In a few words: Killing lethal moods swiftly is the only way to survival for a civilization increasingly surrounded by ever more deadly dangers. One way, or another, the North Korean regime has to be disposed off. Quick. No half measures will do. Against a power crazy, cornered nuclear beast, any moderation will contend in vain. All the democracies have to understand this, and act accordingly.
***
Abstract. War is Homo’s most fateful behavior. Goodness often cannot do without it. Man has evolved partly intrinsically bad, because not only is the planet finite, implying war, but forceful progress, ferociously defended, has always been the only way out of wanton fangs and claws. The law was invented to sheperd new technology away from new bestiality. Better beasts against lower beasties, that is the dirty work enlightenment has to go through, just as one washes clothes, from time to time.
ICBM Trajectories To Hawai’i, West USA On Map
In war, leaders turn into gods, deciding who may, or will, die. Men become death. Yet, in the better cases, war can kill the worst moods, not just other men. With North Korea, such is the case.
With many times more population than the Earth can sustain, dawn may rise on an age of war as never seen before. Unless more advanced discipline, that is, more law, and much more futuristic technology, allow to master the demographic situation. Good discipline is when our better angels are enforcing it. Good technology is when anti-ballistic missiles missiles are reigning, rather than what they are supposed to intercept.
In this context, if a pretext arises to annihilate North Korean fascism, by force, it should be jumped on. Sometimes blatant usage of force is good. Many are the very strong reasons for this. To start with, North Korean fascism has crossed all the philosophical red lines.
It’s the first time a regime begs for food, by threatening Armageddon. Your food, or your life.
It’s not a question of advocating the first good world war around the corner, but a case of precisely the opposite, of desperately clinging to a greater notion of planetary peace. And not just in the context of Korea, but of the entire planet. The age of war will certainly arise, should the mood of aggression be encouraged by brainless pacifists.
One wants to avoid the contagion of having countries around the world believe that nuclear fascism worked, because democracy left it not just unpunished, but rewarded.
That mood, that fascism had been left unpunished, or even rewarded, is precisely why allies of democracy in World War One, such as Russia, Japan or Italy turned to fascism after WWI. They observed that German war criminals, culprit of a deliberately planning a World War of wanton aggression for August 1914, had not been punished. And that some of them thrived (Schacht).
(In truth the Kaiser, and its top generals, should have tried for various outrageous war crimes, not by coincidence the same crimes that made the Nazis’ fame later. Correctly tried, he Kaisers and his co-conspirators would have been hanged. Not coincidentally that would also have had the positive side effect to remove criminals such as Luddendorff, Schacht or Hidenburg, who were top Nazis, one way or another: the former two chaperoned Hitler, the third nominated him.)
Repeating the performance with nuclear weapons ever more widely available, would have even more dreadful consequences.
It is timely for the USA to remember that it is the betrayal, by the USA, of its parents, France and Britain, and humanity in general, that enabled Hitler to score from 1936 until his armies froze in the suburbs of Moscow in December 1941. The pseudo-pacifists, intrinsic collaborators of evil as they are, should be especially reminded of this. And the following corollary:
Those who know history are condemned not to repeat it.
(Fortunately Obama knows history better than the plutocratically tainted Franklin Roosevelt.)
In 2013, the USA can count on the formidable strategic deterrent of the European Union spearheaded by France and Britain. But the USA better be ready to go the whole way, right away with its East Asia allies. The question is whether democracies such as South Korea and Japan will win, rather than the fascist regime principle, in a nuclear context. Should the USA be reluctant to smash North Korea, it would favor the latter rather than the former.
(This, unfortunately is a possibility: the Chinese plutocracy is little more, nowadays, than an antenna, a subsidiary, of the one centered around Harvard and Wall Street; major USA plutocrats would not want their main tool, the People’s Republic of China, broken, and that tool has been cooperating with North Korea since the “communist” era of the early 1950s.)
History, logic and wisdom show that the first line of defense is to inform North Korea that the only concession worth making, is to consent to engage it in total war. There again the situation faced with Hitler is enlightening. In some important ways the present situation is worse. Tolerating North Korea is not just tolerating fascism and plutocracy over democracy, it’s also tolerating nuclear blackmail for planetary guidance over the most basic common sense.
***
THE HEAVY RESPONSIBILITY OF THE USA IN THE 1930s:
The situation with North Korea is clearer than it has ever been with any extremely lethal fascist regime in the past. The regime has to be changed, using force, one way or another. In the soft version, North Koreans, faced with annihilation, do it themselves. So the world democratic leadership should make clear to the NORTH KOREAN MILITARY THAT THEY WILL BE TERMINATED, should they not get rid of the terrorizing dictatorship that they let themselves be guided by.
That solution, execution, and a coup, did not happen with Hitler. But it could have. It nearly did. It certainly would have happened if the Anglo-Saxon part of the West (plus Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden) had not been collaborating with Hitler (each in its own way).
