by Guest » Sun Jul 09, 2017 4:55 pm
I think John is insightful for pointing out the analogy between Trump's phraseology in his Polish speech and the situation before WW2 in which there was a lot of evidence that Hitler would be invading Europe eventually (and Britain too), while the British were talking "peace in our time" and other such "pull the hat over your eyes" attitudes.
It's unclear how much influence the Generational Dynamics way of looking at things may have on the Trump administration - but certainly they at least have its predictions of potential futures in mind, whereas every other recent administration (either Republican or Democrat) seems to be oblivious to any potential impacts of longer-time-scale historico-futurological effects (of which Generational Dynamics analysis is one prime example).
We need to be more cognizant of long-term possibilities and probabilistic eventualities with regards to such entities as North Korea and China, if we want to be vigilant against the possibility of WW3 (somewhat along the lines of what John lays out - although I confess I don't quite understand how he got to the conclusion of Iran being on our side, when the Saudis are at this very moment striking out viciously against Iran and Hezbollah and any Mideast countries aligned with Iran that have the common feature of being sponsors of terrorism).
North Korea is (at the moment anyway) all about the ego of its dictator. Anything coming out of his mouth (or their propaganda agencies, which amounts to the same) does not make any sense. They justify building a nuclear arsenal as a "defense" against the evil United States. Of course, that has the ring of our former Cold-War motivation for a U.S. arsenal against the evil of Communism - but the difference is that the latter was a fact of the time, while the former is pure fiction.
It's an interesting thing trying to deal with a crazy man. I had a (sociologically) interesting experience last weekend when I spent the night at the Chicago bus station, and a nice gentleman sat next to me and seemingly wanted to chat, so I obliged. He was interesting enough to talk to, and by all means was not what I would characterize as "dumb" or even "illiterate" - but three sentences in I realized that he was totally crazy. According to him, he graduated from Yale at the age of 5. It was quite challenging to carry on a conversation with him. Mostly, you had to just smile at his nonsequiturs, and perhaps throw in some true statement once in a while that was generally related to the topic of the moment - if there even was such a thing for such an attempted conversation. Later on, I realized that trying to come to some sensible fact+logic-based agreement with the North Korean child dictator was somewhat analogous to trying to logically come to some conclusion based on the facts, with my erstwhile conversation partner in Chicago (who was capable of making up nonsense at a machine-gun rate).
One thing I can say is that it's a good thing our Korean policy is not decided by the press/TV-commentators (or by Merkel for that matter). Listening to some TV analysts discuss the whole thing after Korea launched a new, bigger (Los Angeles caliber) ICBM to "celebrate" America's 4th of July, the consensus they came to was that we should just send in an assassination team into Korea to take out the child/idiot dictator. Well, that would just prove his idiot remarks about the "evil U.S." to be correct, and justify his goal of becoming a nuclear power (e.g., to discourage such potential assassination attempts). I'm wondering, couldn't the TV analysts find a better caliber of idiot to interview as a so-called expert?
I think a better short-term policy re North Korea might be two-fold:
(1) Shoot down every rocket test launch that they do from here on out. We have the capability, whether it be via the Navy's Aegis system or the ground-based system that perhaps is not quite set up yet. Up til now, we have given their tests "a pass" since by the trajectory we could see that it was not a threat to us or our allies or our naval fleet. I say that's a wrong policy, because it lets them get telemetry data as to how successful their launch is, and how accurate it is relative to its intended target destination. If we blow it up prematurely, they'll never know if it could have gone the whole distance without blowing up of its own accord. We should state in public our new policy that, after this latest provocation, we will pull the plug on any of their future rocket tests. We should shoot it down right at the point that it reaches airspace 12-miles out from their coastline (or from South Korea's coastline if headed in that direction) - so that the falling pieces are not likely to land on any humans, and it nominally respects the North Korean territorial boundaries. Shoot it down as soon as possible after that point. Or if headed toward South Korean airspace, at the earliest opportunity, obviously. With this new policy, the more rockets they launch the better - each one we shoot down is one less missile in their arsenal, plus it gives us target practice, like clay pigeons for a shotgun. I say to North Korea - "Pull!"
