North Korea Launches "Communication Satellite" Rocket 492
Mad Ivan writes "The BBC has just reported that North Korea has launched a long-range rocket, which they say is a communications satellite, but that the US and Japan fear may actually be a ballistic missile. Details are still arriving; the rocket passed over northern Japan on its way up."
Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary is just wrong...
Nobody is suggesting (except the person writing this summary) that the payload of this rocket was anything more than a communications satellite.
What the international community is concerned about is that this really isn't about the satellite and is instead just an excuse to test better ICBMs.
North Korea is banned from launching ICBMs but allowed to conduct space exploration.
Re:Outstanding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, U.N. sanctions don't really mean a whole lot these days (did they ever?)
No, the countries with veto rights makes UN totally useless. North korea isn't one of those though.
Re:Outstanding. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is there isn't a good way to deal with North Korea. They have a massive army, a very fearful and xenophobic populace, and tons of weapons trained on South Korea. So you have two scenarios, neither of which is really acceptable:
1) Conventional attack. You send in large numbers of conventional forces to destroy their army and occupy the country. This would work, but at the first sign of invasion, North Korea will fire their artillery trained on the south. This features lovely things like poison gas warheads and such and easily reaches major cities. There is going to be a large loss of civilian life and infrastructure in South Korea because of this. There is also likely to be fairly heavy casualties in the invading military force. While North Korea's military isn't technology advanced, it is very large.
2) Nuclear attack. You target nuclear tipped cruise missiles, bombs, and perhaps even some ICBMs at all military targets of any note. The idea is a single coordinated massive strike that simply eliminates all their counterforce capability. Perhaps large population centres are targeted as well. Ok well ignoring the whole problem with world opinion on WMDs, you have the problem that this will cause a massive loss of life in the north that is not limited to, or even primarily, military. There's then all the problems with fallout, lingering radiation and all that other nasty shit as seen in Japan in WWII and Russia when Chernobyl blew up. You could potentially (though no guarantee) eliminate the threat to the south in one swoop and crush the north's military, but at what cost?
Thus far there just isn't a good suggestion for how you'd deal with North Korea and not have it lead to massive loss of civilian life on one or both sides. Thus it isn't a situation anyone wants to get in to. There's also the question of how China would react. While they don't seem to be so happy with North Korea any more, they do still support them. Let's not forget that is where North Korea's military support came for in the Korean War.
All in all there doesn't seem to be a good answer, so it is just kind of left alone.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
The childish "you do it, so can I can too" approach you're taking is precisely that: indicative of a severely socially maladjusted person with no grasp of the severity of this situation. Let me take a quote from your post and modify it to suite this situation: until you've got better than a third grade education in these matters, shut the fuck up.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
There were threats back and forth "If it comes near us we'll shoot it down"
"Shoot it down and next time we'll aim FOR you"
"We'll shoot it down no matter what"
"We're readying bombers to bomb you if you do"
To the person wanting coverage, what they've been saying on the news is that they're looking for where it fell so they can pull it up and make sure it was a communications satellite.
Re:Outstanding. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Outstanding. (Score:4, Insightful)
And it is exactly this kind of stupid dichotomy ("we must fight or die!") thinking that pushes countries to war.
There are actually other, peaceful, solutions to this. E.g. NK was actually starting economical reforms much like China did in the early '80s, with special economic regions near the border, until the new president (the "CEO president") of South Korea took the hard-line approach to the North, which, unsurprisingly resulted in similar stance from the NK.
Had NK been allowed to continue their economic reforms, there could be hope that it will eventually be more open much like China did without any wars breaking out.
By forcing your opponent to either fight or curl up and die, don't be surprised when you got a fight in your hands. Although it may be a hopeless fight for your opponent, remember that you are the one taking all the hope from him in the first place.
Even the Art of War said always leave a way out for your opponents, you don't want to force him into a "fight or die" situation, because that's when he will fight most fiercely against you.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know if you've realised, but communication satellites need to head into orbit, not a parabolic arc into the Pacific.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Banned by who? The countries which already have them?
The governments of the US and europe let me down more than they should, but they have a long way to go before they scare me as much as north Korea's government. I mean, I'd trust both Iran and Cuba with nukes before North Korea. Iran and Cuba seem to understand that building an atomic bomb is something you do so that you don't have to use it. North Korea on the other hand seems more likely to use it than not use it.
