Either North Korea is the country that satellite photographs show to have almost no electricity. Or it has nuclear weapons.
It cannot be both of those things. We know for a fact that it is at least one of them. Therefore, we know for a fact that it is not the other.
As for spending money on giant vanity weapons systems while allowing people to starve to death, imagine living in a country like that.
The intense loyalty exhibited when, for example, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il died, is neither fake nor forced.
The participants' point of reference is not South Korea, about which they know nothing beyond what they have been told by people whom it is more than reasonable to assume believe exactly what they are saying.
Rather, North Koreans' point of reference is Korea as it existed before and, heaven help them, during the Second World War.
From the day-to-day, bread-and-butter perspective of most people, and especially of those who are now living in Pyongyang, the DPRK really is an almost indescribable improvement on that.
The conquerors were not welcomed as liberators on the streets of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And that was an almost incomparably more open and outward-looking society than North Korea is.
But an invasion of North Korea would be the second this century of a state precisely because it had nuclear weapons, whether or not it really did have them once anyone bothered to check.
Not much deterrence going on there.
But an invasion of North Korea would be the second this century of a state precisely because it had nuclear weapons, whether or not it really did have them once anyone bothered to check.
Not much deterrence going on there.
Who needs electricity? They run their nukes on the power of their evil, don't you know? There are people who would believe that, and some of them probably do already.
ReplyDelete"As for spending money on giant vanity weapons systems while allowing people to starve to death, imagine living in a country like that." Genius.
"But an invasion of North Korea would be the second this century of a state precisely because it had nuclear weapons, whether or not it really did have them once anyone bothered to check. Not much deterrence going on there." Double genius.
You are very kind.
DeleteOf course, even if North Korea did have nuclear weapons, then they would be no concern of ours. And if Kim thought that they were, then he would obviously be undeterred by ours. Then again, who isn't?