Tag: North Korea

China Would Make A Severe Strategic Mistake To Attack Taiwan In 2021


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Almost no one reads this blog. Like, no one. Maybe almost a 100 people on a good day. Otherwise, I’m just barking into the darkness. So, anything out of the ordinary catches my attention in this site’s Webstats.

Like, why are there people with French URLs who pop up out of the blue? Why are there people in Romania, of all places, who have started to read this blog? Is that one URL I think is a conservative relative who I think it is? And what was with that one person from Brooklyn who spent over an hour doing a deep dive into my rantings on this site? Should I be worried, or pleased with that one?

Anyway, another thing I’ve noticed is a teeny-tiny uptick in hits from China of all places. I think they’re people interested in my rantings about how we’re going to have a civil war at some point between now and January 2025?

Well, if that is the case, all I can say is — slow your roll.

Yes, the United States is as divided as it’s been since the Civil War, but that is going to change the moment there’s a major regional war. For the next four years, until we actually have that civil war (or turn into an autocracy) the United States will become a lot more united the moment we realize we have to gird our loins to save the world, AGAIN.

Around January 2025, however, all that could change.

It would be difficult for the United States to do anything about China — or the DPRK for that matter — if we’re too busy bombing ourselves into oblivion to do anything about it.

So, if you’re some sort of Chinese agent, reading this blog hoping to get a bead on the current American ability to defend Taiwan, that’s my advice.

How Trump Could Start World War 3


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I love me some worst case scenarios and it’s pretty easy to imagine The Darkest Scenario whereby Trump starts World War 3. It goes something like this — Trump successfully boxes Iran into a corner and they strike Israel in some major fashion.

Israel sees this as an existential threat and nukes Tehran. The entire Middle East descends into war. But what, there’s more. Once the taboo of using nuclear weapons is broken a number of the Usual Suspects begin to saber rattle. While India-Pakistan and China-India are obvious, it’s possible that the DPRK might make significant military moves again ROK.

Put this in context — because of Trump’s “love letters” with Kim Jung-un, our problems with the DPRK have evaporated. But once Trump is out of office, the DPRK could come roaring back to the front of our consciousness.

Or, put another way, given how unstable Trump is, it’s not too difficult to imagine something happening in the final weeks of Trump’s time in office that causes him to switch gears with the DPRK in some dramatic fashion.

Remember — the DPRK has the means, motive and opportunity to use city-killer bombs on the United States.

DPRK & The American Mad King (A Scenario)


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s demonstrable that the president of the United States is just barely hanging on to his sanity. Trump is very unstable and erratic, especially on Twitter which is apparently a direct link to his Id. But, to date, he’s managed to keep it together enough that nothing TOO dangerous has happened.

Now that we’re in August — which is a pretty shitty month for news — let’s think up a scenario whereby Trump’s craziness goes from malevolent uncle to destroyer of worlds.

There are many, many scenarios one can think up. But the one that is the easiest to plot out is something to do with North Korea. It’s generally believed that only a crazy person would poke that particular bear unless their was an absolute reason to do so.

To date, Trump’s bonkers behavior has gone the exact opposite direction — he’s be a real suck up to the worst tyrant on the planet. And, in a sense, that’s been for the best. At least we’re not worried about a limited nuclear exhange.

But, let do that now.

The thing about this scenario is it could happen at any point while Trump is president. It could happen today, it could happen two years into Trump’s stolen second term. It’s not like history gives a shit about anyone’s particular political agenda. There’s a reason why they say, “Death be not proud.”

Anyway, for the purposes of this scenario, this happens sooner rather than later. Like August 2020. What prompts Trump finally losing his mind is his absolute need to win re-election smashes into his realization that while he is obviously going to successfully steal the election, it’s going to involve a lot of work and he’s lazy.

So, let’s say he REALLY snaps and he turns his eyes to the DPRK.

The first thing that would happen is we wouldn’t know it had happened. Trump’s been so unstable for so long that the America media works pretty hard to hide it from the public. So, it’s likely if he really did snap and started to see war with the DPRK as an easy way to win re-election “fair and square” we would think he was “joking.”

If something happened and Trump felt offended by Little Rocket Man, he might start to rant about the need to whip the DPRK off the planet. Or he would pull out all American civilians associated with AFK, which would seriously spook the North Koreans.

Once he actually started to do something demonstrable like that, people would sit up and take notice. This wouldn’t be “joking,” this would be serious. The major miscalculation Trump would make — because he’s stupid — is he would see a bloody three month war with the DPRK as simply something he had to do to win re-election.

What he wouldn’t think about is the DPRK, if it felt it had an existential threat on its hands, would likely shoot off a few ICBMs with H-bombs on them our way. And I have no confidence in the DPRK’s guidance equipment. Just because it’s supposed to hit, say, DC, doesn’t mean it won’t veer off course and hit, say, gulp, Richmond.

Anyway, the point is, Trump screwing up a war with the DPRK and being blamed for it is pretty much the only way I can possibly see Trump ever leaving office for any reason.