Whatever it's about environment, peoples rights, weapons or whatever the same rules apply: Clean up in your own backyard or shut the fuck up!
Rational thinking like that has very little use in real-world international politics, and none in dealings with north korea.
It seems like you're suggesting that it's unfair that we have nukes and they don't. I suggest you go downtown, give an angry crazy homeless man one loaded gun and you keep another. By your theory, everyone is equal and everything should work out great over multiple tests. You can tell me how it went on monday.
Re:Outstanding. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is another option
3) Coup d'etat. Replace the paranoid, militaristic North Korean regime with a new government—possibly one backed by the United States or her allies. Since the North Korean population is unlikely to do this on their own initiative, they will need some assistance and logistical support from another world power. Another country could theoretically encourage a "friendly" general to seize power and then back him up militarily, politically, and economically when he does so. The U.S. has a long history of supporting anti-Communist coups via the Truman Doctrine [wikipedia.org], and we have even backed totalitarian dictatorships—so long as they weren't Communist.
A successfully executed coup could be relatively bloodless, would leave North Korea's infrastructure and population centers (such as they are) intact, and would certainly cost less money and manpower than a full-scale invasion. However, the outcome is entirely dependent on luck: military leaders might succeed in launching a WMD attack on South Korea before they are deposed, the new government might not be sustainable, or the coup might be a complete and utter failure. Additionally, U.S. involvement would require our intelligence agencies to demonstrate actual competence, and a U.S.-backed coup could seriously impact our relations with China. Still, I think a coup would be a better option than a full-scale attack.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
There was never anything we could do about North Korea. The amount of military might required to take down North Korea is much larger than the amount we used to take down Iraq.
We would have to have a draft.
Plus there are a few other little problems:
1. Seoul is within conventional artillery range of the DMZ. Think tens or hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. Within the first hour.
2. What would China do? They view North Korea as an extension of China. That's why we didn't take North Korea in the Korean war when we had them on the run.
3. If North Korea does have nukes, Tokyo is in range. Millions of civilian casualties.
We don't want war with North Korea.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except it would make sense for us to "destroy" ours before we enforce our own hypocritical policies.
If it was simply something we "did" in the past, then it's one thing, but our foreign policy requires us to basically tell everyone else what to do because somehow we're better then them.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:1, Insightful)
Korea isn't an island. And North Korea isn't a third world nation, since they are nominally communists.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's both naive and dangerous of you to think otherwise.
Re:Outstanding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, most of the western world is "better" than North Korea. That is not a criticism of their citizens, as they are just along for the ride.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, in which ways are we not better?
Most nuclear powers don't let hundreds of thousands of people starve to death every year so that they can fund their military. For comparison purposes, the US spends around 4% of their GDP on their military. The DPRK? 30%.
Most nuclear powers don't brainwash their people and shut out the entire outside world to maintain an iron grip on the populace.
Most nuclear powers don't keep on the brink of war at all times and use threats to extract aid.
But yeah, sure, it's not PC to say that some countries are better than others. I guess you'd be happy to move to Sudan or the DRC. After all, France or India couldn't possibly be any better.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a little more complicated than all that. The US Military does have the capacity to defeat the military of North Korea (or nearly any military for that matter.) What they lack is the capacity, the capability, and the will to clean up the ensuing mess.
It was the turmoil in the aftermath of war that led to the creation of regimes like North Korea, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iran, Saddam's Iraq, etc. There was US political influence (and military involvement, covert or otherwise) in every one of those circumstances.
The US could destroy a lot of infrastructure in North Korea (or anywhere) and make a big mess without much threat of the violence spilling over into North America. They can't solve the problem, though. Kim Jong Il by any other name is probably just as bad.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I understand that it's much easier to decide what they should do before they have nuclear weapons and long distance missiles since they are so technically inferior to someone like the US so playing "clean" they would get owned immediately, but as soon as they have nukes it all fails since you don't want to play with nukes.
So solving it before then makes sense.
Anyway, lots of countries have nukes and eventually behave badly thanks to the extra insurance they give them. Imho you can't demand others should to..
But then I live in one of those countries with no nukes, with no plans to invade other countries and with a shrinking defence. Call us stupid.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
No.... we're not "better," just much less likely to use them against others.
Funny considering you're the only country who has actually used them in a war.
And I doubt you'd hesitate once vs russia or china if they attacked first.
