Would you agree on a pre-emptive strike against North Korea?

[Final-Fan]

Soundwave said:

Azuren said:

I don't feel concessions should be made to any country that tries to pick fights with a super power just so it can continue being a massive cult.

Yeah and I don't think North Korea really gives a crap what you "feel" or about being liked. Their primary objective is to ensure the survival of their regime. The only difference is they're pretty fucking good at playing this game as opposed to some other "rogue states". 

At this point the US already has many allies with human rights issues and their no.1 trade partner is a so-called "communist" country in China. I guess what would really be the difference in normalizing relations with North Korea?

Give them economic incentives, in return they agree not to fire shit over Japan, tone down the rhetoric, and improve the living conditions of their citizens. IMO that's the only logical play here. 

I agree with you that Bush's stance simultaneously told the DPRK that playing nice was not going to be as lucrative as previously expected, while aggressively pursuing nuclear capability might be a useful tool to increase their perceived and actual military defensibility now that the USA was actively invading places that it got super pissed off at. 

However, I disagree with your claim that giving economic concessions will alleviate the situation.  Any aid we give will, I believe, go straight to their military and/or party loyalists with very little trickle down effect. 

I doubt that they will agree to stop firing missiles over other countries, because—let's be honest here—if you're in North Korea and you want to test a long range missile, what else are you going to do?  This is both a source of legitimate concern for the DPRK's neighbors and a legitimate desire on the part of the DPRK. 

My personal feeling about the proposition that North Korea's nuclear capability is improving too much and/or too quickly and we have to act now to stop it is this:  as far as stopping them from being capable of nuking U.S. assets, it's already too late.  Even if their missiles couldn't get to the west coast, or even if they could but we could shoot them down, they can certainly nuke what we have in South Korea and Japan.  But who's to say that their missile capabilities will get better faster than our anti-missile capabilities?  I don't think there's such a certainty that a later conflict will be much worse than one today that we should trigger a nuclear war now when we might avoid one by waiting. 

The DPRK might fold in the face of a joint China-USA conventional weapons operation without resorting to nukes.  I don't know.  But doing anything of the kind without China's firm assent would be an invitation to World War III.  China wouldn't want to, but if NK hit them in its death throes in the wake of unilateral U.S. strikes I don't think anyone knows what would happen.