The United Nations has released a scathing report of the situation inside of North Korea and I say this long overdue. I am so thoroughly disgusted by this that I can hardly write to be honest with all of you.
Some of the key points:
Arbitrary detention, torture, executions and prison camps
The police and security forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea systematically employ violence and punishments that amount to gross human rights violations in order to create a climate of fear that pre-empts any challenge to the current system of government and to the ideology underpinning it. The institutions and officials involved are not held accountable. Impunity reigns.
Violations of freedom of thought, expression and religion
The state operates an all-encompassing indoctrination machine that takes root from childhood to propagate an official personality cult and to manufacture absolute obedience to the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un.
Discrimination
It is a rigidly stratified society with entrenched patterns of discrimination... Discrimination is rooted in the songbun system, which classifies people on the basis of state-assigned social class and birth, and also includes consideration of political opinions and religion. Songbun intersects with gender-based discrimination, which is equally pervasive.
Abductions and enforced disappearances from other countries
Since 1950, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has engaged in the systematic abduction, denial of repatriation and subsequent enforced disappearance of persons from other countries on a large scale and as a matter of state policy.
Violations of the freedom of movement and residence
The state decides where citizens must live and work, violating their freedom of choice... This has created a socioeconomically and physically segregated society, where people considered politically loyal to the leadership can live and work in favourable locations, whereas families of persons who are considered politically suspect are relegated to marginalised areas.
Violations of the right to food and related aspects of the right to life
The state has used food as a means of control over the population. It has prioritised those whom the authorities believe to be crucial to maintaining the regime over those deemed expendable.
Essentially, nothing that we did not already know. So what can we do about it?
At first glance, the answer seems like nothing, given that China's feathers will be ruffled and the American voter is very weary of war. North Korea doesn't seem to want to advance beyond her current borders and obviously has a vested interest in keeping their little concentration camp of a country intact. Yet the human rights violations demand action. Perhaps we could ramp up our covert activity in the country and get a more clear assessment of what it would take to take out the people that are engaging in these actions.
Clearly, this is one of the greatest humanitarian crises we have faced since World War II. It's been going on a long time and it needs to stop...by force, if necessary.
12 comments:
Well, we are technically still at war with them.
The Chinese were not impressed.
Until you can convince the Chinese that this would a be a "good war" against their own client state, nothing's happening. Given that the Chinese are feeling their oats and putting pressure on all of their neighbors, to the point that even those who hate other are beginning to unite (as US military power in the region continues to decline (and naval power must decline for at least another decade thanks to decisions made in the past decade) because power loves a vacuum. Anybody who thinks a multi-polar world is going to bring more stability never paid enough attention in their history classes.
(as US military power in the region continues to decline (and naval power must decline for at least another decade thanks to decisions made in the past decade)
What is your basis for this statement?
What is your basis for this statement?
What is your basis for that question?
The Navy Is Dropping Down to Just Two Deployed Carriers:
Fifty-percent reduction is mostly budget-driven
Anyone who thinks force quality is going to be good with 9-month deployments, or even the hoped for 8-month deployments (when 20 years ago 6 months was the norm) can only be hoping for a civilian economy so bad it makes even the Navy look good. Morale is not good now.
Where are the frigates?
Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans:
Background and Issues for Congress
Which summarized basically says that Navy shipbuilding plans are ... optimistic, to say the least. Especially when in the last couple of decades we've been retiring AEGIS cruisers at 50% of their planned lifespan. And very often not mothballing them, but being sold for scrap or sinking them as artificial reefs. The frigates are mostly gone and there's nothing to take their place.
Instead we're buying Tiffany ships like the LCS, which are larger than WWII destroyers, but aluminum-hulled and admitted to not be combat survivable (to the point that normal shock testing isn't done because the risk is too high), incredibly lightly armed for such a large ship to the point that it would barely be able to defend itself; with no offensive capability to speak of except against Somali pirates. And they're proving incredibly unreliable. And yet we're paying top dollar for these things. Now that it looks like the program may be cut short, we have nothing to replace either it or the frigates that have been shit-canned.
The DDG-1000 destroyers are $2.5 billion each, and only 3 will be built. Three. That may be a good thing because the hull design may be a dangerous turkey in rough seas.
The F-35 is an platinum albatross around the neck of the Navy. It's sluggish, can't turn, can't carry very much very far and still be stealthy, and is enormously expensive. The sooner the Navy pulls out of that, the better, but again, there's nothing waiting in the wings unless Nothrop-Grumman can keep the F-18E/F production lines open.
I don't think there's a prayer that the Navy's going to get the budgets that it's planning on, and of what they do get, they will waste too much of it. The problem is with big-ticket items, especially ships, there's no such thing as designing and ordering a bunch and getting them in a year. You're looking at a 5-year horizon between deciding we need something, having design competitions, deciding to build, and then finally you can start building. Especially not with our shrunken shipyard capabilities. There will be no WWII-like surge (even the WWII surge was only possible because naval re-armament essentially began years earlier in 1937-38).
So if we're really on the ball, you're looking at minimum 5 years before you start seeing the results. Having been watching Navy procurement over the last decade, I've not much confidence that there's anything on the ball there.
