The Trump Presidency | Biden Inaugurated

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Edgar Allan Pillow said:
Hold on. Let's not dilute the moment that it really is due to politics. I'm sure people who have lived in threat of war will be more than happy with peace progress. Like with any international negotiation, all this signifies is thawing of relations and nobody expects any denuking deadlines to be set anytime soon.
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A lot of people have become accustomed with the threat of war against NK and have largely got on with their lives irrespective of that because it's not materialised at all. They've also been here plenty of times before when NK have made vague promises that they didn't fulfill. The difference back then was that the US didn't give across some notion that they actually believe NK would fulfill whatever promises they'd made.

Granted, an actual meeting was a massive symbolic step, but the actual details as to what NK will have to do don't point towards denuclearisation but instead a well-managed media event that will help Trump and Kim personally without doing much to sort out the issue. Without timeframes and denuclearisation being overseen it's also very hollow.
 
Rado_N said:
I mean what you're saying isn't wrong, because yes that happens, but it makes zero frigging sense that people are driven away from 'wealthy coastal elites' and towards Donald bloody Trump.
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One of the more bizarre ironies in this episode of recent history. Along with the campaign to drain the swamp by recruiting alligators.

Or making America great again by isolating Canada and Mexico, whose consolidated human and resource capital access are the only ways America can remain great in the face of competition from Asia going forward.
 
John Simpson @JohnSimpsonNews

Looks as though Trump got thoroughly done over in Singapore. He agreed to cancel US exercises with S Korea, as NK demanded. But Kim HASN'T agreed to halt testing permanently NOR to let nuclear inspectors back NOR to destroy his ICBMs NOR give details of his nuclear programme.
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My uncle posted on his Facebook that Trump is accomplishing the denuclearization of North Korea.

I posted a status asking what we’ve gotten out of Kim keeping his nukes while we tell our South Korean allies that we won’t train with them anymore.

He responds to my post saying “the document they signed isn’t legally binding so it really doesn’t matter”

I asked him... “then why are you praising it?”

He’s stumped.
 
Eboue said:
can you explain the purpose of having a base there in 2018?
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The war didn't formally end?

South Korea and Japan are the two countries that US bases should be.

South Korea, because the war is technically still ongoing, and Japan, because the US foisted a pacifist constitution on Japan, and Japan has only recently begun to take its own military defense seriously.
 
Nucks said:
The war didn't formally end?

South Korea and Japan are the two countries that US bases should be.

South Korea, because the war is technically still ongoing, and Japan, because the US foisted a pacifist constitution on Japan, and Japan has only recently begun to take its own military defense seriously.
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getting hung up on formally is kind of silly dont you think? there are lots of wars we've been involved in (and started!) that havent been formally declared as such and there are wars that ended that havent been formally declared as such. this is the latter
 
Eboue said:
what do you think happens if the us pulls back some or all of the 25,000 troops currently in korea?
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Well, those guys are a deterrent. The North can’t kill South Koreans without killing our guys too.

Take the deterrent away and the war might just go hot again.
 
Carolina Red said:
Well, those guys are a deterrent. The North can’t kill South Koreans without killing our guys too.

Take the deterrent away and the war might just go hot again.
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i understand the logic of that back in the fifties. but any such war in 2018 wouldnt be fought in the trenches. it would be fought with long range weapons, of which we have more than enough to serve as a deterrent
 
Eboue said:
i understand the logic of that back in the fifties. but any such war in 2018 wouldnt be fought in the trenches. it would be fought with long range weapons, of which we have more than enough to serve as a deterrent
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Have you ever heard the adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?

The 2nd Infantry Division’s presence in South Korea ain’t broke.
 
Carolina Red said:
Have you ever heard the adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”?

The 2nd Infantry Division’s presence in South Korea ain’t broke.
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:lol:

theres an opportunity cost to maintaining 25k soliders halfway across the world. if the best defense you can offer is an aphorism, maybe we could better spend the money on healthcare or infrastructure or education?
 
