nuclear-news

• North Korea likely has missile-ready nuclear weapons.
• An expert in East-Asian nuclear policy says there is now an increased risk for nuclear miscalculation on the Korean Peninsula.
• He believes President Donald Trump’s bellicose behaviour raises the chance that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will mistake US military exercises as an invasion.
• Kim’s logic in such a scenario may be similar to that of Japan’s in its preemptive attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941.
• An isolated conflict between North Korea, South Korea, and the US could kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock forward 30 seconds on Thursday, pushing humanity’s proximity to disaster at a symbolic and alarming two minutes to midnight.

The organisation has adjusted the Doomsday Clock yearly since 1947. Though the Bulletin bases its clock’s position on multiple global threats, this year it highlighted the bellicose behaviour of President Donald Trump toward North Korea and his administration’s nuclear weapons posturing.

“To call the world nuclear situation dire is to understate the danger, and its immediacy,” Rachel Bronson, the president and CEO of the Bulletin, said during a press briefing on Thursday. It’s “the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday,” she added. “As close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.”

One of the Bulletin’s major concerns is about an “oops” moment of nuclear proportions involving the evolving nuclear arsenal of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un……..

The dangerous and fuzzy maths of miscalculation………

“It’s called miscalculation, where one side makes a calculation that war is inevitable,” Lewis said. “They don’t think that they’re starting a war, they just think they’re getting a jump on the other.”…….

How to step back from the brinkLawrence Krauss, a physicist at Arizona State University and a Bulletin chair member, said Thursday that there is still time to turn back the clock.

“It is not yet midnight and we have moved back from the brink in the past,” Krauss said.

The Bulletin makes a few recommendations to ease tensions with North Korea and avert a nuclear disaster:

• First and foremost, it said: “US President Donald Trump should refrain from provocative rhetoric regarding North Korea, recognising the impossibility of predicting North Korean reactions.”
• Second, the US should preemptively open military and diplomatic lines of communication with North Korea – not to signal weakness, but to show “that while Washington fully intends to defend itself and its allies from any attack with a devastating retaliatory response, it does not otherwise intend to attack North Korea or pursue regime change.”
• And finally: “The world community should pursue, as a short-term goal, the cessation of North Korea’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests. North Korea is the only country to violate the norm against nuclear testing in 20 years. Over time, the United States should seek North Korea’s signature on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty – and then, along with China, at long last also ratify the treaty.”

Paradoxically, Lewis says the advent of a proven and substantial North Korean nuclear arsenal itself could open communications channels and opportunities for diplomacy……..https://www.businessinsider.com.au/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-miscalculation-preemptive-strike-trump-2018-1?r=US&IR=T