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5/21/2008 7:45:06 PM

Quote :

"mitsubishi, not a part of defense eh? oh, they only started b/c they developed airplanes and airplane engines. but people like you don't learn those things. they continue assuming."

Just because I've been reading about Japanese history (almost up to the 1900s now), I want to respond to this. Even though it's completely irrelevant to what I was saying about the JSDF.

When Japan came out of the warring states period into the Tokugawa period, huge amounts of resources slowly shifted from war to... other things as it entered a time of peace and complete isolation from the rest of the world for 250 years. Historians see this in a couple of ways, commonly as a flourishing of Japanese culture. The Samurai class shifted to more of an administrative role with ever increasing complexity and bureaucracy. Merchants slowly gained power, society's structure changed slowly.

When pressures from the rest of the world mounted in the 1800s, they stood no chance against attack. A complete sitting duck. A prominent opinion at the time was that they had to open up to the rest of the world, for the sole purpose of building a modernized navy so they could defend themselves and preserve their way of life. People said that the privileged of the nation would have to change their lifestyles because they had become too extravagant through hundreds of years of peace. Apparently even those people understood the guns versus butter economic principle. A host of silly plans were thrown around that would allow them build a defense force and not open their culture and way of life to the world.

Even before Perry landed, there was a minority who claimed Japan would need to not just build a modernized military, but use those forces and build a small empire, just to keep them safe, and insulated from other nations. Another 50 years, and this idea made almost too much sense...

--
Just look at all this stuff that only happened because of the use of force to back politics. The Spitfire included. I guess some of it's good and some of it's bad. Lot of clear direction this gives on on how much return DoD spent money gets.


^^ it's a decrease in yen or as percentage of GDP. It's going down in any unit you use.

[Edited on May 21, 2008 at 8:06 PM. Reason : ]

5/21/2008 8:04:14 PM

Quote :

"One way or the other, about the only significant advantage N. Koreans would have on their side are their good looks"

That, and the ability to turn a city of 14 million into a "sea of fire" in the first ten minutes of an attack.

Quote :

"RedGuard played the Lioncourt Rocks card..."

Yes, I played the Lioncourt Rocks/Dokto/Takeshima card because it's very typical of what's going on in the region. Yes, they are making progress forward in a two steps forward, one step back sort of way. HOWEVER, the problem is that every time they take that step back, there's a very real risk that less than rational decisions are made and things go to hell.

Korea is suffering the same sorts of problems as Japan because they took the Japanese economic model like much of the rest of the region. Sharing pop stars and modern cultural phenomena may be a positive step forward, but it's hardly going to seal the peace. People all over the globe may love American culture, but that hasn't stopped them from strapping explosives to themselves. Europe in the early 20th century was in some ways similar, sharing a lot of cultural concepts across borders, hosting joint events, and whatnot. That didn't stop them from killing each other by the millions. Same in East Asia: it does not take much, not much at all to raise historical specters and stoke nationalist sentiment, particularly in Korea and China when it comes to Japan. That is where the danger is.

I'm not saying that war is inevitable, but to say that they'll all live happily and war is an impossibility is also just as unrealistic. Things are okay now, but that's because economic times are good in the region. What happens when that changes, when rising resource costs strangle economic growth? Again, unlike Europe, the nations in this region don't have any sort of real organizations that build confidence measures. ASEAN+3, EAS, and APEC are not mature enough to handle it, possibly 50 to 100 years off at least from anything close to the EU or EC. There's still a sense of unease among all the nations of the region, and its reflected in their defense budgets. China is experiencing double digit percentage growth in their defense budget, South Korea is talking about a 10% annual increase in their defense budget through 2010 and a 7.8% increase from 2011 to 2015 with money going to develop the advanced weapons systems that are overkill for North Korea; this is the sort of equipment required to take on nations like China and Japan. While the Japanese budget is decreasing, it's still the third largest in the world, behind the US and Russia. You don't burn that kind of currency unless you're not confident about the motivations of your neighbors.

Quote :

"I heard someone call a black person nigger the other day. Maybe we need to worry about a race war here?"

A racial slur from a private citizen is one thing. A threat of sending twenty warships by the president of a country against a survey ship, a move which had tremendous public support, is a whole different matter.