Eboue said:
i understand the logic of that back in the fifties. but any such war in 2018 wouldnt be fought in the trenches. it would be fought with long range weapons, of which we have more than enough to serve as a deterrent
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I'm not sure this is accurate. Pretty much all wars involving infantry, since the advent of the mass produced machine gun, have been literally fought in trenches, be them western front WW1, Eastern Front WW2, or digging fox holes or fighting from heavily fortified prepared fighting positions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The question is, are you willing to risk a potential spark for WW3, by pulling US military bases in SK, because that is what we're talking about. We very nearly went over the edge the first time when the Chinese came across the Yalu river and chased the US/SK/Allied Coalition almost right off the peninsula before we stabilized it and the war went into a cease fire at pretty much the original border.
 
Troops are still in the pacific to balance residual strains of communist power (currently China an North Korea) in the region. Japan and South Korea in particular, have deals with the US to keep multiple bases and troops on their territory for training and rapid reaction capabilities. In the case of US troops in Korea, they are there as added protection for the South, since the war is technically not over and the North now have nukes.
 
Eboue said:
:lol:

theres an opportunity cost to maintaining 25k soliders halfway across the world. if the best defense you can offer is an aphorism, maybe we could better spend the money on healthcare or infrastructure or education?
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The aphorism exists for a reason.

We’ve successfully kept North Korea from doing something stupid for 65 years now by stationing part of a combat division in South Korea.

Why for the life of you would you consider changing that up? It might be the most successful piece of foreign policy we’ve done between the Marshall Plan and the Present Day.
 
Eboue said:
:lol:

theres an opportunity cost to maintaining 25k soliders halfway across the world. if the best defense you can offer is an aphorism, maybe we could better spend the money on healthcare or infrastructure or education?
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Sure, but South Korea and Japan are two of the expenditures that are not only morally justifiable, they are practically morally mandated. Pull bases in Qatar, Italy, or Germany. Japan and South Korea are legitimate. Primarily because we bear a pretty significant responsibility for both situations those countries are in.
 
Nucks said:
I'm not sure this is accurate. Pretty much all wars involving infantry, since the advent of the mass produced machine gun, have been literally fought in trenches, be them western front WW1, Eastern Front WW2, or digging fox holes or fighting from heavily fortified prepared fighting positions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The question is, are you willing to risk a potential spark for WW3, by pulling US military bases in SK, because that is what we're talking about. We very nearly went over the edge the first time when the Chinese came across the Yalu river and chased the US/SK/Allied Coalition almost right off the peninsula before we stabilized it and the war went into a cease fire at pretty much the original border.
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do you not think a conflict with two nuclear states led by leaders of questionable rationality would be fought differently?
 
Carolina Red said:
The aphorism exists for a reason.

We’ve successfully kept North Korea from doing something stupid for 65 years now by stationing part of a combat division in South Korea.

Why for the life of you would you consider changing that up? It might be the most successful piece of foreign policy we’ve done between the Marshall Plan and the Present Day.
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is that why? or it is the fact that we have first strike capability?
 
Eboue said:
do you not think a conflict with two nuclear states led by leaders of questionable rationality would be fought differently?
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I don't think North Korea would nuke the South, unless the regime was under threat from annihilation. Since, invading a country to re-unify a state, only to glass it is kind of pointless.

I do not believe that if the Korean war went hot again, nuclear weapons would be utilized, unless the North Korean regime faced complete annihilation, and even then, I'm not completely convinced they'd be used. They are, primarily, a deterrent against invasion by the South and the US. If the North attacked, I don't see them using nukes, unless they were first nuked.
 
Eboue said:
you havent but since you like aphorisms so much, they are the knife at the gun fight
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Because if war breaks out, it doesn't automatically mean its a nuclear war. Nuclear weapons may be on the table, but amazingly, humanity has had a pretty good record of not using WMD's in war in which both sides possess them, since 1918 I believe!

Korea goes hot, someone wins, someone loses if it is fought conventionally. If its fought with nukes, everyone loses, completely. This is why boots on the ground in SK are still necessary.
 
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