Brinksmanship, ahoy!

So last night it was brought to my attention that North Korea is up to more no good. I looked into it and so far it seems pretty true. So I’ve decided to make a post about it to give a little information about it then give my opinion on the matter. I’m putting this as controversial because I know many people will have many different opinions and hopefully the comment board will reflect that, but that isn’t likely.

Earlier this week, North Korea essentially declared their 60 year armistice with South Korea ‘invalid’ and have entered a “state-of-war” with them. South Korea and the US have apparently played this threat down as tough talk because of the North’s history of bellicose rhetoric, which basically and loosely means ‘aggressive bullshit’, empty threats if you will. The KCNA, Korean Central News Agency, reported a North official gave the statement, “From this time on, the North-South relations will be entering the state of war and all issues raised between the North and the South will be handled accordingly.” Pyongyang also threatened to shut down a border industrial zone, the last remaining example of inter-Korean and cooperation and a zone that gives the North $2 billion a year in trade.
Also, I’ve now read that tensions have been rising since North Korea decided to do order a third nuclear weapons test in February, but I was only aware of the one they ordered in December. China, their sole ally, has not been supportive of their actions and Russia has pushed every side to show restraint.

In addition to all this, the US deployed B-2 bombers, which are nuclear capable, to South Korea as part of a “drill” which was intended to show that we will support them and Japan if war breaks out. North Korea has been threatening Japan, South Korea, Guam, Hawaii, and the US Mainland with missile strikes for some time now. The US hopes that by deploying the B-2 bombers, which left Illinois and returned to Illinois in about 34 hours, it will give opportunity to go about this issue with North Korea diplomatically. I don’t think that’s the case. I think Kim Jung-un will take that the exact opposite way than the US intended. But if there’s any silver lining to that cloud, it’s the fact that if North Korea does start the nuclear war, we can be on the doorstep to retaliate and obliterate in just under 16 hours if our bombers leave from Illinois. Hopefully that’s enough to make them think twice about firing on targets of the US (including mainland targets such as Austin, Texas, D.C., and Los Angeles, California) and her allies.

So, what does all this mean? Here’s what I think. I think it means that the world as we know it is on the edge of ending.
Say North Korea sends a nuclear missile at the US or one of her allies. We have the available technology to shoot the missile out of the sky mid-flight before it reaches its destination. Hopefully, our government will not overreact to it and send some of our missiles back at them, which will effectively wipe them out. As much as I’d like for that to happen just to get rid of this pest, it’s not going to do much good. China is still North Korea’s ally. They will retaliate back against the US then we retaliate back and all holy hell breaks loose on Earth, and in no time at all practically every nation will be destroyed.
Now, say we don’t shoot North Korea’s missiles out of the sky and we end up getting hit here on the mainland (which I don’t see as much of a possibility since they barely have the technology to hit Guam or Hawaii) and our government does retaliate. Our B-2s go over, launch their payload, wipe out North Korea and turn it into rubble, China still gets pissed off, attacks us, so on and so on and the same outcome is the result. The world is screwed over.

There’s a term for what I described above: MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction, people. You’ve likely heard about it in your history classes. Essentially, it’s a domino effect of death and destruction. All it takes is one nation to attack another nation with its nukes. That nation will then strike back with their nukes. Allies of each nation will step in to fight each nation’s allies, allies of those allies will step in, and allies of those allies will step in. In the blink of an eye World War III is taking place and it’s not going to last six years like the second world war did. We’d be lucky for it to even last six days. The world will be in ruins because of one nation’s little man syndrome who wanted to show everyone they’re important.

Normally, I’m someone who’s all for kicking the ass of anyone who openly threatens the US like North Korea has been doing. But the only option for the greater good here is to be diplomatic and try to reason with them. This time we have to put faith in the pen and not the sword. We can’t provoke them, we can’t put boots on the ground to kill them all because they’ll probably just launch their nukes anyway, we can’t do anything hasty.
But since I know it’s not likely that we can talk down North Korea, I see these recent events as a sign that soon we’ll all be dead or wishing that we were. It’s the final move before a checkmate and I don’t see a way out without destroying ourselves. It’s a lose-lose. That’s how I see it at the moment.