Senate candidate Blaine Taylor

First off, I am NOT in favor of ever giving nuclear arms to either of our current two Asian Pacific allies, Japan and South Korea. The former might someday use them against us in revenge for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while the latter might attack North Koreas straightaway. Our forces have remained in South Korea since the Ike Armistice of 1953 "ended" our first Korean War, and sometime within the next decade we may very well be waging our second. Our troops are in-country not only to deter the North from invading the South, but also to keep the South from going north, just as they have been ever since we kicked out the Japanese from the Peninsula in August 1945.

Today, Red North Korea has the youngest chief of state on earth since German Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1888, with both taking over at age 29.

The NKs have been successfully playing the following game of charades with us since the (first) Clinton Presidency: 1) Generate a bogus crisis, 2) escalate tensions, 3) agree to end it by extorting enough money from the US and the other Asian powers to keep its bankrupt state financially afloat until it runs out of money the next time. So it has gone via the last three American Presidencies: Clinton 1, Bush ’43, and the current occupant of the White House.

Secretly and behind the scenes, its capital at Pyongyang is even willing to consider becoming a US ally against its current mentor state, Red China, aka the People’s Republic of China of Beijing, as long as the price is right.

The source for the above and a great deal more is the superb 2015 book by Russian author Andrei Lankov entitled The Real North Korea: Life & Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia, New York, Oxford University Press, that I highly recommend to all of you, with history of the current three generational regime from 1945-2015 inclusive.

Here are some other nuggets gleaned from therein:

