North Korea wants to be an attention whore again...

Originally Posted by The Wise Vivi

Although, I am disappointed... by now you would have thought the nuclear age is over.... What about Neuron bombs....? I mean Nuclear is sooooo 1945....

Neutron bombs are nuclear weapons, you know.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

South Korea and Japan are about to be nuclear powers - and we should make it so.

We don't exactly need to make it so; Japan is quite capable of becoming a nuclear weapons state by itself.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Dyhalto

Why would China help anybody in taking down North Korea? They're N.Korea's closest ally, for fuck's sake. There's too much Chinese investment in N. Korea to risk helping it crumble. Nevermind the dummy nation's serving as a bulwark against S.Korea's democracy as well as constantly hogging Japan's search light.

These are all good points as to why China would want North Korea to continue to exist. At the same time, however, keeping North Korea around doesn't require keeping Kim Jong Il around, as well. If he continues to cause problems, China could very well decide that Kim had outlived his usefulness and replace him and his government with one of their choosing.

Such a new government would, of course, listen very closely to what Beijing has to say to them.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Adamgian1

For that matter, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the DoD run on a policy of being able to fight two full scale wars on different fronts and one small insurrection somewhere else?

I think that the DOD had decided to do "reevaluate" that policy even before Iraq exposed how poorly prepared the Army was to make it work, and won't be without a major expansion of Army to give us the manpower to fight those two major wars.

That was one of the problems that resulted from the end of the Cold War. The DOD policy was, as you said, to be able to fight two major land wars at once, and during the Cold War, the military was large enough to make it workable. However, that policy stayed in place even with the force reductions instituted after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Which isn't to say that we can't pound North Korea into the ground if we need to, but fighting a major ground war isn't much of an option for us right now; the South Koreans would need to be the ones doing that.

On the other hand, China may indeed be thinking about doing something about Kim.

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