I think at this stage the question is more about when than if DPRK will have some form of ballistic nuclear missile capable of sub orbit and range to the US mainland. Yes the ready in 2017 comments are most assuredly propaganda and the DRPK is consistently overly optimistic… but whether it is 2017, 2020 or 2025… they will have the capability unless the US employs something more than sanctions.
But will they?
Yes the North Korean missiles are liquid and primitive by minuteman III standards, but the range will be there and I feel this situation will become more dangerous than the cold war ever was simply because of the leaders involved… can you imagine two WORSE people to negotiate a nuclear attack than Jong Un and Trump? :smack:
So the questions are:
Will Kim Jong Un actually attack the US - All speculation of course. And a question perhaps we can better discuss; what would be the US response? Not since the cold war has this really been an important discussion but going back to the 80s term of “mutual assured destruction” as a deterrent does not seem to be as effective on a country (or two) run by a mad man (or two).
With all that we have seen since the Reagan years in terms of terrorism and how easy it is for some people/groups to comment suicide in order to further their demented cause, it almost seems like a US nuclear strike as retaliation would only serve to further the terrorists goals.
So what are the options? Assassination? Sabatoge? More Sanctions? Bribery/Cave to demands? Attack first and remove their ability to respond?
I am particularly interested in the first and last optons… assassinaton and first attack. Are there ANY scenarios that would put the US into action in one of these realms?
I’d say that it’s fairly unlikely that North Korea would attack the US directly with nuclear weapons. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that North Korea is able to miniaturize a nuclear weapon, manages to build a launch vehicle that can make it all the way to the US and deliver said weapon accurately enough to hit a major city. Having made all of the above leaps and discounting US counter missile technology, how many of such weapons do you suppose North Korea could possibly create and maintain? To put this in perspective, China, who is much, MUCH richer and has much more technical capabilities probably has a nuclear stockpile of 200-500 nuclear weapons. I would say that North Korea would be lucky to have a 10th of that…and more realistically it would be 100th. The US, on the other hand, has literally thousands of nuclear weapons, not to mention conventional forces that could, alone, wipe out North Koreas military and infrastructure in fairly short order if provoked to this extent. This leaves aside the fact that an attack on the US would automatically bring in a number of other nations who have mutual defense treaties with the US…many of who alone could also wipe out North Korea.
Personally, my own fear is that the crazy mother fucker in control of the North will use one of those weapons (or several of them) against South Korea and possibly Japan. Realistically, however, I’d say that he will simply use them to extort better terms from the world community and as a shield to protect himself and North Korea from direct retaliation for the crazy shit he probably plans to do. At least I think that’s what he and his merry men have in mind.
I think the only way North Korea would attack the US with a nuke, or multiple nukes, would be if the Kim regime were already encircled and losing a major land war - like Hitler in his bunker, surrounded by Soviets in the last days of WWII - and nuking America was Kim’s dying middle finger to the USA.
In other words, I don’t think North Korea would nuke out of the blue. It would have to be done as the result of a major ongoing war that Pyongyang was losing.
Not to be pedantic but the US has 450 nuclear missiles and that will be reduced to 400 sometime in the near future.
Your points are valid save for my personal concern that any number of retalitory actions wont be taken into consideration given Jong Un seems to be a complete nut job.
With China and/or Russia’s help, DPRK will have the capability at some point and then I can easily see North Korea being a pawn for the aforementioned China/Russia to attack the US.
Not to be pedantic but I think you are missing a zero or two.
Why would China want to attack one of their major markets? And how does one persuade a nut job to commit suicide and destroy his own country for the benefit of someone else?
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Not to be pedantic but the US has 450 nuclear missiles and that will be reduced to 400 sometime in the near future.
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Where are you getting that figure from? I know that the US still have 18 Ohio class subs in service with 24 missiles alone on each of them…that’s over 400 right there. Each one has multiple warheads. If your point is that the US has less missiles than warheads then I agree. But where do you get the figure that the US has 450 missiles capable of nuclear weapons and we are cutting that ‘in the near future’ to 400??
IMHO the chances of it happening are pretty much zero. But not zero. But shortly after such an attack North Korea would be struck by many American missiles. Russia might join in too to show solidarity - and to save on the maintenance costs.
Note that the mountainous nature of NK could make ground-burst nuclear weapons much less effective as hills and mountains will shelter valleys.
Ok, I see where you are getting that. From here most likely:
But this is only active ICBMs and only those that are ground based. There are an additional 288 (active) with the fleet. And, of course, this is just launchers…a US launch vehicle contains multiple warheads, usually, so each one we fire can actually independently hit multple targets, while any NK device is going to be a one warhead one missile type deal, at least for the foreseeable future.
I was referring to the Minuteman III as that is the only ICBM the US has and the only missile with the ability to reach the east from the US mainland. What I certainly forgot to mention was all the warheads on submarines as alternate delivery vehicles, my apologies for that oversight.
