North Korea: A Different Perspective
Yesterday, Jeff wrote about his thoughts on North Korea. Unlike most issues, I have to disagree. You see, while I think a policy like Jeff points out would work out in time, there’s a few obstacles. The primary one being a policy of intervention that’s been at work through the bulk of the 20th Century.
As our nation has intervened, the world around us has started to get used to it. This isn’t necessarily a good thing. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the world looked to us to liberate it. I personally have no problem with intervening to free a conquored nation. What happened as a result was our continued presence in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s most holy city, Mecca. This, and not our freedoms, are the reason why we were attacked on 9/11.
Our intervention caused this, and other attacks are caused by not intervening in cases with Israel. Frankly, we can’t win in this case. It’s damned if we do, damned if we don’t. So where do we draw the line?
We have, against the advice of several of our founding fathers, found ourselves entangled in multiple alliances and treaties. For better or worse, we’re in them. I believe that it is the responsibility of every sentient entity on Earth to fulfill it’s obligations to the best of it’s ability. For better or worse, we are a part of NATO. And for better or worse, we have obligated ourselves to help protect Japan and South Korea, who lie directly in the line of sight with North Korea.
North Korea is ultimately saber rattling, this I believe very strongly. We have sent “aid” to them every time they have done this in the past, and they know it. They know we don’t want another Korean War, and they’re right. But I’m afraid that ignoring them won’t quite do it.
You see, we have thousands of troops currently in harms way due to our obligations in South Korea and Japan. Ignoring them won’t really work ultimately. Instead, we do need to engage them in dialog. And here’s what I think we should tell them:
If you even think of firing a nuclear weapon, we will obliterate North Korea from the earth so completely that even the history books will just have burn marks where you used to be mentioned.
One of the great “knowns” in strategic circles is that the United States alone has the ability to destroy the entire planet with our nuclear arsenal. So let’s remind North Korea that we are capable of doing so, but have chosen not to since World War II even though it might have ended the Korean and Vietnam Wars (in all fairness, it probably would have started a nuclear war with the USSR, but still…).
North Korea is currently testing a weapon that may be able to reach United States territory. While it would hardly reach our beloved Southwest Georgia; Alaska, Hawaii, and the west coast aren’t so fortunate. We must make it clear to North Korea that their saber rattling days are over. We won’t rise to their bait any longer, but will meet any act of force with such a level of retaliation that not even the cockroaches will survive.
I feel that the time for being completely isolationist militarily has passed. We’ve made our bed, now we just have to lie in it. Intervention must be a last resort in any instance, but we must fulfill our obligations. Failure to do so may cost us American lives…a cost I’m not ready to pay.
Powered by FireStats
May 30th, 2009 at 7:26 am
Four words bro, and something that played a part in my progression to Libertarianism:
Dale Brown. Warrior Class.
In it, Brown introduces President Thomas Nathaniel Thorn, a Jeffersonian Republican.
Among Thorn’s first Presidential acts is to call back our military from every single foreign base – but he also disbands much of it, which as I said is something not even I am comfortable with.
Brown actually does a good job over the course of that book and the next couple of books of exploring what a non-interventionist foreign policy could look like, and while he disagrees with it and paints it as a bad approach, honestly I like much of the scenarios he paints far better than he does. Like I said, to my mind Thorn’s primary error was disbanding most of the military he calls home. THAT is what would cause us to be less secure – not the act of bringing them home to begin with.
May 30th, 2009 at 7:33 am
That’s all fine and good, but we have signed agreements that I feel we should honor, and that includes dealing with North Korea and protecting allies we are obligated to protect like Japan and South Korea. No work of fiction will, in my mind, erase those obligations.