HUH?
N Korea has already given nuclear weapons technology to Syria.
If Israel hadn’t had the courage to destroy it, then ISIS would have nukes today.
No, once we kill the leader.
Not only is there no evidence that North Korea has ever built a nuke capable of fitting on a missile, the missiles they have also aren’t very reliable. And the missiles with the largest payload capacities probably aren’t the longest-range, either.
As for putting one in a cargo ship, just how much commerce does North Korea have with the rest of the world, and would any of it at all not go through checkpoints? You can detect a nuke on a cargo ship just by pulling up alongside it in an inspection boat.
Direct commerce, not very darn much. But if they manage to smuggle to device in pieces into China or SK it would not be that difficult, in principle, to blend it in with the millions of containers and bulk cargos leaving those countries for other destinations worldwide. If SK’s the target they don’t even need to get it aboard a ship.
I know there are efforts to scan many containers entering US ports for suspicious radiation signatures. AFAIK it’s far short of all containers just due to volume constraints. Though that may have changed in recent years. I have zero knowledge of how much radiation or radiation shielding or both can be detected and how much of a gap there may be.
Does anyone have any good recent info? Even vague DHS press releases would worth something.
This is not correct. Assured Deterrence (the “Mutually” was added later by critics to produce the droll acronym) is a particular theory of strategic deterrence with a specific set of prerequisites, including that the scenario is set between two (and only two) parties with effective parity and surety in their nuclear arsenal, ‘perfect’ information about each others abilities, and the ability to accurately and precisely detect and validate a launch, as well as being rational actors. The precepts of Assured Deterrence do not apply to North Korea as an ostensible nuclear power in numerous ways.
The North Korean nuclear program currently has not shown itself to be capable of building weapons more powerful than low powered, probably gun-type nuclear weapons. The largest estimated yield to date for a North Korean nuclear test is about 25 kT. However, “miniaturizing” (or more accurately, packaging) a nuclear weapon onto a missile is not that difficult in and of itself provided that you have a good sized booster and are delivering a unitary, non-maneuvering RV. The more challenging parts are making the system reliable after experiencing the dynamics loads during ascent, assuring that the weapon is safe until it is deliberately armed, and for ICBM class payloads, designing and testing a reentry vehicle (RV) that can survive reentry heating and precisely hit the intended target, none of which has been demonstrated by North Korea to date. It took the United States years of testing to develop a reliable RV system for the high precision Minuteman ICBM family, and the design of modern safety and reliability systems took decades of advances.
Getting back to the question of the o.p., the concern isn’t that the ostensible leadership of North Korea will unilaterally initiate an attack all on their own but in the restricted intelligence of their hermit kingdom may misidentify an action as a threat, or that an internal power struggle may release nuclear weapons from government control into the hands of an alternate faction or military coup, which could then misuse them in any number of ways. Other concerns are proliferation–selling nuclear materials or even whole weapons to third parties to use as they see fit–or accidental launch. The United States and its nuclear-armed NATO allies have put much effort into assuring that weapons in their nuclear arsenals, even if stolen or lost, could not be employed by a non-authorized actor without the arming systems essentially being rebuilt. The same is true for Soviet weapons, and (hopefully) newer generations of Indian and Israeli weapons. However, we do not have such assurances for emerging nuclear powers such as Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea, for whom the development of the weapons themselves and assurance of their functioning is presumably judged as more critical than safety and security so there are very real concerns about the weapons falling into the wrong hands or being used for purposes other than ‘rational’ deterrence.
Stranger
I think the overwhelming concern is that the United States can’t count on North Korea as a Rational Actor. And while the Rational Actor model isn’t always the correct one to use, it’s usually the starting point. MAD worked to a significant degree because NATO largely counted on the USSR and to a lesser degree China acting rationally. There is little confidence that North Korea now, or in the future will act predictively.
And keep in mind this isn’t Trump or the United States acting flippantly on it’s own. Our allies in the Pacific are increasingly nervous over the actions of both NK and China.
At some point in the future we will be asking the same question we did after WW2. Why didn’t we stop this back when we had the chance, and it would have been easy.
NK will blow up. Its only a matter of when and it will be nasty and brutish when it does happen.
At least for Pakistan, that is not true.
I remember reading one exercise where to avoid scanners, they placed a missile launcher on a container ship and fire it as it neared the coast.
From your own reference:
*Nonetheless, nuclear security in Pakistan has evolved substantially during the past nine years, and although improvements are still needed, both physical security and operational procedures are now stronger.
…
Pakistan can deliver its nuclear weapons either by aircraft or by surface-to-surface missiles. The weapons are believed to be kept separate from their delivery systems, with the nuclear cores removed from their detonators.[5] Some estimates claim that the weapons themselves may be scattered, at up to six separate locations.[6] It may be difficult to ascertain the number of actual weapon-storage sites, but nuclear weapons certainly would be dispersed at multiple sites.
