… with all of its talk of preemptive nuclear strikes, made me wonder if NK has the likely capability to do this:
Kill Dick Cheney.
Specifically, they know Cheney is going to be in Tokyo. But Tokyo’s big, Cheney’s location may be kept hush-hush, NK’s nukes are presumably few, they may not be fitted for missile delivery, nukes aren’t really the 100% certain citywide death weapons our cold-war fears make them out to be, and NK’s missiles, while of sufficient range, may not be of sufficient accuracy to either (a) hit Cheney when he is at a known location during these talks or (b) blanket all of Tokyo with enough nukes to ensure anyone within the city limits would have a good chance of getting killed.
Granted, this would be an idiotic move even by NK’s standards, but I was just curious if it was possible.
In this scenario, the bad would far outweigh the good for NK. They would risk at the very least, embargos, invasion, and possibly a return nuclear volley. This would make a few countries secretly happy, but the world community as a whole would be outraged. Besides, no single target is worth that kind of possible backlash. When we went after Sadaam and bin Laden, we made it pretty well known, and no other country threatened us with a return attack in kind (unless you count Iraq).
That kind of move would be tantamount to political, and possibly literal, suicide.
I’ve seen no credible reports, and I do sort of follow this stuff, that North Korea has suceeded in mating one of its purported nukes with one of these missiles.