(2) We need to stop harping on China to jump in there and use their leverage to help calm the North Korea situation. Believe me, China has no leverage, since North Korea is willing to let all its population starve (in light of whatever trade embargoes are implemented) just so it can continue to have fun with rockets and bombs. China is already doing what it can. It apparently has 100s of thousands of troops lined up on the North Korea border, just in case. We should be more worried about any Chinese solution than about trying to get China to help out. Once China sends in the troops, does anyone imagine they will stop at annexing North Korea, rather than marching on and annexing the whole peninsula? And right now China is all about their economy. The above-mentioned reporters stated that trade between China and North Korea was up 40% - so much for China putting on the economic thumbscrews. I can't really blame China for not thrumb-screwing North Korea - because North Korea might attack China just to force China to fight back and make China look like the bad guy in public opinion.
Long-term, North Korea is a mere thorn in the side, whereas China is rapidly approaching the point where it could take out our entire Pacific fleet with a surprise attack analogous to Pearl Harbor. They have submarines that have supersonic torpedoes, and we don't. That means that evasive maneuvers against such torpedoes are ineffective. We lose all our aircraft carriers on day one of such a hypothetical surprise attack. Without the aircraft carriers, the rest of our Navy is just a bunch of small boats floating around, that can be taken out one at a time in a mop up operation. They don't even need to attack Pearl Harbor initially - they can just surround it with subs, and pick off any ships attempting to either return to base or pull out-of-harbor to join the fight. Their motivation to take the land of Hawaii would more be motivated by the new-found ability to launch shorter-range missiles (than what would otherwise be needed) against Los Angeles.
So when some expert claims the U.S. is a hyper-power, that's correct - right up until the moment that it's not correct, since we just got taken out by newer technology. Technology that was financed and made technologically possible by the billions of trade dollars we gave China (just so you and I could buy a T-shirt at Walmart for five dollars instead of ten dollars - so enjoy that T-shirt). So, as much as it's a potential drain on our economy, I think Trump is right for pursuing a round of military modernizing and build-up, lest we get caught with our pants down (but a surplus of T-shirts).
-Jim
I think John is insightful for pointing out the analogy between Trump's phraseology in his Polish speech and the situation before WW2 in which there was a lot of evidence that Hitler would be invading Europe eventually (and Britain too), while the British were talking "peace in our time" and other such "pull the hat over your eyes" attitudes.
It's unclear how much influence the Generational Dynamics way of looking at things may have on the Trump administration - but certainly they at least have its predictions of potential futures in mind, whereas every other recent administration (either Republican or Democrat) seems to be oblivious to any potential impacts of longer-time-scale historico-futurological effects (of which Generational Dynamics analysis is one prime example).
We need to be more cognizant of long-term possibilities and probabilistic eventualities with regards to such entities as North Korea and China, if we want to be vigilant against the possibility of WW3 (somewhat along the lines of what John lays out - although I confess I don't quite understand how he got to the conclusion of Iran being on our side, when the Saudis are at this very moment striking out viciously against Iran and Hezbollah and any Mideast countries aligned with Iran that have the common feature of being sponsors of terrorism).
North Korea is (at the moment anyway) all about the ego of its dictator. Anything coming out of his mouth (or their propaganda agencies, which amounts to the same) does not make any sense. They justify building a nuclear arsenal as a "defense" against the evil United States. Of course, that has the ring of our former Cold-War motivation for a U.S. arsenal against the evil of Communism - but the difference is that the latter was a fact of the time, while the former is pure fiction.
It's an interesting thing trying to deal with a crazy man. I had a (sociologically) interesting experience last weekend when I spent the night at the Chicago bus station, and a nice gentleman sat next to me and seemingly wanted to chat, so I obliged. He was interesting enough to talk to, and by all means was not what I would characterize as "dumb" or even "illiterate" - but three sentences in I realized that he was totally crazy. According to him, he graduated from Yale at the age of 5. It was quite challenging to carry on a conversation with him. Mostly, you had to just smile at his nonsequiturs, and perhaps throw in some true statement once in a while that was generally related to the topic of the moment - if there even was such a thing for such an attempted conversation. Later on, I realized that trying to come to some sensible fact+logic-based agreement with the North Korean child dictator was somewhat analogous to trying to logically come to some conclusion based on the facts, with my erstwhile conversation partner in Chicago (who was capable of making up nonsense at a machine-gun rate).
