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Your eyes do not deceive you, the title is correct!

Those evil Yankee capitalists and their superior weapon systems!

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/26/china-send-nuclear-armed-submarines-into-pacific-us

The driving force behind this of course is North Korea's decision to conduct nuclear tests. As a result, South Korea has asked the USA for missile defence systems, which is understandable, but a consequence of this is that these missiles can easily be pointed at China...

Perhaps the CCP would be better off reining in North Korea and deescalating the situation.

I've always said that if China was serious about scoring a geopolitical victory over the USA, they would back Korean unification, and then help create a united Korea that had zero American troop presence. It would be tricky, but it could be done...

Integrating the two would take decades of work though.

Culture is nigh alien across it. Tech levels, diets, every. The unifcation would have to be a slow decade long process including ratcheting down the propoganda and bringing slowly in various aspects of southern culture

Even language has evolved different on both sides. Its never going to be easy to unify such polar oposites.

 jhe90 wrote:
Integrating the two would take decades of work though.

Culture is nigh alien across it. Tech levels, diets, every. The unifcation would have to be a slow decade long process including ratcheting down the propoganda and bringing slowly in various aspects of southern culture

Even language has evolved different on both sides. Its never going to be easy to unify such polar oposites.

It worked for West and East Germany.

The title sounds silly, but it makes sense. The way to avoid a nuclear conflict between rational powers is to absolutely do not, under any circumstances, deploy anti-missile defenses capable of stopping your enemy's attack. If the US breaks that rule then China has a choice between conceding that their own nuclear weapons are useless, or making a counter-move to put the US back under threat. If you don't want Chinese missile subs off the coast of the US then don't put anti-missile defenses in a position where they can shoot down Chinese ICBMs.

Now, the problem with this theory is that it depends on all sides being rational about the whole situation. North Korea clearly isn't, and that makes things really awkward.

 Peregrine wrote:
The title sounds silly, but it makes sense. The way to avoid a nuclear conflict between rational powers is to absolutely do not, under any circumstances, deploy anti-missile defenses capable of stopping your enemy's attack. If the US breaks that rule then China has a choice between conceding that their own nuclear weapons are useless, or making a counter-move to put the US back under threat. If you don't want Chinese missile subs off the coast of the US then don't put anti-missile defenses in a position where they can shoot down Chinese ICBMs.

Now, the problem with this theory is that it depends on all sides being rational about the whole situation. North Korea clearly isn't, and that makes things really awkward.

Which is why it's in China's interests to crack down on North Korea. The North Koreans might have been useful years ago, but the South is a far more valuable trading partner to China.

Money talks.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
Integrating the two would take decades of work though.

Culture is nigh alien across it. Tech levels, diets, every. The unifcation would have to be a slow decade long process including ratcheting down the propoganda and bringing slowly in various aspects of southern culture

Even language has evolved different on both sides. Its never going to be easy to unify such polar oposites.

It worked for West and East Germany.

Aye, but that was not instant. It took to.e for both sides to intergrate. Not impossible just not going to be perfect overnight.

Decades I propganda and falsehoods imgrained north of the dmz

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

It worked for West and East Germany.

Totally not the same situation.

http://en.asaninst.org/contents/why-north-korea-2013-is-not-east-germany-1989/
http://www.ulsanonline.com/faq/why-north-and-south-korea-arent-east-and-west-germany/

About here, China would be obviously answering to protect its own interests. To me, it looks more like a show just to say that they will not just stay arms crossed while all of this happening. Even if it is in a bad way.

 Peregrine wrote:
The title sounds silly, but it makes sense. The way to avoid a nuclear conflict between rational powers is to absolutely do not, under any circumstances, deploy anti-missile defenses capable of stopping your enemy's attack. If the US breaks that rule then China has a choice between conceding that their own nuclear weapons are useless, or making a counter-move to put the US back under threat. If you don't want Chinese missile subs off the coast of the US then don't put anti-missile defenses in a position where they can shoot down Chinese ICBMs.

Now, the problem with this theory is that it depends on all sides being rational about the whole situation. North Korea clearly isn't, and that makes things really awkward.

It was Reagan's SDI that helped bring down the USSR.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The title sounds silly, but it makes sense. The way to avoid a nuclear conflict between rational powers is to absolutely do not, under any circumstances, deploy anti-missile defenses capable of stopping your enemy's attack. If the US breaks that rule then China has a choice between conceding that their own nuclear weapons are useless, or making a counter-move to put the US back under threat. If you don't want Chinese missile subs off the coast of the US then don't put anti-missile defenses in a position where they can shoot down Chinese ICBMs.

