threat to SK. That’s why the US acts as a deterrent.
Of course, if Rome’s interests are not threatened, then it’s those of Rome’s allies. Nevermind that SK outspends NK on the military, or that the north hasn’t attacked in 70 years.
The difference being: the US can afford to spend that money on the military much easier than NK can.
First off, so what? This is a talking point I always see that makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever, to look at expenditure as a percent of GDP instead of in absolute terms. As if it’s just natural to keep pouring money into the military for no reason, just because you can!
Military expenditure is only justified if it is countering a real, legitimate threat. If a small poor country is threatened by a large rich country, then the small country is of course justified in spending a higher percentage of its GDP on defense, because otherwise it would be completely defenseless. Conversely, to spend not only more than any other country, but more than the next nine countries combined, clearly means that the expenditure has nothing to do with responding to threats. Rather, it is about being a threat, which other countries then have to respond to.
Secondly, I disagree that that the US can more easily spend the money. Because, despite how much richer the US is, it is also trying to hold together a globe-spanning empire through military force. Korea is only one of many theaters that the US is involved in, and what we’re seeing now is that the US is being forced to pull military equipment away from Korea to the Middle East, where it’s once again gotten over it’s head. The money that we spend on trying to dominate Korea also has to be spent on every other imperial project, from Cuba to Iran to Syria and so on.
Because of how massively overextended the US is, it is now $40 trillion in debt, many countries are turning to or at least considering dedollarization, and the US is scrambling to make trade deals more extractive which is causing long-term harm to its alliances. And that’s just internationally! Domestically, the situation is even worse. Trump rose to prominence in a large part because he distinguished himself from the political establishment, both sides of which fully supported the disasterous, failed imperial project in Afghanistan. The far-right has jumped on the opportunity to take advantage of people’e frustrations with all these foreign entanglements, and the declining economic conditions such as inflation, while holding and promoting all kinds of extremist ideas (and while continuing to engage in such projects). The only prominent voices in American politics with a platform to present an alternative are useless liberals who refuse to adapt to the situation in any way, stubborning clinging the same kind of imperialist talking points you’ve said and not addressing people’s actual material needs.
The longer this situation is allowed to continue, the more likely it is that the fascists will seize power, permanently. If you think things are bad with Trump now, you have no idea how much worse the right is capable of becoming, and how much worse they will become. The US, at present, cannot afford to be involved in any conflict abroad. Frankly, I’m not even sure that the US could fix itself if it did drop everything and adopt the correct focus. The core of the empire is in a state of decay and crisis. And while that it happening, it absolutely cannot afford to be preoccupied with anywhere like North Korea, which certainly does not present any kind of existential threat.
Every dollar wasted on pointless military exercises on the Korean peninsula is a dollar that isn’t being spent revitalizing the domestic economy, and if the economy is not revitalized then it is inevitable that the fascists win. Why should I care about this absurd, exaggerated threat on the other side of the world, when there’s an actual, real threat that my next-door neighbors could vote for me to be sent to a camp? It’s delusional, it’s complete and utter nonsense.
Who cares if the empire is maintained and expanded, if it turns full-on fascist?
You’re insane. “Attacked?” A couple scouts wandered across the border. SK fired warning shots and they left. You call that an “attack?”
How many Americans have been killed by police shootings and ICE raids? Those are attacks! When fascists mobs beat trans people to death and the cops look the other way, that is an attack! We are currently under attack, right now. Not an attack 70 years ago, not thousands of miles away, not an “attack” that’s a random soldier with a bad map, but intentional, organized acts of violence, with the intent of establishing a new, oppressive order in the United States itself.
It is beyond unreasonable and just full on delusional to think of anything else but complete and total focus on destroying the one, singlural existential threat that actually exists! They’re at the fucking gates, my dude! They trying to kill us all! And there’s a damn good chance they actually will!
What the fuck is going on in your mind to worry about this non-issue half a world away? A border skirmish? It couldn’t even be called that! Warning shots, fired by South Korea? Are you out of your mind? Fucking hell! Look at what our own government is doing to our own people! I can’t even go to work without thinking what would happen if a bunch of jackbooted masked thugs showed up and started shoving everyone into a van, to be taken to a secret torture dungeon in El Salvador!
