which do you think is more likely to elicit a military response from the united states: dead south korean soldiers, or dead american soldiers?
A rational actor would not attack South Korea at all.
if you would take the time to actually read the content of my posts, you'd find that this is the statement i've been disagreeing with for 2 pages now. rational people can disagree about things. rational people can make miscalculations. rational people can be influenced by emotions, ideology, appeals to concepts like justice/retaliation/whatever, etc. your argument rests on the idea that all rational people see the the same way: the way you see them. that's not an argument; it's just ego.
please stop pretending that all rational people always agree with each other about what is most rational. how do you not realize that the implication of that belief is that everyone who disagrees with you is either crazy or just trying to annoy you?
An irrational actor would attack South Korea regardless of US presence. Tell me, what exactly is the US presence supposed to be doing if Kim Jong-un is just a nutter who is willing to get himself and his country destroyed regardless of the consequences?
here's a scenario: without a us presence on the peninsula, the dprk could be more emboldened to
attack more south korean ships with sub attacks, or
plant more landmines on the sk side of the border, or whatever. i mean i know a rational actor would not attack south korea at all lol, but setting that aside, suppose south korea gets all pissy and finally decides to hulk out on north korea. so they get into a bunch of shit, and north korea goes all guerrilla war, and then maybe china or russia or both decide to start materially aiding the dprk and the peninsula is now up to its dick in a new korean war. or something along those lines.
to be clear, i'm not saying that absolutely 100% would definitely happen in exactly that manner, but it's obviously not hard to think of some scenarios in which a us military presence would be a useful means of de-escalating south korea from going to war. sunk warships are exactly the kind of event that causes otherwise "rational actors" to make less-than-optimal decisions.
Asking people to pay for a service provided isn't extortion. Other countries can afford extravagant social and education programs because a completely different country is absorbing their defense costs. It's time they pay up a few billion dollars at a time. I mean, it's just "petty cash," right?
right. compared to our budget, it's small change. sk isn't fueling their university system by saving $2bln on military expenses, and our healthcare system isn't $2bln away from being top of its class. so imagine the audacity of actually phoning up an ally and saying, "give us $2bln or we're going to take our security forces and go home." forget about the utility of the troops: it's just a fucked up thing to do to a nation we call friends. we've promised to guarantee their security, and keeping us troops there is as much about the gesture as it is anything else. it signals to both koreas that we are serious about protecting these allies, a signal that probably could have prevented the first korean war.
that was a HUGE contributing factor of the first korean war: sung incorrectly perceived the us to be uninterested in supporting the south because of ambiguous and often downright misleading signaling by the us.if anything, suddenly bailing from the peninsula makes such miscalculations more likely.
Oh, please. This is just embarrassing.
We'd "cooperate" with North Korea too, if they actually had anything worth having.
i'm not sure why i should be embarrassed to say that russia and the dprk are qualitatively different and do not require identical foreign policies. i still don't get what russia has to do with whether or not the dprk is a threat to seoul.
ffs the dprk doesn't even have a 'let's try not to nuke each other hotline.' they don't cooperate on arms control at all. they regularly threaten to destroy south korea and the us. they semi-regularly attack and kill south korean military personnel. we don't trade with them and we actively try to stop them from trading with others. they're ruled by a dictator with nearly absolute authority. the list goes on and on...