← Back to context

Comment by baxtr

19 hours ago

Do you believe it’s a good thing North Korea has the bomb?

It’s good for them. That’s the point they’re making. All this shows that for many countries nuclear proliferation is the way to guarantee their safety.

  • Who is "them"? Definitely not the people.

    "safety" for whom? Definitely not the people. They starve.

    • The people arent being pppressed by the bomb, but by their leaders. The odea that the US would liberate all peoples from tyranical rulers is naive. The US routinely installs and supports tyrants who allign with their geopolitical goals. Pol pot, pahlavi, pinochet, marcos, suharto, seko, the banana republics. Nukes didnt enable those guys, the US did

    • Safety for whomever controls the nukes, whether autocratic (Iran) or democratic (Ukraine).

      Russia would not have attacked Ukraine if they still had their nuclear weapons and Iran wouldn’t be under attack now if they had them too.

      I’m not saying whether it’s goods or bad that any or specific countries have nuclear weapons, that’s beside the point. The point is that this attack sends the signal that the only way to guarantee your safety is to have them.

Kinda? I can't help but notice that I'm not particularly worried about my friends or family being sent off to fight North Korea anytime soon.

I believe that it is a rational step they have taken as an act of deterrence.

I don't believe any country having nuclear weapons is good.

If you are the leaders of North Korea, yes

  • What about its people?

    • Yes. Dictatorships suck, but what sucks more is a civil war powered by foreign governments doing a proxy war.

      Syria is the prime example of this. A major reason for the civilian slaughter was foreign intervention trying regime change.

      25 replies →

    • The fact that NK possess nuclear weapons strongly discourages external players from attacking it. It does not in any way change the tools NK has at its disposal domestically.

      If you're trying to say that had NK not had nukes we would bomb it for 'humanitarian purposes' or 'on behalf of its people' then I have a couple of bridges for sale.

      2 replies →

Theyve had the bomb for a while and south korea still exists and is thriving. I have seen alot of batshit insane talk from them, but no real negative consequences for any other country. So it hasnt really been a negative for anyone. I dont think theyll use it first either because they know theyll be glassed if they do

Now if they didnt have the bomb, i dont think they would have lasted this long. I think the US would have gone and "democratized" them to smithereens a while ago.

  • South Korea has the capability to build nuclear weapons very quickly if needed, they're a nuclear threshold state.

  • Nuclear weapons have a very brief transition from “everything is fine and nothing bad has happened” to “we’re completely fucked.” The fact that nothing has happened yet isn’t very reassuring to me with all the ways things can go wrong. The threat of retaliation certainly puts a damper on a first strike, but there’s always the possibility of a mistake, someone feeling backed into a corner, or not believing the consequences, or just going a little crazy. The more countries that have them, the more likely this becomes.