Why the deliberate provocation of North Korea?

[Hugabear]

I'm not defending North Korea's actions, but why are the United States and South Korea hell-bent on provoking North Korea as much as possible? We routinely hold these naval war games in the Yellow Sea, just off the coast of North Korea. I wonder how American politicians would react if Iran, Venezuela, China, or Russia decided to hold joint naval exercises with Cuba near the Florida Keys? What if the Chinese navy decided to park right off the coast of Los Angeles and lob missiles into the ocean? I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't like it, yet that's exactly what we're doing to North Korea.

[Mike Nelson]

1. The dust hasn't fully settled...

...but I think these incidents are timed to make pols in the US, Koreas, or China look either good or bad. Our election is over, so maybe it's something local.

[dkf]

2. Kim Jong Il is asserting himself in an effort to ease his son as his successor.

If not this, he would have found something else.

The big question is what happens after he dies. That is what all the world players are watching for.

[derby378]

3. Provocation? Check this out

Courtesy of the DPRK and their sympathizers south of the DMZ:

http://www.robpongi.com/pages/comboFUCKINGUSAHI.html

[islandmkl]

4. for one thing, there is no large force of the US Army that can be put ANYWHERE, now...

the Pentagon says the Air Force and the Navy can sustain our presence and control without the Army...for a while...

you want to put us on the run?...start a local war we can't avoid...you don't even need a war, you just need involvement...

the US is, by geographical/political definiton, one of the most secure nations on earth...two borders?

we find our selves becoming surrounded OUTSIDE OUR OWN BORDERS...

time to come home, retrench, rethink, force a change that removes such threats...

'friends are forever...enemies are constant"

[Hugabear]

6. I'm all for bringing all of our troops home worldwide

We shouldn't be sticking our noses in literally every section of the globe, like we are now. Bringing home our troops and consolidating our forces would save BILLIONS per year. We already have the ability to strike anywhere in the world on very short notice, if we truly needed to. We don't need to have our troops stationed everywhere.

[Posteritatis]

5. Pretty sure North Korea's the one being provocative

They want this sort of stuff to stop, all they have to do is stop killing South Koreans. They can stop sinking South Korean ships and flattening South Korean towns and bases and sending soldiers through tunnels under the South Korean DMZ any time they like to.

While I know they're automatically the wronged party here because the US is angry at them for doing all of that stuff, it really is just that simple. The ball's entirely in their court, and all they need to do to defuse the situation is to smarten up.

[Eddie Haskell]

7. Just getting even

Remember when you were a kid and you wanted to get even with someone, so you picked on his little brother ...

"China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday in St. Petersburg."

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90778/90859/7208907.html

This is really about the US and China.

[TheBigotBasher]

9. This is nothing to do with China.

This is little boy games with big weapons, being played by North Korea. North Koreas is as much a nuisance to China as it is to the West (eg numbers of refugees and asylum seekers from NK in to China).

[Eddie Haskell]

10. Yep, and that CA missile was just a plane ...

believe what you want.

[Posteritatis]

11. Because that's less reasonable than China firing a ballistic missile in US waters? (nt)

[diveguy]

8. they hold the exercises there because

that is where the bases are. The heaviest concentration of troops is near the border. If Russia and friends hold war games close to us i dont believe we will trun the cannons on moscow.