Drop everything else. North Korea could be rolling tanks across the border as we speak, and it would still be less urgent then dealing with the fascists here at home! They want us in the fucking ground! What part of that do you not understand? They are an imminent threat to the entire world! North Korea doesn’t give half a shit about us, except to the extent that we fuck with them! How can you have such completely ridiculous, mixed up priorities??
Yep. Armed and uniformed soldiers crossed a border between them and a state they are currently at war with. That is an invasion. A particularly shitty one, but what else do you expect, it’s north korea, they’ve been incompetent since day one. Even during the korean war they needed the Chinese to do the heavy lifting.
If you don’t think that is an attack, then the US has never attacked anyone. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korean, Iraq again, whatever. Those armed and uniformed US soldiers probably just got lost on the way to the bathroom. Ya know, you’re at a party at a new house, you’ve had some drinks, it’s two doors over and to the right, but you turn left and accidentally topple a socialist government lol. Just a warning shot. S’all good.
Edit: actually, the sheer incompetence explains why NK thought working with Russia to fight in Ukraine would teach them some good invasion lessons.
Idiot! Read your own fucking article! South Korea was the only one that even fired shots!
You really just compared Vietnam, a full scale, years-long invasion and occupation, complete with a bombing campaign and chemical weapons, to someone walking into the DMZ and then leaving, without harming a single person. That’s the single dumbest thing I have ever read in my life.
Calling that an “invasion” somehow manages to be even more delusional than the right calling immigration an “invasion,” because at least then there are multiple people, who don’t just immediately leave.
Are you trolling? Is this a joke to you? It’s not gonna be a joke when the fascists put us both in camps.
Why do I even bother? This country is doomed by it’s own stupidity, it’s own chauvanism and arrogance, and you are the perfect example of all of those traits, exactly the reason why we’re so fucked. Maybe it’s better to do it your way, where the whole fucking thing will collapse, and the world will be thrown into total chaos. Maybe we just deserve this. Humanity has survived the fall of empires in the past, so no matter how destructive you make this one’s fall, perhaps we will even survive the complete and utter idiocy of people like you.
I just can’t understand why you want to do this the hard way and ensure we live through one of the most chaotic and unstable periods of human history, for no fucking reason, when we could just, not. If people like you would simply pull your heads out of your asses and look around.
NK could just…stop sending raiding parties to SK and focus on resilience. After a decade of no border incidents, SK would probably get sick of the US and kick them out. The US could also stop fucking about in the ME, if only we had solar panels instead of oil derricks. We’ll have slar panels soon enough.
But we both know that the above is just dumbass wishful thinking, because the ruling class of every country is psychopathic. Kim doesn’t give a fuck, Xi gives few fucks, trump gives no fucks, Putin gives no fucks, that’s what leadership and hierarchy is. Identifying the person who truly has the fewest fucks to give when it comes to others.
But we both know that the above is just dumbass wishful thinking, because the ruling class of every country is psychopathic. Kim doesn’t give a fuck, Xi gives few fucks, trump gives no fucks, Putin gives no fucks, that’s what leadership and hierarchy is. Identifying the person who truly has the fewest fucks to give when it comes to others.
So then who the fuck gives a shit whether one country’s ruling class controls a region or another country’s ruling class does? This whole argument has been about you saying that you want to prioritize the interests of the US ruling class and expand their empire, instead of actually doing something that would actually benefit people’s lives!
This is so dumb. You realize that the ruling class doesn’t give a shit but you don’t care, you’re fully on board with advancing their interests because, why? Because you just hate the people they told you to hate?
If the ruling class of North Korea and South Korea are both bad, then why the fuck do you want us to keep going bankrupt from medical debt, just so that one shitty ruling class can control a piece of land thousands of miles away instead some other country’s shitty ruling class? It makes no goddamn sense!
It’s not at all clear that North Korea would be allowed to follow the same path that China did. However, the point is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Again, we are not evaluating the North Korean government or their domestic policy, we are evaluating whether they pose a credible military threat, both in terms of their aims and their capabilities, and the answer to that is a resounding “No,” by your own admission.
In any case it’s incredibly hypocritical to lecture another country about their military spending while the US is spending more than the next 9 countries combined. You can’t pretend that you have some principled commitment towards deescalation if you’re just focused on getting weaker countries to put down their arms so that powerful countries can dominate them. That is just imperialism, plain in simple. You might as well be a British colonizer calling for Zulus to not be so militaristic and to put down their bows and arrows, as they slaughtered them with machine guns.
