Did you know Japan was working on the bomb?
- Thread starter herodotus
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SpikedLemonade
Well-known member
Well you need to keep North Korea and their midget leader in check.
herodotus
Well-known member
You want North Korea to not be a problem? Here is what you do:
1. His missiles are purely defensive. The only way he uses them is if we attack first.
2. You give reason for his two very powerful northern neighbors to put him in check. Oh wait, what's that? We'd rather engage in colossally stupid dick measuring contests and push both of them and North Korea into each other's arms? Fuck.
3. You incentivize him away from the behavior you don't like. You encourage unification and economic development opportunities with the south. The big problem with this one is that the North Korean people's growth has literally been stunted due to decades of near famine.
SpikedLemonade
Well-known member
Does South Korea really want to unite?
They would be strapping on a lot of poverty onto their economy.
herodotus
Well-known member
I covered that in point three. Its the conundrum we are in. The North Korean economy is shit. Hell, Germany's economy is still not where it could be because of how much of a basketcase the DDR economy was. Worse, the Osties never really experienced famine and were at least physically in good health at reunification. The people of the DPRK will literally need to be on disability because of how stunted Juche has left them. However, reunification is the best way to solve the problem on the peninsula. I don't see democracy coming to the peninsula and if it does come to North Korea it will be on the back of civil war. The last thing you want in a civil war is one faction to have nukes that it might just decide to use.
SpikedLemonade
Well-known member
I am all for the elimination of all nukes however it is not going in that direction.
Shit, there are countries like Israel who won’t admit they have them more sign any nuke agreements like the US has.
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herodotus
Well-known member
I have asked why, but you won't like the answer. Putin's coming to power was bad for two groups of people who both hate him so much, our oligarchs and Russia's. In the 1990s we did have better relations with Russia. We dictated its elections, we stole its raw materials, its young and educated fled to the west for better jobs and its women were whored out. Its army was literally forced to hunt for food and sometimes went months without pay. Its government civil service literally was working for IOUs. Businesses ran by people like you or I could not get anything done because to get anything done you had to bribe.
Now Russia has always been corrupt, but again, in the 1990s -the period we are talking about- it was so corrupt the average Russian couldn't do business, the Russian army was not getting paid and nor was government service. The country was for sale to the highest bidder. Drug cartels in Latin America got to within a bureaucrat actually doing his job for free of buying a nuclear submarine to run drugs into this country. Ever hear of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda? They got too damn close to buying Russian nuclear weapons. You think 9/11 was bad? Imagine if those fuckers had been able to buy an atomic weapon and detonate that on a suicide mission in New York. We were able to rebuild New York.
But Gibby, what does this have to do with anything? Well you have to understand that this was Russia in the 90s under the oligarchs. Their oligarchs made a killing, very literally, off the human trafficking, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and selling off of Russian industrial assetts, and raw materials, petroleum, and gems and precious metals. Their oligarchics were in the arms of our oligarchs. Yeah, with rare exceptions, nobody who has a 10 or more digit income got that much money by being a nice guy. Russian oligarchs selling their country to the highest bidder was great for their pockets. Their desire to sell was only matched by the desire of our oligarchs to buy. Our oligarchs wanted to fuck the women they sold (see Donald Trump for instance), do the opium they sold, and use the raw materials they were selling. Plus, cheap Russian weapons could be used by our oligarchs to handle problems in parts of the world such as South America and Africa and Southwest Asia to take out governments we didn't like via coups, civil wars, assassinations, proxy wars or invasions. Their oligarchs were more than happy because money was their god and our oligarchs were too.
Now, keep in mind Russia -at least under Yeltsin - was okay with this because Yeltsin, sort of like Poroshenko and Zelensky, hoped that eventually NATO and the EU would include Russia, but as Bill Clinton lamented in this century we never fully extended that olive branch. So in 2000, Putin came to power and put an end to the fire sale. Being an oligarch was fine but you had to do it his way. You were going to be taxed, you were going to quit selling off the country or you were going to go. If you were really smart you allied with him and owed up to and quit your corruption or at least became smart in hiding it. If you were sort of smart you took your ill gotten gains and fled abroad and bought news outlets such as Britain's The Independent and spoke in Congress about human rights abuses you yourself probably engaged in. If you were an idiot you fucking died and became a martyr for freedom.
Our oligarchs got pissed off at Putin because he was bad for their bottom line too. The firesale, the drugs, the sex slaves, and cheap labor, the arms trafficking and all that shit was done. The PNAC and neocon/neoliberal dream you can read about in the Atlantic Council (I posted that on the Range several months ago) of carving Russia up into little fiefdoms under the control of various western multinational corporations was in the 90s and 2000s the quiet part they didn't say out loud.
That is why we have no relations with Russia now. Our oligarchs got too fucking greedy and sadly the world may eventually have to pay the awful price.
We have no relations now because Putin is a more liberal and cultured dictator than the fat guy in N. Korea but he is still a dictator, power-hungry, threatening and oppressive to his neighbors, the invasion of Crimea, disregards the Nuclear Arms treaties we had with Russia and hates the US.
Because Russia isn't isolated as N Korea is from the world and has a major stake in world commerce, unlike N Korea, he cannot enslave his people but they live in the same fear of the Russian Government as they did the Soviet Government going back the time of the Gulags.
Because Russia isn't isolated as N Korea is from the world and has a major stake in world commerce, unlike N Korea, he cannot enslave his people but they live in the same fear of the Russian Government as they did the Soviet Government going back the time of the Gulags.