There are some elements of diplomacy and international relations that have their place in the toolbox but always struck me as odd. One of these is the tendency to taunt opponents in a Monty Pythonesque way by sending ships in their general direction. What’s always interesting is the commentary that goes along with the announcement. One side expresses their displeasure over some point of contention and says that certain naval forces have been repositioned in response. The other side acts as if this is a giant threatening provocation from which they will not be intimidated. The general public suffers from a momentary fear that dangerous escalation is around the corner. And then nothing happens and we all move on.
The fact that nothing ever happens is part of the point and the utility of the practice. It’s a way to save face and act like you’re doing something without having to truly risk getting anyone killed. Face-saving gestures are very important, even in the United States where people are less obsessed with appearances than in some other cultures.
This diplomatic dance isn’t really working with North Korea, though. On their end, they don’t have the kind of navy that can intimidate so they can’t play the game the same way that the Russians or Chinese do. As a result, they issue the wrong kind of threats. Instead of promising to give us a good ass-whupping, they say effectively that they will kill everyone on American soil, down to the lizards.
The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, did not mince its words.
“In the case of our super-mighty preemptive strike being launched, it will completely and immediately wipe out not only U.S. imperialists’ invasion forces in South Korea and its surrounding areas but the U.S. mainland and reduce them to ashes,” it said.
Threats like these aren’t just over the top. They actually justify preemptive action to reduce North Korea to ashes before they can do what they’ve promised to us and our allies.
If I can go a little diversion here for a moment, consider the literal case for war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
During the buildup to the war in Iraq, the United States repeatedly accused Iraq of using mobile laboratories to produce banned weapons. A U.S.-led force invaded Iraq March 20 after accusing Iraq of violating U.N. resolutions requiring it to give up chemical and biological weapons, long-range missiles and efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
At root, the surface case for war with Saddam was that he threatened us in a vague but still unacceptable way by his maintenance of chemical and biological weapons and his desire to build a nuclear weapon. This was enough to rally the American establishment and half its people behind a policy of forcible regime change.
It would be comparatively easy to make a case for war with North Korea given the fact they actually have nuclear weapons and are threatening to fire them at our country in a preemptive way without warning. In fact, I can’t think of a more open and shut provocation. Ordinarily, a nation that wants to avoid war with our country would work to move American public opinion in the opposite direction.
Of course, North Korea relies on a unique form of deterrence. They can destroy the capital of South Korea at a moment’s notice and we can’t do a damn thing to stop them. This gives them a halo of protection, but they’re at the point now where they’re abusing the privilege of being able to act with impunity.
On our side, we’re doing it wrong because when you announce that you’re sending ships in your enemy’s general direction, you need to make sure that they aren’t sailing in the opposite direction.
There has been some confusion over the whereabouts of a U.S. aircraft carrier group after Trump said last week he had sent an “armada” as a warning to North Korea, even as the ships were still far from Korean waters.
The U.S. military’s Pacific Command explained that the USS Carl Vinson strike group first had to complete a shorter-than-planned period of training with Australia. It was now heading for the Western Pacific as ordered, it said.
China’s influential Global Times newspaper, which is published by the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official paper, wondered whether the misdirection was deliberate.
“The truth seems to be that the U.S. military and president jointly created fake news and it is without doubt a rare scandal in U.S. history, which will be bound to cripple Trump’s and U.S. dignity,” it said.
The Chinese comments don’t make a lot of sense, but their taunting comes through clearly enough. They know how the naval repositioning game is supposed to be played and they know that Trump sank his own battleship with his blundering announcement.
So, we have two nuclear armed countries being run by incompetent loons who don’t understand the basics of diplomacy, which means they are terrible at avoiding war.
There are people in this country with the power to clean house on our end of this dangerous situation. Many of them are Republican lawmakers. If partisanship and narrow fears of personal career preservation didn’t blind them to the far higher demand of species preservation, they’d already be moving to replace our president.
North Korea has never had the most subtle use of diplomacy and Der Trumper hasn’t the experience, patience or team to implement it. Trumper’s “diplomacy” is the diplomacy of generals, so the two sides are operating much the same. Show “strength”, no “backing down”, etc Bushco’s case for war against Saddam, of course, masked the fact that we wanted to invade Iraq in order to liberate its oil. We don’t have quite the same goal with NK. Trumper has his incompetent team of generals seem to have set themselves an impossible goal: Kim’s renunciation of any long range missiles. This… Read more »
I surely hope this is headed for a 1914 style war if war is our only option. They didn’t have nukes in 1914 you see. Sadly I don’t think we’ll get that lucky if/when this finally resolves itself via combat. I’m still hoping for the “Little Kim has an accident and is never heard from again only to be replaced by a more traditional dictator.” angle as the best greater than 10% chance option. I’d love to see a turn around to complete “Fair and Free” society with a democratically elected government, but that’s down there in the ‘probability is… Read more »
Given that the Chinese and Russian rulers are more sane than Trump, they would know that a nuclear escalation is in no one’s interest.
Because Trump is irrational and impulsive, my expectation is that they will engage in less sabre-rattling now, but China will be more prone to tweak Trump’s nose in a way that provokes a Trump twitter storm instead.
If Trump does escalate with NK in a serious way, I expect that the sane rulers of the world would intercede in some manner.
Probably the only one who can’t see a parallel with 1914 is the ignorant Trump.
You have to admit,
This;
“The truth seems to be that the U.S. military and president jointly created fake news and it is without doubt a rare scandal in U.S. history, which will be bound to cripple Trump’s and U.S. dignity,” it said.”
is epic international trolling. It looks like the Chinese are not going to miss any opportunity for exploiting Trumps psychological weaknesses.
.