NK doesn’t pose a credible military threat to the US. It poses a credible military threat to SK. That’s why the US acts as a deterrent.
The difference being: the US can afford to spend that money on the military much easier than NK can. There really isn’t shit to dominate in NK, by modern standards.
Of course, if Rome’s interests are not threatened, then it’s those of Rome’s allies. Nevermind that SK outspends NK on the military, or that the north hasn’t attacked in 70 years.
First off, so what? This is a talking point I always see that makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever, to look at expenditure as a percent of GDP instead of in absolute terms. As if it’s just natural to keep pouring money into the military for no reason, just because you can!
Military expenditure is only justified if it is countering a real, legitimate threat. If a small poor country is threatened by a large rich country, then the small country is of course justified in spending a higher percentage of its GDP on defense, because otherwise it would be completely defenseless. Conversely, to spend not only more than any other country, but more than the next nine countries combined, clearly means that the expenditure has nothing to do with responding to threats. Rather, it is about being a threat, which other countries then have to respond to.
Secondly, I disagree that that the US can more easily spend the money. Because, despite how much richer the US is, it is also trying to hold together a globe-spanning empire through military force. Korea is only one of many theaters that the US is involved in, and what we’re seeing now is that the US is being forced to pull military equipment away from Korea to the Middle East, where it’s once again gotten over it’s head. The money that we spend on trying to dominate Korea also has to be spent on every other imperial project, from Cuba to Iran to Syria and so on.
Because of how massively overextended the US is, it is now $40 trillion in debt, many countries are turning to or at least considering dedollarization, and the US is scrambling to make trade deals more extractive which is causing long-term harm to its alliances. And that’s just internationally! Domestically, the situation is even worse. Trump rose to prominence in a large part because he distinguished himself from the political establishment, both sides of which fully supported the disasterous, failed imperial project in Afghanistan. The far-right has jumped on the opportunity to take advantage of people’e frustrations with all these foreign entanglements, and the declining economic conditions such as inflation, while holding and promoting all kinds of extremist ideas (and while continuing to engage in such projects). The only prominent voices in American politics with a platform to present an alternative are useless liberals who refuse to adapt to the situation in any way, stubborning clinging the same kind of imperialist talking points you’ve said and not addressing people’s actual material needs.
The longer this situation is allowed to continue, the more likely it is that the fascists will seize power, permanently. If you think things are bad with Trump now, you have no idea how much worse the right is capable of becoming, and how much worse they will become. The US, at present, cannot afford to be involved in any conflict abroad. Frankly, I’m not even sure that the US could fix itself if it did drop everything and adopt the correct focus. The core of the empire is in a state of decay and crisis. And while that it happening, it absolutely cannot afford to be preoccupied with anywhere like North Korea, which certainly does not present any kind of existential threat.
Every dollar wasted on pointless military exercises on the Korean peninsula is a dollar that isn’t being spent revitalizing the domestic economy, and if the economy is not revitalized then it is inevitable that the fascists win. Why should I care about this absurd, exaggerated threat on the other side of the world, when there’s an actual, real threat that my next-door neighbors could vote for me to be sent to a camp? It’s delusional, it’s complete and utter nonsense.
Who cares if the empire is maintained and expanded, if it turns full-on fascist?
NK literally attacked SK last year.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn85pvv13e8o
That money ain’t no waste. NK is a problem, and keeping enough guns pointed at them that they stick to probing attacks is a good investment.
You’re insane. “Attacked?” A couple scouts wandered across the border. SK fired warning shots and they left. You call that an “attack?”
How many Americans have been killed by police shootings and ICE raids? Those are attacks! When fascists mobs beat trans people to death and the cops look the other way, that is an attack! We are currently under attack, right now. Not an attack 70 years ago, not thousands of miles away, not an “attack” that’s a random soldier with a bad map, but intentional, organized acts of violence, with the intent of establishing a new, oppressive order in the United States itself.
It is beyond unreasonable and just full on delusional to think of anything else but complete and total focus on destroying the one, singlural existential threat that actually exists! They’re at the fucking gates, my dude! They trying to kill us all! And there’s a damn good chance they actually will!
