I actually highly doubt that North Korea will use them first, Kim Jong-Un knows that doing so would mean end to his dictaroship and his ruling dynasty.
…unless he feels backed into a corner and his dictatorship is threatened regardless.
We have a historical example of this. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro requested that the Soviet Union deploy and use nuclear weapons against the United States in response to an American attempt at invasion, knowing well that Cuba would be totally destroyed. This is not speculation; this is literally Castro stated during a 1992 conference in Havana between Cuba and the United States.
It is never wise to underestimate what a desperate person will do when pushed into a corner, especially if they are already poorly informed or ill-counselled.
Stranger
And are a psychopathic megalomaniac.
This might be repetitive, or, even, met with extreme skepticism…I think a mutual defense treaty between China and North Korea, combined with an agreement they will stop developing their own nuclear arsenal…would really help defuse the situation there.
Yes, any launch that threatens SK, Japan, or any other American interest or friend will likely result in annihilation of the NK as a country. So, what is the point of all the scarce resources being used to create such a force there?
If NK leader is actually, truly, building up his armaments to provide for defense of the country against attack, he should welcome China guaranteeing their safety. We should, too, as we can then use this as an opportunity to further improve our relationship with China. Why should we not do that? China never threatens us. Their economy depends, in large part, on the West buying their inexpensive goods.
And this is different from the US having tons of nukes, how again?
I think this is a case of “mirror imaging” - projecting Western thinking onto a non-Western country, then asking, “Why don’t they think the same way we do?”
Touché. Our current command and control structure for the authorization of deployment and release of nuclear weapons is predicated on the notion that the chief executive, who has plenary authority over their use, is a rational, well-informed individual who accepts expert advise and is versed in the basics of the strategic application of nuclear weapons and the specific organization of elements to provide surety against a disarming attack. For Donald Trump, on the other hand, “the devastation, the power, it’s very important to me,”, and has emplaced apocalyptic Christian fundamentalists in his Cabinet. This is frightening not only for how little consideration Trump may give for authorizing the release of the US nuclear arsenal over a resolvable conflict, but how he might in blithe ignorance compel North Korea or Pakistan to resort to the use of nuclear attack.
Which is a failure we’ve made in Asia repeatedly and to our detriment. Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Nixon and one of the architects of what became the Vietnam War under Johnson, cautions this from his own experience in In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam and the Errol Morris documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, in which he admits that the lack of understanding of the Vietnamese viewpoint (that the US was just another in a long line of occupiers and oppressors) led to the wider conflict that led to the deaths of over two million civilians and ultimately dropping more tonnage of bombs than in all of the European theater of WWII. Other nations and cultures love their children and have their own sense of national and cultural identity, but it is an error to believe that their values and strategic thinking operates the way that we do or the face that we’d project on them, and this is particularly true of China which holds a cultural value in inscrutability and duplicity.
In any case, China does not want to “defuse the situation”. They’ve protected and fostered North Korea as a client state specifically to create instability in the region, and while they no more want a nuclear conflict than anyone else (and are probably quite nervous with the new regime and the accelerating pace of missile tests), a conflict between North Korea and the United States which results in either the US committing unprovoked attack or having to stand down from a confrontation benefits them in reducing US stature and influence in the region, allowing the PRC to become the dominant regional military power. China may need us as a trading partner, but they do not want the United States Seventh Fleet patrolling around in the East and South China Sea, hence the construction of artificial islands and manufactured conflict about violation of territorial waters.
With the US influence reduced, China would have more control of shipping in the South China Sea and be able to put pressure on textile manufacturing hubs of Vietnam and the Philippines, as well as putting more pressure on Taiwan to reconciliation (not that this would happen in the current environment without warfare), and leaving Japan with reduced support in the region, which they are already fearful of with the isolationist rhetoric of the new US Administration. “China never threatens us,” is true only in the explicit and literal sense of the term; China has been tacitly probing and cajoling us for the last two decades with their rise to the status of challenging industrial superpower.
Stranger
Then why is our fleet there? I don’t know of any really significant conflicts in the region that would require a fleet except the constant hammering of threats from NK. China did, in fact, used to be NK’s protector, engaging UN troops in Korea when NK was about to be defeated, leading to an eventual stalemate. Why, now, does China not emphasize that NK is their protectorate? Not doing so has led to NK thinking (if you believe them) that the US is looking for any excuse to attack again.
The whole approach of China supposedly putting pressure on NK to desist from nuclear development and missile development seems to me to only increase the tension…if NK refuses, then is it a given that the US will attack them? Or…what other alternative?
