Resolved: North Korea poses a more serious threat to US national security than Iran

Contention 1: Threats against our allies are threats against the United States. The U.S. is a large global power that seeks to protect and maintain it's military and economic interests world wide. The U.S. cannot accomplish such a task singlehandedly so we have strong ecomomic and military alliances around the globe including the Middle East and Asia. Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc aid in protecting our strategic interests such as oil in the Middle East and South Korea and Japan help protect our interests of sea trade and democracy in Asia. My point is is that our allies make up a large part of our security seeing as we see it fit to supply large quantities of aid and military equipment to those countries. Through our allies we are able to project a force to immediatley deter threats that we see as harmful to ourselves whether it cause economic or military damage. If we saw that no power abroad could somehow harm us then we wouldn't have alliances in the regions of the Middle East and Asia that benefit us while we have many that do. If any of our allies such as Israel, South Korea, or our European allies in NATO, were to come under attack, it may not affect us immediately but in the long run drastic consequences would come into affect. It would spark a sense of empowerment among our global enemies making them confident in attacking other various democratic, or capitalistic, or U.S. friendly nations knowing that that there would be no force to oppose theirs in such a conflict. When just a few of our allies such as Saudi Arabia or Japan out of the several we have around the globe, are defeated by enemies of the U.S., the world economy would immediately feel the blow of a handful of G20 nations being knocked out. We would also lose much of our ability to maintain the security of U.S. strategic interests in those regions and any attempt to do sou would result in a large devotion of military and economic effort on the part of the United States that would otherwise would have been divided amongst our allies. Therefore we have alliances and therefore we have to be devoted to defend our allies and therefore national security threats to our allies are, in the end, threats to the United States as well. Contention 2: North Korea's intentions and abilities are more dangerous than Iran's. The U.S. has the obligation to defend their allies for the U.S.'s own benefit. The U.S. also has already proven to be very effective in dealing with conventional armies in the Middle East such as with Iraq where hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers stormed the oilfields of Kuwait and in response, were pushed back by U.S. led coalition forces in a relatively short amount of time. Iran has a smaller army and Saudi Arabia for example is also in possesion of a formidable fighting force as is Iraq. So even in the event that Iran were able to defeat the armed forces of nations such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iraq, which it might not be able to do in the first place and even if Iran were able to they would undoubtedly suffer heavy losses, the U.S. would be able to effectively defeat Iran probably even quicker than we did Iraq in the first gulf war. North Korea on the other hand is in possesion of a multi-million man army with most of its forces near the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula. Despite having a defense budget of roughly only 6 billion USD, they have proven to be very, well, thrifty. They able to muster over 1 million men for active duty and up to 6-8 million in reserve forces. Along with their massive amounts of military man power North Korea is in possession of 16,400 land based weapons which includes Main Battle Tanks, Armoured Personel Carriers, Towed Artillery, Self Propelled Artillery, etc as well as over 1700 air based weapons such as Fighters, Fighter-Bombers, and Helicopters. In short, North Korea has a better chance of taking over South Korea through military force even if we backed up South Korea, than Iran has in taking over Arab oilfields in which formidable Arab forces along with Israel will fight the Iranian military along with support from the U.S. North Korea can stand a good chance against South Korean forces simply through sheer numerical superiority and any intervention involving the U.S. will turn into a second Korean war only this time more effective weapons will be used claiming tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of U.S. and South Korean lives. We will be forced to defend South Korea. North Korea has proven that they posses nuclear and biological warheads and rockets that have the ability to deliver them closer and closer to the U.S. mainland as North Korea develops more and more, unlike Iran. With North Korea in control of a G20 nation and South Korea's vast economic resources they will undoubtedly develop a more advanced military force along with more advanced missiles capable of delivering nuclear and biological weapons to the heartland of the United States. Simply uniting Korea under communism does not threaten U.S. national security, taking control of a powerful economy to develop powerful weapons capable of devastating the U.S. that will be under control of an utter anti-american dictator is and must be avoided. North Korea has proven time and time again they have no regard for their citizens well being and have constantly committed acts of war such as repeated commando missions killing hundreds of South Korean soldiers and civilians, the sinking of a destroyer and the recent bombardment of a South Korean military installation. We cannot underestimate the DPRK's willingness to go to war and we must intervene to prevent the frightenly likely scenario above. We cannot allow South Korea to be claimed by North Korea for North Korea's own economic gain so we must intervene yet if we intervene North Korea just may launch nuclear and biological warheads on U.S. and South Korean forces. Either way, North Korea has us in one hell of a pickle. http://www.globalfirepower.com... http://en.wikipedia.org...(1966%E2%80%931969) http://en.wikipedia.org... http://en.wikipedia.org...