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Has N. Korea pushed their luck too far now?

Beyond the capability of being able to spray nukes on the US no-one really knows what Kim wants. Whatever it is he will not relinquish his shiny new missiles for all the tea in China. No way. That means the threat of a nuclear holocaust will increase significantly in the near future. In addition other countries may want to develop their own nuclear weapons in case Kim gets an itchy finger and sees them as a suitable target. The whole scenario leaves me feeling rather pessimistic for the future.
 
Beyond the capability of being able to spray nukes on the US of A no-one really knows what Kim wants.

istm fairly certain Kim wants to stay in a position of absolute power, and eventually pass this on to an heir.
 
Exactly 72 years ago to the day, a small atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 70,000 people.

Joe
 
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Joe
 
A totally unnecessary act of mass state terrorism, Joe.

I take it that was written from a Japanese POW camp at the time?

It may have been an unnecessary act, it certainly was a brutal one - but sod all to do with state terrorism and could easily have been prevented had the Japanese military any regard for their citizens. I'm beginning to come round to the idea that you really are just trolling.
 
I take it that was written from a Japanese POW camp at the time?

It may have been an unnecessary act, it certainly was a brutal one - but sod all to do with state terrorism and could easily have been prevented had the Japanese military any regard for their citizens. I'm beginning to come round to the idea that you really are just trolling.
It was totally unnecessary. The Japanese were beaten. The US knew this yet murdered those 70,000 people anyway.

Why on earth you'd consider anybody stating as such to be trolling I do not know. It's not as if it's some far out, wacky opinion.
 
Beyond the capability of being able to spray nukes on the US no-one really knows what Kim wants. Whatever it is he will not relinquish his shiny new missiles for all the tea in China. No way. That means the threat of a nuclear holocaust will increase significantly in the near future. In addition other countries may want to develop their own nuclear weapons in case Kim gets an itchy finger and sees them as a suitable target. The whole scenario leaves me feeling rather pessimistic for the future.

Radio 4's 'The Briefing Room' made a good summary of the situation, not so long ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08n46dn
 
On what do you base this assertion?

Can you give us details of your strategic and tactical analysis, with calculations please.
The Japanese were beaten at the time. It was an unnecessary act of mass-murder which I'd call state terror.

Of course I'm aware of the narrative that says Japan had not surrendered and that the Yanks and allies did not want to risk big allied losses finishing them off using conventional warfare, forcing surrender.

I do not buy it. They could easily have threatened the use of further nuclear weapons if they did not surrender. Instead they chose the 'easy', evil way out of it.
 
It was totally unnecessary. The Japanese were beaten. The US knew this yet murdered those 70,000 people anyway.

Yes, the US knew that it was a matter of time before Japan surrendered - the writing was on the wall for the country. What was an issue was how many US and Japanese would die before the surrender. In fact, after the dropping of both bombs, the US were surprised at how quickly Japan surrendered.

A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

If faced with those sort of figures, as horrible as 70000 dead was, it could be considered as less terrible than the predicted figures.
 
istm fairly certain Kim wants to stay in a position of absolute power, and eventually pass this on to an heir.

He doesn't need a ICBM with nuclear warhead to maintain his absolute authority, he gets that by other means. What I wonder is what are his international aspirations that make this capability such a high priority?
 
He doesn't need a ICBM with nuclear warhead to maintain his absolute authority, he gets that by other means. What I wonder is what are his international aspirations that make this capability such a high priority?

As a starter for ten, removal of many of the sanctions and embargoes on NK.
 
I'm really tired of the words coming from Trumps mouth now, some off it was funny, but now threatening a country and it's people with nuclear annihilation from a golf resort he's gone to far.

I feel he's willing to do anything to save his ass from the Russian collusion investigation, going to war is a perfect way to distract attention away from him and his cronies acts of treason. Just writing the sentence above seem like total nonsense, but i feel he has no grasp on reality whatsoever outside his own immediate bubble, or bunker.
 
...after the dropping of both bombs, the US were surprised at how quickly Japan surrendered.

The surrender was probably partially due to the Russians entering the war against Japan, and invading Japanese territory, between the dropping of the first and second bomb.
 
It was totally unnecessary. The Japanese were beaten. The US knew this yet murdered those 70,000 people anyway.

It's easy to condemn the act in retrospect in the comfort of our armchairs, but one needs to consider the circumstances at the time. Based on the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the fanatical defence of those islands and the casualties incurred, the US military estimated that an invasion and conquest of the main islands would incur over a million US casualties, even with Japan's depleted resources. The question was how to avoid this. The Japanese had been warned of the use of a new weapon. Its nature wasn't specified, but the Japanese scientific establishment knew enough of international pre-war physics developments to suspect what it was.

This does not justify what happened, but it is understandable. It was not an act of state terrorism, but an extension of "war is hell", as William Sherman put it in the Civil War. In principle, it is no worse than the RAF's deliberate firestorming of German cities, culminating in Dresden, nor the USAAF's B-29 fire raid on Tokyo which killed rather more than died at Nagasaki.
 


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