More specifically, German marshalls and generals could not figure out, all too long, on which side Great Britain, and especially the USA, were. Each time Great Britain or the USA made a new deal or concession with Hitler, Hitler’s top generals, who were GRIMLY DETERMINED TO GET RID OF HITLER, were undercut. The German generals wanted to appear as the saviors of Germany, not the ones undermining the great National-Socialist German Workers’ revolution (to give the Nazi party its full name).
One should avoid that same slippery slope with North Korea (Clinton, Bill, the guy who brought us the reign of financial derivatives, and too big to jail bankers, cut deals with North Korea; so here we are, facing nuclear strikes!). It should be made clear to the world’s united fascists, that, threatened with (nuclear!) terror, the democracies will ALWAYS ANNIHILATE regimes playing that sort of “games”
“Nuclear threats are not a game,” Ban, the UN secretary general, a Korean, in connection with N.Korea’s nuclear blackmail said at a news conference in Andorra on April 2, 2013. “Aggressive rhetoric and military posturing… could lead down a path that nobody should want to follow.” My main argument is that rewarding this, is an even worse path.
Although the primary culprits of Nazism were the crazy Germans of the 1930s, themselves, of course, enormous manipulations of public opinion by Anglo-Saxon plutocrats caused the apparition, in Great Britain and the USA, of a mindset collaborating with Nazism. That mindeset was re-amplified back in Germany as Germans, and especially the Nazis, could appreciate all the help from the USA the Nazi party, and then regime, was getting.
Anti-French feeling, prominent with the London financier and economist Keynes, rose in that context; the French republic became the explanation of all that was bad in Germany, as far as much of the Americans elite was concerned (it goes on to this day, in a remarkable case of mental inertia).
World War Two killed 75 millions, 3% of the world population. Could it have been (mostly) avoided? Yes. Is there an application to the situation with North Korea? Yes.
In 1939, the USA, entangled with Nazi Germany through its plutocrats, passed a law calling its parents, France and Britain, “belligerent countries” (because France, followed by its reluctant poodle Britain, had attacked Hitler).
As it turned out, France and Britain were right to attack Hitler. However, in the first ten months of the war, more than 95% of the fighting against the Nazis was made exclusively by the Poles and the French. On May 10 1940, France had 110 divisions engaged against Hitler’s 160 divisions. Britain had only ten divisions (plus one tank brigade). (Various traitors such as Belgium and the Netherlands found themselves arttacked by Hitler, mostly put off balance the French military, so, instead of helping France, helped efficiently in her demise.)
Carefully forgotten by official history, the most significant contributions of the USA to the war effort in 1939, helped Adolf Hitler. OK, not a thesis to make friends with! Friends trespass, truth stays.
***
NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL OUGHT NOT TO BECOME THE NEW PARADIGM:
President Obama, contrarily to Franklin Roosevelt, was not born and raised in the plutocracy, and knows history much better (Roosevelt’s unexplained, long term anger against France, and his urge to cut Europe into small pieces, is a testimony to his lack of a sense of history; in the fullness of time, for the USA to undercut the beautiful civilization out of which it sprang, is self destroying).
Moreover, differently from 1939, when Hitler looked like a distant asset of the USA, this time the USA is on the frontline. A president of the USA will not be able to claim surprise as with Pearl Harbor, or 9/11. The North Korean military has just announced that it has been authorized by Mr. Fatso to conduct nuclear strikes on the USA.
North Korea’s 2013 nuclear threats were apparently to get “concessions”. Nuclear blackmail is a new mood on the world scene, a new mood in history. A CASUS BELLI, PER SE. No nation has ever engaged in idle nuclear threats before (nuclear dissuasion is an entirely different thing). On the face of it, nuclear blackmail is a new form of terrorism. Nuclear terrorism.
It’s not because a regime is led by obviously crazed maniacs, that it should not be taken seriously. In 1939, the USA did not take Hitler, seriously. The USA did not stand with its parents, France and Britain, or even democracy, civilization, or common sense, and basic humanity, against fascist thugs. Quite the opposite.
***
WHY THE NORTH KOREAN DICTATOR IS CRAZY, AND WHY HE WON’T STOP, UNTIL DESTROYED:
Hitler had good reasons to be angry and desperate in 1945. The Nazi dictator had actually the means to kill millions in 1945, using jet bombers (that flew too fast to be intercepted) and huge storage of nerve gas. Hitler did not even contemplate the possibility. Whereas the insane Mr. Kim poses in front of map that says he plans to kill dozens of millions or so. Mr. Kim is not too worried; he is obviously not even on a diet. He is an old hand at terror as the way to the best life, the only life he knows.
The present North Korean dictator spent nearly ten years in rich boarding schools in Switzerland. Many say that would make him somebody one can trust. Quite the opposite. Mr. Kim knows that it is terror that brought him (and his father before him), the ultimate plutocratic lifestyle: buying anything, getting away with anything (not just mass murder).
Hoping that Mr. Kim is one of us, a frequent reaction with common people I interviewed, because he has always lived like the ultimate plutocrat shows how brainwashed We the People has become. Plutocrats are not like us!
