Barring military action against North Korea - which would lead to colossal cost in economic damage to South Korea’s economy, etc. - it’s well likely that Pyongyang will have a fully-fledged strike force of nuclear-tipped, functional, ICBMs within a decade or two.
So - is it that bad?
It’s highly unlikely that North Korea would use them first, or sell them to a terrorist third party. A decade or two from now, it’s also perfectly possible that American/South Korean/Japanese military technology will also have made strides to the point where it will be possible to conventionally knock out North Korea’s nuclear arsenal in a preemptive strike, or also intercept them mid-flight.
It’s not likely that North Korea would use nukes against the USA in the year 2030 in a first-strike any more than the Soviet Union would have used nukes against the USA during the Cold War, and that was a Soviet arsenal 100x larger than such a North Korean nuclear arsenal would be.
Is it that we’re afraid of “legitimizing” nuclear proliferation? Of letting the DPRK get “respect?” Pyongyang may not fear sanctions, but a country like Iran - a much more modernized, well-off, and prosperous society than North Korea - may still fear sanctions if it follows Pyongyang’s example.
What, exactly, is *that *scary about North Korea having, say, 50 ICBMs and 100 warheads?
Can’t think of a single reason for a rational leader to use nukes; while they will be in a shelter the people who suffer under them will die in the retaliation strikes. They won’t have anything left to rule. The pointlessness is pretty inescapable.
The operative word was of course ‘rational’.
Obv. it suits the US military and contractors to have a huge bogeyman they can dispatch aircraft carriers towards, with the corporate media happy to offer the public images of sweeping decks full of taxpayers cock waving excellence, and a big old flag fluttering overhead.
It suits all parties really; jong-Un gets to play with his toys and troll around, the US gets to validate an absurd expenditure and pretend.
NK has had the ability to nuke all but the US and western Europe for a while now. More than enough to cause major damage to US interests (nuke Japan, South Korea, Australia).
No it is not a good thing but for all their crazy talk I think MAD still applies even to them. They have to know the day they launch even one nuke against anyone it is all over for them. Even China, on their doorstep, will stomp them if they do that.
Their crazy talk only serves to protect them. I think they leave little doubt that if anyone attacks them and the government is in danger of falling they will press the button. Which is what MAD relies on really.
Actually all the artillery pointed at Seoul, South Korea has been enough to keep everyone at bay (also China).
My question it what does China think about them. It’s like having a rabid dog that keeps people away that you do not want around but still…rabid dog on your doorstep.
Someone made a comment in another thread that Kim’s current behaviour is actually having a positive effect on America’s relationship with China - that it has kept Trump being nicer to the Chinese than he appears to have originally intended to be.
I found that pretty interesting. I would not be at all surprised to find that NK and China have a gentleman’s agreement whereby Kim gets to dance as close to the crazy line as he likes as long as he stays juuust this side of it. If they do, they certainly won’t be telling us about it.
If Kim attacks anyone, it won’t be them first. If he does get seriously out of line, they can stomp him fairly easily, and not only will no-one mind, they’ll probably be applauded by a grateful world. It’s hard to see anything about the situation which isn’t pretty ideal from the Chinese POV. And then their public announcements along the lines of ‘gosh darn it there’s only so much we can do with the crazy kid, it’s all up to YOU guys’. Uh-huh.
Looking at the Cold War, the Soviets and US had a pretty stylized dance for conventional saber rattling against each other to minimize the risk of a larger war starting. While both sides would arm/equip/train proxies to fight against the other or the other side’s proxy, both sort of respected the need to maintain at least mildly plausible deniability while doing so. Nuclear implications affected our decisions with respect to both hard and soft power. That was especially true after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both sides wanted to avoid the flashpoint that might lead us down the path to large nuclear exchanges.
NK, just in the last decade, as part of their brinksmanship has fired artillery rounds into South Korea, sunk a naval vessel, infiltrated troops south of the DMZ, and jammed GPS signals. There’s a direct, and heavily militarized border, for small incidents to occur every hour of every day even without the higher level decisions being made to use force. NK hasn’t shown a change in how they are managing the conventional side of their approach towards SK since they first successfully tested a nuclear weapon.
It’s a more volatile backdrop. In the late Cold War we were like two kids holding boxes of matches while sitting in a room next to a big pool of gasoline. Every now and then we might step away and carefully light a match before shaking it out. North and South Korea have been two kids sitting in a room occasionally lighting and throwing matches at each other. Recently someone added a small pool of gas over in the corner. By itself that hasn’t changed the risk too much. We’re debating whether it’s an issue to keep adding more gas.
You have an autocratic regime isolated from the world with a supreme leader of questionable stability and with possibly a limited understanding of how the world outside his borders works, in charge of nukes. Now, there is no given that the regime itself is internally stable.
What scenarios can you see in which this goes badly ?
Nuclear bombs are actually pretty small (although heavy). There has been speculation about briefcase nukes but not sure those were ever a thing. It would be a big briefcase and very heavy so not really practical. There was also a nuclear bazooka. So a guy with a bazooka shooting nukes. Not a great idea since the guy shooting it is alarmingly close to the blast.
Sorry - what I meant was - are North Korea’s nukes miniaturized to fit on ICBMs. I know of course that America’s, China’s, Russia’s, etc. ICBMs carry nukes.
Their leader is neither stable nor sane. It is in no ones best interest for them to have that capability. The question is, to what lengths will what country/countries go to stop it?
I can’t help but think that if the enough of the major powers cooperate fully, this could be solved easily (the ‘many hands make the burden light’ approach).
Unfortunately, as long as 1 or 2 of the major powers think that they can get away with keeping Kim as a point-and-click nuclear powered marrionette, this will drag out.
The main problem is the North Koreans supposedly have a ridonculous number of artillery tubes pointed at Seoul, South Korea (which is surprisingly close to their mortal enemy). Something like 10,000 artillery tubes. If you do the math you realize they can throw a nuke’s worth of firepower into the city every hour.
Sure an attack on them would be going after those but Seoul would take major damage no matter what. And we have not even counted NK actual nukes yet.
Then add in China has been a protector of North Korea. Indeed it was the Chinese coming across the border that turned the American tide and almost pushed them off the peninsula. China may not be thrilled with NK but they’d be less thrilled with the US attacking them.
That’s why no one is in a rush to put an end to the idiocracy that is North Korea.
Cite from any of the subject matter experts? I’ve not seen a single one of that agrees North Korea currently possesses that capability. They seem to be of a mind that the striving is still underway.
As to NK nuking a distant country they can certainly do it today via a bomb placed in a cargo container that gets shipped to wherever through enough middlemen to escape detection.
Agree they lack missile delivery systems today that can do the job past (at best) nearby areas of China, Russia, & Japan.
I also question the OP’s contention that NK wouldn’t happily sell (or give) nukes to outsiders. Handing a few to ISIS or Al Qaeda just for the lulz might not be a bad idea from their POV.
The real answer comes down to rationality. And the significance of both capability *and *attitude as I explain more fully here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=20174964#post20174964.
Most governments are rational. Until they aren’t. Kim, Assad, and maybe Ahmadinejad’s Iran are examples of regimes that if not fully irrational; could tip (or could have tipped) over the edge at any time. Hitler before the invasion of Poland is another example of a regime that appeared rational to many outside observers until it stopped behaving that way.
Right now NK is Number 1 on the unstable psycho government hit parade. That makes them *the *country it most behooves the rest of the planet to keep in check. Permitting them to upgrade from actively threatening 20 million people to actively threatening over a billion seems … shortsighted.
