If your crazy neighbor vows to kill you
by Greg Krehbiel on 7 March 2013
There are a lot of situations in life where you just have to wait until something bad happens.
Your relative is an alcoholic and keeps driving drunk. You can’t do anything. You just have to wait and hope.
Your neighbor is a lunatic who goes on violent rants from time to time and owns a lot of weapons. There’s nothing you can do.
But what if you’re the president, or Congress, and your crazy “neighbor” (N. Korea) threatens to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike?
I don’t think the same rules apply. I think the U.S.A. would be justified in taking action against North Korea.
I’m not saying it’s the wise thing to do in this particular case. I don’t know the details well enough to say. But when one nation threatens a pre-emptive nuclear strike, the threatened nation has every right to act first.
-- 2013-03-07 » Greg Krehbiel
8 March 2013 @ 4:17 pm
What’s wrong with a monstrously overwhelming show of force without an actual attack, and a demand for unconditional surrender?
If China balks, we refuse to do any business with them at all. If they can’t buy our stuff, the dollars they hold are worthless to them.
8 March 2013 @ 4:44 pm
The more serious answer is that a preemptive strike against the nuclear capacity of the DPRC can’t nullify their enormous conventional forces ready to attack the South.
8 March 2013 @ 4:48 pm
I’m not sure what the correct response is, but when a country with nukes makes threats like that, I think the threatened country has a right to respond.
8 March 2013 @ 6:52 pm
As Hippocrates said, “First, do no harm.”
Sadly, we are living in a time of “solutions” that fail to address the real problem, always seem to make things worse.
9 March 2013 @ 10:43 am
@John: you suggest that we might consider to stopping doing business with China. You say that if we stop doing business with them, the dollars they hold would become useless to them.
Why? Why can’t they use the dollars to buy oil from the Middle East, for example?
Can you provide more information?
9 March 2013 @ 4:33 pm
Of course you are right that they can use dollars to trade with others who will then trade with us.
I overstated my position.