Bulletins and News Discussion from April 14th to April 20th, 2025 - The Lamentations of a Levy-Loving Leader

Image is of Trump's initial set of reciprocal tariffs. Source is CNN and Reuters.

It's difficult to keep up with the news around the tariffs; they get instated, then dropped, then reinstated... for example, on Friday, Trump said that certain electronics like smartphones would be exempt, causing markets to rally a great deal, but now the Commerce Secretary has said that they might not be exempt? The state of play right now, if you haven't been keeping up this week, is that the US recently announced a 90-day global pause on implementing the tariffs he had planned (that is, 25% on certain Canadian and Mexican goods, and at least 10% on every other nation) but nonetheless increased tariffs on China to 145%.

Meanwhile, China has been - quite remarkably - standing their ground, increasing tariffs on the US to 125%, and putting restrictions on rare earths. Xi Jinping has been in Vietnam and has made statements against a tariff war there, saying that it would have no winners. Meanwhile, a Chinese spokesperson has essentially said that China can endure the tariff war due to the increasing demand from its domestic market in combination with its growing economic ties with other countries.

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In case anyone's wondering "why doesn't North Korea make a move on South Korea, or China on Taiwan" with the large build up of US military assets in the Middle East, with many of these assets coming from South Korea and US military bases in the region, it appears that the US has simultaneously reinforced their defences (or offensive capabilities) in the the region, with four B-1B Strategic bombers deployed to Japan, along with additional F-35A 5th generation stealth aircraft and F-35B vertical/short take off and landing (V/STOL) 5th generation stealth aircraft deployments. There are 10 US bombers deployed overseas (6x B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and 4x B-1B bombers), flanking China from both the east and west. The 6 B-2s are currently carrying out operations against Ansarallah in Yemen.
This is also the first US bomber task force deployment to Japan since the Vietnam war.
There's also an interesting, maybe coincidental, may not, payload match up here. 6 B-2s can carry 96 JASSM stealth cruise missiles internally (6x16). 4 B-1s can also carry 96 JASSMs internally (24x4).
- China probably strongly prefers stability in the region so they are probably using whatever leverage they have to maintain it. But honestly, why would North Korea make a move on RoK, China or Taiwan even with a golden opportunity? What would they gain from that?
  
  they wouldnt gain anything, they would be handing the us a golden opportunity to generate instability in the region and thus divert large capital flows away from northeast asia and back towards the us. the point is to slowly and painlessly strangle the us influence out of asia while the us is bogged down in the middle east again.
  you see the beginnings of this with yoons ousting and japanese waffling on anti chinese aggression while simultaneously trying their hardest to keep the ukraine conflict alive so that the americans have things to worry about other than igniting ukraine 2.0 in westpac.
  
  kicking out the US from the penisula so they cant do "training drills" that look like the precursor to mass slaughter of the people of DPRK multiple times every year. finally fully putting an end to the long years of humiliation and colonization suffered by the korean people. access to a ton of arable farm land that would greatly lessen the pressure they're under to feed the country because of how mountainous the DPRK is which currently causes them to be much more heavily reliant on fossil fuels for the absolutely massive amount of farm machinery+fertilizers needed to intensify agriculture to a level sufficient to stave off famine, although this gain of farmland would depend on the war being relatively quick so the damage to farmlands was not so great.
  
  Occupied Korea's military is larger even without US help, so do we really think DPRK could both win a war against them and occupy the territory for very long? Unless there are at least 30-40% of citizens in South Korea who actively want DPRK to take over and will assist with that, it seems that even the most favorable situation they could get, where the US is too occupied elsewhere to support South Korea, it would still be a long shot that comes with with a risk of ending a decades long stasis that has been good for the DPRK to maintain.
  
  im not saying they're going to do it, i was answering "why would dprk want to do this"
  as to occupied korea's military being larger, how would we even know that? not to say you're wrong but the DPRK always seems to play its cards relatively close to its chest to me so i dont really understand where these military comparisons come from.
  I dont even think its the popluation (who by and large already hate their lives in occupied korea anyways lol), moreso its whether they could bribe enough SK officers (especially) generals. imo that's the condition they would probably be looking for to pull the trigger on any sort of restarting of the hostilities
  also the stasis was really bad for the dprk when the USSR collapsed, if china ever collapsed they would be done for so there's very real incentive there especially with their ideology that emphasizes self reliance to be able to shore up that weakness (relying on china) if the opportunity ever came up
  
  Ah sure I see what you're saying, yeah I agree that those are potential benefits they would consider.
  I originally just googled the numbers but looked into the source and everyone seems to be quoting The International Institute for Strategic Studies(IISS) from their annual global military capability assessments called The Military Balance
  The extra time looking around has lead me to learn some new data which changes what I originally said: DPRK is estimated at 1.28 million standing army, 600k army reservists and 5.7 million paramilitary reservists 7.58mil RoK has 555k standing and 3.1mil reservists, plus 3 mil paramilitary reservists.
  So DPRK technically has a bit more people according to these estimates. I don't see anything about where IISS sources their info.
  Yeah having Generals on board would be ideal, but when you have a large population of people who see themselves as westernized and also did mandatory military service, even when they hate how their government is going it doesn't mean they are going to be happy about their entire society changing drastically under the rule of the people you have been raised to believe are your worst enemies.
  I wish for a unified DPRK but seems like pretty much everyone except maybe Yemen works under the premise that a tense stasis is a better position to be in than an active war with a neighbor. Of course it isn't easy to be in that position, and the DPRK has had to struggle immensely due to it, but unless they know they are absolutely going to sweep the floor with minimal losses or that the enemy is going to strike first and they need to preempt that, keeping your people alive and your society developing is often thought to be better than initiating a hot conflict.
  
  NK can wait 10 years to SK to finally destroy itself.
- I genuinely dont think the DPRK is interested in fighting another devastating war than it is just letting the South royally fuck up without outside input.
  For China, I don't think they'd move on Taiwan unless they were convinced the US would back down.
  Right now it's much more advantageous to prepare and let the Americans make the first move
- They're moved from America, right? Perfect time for Canada to pre-emptively strike (as a last resort)

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