Star Wars Realized: Questions for the Left

[iron81]

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But turning to the situation of North Korea I'm not sure mutually assured destruction holds. That philosophy operated with two opponents of roughly equal strength.

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You're right, MAD doesn't hold in this situation, because the North Korea situation is much more heavily in our favor. North Korea will never be able to kill the majority of Americans, while it would only take a small fraction of our nuclear strength to kill every person in Korea. The Koreans know they can never win a nuclear war against us.

[kickabuck]

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"The Star Wars project was not meant to protect Koreans". That was not my point. My point was that if Kim Jong-Il gets a hair up his arse, the Korean Peninsula will be at great risk. By not having these weapon systems be more of a priority during the previous couple decades, we have risked our own population and that of our adversary, unless of course we choose not to respond to the annihilation of a West Coast city. In effect the Left has made the possibility of a horrible decision by the leader of this country as to the response after a Korean attack, one that need not come if a missile was incapable of hitting our shores because of a robust defense. Be it with Aegis cruisers or the laser system on 747's or otherwise. Now all we have is the system deployed in Alaska which is probably not all that reliable. Hence the dangers to both populations.

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If N. Korea also has a greater degree of confidence that an incursion into S. Korea will not be met by a massive U.S. response, principally because of their belief we would not risk a missile being lobbed into the west coast of the U.S.A., such a dynamic necessarily increases the chances N. Korea will test U.S. resolve. If we had a robust missile defense system, this does not come into play.