Quote :

"History's a bitch. Hey, here are two things that have worked once or twice"

History is a bitch, especially when wounds don't heal clean. Yes, education and democracy will help bring peace, but it's no guarantee either. During the 2005 Dokdo mess, it was the educated writing columns in Korean newspapers talking about how Korea needs to buy more AEGIS cruisers because the navy was insufficient to battle the Japanese. Large doses of education and democracy didn't stop the United States from flattening a nation it didn't like on the other side of the globe. Besides, a lot of the largest players in the region are still lacking in one, the other, or both.

5/21/2008 9:33:52 PM

Quote :

"Have you ever watched cable news by the way?"

I try to avoid it for that very reason, come to think.

Quote :

"They're not even that outnumbered!"

Three and a half million people is nothing to sneeze at.

Quote :

"1) education 2) democracy"

Reasonably educated people living in a democracy helped put Hitler, Mussolini, and a variety of other less-notable but similarly unpleasant people into positions of power.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of both, but I don't think they're going to preclude the need for a big stick any time soon.

Quote :

"That, and the ability to turn a city of 14 million into a "sea of fire" in the first ten minutes of an attack. "

There is that.

And let's not forget that Kim Jong Il's sanity tends towards the questionable, such that even a high probability of defeat is not necessarily enough to keep him reigned in.

Quote :

"As I mentioned before, Japan has several very real threats that require substantial military assets."

With the exception of North Korea, I disagree that any of them are real at all. South Korea and Japan are both sort-of-democratic U.S. allies, and along with China stand to lose immensely from America getting pissed off at them. If we stop protecting the first two, they suddenly have to pony up for their own weapons. If we stop trading with any of them, their economies will suffer catastrophically.

Saber rattling is useful to get support, but no leader of any of those countries is crazy enough to think that a shit-fuck little island is worth the serious economic, military, and political consequences of conflict.

5/21/2008 11:33:05 PM

I can't bring myself to think that Lioncourt Rocks is anything more than political comic relief.

You want something that actually builds tensions, look at the Yasukuni shrine. I still can't believe any of you would even attempt to claim that SK-Japan could go to war. Not now, not in the next 50 years. Warmongers!

Quote :

"That, and the ability to turn a city of 14 million into a "sea of fire" in the first ten minutes of an attack."

what in the hell are you trying to say? The nuclear issue?

And just for the record, SK and Japan have more than sufficient capabilities to build nuclear weapons themselves. Probably even have good enough grade of plutonium to use. Why not? Because they're too educated to let their leaders do something stupid like that. Thank god they don't have Republicans there!

Quote :

"With the exception of North Korea, I disagree that any of them are real at all. South Korea and Japan are both sort-of-democratic U.S. allies, and along with China stand to lose immensely from America getting pissed off at them. If we stop protecting the first two, they suddenly have to pony up for their own weapons. If we stop trading with any of them, their economies will suffer catastrophically."

ding ding ding

We live in an interconnected world.

5/22/2008 7:28:57 AM

Quote :

"Why not? Because they're too educated to let their leaders do something stupid like that. Thank god they don't have Republicans there!"

How naive. I guess you also believe the lie that Israel has not developed any nuclear weapons either?

5/22/2008 9:10:34 AM

ya damn right I don't believe Japan has developed nuclear weapons.

Israel has had politicians make "gaffs" where they admit to having them, so I'm going to have to go with 'highly likely'.

Simply having the power to wield power does not mean that one does so. If you think Japan or SK have secretly developed nukes, you're an idiot. In their own press, people have discussed the possibility of other nations thinking they have used their infrastructure to build weapons, so they're not blind to this either. There's something called the IAEA btw. There's something called the non-proliferation treaty they happened to sign. There's something called peace.

it's a nice word.

5/22/2008 10:05:04 AM

I didn't say they did have nukes, merely that I would not go around proclaiming they do not have them because, honestly, how would we know if they did? If the only reason you know the Israelis do is because some politician 'accidentally' said so, is it not possible that the Koreans learned from this and so don't tell every politician? On the other hand, one of our politicians claims to have invented the internet, does it make it true?

