South Vietnam was totalitarian under the French. It was because the French asked the United States to help them out that the US entered into that war in the first place. (Once the French got out, they essentially said to the US, “Thanks for helping us out, have fun with the war, see you when it is all over.”)

It was about the 1980s time-frame that India and China began to adopt free market capitalism as a better idea than central economic control.

Would the soviet Union have been less bold about their failing system had their North Vietnamese friends been the losers? Perhaps they, and the Berlin Wall, would have fallen sooner. Perhaps more satellite countries than Poland would have escaped Soviet control sooner, had we been seen as the decisive winners in Vietnam.

And why did South Korea get better in the 1980s? Was it, perhaps, liberty by American example? And could that good example been accelerated with a success in Vietnam as it was in Japan, Germany, and much of the rest of Western Europe post WWII?

Or maybe you think not.

Instead, you look at the real world, where the US fell under the communist influence of the Post 1960s Democratic Party and became more and more socialist as time went on, giving the world a false impression of what American values and American liberty once were, and reducing the value of being friends with the US.

Indeed, would the US be so socialist that Obama would have been considered a rational candidate for president in 2008? I doubt it, but perhaps you do not.

But your question was hypothetical, so I delivered a hypothetical answer. That you don’t like the answer is your problem, not mine. Perhaps next time you will be more satisfied by asking questions whose answers are less hypothetical.

I know about the Korean War and why MacArthur thought that he could win it by chasing the North Korean army into China, and why Eisenhower knew a different strategy was called for.

Stay warm, drink fluids (and eat), and get lots of rest. It may sound like a cliche, but it beats the alternative. I once lost seven pounds fighting a virus and thought of writing a book called “The Dehydration Diet.” You lose lots of weight, on that diet, especially after you are buried or while you are being cremated.

To summarize briefly;
Some of us want the NK’s wiped out, today.
Others desire a different path.

-I want to know, why we refused to bomb Hanoi, during the Vietnam War?
-All of N. K.’s original nuclear infra-structure, was given to them by the USSR.

It is dangerous to remain here, you must leave within 2 days….
“2010-Look Behind You”
https://youtu.be/1rjUfaXNII0
(5:07)

Edward, pardon my brevity, errors and incoherence, I’m currently “enjoying” a viral gift someone passed along.
(The old fashioned biological kind).

Hmm, I did say “we needed to stop the spread of Communism” because that’s how it was presented but really we were trying to limit the power of the USSR and it’s allies.
“Spreading Liberty” sounds good, but remember So Vietnam was totalitarian and so was So Korea for much of the time after the war till the late 1980’s (one wonders how Democratic it’s been recently while being ruled by Rasputin and daughter).

BTW with Korea the N Korean forces collaped quickly after Inchon, the rest of the war was vs China (at the time fairly tight with the USSR – remember the Migs?).
The NVA and VC were tough (they bloodied China in the 70’s)

The “Liberty plan” echoed down the years and landed on GWB – do you really think a democracy was about to break out in Afghanistan or Iraq? (Were you advising Obama and Hillary about the “Arab Spring?)

just a moment….energy dropping…I cn feel it…….toght me a song….would you like to hear it daavvve?…

And so it did. But so would have Europe as the Soviet Union extended its reach, if we hadn’t continued our involvement there. And so would Japan, either by the Soviet Union revisiting the Russo-Japanese War or by China taking revenge.

What has stopped North Korea from invading and taking over South Korea? It is the US involvement at the Demilitarized Zone. As LocalFluff and wayne pointed out, there is a lot of North Korean military, on that zone, just waiting for invasion orders.

Mitch S wrote: “but through the lens of history it was just one battle in a war that we won.”

The main difference between socialism and communism is central control.

