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[–] 41 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Looks at Ukraine and the Budapest Memorandum

Hard to argue with Kim here.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    Hell, looks at Iran. North Korea got nukes and now their leader is parading his daughter on a tank and preparing her to succeed him. Iran tried to negotiate and their now-leader's father, wife and children are all dead. Given the crippling sanctions already on Iran, one approach is clearly more successful than the other.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago

    I haven't seen much evidence that Kim Ju-Ae is being raised as a "successor," KJU has an elected position. I do think he is preparing her for politics, but it may not be in the capacity of General Secretary of the WPK or anything like that.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    I bet Iran will now. They’d be pretty stupid if they didn’t.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    Iran has something the DPRK does not, though, Hormuz. It's essentially an economic nuke, though obviously it isn't as effective at preventing attack, it seems very effective at flipping the tides without inviting an actual nuke on them in retaliation like MAD doctrine would result in.

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  • [–] 1 point 22 hours ago* (1 child)

    It's sort of one-time-use though. Now that it's been used, the gulf states are building pipelines to bypass the gulf and vulnerable countries are taking the opportunity to decarbonize. If the straight opened tomorrow, these countries would continue those efforts to reduce their strategic vulnerability. It won't be as strong of a deterrent the second time around.

    Also, a nuke is supposed to deter aggression. It didn't do that.

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  • [–] 2 points 22 hours ago

    It's not a 1 to 1, and the strait still provides a huge capacity for oil flow that pipelines do not have. Further still, the world is transitioning to solar (at greater and lesser rates), reducing the importance of pipelines anyways.

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