Nothing say north korea will attack first either, but it will prevent them from getting attacked in the first place, as is the situation with all nuclear forces.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, this is never going to work. The cat is already out of the bag, so to speak. What's important now is determining the likelihood that an aggressive nation bent on insane policy will use nuclear weapons on their neighbors... oh, wait, that seems to describe North Korea.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny considering you're the only country who has actually used them in a war.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with how likely we are to use them now.
And I doubt you'd hesitate once vs russia or china if they attacked first.
That's kind of the point of MAD. You don't think Russia or China (or the USA) hasn't used them lately, because of some warm-fuzzy humanitarian reason, do you?
Nothing say north korea will attack first either [...]
Of course not. But, most people would agree that they are more likely (no matter how small that probability may be) to launch a first strike than the US, Russia, or China. They are a relatively small, backward, unstable, and unpredictable nation. They simply have less to lose.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO the West really has no business telling the rest of the world that they can't have nukes while the West still has them - this doesn't mean that we should give everyone nukes, it means we should damned well disarm to put everyone on an equal footing.
Super idea. Lets all give up nukes, and go back to the days when war between major powers is again thinkable.
And slaughter millions upon millions in the process.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US:
* Brainwashed population:They believed that Iraq has WMDs.
Check.
* Keep on the brink of war at all times:
Dick Cheyney claimed that the War on Terror could go on "indefinitely".
Check.
As for your 4% figure, you have to include the military related R&D spending of all companies in the military industry, such as GE, General Dynamics, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin and a bunch of others. Just because the US has privatized large parts of its military doesn't mean you can arbitrarily exclude them from the military spending figure. If you include all of these then you'll come to a hell of a lot more than 4%.
Oh, and if you think that you can point to a bunch of government policies and conclude that your country is "better" than another, then the cultural attitude that you represent automatically, in my eyes, makes you worse than just about everyone else.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
Care to start over?
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
They simply have less to lose.
Actually, to further your point, the DPRK has a lot more to lose should their iron-clad grip on a starving, crushed population begin to loosen. They're likely to blame such an occurrence on Western influence, and resort to rather irrational acts.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are seriously attempting to compare everyday life in the U.S. to North Korea, you're completely out of your mind. I can write an opinion piece to the Atlanta Journal & Constitution declaring the President to be a bumbling buffoon, calling every Senator in Washington a bunch of dirty names, and expressing the opinion that Georgia's governor has terrible taste in suits. I run zero risk of being arrested for these acts.
Such behavior would most likely get me tortured to death in North Korea at worst, or locked up for ten years and "made an example of" at best.
Grow up.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course not. But, most people would agree that they are more likely (no matter how small that probability may be) to launch a first strike than the US, Russia, or China
Really, just like Iraq made the first strike against the US? Tell me, what benefit to DPRK would attacking the US have?
They are a relatively small, backward, unstable, and unpredictable nation.
You seem to know so much about them. Or is that what you media tell you?
They simply have less to lose.
I would argue that the US could wipe out N.Korea before N.Korea would wipe out the US. Who has more to lose? For that matter, what balances are in place to prevent the US from attacking N.Korea for little to no reason? Do I have to start linking to the wikipedia articles of various Asian, Latin American, and South American countries to make the point that the US is an aggressor nation?
I have no delusions as to the dangers of N.Korea. But I have no delusions about US interests, either.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was referring to the mythical ones that Rumsfeld kept crowing about in the UN. The ones that nobody believed existed because even the UN inspectors testified that, not only were they of the belief that they did not exist, but that Iraq did not have the capability to even manufacture them.
But I'm guessing that you knew what I was referring to, but were deliberately misdirecting towards facts that suit your pre-conceived view of the world.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
As for your 4% figure, you have to include the military related R&D spending of all companies in the military industry, such as GE, General Dynamics, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin and a bunch of others.
It doesn't really work that way. To the extent that that R&D is paid for from the revenues made by selling to the US Government, you'd be double counting. To the extent that it's paid for from revenues made by selling to other governments, you'd be counting non-US military spending.
(Which isn't to deny that it's hypocritical to cry foul when other countries to the same things we do - it's pretty obvious that anyone the US or its allies (or other powerful countries) may one day see an interest in fighting with will want to be sufficiently armed to deter that which means being able to deliver a sufficiently destructive payload a sufficient distance. This is just reality. Everyone knows that the USSR wasn't attacked despite attrocities to equal anyone else's because they DID have weapons of mass destruction on a scale nobody would want to face and that Iraq wouldn't have been attacked if they had been in that position too. Again, reality.)
