Cheating Defector

We are staring down the barrel of an ICBM with a nuke on it! Here’s the issue: We are entering into a war of one-upmanship with North Korea. We’ve got the Ol’ Pussy Grabber who’s only negotiating techniques are bluff, bluster, bully, and grab-the-money-and-run. That works well when you are dealing with small to middling contractors who can’t afford protracted legal battles over getting bills paid, but it don’t work so well when you are dealing with a dictator who serves at the pleasure of his generals.

NK: Suicide Watch or Distraction?

As I wrote earlier, there are three salient factors when dealing with North Korea:

1. They are pursuing a policy of Juche or self-reliance. This policy is based on a long cultural history of isolationism — they don’t call it the Closet Kingdom fer nothin!
2. When you couple this policy with the cultural imperative to endure hardship expressed by the quaint Korean term, fighting, you find that economic sanctions have limited value.
3. These two cultural tendencies lead to a conclusion that when things look really bleak, the only honorable thing to do is to commit suicide. There is a reason why suicide rates in South Korea are so high, especially among high school students.

Now, we add to this toxic volatile stew, a complete lack of personnel in either the State Department — we still don’t have a nominee for ambassador to South Korea! — or the Department of Defense specializing in North Korea, nuclear proliferation, or nuclear strategy because deep state and burn it all down!

With these factors coming together, we can now all resume duck and cover drills! Last Tuesday 2 August, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-Talks the talk, not the walk) told Matt Lauer on the Today Show that the Ol’ Pussy Grabber… oh hell, let’s just block quote the confirmed bachelor:

He’s not going to allow — President Trump — the ability of this madman [Kim Jong Un] to have a missile that could hit America.

If there’s going to be a war to stop him, it will be over there. If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die over here — and he’s told me that to my face.

There is a military option: to destroy North Korea’s nuclear program and North Korea itself.

Talk like that is likely to trigger a preemptive strike from North Korea. If they go, they go big. They  unleash their artillery onto the greater Seoul metropolitan area where about half the country lives. It won’t be thousands of dead, ya old pussy grabber, it will be millions. Call up Moon Jae-In and ask him how many people live in South Korea, you idiot. They will send their missiles to the States and Japan, too. They probably even have a few nasty tricks up their sleeves like using their surface-to-air missiles to bring down as many commercial aircraft as are in range.

Everyone should be well aware that there is no way North Korea wins a protracted war with anyone. They don’t have the man power (approximately 20 million in population versus the 40 million in South Korea); they don’t have the resources (they’ve been sanctioned to death; they don’t have the reserve stock of fuels); and they don’t have the re-supply (no one is going to arm them once they run their current stockpile of weapons and munitions). They can’t win, and they know it. They aren’t stupid, and they aren’t crazy. So, what choices do they have?

You want them to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are  committed to defending South Korea and Japan. That should they threaten either in any meaningful way, those B1’s won’t be flying over South Korea, they will be dropping bombs on the North. And they will be utterly destroyed.

How is that message different from the water Senator Graham carried for the Ol’ Pussy Grabber? It doesn’t make the threat of starting the war! It leaves it up to them. It leaves us all wiggle room. If you know you are vulnerable and your only chance at victory is to convince South Korea to capitulate before the US can counter-strike, you are going to roll the dice and attack.

They will not sit back and be bullied. Kim Jong Un cannot afford to look weak before his generals. He cannot afford to allow himself to be attacked. He has staked everything on developing long-range nuclear-tipped missiles. We’ve got all the ingredients for a fire, let’s not supply the catalyst.

The one thing a bully doesn’t survive is someone calling his bluff. Don’t make that mistake with North Korea, the stakes are far far too high.