Now, the problem with this theory is that it depends on all sides being rational about the whole situation. North Korea clearly isn't, and that makes things really awkward.

It was Reagan's SDI that helped bring down the USSR.

That was one reason amongst many.

Definitely decades. You have an entire culture afraid to think for themselves that are spoonfed weekly meetings on how great they are and how awesome their leaders are and how evil everyone else is. Education would be a huge thing just getting them up to even 3rd world standards. Teaching them history would be a massive culture shock in itself since they truly believe Kim the 1st went to the moon, invented cars and television and was basically the most "interesting man in the world."

As to missile defense systems, if they don't like it, build their own. Far more costly to build and maintain nuclear platforms than it is defense systems to shoot them down. I know there is that old mutually assured destruction thing but...

Col. Dash wrote:
Definitely decades. You have an entire culture afraid to think for themselves that are spoonfed weekly meetings on how great they are and how awesome their leaders are and how evil everyone else is. Education would be a huge thing just getting them up to even 3rd world standards. Teaching them history would be a massive culture shock in itself since they truly believe Kim the 1st went to the moon, invented cars and television and was basically the most "interesting man in the world."

As to missile defense systems, if they don't like it, build their own. Far more costly to build and maintain nuclear platforms than it is defense systems to shoot them down. I know there is that old mutually assured destruction thing but...

I'm not buying that argument. Post world war 2, America was able to rebuild and re-shape Japan into a thriving, prosperous democracy in a short space of time, so it can be done in North Korea.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Col. Dash wrote:
Definitely decades. You have an entire culture afraid to think for themselves that are spoonfed weekly meetings on how great they are and how awesome their leaders are and how evil everyone else is. Education would be a huge thing just getting them up to even 3rd world standards. Teaching them history would be a massive culture shock in itself since they truly believe Kim the 1st went to the moon, invented cars and television and was basically the most "interesting man in the world."

As to missile defense systems, if they don't like it, build their own. Far more costly to build and maintain nuclear platforms than it is defense systems to shoot them down. I know there is that old mutually assured destruction thing but...

I'm not buying that argument. Post world war 2, America was able to rebuild and re-shape Japan into a thriving, prosperous democracy in a short space of time, so it can be done in North Korea.

Counter Point. Iraq (Barely holding) and Afghanistan (ready to go down the tubes with Iraq)

COunter counter argument:
Iraq and Afghanistan are areas with multiple tribes.

Historically Korea has always been one country (far long than the US, Britain, and arguably China for that matter). it also matters that pressures from China and Japan have helped keep Koreans thinking of themselves as...Koreans.

Now I agree it would be a herculean task for them to get their economies back in sync. But it could be done and one day will be.

 Jihadin wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Col. Dash wrote:
Definitely decades. You have an entire culture afraid to think for themselves that are spoonfed weekly meetings on how great they are and how awesome their leaders are and how evil everyone else is. Education would be a huge thing just getting them up to even 3rd world standards. Teaching them history would be a massive culture shock in itself since they truly believe Kim the 1st went to the moon, invented cars and television and was basically the most "interesting man in the world."

As to missile defense systems, if they don't like it, build their own. Far more costly to build and maintain nuclear platforms than it is defense systems to shoot them down. I know there is that old mutually assured destruction thing but...

I'm not buying that argument. Post world war 2, America was able to rebuild and re-shape Japan into a thriving, prosperous democracy in a short space of time, so it can be done in North Korea.

Counter Point. Iraq (Barely holding) and Afghanistan (ready to go down the tubes with Iraq)

Counter counter counter point . In Japan, you had a military and administration genius called Macarthur, who I would argue is America's greatest general, rebuilding Japan.

You were missing somebody of Macarthur's calibre in Iraq and Afghanistan.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
COunter counter argument:
Iraq and Afghanistan are areas with multiple tribes.

Historically Korea has always been one country (far long than the US, Britain, and arguably China for that matter). it also matters that pressures from China and Japan have helped keep Koreans thinking of themselves as...Koreans.

Now I agree it would be a herculean task for them to get their economies back in sync. But it could be done and one day will be.

But it could be done and one day will be

As long as it's not done with your tax money, you're happy

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Col. Dash wrote:
Definitely decades. You have an entire culture afraid to think for themselves that are spoonfed weekly meetings on how great they are and how awesome their leaders are and how evil everyone else is. Education would be a huge thing just getting them up to even 3rd world standards. Teaching them history would be a massive culture shock in itself since they truly believe Kim the 1st went to the moon, invented cars and television and was basically the most "interesting man in the world."