If we won, why are we becoming more and more communist with each presidential administration? The US government controls more and more of our economy and our businesses. Already we have direct central control of the financial service sector, virtually all of education (with very, very few exceptions), most of the auto industry, and now all of the healthcare industry — right down to directing We the People as to how to spend our own money. No other tyranny in all of history has had the audacity to coerce its subjects into entering into contracts, desired or not; that isn’t what I would call liberty. It used to be that a coerced contract was null and void, but not anymore! We no longer have the freedom to choose to not enter into contracts, even overwhelmingly-expensive/low-service ones.

Overregulation abounds throughout the rest of our economy, with directives as to how to run our companies coming from the central Washington government. That isn’t what I would call liberty.

Furthermore, the only country that stopped being communist is the Soviet Union and its satellites. Putin is working toward re-communistifying that region, right down to reinvading the Crimea and the Ukraine. And our now “flexible” president does nothing to stop him.

As we read and write this, Europe becomes more and more socialist and communist. Just the other day, the Netherlands consummated their ban on free speech, declaring anything they disagree with to be criminal “hate speech.” That isn’t what I would call liberty.

If we won, why are there so many communist nations still around? China may have started to embrace free markets, but it is still a communist country. And why are we becoming friendlier with communist nations, such as Cuba?

Even Europe is turning more and more communist. European central control is the main reason that Britain voted to “Brexit.”

“Would there have been a point is staying, loosing thousands more Americans and killing hundreds of thousands more Vietnamese?”

Apparently not, since the rest of the world is going the way of South Vietnam without us having stayed there.

Would Vietnam seem more free market capitalists if they were flying Soviet-built Aeroflot-like airliners? (Aeroflot, still 51% government owned. Hardly a bastion of capitalism.) Communists engage in international trade, but it does not make them any less communist.

Unless our victory in South Vietnam had seemed to the world to be a victory, then the resulting liberty would have been worth the losses, assuming the North would have reinvaded. If the North had been as frightened of invasion as the Soviets were, there would have hardly been any losses at all, as in the Korean Peninsula.

Instead, the rest of the world thinks that North Vietnam whipped our hide real good!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X6QqZF3J14 (30 seconds)

Our hide. Not South Vietnam’s hide. Ours. We were the losers, and we were big losers. Maybe we can put a man on the Moon, but the Democrats made sure that the world thought us to be a paper tiger, to the point that they thought that attacking us with four airplanes would cause us to surrender to Sharia Law and Caliphate.

What would have been the world’s reaction to communism if the free market capitalists had whipped the communists’ hide real good in Vietnam? Instead, the Democratic Congress (the Democrats were very friendly with the communists, back then — come to think of it, the head of the Democratic Party promised more flexibility toward the pro-communist Putin once he, Obama, got reelected in 2012).

Where was I? That’s right: instead, the Democratic Congress lost the peace, in Vietnam, by abandoning our friends there and allowing the North to win the War Part II. Thus the world lost respect for the US’s willingness to protect them from the communist tyranny.

We had been warned that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, so we were vigilant in South Vietnam. Then the Democrats ended our vigilance in 1969, and we have slowly been taken over by Fabian Socialists ever since.

Would there have been a point to staying in Vietnam?

Liberty would have been the point. Liberty for ourselves, for the South Vietnamese, and for all the others in nations that would have given up communism, after seeing that it is a dismal failure. Except that it is not a failure for the “more equal” ruling class, the ones who live like kings while the others — the serfs — live like they are on an animal farm.

Since Nagasaki the policy has been to view use of nukes as unthinkable save in the case of ultimate deterrence – response to an existential nuke attack.

We made it through decades of cold war facing an adversary that publicly threatened to bury us, without the use of nukes.

Not to say there is never a situation where use of nukes is vital – but it must be clear it is a last resort.
Once the door to the use of nukes is open, it can’t be completely closed.

Re N. Korea, I still wonder where China fits in.
Do they dislike the Kims but back NK because it’s a fellow commie state? Or are there more practical reasons for putting up with them?
Clearly the Chinese like that the Kims keep millions of starving NK people from trying to get into China, but is Kim’s belligerence and even his nukes useful for China’s interests (and trust me “moral considerations” are not part of the mix)?
Dealing with NK cannot be separated from dealing with China.
Obviously if it gets to the point where NK is about to launch a nuke at us, we have to do whatever it takes to stop it but unless that is the situation, we cannot ignore the larger picture.