Despite their disassembled status, General Khalid Kidwai, head of the SPD, has stated that the weapons could be assembled very quickly.[7] Although not originally equipped with permissive action links (PALs), which require the entry of a code before the weapon can explode, each Pakistani warhead is now fitted with this code-lock device, according to Samar Mubarakmand, one of Pakistan’s top nuclear officials and scientists in an interview with a private TV network in 2004.[8] The employment of PALs was publicly confirmed in November 2006 by General Kidwai.[9] In addition, Pakistan follows a two-man rule to authenticate the codes that call for the release of the weapons. It may in fact be a three-man procedure in some cases. Such authentication processes are standard in advanced nuclear-weapon states.
…
The United States and Pakistan initiated a bilateral dialogue on improving nuclear security in the wake of a visit by Secretary of State Colin Powell in October 2001. The results of the discussions have been very closely held, though not strictly secret, as references to the cooperation have been made in Western and Pakistani news media, in other expert publications, and in briefings to Pakistani parliamentarians.[12] The discussions have been conducted at the expert level and on a nonsensitive and nonintrusive basis, with Pakistan insisting on clear redlines. The scope reportedly includes export and commodity controls, PRPs, nuclear material protection, control and accounting, transportation security, sharing of best practices, training of security personnel, and the provision of equipment. According to the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the cooperation has been “in the nature of rudimentary training and ideas,” and the equipment provided for tracing nuclear materials is of a “basic nature.”[13]
This cooperation does not extend to the “safety” of nuclear weapons because of U.S. legal limitations as well as Pakistan’s insistence on nonintrusiveness and maintaining secrecy related to its nuclear weapons and their locations. Another very sensitive issue is the suggestion that the United States is engaging in contingency planning to “secure” or relocate Pakistani nuclear assets in case of a breakdown of order.[14] This is not part of the U.S.-Pakistani nuclear security dialogue. Pakistan would be very wary of continuing cooperation with the United States on nuclear security improvements should this issue become an official priority. It could raise the question of whether the United States has given up on the objective it had after the 1998 nuclear test of rolling back Pakistan’s nuclear capability. It also would raise questions about the sincerity of statements by knowledgeable current and former officials about the improved security and safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.*
In essence, although Pakistan has made overtures of improving security of their nuclear weapons, the weapons themselves and their storage facilities have not been made available for inspection, the weapons themselves have been “fitted” with a PAL but there is no indication that they have designed in mechanical safety interlocks which would prevent them being used in a non-standard manner, and Pakistan has not been forthcoming about cooperation regarding nuclear weapon safety (which is somewhat understandable insofar as the United States has the stated policy of working toward nuclear rollback in Pakistan but no corresponding policy regarding their nuclear-armed neighbor of India). Given political instabilities in Pakistan there are still substantial concerns that weapons could be used by a military coup faction or acquired by fundamentalist ideologues for use in terrorist action or as bargaining chips with the potiential for an accidential or deliberate nuclear detonation.
That is plausible although launch at sea is more difficult than people often imagine. A more plausible scenario is a semi-submerged vessel with a quiet diesel-electric propulsion system hugging up to a coastal city and detonating in water. However, for the previous regimes of North Korea, their nuclear ambitions have clearly been in line with the policy of getting the rest of the world to accept the regime as a legitimate power and to get concessions and aid in exchange for promising to curtail their weapons program. With this current regime it is difficult to tell what their plans are, and the repeated testing of ballistic missile delivery systems, often with little or no prior warning, is provocational.
For the part of China, the instability that spifflog notes is clearly a part of their strategy in being patron to North Korea to undermine US influence in Asia and the Western Pacific where they seek to be the regional authority. However, this may backfire on them if North Korea becomes destabilized or a military coup takes over the nuclear weapons arsenal. China is basically the conduit for all commercial goods and necessary aid, so it still has an essential stranglehold on the government regardless of who is running it but should North Korea take action that the international community cannot ignore, such as a direct attack on South Korea or Japan, China may well be in the position of having to impose order or suffer having American and European forces operating in the East China Sea and Yellow Sea, and on the upper Korean Peninsula, which it absolutely does not want. There is also the danger of a three cornered conflict with Russia entering on its own agenda, which has the potential to be a shitstorm that makes the conflicts over Syria look like a playground fistfight.
Dealing with this issue without turning it into an open regional conflict requires careful diplomacy with multiple players (at a minimum the governments of North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia), not some Art of the Deal bullshit where you try to keep everyone in suspense by claiming a phantom armada is steaming into Inchon. And getting any effective action will require diplomatically convincing China that it is in their best interests to convince North Korea to pull back and stop acting provocatively, while building up confidence in the allied nations potentially impacted that the United States has the situation under control and there is no reason to use preventative action. The notion that normal bilateral nuclear deterrence under any label could prevent a provocation, real or imagined, from leading to wider conflict and perhaps open warfare is just not based in any kind of critical assessment or history.
