North Korea, and opportunity.

It's been a couple days since I posted, which is a shame but I have friends in town and have been distracted so whatever.

Saber rattling in North Korea, a carrier group has been sent to the region after some delay, it seems our president told the world that was happening before actually telling the Navy to do that, I am sure someone said something during the election about not announcing their military moves, but I just can't quite recall who it was, oh well I am sure it will come to me.

The situation could very well lead to all out war, which would not be great for South Korea like, at all, but would probably signal the end of North Korea as a functional state. Mind you since China also kind of has interests there, it also could lead to WWIII, but my guess is it won't go that far.

The news made much hay out of a failed missile launch test by NK last week, thus missing the point entirely. Like sure, Kim Jong Un probably wanted a successful test and maybe somebody got in a lot of trouble when it went poorly, but those who have influence there know that the success or failure of that test is irrelevant, what matters is the public announcement and dissemination of the news, they told the world, again, that they don't give a damn what anyone else thinks, they will keep making weapons and are willing to use them if they feel pushed.

It was a statement of intent, and one we should absolutely believe they intend to follow through on. In a lot of ways the success of the Iran deal may be giving policy makers a case of victory disease, if a hardline stance, threats, and embargoes got Iran to the table, then obviously it will work in North Korea too right? They fail to realize that the only thing those two powers share is a hostility towards America. While Iran has a pretty terrible and aggressive sounding government, the reality of it is that government is not as free to act on whim as one might think, there are in fact several factions that control it, and while most of them share a hardcore religious belief, they do differ in what to do about it, and at least some of them have goals about the health of their country rather than reducing the health of others.
There is no balance of power in North Korea that I can see, I strongly suspect Un is a figurehead more than anything, but the power behind his throne is at least as crazy as he appears to be and when they feel capable, I have no doubt they will flex their muscles. The thing is, it is pretty hard for an outsider to decide when they might feel capable, because their definition of it is unlikely to match ours, my guess is they overestimate their strength relative to the US and South Korea, but that doesn't mean they can't do some damage. I think ignoring them and maintaining the current status quo would probably have been a better move than what the administration ended up doing.

Of course that is only in regards to the safety of the world, The Toddler, even if he doesn't realize it at the moment, should like nothing better than for the Carl Vinsen carrier group to be attacked, remember the reaction to the idiotic Syria retaliation? Or for that matter the dick waving that was the MOAB strike in Afghanistan? Hell remember 9/11? The easiest way for a president to bump his approval numbers is with military action, preferably retaliatory, but it doesn't have to be, if NK strikes the carrier group, even if it doesn't succeed at doing any damage, we will see an approval rating of over 50% for The Toddler literally overnight.

I don't believe that he knows this, I believe that he just loves the idea of blowing stuff up, but there are those in the administration who do and have to be praying for it, for that matter so must the GOP in general, because support for the president turns( a little) into support for the party, and the party could use a boost to pass a number of contested items right now, and the ability to roll some of those items into a war funding bill would be just the ticket for the Republicans, virtually guaranteeing that many centrist Democrats vote for it as well, if only to avoid being perceived as unpatriotic to their red leaning voter base.

Shit might just get fucked is what I am saying, and even if it doesn't blow up into a global conflict, it will have severe repercussions on the situation here at home, we can only hope that the North Korean government doesn't realize that and decides they aren't ready to start something after all for now.