Inside North Korea

StayDead wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:

StayDead wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:It would surely be worth it just to remove the threat.

Of course it wouldn't. Innocent lives would be lost for a war that could possibly take decades and thousands more would die in conflict that shouldn't be there in the first place.

Seriously, sooner or later. The people of North Korea will liberate themselves, or cause some kind of revolt. Either that or their military will find out the truth about their great leader and either defect, escape the country through china or free out all of the Gulag's.

Something will happen in that country on it's own sooner or later, the rest of the world getting involved would change nothing, if anything it'd make to the north koreans that they've been right all along and their Glourious Leader wasn't just spouting lies about the west.

Innocent lives are always lost in war, it wouldn't take decades and you have too much faith in the ability of the people to overthrow the government; been to Myanmar lately? They tried out the whole democratic revolution deal, it didn't work out.

Innocent lives shouldn't have to be lost in war, especially in a case where it could of been avoided completely. That's just horrible. Think of the real long lasting effects of the people who were indirectly affected would feel? I for one, wouldn't be happy knowing our governments caused people who were in other words in no danger what so ever, get nuked because we entered a pointless war.

Luckily for civilians the world over, precision-guided munitions will soon be so good that the separation of war and civilian life that we had for centuries before WW1 will be at last restored, and if the US is at war with NK it will be watching every moment of every day for the telltale signs of ICBM/IRBM launches. It should be able to intercept them before they can hit their targets.

Alvin Flummux wrote:Luckily for civilians the world over, precision-guided munitions will soon be so good that the separation of war and civilian life that we had for centuries before WW1 will be at last restored

Orly?



X-ray satellites?

Return_of_the_STAR wrote:

NickSCFC wrote:

StayDead wrote:Seriously, sooner or later. The people of North Korea will liberate themselves, or cause some kind of revolt. Either that or their military will find out the truth about their great leader and either defect, escape the country through china or free out all of the Gulag's.

Something will happen in that country on it's own sooner or later, the rest of the world getting involved would change nothing, if anything it'd make to the north koreans that they've been right all along and their Glourious Leader wasn't just spouting lies about the west.

I wish it were that simple, sadly all the people in that country has ever known is rice farming, Japanese occupation and communism. At least the old Russia had a large upper class and some sense of the world. I don't think any country in history (baring tribes) has had so much of a grip over its people, alot of them just don't know any better.

What Nick says is sadly very true.

Yup, fast forward a decade and the situation will be no different, it's complete stalemate. China and the South will continue to prop them up for stability, and America will do what it does best, calling them silly naughty boys while bombing kid's schools in the middle east with their 'precision-guided' weapons.

PS, Alvin, purposefully bombing the gooseberry fool out of ordinary civilians has always been a great way of winning a war.

NickSCFC wrote:PS, Alvin, purposefully bombing the gooseberry fool out of ordinary civilians has always been a great way of winning a war.

Yeah, the blitzkriegs of WW2 of London, Coventry and other British cities sure did make us lose the war. Right? Wrong.
But the mass bombing of Dresden worked, right? Wait, no...
Firebombing Tokyo killed the country's spirit, right? Um... no.

Bombing civilians tends to unite them against you, rather than destroy their morale or support for their leadership.

Alvin Flummux wrote:

NickSCFC wrote:PS, Alvin, purposefully bombing the **** out of ordinary civilians has always been a great way of winning a war.

Yeah, the blitzkriegs of WW2 of London, Coventry and other British cities sure did make us lose the war. Right? Wrong.
But the mass bombing of Dresden worked, right? Wait, no...
Firebombing Tokyo killed the country's spirit, right? Um... no.

Bombing civilians tends to unite them against you, rather than destroy their morale or support for their leadership.

Nuking Japan worked, I think it came a little to late in the war mind. Japan's expansion across Asia had ceased months before, I know America couldn't be arsed to invade, but did they really have to?

