Journal Mysticalfruit's Journal: More stuff to chew on...
To continue the discussion about NK is to wonder what'll happen to the crumbling infrastructure and their ?nuclear? arsenal.
At a certain level, even though Kim's a wack job, you'd have to think that at some level there's a general who has the brains to go "Ya know, even if we had a dozen of these bombs, we're going to lose." Though if people weren't aware, NK has managed to drop missile parts on Alaska. So, if they wanted they could with drop a bomb on San Francisco. What's a more frightening prospect is NK starving would degenerate into a civil war and it's nuclear material would go to the strongest general or the highest bidder. (though the strongest general wouldn't be too bad provided they didn't have the intention to use it) So, in a nutshell, NK worries me.
The next area that frightens me in terms of future stability is China (and India). China has a couple of major problems that it doesn't like to talk about. I'll mention the first one and then talk about both of them when I talk about the second one. The first problem is AIDS. Right now China has an out of control AIDS epidemic that it isn't talking about or doing much about. The second and more serious problem is peasant unrest. The great divide between the peasants and "haves" in chinese society grows every bigger. These "haves" have the money to buy the medicines to stave off the effects of AIDS. The peasants who have little or no education about safe sex practices come to the cities (most of them male) come to the city to make money to bring home to their village. Once in the cities they engage in risky sexual behavior. In one region 11% of sex workers tested postive for HIV. They then go home to their village and well you get the idea. The thing that's dangerous is that this is directly effecting the cogs of chinese industrial might. What happens when large numbers of it's working age population can't work anymore, i.e. start dying in droves. Now the government has gotten off their asses on this, but so far it's been really slow to react. When the unrest bit comes in is that at a certain point the workers are going to realize that the government a) knew this was happening b) did nothing about it. That's when the shit will hit the fan. Though at that point it's a bit like beating up the captain after the ships already gone over the waterfall. China's social fabric will start to rip when there isn't enough food. Then international investors will start bailing out (though that will have happened earlier (probably right after the communiest party is dragged out in the street and dismembered by 100 million enraged peasants).
India frightens me for all the same reasons as China. Rampant poverty, population explosion combined with an explosive HIV situation.
If you've been following the news, you'll see that there are some major issues in the Ukraine right now. Basically, according to the exit polls the non russian backed canidate should have won, but the russian backed canidate won instead. To top it off, international monitors reported voting irregularities. Though they haven't said what those were. In any case, right now there are tens of thousands of Ukranians in the street demanding that the "winner" be redecided. This brings up the next question. What if russia has been trying to influence the election in Ukraine? It's not that inconcievable. Considering that 15 years ago, it was just a satelite state of the USSR. Everybody thought that Putin was pro-western president until he suddenly ignored all kinds of russian properly law and gutted russians largest oil company on grounds that people have argued are "flimsy" (such as the company suddenly having massive tax bills out of nowhere). Could we see a new soviet union reemerge? IF it did, what ramifications would that have on our current military strategies? We've moved away from fighting the monolythic enemy (USSR) to the current situation where we're basically the worlds targets... Though we do have to remember that alot of messes that we've made in the past were to harrass the USSR and now those messes have come back to haunt us. (i.e. Afghanistan)
At a certain level, even though Kim's a wack job, you'd have to think that at some level there's a general who has the brains to go "Ya know, even if we had a dozen of these bombs, we're going to lose." Though if people weren't aware, NK has managed to drop missile parts on Alaska. So, if they wanted they could with drop a bomb on San Francisco. What's a more frightening prospect is NK starving would degenerate into a civil war and it's nuclear material would go to the strongest general or the highest bidder. (though the strongest general wouldn't be too bad provided they didn't have the intention to use it) So, in a nutshell, NK worries me.
The next area that frightens me in terms of future stability is China (and India). China has a couple of major problems that it doesn't like to talk about. I'll mention the first one and then talk about both of them when I talk about the second one. The first problem is AIDS. Right now China has an out of control AIDS epidemic that it isn't talking about or doing much about. The second and more serious problem is peasant unrest. The great divide between the peasants and "haves" in chinese society grows every bigger. These "haves" have the money to buy the medicines to stave off the effects of AIDS. The peasants who have little or no education about safe sex practices come to the cities (most of them male) come to the city to make money to bring home to their village. Once in the cities they engage in risky sexual behavior. In one region 11% of sex workers tested postive for HIV. They then go home to their village and well you get the idea. The thing that's dangerous is that this is directly effecting the cogs of chinese industrial might. What happens when large numbers of it's working age population can't work anymore, i.e. start dying in droves. Now the government has gotten off their asses on this, but so far it's been really slow to react. When the unrest bit comes in is that at a certain point the workers are going to realize that the government a) knew this was happening b) did nothing about it. That's when the shit will hit the fan. Though at that point it's a bit like beating up the captain after the ships already gone over the waterfall. China's social fabric will start to rip when there isn't enough food. Then international investors will start bailing out (though that will have happened earlier (probably right after the communiest party is dragged out in the street and dismembered by 100 million enraged peasants).
India frightens me for all the same reasons as China. Rampant poverty, population explosion combined with an explosive HIV situation.
If you've been following the news, you'll see that there are some major issues in the Ukraine right now. Basically, according to the exit polls the non russian backed canidate should have won, but the russian backed canidate won instead. To top it off, international monitors reported voting irregularities. Though they haven't said what those were. In any case, right now there are tens of thousands of Ukranians in the street demanding that the "winner" be redecided. This brings up the next question. What if russia has been trying to influence the election in Ukraine? It's not that inconcievable. Considering that 15 years ago, it was just a satelite state of the USSR. Everybody thought that Putin was pro-western president until he suddenly ignored all kinds of russian properly law and gutted russians largest oil company on grounds that people have argued are "flimsy" (such as the company suddenly having massive tax bills out of nowhere). Could we see a new soviet union reemerge? IF it did, what ramifications would that have on our current military strategies? We've moved away from fighting the monolythic enemy (USSR) to the current situation where we're basically the worlds targets... Though we do have to remember that alot of messes that we've made in the past were to harrass the USSR and now those messes have come back to haunt us. (i.e. Afghanistan)
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