No choice for US but to accept a nuclear North Korea, ex-CIA analyst sayshttp://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2113296/no-choice-us-accept-nuclear-north-korea-and-more 28 Sept 17,US acceptance of a nuclear North Korea might include a nuclear-armed South Korea, said Su Mi Terry, who served under former US president George W. Bush. The US has no choice but to accept the nuclearisation of North Korea and China may need to live with a South Korea that is nuclear-armed or at least more heavily weaponised than the US’s ally is now, said a northeast Asia analyst formerly with the CIA.
US acceptance of a nuclear North Korea would need to come with military measures that include at minimum a robust missile defence system in South Korea regardless of how China might react to such a scenario, Su Mi Terry, who served as a senior North Korea analyst in the CIA under former President George W. Bush, told the South China Morning Post.
“We can be creative about containment and deterrence,” Terry, now a senior adviser at Bower Group Asia, a consultancy specialising in Asia-Pacific issues, said in an interview.
A containment and deterrence policy “doesn’t have to mean that we just sit around and say ‘that’s OK’. It may mean missile defence. It may mean ultimately after North Korea acquires its capability to attack the United States with a nuclear-tipped ICBM, it may mean that South Korea will have to go nuclear”.
Terry’s remarks reflect what some analysts are saying about realistic outcomes for the stand-off on the Korean Peninsula, but run counter to the official line in Washington and Beijing.
While the US and China have cooperated on passing unanimously a series of sanctions against Pyongyang and condemnations of the country’s nuclear weapons programme, the deployment of a US missile defence system in South Korea has stirred China’s anger.
In addition to her role at Bower Group, Terry is also a senior research scholar at the Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute
China has consistently opposed the deployment of the US’s Terminal High Altitude Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea, saying it would do little to deter the missile threat from North Korea while allowing the US military to use its radar to look deep into China’s territory and at its missile systems.
The US and South Korea have resisted such calls, arguing that THAAD is a defensive system only. Yet, an effective missile defence for South Korea would likely require even more than the existing THAAD deployment.
The likelihood that the US and China will clash over containment and deterrence options has risen following a volley of militaristic threats between US President Donald Trump and Kim.
North Korea “will have to continue with the provocations, they will have to continue and complete their [nuclear] programme because Kim Jong-un has made it personal and Trump has made it personal”, Terry said.
“You see Kim Jong-un’s statement which came out after Trump made his UN speech. I’ve never seen anything like that, where he says he takes it personally, writing in the first person on the front page of Rodong Shimbun (an official North Korean government newspaper) and putting his name to it. There’s no way Kim Jong-un is going to back down from that. If he was going to back down he would not have made it so personal.”
Terry was referring to Kim’s response to a threat Trump made in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week to “totally destroy” North Korea. Kim said in his response carried by state media: “I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire.”
China and the US remain engaged in finding a solution to their concerns around North Korea, with both sides aiming for denuclearisation.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson left Washington for Beijing on Thursday and will be there until October 1 for talks that will include Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes.
Tillerson and his Chinese counterparts “will discuss a range of issues, including [President Donald Trump’s] planned travel to the region, the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and trade and investment”, the US State Department said in an announcement earlier this week.
Former NATO military chief: there’s a 10% chance of nuclear war with North Korea
And a 20-30% chance of a conventional one. Vox by Yochi DreazenRetired Navy Adm. James Stavridis spent 37 years in the military, including four years as the supreme allied commander of NATO. Hillary Clinton vetted him as a possible running mate. President-elect Donald Trump considered naming him secretary of state. He is a serious man, and about as far from an armchair pundit as it’s possible to be.
And that’s precisely what makes his assessment of the escalating standoff with North Korea so jarring. Stavridis believes there’s at least a 10 percent chance of a nuclear war between the US and North Korea, and a 20 to 30 percent chance of a conventional, but still bloody, conflict.
“I think we are closer to a significant exchange of ordnance than we have been since the end of the Cold War on the Korean peninsula,” he said during a panel I moderated Tuesday at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House.
His estimate of the potential death toll from even a nonnuclear war with North Korea is just as striking. North Korea has at least 11,000 artillery pieces trained on Seoul, South Korea’s capital of 25 million people, and would be certain to use them during any conflict. The US would be just as certain to mount a sustained bombing campaign to destroy those artillery pieces as quickly as possible.
The result? “It’s hard for me to see less than 500,000 to 1 million people, and I think that’s a conservative estimate,” he said.
Remember: That’s assuming North Korea doesn’t use its arsenal of nuclear weapons, which can already hit Seoul and much of Japan.