BTW Edward, regarding Vietnam, it seems to me when it came to South Vietnam there was “no there there”.
South Vietnam was doomed to fall without continued heavy US involvement.
But to what end?
Originally the thought was we needed to stop the spread of Communism. In that regard the fall of S. Vietnam looked like a failure, but through the lens of history it was just one battle in a war that we won.
Sure, today all of Vietnam is now “Communist” but that is meaningless to our security or trade needs.
Years ago I was sitting in Narita Airport and saw a Boeing 777 in “Vietnam Airlines” livery.
So Vietnam is buying multi-million dollar airliners from the company that made the bombers that once dropped ordinance on it’s cities. And I bet plenty of people at Boeing wear Nike sneakers made in Vietnam.
Who won/lost the Vietnam war? Would there have been a point is staying, loosing thousands more Americans and killing hundreds of thousands more Vietnamese?

https://www.vietnamairlines.com/us/en/about-us/our-story/

Dr Strangelove
https://youtu.be/231TmvIPzQQ
(2:35)

Even so, it’s not much of an option for North Korea either; use of nukes is a threat that can carry a lot of power, but once they use a nuke, it’s all over for them.

I think it’s wrong to say that Kim is completely irrational; rationality/irrationality is a spectrum (Wayne, correct me on this if needed), and despite what Hollywood portrays, very few people are completely irrational (or completely rational, for that matter). Many who are somewhat unstable notice the power of being perceived as irrational, and they exaggerate how irrational they are, so they can intimidate people.

Don’t get me wrong; Kim definitely has some irrationality about him, but I find it very hard to believe that he thinks he can launch a nuke and come out ahead by doing so. I’m more worried about the irrationality of the shiite extremists than I am about Kim’s, but that’s a different topic.

Edward, thank you for bringing some well-articulated sanity to this discussion.

This discussion has brought out a great fallacy – “those people are so evil, they might start a nuclear attack. We have to stop them – by attacking them with nukes.”

Or “those people are so crooked that they’re going to rig the election. That’s why we have to rig the election so they lose.”

If we were to launch a pre-emptive strike, what’s the guarantee that someone else (Pakistan, Iran, if they’re more advanced than we thought) doesn’t drop a nuke or two our way? Or that Premier Kissoff hasn’t activated the Doomsday Machine that he was going to announce to the world next Monday?

Ok, that last one was less than serious (it’s always a good thing to work in a reference from Dr. Strangelove), but the point is, a nuke strike, even if we announce it in advance, is going to give very confusing information to the world as it happens, and there’s no telling how different actors are going to react.

My primary argument is the moral aspect, but in this case a first strike is flawed from the strategic aspect as well.

Actually, we don’t do much the way we did up to and including WWII. We haven’t fought to win since WWII. This is why Korea was fought to a stalemate, why Vietnam was such a mess (we won the war, but we lost the peace), and why Iraq was also lost after the war was won.

Even after WWII, we understood the concept of winning a war but losing the peace. It is a line in the 1948 movie “A Foreign Affair,” which takes place in post-war Berlin: “There’s a little unfinished business here, you know. Now that we’ve won the war, we mustn’t lose the peace!”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040367/quotes?item=qt3150272

But we have stopped being so concerned about winning the peace. We stopped doing things the way that worked but expected the same results.

The peace in Vietnam was lost because an incompetent Congress forced a withdrawal and the North was allowed to break the peace treaty when America left the South defenseless from an invasion of the North. The peace in Iraq was lost because our incompetent president withdrew and left her defenseless from ISIS attack – after the same incompetent president armed ISIS, which had formed from a reorganized Al Qaeda In Iraq. In fact, WWII started because Europe lost the peace when Hitler was allowed to rearm after WWI.

