The Japanese SDF is a "real" military in everything but name and the uses to which it has been put. Turning it into an officially "real" military would take nothing more than a name change and repealing of Art. 9.

As far as making them go nuclear, or even whether we should "want" them to, sure we have a big stick and could always annihilate NKorea if push came to shove, but the Japanese themselves might want the more serious defense. The threat of a nuclear Japan would not sit well with their neighbors in China, hopefully prompting them to put pressure on NKorea.

As far as the missile defense, sure it may be expensive, but in the face of intercontinental nuclear warheads, short of the preemptive military strikes abhorred by so many, what other real defense would the US have? If we wait till NKorea launches a nuke at Tokyo or San Francisco, absolutely they'll be signing their death certificates, but Kim Jong Il doesn't seem like a terribly rational guy/dictator-type, and irregardless whatever response we take will ultimately be too late for the target city.

I don't know about you, but I'm not comfortable with "our only defense is the threat of total annihilation AFTER one or more major global cities is turned into rubble."

Control of nuclear weapons might mean for N.K a couple of options that are truly threatening to the US. More so than this ICBM attack on the west coast all of you are so worried about.
1. They can sell the short rangeweapons or technology to rogue states or terrorist organizations (prob the biggest reason the US doesnt want them to have them) who can easily deploy them.
2. They can put military pressure on unifying the penninsula under n.korean rule and use the threat of a nuke strike on Japan or the south to delay intervention by the Us or united nations. Annex small pieces or invade a portion, then bargain thier way into letting them keep a piece of it because its not worth the chance they actually act on making Nihon glow. (Again, china probably wouldnt put up with this for long...when the United nation starts sanctioning them for not policing thier little korean brat)

#1 is definitely a very real concern and there is evidence (according to the intel community at least) that they have been involved in NPT violations (beyond the obvious ones), including the AQ Khan network we so conveniently swept under the rug a few years ago (the fucker is living it up in a lakeside mansion!).

#2 is extremely unlikely. Invading would trigger an epic shitstorm, if they even managed to seize any territory they wouldn't be able to hold it for long. For North Korea to beat the US militarily we would have to invade them, and it's not really clear they understand or are prepared for so-called "fourth generation" warfare. I don't think they really give a shit about unification anymore, even if they could accomplish it magically without the use of force and without any kind of military response digesting 21st century South Korean culture would destabilize the existing regime a hell of a lot more than an actual war would.

That's not far off from my position.

I envision a new kind of war where instead of bombs we drop the best implements of liberation money can buy. In the case of North Korea, the problem is that you have a large population without adequate food, information, or fun. They're a bunch of miserable peasants enslaved by a fucked up authoritarian dictatorship. I say we ignore the government of North Korea and take our issues up with the people directly. We can do this by dropping food on them, and with it every piece of modern infrastructure that can be designed to survive a high-altitude parachute drop. We can blanket the entire nation with wireless internet and drop computers on them. We can hijack their radio spectrum and bring them rock and roll.
It probably wouldn't hurt to drop some decent recreational drugs as well. Imagine the fun that would ensue if one day in Pyongyang it rained MDMA. Although that would probably be some kind of a war crime (I think it's a debatable point).
And porn. Lots of porn.

Ultimately, this is significantly cheaper than dropping bombs on them and the death toll will be significantly smaller. Even if we have to design and build a lot of new equipment to get it done, it's the kind of gear that will have uses beyond this new kind of war and will stimulate the economy. So, we don't have to waste $100,000 bombs dropped from $20,000,000 jets to blow up starving child-slaves, the North Korean people get plugged back into reality, and a really ugly nasty war gets avoided. Everyone wins! Except the bad guys, but odds are they wind up like Mussolini.

The only real risk of my plan is that as it becomes destabilized the North Korean government might lash out. We would have to be ready for that. It's really not much different than the current situation, except they will be striking from a weakened and weakening position in a much more predictable manner.

Thoughts? Am I nuts? Should Obama give me a few hundred billion dollars and orders to liberate North Korea? Is there some flaw in my plan I can't see?


EDIT: Just to make it clear (because I know some of you are a bit slow), my plan is basically that we turn our military might to dropping as much of the 21st century on the North Korean people as we can and let them go nuts with it. We can't win in a traditional military conflict without unacceptable losses, so lets fight the most badass culture war ever instead. Imagine if one day the future fell out of the sky. That is exactly what it would be to the North Korean people.

I don't think there is anything we can do to mitigate their ability to threaten. We either accept that a really fucked up crazy group of people have nukes or we do something about it. I'm inclined to say we should do something about it, but we should do something that isn't militarily provocative. If we don't actually break anything, if all we do is literally shower them in gifts, it's the most extreme action we can take that is still relatively non-threatening. No one expects the future to drop out of the sky, the North Korean government is likely to not have any idea how to respond.




I think option 1 is more of a pipe dream than my idea, and it ignores the threat of a conventional attack. If it came down to it North Korea appears to be able to put on a good show, they don't need nukes for that. Option 1, at great expense, possibly reduces the risk of missile strikes. That's it. Even assuming that it worked it does nothing for the enslaved North Koreans. The regime carries on, or it comes apart and we have a new major crisis (nuclear armed civil war, mass starvation, millions of refugees, etc.).

I don't think option 2 is feasible. Not to mention it's a lot more risky than my proposal. The kind of force necessary to decapitate the North Koreans can't move fast enough. Not to mention we've played that card before, they know that that is exactly what we will do.




I think my plan is less poking the bear with a stick and more throwing tranquilizer-laced honey at it. Once the bear is snoring we can chain it up, and then teach it to dance for us.

This is a good plan but is probably difficult to implement effectively. I might be wrong but it seems like the intel community does not know a whole lot about the internal politics of North Korea, if we were going to get their elite fighting each other we would really need to understand the various factions first. The logistics of this plan are a bit difficult and risky too. It may be that the CIA has a network established there that could carry it out, but I really doubt it. China and South Korea likely do, but they are almost definitely going to be strictly intel focused and not very useful when it comes to producing mayhem. Getting special forces types operating in the countryside is certainly possible, but getting them to plausibly emulate the beginnings of a coup seems like a pretty tall order, and without any local infrastructure they are totally on their own out there. Maybe we could get our allies to assist, but it's hard to imagine some random North Korean officer or factory manager who is being blackmailed into supplying relatively innocent documents to what he thinks is a Chinese businessman participating in anything that involves armed Americans inside North Korea.

Part of that may be that the adults are in charge again. Part of it may be the specifics of the situation, with Iraq it was obvious from the beginning that the WMD story was so much bullshit, whereas North Korea has set off two nukes and has ICBMs (even if they are still half-assed). The threat is clear.

If you're talking about me specifically, I'm certainly willing to explain the nuances of what I think America should and shouldn't do when it comes to foreign policy. I do admit to having varying contradictory opinions but that's because I think there is more than one moral path.