As to missile defense systems, if they don't like it, build their own. Far more costly to build and maintain nuclear platforms than it is defense systems to shoot them down. I know there is that old mutually assured destruction thing but...

I'm not buying that argument. Post world war 2, America was able to rebuild and re-shape Japan into a thriving, prosperous democracy in a short space of time, so it can be done in North Korea.

Counter Point. Iraq (Barely holding) and Afghanistan (ready to go down the tubes with Iraq)

Counter counter counter point . In Japan, you had a military and administration genius called Macarthur, who I would argue is America's greatest general, rebuilding Japan.

You were missing somebody of Macarthur's calibre in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Counter counter counter COUNTER point . We have plenty Macarthur types... what we don't have is the political will to do that again.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
The title sounds silly, but it makes sense. The way to avoid a nuclear conflict between rational powers is to absolutely do not, under any circumstances, deploy anti-missile defenses capable of stopping your enemy's attack. If the US breaks that rule then China has a choice between conceding that their own nuclear weapons are useless, or making a counter-move to put the US back under threat. If you don't want Chinese missile subs off the coast of the US then don't put anti-missile defenses in a position where they can shoot down Chinese ICBMs.

Now, the problem with this theory is that it depends on all sides being rational about the whole situation. North Korea clearly isn't, and that makes things really awkward.

It was Reagan's SDI that helped bring down the USSR.

Helped, sure. Not the root cause, you can put the blame on Leonid Brezhnev for continuing to fund the space race and military heavily instead of consumer goods. You have to remember that the star wars program almost destroyed our economy also.

(scratches head) I said nothing about SDI being the root cause.

Didn't destroy our economy at all. We had a the strongest economic growth during the period since the end of WWII, multiple s of the sad pretend growth we have now.

And its that star wars that brought us THAAD and the other systems currently deployed off the West Coast.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
Integrating the two would take decades of work though.

Culture is nigh alien across it. Tech levels, diets, every. The unifcation would have to be a slow decade long process including ratcheting down the propoganda and bringing slowly in various aspects of southern culture

Even language has evolved different on both sides. Its never going to be easy to unify such polar oposites.

It worked for West and East Germany.

Unfortunately the problems are both much greater in scale and more numerous than with the case of Germany. Germany was a well built nation split by foreign powers and reunified when ine collapsed, the Koreas are effectively new nations created from scratch from a minimally developed (economically and industrially) region, and for all practical purposes with leadership that is no longer directly reliant on foreign powers for their position, and a period of separation long enough that almost none of the living population have any memory of a unified people. It's possible to achieve reunification, but it will be far more difficult than with Germany (which is still smoothing things out).

One of the reasons why China cannot calm North Korea down is because North Korea doesn't really listen to us anymore and we don't really like North Korea. North Korea's current leader has proven to be pig headed and head strong in ignoring our advice to calm their weapon testing. Several high profile cases of North Koreans sneaking across the border to rob nearby towns has also killed almost all sympathy for the people and making relations a lot colder.

To integrate North and South Korea will require time and effort that I cannot see any country willing to invest. It would be political suicide in the United States to suggest spending that much money overseas and China does not care to help North Korea with its problems. Kim is also going to resist any attempts to remove him from power even if they came from China, which could lead to the situation escalating into nuclear conflict if he feels threatened enough.

It's been reported in recent years that the Chinese are reading a lot of history, with particular focus on how England usurped the Spanish and the French, and in turn, created the British Empire. The Chinese see parallels between the Spanish Empire and the USA...

IMO, as an armchair strategist

I would suggest that the Chinese ignore that period and focus on Otto Von Bismarck. Why? Because if China is serious about getting US influence out of the Pacific, they could take a leaf out of the Iron Chancellor's book and build a system of alliances.

Nobody wants war, but the Chinese are fortunate that they can use other methods to achieve the same result.

Economic potential is one method of building power, but smart geopolitics is another:

1) A United Korean peninsular = no need for American Military presence = 1-0 to China

2) A tall order, but China recognising Taiwan's independence as a sovereign nation, and its close economic ties with China, removes another American piece from the game board.

3) Toning down the rhetoric with Japan, and reducing defence spending, is less likely to alarm Japan.

4) Turning the South China sea into a joint economic zone with its neighbours again reduces tension, and with China's growing economic might, they can slowly reduce American influence.

It's unlikely that the CCP will adopt any of these methods for various reasons, but some smart play from China could see a major reduction in American influence.