LocalFluff wrote: “About what other governments would think of it. Well, it doesn’t concern them, it isn’t any of their business if the US nukes North Korea. Why do some people here think that they had a say about it? The only rational response for them would of course be to stay out of the way.”

This is how the US can end up looking like a bully and colonialist – or becoming these. It is the government that does not care what anyone thinks that is able to act badly. North Korea acts badly toward its own people, because they don’t care that other governments think they are bad for starving their own people; in fact, they use that concern from other governments to get concessions from them (e.g. food for the people, which is then distributed to the leaders and the military).

If this means that we have to wring our hands over rogue nations, then we have to do so. We need moral reasons to overturn even a tyranny, and this is what the Declaration of Independence was about.

If we lose our morals, then how do we get them back? I think that was one of the things that was going through the mind of Morty in wayne’s linked video. If we can nuke a rogue nation, then can we avoid considering as rogue any nation that disagrees with us in some way?

The Netherlands have recently taught us that morality is easily lost, as it convicts a policy maker for discussion policy in a different direction than the leadership desired; the valued free speech was lost in that country. How do we make sure that the US doesn’t behave toward the rest of the world the way the Netherlands has done toward its dissenting citizen?

The answer is to continue to moralize. Our actions must remain moral, otherwise we end up being the tyrants that we despise, the tyrant that the Netherlands just became, the tyrant that the current US president is, and the tyrant that the US revolutionary war was fought over.

Rick and Morty:
Season 1 ending clip
https://youtu.be/evYxx8qjZFs
(2:32)

You certainly are.

I am however, absolutely convinced in my own mind, the time for moralizing & wringing my hands over rouge-nations, has long passed.
Our enemies are already at war with us, we just don’t want to admit it to ourselves.
And specifically– we don’t want to admit;
1) We let it happen to ouselves & trusted our Leaders to protect us.
2) We blew all our low-impact options away and fiddled endlessly while Rome burned to the ground.
3) We attribute benevolent motives to people who have declared-intentions to kill us all & maintain a mental-fiction that they are rational-actors and not intent on killing us all.
4) Huge amounts of material goods & massive numbers of people are going to die in the near & long-term future, in viscious, nasty, gruesome, circumstances.

Changing thought-tracks….

This recent lecture is extremely interesting.
I don’t advocate nor dis-advocate his views, but they are very enlightening. (or rather, the process he undertakes.)

“What Can European History Teach Us About Trump’s America?”
Timothy Snyder
(12-6-16)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nEmBmGK5kM
(1:22:49)

RIGHT.

You sound like you could have written it, you understand it precisely, although you may call it something else. You are ready to extinguish / exterminate anyone who you subjectively believe to be an existential threat to you, your family and your country.

S.O.M. : “CONCLUSION: The public lives and operates under a moral code perspective which they assume their leadership is constrained by. This is a subjective false perspective conclusion on the part of the public, in fact leaderships core fiduciary responsibility requires that leadership is or can be selectively or necessarily void of “morality”. ”

Things like you propose do not happen in today’s “civilized” world as a general rule where there is not some level of agreed upon legal authority to do so. But there are always exceptions……..right?

Like I said, IF a decision to annihilate them was made, I’m not much worried about the mechanical details. Mass destruction is mass-destruction, it’s nasty and vicious. They die, we continue.

If you want to starve them all, I’m on board with that as well, but the Party Members will be the last to go. Better to just annihilate the Head and the body will Die.

Nuke the entire site from orbit
https://youtu.be/aCbfMkh940Q

http://www.hardenedstructures.com/emp-protection.php

“I do sorta dislike being, “that guy,” but, oh well. I already consider them to be at War with us. Personally, I’m sick of It All. Words cannot express the degree to which I am utterly sick of these alleged-people and I don’t care whatsoever, what methodology is used to eliminate their threat, once-and-forever.”

It sounds like you believe that there is a one (all be it drastic) step to take and solve all of the problems that “we” have in North Korea. That IMO is a bit narrow thinking, things just work that way. Pzat has a bit more realistic interpretation of the situation, although it is a bit of a James Bond / Argo kind of a solution.