Everyone with access to a satellite knew the ships were headed to the south and not to Korea. Thus, every body knew they were lying and then the world stood back and let the donald lie.
Why would Trump care about what the Chinese say? He lives in a world of lies. In his world the ships were headed to NK.
It really doesn’t matter when the satellites or anyone else says.
I am sure he sees the Chinese announcement as fake news.
I don’t mean to be argumentative, but the general (and diplomatic) expectation in 1914 was that surely sanity would prevail. Germany would “restrain” Austria, Russia Serbia, with England and France as the Grand Guarantors of peace. That sanity would prevail was an illusion. No one “wanted” war, but it was seen a “inevitable” and thus it was. The question is whether any power in today’s looming Korean standoff does indeed see total war as advancing their national interests. Since the US now sees regime change with non-aligned nations with WMDs as well within our national interest, Trumper’s team has an… Read more »
Or replacing North Korea with a giant hole.
I was with you until the last paragraph. I never thought you would stand with the terrorist regime of North Korea against the Constitution of the United States because of sour grapes of Hillary Clinton.
What!? Is there a sequitur in there anywhere?
it’s called Poe’s Law IIRC.
That’s about the stupidest fucking thing I have read all fucking week, and its been a banner week for fucking stupid.
BooMan, you’re discussion of the Iraq invasion totally papers over the most egregious and horrible aspect of the whole thing: that the public (and many officials) were totally behind it — because it was sold as “payback” for 9/11. I remember reading about the American soldiers with pictures of the World Trade Center in their Bradley Fighting Vehicles “to remind us of what we’re fighting for.” John Kerry, in the debates, reminded the audience that “Saddam Hussein did not attack us — Osama bin Laden attacked us.” (I remember an audience member interviewed after that who said, “That was huge,… Read more »
Excellent use of the Wayback Machine. Thank you.
The US public was (happily) conned into an illegal war with Iraq via open lies. As Reichsmarchall Goring observed at Nuremberg, conning a people into war is always an easy matter, whatever the society.
Can we be similarly persuaded about the current NK “Madman”? Child’s play, even for the incompetent illegitimate regime squatting in the WH. Just send beloved Mad Dog Mattis out and the corporate media (not mention a majority in Congress) will be eating out of his hand in about 5 minutes…
RE: . . . the public (and many officials) were totally behind it . . . In fact (3/16/2003 10:48 PM), By a 2-to-1 ratio, Americans favor invading Iraq with U.S. ground troops to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Not since November 2001 have they approved so overwhelmingly. Nearly six in 10 say they’re ready for such an invasion “in the next week or two.” But that support drops off if the U.N. backing being sought by the United States, Britain and Spain Monday is not obtained. If the U.N. Security Council rejects a resolution paving the way for military… Read more »
The truth seems to be that the U.S. military and president jointly created fake news and it is without doubt a rare scandal in U.S. history, which will be bound to cripple Trump’s and U.S. dignity,” it said.The Chinese comments don’t make a lot of sense, but their taunting comes through clearly enough. They know how the naval repositioning game is supposed to be played and they know that Trump sank his own battleship with his blundering announcement. That doesn’t make sense to you? Maybe I’ve lived here too long, but that strikes my sensibilities as pure-grade snark delivered at… Read more »
I try to avoid sweeping sky-is-falling statements, but in many respects it seems as though the US permanently opted out of the 21st Century when we allowed Trump to ascend to the Presidency.
We opted out once C- Augustus was installed into office, if not before.
Obama wasn’t the solution to the problems that Bush gave us, but he put us back on a probationary sort of path back to sanity. Not out of the woods, but trending in the right direction. Then, on 11-8-016, we collectively decided to drink half a gallon of bleach.
If you work in the state department, these days you probably just stay home because there’s no work for you to do.
I started to laugh as BBC tried desparately to analyze the issue, miscommunication etc.
I mean really. They accelerated the carriers scedule to reach Korea faster without dropping everything but Trump just lied because it sounded better and now the White House staff gas to cover for thr lie. Thats it. Thats what happened.
All the two loons can do is give orders. They depend on people who have been through this drill many times to carry out those orders.
Those are the people who will actually create the war if one occurs, not Trump and Kim Jung Un.
The unprecedented part of the relationship is not having diplomatic relations with a country for over 70 years, and thus not having regular diplomatic channels (and intelligence assets) that can buffer the harsh actions. Testosterone signalling alone is what is scaring people.
Patrick Lang’s reading of the situation. Patrick Lang, Sic Semper Tyrannis: My thoughts on Korea – Chapter 1 – 19 April, 2017 So, what is the probable future (60% maybe?) IMO by the end of May we have the possibility of three aircraft carrier battle groups being in the Sea of Japan. That would make available the carriers’ three embarked air wings with all the various ordnance on board as well as on board replenishment ships. There would also be the assets provided by the ships of the aircraft carriers’ screens. These would be some combination of cruisers, destroyers and… Read more »
If I can go a little diversion here for a moment, consider the literal case for war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Tests rule out suspect bio-labs | CNN – April 15, 2003 | The 11 cargo containers were filled with new laboratory equipment apparently intended to make conventional weapons, said team leader Chief Warrant Officer 2 Monte Gonzalez. “Based on what we’ve seen, the containers are full of millions of dollars worth of high-tech equipment,” he said. “It possibly has a dual use. But it does not appear to be weapons of mass destruction.” The containers held equipment typically found… Read more »
Perhaps before Mr. Longman starts suggesting how easy it would be to make a case for all-out war with North Korea (a war that would cost an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 military casualties on our side alone), he might at least try to demonstrate that North Korea in fact has the capability to make a nuclear strike on the United States. The most recent experience with their delivery systems suggest that they are not up to the job — and without that capability, what we would be doing essentially is making war based on North Korean bluster.
thank you for a voice of sanity.