What the fuck is going on in your mind to worry about this non-issue half a world away? A border skirmish? It couldn’t even be called that! Warning shots, fired by South Korea? Are you out of your mind? Fucking hell! Look at what our own government is doing to our own people! I can’t even go to work without thinking what would happen if a bunch of jackbooted masked thugs showed up and started shoving everyone into a van, to be taken to a secret torture dungeon in El Salvador!
Drop everything else. North Korea could be rolling tanks across the border as we speak, and it would still be less urgent then dealing with the fascists here at home! They want us in the fucking ground! What part of that do you not understand? They are an imminent threat to the entire world! North Korea doesn’t give half a shit about us, except to the extent that we fuck with them! How can you have such completely ridiculous, mixed up priorities??
Yep. Armed and uniformed soldiers crossed a border between them and a state they are currently at war with. That is an invasion. A particularly shitty one, but what else do you expect, it’s north korea, they’ve been incompetent since day one. Even during the korean war they needed the Chinese to do the heavy lifting.
If you don’t think that is an attack, then the US has never attacked anyone. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korean, Iraq again, whatever. Those armed and uniformed US soldiers probably just got lost on the way to the bathroom. Ya know, you’re at a party at a new house, you’ve had some drinks, it’s two doors over and to the right, but you turn left and accidentally topple a socialist government lol. Just a warning shot. S’all good.
Edit: actually, the sheer incompetence explains why NK thought working with Russia to fight in Ukraine would teach them some good invasion lessons.
Idiot! Read your own fucking article! South Korea was the only one that even fired shots!
You really just compared Vietnam, a full scale, years-long invasion and occupation, complete with a bombing campaign and chemical weapons, to someone walking into the DMZ and then leaving, without harming a single person. That’s the single dumbest thing I have ever read in my life.
Calling that an “invasion” somehow manages to be even more delusional than the right calling immigration an “invasion,” because at least then there are multiple people, who don’t just immediately leave.
Are you trolling? Is this a joke to you? It’s not gonna be a joke when the fascists put us both in camps.
No, it is not a joke. Armed, uniformed, active duty military crossing a border is invasion. Even if they “just got lost”.
I will admit, though, north korea isn’t stupid. When faced with strategic superiority, the tactically correct decision is probing skirmishes (see above) and suicide attacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Gangneung_submarine_infiltration_incident).
The strategically correct response is containment with overwhelming firepower. That’s where NK is now. Sucks for them.
You’re gonna get us all killed. Idiot.
None of that shit matters at all.
Why do I even bother? This country is doomed by it’s own stupidity, it’s own chauvanism and arrogance, and you are the perfect example of all of those traits, exactly the reason why we’re so fucked. Maybe it’s better to do it your way, where the whole fucking thing will collapse, and the world will be thrown into total chaos. Maybe we just deserve this. Humanity has survived the fall of empires in the past, so no matter how destructive you make this one’s fall, perhaps we will even survive the complete and utter idiocy of people like you.
I just can’t understand why you want to do this the hard way and ensure we live through one of the most chaotic and unstable periods of human history, for no fucking reason, when we could just, not. If people like you would simply pull your heads out of your asses and look around.
You are right. We could just Not.
NK could just…stop sending raiding parties to SK and focus on resilience. After a decade of no border incidents, SK would probably get sick of the US and kick them out. The US could also stop fucking about in the ME, if only we had solar panels instead of oil derricks. We’ll have slar panels soon enough.
But we both know that the above is just dumbass wishful thinking, because the ruling class of every country is psychopathic. Kim doesn’t give a fuck, Xi gives few fucks, trump gives no fucks, Putin gives no fucks, that’s what leadership and hierarchy is. Identifying the person who truly has the fewest fucks to give when it comes to others.
So then who the fuck gives a shit whether one country’s ruling class controls a region or another country’s ruling class does? This whole argument has been about you saying that you want to prioritize the interests of the US ruling class and expand their empire, instead of actually doing something that would actually benefit people’s lives!
This is so dumb. You realize that the ruling class doesn’t give a shit but you don’t care, you’re fully on board with advancing their interests because, why? Because you just hate the people they told you to hate?
If the ruling class of North Korea and South Korea are both bad, then why the fuck do you want us to keep going bankrupt from medical debt, just so that one shitty ruling class can control a piece of land thousands of miles away instead some other country’s shitty ruling class? It makes no goddamn sense!