So, again, you are naive if you believe whatever politicians tell you. Unless you work for the CIA you must entertain the possibility that at least South Korea, whose people to this day suffer emotional revulsion due to Japanese occupation, might have developed nukes to prevent such attrocities from happening again.

5/22/2008 11:06:54 AM

funny this whole thread is about japans right to not have a military.


countries can still "bitch and moan" all they want, yet they still remain free to not have a military.. what's the problem?

5/22/2008 11:15:54 AM

Quote :

"what in the hell are you trying to say? The nuclear issue?"

No, he's referring to the largest concentration of artillery in the world, all of which is pointed directly at downtown Seoul (which is very close to the border). In the opening minutes of the war, all of those guns start firing. It's one of the reasons why a North-South war is such a nightmare scenario, because unless there was quite a bit of warning then the death toll just in the first half-hour has the potential to make Dresden, Tokyo, even Hiroshima look tame.

5/22/2008 12:12:12 PM

^ do you have any links, I want to read about that.

5/22/2008 1:59:15 PM

Quote :

"The capital Seoul, only 60 km (37 miles) south of the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone that has divided the peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953, has long been within range of one of the world's most powerful artillery batteries. South Korea's Defense Ministry said the North had amassed more than 13,000 pieces of artillery and multiple rocket launchers, much of it aimed at Seoul. Jane's International Defense Review estimates that if North Korea launched an all-out barrage, it could achieve an initial fire rate of 300,000 to 500,000 shells per hour into the Seoul area -- home to about half the country's 48.5 million people."

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/06/27/north_korean_guns_clear_and_present_danger_to_south/

Just the first thing off a google search, but it gets the point across pretty clearly. This is one of those things that I have come across quite a lot over the years talking with military folks and course instructors.

As the article goes on to point out, the quality of maintenance for NK weaponry is no doubt lacking, but even with a lot of fuck-ups that's a lot of shells in the first hour. Similarly it goes on to point out that the US and ROK have worked quite a bit on counterstrikes, for obvious reasons. But that's a hell of a lot of guns to destroy, guns that would certainly get off many rounds before retaliation was complete.

5/22/2008 4:18:16 PM

Quote :

"But as a relatively basic weapons system, a rain of artillery would be the North's most effective and reliable way to hit the South fast and hard, they add."

Ok, one of the key elements of this, is that at such a short distance you don't have to have advanced or any "smart" missiles, or may not even be mobile or many other sorts of things we would often associate with an artillery. As in, these could be barley above the level above a direct projectile, and are probably developed to a minimum of accuracy necessary, as in the Seoul city limits.

It's almost like trench warefare tactics... with a retardedly large trench.

5/22/2008 5:01:33 PM

Quote :

"what in the hell are you trying to say? The nuclear issue?"

No, the artillery issue as GrumpyGOP pointed out. Of all nations involved in the six party talks, South Korea is the one that cares about nuclear weapons the least since the North can easily mess up the South without them. North Korea also has shells that can hold chemical and biological agents. That much firepower going into a city like Seoul is going to easily kill hundreds of thousands.

Quote :

"I can't bring myself to think that Lioncourt Rocks is anything more than political comic relief."

It's funny right now because nothing happens, but if nutcases in Japan keep insisting on poking the South on the issue, and if the South continues its pattern of deploying military forces to respond, then it doesn't take much for something bad to happen.

Quote :

"And just for the record, SK and Japan have more than sufficient capabilities to build nuclear weapons themselves. Probably even have good enough grade of plutonium to use. Why not? Because they're too educated to let their leaders do something stupid like that. Thank god they don't have Republicans there!"

Japan doesn't need to build a bomb because they're under the American nuclear umbrella. As for South Korea, don't count them out. They've been caught once building a nuke back in the 1970s and once by the IAEA in 2004 for illegal enrichment activities. Apparently those educated people didn't think their actions through given the tensions on the nuclear issue with North Korea around that time.

Again, this is all side show to my main point: the region is not as stable as you're giving it credit for. All the players are spending huge chunks of change in what looks like the start of a regional arms race. The Japanese budget may have stagnated, but its still the third largest. The Chinese are rapidly increasing their annual spending. The South Koreans are building cruise missiles capable of hitting Beijing and Tokyo, far beyond any possible need for North Korea. At the same time, you don't have the sort of mechanisms that promote peace like in Europe. Nothing may happen and cooperation may grow, but when neighboring nations are escalating their defense spending and developing their power projection capabilities, nothing good can come of it.