NickSCFC wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:

NickSCFC wrote:PS, Alvin, purposefully bombing the **** out of ordinary civilians has always been a great way of winning a war.

Yeah, the blitzkriegs of WW2 of London, Coventry and other British cities sure did make us lose the war. Right? Wrong.
But the mass bombing of Dresden worked, right? Wait, no...
Firebombing Tokyo killed the country's spirit, right? Um... no.

Bombing civilians tends to unite them against you, rather than destroy their morale or support for their leadership.

Nuking Japan worked, I think it came a little to late in the war mind. Japan's expansion across Asia had ceased months before, I know America couldn't be arsed to invade, but did they really have to?

Nuking Japan wasn't the reason why they backed down you know.

Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually did less damage to those cities than firebombing Tokyo.

It was politically effective as it was seen as the weapon that would render conventional war useless, destroying whole cities in one stroke, but as the following decades have shown us, nukes do not prevent conventional wars (except maybe the potential USA-USSR conflict), even when nuclear powers are involved as the aggressor or defendant they aren't used. Nuclear weapons are useless if nobody is willing to use them; Mao understood this perfectly. Besides, they're not very accurate weapons and could be shot down now, which they couldn't before.

NickSCFC wrote:

Alvin Flummux wrote:

NickSCFC wrote:PS, Alvin, purposefully bombing the **** out of ordinary civilians has always been a great way of winning a war.

Yeah, the blitzkriegs of WW2 of London, Coventry and other British cities sure did make us lose the war. Right? Wrong.
But the mass bombing of Dresden worked, right? Wait, no...
Firebombing Tokyo killed the country's spirit, right? Um... no.

Bombing civilians tends to unite them against you, rather than destroy their morale or support for their leadership.

Nuking Japan worked, I think it came a little to late in the war mind. Japan's expansion across Asia had ceased months before, I know America couldn't be arsed to invade, but did they really have to?

It saved literally millions of lives on both sides.

But it brought unimaginable horror to the survivors of the blasts. Have you heard their stories?

Not in person just through documentaries. However I doubt that surviving a nuclear blast is any better or worse then surviving something like a firebombing. War is war, at the end of the day I don't think a person who has seen their family killed by napalm, or poison gas, or a bullet is any happier and less traumatized then a person who has seen their family killed by a nuclear bomb.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were large industrial centres which made munitions for the army. The Americans even scattered leaflets a few days prior to the bombing telling everybody to leave. It really was the lesser of two evils.

Rightey wrote:Not in person just through documentaries. However I doubt that surviving a nuclear blast is any better or worse then surviving something like a firebombing. War is war, at the end of the day I don't think a person who has seen their family killed by napalm, or poison gas, or a bullet is any happier and less traumatized then a person who has seen their family killed by a nuclear bomb.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were large industrial centres which made munitions for the army. The Americans even scattered leaflets a few days prior to the bombing telling everybody to leave. It really was the lesser of two evils.

Wasn't Japan in major retreat before they nuked them though? I always understood it was done as a show of force to the russians in case they get any ideas about invading a weakened europe.

StayDead wrote:Nuking Japan wasn't the reason why they backed down you know.

Was really though wasn't it.

Rightey... Atomic bombs were enormously powerful weapons, but so were conventional bombs. Terrible damage was done to both Tokyo and Hiroshima, yet both survived as cities, and indeed, both were functioning within days of the bombing. The results were similar - devastating without being decisive. What wasn't clear was whether the nuclear delivery system (taken as a whole), from research to explosion, was more efficient than conventional bombardment.



A must therefore conclude that it's not clear that the atomic attacks alone were the reason why Japan surrendered. They were, after all, conducting secret surrender talks with the Soviet Union at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima (even while the Japanese leaders talked big in public), and then the Russians, in violation of the Russian-Japanese neutrality pact, invaded Manchukuo, and then Nagasaki was struck by America. If these events combined forced immediate surrender, so would an invasion of the Japanese home islands by the overwhelming combined forces of America and Russia from the south and the north respectively.