Stranger
I actually don’t think that Kim is as insane as people in this thread suggest. He is simply the center of a cult pf personality that he needs to maintain to keep power, and who has developed a healthy sense of paranoia that requires the purging of those in his regime that might be powerful enough to challenge his rule.
I think he realizes that the practical use of nukes is as deterrence. He knows that if he uses them his lifespan reduces to a number of days. The only time he will use them is if he finds himself in a situation where he has nothing left to use. But by having them it makes it in the rest of the worlds best interest that Kim is never put in such a situation.
The problem is that his regime is internally rather unstable and so even if handled with kid gloves there is a chance that Kim will find himself backed up against a wall and let the nukes fall where they may as a last ditch hail Mary, or final act of vengeance.
They will probably have it sooner than a couple of decades at their current pace, but I don’t think it’s a given. China still has quite a bit of influence and are really starting to exert it to put pressure on NK to stop being so provocative. The thing is, NK is a lot closer to the edge than people seem to realize, and one of the thing that’s kept them from going off the deep end has been China’s help, support and economic assistance.
Well yeah…of course it is. You are talking about a highly unstable state wanting to get its hands on a weapon system that could kill millions. This is a state that has in the past attacked its neighbor in a variety of ways, has even use nerve gas to assassinate the brother of the current thug in chief and seems to have little grasp on reality. A state where they keep a tight reign on information and basically indoctrinate their citizens in a hatred of the US and SK from kindergarten on. People think Trump’s antics wrt fake news and spin are over the top, but in NK they would see him as a piker. 
What do you base this on? I can think of several scenarios where NK could use the things first (I don’t see them selling them to terrorists)…economic collapse or widespread unrest at home with the regime directly threatened being only two. There isn’t much that the US or its allies can directly do about this at this point, but trying to whitewash the potential for disaster here is unhelpful.
That’s not the real danger, though. I don’t think anyone realistically feels that the NKs will ever be able to threaten the US existentially with nuclear destruction. There is a very real danger, given the NKs attitude towards the US that they might attempt to strike a US city, and would kind of suck to have them hit a large city in, say, California. More likely, however, is that they would be used against some of our principal allies, such as Japan and of course South Korea.
No…NK already has nuclear weapons, so it’s not a large change in the status quo. Having an effective delivery system certainly ramps up their prestige, but thanks to China the NK regime already has nukes. No, the issue is in their developing an effective delivery system that would allow them to effectively threaten their use outside of North Korea and having that in the hands of a regime that is as unstable and nuts as little Kimmy 3.0 and his merry band.
What’s scary about a mental case going into a shopping mall with a Donald Duck mask and a Mossberg? Clickity clack…QUACK…BOOM! The fact that a bunch of cops will undoubtedly show up at some point and shoot the guy is going to be cold comfort to those folks in the mall when the nutter is there with the shotgun.
KJU has the potential to kill millions very quickly and you are relying on him acting rationally by YOUR definition of rationality to prevent him from using them. But if he feels that he’s got nothing to lose at some point, then what seems rational to him would be very different than what would seem rational to an outsider. And the thing is, NK is unsustainable…eventually it’s going to collapse. Catestrophically. Most likely sooner rather than later, especially if China actually follows through with their economic pressure.
Part of the problem is that it is, in some sense, in Kim’s rational interests to act irrationally.
MAD works when neither side is crazy enough to commit suicide. After the Cuban missile crisis, both the US and the USSR took steps to avoid a situation that would escalate into making the other side crazy enough to commit suicide. Kim acts crazy enough to make the rest of the world think that he might be crazy enough to commit suicide. The danger is that he might be perceived to be crazy enough to commit suicide, so that the US and SK attack before he can actually commit suicide by attacking Seoul, or Japan, or (eventually) the US. It’s as dangerous as this kind of brinkmanship always is.
I don’t think Kim is crazy enough to attack before he has his back to the wall, and has nothing to lose. But I, and the rest of the world, aren’t sure. That’s what he is banking on.
What if there is another famine, and the generals in NK decide Kim has to go, and there is a faction that still supports Glorious Leader and his decision to nuke Seoul? Then Kim might really decide to go out in a blaze of glory, or of radioactive dust. That’s the problem with a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Regards,
Shodan
You are apparently possessed of critical information that the world’s top intelligence agencies don’t have. You might want to let someone in the Department of Defense know.
The Taepodong-2 is not an operational weapons platform yet and in fact there is no reason to believe that North Korea can launch it with a nuclear weapon board and strike a target in Australia. North Korea has never successfully tested a re-entry payload on any missile, so far as I am aware.