5/22/2008 9:23:25 PM

So increasing military spending isn't a good thing.

Some countries are more likely to wind up as an alley in a world conflict than as an enemy, presumably a differential increase in military spending for a closer nation would be a benefit to our nation. But if things are so non-clear cut, we don't even know enemies are enemies, allies are allies. The only irrefutable benefit to national security is increase in domestic spending.

If you trust your leaders.

Add, subtract, gather intelligence. The only true benefit to world security and the lives of it's citizens is decreasing military spending. Everywhere. I don't mean to suggest this in a specific sense, like Iraq war, but the end result of ALL conflicts that we engage should be less armed struggle and buildup. Else, we failed miserably.


^ Do you even know what's happened in Asia in the last 15 years? South Korea was fucking backwoods like Vietnam in 1993. The "Asian Tigers" have taken off at a rate and scale history has never seen. You are miss-allocating the fairly modest pride those people express to be a member of their nation as destabilizing of the region.

You think it's scary that South Korean kids draw pictures of poo smeared into the Japanese flag because of ownership of an island? Can you even begin to IMAGINE how scary Americans sometimes seem to other world citizens?

In any relative terms, military spending has been decreasing drastically there.



Japan, having the most stagnating economy of the countries under discussion, has decreasing military spending. Not surprising. I'll tell you what's surprising, that the net spending has only increased as much as it has in the mist of sustained near double digit growth in these countries. Even if you took the worst case scenario for unreported spending.

The region is not destabilizing, or going anywhere close to that direction, it is stabilizing. If SK builds a few missiles that have mid-range capabilities, do nothing of the good things that happened to these places give them something more worth protecting? Do these things not give them less reason to go to war? The reason those get built now, and not before is because they didn't have the ability before, and now they have less reason than ever to use them.

If a city has one more missile pointed at them this year than last, but yet the city itself is safer than last year - then trying to scare people by looking at the world through eyes of a general is fearmongering. It is not true, people are not becoming less safe.

I don't know what you imply by "mechanisms that promote peace", but I'll go out on a limb and say that East Asia has plenty of them.

[Edited on May 23, 2008 at 12:11 AM. Reason : ]

5/23/2008 12:07:42 AM

to reply to the first post...that kind of thinking was rampant after the first world war

people thought it would be impossible for another one

5/23/2008 3:48:14 AM

Was rampant in Germany? I don't think so.

5/23/2008 6:58:11 AM

Germany? No. But enough of the rest of the world that Germany got to pull all its shit.

5/23/2008 11:23:11 PM

Quote :

"You want something that actually builds tensions, look at the Yasukuni shrine. I still can't believe any of you would even attempt to claim that SK-Japan could go to war. Not now, not in the next 50 years. Warmongers!"

While I don't think we would realistically see war break out between SK and Japan, I don't think it's impossible. Every once in awhile you get some jerks on TV here declaring how SK is out to get Japan blah blah blah.

What I think is more possible is Japan and NK going at it. Between NK "testing missiles" by shooting them in the general direction of Japan and Japan pissing and moaning about allegedly kidnapped Japanese residing in NK, there's enough fodder there where if NK finally stepped over the insanity boundary we could see a scuffle.

5/24/2008 2:27:28 AM

Quote :

"What I think is more possible is Japan and NK going at it. Between NK "testing missiles" by shooting them in the general direction of Japan and Japan pissing and moaning about allegedly kidnapped Japanese residing in NK, there's enough fodder there where if NK finally stepped over the insanity boundary we could see a scuffle."

I think this is very realistic. I also think the US would be the primary driving force behind it. If North Korea and missile are in the same sentence, the US is involved, and we put strong pressures on Japan for this.

The Japanese government got to the point of making propaganda anime for that kidnapping incident.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FWsZGOQg2w&feature=related

If Japan goes to war with NK, I'm pretty sure we're in it. And we might have started it.

