Being belligerent is not the way to proceed Mr Lil Kim. Both India and Pakistan built and tested weapons and since they didnât threaten us with them we let those two nations beâŚmore or less. But looking eager to use them makes everyone nervous and does nothing to raise the dignity of your family fiefdom.
Kimâs bellicose insistence to proceed to full nuclear deployment means that any little slip-up or mistake they make, anything that gives a pretext, could lead to the annihilation of North Korea and nuclear fallout, wherever the prevailing winds take it, in the region.
I am not optimistic about the prospect of peaceful outcomes here.
And also, Kim is far from reaching âequilibriumâ in his menâs couture. That suit!!! Left over from Mao Zedongâs prom night?
Kim Jong Un said his country is nearing its goal of âequilibriumâ in military force with the United States
This is the greatest hyperbole yet.
@ralph_vonholst The suit is merely a trick to distract from the hair.
On the other hand, this might also be a signal that heâs willing to stop posturing if weâre willing to promise not to launch a first strike on him. The south korean response is interesting though.
South Korea has little to lose. If North Korea or the u.S. screws the pooch, S.K. is toast. They have everything to live for so there is a strong motivation to find a solution that keeps them in the 21st Century. Likewise Japan has a highly developed society uncomfortably close to Kimâs 19th Century arms race.
Given that the two principals in the conflict are certifiable mental cases, Japan and South Korea have become by default the adults in this psychodrama.
Evan Osnos has an excellent article in this weekâs New Yorker about life in North Korea with Dear Leader III. One of its many takeaways is that the level of anti-American belligerence, even on the part of young children, is in the stratosphere.
Fridayâs launch followed North Koreaâs sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3 in what it described as a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its developmental ICBMs.
I canât find any proof other than their say-so that this is a fusion weapon.
One of the striking things about Hillaryâs interview with Rachel was her talking about this issue and the State Department. How we really need to be talking diplomatically to basically everybody about this but the Dept. is âhollowed outâ. She suggested hiring some of the people whoâve left on some sort of contract basis so somebody would know what the hell was going on. Fuck.
North Korea (the DPRK) has shown impressive ability in their nuclear warhead and missile program, especially considering the meager resources they have compared to other states that have developed weapons.
North Korea has always been a difficult customer, belligerent in tone (nothing new here), and given to provocation.
1968-1969 was the high water mark for this behavior:
The Blue House Raid in 1968 to assassinate the ROK leader (but South Korea also tried an assassination operation around this time which failed);
The Pueblo Incident in 1968;
Killing 31 U.S. servicemen in a spy plane shoot down in 1969;
Then there was the 1987 bombing of Korean Air Flight 858; and behavior that would have been considered over the top in a spy novel like sending commandos in a submarine to Japan to kidnap teenage schoolgirls to become slave Japanese language teachers in North Korea.
But in the last 20 years the hostile and provocative behavior has been limited to occasional naval skirmishes (only two leading to casualties IIRC), and exchange of artillery shells to no effect.
As the saying goes: North Korea may be crazy, but they are not insane.
The DPRK has always viewed the United States as its actual enemy with South Korea a puppet regime (it was the U.S. who was the principal combatant opposing them in the Korean War, and whose military has been the guarantor of ROK security).
They suspended their principal nuclear weapons activity for about a decade, shutting down their test site, their plutonium infrastructure, hot cell research, etc. It wasnât until Dubya decided to call them part of an âAxis of Evilâ and suspend the U.S. side of the Agreed Framework, and also move to put military pressure on Iraq, that North Korea restarted the program. The invasion of Iraq by the U.S. no doubt locked in the decision to develop the ability to strike the United States to prevent a future Dubya from doing the same thing to them (and now we have Trump).
Developing an effective deterrent against the U.S. is highly rational from their perspective.
It appears that the advance of their nuclear program also gave them the confidence and resolve to finally offer to negotiate a peace treaty with the U.S. and ROK, which they offered in 2010. Now however the U.S. refuses to do so until North Korea demolishes their nuclear program. This isnât happening so it is up to the U.S. now to decide that a peace treaty with a nuclear armed state is a good idea on its own merits.
North Korea is getting pretty close to having that deterrent.
They have the warhead and the missile system now. It will take a bit more testing of the missile system at least to get it ready for deployment, they havenât done any RV tests yet for example, but their program has accelerated in the last year and so it may be only a year or two for this to happen (I would be really surprised at this point if it took more than 3 years).
You wonât find proof other than the fact that it was more than ten times larger than their last test and really too large to be anything else. The most recent reanalysis of the seismic data puts it at 250 kilotons.
The only possible scenario (not credible scenario) in which this wasnât a two-stage (âtrueâ) hydrogen bomb is to suppose, on no evidence, that they built a huge undeliverable pure fission device, or a single stage Sloika-type fusion bomb simply to fake everyone out.
But if they wanted to fake people out they could have done that 10 years ago by building a big enriched uranium fission bomb. But they didnât. They appear to have been conducting a series of tests to develop the capabilities to build what they just tested, a true hydrogen bomb.
Why are there no independent reports of exactly what was tested ? Weâve always sniffed the air for this info.
We have detected Xe-133 releases from this shot.
But it was buried something like 900 meters underground and only highly volatile elements can escape at all (and with some tests nothing escapes). Xenon escapes because it is a noble gas that is completely inert (like helium) and does not react with or bind to anything. Xe-133 is a fission product and by itself only tells us that it involved fission (which we already know).
We can hope that iodine-131 and tritium might escape, which would give us a lot more information, all taken together.
Thanks.
Well, President Frankenputz, what now?
(Itâs the potential list of âAnswersâ that might come out of the brass hats and the brass brain in the Oval Office that worries me.)
And just as an aside, is America any better prepared now for what North Korea might try next than it was the last time the prospect of a Nuclear strike was mentioned? Last Month, wasnât it?
Or does the White House want Guam turned into a low-rent district that glows in the dark/? Knowing the White House these days, some clod in the Oval Office might think itâs the perfect place for homeless hurricane survivors from Texas and the Florida Keys.
We (and the Japanese and ROK and probably others) had sniffers up. (I have no faith in Trump, but I do still have faith in the USAF.) It isnât the case that every underground test releases fission products. If there was no release, the seismic data is all we have to go on.
As @careysub notes, at 250 Kton a two stage device is the only answer that makes sense.
Iâd add a third sociopath - behind the scenes, Putin is doing his usual shit-stirring. Russia has been far more culpable than China in egging Kim on, Iâd argue.
Note to AP: I wouldnât be so sure that reference isnât actually to Russia - whom Iâd argue has been a far more irresponsible actor here than China, especially lately.