Pithy quote time:
(From the Washington Times)
That, and succession issues are probably why they’ve been stepping things up. I’m fairly sure Li’l Kim isn’t in good shape right now, so it’s probably the guys at the top jockeying for position.
He’s not going to sell them to anyone - selling them to a terrorist group and then having that weapon used somewhere is the functional equivalent of you using the bomb yourself. Real good way to ensure the continuing existence of your government, yeah.
Keep thinking that foreign governments and leaders are all stupid, deranged, or crazy (edit: or mere pavlovian animals, Col. Cucullu) - that’s the kind of thinking that gets us into this crap in the first place. There’s no reason to believe that Iraq (pre-invasion), Iran, and N. Korea are any less rational and intelligent than the lot of us advanced nations.
Nukes are the shortcut to increased barganing and negotiating power for these smaller states, that’s all they are.
Oh yea, Little Kimmie & Ahmadinejad are sane minded, balanced leaders…
NK has starved how many of it’s own citizens?
How many times has Ahmadinejad said Israel will be destroyed?
sane, completely sane…
:rolleyes:
Was there a point in there somewhere? Or did you just copy and paste what you heard last night on Glenn Beck?
Need I remind you of the countless numbers of dictators the US has propped up in the last 1/2 of the 20th Century who have done things as “insane” as torturing people, murdering dissidents, etc… Or are those actions not “insane” while starving people is?
FWIW, I said nothing about balanced; but the fact is they know more about power, politics, and governnance than you would ever know.
And you should re-educate yourself as to what Ahmadinejad said and how that doesn’t really qualify as insanity
Both of those behaviors are completely rational in terms of the politics and power struggles internal to their own countries. They are nasty and ruthless, but not insane.
But…but… WE need our arsenal of nukes in order to stop those pesky asteroids or to nuke the alien mother ships! 
How many times, flickster? Please educate us.
close enough for a quick search
AP says he did
Ahmadinejad is not the leader of Iran, flickster. Khamenei is. How do we know? Well, Khamenei’s title is Supreme Leader.
Okay, Iran’s leadership structure is a little messier than that, but Ahmadinejad isn’t in charge and certainly is not in charge by himself, and does not have the ability to nuke Israel. His remarks are disgusting, but they’re demagoguery to appeal to his base. He’s an elected official.
Kim does a lot of crazy shit, like importing tons of bourbon and kidnapping movie directors and pretending to be the world’s greatest golfer. But he knows he can get the world’s attention by showing off his weapons. It’s true that he’s been rewarded for that in the past; the international community tries to get him to step away from the ledge by offering him money every time, so every time he needs money or food, that’s what he does. Is that hard to believe?
The North Korean media finally released some newish pictures of Kim to go along with this news. He wasn’t fashionable before, but he looks like shit.
Plus I doubt it makes much economic sense. The direct cost of developing the weapons must’ve been pretty large, plus the indirect cost of years of sanctions incurred for their nuclear program, I doubt anything a terrorist organization could pay would be anywhere close to what it cost N. Korea to build the weapons. Especially since they only have a limited amount of plutonium, so if they sell one they can’t easily whip up a replacement.
Some good points are raised here. I believe that Kim is clearly not insane and is in fact very good at what he does.
I think the strategic calculation goes like this. I apologize for the length, and I hope someone finds some value in my explanation. I also hope it is clearly explicated, though I somehow doubt it.
Domestically, Kim has to pay off a few hundred wealthy and influential North Koreans to maintain his tyranny. If he fails to pay them off sufficiently, a coalition of them could rebel, toss him out, and divide the spoils among a smaller group since they would kick out all of Kim’s old coalition partners not involved in the revolt.
The spoils are potentially larger if you are part of a successful rebellion, but the risk is great. You also want to make sure that if there is going to be any successful rebellion, you have got to be part of it otherwise you will be thrown out of the coalition and probably killed.
Because of the risk, the potential payoff has got to be large. In other words, the rebel coalition has to stay small, otherwise rebellion is simply not worth the risk. Why throw away an enormous stream of benefits only to risk your life to achieve a new stream that is hardly any bigger?
Kim knows all of this and he has been managing his generals and apparatchiks for a long time now. He has to maintain a stream of benefits robust enough to convince his underlings that they won’t get a better deal anywhere else, because if the rebel coalition is too small, the rebellion will fail.
Kim gets this stream of benefits from China, South Korea, and the west. Kim can funnel all of the wealth he appropriates from his own people to his generals because he knows (especially) China will continue to feed North Korea. China has made it very clear over the years that a massive reefugee problem on its border with NK is unacceptable, so China is essentially subsidizing Kim’s rule.