To believe that just because plutocrats are spoiled they will always be keen to not make waves, is similar to the reasoning of the 1930s that Von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister, had got to be reasonable in the end, because he was an extremely rich wine merchant, with a vast, luxurious apartment in central London, where he entertained the British oligarchy. Hitler himself, not just the British high society, believed this.
Von Ribbentrop was hanged at Nuremberg, for the part he played in setting up the conditions for World War Two, by misleading a lot of people. It’s clear that, should missiles start flying, the young Mr. Kim’s responsibility will be much greater than that of von Ribbentrop. In other words, Mr. Kim is a potential criminal of the highest order. Already making nuclear war threats put him off the scale. That he had a privileged youth, thanks to the murder of thousands, if not millions, makes him even more so.
Mr. Kim was born and raised in a world of terror, where terror is the friend that kept on giving to him. What he knows at this point is that many North Koreans want him dead, and all too many of his own generals are wondering why this brat, half their age, gives them dangerous orders. Apparently there was already at least one assassination attempt.
By the time France and Britain declared war to Hitler, there had been no less than 24 (two dozen) known assassinations attempts against Adolf Hitler (including some by SA and SS, some all the way up in the army command, all the way to Generalfeldmarschall, and higher!). Those assassinations attempts motivated Hitler to further an ever more outrageous, ever more dangerous situation, in the hope of activating the fascist instinct that makes people group up brainlessly behind their leader in case of lethal threat.
The top Nazis were in the usual position that top plutocrats always find themselves in, when they have got too far. When their devotion to the Dark Side has brought them far enough, the safest course, the only course, is to get ever worse.
Mr. Kim, the North Korean dictator, sees two alternatives: on one side being arrested, tortured, jailed, tried or assassinated, and, on the other side, playing nuclear war games. With the hopes that he can score big that way (say through concession by the West, as he used to get from Clinton, Bill, Lewinsky Maximus). As his father did before him.
Then, after his hoped-for abject concesssions from the West, Mr. Kim would appear to be Mr. Indispensable, saver, if not father, of his nation. That is why Mr. Kim will never stop, because the only hope he has, to survive, is to instill in us enough horror, that we submit abjectedly, ever more. At some point, that will mean actually launching a nuclear tipped missile, unless Mr. Kim is physically neutralized first.
***
KILL NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL NOW:
Looking forward, nuclear blackmail should be viewed as a war crime. If one makes a death threats against, say, the president of the USA, it’s legally punishable. The same should a fortiori be true when one makes threats against millions of people.
Any regime that engages in nuclear blackmail ought to be discontinued. Taking North Korea out, would incite leaders who do not think very well in Iran or Pakistan, let alone Beijing, or Moscow, and the individuals attending to them, to think more carefully in the future. It’s a question of annihilating a mood that feels nuclear blackmail works. That mood will grow, lest it’s killed in its North Korean egg.
If that mood grows, the situation will become very hard to control. One of the problems in 1939-1940, is that the French republic found itself at war with no less than five hostile countries or gangs rendered crazed by fascist thugs: the Nazis, the Italian fascists, the murderous Soviets, the Japanese imperial machine, and (most of) the American plutocracy (the latter pulling everybody’s strings directly, but for the Japanese, who, nevertheless, through the formal machinery of the Axis, were submitted to their influence; after all Yamaoto studied at… Harvard, just as one of Hitler’s earliest (1921) sponsors).
Although France could have handled just one of these enemies with 99% probability of winning, with so many enemies together collaborating suddenly, the Republic was at the mercy of a shove by a combination of high command incompetency, fate and betrayal. As happened. (One of the many nefarious consequences being the Holocaust of more than 50 millions.)
Right now, the West can smash the North Korean dictatorship completely, and easily. Others who want to help the infamy in North Korea are welcome to stand on the battle field, and be smashed too. We may as well have it now, on the time and place of our own choosing.
Tomorrow will be something else. There is no doubt that, if Mr. Putin sees that North Korea is getting concessions, he will become even more aggressive than he already is. On the other hand, if he contemplates every single palace of Mr. Kim reduced to ashes, he will reconsider his present drift towards ever more aggression and tyranny.
Indeed, after the Troika was very firm on Cyprus’ mobsters’ activities, the Kremlin backed off. If the Troika had been impressed by the threats of Medvedev and Putin, we would still be giving respect to gangsters (instead, Cyprus’ justice is now turning against the politicians and oligarchs it suspects got paid by the Russian mob).
***
TO ENCOURAGE A COUP, NO CONCESSION WHATSOEVER:
Democracies have to make junior, or more moral military in a fascist regime realize that they better not collaborate.
The first way to take a fascist regime out is to make very clear that anybody contributing to such a regime will be tried for war crimes, and that the regime, should it engage in outrageous threats, confirmed by aggression, will be taken out. To back up that threat, it has to be real.
One should not repeat what happened with Hitler. The top German brass had contacted the British government to ask it to declare that Britain would stand with France and declare war, should the Nazis engage in one more provocation. The idea was that then the German generals, headed by Beck, the head of the army, would make a coup, and justify it to the German Volk by observing that Hitler’s march to a war with France and Britain, would destroy Germany.
