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North Korea is an infinitely bigger threat than ISIS, why aren't we intervening?

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Original post by skunkboy
US is actually the bigger threat than North Korea . Why aren't we intervening?

Because we also got brainwashed by US mass media!!!

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Maybe it is because they are an ally and world super power, just maybe.
Reply 41
Original post by Frank Underwood
North Korea recently tested a hydrogen bomb, and launched a satellite which has been determined by experts to be at an ineffective orbital height for regular satellite purposes, so its likely to be nuclear related.

Why are we trying to crush terrorist groups who can inflict a death toll of between 5 and 200 deaths in one attack on westerners, when we have individuals like Kim Jong Un openly threatening to violate the UN and launch nuclear weapons?

I think the government should not be discussing what to do about a terrorist group, similar to those which have already existed for decades, and instead discuss how to make sure that North Korea never ever launched a nuclear weapon. And the same applies to the living conditions in North Korea, I believe they are as bad, if not worse than the conditions in Syria. In Syria, people are able to move and are actively leaving the country, whereas in North Korea it is much more difficult to leave.

Sorting out North Korea would relieve a massive human rights violation and prevent the possibility of a nuclear war started by Kim Jong Un. Sorting out ISIS, so far, has done nothing for us apart from make the UK look to be co-operating with other European countries.


As long as they do not attack us why should we care. We are not their number 1 target so stop crying
clealry NK is a formidable military threat ( with current backing of china)

ISIS are fanantics and directly threaten the west, but dont have the brains or capablity of an enraged NK , so we still have a reasonable option to take them on - and indeed china and russia would not intervene against us in that endevour
Original post by DiddyDec
Maybe it is because they are an ally and world super power, just maybe.


true allies don't exist. true enemies don't either. things can possibly change.
Original post by Frank Underwood
North Korea recently tested a hydrogen bomb, and launched a satellite which has been determined by experts to be at an ineffective orbital height for regular satellite purposes, so its likely to be nuclear related.

Why are we trying to crush terrorist groups who can inflict a death toll of between 5 and 200 deaths in one attack on westerners, when we have individuals like Kim Jong Un openly threatening to violate the UN and launch nuclear weapons?

I think the government should not be discussing what to do about a terrorist group, similar to those which have already existed for decades, and instead discuss how to make sure that North Korea never ever launched a nuclear weapon. And the same applies to the living conditions in North Korea, I believe they are as bad, if not worse than the conditions in Syria. In Syria, people are able to move and are actively leaving the country, whereas in North Korea it is much more difficult to leave.

Sorting out North Korea would relieve a massive human rights violation and prevent the possibility of a nuclear war started by Kim Jong Un. Sorting out ISIS, so far, has done nothing for us apart from make the UK look to be co-operating with other European countries.


There are some pretty large reasons at play for why ISIS in preferred to be dealt with instead of NK, and i will list them as push/pull factors for both and link them with one-another.

Pull factors for intervening against ISIS (Factors that attract us towards intervening against them.)

[CONTEXT]
1. ISIS is/was an emerging threat, a realtively new wave of brutal insurgent activity, and immediately made themselves known by beheading foreign nationals, British nationals included. Meanwhile North Korea hs been around for the past 60-70 odd years and has decided to spend its time flipflopping between trying to make nuclear bombs and trying to intimidate south korea (which is becoming increasingly futile.) Finally on this point, there is confidence in the Western camps that Kim's purging of the top military tier will result in generals beneath him getting nervous and perhaps launch the country into some sort of state of civil war, but honestly that could be a long time yet, as long as Kim is alive and his cult of personality is active then i doubt there will be much room for change in NK. Compared to ISIS through NK is ancient.

[NK: Historic failings. ISIS: Historic rise.]
2. This comes back to comparing the timelines between the two nations. Look at what NK has achieved in the past 70 years. Due to its economy being 'army-first' development in ALL other areas has suffered, as a result the North Koreans do not have the additional tech to make a nuclear bomb accurate or to even
miniaturise it. Whilst in ISIS short time in existence they have been snatching land out from the Iraqi's hands and launching a PR blitz attracting naive young muslims and non-muslims into joining the apparent land of paradise. So if you look at the scale of achievement ISIS is actually currently a more compelling threat.

[Comparison of threat in principle to threat in practice.]
3. Look at the damage that ISIS has achieved in the western world compared to NK's conventional armed forces. ISIS has managed to kill several hundred Europeans in the past year alone whilst NK has only been locking up western tourists into NK, in terms of arithmatic although NK has the potential to be a far greater threat because they aren't acting on it we consider them to be less hazardous left alone unlike ISIS.

[Allies and friends.]
4. As somebody more concise than me mentioned earlier, NK for being a small boy in the playground, can pack a big punch with the friends that it has. China is an economic powerhouse and anyone would be fools to think that we want to go near NK after what happened last time: (We nearly took all of North Korea during the Korean war in the 50's. All of a sudden overnight China launched a string of human-wave attacks and had about 150,000 troops cross the border over night. One unit of 680 UK soldiers were on a hill fighting off 10,000 Chinese.). The Chinese pushed us back until their supplis ran thin, that's when we launched a counter attack and ultimately ended up fighting them to a standstill at the identical border that SK had before the invasion.

The consequences would be even more severe this time in the click-and-shoot age where it would most probably be a missile exchange, with Chinese bombs instead of Chinese troops crossing the border and as a result the cycle of retaliation would have the potential to lead to nuclear exchange with a country that HAS miniaturised its nuclear weapons and has a global capability.