WW3: Trump as ‘War President’ or ‘A Fish Rots From Its Head’



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have long thought Trump wants a war or major terrorist attack. That’s the only way I can explain his callus disregard for our national security. Well, he may very well have his chance to be a “War President” after all if the worst happens in Asia.

I don’t really expect any of this to happen. North Korea just wants some attention as it occasionally does. What’s going on between India and China right now is far more rare, but to date, it’s still kind of a so-what situation. But let’s suppose the worst happens and there are several regional wars that occur at the same time that are marketed as “World War Three.”

What happens?

Well, initially, Trump’s popularity will skyrocket.

Then everyone will realize, again, what a moron Trump is and it will go back down to where it is now. A conventional war between the United States and the DPRK would be a short, bloody affair. It would probably be about three months long.

That’s the best case scenario. If it went nuclear, then, well, goodbye LA, NYC and DC. The DPRK, meanwhile, would be nothing more than radioactive sludge.

But, again, I just don’t see that happening. Everything is going to calm down and things will go back to “normal.” Trump’s still never leaving office for any reason, though.

Why War With The #DPRK May Be Inevitable

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

While it pains me to admit this, I fear we have to accept that war between the United States and the DPRK is almost frightfully inevitable in the near future. When I say “near future” I say sometime between now and Election Day 2018.

I say this because Donald Trump not only lacks basic human empathy, but his personality is such that he will desperately want to boost his poll numbers by Election Day 2018 so Congress doesn’t flip and lead to his impeachment and conviction. What better way to do exactly this than to do a preemptive war against the DPRK in just the right way so by November 2018 American television screens will be plastered with the imagines of the oppressed citizens of North Korea being liberated.

The moment a preemptive war with the DPRK starts, the political clock will be stopped and restarted. The moment the war starts, there will be a darkness at noon not seen since 9/11. And Trump will not only see an enormous boost in his popularity, he will also be a war president with all of the additional power that is associated with that designation.

There is a real risk that should a war with the DPRK begin, that we’ll wake up a few later and there we’ll be in a significantly more dystopian world than we ever imagined. The what’s even more troublesome is many liberals will, once the war starts, be quite supportive of a war with the DPRK because the people of the DPRK legitimately do deserve to be liberated. It’s just that up until this point, the cost of that liberation would be so tragic and so costly that we did not give it real honest thought.

But now, because of the self-evident mercurial nature of Trump what was once unthinkable is now definitely thinkable. If 3,000 deaths on 9/11 are enough to fundamentally change the American experience, imagine what 30,000 American expat dead caused by a preemptive war with the DPARK might change. It seems obvious that we’re rushing towards a dark and dystopian future because of a possible war with the DPRK.

I’m not saying I can predict the future, but I am saying the conditions are there for a preemptive war with the DPRK. All I can say is we will have to be prepared to fight for the American Republic when a war with the DPRK tests it beyond what we could have possibly imagined would ever happen.

Germany No Longer Trusts America Because Of Trump: What Could Go Wrong?

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

The news out of Europe today is that German Chancellor Angela Merkel says Europe can no longer rely upon the United States and that it must go it alone from now on.

This is pretty earth shattering stuff in the context of the last 70 years or so. Of all the possible outcomes of Trumplandia, this is got to be up there with worse case. So not only is Donald Trump trying to establish something of an autocracy domestically, internationally he’s managing to fuck things up pretty well, too.

I always thought that things would go down like this: Trump would meet with Russian President Putin at some point and Trump would lift sanctions on Russia while giving Putin the go-ahead to make a major landgrab in Ukraine, if not elsewhere.

While that’s still a possible outcome, it looks as though there was another possibility that I did not imagine: our allies themselves would get fed up with Trump and decide that they could no longer trust the US to back them up on a strategic level.

This may be looked back upon as the moment when Trumplandia force some serious shifts in public policy in ways that none of us could have expect. There is now the very real possibility that there will be no need for Putin to meet Trump face-to-face. Putin could challenge NATO in a major way — first in Ukraine, then elsewhere — knowing Trump will be so busy talking about crowd sizes and leaks that he won’t have the time, nor the inclination, to do anything about it.

Not to get too bombastic, but the entire liberal post-WWII order is beginning to have a few bolts pop off. This is the first real demonstrative sign that the world is now a lot less safe in the age of Trumpandia. It is possible that Putin will feel so embolden by all this that NATO states in the Baltics may be gobbled up without the United States blinking an eye.

I really don’t what to make of all this. This is one of those events that is so heady and potentially significant that we can’t fully comprehend what it all means right now. We’re going to need some time to digest all of this, see how it plays out.

And, remember, we still haven’t had a major international crisis during the age of Trumplandia. It will interesting to see what Trump does — or doesn’t do — when he actually has to be the leader of the free world. My fear is he will totally not be up to the task and what could otherwise be managed with some proactive diplomacy will devolve into something significantly more serious.

Right now, Ukraine and North Korea are the places I am most concerned about. Ukraine, in particular, is a place where the conditions are now ripe for a major land grab by Russian forces. Maybe I’m being too alarmist about that, but history would suggest otherwise.