Nagasaki was, I believe, also a shot across Russia's bow as much as anything to do with Japan; America could not afford for Russia to become a maritime power in the Pacific. At least in the Baltic and Arctic, Russian naval aspirations could be contained.


Back to the topic, I doubt that NK will actually use its nuclear arsenal, if it has one. China is an example of an apparently irrational nation that was expected to behave aggressively once it obtained the bomb. In fact, it did not behave aggressively at all, but was quite rational. China found that the bomb, by deterring a Soviet attack, or at least contributing to such a deterrence, allowed it to take a prudent course. Indeed, nations that lack a nuclear device may feel the need for a display of bravado, which is obviated by possession.

But what would it gain from using its nuclear arsenal during a war with America, SK and Japan? If it tried to nuke SK or JP cities, public opinion in both nations would undoubtedly be stirred in favour of all-out war to eradicate the threat, rather than press for immediate peace talks. I know that if UK cities were nuked, I'd be all in favour of wiping out the aggressor nation. So what if it tried using its nukes on enemy armed forces? Well, nukes aren't very accurate, and frankly I doubt that they'd achieve many military goals from their use, plus their use would effectively be the green light for the US to really beat up NK badly.

Alvin Flummux wrote:

Delivering the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima carried with it a $2 billion price tag ($1 billion per city) for the research, development and production costs of the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project diverted massive resources to achieve a goal that conventional weapons could have achieved, though not as easily, at a much lower cost. A single B-29 bomber cost $639,188; a fleet the size that devastated Tokyo cost $213,488,792. That was 10% of the cost of the Manhattan Project, and it was reusable. While the maintenance crews for an air wing appeared to be much larger (the 20th Bomber Command had 11,144 personnel) than that of an atomic squadron, the number of individuals needed to build, deliver and maintain an atomic device was much greater, not only in terms of numbers but in terms of technical skill as well. The cream of American science and engineering were devoted to the Manhattan Project, and important aspects of the war were dangerously delayed because of the Manhattan Project's priority claim on key material. Indeed, amphibious operations in the Pacific as well as D-Day in Europe were jeopardized because of this.

Interesting figures, but you don't mention this single biggest impetus behind Manhatten: the Germans were also working on the A-bomb. Many in America believed the entire war would come down to who delivered the first usable atomic bomb; America or Germany. As it turned out, Germany were defeated before the America A-bombs were ready to go. Using them on Japan was, in part, fueled by the very figures you mentioned above. They almost had to use them to justify the cost.

Looking nicer now the cladding's been down, evil dictatorships need evil futuristic towers in this day and age

Shame it'll only ever have an occupancy rate 0.1%

If there's one thing dictatorships like NK are great at, it's creating strawberry floating awesome buildings.

Alvin Flummux wrote:Rightey... Atomic bombs were enormously powerful weapons, but so were conventional bombs. Terrible damage was done to both Tokyo and Hiroshima, yet both survived as cities, and indeed, both were functioning within days of the bombing. The results were similar - devastating without being decisive. What wasn't clear was whether the nuclear delivery system (taken as a whole), from research to explosion, was more efficient than conventional bombardment.

Delivering the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima carried with it a $2 billion price tag ($1 billion per city) for the research, development and production costs of the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project diverted massive resources to achieve a goal that conventional weapons could have achieved, though not as easily, at a much lower cost. A single B-29 bomber cost $639,188; a fleet the size that devastated Tokyo cost $213,488,792. That was 10% of the cost of the Manhattan Project, and it was reusable. While the maintenance crews for an air wing appeared to be much larger (the 20th Bomber Command had 11,144 personnel) than that of an atomic squadron, the number of individuals needed to build, deliver and maintain an atomic device was much greater, not only in terms of numbers but in terms of technical skill as well. The cream of American science and engineering were devoted to the Manhattan Project, and important aspects of the war were dangerously delayed because of the Manhattan Project's priority claim on key material. Indeed, amphibious operations in the Pacific as well as D-Day in Europe were jeopardized because of this.

