Q: Can someone explain to me why so many knowledgeable people take Putin's thinly-veiled threat to nuke enemies seriously but dimiss Kim Jong Un's naked threat to nuke SK & US?
I mean, Ukraine isn't even Putin's core interest, whereas SK surely is to Kim, who has 50+ nukes.
I’m just an ignorant foreigner, not a policy wonk, but at a guess, Kim knows that the moment he starts a war, he’s going to lose. Whether he uses his nukes or not, whether China ends up helping him or not (and if China does so, revealing its hand, it almost surely loses South Korea as a trading partner), North Korea will get bulldozed by forces far larger than it. Unlike Russia, North Korea doesn’t have huge oil reserves to use as a bargaining chip, and any long-range strike it might attempt against the US or US territories can probably be met by missile-defense systems. North Korea’s best bargaining chip, right now, is fear of conflict and the ensuing devastation to South Korea (although I’d have faith that South Korea would recover from a conflict far faster than North Korea ever could). So North Korea knows it can only get away with little strikes and incursions against South Korea, or with the tentative-but-provocative firing of its missiles toward Japan.
Russia, by contrast, doesn’t know or acknowledge anything like this. Putin established a “red line” about Ukraine long ago, so his current move, while perhaps surprising in its timing, shouldn’t be shocking. He hasn’t suddenly gone crazy, any more than Kim Jong-eun is crazy.
Russia is, overall, a bigger, more serious threat. North Korea threatens and blusters, but it has never moved to take over anyone else’s territory. And we all know why: it’s too poor. It’s equipment is old and outdated; its army is hollow and starving. Any major conflict would last, at most, weeks (perhaps followed by a long occupation/mop-up). That, in my humble opinion, is why people take it less seriously.
Last edited 2 years ago by Kevin Kim
setnaffa
2 years ago
Solid analysis, Kevin.
Korean Man
2 years ago
And why should anyone take Mr. Sung-Yoon Lee seriously? Who the hell is he?
I’m just an ignorant foreigner, not a policy wonk, but at a guess, Kim knows that the moment he starts a war, he’s going to lose. Whether he uses his nukes or not, whether China ends up helping him or not (and if China does so, revealing its hand, it almost surely loses South Korea as a trading partner), North Korea will get bulldozed by forces far larger than it. Unlike Russia, North Korea doesn’t have huge oil reserves to use as a bargaining chip, and any long-range strike it might attempt against the US or US territories can probably be met by missile-defense systems. North Korea’s best bargaining chip, right now, is fear of conflict and the ensuing devastation to South Korea (although I’d have faith that South Korea would recover from a conflict far faster than North Korea ever could). So North Korea knows it can only get away with little strikes and incursions against South Korea, or with the tentative-but-provocative firing of its missiles toward Japan.
Russia, by contrast, doesn’t know or acknowledge anything like this. Putin established a “red line” about Ukraine long ago, so his current move, while perhaps surprising in its timing, shouldn’t be shocking. He hasn’t suddenly gone crazy, any more than Kim Jong-eun is crazy.
Russia is, overall, a bigger, more serious threat. North Korea threatens and blusters, but it has never moved to take over anyone else’s territory. And we all know why: it’s too poor. It’s equipment is old and outdated; its army is hollow and starving. Any major conflict would last, at most, weeks (perhaps followed by a long occupation/mop-up). That, in my humble opinion, is why people take it less seriously.
Solid analysis, Kevin.
And why should anyone take Mr. Sung-Yoon Lee seriously? Who the hell is he?