I don’t see China as needing any more regional hegemony than it now has. Their economic engine is chugging along. They are smart enough to cancel orders for coal burning power plants. If we wanted to maintain any influence in that area, why then did Thrump refuse the TPP?
Our economy does not depend on there being fewer imports from China. We could try being self-sufficient, but no economist believes such a practice will do anything but stagnate and ruin our already healthy financial situation.
what we need, most of all, is to cut the defense budget by at least 50%, investing the excess into alternative and, even, safe nuclear power. Use some to brace up the health system until we can agree on the better alternative, single payer.
I can’t speak for what goes on in Donald Trump’s mental game of one-dimensional Chutes & Ladders, but we’ve maintained a presence in Asia since WWII because it is a strategic position to prevent expansionism (originally against the Soviet Union, later the PRC), because we have political and military alliances with Japan, South Korea, et cetera, and because free trade with the burgeoning manufacturing sectors in Southeast Asia. You can argue whether this is good or bad, but it exists and is why we have a fleet dedicated to the Western Pacific Ocean region.
If you don’t know of any “real significant conflicts” then you aren’t studied in the last twenty years of events in Asia. China has had conflicts bordering on open warfare with India, occupies Tibet and parts of the disputed Kashmir region, conflicting claims of the Paracel and Spratley Islands, has repeatedly threatened the Republic of China (Taiwan) as being a “rogue provence” that it intends to reintegrate (by force if necessary), and has recently constructed artificial islands to manufacture territorial claims over what was previously undisputed international waters. It formed an ongoing alliance with Russia in the early 'Aughts specifically to counter American influence in Asia, and has had exclusive economic zone disputes with South Korea and Japan in the East China Sea and Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia in the South China Sea. China’s obvious and evident goal is to return to its historical status as the dominant military and economic power in the Greater East Asia region.
Stranger
China could roll over NK militarily in a heartbeat if it really wanted to, setting aside that they’re the only power in the world that provides any economic support.
I’m actually OK with their proliferation, because it spurs scientists here to improve their ABM system. Currently we’re at approximately a 30% shoot-down rate, but technology improves all the time, and I’ll bet there’s a short window of an actual NK threat to us.
Besides, I’m sure it’s no more than the usual loony-tunes saber-rattling from Un anyway. NK would be turned into a glass parking lot.
My fear is NK will sell nuclear arms and technology to third parties. I know OP said that is unlikely, but so far NK has sold nuclear expertise to Iran, Syria, Libya, Myanmar and who knows what other countries.
NK helped build the nuclear plant that Israel bombed in 2007 for example.
Supposedly one reason NK keeps doing nuclear tests isn’t just to intimidate the west it is also to let other nations know NK is in business and will help you build bombs too.
Seeing how NK flaunts international law with abandon, I don’t see why they wouldn’t sell nukes or nuclear technology to foreign nations. It isn’t like the rest of the world could do anything, if we invade then NK will attack SK and Japan.
Or at least it gives the US a rationale to continue to spend money on development and testing of systems whether they actually work or not.
This proliferation of expertise and materials is a genuine concern. Even if North Korea cannot field an effective nuclear threat, they can provide enough materials for other actors (both nations and private groups) to construct subcritical dirty weaposn or even crude fission devices which could be used as terror and area denial weapons. China doesn’t want this because that would be uncontrolled instability rather than the carefully crafted instability they have encouraged so far, but they may not be able to influence the current regime except by threat or use of force which would be basically their last recourse.
Stranger
My response to that is a big “So what?” It took us roughly a decade to put a man on the moon; given the scientific and engineering effort (read: funding) it’s by no means impossible, let alone improbable.
What do you thing about the ICBM interception of a few days ago? Why is it being hailed as something game changing?
Well, its like this. You’ve got a crazy man down the block who is always threatening to kill you, blow up your house, kill your dog and burn your grave. He does this to most of his neighbors, but he doesn’t act because he knows you own guns.
One day he comes home with an entire gasoline truck.
Are you serious? Right now North Korea can barley laugh a missile, but in time, they will be able to fire missiles with range and accuracy.
Do you really want a brutal dictator, who appears to be very unstable to have this type of weaponry?
North Korea minds its own business.
If America could do the same, there would be no problem.
Israel IS a rogue state and we blithely accept whatever crap they dish out.
Stranger
Really?
Compare that to the number of attacks on sovereign nations committed by America in the same time.
I made no claim that the US does not interfere with other nations, sometimes to the point of open conflict and unilateral invasion with manufactured justification. But that does not change the fact that your claim that North Korea is benign and “minds its own business” is provably false.
Stranger