One thing I can say is that it's a good thing our Korean policy is not decided by the press/TV-commentators (or by Merkel for that matter). Listening to some TV analysts discuss the whole thing after Korea launched a new, bigger (Los Angeles caliber) ICBM to "celebrate" America's 4th of July, the consensus they came to was that we should just send in an assassination team into Korea to take out the child/idiot dictator. Well, that would just prove his idiot remarks about the "evil U.S." to be correct, and justify his goal of becoming a nuclear power (e.g., to discourage such potential assassination attempts). I'm wondering, couldn't the TV analysts find a better caliber of idiot to interview as a so-called expert?
I think a better short-term policy re North Korea might be two-fold:
(1) Shoot down every rocket test launch that they do from here on out. We have the capability, whether it be via the Navy's Aegis system or the ground-based system that perhaps is not quite set up yet. Up til now, we have given their tests "a pass" since by the trajectory we could see that it was not a threat to us or our allies or our naval fleet. I say that's a wrong policy, because it lets them get telemetry data as to how successful their launch is, and how accurate it is relative to its intended target destination. If we blow it up prematurely, they'll never know if it could have gone the whole distance without blowing up of its own accord. We should state in public our new policy that, after this latest provocation, we will pull the plug on any of their future rocket tests. We should shoot it down right at the point that it reaches airspace 12-miles out from their coastline (or from South Korea's coastline if headed in that direction) - so that the falling pieces are not likely to land on any humans, and it nominally respects the North Korean territorial boundaries. Shoot it down as soon as possible after that point. Or if headed toward South Korean airspace, at the earliest opportunity, obviously. With this new policy, the more rockets they launch the better - each one we shoot down is one less missile in their arsenal, plus it gives us target practice, like clay pigeons for a shotgun. I say to North Korea - "Pull!"
(2) We need to stop harping on China to jump in there and use their leverage to help calm the North Korea situation. Believe me, China has no leverage, since North Korea is willing to let all its population starve (in light of whatever trade embargoes are implemented) just so it can continue to have fun with rockets and bombs. China is already doing what it can. It apparently has 100s of thousands of troops lined up on the North Korea border, just in case. We should be more worried about any Chinese solution than about trying to get China to help out. Once China sends in the troops, does anyone imagine they will stop at annexing North Korea, rather than marching on and annexing the whole peninsula? And right now China is all about their economy. The above-mentioned reporters stated that trade between China and North Korea was up 40% - so much for China putting on the economic thumbscrews. I can't really blame China for not thrumb-screwing North Korea - because North Korea might attack China just to force China to fight back and make China look like the bad guy in public opinion.
Long-term, North Korea is a mere thorn in the side, whereas China is rapidly approaching the point where it could take out our entire Pacific fleet with a surprise attack analogous to Pearl Harbor. They have submarines that have supersonic torpedoes, and we don't. That means that evasive maneuvers against such torpedoes are ineffective. We lose all our aircraft carriers on day one of such a hypothetical surprise attack. Without the aircraft carriers, the rest of our Navy is just a bunch of small boats floating around, that can be taken out one at a time in a mop up operation. They don't even need to attack Pearl Harbor initially - they can just surround it with subs, and pick off any ships attempting to either return to base or pull out-of-harbor to join the fight. Their motivation to take the land of Hawaii would more be motivated by the new-found ability to launch shorter-range missiles (than what would otherwise be needed) against Los Angeles.
So when some expert claims the U.S. is a hyper-power, that's correct - right up until the moment that it's not correct, since we just got taken out by newer technology. Technology that was financed and made technologically possible by the billions of trade dollars we gave China (just so you and I could buy a T-shirt at Walmart for five dollars instead of ten dollars - so enjoy that T-shirt). So, as much as it's a potential drain on our economy, I think Trump is right for pursuing a round of military modernizing and build-up, lest we get caught with our pants down (but a surplus of T-shirts).
-Jim