So, it's your contention that the Chinese are going to outpace us in terms of a blue water navy?
What are your thoughts on the F-22?
What is your basis for this statement?
What is your basis for that question?
Why are you answering a question with a question?
So, it's your contention that the Chinese are going to outpace us in terms of a blue water navy?
The Chinese have the advantage of not going 'forward-deployed', they only need to deal with the Western Pacific. That is much less of a reach for them then it is for us. In other words, they don't have to reach parity to have an advantage.
Not to mention that they are on an upward trajectory and we are at this time downward. That could change, but only by re-prioritizing DoD (adding to Navy by reducing Army). Obama hasn't really hinted at such and it would of course meet with much bi-partisan disagreement in Congress.
What are your thoughts on the F-22?
It is irrelevant to a discussion of sea power or even sea-based air power.
China's not building a global blue-water navy. Not yet, anyway. They're building a navy and air force that will dominate the seas within 1000 miles of their coast. They're on their way to doing that. Nothing necessarily wrong with that except they're also trying to lay claim to virtually the entire South China Sea and East China Sea. They're behaving in a way that is making all of their neighbours quite nervous about what the next decade or two will bring. Rather like Wilhelmine Germany in the 1890's and early 1900's. Chinese diplomacy has gotten rather too arrogant and abrasive to be called diplomacy sometimes. Laying a claim on Okinawa, for instance?
My thoughts on F-22? World-beating fighter at a budget-busting price. We have far too few of them for a war, and with the production line long shut down (a hideous mistake, even with the cost), there will be no replacements. A non-nuclear shooting war with China could in a few years result in losses we couldn't sustain. At that point, would we see efforts to coerce Taiwan and/or Philippines into the New People's Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Who knows. I'd rather we were strong enough for the question to be moot. If we're not, Japan will re-arm more extensively. If they're more than a few months away from a nuclear capability, I'd be stunned. It's just engineering, and they've got the materials, talent, skills. South Korea not far behind. It depends all on what they think our word is worth, and whether we can back it up or not. Our still having nukes means nothing if the other side is quite sure we're not willing to use them in defence of allies.
For that matter, I wouldn't be surprised for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to be a nuclear power very shortly after Iran. They will buy them at any price from anybody willing to sell them. Hello, fellow Sunni nation, Pakistan? Or maybe North Korea.
My thoughts on F-22? World-beating fighter at a budget-busting price. We have far too few of them for a war, and with the production line long shut down (a hideous mistake, even with the cost), there will be no replacements.
My issue with the F-22 is that it can't land on aircraft carriers which is inhibitive. And what about its performance in the rain? And the O2 tank issues?
A plane that wasn't designed from the beginning for catapult-assisted takeoffs and arrested landings on carriers will never land on carriers (except for a few very special instances as href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar-poc38C84">tests or limited ops. The structural requirements go far, far beyond just beefing up the landing gear. That structural strength doesn't come for free. It's comes out of potential payload, or range, or manoeuvrability (usually a bit out of all three). Air Force and Navy requirements are quite different (besides the whole structural aspect, different types of aerial tanking are used -- and both have very good reasons why they're used where they're used), but sometimes a Navy plane may be modified and used by the USAF. F-4 Phantom II and A-7 Corsair II are two examples.
But since the Navy's not developed/ing a stealthy air-superiority fighter, there's no possibility of the Navy and Air Force sharing one. A navalized YF-23 would've been interesting, but like developing the F/A-18 from the YF-17, it would've been pretty much a new design from the ground up. Unfortunately, at that point, the failed A-12 had eaten the Navy's development budget and Cheney forced an end to building new F-14Ds. A-6 medium attack bombers gone from the fleet with no A-12 to replace them. F-14s gone from the fleet with no new fighter to replace them but the newer model F/A-18Es. At least as importantly for the future, the S-3B Viking sub-hunters are gone from the fleet with nothing to replace them. And at the same time, the P-3Cs land-based sub-hunters are all wearing out with the long-delayed replacement P-8 (based on Boeing 737) having big problems with systems integration -- i.e. it flies, but it's awful at performing the mission. Fixable, but may take years to fix right, and always more money.
I don't think the F-22's problems with it's stealthy coating is that big of an issue except for the costs. At most, it loses some (but not all) of it's stealthiness, but still be an excellent dogfighter. The O2 issue is embarrassing (when it's not lethal), but is a fixable sub-system. It's not like it can't be replaced. It's certainly a mystery as to what the actual problem is, and it wouldn't even surprise me that much if the root cause isn't even directly related to the generator itself.
But we've got so few of them, and the line's been shut down. We still make F-15E Strike Eagles, but the air-superiority F-15Cs are all oold and under flight restrictions because aging airfrmes. They've just about been worn out. They're supposed to be in service until up to 2030, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if most aren't flying by 2020. They could be rebuilt, but that's almost as expensive as building new.
I think our leadership both civil and military have got us firmly wedged for at least a decade. There's signs that the rot is finally being recognized as very real, very hard numbers are starting to stare the leadership in the face. But until I start seeing some actual shit-cannings of responsible careers (and not through the revolving door into directorships at Lockmart), and even possible prosecutions in a few cases, I have doubts.
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