• 'The ruling Commie elite accounts for but a mere 5-7% of the overall population that realizes that it will be massacred en masse if and when the regime collapses, either of its own dead weight and volition, or via Allied bombs and/or invading armies, and yes---that does include from its own northern border, with China.
• 'The NKs have had a nuclear capability since 1995, but is only just now bringing online a nuclear-tipped ability to launch weapons at us as well as at our Asian allies. In the US Senate in 2017, I would urge bombing those centers to oblivion with conventional weaponry NOW, while we still can. I recall 1981 when Israel successfully destroyed Iranian nuclear plants with a first strike that we should emulate today.
• 'However, their weaponry already went underground under President Clinton, so ground troops might be necessary to nip that danger in the bud. I’d sooner send them to North Korea---and also to Mexico---than back to the Mideast.
• 'Greater Seoul is already vulnerable---with almost half of the entire South Korean population residing there---with 24 million out of the total 50 million living within 25-30 kms from the Demilitarized Zone/DMZ, where 250-300 NKA artillery tubes are also already aimed southward
• 'North Korea fears both a US invasion and a domestic military coup, and/or a mass uprising from below to overthrow the regime, long overdue.
• 'The current Kim regime will most likely fall from within, just as did the former USSR at Moscow decades ago. The NKs are well aware of the prosperity of their southern neighbors, and want it for themselves.
• 'Not only the Internet, but also Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America will play a large role in the eventual fall of the Kim regime, just as did the latter with those lovable Bolsheviki of yesteryear in the Kremlin and eastern Europe.
• 'The estimated costs of unification of the Two Koreas is now five times more than the South’s annual Gross National Product of $3 trillion of 2010, now six years ago. The current SK GNP is about $ 1 trillion.
• 'One stumbling block to unification is that the North is now still using 1960s Soviet technology, including antiquated NK medical doctors and their "modern" drugs with their medical practices
• 'Current NK workers in the South are judged "Not eligible for anything but low-skilled and low-paid work," due to their complete lack of modern skills, thus making them poor material within any future unified framework of North and South
• 'The NKA/Army is estimated at 1.1-1.2 million troops that is considered, "Essentially an unpaid labor source," and not really soldiers as such, with a core of 3-400,000 actual warriors, mainly in its Special Forces component and the capital’s Pyongyang Defense Command. There are also other, smaller elite forces, with the remainder being "poorly-paid security guards," and even criminals.
• 'The major nuclear facility is at Yongbyun, the NK version of the former American Los Alamos, NM facility of 1945. It’s estimated that the regime has 5-10 nuclear devices now, but lacks the intercontinental ballistic missile delivery system that a US Sen. Taylor would vote to ensure that they never get, period. In 2011, then Bush Defense Secretary Gates estimated that NK would have them by 2016!
• 'North Korea’s current decline began in 1990, during the first Bush Presidency. Its current population of 24 million is ruled by its top 10,000 Commies, aided by an estimated 1-2 million "henchmen." The DPRK---or Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea---was established on Sept. 9, 1948, while the rival southern state and our ally at Seoul was founded on the previous Aug. 15, 1948. The former began as the client state of then Stalinist Russia, while the south started as our allied regime, just as had occurred in Central Europe with the Two Germanies, now reunified.
• 'North Korea became the world’s first state to ban tunable radios in peacetime within its frontiers, the betterto seal off its people from the outside world.
• 'The NK Railways still use 1930s steam engine-powered locomotives on its national lines, in a state about the size of our own Pennsylvania overall
• 'During the NK regime’s first Great Famine of 1996-99, it was estimated that between 250,000-3 million died of starvation.
• 'NK regime-supplied rations to all of 1994-2015 ended last year suddenly, with riots resulting, staged by middle-aged women; "oven" riots occured in 2005, 11 years ago, in which an estimated further one million perished
• 'SK’s per capita income is 15-40 times higher than that of the North; the latter’s much-touted 2009 currency reform failed
• 'The 2013 NK harvest was billed as, "unusually good." Historically, in all states, "unrest" starts in cities first, and last in its rural areas
• 'NK failed missile launches have been recorded for 1998, 2006, ’09, and ’12, with its third known nuclear test having been three years ago, in February 2013
• 'NK began producing HEV---Highly Enriched Uranium---in 2010, and seven years before, the regime became the first state on the planet to withdraw from the 1963 JFK-negotiated Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• 'The year 2003---13 years ago---marked the first Six-Party Talks that encompassed the US, PRC/Beijing, Russian Federation, SK, NK, and Japan. NK’s first nuclear test occurred in October 2006, in the Bush 43 era, and that same year, the Red Chinese ramped up its aid to Pyongyang that continued into the first half of 2013
• 'NK missile launches designed to hit Alaska and Hawaii failed in 2009, resulting in increased aid from Beijing to the North
• 'The PRC/Red China has waged a wary foreign policy regarding its own southern frontier Commie neighbor, preferring to see the volatile peninsula remain split into two sovereign states, but fears that its Red client state at Pyongyang will simply implode from within, just as did the former Romanov regime at Leningrad in 1917.
• 'The PRC also fears that someday NK may reassert its former alliance with the late USSR, reviving ancient Russian claims to both Manchuria and the former Tsarist/Soviet Maritime Provinces on the Chinese Pacific coast shoreline
• 'Along with both myself and contrary to the GOP’s Trump, the PRC is also con both SK and Japan ever attaining nuclear weaponry as inherently dangerous to peace in Asia
• 'The PRC’s estimated trade with NK in 2013 was $ 6.45 billion, while that figure with SK was $ 250 billion; indeed, the PRC conducts more trade with far-off Chile than it does with its own alleged "client state" to the south, Red Pyongyang
• 'As with Nazi Germany in 1938, the PRC regime at Beijing needs coal, iron ore, and copper, all of which it receives in trade with Communist North Korea
• 'Thus---and in summation---the PRC prefers the maintenance of the current status quo of and in the Two Koreas, as opposed to any change.
• 'Therefore, the US is not as bad off relative to the North Koreans as at first glance it might seem: we have the Northern regime surrounded on all sides by either outright or potential allies.

Will there be a second US-Korean War? I’d guess that the chances are 50-50 either way, just as with the current unpleasant but livable standoff we face as well in the Mideast between Israel and their tar baby, the Palestinians.

Peace is preferable to war---unless the third Kim regime moves to make its potent missile threat to our shores an actual reality. Before that appears, I say strike first, and I always will, too.

Thank you for your kind consideration!