A must therefore conclude that it's not clear that the atomic attacks alone were the reason why Japan surrendered. They were, after all, conducting secret surrender talks with the Soviet Union at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima (even while the Japanese leaders talked big in public), and then the Russians, in violation of the Russian-Japanese neutrality pact, invaded Manchukuo, and then Nagasaki was struck by America. If these events combined forced immediate surrender, so would an invasion of the Japanese home islands by the overwhelming combined forces of America and Russia from the south and the north respectively.

Nagasaki was, I believe, also a shot across Russia's bow as much as anything to do with Japan; America could not afford for Russia to become a maritime power in the Pacific. At least in the Baltic and Arctic, Russian naval aspirations could be contained.

The reason Japan surrendered though was because the emperor himself got off his ass and demanded his generals surrender. The only reason he did that was because he heard that an entire city had been whipped out with a single bomb.

They had had cities totally flattened previously and it did nothing to them, for example the firebombing of Tokyo 2 weeks prior to Hiroshima killed more then the two atomic bombs combined and yet they did nothing.

As far as stopping the Russians in the Pacific you have heard of Vladivostok yes? You know the major Russian seaport in the Pacific? It's not as if they were ever boxed in so I don't see what you're talking about there.

Carlos wrote:

Rightey wrote:Not in person just through documentaries. However I doubt that surviving a nuclear blast is any better or worse then surviving something like a firebombing. War is war, at the end of the day I don't think a person who has seen their family killed by napalm, or poison gas, or a bullet is any happier and less traumatized then a person who has seen their family killed by a nuclear bomb.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were large industrial centres which made munitions for the army. The Americans even scattered leaflets a few days prior to the bombing telling everybody to leave. It really was the lesser of two evils.

Wasn't Japan in major retreat before they nuked them though? I always understood it was done as a show of force to the russians in case they get any ideas about invading a weakened europe.

Japan was loosing the war but that didn't mean they were going to go down easy as shown by battles in places like Iwojiwa, and Okinawa where they fought to nearly the last man. In fact in Okinawa the Japanese army was able to convince many of the civilians to commit suicide or kill their families, as they were told the Americans would kill and rape them. Which was another reason they wanted to end the war without an invasion, they knew if they invaded every single able bodied Japanese person would be coming at them with anything they had.

Rightey wrote:The reason Japan surrendered though was because the emperor himself got off his ass and demanded his generals surrender. The only reason he did that was because he heard that an entire city had been whipped out with a single bomb.

Or, more likely, the combined shock of Tokyo's firebombing, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Russian betrayal forced him to act.

They were already deep into talks with Soviet Russia to negotiate a general Japanese surrender. All the shock of these events did was bring the inevitable surrender forward.

Rightey wrote:They had had cities totally flattened previously and it did nothing to them, for example the firebombing of Tokyo 2 weeks prior to Hiroshima killed more then the two atomic bombs combined and yet they did nothing.

An atomic attack without Russian invasion probably would've had a similar effect, then.

Rightey wrote:As far as stopping the Russians in the Pacific you have heard of Vladivostok yes? You know the major Russian seaport in the Pacific? It's not as if they were ever boxed in so I don't see what you're talking about there.

The only major Russian Pacific seaport, yes? Possessing Japan would've given them a lot more ports, many more facilities to house or construct a Pacific Navy, easy access to Southeast Asian trade routes and an escape route from the mass encirclement maneuver America performed over the following decades. They could and would have used Japan as a means to threaten US hegemony in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as its economic ties to east Asia via the Pacific. As a true maritime power, Russia's economy would have been a lot more vibrant and the Cold War would have been a far more foreboding time to be alive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11432894

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/se ... orth-korea

Couple of decent articles, was communist China's fault Korea's in this mess, capitalist China should be responsible for dragging them out.