Good plan. Have you ever heard the phrase...the chickens will come home to roost? Inevitabely if we do this, it will turn against us later. Osama Bin Laden was once our friend. We trained him. The Suni's, you know, the nest of the Iraqi insurgents, were also our allies as we invaded Iraq in 2002...because we had a common enemy. Now that the enemy is gone, they are focusing on us. Zarqowi (sp?) takes shelter among the Suni.
At least come up with a valid argument before you try and shoot me down. I can't believe your comparing OBL with South Korea. SK would be communists living under tyrannical rule if it wasn't for us. You can't even begin to compare SK to Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan who live by some crazed interpretation of Islam. The way the whole world is working now is everyone wants nukes for self defense. If NK is going to use that excuse, then SK certainly should be able to...whether they develop them on their own or whatever. Then, let's see how NK likes the other side having nukes on the peninsula. Your worrying about SK turning around and stabbing us in the back after we've sheltered them from communism and tyrannical rule for 50+ years. Give me a break.
friggin Pakistan and India have the bomb.... atleast Pakistan is far worse than both North Korea and Iran....but again they won't be attacked because of the bomb....its all about who has it...if you don't your screwed.....that's why Iran probably wants it bad...cause then they will not be attacked...Iraq was attacked cause they did'nt have the bomb..they knew Saddam is a nut...and would have used it. ask Mr.Blix himself!
Except that they betrayed us while we were "buying them off". We agreed to give them nuclear reactor technology (actual nuclear reactors!) in exchange for a promise to use them for good and not evil. They used them for evil and it looks as if they bold-face lied to Carter in order to get the technology to build nukes. So, we were buying them off and they were just playing us for fools. I don't understand why you think they all of a sudden started working on nukes after we stopped "buying them off" when they were planning on nukes the whole time.
Didn't Islamic fundamentalist get assistance and training from the U.S. also? Not trying to argue but just getting my facts straight.
Not sure why there is a comparison between the people/government of South Korea and religious fanatics. Also considering the post Cold War world is different from the Cold War world. This kind of comparison is the akin to saying 'should we give Tsunami aid? No, we gave islamic fundamentalists and it came back to haunt us.'
I'm just saying we need to be careful about handing out equipment/secrets. What if NK invades SK and captures all of their equipment. What if there are corrupt officials in SK selling secretes. Or even NK spies within SK passing info. My point is arming other countries is a sticky situation because it may come back to bite us in some unseen manor.
NK already has nukes, so it wouldn't matter if they invaded SK and captured THIER nukes. On the other hand, it would serve as a deterrent to NK invading in the first place, just as the US extension of our nuclear deterrent has since the Korean War. Personally I'd like to see LESS countries with nukes, not more. But as Ottoman pointed out, Cold War non proliferation regimes are failing/have failed. Now the choice is between taking aggressive action to stop states from getting the bomb OR to balance out the proliferation ala Waltz et al as seen with China/India - India/Pakistan - China/Russia - Soviet Union/US. One more reason I'm for BMD.
Exactly. But, if NK decided to invade SK, then all hell would break loose. We would obviously be sucked into that conflict to stop NK from taking over SK. Or, else, why the F are we over there right now if not to serve as a deterrent and to prevent that? NK would have to have some kind of death wish to decide to invade SK.
I don't understand your point. Yes, all hell would break loose if NK invaded SK. That is true now, and would be true if SK had nukes. NK would be less likely to do so if SK had nukes and we could leave SK.
My point is worrying about NK acquiring SK's nukes(if they had some) would not be worth worrying about. NK would never be able to acquire SK's nukes. It wouldn't come to that. Like you said, it doesn't matter anyway as NK already has nukes. The only thing we should be worrying about with NK is them selling or transfering their own nukes or nuke technology to third parties. They are probably desperate enough to try such a move given their situation.
Your missing the point. Selling weapons and/or secrets to counries in embattled parts of the world has gone against us many many times. Maybe there is a short-term benefit, but it seems to come back to bite us too often. Why is this so hard to understand? Arming third world countries is BAD POLICY any way you slice it. I don't know why I'm continuing to entertain this conversation. If NK knows we will protect SK, then that shuold be deterance enough. Arming them won't change anything. Besides, look at Chron.com right now. NK is claiming they have nukes to protect themselves from American. SK doesn't even factor into it. So if we are the threat, why would we arm SK?
If NK decides to roll over the DMZ our troops over there would be little more than speed bump before the NK army got to Seoul. That is unless NK missles turn Seoul into a pile of ash pre-invasion. Nothing against the US Armed formces over there, they are just SEVERELY out-numbered.
And didn't the US recently say we were pulling our troops out of the DMZ? Seems I recall something to that affect.
SK is hardly a third world country. However I do agree giving them nukes might not be the best way to solve the problem. NK is just trying to blackmail the world, nukes are their way of getting some attantion. They will continue this on/off disarm talks to get more money out of us. They will never give up on nukes, since that would mean they will lose their blackmailing bargaining chip. And this unstable/boarderline craziness behavior is all part of the show to get US to give into what they want. No worries, they will be back at the bargaining table after some tough rhetorics. (and pattern repeats every 6 month or so)
We don't have to arm them. They already have had a program, we just pressured them to stop and gave them our guarantee instead. Letting them proliferate would change the situation in this way: we could leave - which removes NK's concern about us, right? But we wouldn't be leaving an ally to NK's mercy. Removing us from the equation makes it more likely China gets involved. Now they can sit back and laugh as we get clobbered in the 'international media.' Their real concern in Japan rearming so they have incentive to smack NK on the head and calm the situation down, IF we leave. Finally, removing pressure from a democratic and stable SK proliferating is NOT the same thing as handing munitions to religious fanatics. I understand you intuitively believe proliferation is bad, but if its inevitable then the only course is to try and balance it out. Regimes to prevent the spread of technology are a failure - aside from the major powers there is India, Israel, Pakistan, NK that HAVE the bomb. Taiwan, SK, South Africa, Iraq, Iran, Brazil, Argentina and who knows else have all had programs.
Fine, lets just promote proliferate and leave SK to themselves. I'm sure that will solve everything. And I'm sure in 30 years we won't be talking about the black market of nuclear material. Oh wait, we already are talking about that with the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Yea, the threat of dirty bombs is no biggy. I'm sorry HayesStreet, there is no way you are going to convince me that promoting nuclear proliferation is a positive thing. Even if it creates a stalemate, that means you have school children doing nuclear bomb drills at school. That's the best case scenario. Worste case is the exitinction of humanity...minor detail. Look, the U.S. has enough bombs for everybody. Lets just leave it at that. I realize nuclear poliferation is a reality of our current political environment but I don't want to be in the business of promoting it. It is a simple message really. No need to drowning this with crap about China and Japan. I don't like bombs and consider it a last resort thing...not preventative maintenance as several of you casually mention that it is okay to arm SK.
