North Korea: When Internet Trolls Get Nukes

[W8taminute]

...

What if the Chinese moved in PLA troops to occupy North Korea?  Something along the lines of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan with the goal to stabilize the situation and maintain order.  Kim might stay in power as a figurehead, but the Chinese would be running the show.  How would the US and South Korea react to such an incursion, with condemnation or relief?

This is what worries me about this whole North Korea situation.  The question I'm struggling with is what does China gain by occupying and controlling North Korea?

[Longdan]

That's part of the problem.  If they wanted it they could have had it.  Still can.  Still don't.

[LongBlade]

Being a drunk is one of the few talents I have mastered.

Somedays I think it's a requirement to have a masters in drinking to hang around here.

[JasonPratt]

Is North Korea resource rich? Not that China doesn't have that already, but another small resource rich province couldn't hurt. Sure, administration would be a nightmare for a while, but China has generally had thousands of years of practice in administration, and they administrate 1/6 to 1/3 of the world's population already.

Also they earn a ton of goodwill throughout the world if they do it right. God knows they have the manpower to do it and get it done. Sure it would be imperialism, but a lot of our problems in the past century up until now (including land wars in Asia) is that we aren't really imperialists and weren't seriously trying to be. Govern the damned land, take responsibility for its welfare and for the people, now and ongoing.

Granted due to the local sociopolitical situation there was no way we could do that in the Middle East. But the situation for China locally would be way different: next door, they can walk or rail troops in, a lot of similar cultural notions, they're technically fraternal communist buddies, China literally saved the North from being defeated the last time there was active fighting.

[Longdan]

They had full occupation of that country and then promptly went home.  Even the people who live there don't want to live there.
My Dad went there in 1950.  He said it was very noisy and chaotic with lots of shooting and the whole place smelled like sh*t and all the wimmins had VD.
He did not like it there.  Worse than Winnipeg.

[GDS_Starfury]

Last thing China wants is war with the USA, we owe them too much money.  After all if China were to intervene in a Second Korean War, we could claim afterward they owed us about 5 trillion in war reparations.  Just enough to eliminate our entire foreign debt to them in one fell swoop.

FWIW China holds about $1 trillion of our $16 trillion debt.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/01/23/is-chinas-ownership-of-u-s-debt-a-national-security-threat/

[Longdan]

Any way you slice it that is a lot of Simoleons.

[GDS_Starfury]

[LongBlade]

Yeah. They might be careful what they wish for.

[Longdan]

Funny you should be talking about mass murder.  Which is kinda what nukes do. 

[Arctic Blast]

The goddamn Lion King has nukes? That's it! We need a pre-emptive airstrike against The Magic Kingdom!

[GDS_Starfury]

Funny you should be talking about mass murder.  Which is kinda what nukes do.

[MikeGER]

Funny you should be talking about mass murder.  Which is kinda what nukes do.

...consider wellknown Grogheads (Hawaii) sit in the impact zone, if the SM-3' from the destroyers VLS has a seldom exceptional software glitch in its trajectory calc, while NK's crude missile hardware unbelievably don't fail this time.
and it doesn't has to be a nuke, an improvised dirty bomb NK warhead would be enuf. 

     

[bayonetbrant]

Funny you should be talking about mass murder.  Which is kinda what nukes do. 

so how would you characterize what the Nork regime has done to their citizens by taking all the food for the military and leaving the rest of the country to starve?  What might cause the greater casualty count: one US nuke on Pyongyang, or 40 years of economic and agricultural mismanagement that's left millions to starve to death?

[Staggerwing]

Wasn't that one of the ideas behind the development of the Neutron Bomb? You could take out a large aggregation of baddies while severely minimizing the fallout to surrounding areas due to the almost immediate dissipation of the actual destructive agent- the neutrons emitted. Also, outside of a localized central area most of the surrounding buildings and infrastructure would remain usable, after a certain amount of 'residual biological material' cleanup.