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because I haven't linked to someone else's opinion u think my opinion is of no value? hah!
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that's not what i'm saying. what i'm saying is that it would lend much stronger value to your arguments if you did. as it stands, i have only your arguments to go on. i have no idea of your qualifications, i do not have any basis for judging the veracity of said arguments; thus, i cannot in good conscience take your arguments on a factual basis.
furthermore, the other times i say your opinion doesn't matter is not because you haven't linked to someone, but because you, like me, do not dictate government policy in china, north korea, south korea, taiwan, japan, or the united states. your opinion has, for all intents and purposes, as much value and weight as mine. however, i am still trying to convince you that giving nukes to japan would be a bad idea for all involved, not because i think it will actually affect the decisions made by the higher ups, but because i would like to dispel any notion that you may have that it will lead to greater stability in the region.
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and ur links were pretty useless. u linked to japans/taiwans/south koreas nuclear ambitions. but as has been made abundantly clear by me I am not alarmed by those things. and in the case of taiwan I've sed several times that their nuclear ambitions are not only justified, they're almost god damn necessary!
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i linked to them and specifically pointed to the parts where it said that the nuclear ambitions will cause an arms race. i did not link to them because they talked about how the nations sought nuclear weapons; that much is evident from their behavior in the past. rather, they and the excerpts were selected each for their insistence that they would create an arms race in east asia.
that's why i linked to them.
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u flame me when u stick stuff like "U make no points, or u have no understanding" etc at the end of ur posts.
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i'm sorry you feel that way. although i don't think you've seen how nasty flames really are. i have never said that you make no points; that itself isn't actually a flame, but rather a critical argument that targets your posts. i said perhaps that you didn't have any understanding, but only because your logic escapes me, and you have not given any rigorous backing to your arguments: no links, no cause-effect relationships, no basis in Realism, Constructionism, or Idealism.
a flame, however, is an ad hominem attack; an ad hominem attack is when i attack you personally, by slandering you, insulting you, and focus on you rather than the argument. i do not believe i have done that at all during this thread.
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why is it that everyone plays the "lets appease china" card.
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i'm not playing the "let's appease china" card. for you to even suggest that is more of an insult than anything that i have given you. indeed, throughout this argument, i've kept a calm, reasonable tone, not once have i engaged in putting words in your mouth or "twisting your words", as you so put it. i have never intended to insult you, and all of my arguments have targeted your arguments, not you yourself (thus, you claim that i have engaged in ad hominem attacks is erroneous).
the fact that we are no longer discussing the issue at hand, which is whether arming japan, skorea, and taiwan with nuclear weapons, is in fact a big problem. but i digress.
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why is it that everyone plays the "lets appease china" card. of course they'll feel threataned, HOW U THINK TAIWAN FEELS RIGHT NOW. I mean holy crap north korea is holding the world hostage, china is plotting endlessly to be a general dipshit. and u dont wanna give weapons to some of the sane ppl in the region?
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i am well aware of how threatened taiwan feels by china. indeed, during the cold war, and even now, although japan, taiwan, and south korea were all economic competitors, they were also all democratic allies; indeed, both skorea and japan followed the same logic that the united states had, and both promised to fight with taiwan against china in the case of any hostile and aggressive action by the communist state.
i am not saying that we ought to appease them and let them have their way; far from it. if we did, you can bet that all of east asia will come under their sway, and will jump when the chinese tell them to. i do, however, think that arming the democracies of the region with nuclear weapons will only lead to a higher-stakes and tenser situation than currently exists--and i for one would rather have that not happen.
north korea is also not holding the world hostage. rather, it is threatening its immediate neighbors and the united states (all of washington state which it can reach--and that's on an untested rocket) with its nuclear weapons in a game of brinksmanship. it is wondering how much it can get from its neighbors by brandishing the nuclear specter, expecting the rewards to be lucrative. if anything, it's more like an armed robbery, and the nations in question are not 100% sure whether the gun is loaded or not, and so are erring on the side of caution.
i also question your usage of the term "sane". kim jong-il, the current leader of nkorea, is no more insane than he is german. he knows full well what he's doing--extorting money from other to boost his ailing regime by the only means he can. he's not very good at it, but he knows what he's doing. china is also not insane. china may not be our friend, but they are very capable of making informed decisions that benefit them the most.
giving and allowing for nukes to skorea, taiwan, and japan would naturally alter the balance of power. however, i am convinced that this will lead to an arms race.
John Mearsheimer, a leading Realist thinker, cites in his book
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001) (US$19.97, Amazon.com) numerous sources which assert that "China...has made it clear that if Japan and the United States deploy missile defenses of any kind, it wil markedly increase its arsenal of ballistic missiles so that it can overwhelm them (pp376)". In that same book, he also cites sources that assert that should japan actively seek nuclear weapons it would intensify security competition in the region (read: arms race) (pp399). things are relatively stable now. china has the bomb, which sucks, but neither taiwan, japan, nor skorea are in any immediate danger from chinese nuclear weapons, thanks to the united states' vast arsenal--an arsenal of democracy, to appropriate the term. however, giving nations that china sees as potential enemies (pp375) would appear to pose as a serious security threat to china--meaning that they would invest even more heavily in modernization and expansion in their military, the very definition of an arms race.
simply put, giving japan the bomb would cause china to seek a larger conventional military and a larger nuclear force. this in turn would cause taiwan and skorea to feel justified in the nuclear club due to increased fears of their security, especially because the united states would no longer be a credible non-proliferation agent. this would also then lead to ever more increasing allocations in the budget for defense and security (the classic arms race), which would lead to a much more tense and electrified region.
that is precisely why i am alarmed. it matters not that the, as you put it, "sane" nations would have a nuclear deterrent; it worries me that the fact that they have nuclear arms will only drive china to further invest in more nuclear arms, and nkorea to sink its last dimes into more nuclear weapons, and thus, throwing gasoline on an already tense situation. kapeesh?
no. i drew a parallel. nowhere did i claim that those nations were democracies...