As a general rule we are not going to decisively out of the blue attack another country without an overwhelming level of documentation and justification ala U.N. resolution. (unless you are advocating some level of false flag in order to deliver the justification?) The carrot and stick works, its simple and its payed attention to, but it must be driven home that if things are pushed too far their will be consequences up to and including massive military action. Real economic sanctions is a good and workable strategy, but everyone that can or does supply it must be on board.

>The Chi-Coms have recently completed large sections of a new “Wall” on the NK border.

That’s not my impression, but I’m not a physicist. I think that EMP actually melts all microelectronic circuits. And the range is described more by the Earth’s magnetic field than spherically around the detonation. One can be safer nearer than further away. Long power lines, as you mention, are vulnerable to Solar events, but nuclear EMP is another kind of beast. It irreparably burns all electronic devises within reach, with a complete cease of production in society as an immediate and long lasting consequence. And of course then most people die within a couple of weeks without any food, and then the death toll accelerates when all the cities are filled with starvation corpses and the plague gets a hold in them and kills most of the rest, even those who found something to eat for the day. That is the alternative to striking first and eliminating the threat.

About what other governments would think of it. Well, it doesn’t concern them, it isn’t any of their business if the US nukes North Korea. Why do some people here think that they had a say about it? The only rational response for them would of course be to stay out of the way.

I want to add the upcoming secretary of defense quote to other quotes here:
“No war is over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.”
That’s to the point. War is about convincing the enemy to beg for peace. It doesn’t end until then.

— Not advocating “taking over” NK. And, not opposed to a decapitation strike. Their Command/Control/Communications structures, aren’t all that target rich.”Kick in the front door and whole corrupt mess will fall on it’s own weight.”
Also– absolutely not advocating we “help” any of them, afterward.
We strike, they die.–I’m way past the line of worrying about ethics & morality. When a decision is made to annihilate one’s enemies, I don’t care how mechanically, that is accomplished.

As LocalFluff touched upon briefly– the “demilitarized zone,” is the most heavily militarized zone on Earth, their forward artillery needs to be radiated first, before they can shell S.K. I’d advocate we use our Neutron Bomb technology, but all those programs were cancelled; so we’re left with overpressure and prompt-radiation. The resulting firestorms, are just icing on the cake.

Not an engineer.
The EMP effect was first noticed in action at the Trinity test. One of the Physicists had predicted a pulse & insisted his instrumentation be shielded. Numerous other occasion’s, test-data was lost due to electromagnetic & ionizing radiation effects, until they took elaborate steps to shield their instrumentation.

The Starfish Prime series of tests, wasn’t primarily intended to explore EMP effects.
Reference the Hardtack 1 test-series & the Argus test-series where warheads were detonated at 100, 182, and 466 miles above Earth, to determine military effects of injecting charged particles into the radiation belts surround Earth.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Argus.html

“Operation Argus was the only clandestine test series in the 17 year history of atmospheric testing. It was secretly conducted in the South Atlantic, 1100 miles southwest of Capetown, South Africa. Argus consisted of three very high altitude test shots of the W-25 warhead to investigate the effects of nuclear explosions outside of the atmosphere – how the charged particles and radioactive isotopes released would interact with the Earth’s magnetic field which could potentially interfere with radar tracking, communications, and the electronics of satellites and ballistic missiles. To investigate the effect of trapped radiation in the Earth’s magnetic field it was important pick a test site where the magnetic field configuration could trap and hold charged particles efficiently – this dictated test between 35 and 55 degree (either north or south of the equator). The altitude limit of the available missile dictated a southern hemisphere test since the fact that the global magnetic field is centered about 200 miles off-center from the Earth’s geometric center brings the stable trapping region 400 miles closer to the surface there.”

Tom Billing’s touched briefly upon the altitude’s in which our nuclear tipped ABM weapons operate. And they do so, precisely to minimize collateral effects over our own homeland.