Kim is very good at the nuclear game. He needs to prove to the world that he is credibly developing a bomb in order to gain concessions, but I do not believe he ever actually wants to build one. First, a bomb could easily fall into the wrong hands within NK and be used against Kim or, better yet, nuclear technology could be sold and could provide benefits to Kim’s generals independent of Kim himself. Very, very bad, because if the generals do not need Kim anymore, they can toss him out.
Actually having a bomb also changes the foreign strategic calculation. The US, Japan, and SK might not be willing to endure 100k of troop losses to end a possible NK nuclear program, but they very well might be willing to expend far more blood and treasure to get rid of an actual bomb if they believe it will be credibly used.
Obviously, once Kim has the bomb, the onus is on him to put up or shut up. If he puts up, he will invite the vengeance of pretty much the rest of the world. If he shuts up, he can no longer extort money and food from China and the west. His generals will revolt, and he will assuredly lose since he can no longer bribe them into loyalty.
So his best bet is to keep rattling the saber and credibly continuing his dead-end nuclear program.
This part is tricky, because the rest of the world can think through this strategic problem just as well as he can. So we can call his bluff. But if he manages to rattle the saber just enough to convince people that he just might be crazy or that he just might be serious, the benefits continue to pour in. And they have poured in. The North Koreans are absolute masters of this game. They have convinced the rest of the world that their bomb threat is just credible enough and that the plight of the North Korean people is just pathetic enough that we continue to pay. Meanwhile, Kim and his underlings live like kings. It’s a great job, if you can get it. Harder still it is to hold onto it.
I disagree with this.
MAD worked. There was a thread recently asking when WWIII might have started if nuclear weapons had never been invented. Most agreed likely in the 50’s or 60’s.
I have lost the cite but IIRC after Desert Storm I some Indian official, commenting on the overwhelming success (militarily) of the US army, opined that the lesson to be drawn was that the only means of defense for most was nuclear weapons.
It is not lost on Iran or North Korea (rounding out the “Axis of Evil” triad) that there is no way their conventional forces can stand up to the US if the US is of a mind to have at them. The ONLY thing that will stop the US, aside from just hoping the US can’t be bothered, is to have a nuke of their own. They can stop the US in its tracks merely by suggesting if they are attacked someone the US cares about will get nuked (or even nuke the invading US troops).
I certainly do not want to see nuclear proliferation and certainly not nukes in the hands of Iran or North Korea but I completely understand their desire to procure them. Even at great cost to them it is worth it. Once Iran can definitively state they have nukes they are enabled to get more aggressive in the Middle East because no one will dare retaliate against them. North Korea has gotten all sorts of concessions for having one.
This goes far beyond just wanting to be in some special “nuclear club”. These countries see obtaining nukes as vital to their interests and they are not wrong on that. The only way to show it is not worth trying for nukes is to have not appeased the likes of NK or try to talk Iran out of it but to stomp on them mercilessly (either via serious sanctions and/or bomb the crap out of anything that remotely looks like it is involved in nukes) as soon as it was apparent they were seriously trying. Of course global politics makes such things near impossible so these regimes are largely free to continue…they have every reason to try and none not to.
This confuses me. Kim HAS the bomb. He has tested them twice now. A 2006 assessment said he had enough fissile material for 4 to 13 nuclear bombs, and it’s probably higher now.
To be fair the 2006 bomb was deemed a failure. Not sure what that really means in these terms though. For all I know “failure” means it only exploded with 20 kilotons of power when they were aiming for 50 kilotons.
Presumably this is one reason they tested this one a few days ago. They needed to show they had sorted their problems building a nuke and have a workable design now.
Bingo. The 2006 test was too small to have been detected by China and South Korea. The rest of the world picked up a little rumble smaller than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The detonation was so small, it was not possible to determine that atomic weapons were even deployed at all. The 2006 test was definitely either a failure or a fake. Enough to keep the world believing that the threat of a NK weapons program is credible, but not serious enough to really consider a non-traditional response.
When my employees make statements that reflect badly on the company, I tell them to shut the hell up or get out.
The base who elected him and probably agree with what he says, nor would have a problem if he carried out his threats? Or, are you suggesting that Ahmadinejad is just a random aberration and doesn’t reflect the people who voted him in, or the people who actually hold power in Iran?
It’s still an open question as to whether this most recent test happened, or if it did was a weapon of significant size.
If they want to show off their nuclear capability they’re being unusually coy about it. “We blew up a bomb” is not as convincing as “Here’s pictures of the detonation.”
If South korea was smart they would let the NK generals know they have a job and a house with a view if they would help reunite the 2 countries.
Suppose you are a NK general and your worst enemy offered you a gigantic bribe. The deal is, bite the hand that feeds you now for some stream of benefits later. Provided not by your old colleague and trustworthy tyrant, but by your worst enemy. You trade away your nukes, your power, your army, your everything on the promise that the country you have been in either a hot or cold war for the past 50 years will honor its side of the bargain.
Sound like a good deal to you?