Tag: North Korea

Expecting Iran to Break Is a Risky Bet: Lessons from the Iran-Iraq War

Can bullying succeed against fanatics?

President Trump has bet that pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran will force Iran to come to accept major changes in the deal or go under economically.  Furthermore, he has gone beyond invoking crippling sanctions to make an implied threat of military action if Iran continues its outlaw ways in the Middle East. Does Trump think Iran is trembling in fear of a U.S. attack?

I wonder.  I just took a backward look at the Iran-Iraq War, that lasted from 1980-1988 and cost Iran more than 150,000 lives.*  The minimum age for military service in Iran is 15; estimates put the fraction of fatalities aged 15-19 at one third (50 thousand).  Iran also sent even younger children into battle.  Although Iraq attacked first, Iran pushed the offensive for most of that time.  As a fraction of the 1980 population of Iran (38.67 million), it is about 1 out of every 258 Iranians.  A proportional loss inflicted on the U.S. today would cost 1,163,000 lives—more than twice the number of U.S. military killed in WWII (405,400), and close to twice the number killed in our Civil War (618,000).  Given such past sacrifices, I expect that Iran is ready to let its people starve rather than yield to the U.S.  After all, the North Koreans have been doing so for a long time, and Iran has far greater resources, and more friends, than North Korea.

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The Nuclear War Threat: Way Beyond North Korea

If you think you’re worried about nuclear conflict now . . .

THINK SOME MORE. 

Sure we’re deeply troubled by the prospect of a nuclear war between an American Narcissist Who Would Be King and a North Korean Dictator Who Would Be a God.  But—trying not to diminish the horrific losses such a conflict would entail—at least it would not lead to global Armageddon.  The leaders of Russia and China would keep cooler heads than either of these madmen, and avoid a widespread holocaust, although the damage to North Korea and perhaps the U.S. would be immense and long-lasting.  I trust those other leaders to be rational: however cruel, repressive, and callous they may be, they are not suicidal, neither are they unpatriotic enough to risk the destruction of their nations over North Korea.

So that you can worry about the potential for  a nuclear exchange far more consequential than Korea’s, I call attention to a piece in the September 23-29 New Scientist by Debora MacKenzie, entitled “Accidental Armageddon” —that’s the title within the pages; on the cover the headline reads “End Game: You’re right to worry about nuclear war – but not for the reason you think.” If these headlines make your blood run cold, you may find it run colder once you read MacKenzie’s article. Unfortunately, at this moment I can’t give you a link to the story, but you can find the magazine in material form at most libraries.

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“Very powerful”. . . a Trumpian Epiphany

The Errant Armada

Sorry, it’s almost impossible to get through a day without some shard of Trump-inspired government wreckage getting lodged in your throat, to be expelled by laughter over folly so ridiculous that future generations will have to conclude that someone made it up.  They would be viewing it through the cracked lens of Fake-News-Making that has become the paradigm for information dissemination in the Age of Social Media.

The ridiculous part was Donald Trump’s announcement of an “Armada” en route to the shores of North Korea, when it was at the moment actually headed in the other direction for a training exercise in the Indian Ocean. (Hapless White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was once again thrust into Alternative Facts Limbo, suspended between his clueless boss on one side, and on the other side a Press Corp hungry for the truth.)

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