An EMP occurs when gamma radiation interacts with the atmosphere. Damage to the analog, 1950’s style electrical system in Hawaii was easily repaired. Subject 50 million IPhones to the same radiation effects, and they won’t work.

Part of the reason “military electronics” cost so much— the chips & circuit boards have been hardened against effects of radiation. Commercial variants do not have that protection.

Ok– so we’re not going to do anything to the NK’s.
What about the Iranian’s? Is a nuclear strike against them, off the table as well?

Personally, I’m sick of doing stuff, the same-old-way-we-always-have, and expecting a different result. Time to go Medieval all over our enemies.
Once is enough, the other malcontents will fall in line, or be moved to the top of the List.

One complication may be that Japan might want some of their trainees to emigrate to Japan to serve as the blue collar workers who are getting in shorter and shorter supply. Or it might want no part of them going to Japan; it’s hard to tell which way they would go.

Japan has among the lowest percentage of foreign residents, and the majority of them are Koreans who were brought to Japan before and during World War 2, and their descendants. Most of them know only Japan and speak only Japanese, yet they hold Korean passports and are not fully integrated into society.

My gut tells me it’s mostly up to China to figure out what happens to North Korea when the collapse comes. China would be foolish not to let Japan help pick up the pieces, but that’s probably the default setting.

I just hope there’s little collateral damage when the collapse does come.

First off has anyone heard saying ‘you break it you bought it’.
Well go ahead and kill all the leaders of NK. Good job.
IF you manage to take it over without the brain washed masses and solders fighting you, who is willing to take over?
And who is going to run that country like a good communist nation should be run.
Those people are not in a position or shape to manage themselves. They do not own any of the land let alone have the knowledge to plant crops on it if they did. They will starve even worse.
SK is willing to take over and manage them, but they do not have the resources.
Would China stay out of NK or take the opportunity to take it over?
China would be the best option for supplying the food to NK for the short term, would they be willing to feed millions? For a few years?

The best option would be to kidnap a few families of the top generals. Then attempt an assassination.
The generals would think their dear leader took their families and the dear leader would think the generals had smuggled their families out for safety.
You might have to extract the family members from ‘political’ prisons since Dear Leader is more than likely holding them as captives.
The hard part is finding someone inside Nk who is friendly to the outside world and is willing to take over.

As for EMP effects.
ALL those tests were done BEFORE grounding, fuses and circuit breakers were common.
Not one. No radios on ANY ship or aircraft around the Hawaiian Islands were effected. Not a single one. Civilian or naval. Not one ittem not plugged into the grid were effected.
EMP requires long linear power lines to propagate and become effective.

I work in the industry and we specifically design board traces to not pick up any stray electronic signals or even EMP.s. Our lives depend on this and we take it seriously.

I’m going to counter-differ slightly on the Deterrence ‘thang.

I’d would put forth that deterrence only works on rational-actors. North Korea and Iran, to name but 2 of many— “non-rational actors.” And I would put forth they both operate as apocalyptic suicide death-cults.
(–The whole world would thank-us, but I really don’t care what anyone, including our enemies and detractors say, anymore. They can STFU or get moved to the top of the List.)

We already have an overwhelming capability, but what we do not have, is a credible willingness to utilize it. (The only reason the old soviet-union never struck us, was because they knew in their commie-statist hearts, we would strike them dead, instantly.)

I do sorta dislike being, “that guy,” but, oh well. I already consider them to be at War with us. Personally, I’m sick of It All. Words cannot express the degree to which I am utterly sick of these alleged-people and I don’t care whatsoever, what methodology is used to eliminate their threat, once-and-forever.

Deterrence can be restored quickly; all it takes is a credible capability and a credible willingness to use it. The tricky part is winding back the enemy’s gains he made before the restoring of deterrence.

There are plenty of options short of a nuclear strike, which would open not a new can of worms but many new barrels of snakes.

“Yankee, go home” is an old phrase, usually used on the very Americans who were asked by the host countries to rescue and to safeguard those countries as well as those using the phrase.