SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the he-might-be-a-little-nuts-too dept.
North Korea's defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities, dramatised by last weekend's powerful underground test and a recent long-range ballistic missile launch over Japan, has been almost universally condemned as posing a grave, unilateral threat to international peace and security.
The growing North Korean menace also reflects the chronic failure of multilateral counter-proliferation efforts and, in particular, the long standing refusal of acknowledged nuclear-armed states such as the US and Britain to honour a legal commitment to reduce and eventually eliminate their arsenals.
In other words, the past and present leaders of the US, Russia, China, France and the UK, whose governments signed but have not fulfilled the terms of the 1970 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), have to some degree brought the North Korea crisis on themselves. Kim Jong-un's recklessness and bad faith is a product of their own.
The NPT, signed by 191 countries, is probably the most successful arms control treaty ever. When conceived in 1968, at the height of the cold war, the mass proliferation of nuclear weapons was considered a real possibility. Since its inception and prior to North Korea, only India, Pakistan and Israel are known to have joined the nuclear "club" in almost half a century.
To work fully, the NPT relies on keeping a crucial bargain: non-nuclear-armed states agree never to acquire the weapons, while nuclear-armed states agree to share the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology and pursue nuclear disarmament with the ultimate aim of eliminating them. This, in effect, was the guarantee offered to vulnerable, insecure outlier states such as North Korea. The guarantee was a dud, however, and the bargain has never been truly honoured.
[Ed Note: Since this story was submitted there has been at least one additional ballistic missile test by North Korea.]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:17AM (5 children)
We should have finished off the damn commies when we had the chance. And Israel's enemies too. It's called "finishing the job"! We had the power and failed to use it. Now? We're pretty much fucked. Our constant state of crisis is just what the tyrants need to keep us all cowering in the corner.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:43AM (1 child)
Flamebait
See how the truth hurts? Pansy ass moderators are a perfect reflection of why we are doomed. We will never win another war again. People like them and most of you just don't have the stomach to do what it takes! Well, fine! Then you people will learn what hell war and tyranny really is. Lord help your heathen souls!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:50PM
I'm not sure if I could say there were winners after N-day. BRICS forces seemed to be winning as the siege of Denver began.
On the other hand, who really wins when Moscow and Beijing are irradiated ruins the same as every other major city, and the luxury bunkers have been sealed with cement? I think the people win, at least those of us who survived the year from hell. Humanity may just have learned something important from the walk to the gas station.
(Score: 3, Offtopic) by DeathMonkey on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:59AM
We should have finished off the damn commies when we had the chance. And Israel's enemies too.
The Nazis?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:32PM (1 child)
I'm gonna go ahead and feed the troll: the US could not have exterminated the communists or the arabs (I assume that's what you mean by Israel's enemies).
The US had enough citizens sympathetic to these groups to generate serious problems in the long term if such plans had been carried out.
In fact, this is a generic reason for genocides not being a practical approach: there will always be someone who does not fit the imediate definition of "enemy", but they are willing to make your life hell for going through with the genocide.
Unless you are willing to kill enough humans to make survival of the species very unlikely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @10:23PM
Unless you are willing to kill enough humans to make survival of the species very unlikely.
We only need to get rid of about 6 billion or so. The Africans and Asians and India, and of course the Russians and much of Eastern Europe, should cover it, and maybe anything from Guatemala on south. They won't be missed. The surviving one billion and change will be extremely grateful and will do just fine. Maybe we'll actually evolve into reasonable humans instead of the tribal ones from all that riff-raff hanging around like parasites. If anything is jeopardizing the survival of the species today, it's all this political correctness. It's time to do what's right. The purge is much needed. We do this and we will all be better off. That is a guarantee.