A similar situation happened a bit earlier in Japan: junior officers tried a coup against the top military-plutocratic brass. Strong support by the West against those officers may have been effective. In any case it may have make top officers such as USA educated Yamamoto (head of the Navy) think twice.
Instead of making the declaration the German generals asked for, British traitors told everything to Hitler. That made all subsequent coup attempts much more difficult. It is certain that, should Britain have clearly declared in 1938 that it would go to war against Hitler with France, Beck would have got rid of the Nazis (they were easy to eliminate for the army in 1938).
In North Korea, as in Nazi Germany, millions of rather well meaning naïve idiots are the main support of the regime. One has to show them that their leaders bring them doom and gloom, and only doom and gloom. And never, ever, the smallest positive thing.
***
SHOULD ONE FAIL TO ACT…
A most significant difference, at this point, between the 30 year old fatso in Pyongyang and Hitler, is that Hitler never had a nuclear weapons program. The Nazis had been told by their ignorant scientists (Hahn, Heisenberg, etc.) that nuclear bombs were not possible. (France had started her bomb program in January 1938, Japan did have three nuclear programs, the main one in (occupied) North Korea.)
Another difference is that, six years into his reign, Hitler was at war with Poland, and the French and British empires. The North Korean dynasty is in its third generation, and it’s getting ever more absurd, crazy, and lethal
The scared and scary brat in North Korea may have 300 weaponized, miniaturized nukes, and perfectly working ICBMs, in ten years. Then what? Dozens of millions dead?
In ten years, the nuclear brat in Korea will be more scared than ever, more crazy and lethal than ever, and would believe, should he succeed in his present maneuvers, that ever more blackmail will be ever more profitable. By then he may have more allies (contemplate Putin’s unstable, phantasmagoric and childish mind).
Moods are important. Mussolini was Hitler’s determined enemy, before he realized, that, after all, they were fellow fascists. Stalin, and his cabinet of Soviet comrades just as phantasmagorically, went the other way, from German generals, and Hitler’s best friend and fan (!), to their most determined enemies.
The German slip, from imperial fascism in July 1914, to racial mass murdering fascism by 1933, was greatly due to the mood that whoever the Nazis and their fellow travelers thought counted in the USA, and Britain, was with them, against France (and then against the Jews).
Once the fascist instinct has taken over an entire population, said population has to be defeated as the large single minded idiotic monster it has become. The Nazis were still fighting like mad men in April 1945, when most of Germany was covered by foreign armies. Units were formed of German kamikaze pilots to ram their planes against Allied bombers. The first suicide collision brought down two American superfortresses… So do not doubt an instant that many a North Korean officer is foaming at the mouth to visit nuclear fire on all the cities of the USA (among other places).
The West should not be afraid to impose a new mood now, because not only its survival, but the fate of the biosphere depends upon taking the toughest decisions, and very soon. The new mood should be that the West will not hesitate, as Voltaire ordered, to crush infamy. Especially when it has to do with saving reason.
China and Russia have to face the fact that their own creature, North Korea, is threatening to engage in nuclear war. That is their responsibility. This is not something that happened in the 1950s.
President Truman fired Mac Arthur, because he said that Mac Arthur “wouldn’t respect the authority of the President”. It had nothing to do with nuclear war. Had North Korea be endowed with the capability of waging nuclear war, and threatened the USA with nuclear strikes in the 1950s, Truman would certainly have unleashed Mac Arthur all the way to Stalin’s Moscow.
Hitler had not even threatened France and Britain when the two democracies gave him an ultimatum on September 1, 1939. Why did France and Britain engaged in a world war? Crush infamy! At least, this time, and in a striking contrast with what happened in 1939, the USA can be sure that, should nuclear war be engaged in Asia, it can count on its parents to help keep Mr. Putin in check, manu militari.
Voltaire felt very strongly about his metaprinciple: Écrasons l’infâme (“Let’s crush infamy“). So strongly that he signed his letters with Ecr. L’inf. (Cru. inf.)
***
Ecr. L’inf., Patrice Ayme
Tags: Appeasement, Collaboration, Kim, North Korea, Nuclear War, USA
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
April 4, 2013 at 1:03 am |
Those who know history are condemned to repeat it, for those who don’t are in majority.
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April 4, 2013 at 1:05 am |
Except the majority does not decide. We are in so called “representative democracy” remember? We The People delegate our powers to a few individuals. If Obama and the South Korean president stand firm, this North Korean circus will not be 1939 again, at least for the USA.
PA
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April 4, 2013 at 1:14 pm |
Amusingly, I distinctly recall that during the surrealistic buildup to Iraq’s invasion, I often thought that the whole business was so harebrained that it had to be a smokescreen. Maybe, I mused, Bush is revving up his war machine under the cover of homeric oral exchanges with Saddam – and when ready, he will operate a prompt logistical reshuffle and flash-jump North Korea and its very real WMDs.
Shows how naive I could be.
There certainly is a big case for snuffing out such a delinquent regime. NK embassies have been known to fund their diplomatic operational costs by drug running.
