Friday, August 11, 2017

It's a Question Best Answered Well in Advance.



If Trump picks a fight with North Korea, perhaps egging Pyongyang into some missile launch demonstration and then treating it as a pretext for declaring war, should Canada and the rest of NATO treat that as an Article 5 event? Should Canada let the Cheeto Benito drag us into an Asian war?

Let's be clear about one thing. There is no reason to be confident that China would not intervene in the event of an American, South Korean or Japanese attack on North Korea. China has made that much clear:

"If the US and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korea regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so," said an editorial in the state-run Global Times.

That's the problem. Conflicts such as a war between the U.S.and N.K. can get out of hand, drawing other nations into the fray.  According to Deutsche Welle, some nations have already declared their willingness to fight alongside the U.S.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Melbourne radio station 3AW on Friday that Washington "has no stronger ally than Australia."

"Let's be very clear about that. If there is an attack on the United States by North Korea, then the ANZUS treaty will be invoked and Australia will come to the aid of the United States," Turnbull said.


It's certain that South Korea would join the fight. Japan would probably follow suit. The rest of Southeast Asia/Asia Pacific, hard to tell. Russia also shares a small, 17 km., land border with North Korea and the Kremlin has already had NATO up to the tits. 

As for Canada, we'll stand mute until we have to make a quick and ill-considered decision, like our decision to tame Kandahar province with a piddling force of 2500 personnel.

7 comments:

Toby said...

Canada should be making it very clear that we will not in any way support Trumps wacko foreign policy, treaty or no treaty.

The Mound of Sound said...


I think Junior is too afraid to piss Trump off lest it rebound on the NAFTA renegotiation that he'll stand mute.

Toby said...

We've seen this movie before. Canadian soldiers were shot or blown up in Afghanistan in order to keep the borders open to trade with the US. That's a lousy deal.

There used to be warrior chiefs who would lead the troops into battle. Now they sacrifice the troops from afar so that business can profit. I don't know how our leaders can live with themselves.

Toby said...

"Beware the dogs of war. The same intel “folks” who brought to you babies pulled from incubators by “evil” Iraqis as well as non-existent WMDs are now peddling the notion that North Korea has produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead able to fit its recently tested ICBM." Pepe Escobar at Asia Times. http://www.atimes.com/article/north-korea-fire-fury-fear/

Is war against North Korea on the agenda? Are we being persuaded that NK has nukes and is preparing to attack Los Angeles and Peoria? Are we seeing the preliminaries as we did with Iraq?

Anonymous said...

is war against N Korea on the agenda? Nah, no preparations are being made, no ships steaming toward S Korea, no major troop deployments, nada.

Trump's lost interest. Venezuela's in his sights now, and they've got oil. That ought to please ol' Rexxon.

Cap

The Mound of Sound said...


Fingers crossed,Cap.

Anne Peterson said...

If Trump antagonizes this person and causes an incident we should NOT consider it necessary to join with NATO to help the US.