nuclear-news

“………….SOUTH KOREA’S VETO AGAINST MILITARY FORCE

this ICBM test launch will not lead to a strike, despite all the talk about how it is a game-changer.

The most important reason is not strategic but political. Any kinetic action by the US against North Korea would risk substantial retaliation, likely targeted at US allies South Korea and Japan.

Yes, Alaska may be within Pyongyang’s missile range. But North Korea could strike with far greater force and flexibility in the region. Its many missile tests into the Sea of Japan over the last year are almost certainly intended to signal to Japan that it too is in the firing line. But of course, it is South Korea that is most vulnerable.

Any US strike against the North would require, both politically and morally, the assent of the Japanese and especially the South Korean government. Politically, a strike without their assent would almost certainly terminate the alliances at once, since South Korean and Japanese populations and cities would likely face devastating retaliation after a US strike. If they did not have the right to consent to the risk of that strike, why would they stay in alliance with the US?.

Morally, it would be astonishingly callous for a democracy like the US to gamble millions of lives without even soliciting Japanese and South Korean assent.

So even Donald Trump, for all his bluster, is not going to attack North Korea without South Korean and Japanese approval…….

If kinetic options are not on the table, what other choices are there as the “impossible state” progresses toward a nuclear missile that can strike the lower 48 states of the US?

One word, adaptation. The US and the west learned to live with the nuclear missiles of unfriendly regimes in the past. ……… http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/commentary-why-we-will-all-learn-to-live-with-a-north-korean-9025510