North Korea there will be blood?

N. Korea has backed themselves into a corner. Due to sanctions and other factors they are literally starving to death. To alleviate this problem they have two choices: normalize relations and lose face, or start a war that they have no chance of surviving.Their best play is to act the bully and see how much lunch money they can get, and that is exactly what they are doing. I think that the generals are smart enough to know that there is no way that their regime will stay in power if they start an all out war.

Someone in the N. Korean administration might be crazy enough to do it, but I think overall there are sane people at the top. If it even appears that they will launch one they have just opened themselves up to a massive US-led, NATO backed invasion that they know they will never survive. Ever. It is suicide.

It was a matter of policing a country so that a democratic government could be formed. We created a power vacuum and we were afraid of who would fill it. We stuck around so that we could get a government that we wanted.

Iraq was not capable of fighting a war as a nation state after week two.

The war between nation states stopped. The ability of Iraq, the nation state, to wage war was gone after two weeks. We could have just walked away at that point. Iran probably would have marched right in and taken it, but big whoop. We had beaten the Iraqi nation state that was threatening us (allegedly).Afghanastan was the same. The government had no ability to wage war.If you think I am wrong, then perhaps you could show me examples of the Iraqi army fighting US troops in the last 2 years or so?

IMHO, absolutely. The Chinese economy is joined at the hip with the US economy. The last thing they want is bad relations with the US. All we need to do is figure out a way for China to play a leadership role, and allow them to save face in the process.As for Russia, who cares. Just personal speculation again . . . I strongly suspect that Russia would rather leave East Asia to China and focus on other areas of the globe. I think it would require NATO and UN support which would be easier to get this time around given the real threat and N. Korea's stance on weapons inspections. The goal of the fighting is different than the war itself. We could just walk away and would not be under immediate threat from an army run by a nation state. What we are attempting to do now is police a nation so that a stable democracy can be formed. Whether this is a good idea or not is a totally different topic, but that is what we are doing.

We could definitely afford to do it, but it might cost more than US citizens are willing to pay. That's the sticking point.Hopefully the US will not have to bear the brunt of policing N. Korea if it comes to that. I think there are other countries in the region that would want to take a leadership role. If China does take the lead, would they allow for the development of a democratic government? That is an interesting question on its own.

That is certainly a good question. No one is asking about Estonia's position on N. Korea, or asking if Hungary is going to send in troops.Imagine the "oh shit" expression on the faces of world leaders if the US marched into the UN and said, "we really don't give a flying fuck what N. Korea does to other countries in Asia. It's not our problem anymore, you guys deal with it." Is it really in the interest of the US to be the world police? The US can certainly influence world politics to its favor, but at what price? Is there an advantage to a US isolationist policy? Would we ever elect a president who campaigned on an isolationist platform?

I am sure that there is more than one doctoral thesis on that topic. It surely deserves its own thread. In general, I don't think the US should take on the mantle of world guardian. It should be more of a group effort. The US already spends more money on their military than the next 20 countries combined, or some insane statistic like that. We are STILL occupying Germany 70 years after WWII, and still have bases in Okinawa.More importantly, we still have a lot of troops stationed in S. Korea, and they have been there since the 1950's. That is what pulls us into this conflict.

We certainly could. But what type of message would that send? If you threaten the US they back down? Is that a message we want to send?

Why do you think that the US will suffer more casualties than the N. Koreans in a war between the two countries? [And that's even ignoring the civilian casualties for the two countries]

That's a twisted piece of logic you have there. It would appear that we are playing a game of heads you win, tails I lose.

How is it honest? You will just invent whatever ratio of US soldiers to NK soldiers for your "pain" calculation that your argument needs. You are just making it up as you go along.

The average N. Korean places greater value on one N. Korean's life than on the lives of Americans. The equation works the other way as well.

Do these soldiers not have families and loved ones?