5/24/2008 9:59:49 AM

What I think is so funny about them being pissed off about these kidnapped people is Japan gets accused of letting their citizens kidnap children into Japan every year and aren't signatories to the Hague Convention. And then they wonder why the rest of the world doesn't really care when they complain about Japanese who were supposedly kidnapped into North Korea back in the 1970s.

But anyway, I don't think the US would even have to be a driving force for Japan to engage with NK. If NK decided to launch some sort of attack, Japan would be all over that without the US asking them to. While the kids here might not be drawing pictures of them stomping on the NK flag, there is a lot of resentment towards NK by the average citizen in Japan.

5/24/2008 11:06:53 PM

Ironically, Japan was the last one to fuck the other over in the NK-Japan relationship. In fact, you have to go back hundreds of years to find the last time any Korea attempted to do shit to Japan.

The North Koreans just have to remember Japan's support of the US in the Korean war and the Japanese occupation of Korea for decades before and during world war 2.

Funny how history works.

[Edited on May 25, 2008 at 1:22 AM. Reason : Korea = Asia's bitch throughout history]

5/25/2008 1:18:59 AM

Quote :

"Korea = Asia's bitch throughout history"

lol, I remember when I went to Korea to visit some friends there and I had this Korean chick tell me, "No one in Korea likes to talk about Korean history because we're always the losers."

5/25/2008 3:02:40 AM

ITT: white people that are scared of every other country.

5/25/2008 3:29:26 AM

^ Rat?

5/25/2008 11:32:37 AM

Quote :

"^ Do you even know what's happened in Asia in the last 15 years?"

Yes, I do. I've been to China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam at least ten times over the last period. I keep track of the press, I've read several of their respective white papers.

Quote :

"You are miss-allocating the fairly modest pride those people express to be a member of their nation as destabilizing of the region."

Modest pride would be a protest or two, a few angry columns, and maybe a protest by an ambassador. The launch of F-16s to chase off a civilian plane is not simply "modest pride." Nor is the launch of a twenty ship task force to block off a Japanese government vessel. I'm not saying that the South Koreans are going out to kill the Japanese tonight, but if a government is willing to so quickly throw around their military, even if just for a show of force, then you're taking a risk each time.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that graph. From what I see is a forty billion constant dollar increase in defense spending over six years, about 40%. Maybe that's chump change for the United States, but for any other nation, or collection of nations, that is a rapid escalation in military spending. Maybe its not keeping up with their domestic growth, but one could easily write that off, saying that defense spending takes time to catch up.

The region is becoming dangerous right now because the existing balance of power that's kept the peace is beginning to fall apart. Until a new agreement is settled, there's plenty of room for bad things to happen, especially with the large grab bag of issues that are out there. Yes, assuming that nothing happens, it'll eventually stabilize. Nations are uneasy, and their spending habits are driving it. As I said before though, it's two steps forward, one step back, and every time you take a step back, there's a real risk of something happening.

Quote :

"If SK builds a few missiles that have mid-range capabilities, do nothing of the good things that happened to these places give them something more worth protecting? Do these things not give them less reason to go to war?"

I think you misunderstand what those missiles mean. South Korea flirted very closely with violating numerous arms treaties they've signed to build them. It's a capacity that's far beyond any of their traditional security goals and its range deliberately makes a directed political statement and threat to its neighbors.

Quote :

"I don't know what you imply by "mechanisms that promote peace", but I'll go out on a limb and say that East Asia has plenty of them."

Europe has a lot of multinational organizations and multinational treaties that help bind the nations of the region together to ensure peace and prosperity between their neighbors. They also had forty years of the Soviet threat to force them to learn to play nice with each other. Eastern Asia does not. There are a few things that are emerging now, but given that the region's nations don't even have a clear vision of what they want, it's going to be a long time before you see anything like that achieve the same force as they hold in Europe. I hope that they do eventually develop for the sake of the region, but until then, the region's peace is dependent upon the good will of the nations there, and while things are good now with the economic boom times, all you need is one crisis to destroy that confidence.

Again, I'm not saying that they're all going to kill each other tomorrow, but it's not a rosy picture either. There are plenty of tensions there, and with weakening US strength and a rising China, the nations caught in between are unsure of what's going to happen. Their rapidly increasing defense spending is a sign of that uneasiness; it's not driven by the Americans but by their own self interests.

5/26/2008 11:13:15 PM

Quote :

"I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that graph. From what I see is a forty billion constant dollar increase in defense spending over six years, about 40%. Maybe that's chump change for the United States, but for any other nation, or collection of nations, that is a rapid escalation in military spending. Maybe its not keeping up with their domestic growth, but one could easily write that off, saying that defense spending takes time to catch up."

How about we put it as a percent of GDP? With your background, I'm sure you understand this well, but I'll throw in a graph.

for china:


With that kind of growth, how can a successful politician not increase military spending? I understand uneasiness will still accompany this. Even if military spending grows at a much slower rate than GDP, that still means that missiles reach further.

The events I follow are more along the lines of general politics, but I don't get the sense at all that we are just averting crisis. I seem to hear more of 'sunshine' policies opening than people destroying the relationships. Like Hu's visit to Japan

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080508a1.html

I understand that Japan's Koizumi days were detrimental, things like yasukuni happen, sheer nationalistic gestures. But the general attitude promoted by seemingly all of the governments (NK, you're not included) is one of 'friendship'. Olympics, world cups, modern culture, trade, etc really do help. Call it uneasy, but this is a far far far from turning around and shooting each other.

I mean, they are friends right?

Really, I can understand how a PRC -> Taiwan or North Korea -> South Korea skirmish could be ignited. I understand the background is there for this to happen, I don't think it would. But really, can you explain to how, realistically any other combination could happen? Why do countries go to war? National pride alone would never come close to sufficing, and you don't make money off of wars in the modern world, as we continue to show.

Seriously, what would you do? Would South Korea invade Japan? Really, what would they do? It could never be anything other than a pointless military skirmish. Say we initiate an air, sea, or ballistic missile exchange. What would that result in? There is no end goal for either, I seriously don't see it. From a purely capability standpoint, some of you're saying makes sense, but the rationality ends there. I simply don't see how any of this could happen.

5/28/2008 9:05:37 PM

Quote :

"But the general attitude promoted by seemingly all of the governments (NK, you're not included) is one of 'friendship'. "

I wouldn't agree with that. It's less friendship and more uneasy acquaintance. Especially when you have dumbass shit like this going on:

Quote :

"Japan will refrain from identifying Takeshima — a pair of Seoul-controlled rocky islets in the Sea of Japan known as Dokdo in South Korea — as an "integral part of Japan" in an educational document, a government paper said Tuesday. Earlier this month, government sources said the education ministry planned to add the phrase in a supplementary document for new guidelines for social studies at junior high schools starting in the 2012 school year."

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080528a2.html

6/4/2008 3:57:25 AM

Quote :

"National pride alone would never come close to sufficing, and you don't make money off of wars in the modern world, as we continue to show. "

National pride wins election campaigns and money for the same. The rest, people realize later. It's not really much of a concern for a politician on his last term, or trying to get to his last term.

Bush didn't get the U.S. to invade Iraq by promising it would make us money, he did it by playing off national pride in one way or another.

Quote :

"I simply don't see how any of this could happen."

You also explicitly stated, "NK, you don't count." That's a fairly big deal. And China, for the moment, is being a good boy. Based on their system of government succession, that's not a guarantee for very long. They hit a depression and all bets are off.

6/4/2008 4:03:21 AM

How does hitting a depression change everything? Countries will not go to war over natural gas fields, it doesn't make sense now and it will never make sense. The economic value of trade to whatever nation they would go to war with dwarfs the value of said resources.

Takeshima/Dokdo is at this point a laughing stock. Really, we should claim it in the name of the USA just because.

So they're going to go to war over hatred? That's a hard sell even for China.

6/4/2008 10:38:11 AM

Quote :

"But really, can you explain to how, realistically any other combination could happen? Why do countries go to war? National pride alone would never come close to sufficing, and you don't make money off of wars in the modern world, as we continue to show. Seriously, what would you do? Would South Korea invade Japan? Really, what would they do? It could never be anything other than a pointless military skirmish. Say we initiate an air, sea, or ballistic missile exchange. What would that result in? There is no end goal for either, I seriously don't see it. From a purely capability standpoint, some of you're saying makes sense, but the rationality ends there. I simply don't see how any of this could happen."