Plus the whole blowing up on the launchpad thingy during tests. Might not be the most reliable or wise option to put a nuke on a rocket that might not make it more than a few feet off the ground before exploding.
According to Wikipedia the taepodong 2 with a range of 6000 km, barely reaches Australia’s northern coast, but that missile wasn’t intended as an ICBM. The link you cited puts their maximum missile range at 4000 km.
Any proliferation is a problem, no matter how sane or stable the new nuclear-armed country appears to be at the moment. Those nukes are going to be around for a long time, and regimes change.
Pariah states with nothing to lose are of course even more frightening.
I really have to address this, because the “nuke’s worth of conventional firepower aimed at Seoul” is a weird bit of information that’s sort of out there in the gestalt psyche as far as North Korea goes, but is actually dramatically overstated.
Firstly, the vast majority of NKs artillery tubes pointed at Seoul can’t actually hit Seoul proper. They can hit the sparsely populated suburbs, sure, but very few of NKs 10k artillery tubes can hit the very densely populated areas of Seoul.
Secondly, Seoul is built with the risk of artillery bombardment in mind. Metro stations that double as bomb shelters are abundant.
Thirdly, the dud rate of North Korean artillery fire is astronomical (upwards of 25% based on available data), and their ability to avoid being blown sky-high by counterbattery fire is minimal. The effective length of any North Korean artillery bombardment of Seoul before they simply have no operational firing positions left is a matter of hours at best. And to top all of this off, South Korea has access to the most advanced anti-artillery systems in the world, akin to the Israeli Iron Dome.
So, to summarize - yes, North Korea has artillery aimed at Seoul, and could potentially (assuming here that they do not have weapons systems capable of delivering, say, shells loaded with VX nerve agent) do very serious harm to Seoul, killing thousands of people.
But they cannot level Seoul, and they have nowhere even remotely in the realm of a nuke’s worth of firepower aimed at the city. There is no real risk to Seoul’s continued existence.
There’s no conclusive evidence NK can nuke anyone with missiles. But obviously from a basic map if their capability to hit non-contiguous US states were (or has been) perfected then Australia would also be included, for whatever that’s worth (no offense to Australia and I’m sure it’s of some import to them whether they’re in range, but doesn’t seem the whole NK nuke issue hinges much on that).
But it’s reasonably assumed that’s not far off for missile classes they’ve (more or less) demonstrated mastery of. And also once they have an operational SLBM and sub to launch it, denying strike capability against almost any country is a matter of being sure the sub could be intercepted (history of ASW sans code breaking information* suggests that’s not something to bet on).
A nuclear BM armed NK is bad. Besides the characteristics of NK itself, it’s also a precedent, and sooner or later maybe a fanatical regime really isn’t ‘deterrable’. Already there’s the precedent of accepting nuclear NK (at least as in conducting tests of devices, though of publicly unknown practicality as weapons). At least in theory that’s been effectively delayed for awhile with Iran. But the right question is definitely ‘how bad compared to what’s necessary to stop it?’. It’s not making it a petty political issue about who did nothing, who is ‘saber rattling’ etc.
Although politics is part of reality. And Obama never made the argument NK nuclear BM capability v the US was acceptable, while doing pretty much nothing about it. Is it totally unfair to say he should have made that argument? Of course Bush II achieved nothing in this regard either nor Bill Clinton but that was when NK was further away. Nor is Trump necessarily going to be able to accomplish anything, nor do I think he’ll necessarily go stomping into some military action there. If frustrated IMO he’s more likely to declare it’s all solved and try to change the subject, but it remains to be seen.
Anyway the subtext to a lot of the debate is ‘why don’t we just let this happen? It’s not worth trying to stop’. But very few public figures let alone elected politicians in the US are willing to say that openly.
*big, big factor in otherwise amazing, and long seemed so in writings till decades after the war, wide area interceptions of Axis subs in WWII (just moving around the open oceans, not contricted waters, not leaving ‘flaming data’ of the positions of ships they attacked). Since then there have been advances in long range passive detection but dedicated fixed arrays like SOSUS don’t exist anymore, and never covered everywhere. I guess who says the US and/or ROK don’t read NK codes or have HUMINT they aren’t risking blowing cover on for anything less dire? But anyway while it’s certainly very possible a NK SSB could be intercepted on a long mission, not a sure thing IMO.
I think you are making some unsupported assumptions:
You never know. With such an unstable regime and leader, it’s hard to predict what they will or will not do.
[QUOTE=Velocity]
or sell them to a terrorist third party.
[/QUOTE]
I could easily see this happening if they are isolated enough and need the cash.
[QUOTE=Velocity]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Two very big assumptions, with no evidence cited that this is possible in the near future.