Of course the West’s plutocrats see all this with benevolent amusement. Hey, they do much worse day after day. And (I’m not making this up) they say, look, in Pyongyang there ARE discos, smartphones and neon lights! they ARE civilized, after the Wall Street trader fashion! And their civilization is built upon terrorized sweating masses, which is truly civilized in Ayn Rand circle wanks!
Not to mention that if the international community starts to go after egregious scallawags, it may then turn its eyes towards the quieter, pin-striped nests of industrial size parasitism – starting with the English Dominion belt of tax havens servicing Californian and Chinese billionaires alike, and then the inner circle feasting on Europe’s taxpayers.
Which is why the nuke toting brat will not be taken out anytime soon. After all, should he blow a gasket and push the button, mere millions would die – millions people, not millions dollars, thank the Almighty God. Think of the reconstruction contracts.
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April 4, 2013 at 3:51 pm |
Yes, Dominique, indeed. It took me forever to write the essay because I wanted to present a bit of that angle. There is much more to say, as you did. In the plutocratic order of things, North Korea has its place. Many a major plutocrat has got to be livid right now, as We The People contemplates, and may have to engage, in real war with one of their fellow nuts. Simply the nut does not want to die personally, so he grabs onto nuke war to survive, personally.
“Ca fait desordre”, as the French would say…
Plutocracy is the world order of things. Right now a bunch of fat cats are having breakfast with Obama for $32,400, in in a private mansion in Atherton. Americans find this normal, and, no doubt, would just sneer that I am jealous…
Apple Inc. shuttles 100 billion dollars of profits through the British Virgin Islands alone… The plutocracy has gone too far, just like Mr. Kim, and only sees that it better not stop… Although, with the French realizing that plutocracy pervades even French society, things may get to move in the EU. The resolution of the Cyprus crisis, that is now turning to the judicial, is examplary of the ray of hope in the distance…
PA
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April 4, 2013 at 4:31 pm |
Patrice is exactly right.
North Korea has its propaganda video limning its intended fiery destruction of the US and South Korea.
What exactly is the point of such a fantasy production? (I can’t find the link right now, but its assumptions of artillery barrage success, among other things, are nonsense.) The point is the same as the man who ties a chicken to his head to scare away elephants (“See any elephants around here? No! So it really works, right. Want to buy a chicken?”).
If the US engages in any form of negotiation to “cool” things off, it will be taken as proof by all the wrong people (i.e., North Korean generals and others in positions analogous to the 30’s Germans, as well as sideline “observers”) that that video and the nuke rattling thing really worked. Time to buy a chicken, not behead a fatuous tyrant.
And Patrice deftly points out where that leads.
Iraq was a war crime by the US and, in a truly just world, Bush and company would all be standing in a Nuremberg-like dock.
But in the meantime, there are times when hot lead and not just hot words are called for, and force must be used for the right ends.
The US can call it a “police action” (as they did in the 50’s) if they want. They need to do it now.
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April 4, 2013 at 9:09 pm |
Thanks Bowtiejack!
We agree thoroughly. When adressing nuclear tyrants, moderation has no relation to reason. Nice chicken/elephant analogy. As I pointed out, the Korean situation was MUCH less serious in the 1950s. No comparison.
In the times we have now, of powerful nuclear weapons, where laser separation is going to make it much easier to produce HEU (Highly Enriched Uranium), the problem is drastic.
Hiroshima was a HEU bomb. Nagasaki was a Plutonium implosion device. Big difference. I’m going to write hopefully a mini post with all these techical details…
Thanks for the video. Very interesting, nice music. Now we know what beautiful dreams are all about in N.Korea (Nuclear Korea?).
PA
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April 5, 2013 at 1:42 am |
Looking forward to your bomb post.
I was a physics undergrad and a Navy Special (Nuclear) Weapons Officer for a couple of years, a lifetime ago.
People have no idea just how easy it would be to build a Hiroshima-type bomb if you can get your hands on the HEU.
It is definitely NOT, as they say, “nuclear physics”.
Implosion devices may be sexier (and technically a lot harder to pull off), but enough fissile material in one pile will get the job done.
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April 5, 2013 at 3:26 am |
dear Bowtiejack: Happy to have here somebody who knows what one should be talking about! Highly Enriched Uranium bombs are trivial to make. Implosion devices, very hard. And here comes laser separation.
Frankly, an example has to be made with North Korea. This has gone too long.
North Korea is not Iraq (imaginary WMD), and this is not Iran (Iran has always protested that its nuclear program was civil). It’s not even Pakistan (which has used loquaciously its nuclear deterrent as a cover to its conflict against India, arguing it could do whatever, because India was scared of Palie nukes).
I noticed that the Islamist Republic of Iran has apparently made it known in the last few days, that it would scrupulously respect the demands of Israel (!!!!!!!!!!) regarding nuclear energy.
Anyway more in a short post, thanks for the feedback. I need it, as I stuck my philosophical neck out, knowing full well that the pacifist herds would come charging at me, grunting all the same.
PA
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April 4, 2013 at 11:15 pm |
War is not the answer.