No, South Korean marines aren't about to land in Kyushu, but what happens if the Japanese were to send a small flotilla to the Lioncourt Rocks to make a point, prompting a response from the South Korean government to launch their own forces? All you need is for someone to twitch to test who has the better AEGIS cruiser. Or the South Koreans arrest or even sink a Japanese government vessel sent to survey the islands? If shots are fired, things can escalate fast. Yes, its a petty issue for such a small rock, but territorial integrity is always a very touchy when combined with strong nationalist undercurrents and a touch of post-colonial fury. The British sailed to the other side of the planet to defend an island of no strategic value that probably didn't even really belong to them just to make a point. You could replay this scenario in the South China Sea between Japan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan (though I view the South China Sea as not too likely at this time). Just pick a combination.

Or what if North Korea were to destabilize and the PLA decides to march into the North? Who knows how the South Koreans would react to that, with the PLA just a few mere kilometers from Seoul.

Or what if the North Koreans began fueling up missiles to launch at Japan and the Japanese decide to launch air strikes to blow up the launchers? What kind of reaction will that create from the nations involved?

Quote :

"How does hitting a depression change everything?"

A short term depression won't cause problems. However, if you have long term economic hardship then the temptation is there to push nationalist issues as a means of distracting the public. This increases the chances of something bad happening.

Quote :

"Countries will not go to war over natural gas fields, it doesn't make sense now and it will never make sense."

Not if our friends over in the peak oil thread are correct.

6/4/2008 1:01:44 PM

peak oil wars seem like a contradiction to me. It takes those same resources to fight the battle over them y'know. And after you get those resources, they'll dry up soon enough, just like the rest of them.

You would be hard pressed to prove that 5 years production from a Nat. Gas field at crucial time would determine future world hegemony. But I'm sure people are working on that. I still think it would work better to shut down your military and launder the gas it would otherwise used

6/4/2008 1:09:37 PM

JTown is cutting current spending on the military so they can increase spending on giant robot research.

Are we sure Rat isn't a joke/troll alias?

6/4/2008 3:48:15 PM

Quote :

"A short term depression won't cause problems. However, if you have long term economic hardship then the temptation is there to push nationalist issues as a means of distracting the public. This increases the chances of something bad happening."

Very true and you can see it happening more and more in Japan. They've been in a slump for a long time now, and the nationalists are getting more of a voice with every passing year. I'm actually surprised by some of the crap you hear in the media about "evil outsiders." I don't think you would have heard the same sort of rhetoric in mainstream media 15 years ago.

6/5/2008 3:34:29 AM

Quote :

"How does hitting a depression change everything?"

Poor people are more eager to blame someone for their problems and then shoot them. It's not like we haven't seen it happen before.

Quote :

"Countries will not go to war over natural gas fields, it doesn't make sense now and it will never make sense."

:shrug: Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in large part over the rights to oil fields.

Remember, the question isn't whether or not the offered rationale for a conflict actually makes sense. The question is whether it will help whoever is offering it obtain/maintain power. Obviously invading Kuwait had a lot of negative consequences for Saddam, all of which are almost certainly greater than whatever access to oil he would be getting.

But another very large (arguably the largest) reason he took that action was because Iraq was getting a little perturbed. Iraq had just gotten mauled in a long, pointless war with Iran, and it's not like Saddam was the best fella to live under even in the best of circumstances. Iraqis were restless.

But you know what? When Saddam demanded oil fields that Iraqis thought were rightfully theirs, then stood up to the rest of the world when it protested, Iraqis calmed down for a bit. They got less focused on what an ass ol' Saddy was. So invading Kuwait over oil didn't turn out to be worth it to the Iraqi people, it was damn well worth it to the Iraqi leadership, which (arguably) got to stay in power that much longer as a result.

If, say, the Chinese or North Korean leadership comes to a position where it is best maintained by a little scuffle with Japan, you can bet your ass they will make a scuffle happen. They might even realize that, ultimately, they and their course of action are probably doomed. But the longer you can put off that doom, the better.

6/5/2008 4:32:06 AM