Speaking at the same event, Michèle Flournoy, formerly the No. 3 official at the Pentagon in the Obama administration, said Trump’s harsh rhetoric toward Pyongyang — which has included deriding North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as “Little Rocket Man” — created the real risk of an accidental war between the two countries.
“My worry is that all of this heated rhetoric has really charged the environment so that it’s much more likely now that one side or the other will misread what was intended as a show of commitment or a show of force,” she said. “It could be the basis of a miscalculation that actually starts a war that wasn’t intended at that moment.”…….
Here’s why the odds of war with North Korea are rising
Both Stavridis and Flournoy see Kim as a fundamentally rational leader whose overriding goals are to ensure the survival of his regime and his personal control over North Korea. Nuclear weapons, in Flournoy’s words, are “the ace that he could play if there was a conflict to say, ‘Stop, you’re not going to take me out without risking nuclear war.’”
查看繁體中文版 By RICK GLADSTONE and DAVID E. SANGER,North Korea threatened on Monday to shoot down American warplanes even if they were not in the country’s airspace, stating that President Trump’s comments suggesting he would eradicate North Korea and its leaders were “a declaration of war.”
The nuclear threat can be contained by diplomacy, These issues are manageable if they are given the right degree of priority, John Sawers Ft.com 25 Sep 17 “……… North Korea is the issue of the day. The objective of a denuclearised Korean peninsula, pursued by the previous US administrations, is no longer an achievable goal.
The best that can be hoped for is the suspension of nuclear and missile testing in return for security assurances and practical aid. Sanctions are designed to draw Kim Jong Un into a negotiation with that aim, and to pressure China to take a more active part. But it is very hard to see President Kim pulling back now. And China is more concerned about a new US-led war in Korea or the north collapsing and sending millions of refugees into China, than it is about living with a nuclear armed Pyongyang.
The US only really has two strategic options: contain and deter the threat; or destroy it, which would require regime change. There are always military options. But all who have studied the secret Pentagon plans are sobered by the scale of loss of life in South Korea these would entail. There is also a risk of China reluctantly coming to the aid of the north as it did in the 1950s.
Realistically, it seems the only practical option is containment. That requires missile defence systems to create uncertainty that nuclear-tipped missiles would ever get through to their target, and to deter any use of such weapons by being clear that North Korea would be destroyed if it ever tried to use them.
Mr Kim may be hard for us to comprehend, but he is a rational actor and he is certainly not suicidal. US concern about this isn’t exaggerated by the Trump administration: it has a serious problem on its hands.
However much we may view containment as the only sensible answer, there are still dangers of miscalculation. Mr Kim may be tempted to use his nuclear arsenal to hold others to ransom. There is also a proliferation threat. We have seen how Pyongyang has used its nuclear technology as an export earner. In 2007, the Israelis destroyed a secret nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert that had been designed and built by the North Koreans. Is it conceivable that a future terrorist organisation might be able to obtain such a device? Unlikely. But if they had the means, then Pyongyang would be the first place to go to get it. Pakistan’s ambivalent relationship with terrorist organisations adds to the dangers.
One country where our nuclear weapons concerns had eased is Iran. The nuclear agreement has its weaknesses, especially that it only applies for 10 years. But it is worth having, and Tehran is complying by its technical requirements. If Donald Trump walks from the nuclear deal — as he threatened at the UN last week — then before long he could find he has another North Korea to deal with, this one in the Gulf.
The outlook on nuclear weapons might look grim. But as we showed in the cold war, these issues are manageable with skilful diplomacy and the right investments in defence. We just have to give it the right degree of priority. When I was at MI6, and before that our negotiator with Iran on its nuclear programme, I was always mindful of the nuclear threat. The only issue that can seriously threaten our way of life must be among our top international security priorities. The writer is chairman of Macro Advisory Partners and a former chief of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service https://www.ft.com/content/02c58f70-9c80-11e7-8b50-0b9f565a23e1
The US President warned Pyongyang’s foreign minister that if he if ‘he echoes thoughts’ of the country’s leader Kim Jong Un they both ‘won’t be around much longer’.
He was responding after Ri Yong Ho told the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday that targeting the US mainland with its rockets was inevitable after ‘Mr Evil President’ made an ‘irreversible mistake’ by calling Mr Kim ‘rocket man’.
Describing Mr Trump as a ‘mentally deranged person full of megalomania,’ Mr Ri went on to tell the annual gathering of world leaders that the country was now ‘only a few steps away from the final gate of completion of the state’s nuclear force’.
Hitting back on Twitter, Mr Trump wrote: ‘Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won’t be around much longer!’
Shortly before Mr Ri was scheduled to speak at the assembly, the Pentagon announced a fleet of US bombers and fighter jets had flown off North Korea’s coast, in what it called a ