I think it's absurd that there are people in this thread who truly believe that the North Koreans are mostly loyal to Kim Jong Il. or that they believe anything he says. or that they don't know what's going on in the outside world enough to know that something is wrong in their country. They are not idiots and they don't necessarily share the views of the governemnt.
There was a deal a couple of years ago where a North Korean volleyball team visited the South as part of the sunshine policy. When the volleyball team saw a billboard for the event that had the South Korean president shown on equal footing with Kim Jong Il (instead of venerating Kim above all else), they had a mini-riot. Kim Jong Il is a deity in North Korea. Literally. It is a classic example of Cult of Personality that was demonstrated by Stalin. The first thing that schools teach from the youngest age is how much everybody owes to the great Kim Jong Il. It is a capital offense to listen to non-approved media, so with absolute control over input the state can bombard people unopposed. Of course there are individuals who don't believe. Probably a large number, and it is apparently growing. There are people in the South who interview refugees on attitudes, and I remember hearing that they estimate that dissatisfaction has grown in recent years. But the core of people who do believe, who are totally devoted in a creepy, cult-like way is larger than anywhere else in the world. I suggest you watch any of the documentaries from recent years showing life inside the North, like the following: <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QFxvvd-l6-w&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QFxvvd-l6-w&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
Being part Iranian, I assure you that I understand the attitude to a large extent. Surely you are aware that loyalists are almost always put in leadership positions, even in sports. They are also preffered when selecting a team of players. This is basically a game of who kisses the most a$$, and the people who do are not necessarily real believers in Kim Jong Il but do everything in their power to make it appear that way. Even if it means throwing a fit at a poster in the incident you described. No matter how much of an offense it is to listen to capital media, the state is not going to be able to assert that level of control anymore in this day and age. Once the "incision" is big enough, the information will (and has already) spread rapidly. Thanks for the documentary. It's good but nothing in there was really new to me. I'm also fully aware that it's not a good source of info knowing that the majority of N Koreans can not come out and say "no actually, we all hate the dude but have to act this way to have bread to eat." Certainly, the number of peopel who worship the guy, literally or figuratively, will be larger because there is more isolation than anywhere else. But I think you may be massively underestimating the number of people who know exactly what's going on but still act loyal in order to survive.
China supplies NK's with its 70% food and energy need. NK's trade w/ other countries is almost non-existent. Unilateral trade sanction by the south or US at this point doesn't work to straighten NK's bad behavior. OTOH, if China stops supplying NK for just one day, NK will feel the pinch. Therefore, China has to be involved in efforts to punish NK. Kim is 70 year old. There are growing dissatisfactions in the country albeit the iron fist and massive propagandas. I think NK will fall just like Mao's China did 30 years ago.
Did the PRC fall from power? Did you notice fell was in quotes? The power structure built by Mao and his people is still in place. What we see today, while certainly evolved, is still that same power structure. It has a different face, China's society has certainly changed, and from a Western point of view, as well as a Chinese point of view, a lot has improved, but the same power structure remains.
Power structure, in terms of how things are run politically, maybe still the same to some extent, but you have to recognize the country has shift its zealous from ideology of realizing communism to economic development and wellbeing. There is a parallel between NK today and China 30 years ago. By "fall", I don't mean a drastic political shake up or reconstitute of some sort. It is welcoming and encouraging if NK could just focus on the wellbeing of the country. Of course, Kim and his generals are paranoid about NK's survival as a communist state. To them the wellbeing of the country is to maintain military power over the South and US. I feel that would change if Kim's gone.
Finally found a thread to put this information into, which I found very intriguing. The President has seen fit to deploy our latest military option that not only projects power, does it with conventional weapons, but is also essentially impossible to track, impossible to find, and can hit extremely hard. There is not another country on the planet that has anything like this. The Russians have the ability to create something similar, although possibly not as hard to detect submerged. What especially intrigued me is where and how these weapons are being deployed. Thursday, Jul. 08, 2010 U.S. Missiles Deployed Near China Send a Message By Mark Thompson / Washington If China's satellites and spies were working properly, there would have been a flood of unsettling intelligence flowing into the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese navy last week. A new class of U.S. superweapon had suddenly surfaced nearby. It was an Ohio-class submarine, which for decades carried only nuclear missiles targeted against the Soviet Union, and then Russia. But this one was different: for nearly three years, the U.S. Navy has been dispatching modified "boomers" to who knows where (they do travel underwater, after all). Four of the 18 ballistic-missile subs no longer carry nuclear-tipped Trident missiles. Instead, they hold up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles each, capable of hitting anything within 1,000 miles with non-nuclear warheads. Their capability makes watching these particular submarines especially interesting. The 14 Trident-carrying subs are useful in the unlikely event of a nuclear Armageddon, and Russia remains their prime target. But the Tomahawk-outfitted quartet carries a weapon that the U.S. military has used repeatedly against targets in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Sudan. (See pictures of the U.S. military in the Pacific.) That's why alarm bells would have sounded in Beijing on June 28 when the Tomahawk-laden 560-ft. U.S.S. Ohio popped up in the Philippines' Subic Bay. More alarms were likely sounded when the U.S.S. Michigan arrived in Pusan, South Korea, on the same day. And the Klaxons would have maxed out as the U.S.S. Florida surfaced, also on the same day, at the joint U.S.-British naval base on Diego Garcia, a flyspeck of an island in the Indian Ocean. In all, the Chinese military awoke to find as many as 462 new Tomahawks deployed by the U.S. in its neighborhood. "There's been a decision to bolster our forces in the Pacific," says Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "There is no doubt that China will stand up and take notice." U.S. officials deny that any message is being directed at Beijing, saying the Tomahawk triple play was a coincidence. But they did make sure that news of the deployments appeared in the Hong Kong–based South China Morning Post — on July 4, no less. The Chinese took notice quietly. "At present, common aspirations of countries in the Asian and Pacific regions are seeking for peace, stability and regional security," Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said on Wednesday. "We hope the relevant U.S. military activities will serve for the regional peace, stability and security, and not the contrary." (See pictures of the most expensive military planes.) Last month, the Navy announced that all four of the Tomahawk-carrying subs were operationally deployed away from their home ports for the first time. Each vessel packs "the firepower of multiple surface ships," says Captain Tracy Howard of Submarine Squadron 16 in Kings Bay, Ga., and can "respond to diverse threats on short notice." The move forms part of a policy by the U.S. government to shift firepower from the Atlantic to the Pacific theater, which Washington sees as the military focus of the 21st century. Reduced tensions since the end of the Cold War have seen the U.S. scale back its deployment of nuclear weapons, allowing the Navy to reduce its Trident fleet from 18 to 14. (Why 14 subs, as well as bombers and land-based missiles carrying nuclear weapons, are still required to deal with the Russian threat is a topic for another day.) (See "Obama Shelves U.S. Missile Shield: The Winners and Losers.") Sure, the Navy could have retired the four additional subs and saved the Pentagon some money, but that's not how bureaucracies operate. Instead, it spent about $4 billion replacing the Tridents with Tomahawks and making room for 60 special-ops troops to live aboard each sub and operate stealthily around the globe. "We're there for weeks, we have the situational awareness of being there, of being part of the environment," Navy Rear Admiral Mark Kenny explained after the first Tomahawk-carrying former Trident sub set sail in 2008. "We can detect, classify and locate targets and, if need be, hit them from the same platform."(Comment on this story.) The submarines aren't the only new potential issue of concern for the Chinese. Two major military exercises involving the U.S. and its allies in the region are now under way. More than three dozen naval ships and subs began participating in the "Rim of the Pacific" war games off Hawaii on Wednesday. Some 20,000 personnel from 14 nations are involved in the biennial exercise, which includes missile drills and the sinking of three abandoned vessels playing the role of enemy ships. Nations joining the U.S. in what is billed as the world's largest-ever naval war game are Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Singapore and Thailand. Closer to China, CARAT 2010 — for Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training — just got under way off Singapore. The operation involves 17,000 personnel and 73 ships from the U.S., Singapore, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. (See "Hu's Visit: Finding a Way Forward on U.S.-China Relations.") China is absent from both exercises, and that's no oversight. Many nations in the eastern Pacific, including Australia, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam, have been encouraging the U.S. to push back against what they see as China's increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea. And the U.S. military remains concerned over China's growing missile force — now more than 1,000 — near the Taiwan Strait. The Tomahawks' arrival "is part of a larger effort to bolster our capabilities in the region," Glaser says. "It sends a signal that nobody should rule out our determination to be the balancer in the region that many countries there want us to be." No doubt Beijing got the signal. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2002378,00.html
"US Military Told to Prepare for War" is a HORRIBLE headline when the article, upon reading, clearly conveys that "Obama orders commanders to prepare 'to deter future aggression,'" NOT a war. Which brings me to a point I'd like to make right quick... Is it me or have we Americans really lost site of what a war is as defined by the Constitution? I mean if we really want to get technical I don't believe we have officially had a war since WWII. By "officially" I mean declared by Congress, as outlined in the big C, which is the only way we could technically "go to war." Just sayin'!
LOL. What signal? "We are the only super power left in the world, and we can waive a big shot gun in front of your house to threaten you, but you can't do a damn thing about it?" I guess PRC got that, nothing really new. US has been doing that since 1990. All those nice things about democracy, freedom, equality etc, are only for domestics. Internationally, it was, is and will be forever about interest/profit/power. It's funny when Israel kills Palestinians, it's Hamas' fault (or just insert any random groups). When North Korea sank a South Korea ship, US feels the urge to send PRC a signal If US do have strong "evidence" that N.K did that, they can go ahead to support S.K to invade N.K for all i care, or just bomb N.K directly. Even if US doesn't have evidence, it can still make some up. After all, still about 1/3 Americans believe they found WMD in Iraq. But instead of showing muscles to N.K, US sent a "signal" to PRC? So impressive：D
it sends a signal that the US Navy has an excess of expensive equipment designed for a previous era that it's trying to keep relevant.
Its like in the hood after a big drive-by shooting, the cop cars patrolling the area to serve notice. China really should police their own, send out their own squad cars.
I think we really overestimate the influence China has on North Korea, anyways I think the Chinese is secretly laughing that we just wasted millions sending an weapon over there that is not going to be used.
They aren't laughing. Why this move is difficult to understand or something to be made fun of is a mystery to me. North Korea recently sank a warship of the South Korean Navy, an act of war. We are allies of South Korea. Personally, I'm damn glad the move was made and that we have these ships, which give us a very credible non-nuclear option that is nearly impossible to defend against, perfect for the present circumstance. Many here don't realize that Nixon came very close to using an atomic weapon in 1969 against North Korea, after they shot down an American spy plane that was over international waters. He initially decided to take out the airbase the North Korean planes flew from with a device 20 times as powerful as those used against Japan. He changed his mind. Ponder that and you might see the value in having this non-nuclear ability to hit and hit hard. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128337461&ps=cprs
I think you are seriously overestimating the military capacity of the North Korean military, whose best weapons are outdated hardware from the last century. To use that against the North Koreans would be like using a cannon on a mosquito. Make no mistake, the appearance of this sub is mainly aimed at the Chinese to show them (as if they don't know) we still have the biggest guns on the globe, and to reinforce the our influence in the region. The problem I have is that we are focusing on the wrong things, while we are so heavily focused on our military superiority (even tho no other country is remotely close to catching up to us). China is focusing on their economy, and building more binding ties with its neighbors, which will further lessen our influence in the region.
Here is a good research article done by the Cato institute about how we are weakening ourselves by spending all these money even tho nothing in the world comes remotely close to threatening us militarily. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11113
Probably because Congressional consent is usually granted, both by implicit legislation and explicit funding, and because the generally accepted idea of a war pre-dates the Constitutional defintion by 5,000 years or so. And the fact that a "War" is generally engaged in by two parties, one of which may not adhere to the war-defining policies of the US Constitution.
How am I "seriously overestimating the military capacity of the North Korean military?" Have you looked at a map and seen just how close Seoul is to the border? Consider that North Korea, as relatively inferior as their weaponry is compared to South Korea, much less the US, has thousands of conventional rockets, artillery tubes, and missiles aimed right at the South Korean capital. If war broke out, the civilian casualties would be horrendous. The "best use" of our weaponry is as a deterrent, and hopefully these subs will have that effect, but if North Korea acts irrationally again and military action by us is unavoidable, I'm glad that we have options like these. Any "impact' these submarines are having on the thought process of the Chinese government and military is of interest of the writer of the article, not me, but since you said they were "laughing" at us spending the money to re-configure these subs for conventional and covert operations, I have to disagree with you. They aren't laughing. And the reason for deploying them in the region, in my opinion, is what I consider a response to North Korean aggression. One can only hope the North Koreans are paying attention. Regardless, I'm glad we have them there, should the horrific become reality.