Additionally China might very well allow NK to keep its nuclear weapons in order to make other concessions. Or instead China might follow the US' footsteps, where the US reluctantly gave the UK the nuclear technology (after we-were suddenly expelled from the nuclear alliance with them) in case the US suddenly suffered an unexpected devastating first-strike by the Soviets then the UK could respond in kind, independently of relying on the US. China could do the same, out of fear of increasing US interventionism in the South China Sea China might very well feel that letting the NK having nuclear weapons (on the conditions they don't leave their silo until China says so.) or even having chinese nuclear bases IN NK, that is how far i feel this could go should we keep trampling on Chinese interests.

Now ISIS however do not have anywhere-near the same levels of support, yes they're getting funding, weapons even possibly training from some states, but they aren't openly gunning for ISIS to win in a ground war, they want them mostly to exist in a similar way to the Taliban or Al Queda, a slow destabalising force that will scourge the land for decades. However this leads me on to my fianl point

[Strengths and Weakness]
5. Strengths of ISIS:
Social media rise-They have been very effective at getting material and manpower resources by using social media, as well as building up sympathy for their cause. Meanwhile North Korea is one of the few remaining powers to lack access to the wider internet for most of its people.
Insurgency tactics: The most infuriating thing for every western military commander is Insurgency tactics: the way that the enemy can just suddenly melt away and blend in with the civilian population before adequate force can be rallied in order to repel them. ISIS use this to their strengths, and have been quick-learners in this regards, but only after significant losses and they are still losing lots of personnel, money and materials through the strikes.
(I might edit some more in when i get back from work, as you can imagine this monster post has taken a while to create!!)
Blitztruck tactics: We all remember how ISIS was reported as this incoming storm that was going to change the face of everything. The media played it up so much it ended up giving them their own cult of personality and that alongside ISIS' promise of paradise, many slow-minded/short-sighted/idealistic individuals, specifically teenagers and young men joined up.
(i could put a few more here but i really don't have time and i think my post is long enough already!)

Weaknesses of ISIS
Their name: The very name ISLAMIC STATE did them no favours, as it basically shows that ISIS is about land the same way UKIP is about leaving the EU. They turned their whole cause into a single-issue, and that issue was landgrabbing and turning it into a caliphate. As a result unlike Al Queda or the Taliban which pretends to have credbility for outright terrorist attacks or in Al Q's decimated leadership previous terrorist attacks. Meanwhile ISIS has to live up to its name and hold on to the land that it has claimed fo the caliphate, this is great really as it means that the western world can draw out on the map an extent of their control as well as an extent of their influence and as we have seen in Ramadi (a former ISIS-owned town) the Iraqi army are able to push these muppets out, slowly but surely, albeit with a withering cost in human lives and damage to infastructure.
Violent tactics: This issue is somewhat contentious, some might say that this is one of ISIS strengths in gaining and keeping support, but to me it's one of the things that have caused them to end up getting bombed by most of the major powers in the West and in the East. Their attack on the Russian airliner caused Russia's direct involvement, and if they had done their research about Afghanistan they would learn that Russia only left after slaughtering a huge number of insurgents (and after the west gave insurgents thousands of stinger missiles so they could shoot down Russian gunships). Adittionally they then decided to immolate that Jordanian pilot, which made them hated around the whole world and as a result, instead of backing down Jordan stepped up its activity in the bombing campaign.


Strengths of North Korea
Military state: This is a very important point, in the world we live in nowadays statistics are thrown around like candy, and if it came to a public campaign to try and enthuse the public into open war with NK to remove it of nukes or liberate the people or however you want to spin it..then those opposing the conflict could start chucking around some scary statistics, such as the 700,000 active soldiers, with 4.3 million in reserve. Numbers like that thrown around enough in the media would nullify ANY enthusiasm for going to war with NK.
Big Friends: China, need i say more? I already refer to them in a previous point i made under point 4. Going to war with North Korea; we would be sleepwalking into a war with China, just like last time.
Cult of personality: This means that unfortunately many North Korean people may be so brainwashed that they'd be willing to die/starve for their leader and his military campagn against the west, or at worst this could result in some sort of deluded insurgency should NK be occupied once-more by the West. However i'm really-reaching here.

Weaknesses of North Korea:
Economic backwater: Decades of wasteful military spending have resulted in the nation being rock-bottom in regards to almost everything else. They have the capacity to fight a brutal ground war but not the capacity to feed their people. The capacity to detonace nuclear bombs underground, but not the capacity to keep the lights on in their capital city of Pyongyang at night. As a result this can make them seem like a rather appetising target for more advanced nations.
Short-sighted diplomacy: North Korea were the experts at making the rest of the world despise them for a long time, until ISIS came along. Even then NK has still been at its diplomatic prime by sinking SK ships and shelling islands, it is this kind of provocation that may cause the highly advanced SK military to launch either a retalitory or pre-emptive strike should they consider NK to be an upwardly expanding threat. Or if SK feels that NK is about to get a fully functional nuclear program.
Cult of personality: Now i used this on strengths as well, and that's because depending on how this plays out the outcome could be very different. E.g a sudden Western intervention into NK may cause the cult of the evil west to be reinforced for a short time and as a result the brainwashed population might rise up against the attackers. Alternatively if we allow NK to chunder on then we might find that in a few years time with increasing political pressure on NK and us countering NK propoganda with the promise of a brighter world the Cult of personality might itself die out and go out with a whimper instead of a bang.

These are observations mostly, not reasons why we should or shouldn't attack one, or the other, or both! But instead they hopefully add some vital context when considering going to war either force. Sorry for any grammatical or spelling mistakes, this has taken me nearly an hour to type out.
I hope you all find it useful, i promise my next post wont be so long!

Best regards :biggrin:
-Francis.
(edited 8 years ago)

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