Never was.
And nuclear war is most certainly not the answer.
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April 5, 2013 at 1:33 am |
Dear Old Geezer Pilot: Are you saying, as Pat Buchanan does, that the French Republic and Great Britain were wrong to declare a state of war with Germany on September 3, 1939, at 11 am?
Should France and the UK have considered another answer to Hitler’s lack of answer to the ultimatum they had given him about removing his armed forces from Poland? And if so, what could it have been?
Should France and Britain have, once again ignored Hitler’s aggression as Roosevelt did? like Roosevelt, and claim, as it did on September 21, 1939, that a war had not started, when no less than 300 divisions were already engaged in combat?
Another thing: I am happy that you feel that “nuclear war is most certainly not the answer“. That was the gist of my essay. How to prevent nuclear war, in particular where I happen to be right now, an area specifically targetted by Mr. Kim and his co-criminals for nuclear strikes. And yes, they have the means. They demonstrated them in the last four months, in complete violation of United Nations law!
PA
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April 5, 2013 at 3:45 pm |
In 1945, after the deaths of some 100 million people around the world, a handful of men in well-cut suits carrying beautiful leather attache cases sat around a table to divide up the post war world.
Their fathers’ generation did the same thing at Versailles 20 years before. In that war, a mere 30 million perished.
Europe, to her credit, has managed to avoid a third one. As an answer to your rhetorical question, I would re-phrase it to read, “If Roosevelt and Churchill (and Stalin) had known the cost of WWII, might they not have figured out a way to have the well-tailored men gather around that table FIRST, before the war?
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April 5, 2013 at 5:57 pm |
Well, OGP, it seems I have to write an esay on how WWII started… Churchill and Stalin were friends of German fascism as early as 1929. They changed their music later. Roosevelt talked some talk, and walked in the other direction.
As far as Stalin and Roosevelt were concerned, the outcome of WWII was excellent. Roosevelt built a world empire for the USA, with very few Americans killed (1/5 of the number of French). Stalin got to kill twice more Soviets has he had before, and certainly much more than Hitler did, as he boasted, half drunk, to Churchill.
At Yalta, Roosevelt gave Stalin half of Europe.
As I put it in the last essay, the USA collaborated, deliberately and willingly, with Hitler in 1939. France was facing a coalition of 5 in 1940. As far as Stalin and the USA were concerned, the outcome of WWII was EXCELLENT.
Versailles was no division as much as REGURGITATION. Germany was made to regurgitate, to the fury of Keynes. And if you wonder about the connection with Krugman, wonder no more…
PA
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April 5, 2013 at 4:34 pm |
And this just in from Reuters:
(Reuters) – Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro warned ally North Korea against war on Friday and described the current tensions on the Korean Peninsula as one of the “gravest risks” for nuclear holocaust since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Saying he spoke as a friend, Castro wrote in Cuban state media that North Korea, led by 30-year-old Kim Jong-un, had shown the world its technical prowess and now it was time to remember its duties to others.
North Korea, which along with Cuba is one of the world’s last communist countries, has been ratcheting up pressure by declaring war on neighbor South Korea and threatening to stage a nuclear strike on the United States.
Few observers believe it will actually attack anyone, but Castro has become an anti-nuclear advocate in recent years.
“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was always friendly with Cuba, as Cuba always has been and will continue to be with her,” Castro wrote, using an almost paternalistic tone.
“Now that it has demonstrated its technical and scientific advances, we remind it of its duties to other countries who have been great friends and that it would not be just to forget that such a war would affect in a special way more than 70 percent of the world’s population,” said the 86-year-old, who turned Cuba communist after taking power in a 1959 revolution.
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April 5, 2013 at 5:47 pm |
Wow, Old Geezer! Even Castro is stepping in! The Cuban missile crisis was still something else. It was consecutive to, and partial consequence of, aggression of the USA (the “Bay of Pigs”, in the name of the Cuban plutocracy and USA Mafia?) The solution of the CMC was good: short range nuclear tipped missiles in Cuba or Turkey were removed. They were highly destabilizing.
A war with North Korea right now does not have to be nuclear. Not at all. That’s Mr. Kim’s choice. even if a few bombs go off, so what? In ten years, Kim would have 300 nuclear tipped ICBMs, and the USA will be brimming with anti-missile batteries and terror would pervade. If Mr. Kim has not been neutralized first, as he has to be.
France warned, years ago, that she reserved herself the right of nuclear (counter-) strike in case of mass terrorism (Pakistan, curiously, protested!) With precision bombing, assets can be taken out with conventional explosives. A few French Mirages smashed the entire armored army of Qaddafi in a few minutes in the suburbs of Benghazi (making interesting… mushroom clouds). Rafales were flying in a protective role, confusing and taking out anti-aircraft missiles.
PA
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April 6, 2013 at 3:17 pm |
Wars are easy to start.
Not always easy to end.