North Korea is very likely to threaten to nuke the U.S. (and has already done so, obliquely) for short-term gain but the second they actually do so, they’ll suffer massive permanent loss so… no, I don’t think an attack is likely.
Ok, that’s what I figured. True enough if you are talking about only active and only ground based ICBMs, but a bit misleading unless you put in the caveats. The US still has a couple thousand of non-active missiles, IIRC, and lots of warheads in storage, though they are all unlikely to be needed so it’s just a big number. And this is just the SLBM or ICBMs…doesn’t include cruise missiles or bomber based nukes or the shorter range types, though I think those have been mostly phased out at this point (I admit I haven’t kept up on this since the collapse of the Soviet Union). Even at 450 (or 728) missiles you are probably talking about several thousand warheads targetting several thousand different targets, so the overall point is the same.
But it’s a good point…the US doesn’t have thousands of active ICBMs anymore. Neither does anyone else of course. The North Koreans, however, could potentially have…a few…that could reach the US. In a decade. Maybe 2-5, perhaps as many as 10 though to me that’s a bit of a stretch. Each one with a single warhead. So, from the perspective of the OP any attempt by NK to hit the US would be pretty much doomed from the perspective of the continuation of the NK government.
Thats my view, the NK regime wants to survive most of all, and will do anything to do this. The only time they’d use nukes is if they were in an all out war and knew they were going to lose, it would be a final fuck you to the world.
I think the goal of NK is to let the rest of the world know they will cause a lot of suffering and misery if anyone tries to overthrow their regime. A first strike nuclear attack will bring down their regime.
However, NK has already tried to help various nations build their nuclear capabilities. North Korea helped Syria build a nuclear plant, they helped Iran, Libya, Myanmar, etc. So even if NK isn’t nuking people, they are trying to help unstable undemocratic regimes gain nuclear weapons. Point being, NK may not engage in a first strike but they will give weapons technology to nations who may eventually give them to terrorists or engage in a first strike.
Yeah, this. NK’s nukes aren’t about being able to make a first strike against the US, it’s a shield against any attempt at invasion of NK by anyone.
Consider how the US has treated Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 20 years, as compared to how they treat Pakistan. All three of these countries are messed up, and supported terrorists to some extent or other, so why didn’t the US also invade Pakistan?
Because Pakistan has the Bomb.
And you can be damned sure that every tin pot dictator in the world has noticed that. They’d all love to get their hands on a few nukes, for just this reason. NK is different only in that they managed to achieve that goal. Now, they’re essentially immune from invasion by the US, or any other major power, barring simply outrageous provocation on their part. And even then, what we’d consider “outrageous” enough has probably gone up.
If North Korea nukes the United States, North Korea ceases to exist. If North Korea nukes South Korea, North Korea ceases to exist. If North Korea nukes Japan, North Korea ceases to exist.
The world’s involvement with North Korea is a hostage situation. If they start shooting hostages, you take them down as quickly as possible.
Another possible North Korea-nukes-America scenario is that there is a conflict on the Korean peninsula, and as part of the war, America begins striking North Korea’s nuclear arsenal (with conventional weaponry) in an attempt to disable it. In that scenario, even if North Korea wasn’t losing the broader war yet, the leadership in Pyongyang could panic and think “We’d better use our nukes before we lose them” and hence begin launching the ICBMs.
The North Korean nuclear launch capability isn’t particularly resilient, at the moment. If “America begins striking North Korea’s nuclear arsenal”, I really doubt they’d have the ability to get a missile launched. They don’t have anything like our hardened underground silos. They’ve got to stand a rocket up on a pad and fuel it. It’s a relatively slow process, and their launch pad(s) would be prime targets for strikes. It’s not like they have road-mobile TELs capable of hitting USA with nukes (although they are working on them).
Right now North Korea’s best bet to nuke America would be to put it on a submarine and hope to Kim Il-Sung that we somehow did not detect it driving right up to the docks in Los Angeles or Long Beach.
IMHO NK is a lot less likely to attack the US under a Trump administration than under an Obama one (or anyone else’s FTM).
NK has shown themselves to be ready to play some serious chicken. They’ve attacked SK repeatedly, sunk ships etc., gambling that SK wouldn’t make a full-scale war over it. So while it’s unlikely, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they could make a similar calculation WRT the US, again gambling that the US would shy away from full-scale war.
But that’s a lot harder with Trump in power. There’s no telling what that guy would do. I think the NK would take much more seriously the risk that they would be bombed back the stone age if Trump is in power than if anyone else is, and this would significantly temper the risk that they would try to start something serious.
Ironically, in that sense, Trump is a lot like the NKs themselves. They’ve profited a lot over the years from the perception that they’re dangerous guys that need to be pacified, and now there’s another loose cannon in the room with them.
