> The most blatant endgame here for the US is "NK hacked us. They have nukes! It's time to invade!". And then NK becomes a new market for the West to take over for cheap as they did in Communist Yugoslavia and so on
But "They have nukes!" would be reasonable enough reason to invade. Why not work with that narrative as opposed to "They're hacking us!"?
Some might say the US has a moral obligation to pursue regime change in N Korea, but US foreign policy has focused on isolating as opposed to invasion
I do think nukes are the primary reason, much like with Iran. But you see a trend with Iran, Russia, China, NK- when the country is too legitimate to invade (compared to little Serbia or Somalia), isolation and sanctions are pursued.
Perhaps it is convenient fear-mongering and deepening of arguments. America seems to be pretty good at spreading multi-faceted arguments about why you shouldn't even _think_ about the legitimacy of a multi-polar world.
I guess my point is, the American government and official state media seem pretty content to have these multi-bullet playbooks against nations that are quite deeply fulfill the criteria of "non-western", "non-democratic", "non-capitalist", but still quite serious "economic and militaristic threats"
> I do think nukes are the primary reason, much like with Iran. But you see a trend with Iran, Russia, China, NK- when the country is too legitimate to invade (compared to little Serbia or Somalia), isolation and sanctions are pursued.
Stuxnet was (in a sense) a much more interesting topic than this leak. It showed that the retaliation is pursued not only by isolation and sanctioning, but with (subtle & undercover) direct attacks too.
But "They have nukes!" would be reasonable enough reason to invade. Why not work with that narrative as opposed to "They're hacking us!"?
Some might say the US has a moral obligation to pursue regime change in N Korea, but US foreign policy has focused on isolating as opposed to invasion