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April 6, 2013 at 3:34 pm |
Wars can be also very hard to start. The French Republic took three years to start the war against Hitler, time spent in changing Britain from an ally of Hitler to an enemy. Even then, although France attacked with 45 divisions in september 1939, it took one month for the first British soldier to reach France. In May 1940, although 300 divisions were engaged, Great Britain had only ten divisions, plus one tank brigade. At that point the full might of the economy of the USA and the USSR made possible for Hitler to wage war.
The situation is reminiscent of this in Korea. N. Korea is supported by the pseudo-Maoists and the Soviets-in-denial. Should Kim survive this episode it will take a frantic arm race and militarization of the USA to escape 100 nuclear 9/11 on a decadal horizon. Same with Iran, etc. The anti-missile system of the West Coast of the USA is not very good, BTW…
Juridically, I am not sure the war with North Korea, allowed 60 years ago by the UN is over. methinks the war authorization given then is still valid. So, indeed, the war has not been easy to end. Clearly the conditions for doing so are being gathered… ;-)!
Bellicosity against the fanatical enemies of our better angels is not just enlightened, but necessary for survival.
BTW, this is exactly why France is, historically, in the last 16 centuries, the world most aggressive military power.
PA
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April 5, 2013 at 10:27 am |
Let me suggest a research project for the arms industry: a missile head which will explode with the spectacular flash, boom and mushroom of a nuke, but will merely sprinkle the countryside and streets with leaflets saying “Wham! You’re dead. See you next time”.
Remember war is all about communicating to the enemy the notion that he has lost.
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April 5, 2013 at 2:55 pm |
Dominique: This was actually studied at the end of WWII. It was seriously considered to explode a nuke over Tokyo Bay to impress the Japanese high command into submission. But it was (correctly in my estimate) thought they would not take it seriously.
A book just came out, written by anti-nuke activist trying to prove the self contradictory thesis that it’s very important to discontinue nuclear weapons, as they had no military impact whatsoever in Japan in 1945.
I do know the period pretty well, from sheer historical interest, not from having a meta agenda, and I know this is false.
Those who camp on refusing to make nuclear strategic reasonings are the best helpers of incoming nuclear Armageddons, just as those who refused to consider Nazism were Nazism’s best friends. It’s easy to say “war is never the answer“, and the same will say the same, once Japan and South Korea will have 5,000 nukes, trigger ready.
The Nazis knew they had lost by January 1, 1945. Still they kept on fighting for another 17 weeks during which millions died. The idea was that Germans ought to fight to death. In Japan the C in C wrote haikus to the eternal beauty of seeing soon 100 million Japanese being cut down as 100 million flowers in the coming final battle.
War is a metaphysical instinct in man, that’s what inspire rabid pacifists confusely. But that does not make it any less so.
PA
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April 5, 2013 at 5:15 pm |
NK might be developing ICBM’s sooner or later – courtesy of US enemies support. It would be good internal PR for their leadership anyways.
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Since they claimed they will nuke US cities, we are entitled to run spy planes above their land and deploy serious countermeasures right at their borders.
My main point: we should reply straight into Kim N’th face.
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The US display of force must be obvious (‘in your face’) to most NKoreans such that their leader’s bluff will be called.
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If that guy will take it personally, we can expect him to begin making a lot of idiotic moves and thus split their military/party elites into factions.
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April 5, 2013 at 5:17 pm |
Yes, newphilo. The point is that the answer to threatened nuclear war is no (more) concession whatsover, as France and Britain imposed on Hitler, September 1, 1939.
Actually, to be more precise, I should say this:
The civilized posture, the deep wisdom, is that the answer to threatened nuclear war is no (more) concession whatsover. As France and Britain imposed on Hitler, in August 1939. War on one’s own time and place is always better.
PA
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April 5, 2013 at 9:09 pm |
Patrice,
Kim Il Jong may sound like a steroid-enraged chicken (maybe he is but I think he probably learned more than just that when he got educated in Switzerland) but he may just be afraid of losing his dictatorship if he doesn’t bluster enough to impress the North Korean generals pulling the strings behind the curtain. If he has an ounce of integrity and really wants the North Korean people to one day have enough to eat – something they haven’t had since the regime was founded – he’ll have to do a sharp about face one of these days. In that case China is probably more worried about the prospect of having millions of starving North Koreans flooding across its border than about the North Koreans’ atomic weapons or army. The likelihood is strong that the North Korean regime is fast approaching collapse if it is following the same trajectory as the former Soviet Union, which had more oil and gas and did need as much food aid from the West to survive.
Jeff
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April 5, 2013 at 9:12 pm |
Dear Jeff: So we pretty much agree. If Kim can’t blackmail the West (which is actually east…), he dies. So he will blackmail all the way! What people considers to be integrity varies. In the case of Kim, no doubt, it has to do with his due, as an apex predator. After all, his family, from his point of view, sacrificed so much…
The fact he got a plutocrat’s education in Switzerland is an aggravating factor…
PA
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April 5, 2013 at 11:20 pm |
“War is a metaphysical instinct in man. This inspires pseudo-pacifists’ impotent extremism confusely. But rage does not make it any less so.”
You say well MAN….. Less woman….