Naturally, the USA is unlikely to stand idly by, but with Trump potentially getting the keys to the White House, nobody knows what the USA is going to do.

If you think that South Korea is a "free and a democratic" country you know nothing and you should stop giving advises about who should joint with whom.

US will not get out of South Korea ever because they serve US interests in that region against China as well. For example, the US bases are still Europe, Germany in particular, despite the dissolution of the Warsaw pact and USSR.

Who would get the nuclear weapons, the technical equipment and technologies and the specialists from DPRK if the Koreans are to become united?

Recognizing Taiwan would not remove US influence, in fact it might improve it and make the two closer allies.

A united Korea would benefit the US greatly. We might close a lot of bases near the DMZ, but we would likely keep the bigger more southernly ones like Pusan and Osan.Lets be honest the army presence there isn't that big even now, maybe 30k troops or so which is a drop in the bucket compared to the ROK army or the Chinese.

Giving up on those islands they invaded to the south though would reduce tensions dramatically. Let the countries located adjacent to them argue about who owns them and support one of them and boom instant ally. Same with Japan. Really? Those islands were privately owned and are very obviously part of the Japanese island chain, where does China even get off on claiming them with a straight face? If anything it should be Taiwan and Japan disputing them not China.

Like it was said, China seems to only have one diplomatic goal, my way or the highway and doesn't seem to compromise. I am amazed the Useless Nations security council ever gets anything done.

Interesting to hear about the Chinese relationship with Korea. I always thought they were buddy buddy with each other, not the strained relationship that Signless was talking about.

This Kim is a wild card, the previous had what seemed like stable relationship with both china and Russia and was not the regional antagonist that the new one was.

Far less bluster, none of the nuclear mess. None of the trouble this one seems determined to start like stupid stuff like nuking Alaska... ?

If he keeps up with threats, no one believes him and then he had to back it up. ... China, china wants peace ob its border. Better the devil it knows than a new one. Plus hoards of refugees headed to its borders.

I can see why china is unhappy with the new Kim.

Heres a thought...does China have enough influence to have Kim's underlings stage a coup and depose him? If they make sure that they fear Chinese reprisals more than Kim himself, would they turn on him?

 Yaraton wrote:
If you think that South Korea is a "free and democratic" country you know nothing and you should stop giving advises about who should joint with whom.

Any evidence to this? Because a quick google seems to reveal it's considered a flawed democracy, in front of Japan but behind Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Yaraton wrote:
If you think that South Korea is a "free and democratic" country you know nothing and you should stop giving advises about who should joint with whom.

Any evidence to this? Because a quick google seems to reveal it's considered a flawed democracy, in front of Japan but behind Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

One of the biggest problems in South Korea is Samsung. The company makes up a significant portion of the South Korean economy (think half of the economy), and there is a lot of cronyism and corruption between the company and the SK government.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Yaraton wrote:
If you think that South Korea is a "free and democratic" country you know nothing and you should stop giving advises about who should joint with whom.

Any evidence to this? Because a quick google seems to reveal it's considered a flawed democracy, in front of Japan but behind Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

One of the biggest problems in South Korea is Samsung. The company makes up a significant portion of the South Korean economy (think half of the economy), and there is a lot of cronyism and corruption between the company and the SK government.

Spent over three years in South Korea. I agree but they are not the only ones

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Any evidence to this? Because a quick google seems to reveal it's considered a flawed democracy, in front of Japan but behind Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

I have a construction site near the place where I live and they've got a fence made of plywood and somebody sprayed it with "F*ck the police!" I've checked - there is none of that going on there.
"Democracy Index" has the same value as a "Non-GMO Verified" sticker on a burger joint.

 Yaraton wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Any evidence to this? Because a quick google seems to reveal it's considered a flawed democracy, in front of Japan but behind Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

I have a construction site near the place where I live and they've got a fence made of plywood and somebody sprayed it with "F*ck the police!" I've checked - there is none of that going on there.
"Democracy Index" has the same value as a "Non-GMO Verified" sticker on a burger joint.

Could you say that again, this time making sense?

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Yaraton wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
Any evidence to this? Because a quick google seems to reveal it's considered a flawed democracy, in front of Japan but behind Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

I have a construction site near the place where I live and they've got a fence made of plywood and somebody sprayed it with "F*ck the police!" I've checked - there is none of that going on there.
"Democracy Index" has the same value as a "Non-GMO Verified" sticker on a burger joint.

Could you say that again, this time making sense?

Ask the other adults to help you with that. Over and out.