| putin |
09-03-2017 07:36 PM |
I was listening to a podcast with Sam Harris and Mark Bowden on the situation in NK. The way they say it, we basically are just gonna have to get used to the idea of North Korea have nukes.
What we have to worry about is the precedent it sets, more than anything else. Becoming a nuclear power gives a country much more geopolitical leverage, and we would very much not like to see a regime like NK in that position.
It basically will demonstrate a lot of weakness in our position in terms of being able to prevent other rogue dictatorships from becoming nuclear powers. Expect Iran to be next, and it won't stop there.
Unfortunately, there's not an easy answer in terms of preventing this sort of thing. It was the kind of thing we were trying to preemptively prevent in Saddam's Iraq, and the immense costs involved in that campaign became all too self-evident after 10 years of war in that country. So we don't really have the heart to start a new major war.
For now, we will posture and try our best to prevent these dictators from pursuing nukes. This is under the assumption that nobody, not even Kim, is crazy enough to actually start a nuclear war. Of course, should this assumption turn out to be incorrect, and for whatever reason one of these powers ends up nuking one of their enemies, then we will be working with a very different set of assumptions moving forward, and will not be nearly so hesitant to take more preemptive actions in the future.
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