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, back in the cold war days there was a lot of rhetoric about what the russians could do, were likely to do and wanted to do. But it turned out that much of it was fear mongering by the military industrial complex in our own countries that stood to make massive gains selling us weapons to counter that stuff.
Welcome to the new enemy, same as the old one
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:0, Insightful)
I can write an opinion piece to the Atlanta Journal & Constitution declaring the President to be a bumbling buffoon, calling every Senator in Washington a bunch of dirty names, and expressing the opinion that Georgia's governor has terrible taste in suits. I run zero risk of being arrested for these acts.
You might get all of your computers and electronics equipment confiscated by corrupt agents of the state [slashdot.org], though.
Lets stop the tit for tat, aye? NK is obviously the most serious threat to world peace at the moment, but the US has done more than enough war mongering and Bush-era posturing against the middle east to be ranked right up there as well.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
Being the ones who opened the bottle, and then saw how dangerous the genie is, and shoved the cork right back in, we take it as our responsibility to guard the bottle against others who would open it.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
A friend pointed me to this site, (possibly NSFW depending on certain links) which has a couple of people going inside North Korea to shoot video. What they shoot is not concentration camps. It's not executions. It's not poverty (strictly speaking). It's just the completely bizarre world that is North Korea.
Hey, thanks for that link; very interesting videos.
Someone mod this guy up as informative. I'd do it myself, but I already posted earlier in this thread.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously [nuclear disarmament] is never going to work
Damn it.
Every year that nuclear weapons exist there is a certain chance that someone uses them and triggers the apocalypse. I don't know what that chance is. But even if it's very low, given enough time it is certain to happen! Bear in mind that nuclear war has almost started on several occasions, including by accident [wikipedia.org]. We cannot survive this situation forever.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not understand why this was moderated "troll". It should have been moderated "insightful". It is a very perceptive comment. Those of us who grew up during the Cold War faced the very real possibility of a large scale nuclear attack every day. Today's threats, while very real, are minor compared to the threat of 30,000 nuclear warheads raining down on your country.
Re:Update on the article... (Score:2, Insightful)
How can anyone believe there really was a satellite on the rocket?
Spare money? Hell if any country (Score:3, Insightful)
should be accused and consistently vilified over their "luxury" expenses at the cost of their own people it is North Korea. There never seemed to be and end to the bellyaching over India launching satellites as people pointed to all the people living in poverty there. Yet the only concern here seems to be that they now have a long range rocket and it might hit a civilized country. I guess we are so over the fact we can't do anything about North Korea that we totally ignore the people that live there.
Re:Spare money? Hell if any country (Score:3, Insightful)
Right now we're concerned that the people of North Korea are going to become a danger to the rest of us, in the same way that the people of Germany and Japan became dangerous - it doesn't matter if you pick up a gun and fight or not, if you're not working against a war, you're supporting it just by going about your business back home. Same goes for the citizens of the USA right now, of course... So it's all a bunch of flag-waving bullshit - except that N.K. is the only country that much of the world believes is likely to actually use a nuclear weapon. Whether that fear is justified or not is the big question.
Re:Summary is hopelessly wrong... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that I disagree... but to play Devil's advocate I would point out that North Korea has this very strong cultural desire for self-dependence. Even if they could buy a launch cheaper, they might just want to do it themselves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche [wikipedia.org]
I guess by "they" I mean "him" though. The people aren't the ones making the decisions there.
Re:Spare money? Hell if any country (Score:3, Insightful)
You cold not be more right.
You probably already know this, but the situation in North Korea is so
horrible that the average north korean male is 5.9cm shorter than
the average south korean male, due to chronic famine.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/dec/05/northkorea [guardian.co.uk]
The government, instead of fighting of famine (or simply accepting the
foreign help), tries to stimulate people's growth with gymnastics
(this isn't present in the link above; I read it on a newspaper and
don't have a link right now).
North Korea is both metaphorically and literally on the Dark.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm [globalsecurity.org]
Its leader, however, is a buffoon that lives with comfort, luxuries
and ostensible wealth.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticias/2009/03/090316_coreiadonorte_pizza_cq.shtml [bbc.co.uk]
(the above link is in Portuguese, sorry)