Nuclear threat from North Korea

[KUSA]

But with all that devastating power, how can we simply ignore the threats? Should the world do nothing on any level?

[abaris]

But with all that devastating power, how can we simply ignore the threats? Should the world do nothing on any level?

Well, the obvious point of view would be life insurance, wouldn't it? With all the interventions having gone on these last two decades, I really can't blame anyone for saying, attack and I nuke you. Everything else is just bravado to keep the threat present.

[The Grand Nudger]

What devastating power? As another, much more astute political poster has mentioned in the past, nukes are weapons that lose -all- power the moment you use them. In any case, in todays world, unless you can launch an attack capable of unilateral and complete annihilation, you've signed your own death warrant...and any attack that could achieve that end is just another, slower, type of death warrant.

@abaris I can't fault N. Korea for developing and threatening to use nuclear weapons either. Tiny nation, no ability to defend itself from neighbors or more exotic foreign powers. If I was N. Korea I'd have built nukes as well. Scorched earth man, scorched earth.

[ignoramus]

The dick is obviously a narcissist.
He wants to be seen as an equal with the big boys.
Even if it's just to reinforce his godly powers to his peons.

I'm pretty sure he's not deluded enough to even dream of attacking anybody.
Life must suck without any friends.

[abaris]

The dick is obviously a narcissist.
He wants to be seen as an equal with the big boys.
Even if it's just to reinforce his godly powers to his peons.

I'm pretty sure he's not deluded enough to even dream of attacking anybody.
Life must suck without any friends.

Don't make him out to be a raving lunatic. That guy has been educated in Switzerland at a private institution. He's reported to have enjoyed the high life, just as his father did. So, his decisions are rational. Maybe in a creepy way, but still rational. He wants to stay in power is probably the main goal. So he has to present something to his own people and he has to tell the West, who considers his domain as one of the evil empires, that he's well capable to make them bleed. A perfect rationale in my opinion.

[The Valkyrie]

The dick is obviously a narcissist.
He wants to be seen as an equal with the big boys.
Even if it's just to reinforce his godly powers to his peons.

I'm pretty sure he's not deluded enough to even dream of attacking anybody.
Life must suck without any friends.

That's it just there.

That loon has nukes.

I ask the US to give me the ones they don't want any more and I get, "No!  You can't have our nukes!  We have the CIA running a background check on you."

[Anomalocaris]

The dick is obviously a narcissist.
He wants to be seen as an equal with the big boys.
Even if it's just to reinforce his godly powers to his peons.

I'm pretty sure he's not deluded enough to even dream of attacking anybody.
Life must suck without any friends.

Don't make him out to be a raving lunatic. That guy has been educated in Switzerland at a private institution. He's reported to have enjoyed the high life, just as his father did. So, his decisions are rational. Maybe in a creepy way, but still rational. He wants to stay in power is probably the main goal. So he has to present something to his own people and he has to tell the West, who considers his domain as one of the evil empires, that he's well capable to make them bleed. A perfect rationale in my opinion.

The guy is a 30 year old playboy born into the utmost privilege and who really has the absolute power of life and death over septuagenarian generals and senior most beuracratic, to say nothing of every other lesser vermin, I meant human, in North Korea.   How much difference is Swiss private school going to make on the sanity of such an individual?

In any case, true sanity would not be fully expressed purely in the possible immediate rationale of the next step he takes. It has to be judged in the plausibility of success for the fundamental strategy for which he takes that step. If he wanted his regime and himself to survive, his strategy should be dramatically different.

[abaris]

The guy is a 30 year old playboy born into the utmost privilege and who really has the absolute power of life and death over septuagenarian generals and senior most beuracratic, to say nothing of every other lesser vermin, I meant human, in North Korea.   How much difference is Swiss private school going to make on the sanity of such an individual?

All the difference in the world, since all he's doing is aimed at survival. Unprovoked nuking of another country doesn't fall into that category.

[brewer]

But with all that devastating power, how can we simply ignore the threats? Should the world do nothing on any level?

Until there is an overt act, in my opinion, China would have the most influence and should step up/in.

[Anomalocaris]

The guy is a 30 year old playboy born into the utmost privilege and who really has the absolute power of life and death over septuagenarian generals and senior most beuracratic, to say nothing of every other lesser vermin, I meant human, in North Korea.   How much difference is Swiss private school going to make on the sanity of such an individual?

All the difference in the world, since all he's doing is aimed at survival. Unprovoked nuking of another country doesn't fall into that category.

Except isolating himself through threatening nukes does not get him out of the hole he is in, and the hole is getting deeper all the time.  He most likely had an opportunity to pursue a different course when he ascended to power in 2012.  He was insane enough to not recognize the ultimate hopelessness of his current course.

Every evidence suggest to me he is drunk with power and thinks his influence and prestige is enhanced by ostentatiously capricious, as oppose to skilled or farsighted, use of his power. He does things because he thinks he can now, not because he has thought through the implications of doing so in the long run.

If he could name his horse consul of Rome, he probably would, mainly because he thinks doing so show his power because no one else could, or would.