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April 5, 2013 at 11:22 pm |
Evelyne: Less woman, because man is the war machine side, more readily. Not to say women cannot be as dark…
PA
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April 6, 2013 at 1:19 am |
Encore plus “tarré” que son père…. Je plains son peuple…..
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April 6, 2013 at 1:22 am |
Well, they should rebel. Paradoxically Kim’s increasing craziness is an indication of inchoating rebellion… That’s why democracies have to bring up the heat.Now better than later.
PA
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April 7, 2013 at 7:39 pm |
Patrice, you’re going a bit over the top here. Did you mistake “Olympus Has Fallen” for fact?
I’m not convinced by your argument that Mr Kim is the new Hitler. My concern is that we have been fed a continual diet of propoganda enemies over the years. Gaddaffi, Castro, Chavez, Ayatolloh, Sadam, blah, blah etc etc. All drawn as cartoon baddies. These days, I admit we have no idea of we are being told anything resembling truth.
Maybe the continual running of the Wests propaganda machine has desensitized me to the real dangers of that new Nazi Germany: the menacing super power of North Korea. Or maybe Macdonalds and KFC are looking for some new outlets, with Halliburton and SAIC reaping some billions in “reconstructing” yet another country smashed by Western imperialism. Intuitively, I consider that latter far more likely.
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April 7, 2013 at 10:45 pm |
Dear Hazxan: Sorry if I left the impression that I believed Kim Jong Un was the “new Hitler”. That is in no way what I tried to say. My main point was otherwise subtle.
Although Kim Jong Un does command the fourth largest army in the world. I must admit he has a charming wife, whereas Hiler got married at the last hour (OK, last 5 hours). Hitler was also in his forties when he got to responsibilities. Whereas Kim Jong Un is only 29. Nor does Kim Jong Un have a racist agenda, to my knowledge.
I was making an analogy between the way this crisis ought to be treated and the way Hitler was treated. I was also making a much deeper analogy: the fascist MOOD that rose, starting before 1914, was not barred, with ULTIMATE VIOLENCE, until August 1939. Nietzsche would have said pointed out that crazy militaristic racist fascism was well started in Germany by 1980. There was, especially in the 1930s, an infection of fascism, worldwide. Japan, germany, Spain, among others, fell to fascism in the 1930s. In the USA, the country nearly did, and then its plutocrats took command in lots of countries, including Germany and Italy.
Right now we are facing the possible rise of a MOOD OF NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL. Worldwide. That was my main point. To say I said Hitler = Kim, frankly is a smokescreen masking my real main idea.
If Kim Jong Un is not struck down, nuclear blackmail will be rewarded. Other fascist regimes may be inspired. China, right now, is opposed to what North Korea is doing. BUT, if China (for example) sees that nuclear blackmail is rewarded, some, in China, are bound to feel that it works.
I wrote my essay very carefully, sweating hard. I stand by it. To make the debate advance, instead of suggesting I have gone over the top in the abyss on the other side, one should brandish a particular point where I am wrong. Kim will have 300 nuclear tip ICBMs in ten years or so. Then what? Japan will have 6,000, South Korea, 3,000. China will try to have even more.
What will one say? Patrice was over the top?
I lived most of my childhood in Africa. My dad met with many potentates, various presidents, even the Shah.
In this particular case, I saw no piece against North Korea’s Kim Jung Un as fierce as the one I wrote myself. Does that mean I am “Western propaganda”?
In my case, I am not get anything material advantage from it. I am just telling what I perceive as the truth. Just having a feeling there is a propaganda out there, is neither here, nor there. One needs to point at ONE thing I said that does not look reasonable. Every single sentence was mulled over. All my data points are armored, fully backed up.
The plutocracy has actually NO interest to a full blown war with N Korea (because they may be the next ones to be blown). A full blown (world, or not) war would probably lead to a great equalitarian wave, as happened, in Europe or the USA, after WWII.
The Romans used to say that, if one wants peace, one should prepare for war, but the truth is worse. If one wants maximum peace, one should make mini wars, in a timely fashion.
The question of tax avoiding corporations is indeed related. Those should be carpet bombed into submission, ASAP.
PA
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April 8, 2013 at 1:36 pm |
Nicely done. The problem is not North Korea’s current capability/actions, but what ignoring it leads to. And what it encourages others to do.
If one thinks of all this as some sort of sports event (soccer, basketball) where one obstreperous, minor player keeps fouling and getting away with it, you realize it won’t be long before some other players figure out that there’s no reason for them to obey the rules either.
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April 8, 2013 at 2:19 pm |
Thanks Bowtiejack! Glad you liked it! Your sport analogy is excellent. Cheating can lead to a chain reaction of its own.
Something I did not insist upon is that the Korean War never ended: it was just a ceasefire. So when North Korea says it’s in a state of war, it proclaims a triviality. Should massive hostilities start again, it’s the local US commander, who would be the United Nations general in charge… In theory giving orders to the South Korean army.
PA
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April 8, 2013 at 7:23 am |
[…] Intelligence at the core of humanism. « North Korea: CRUSH INFAMY! […]
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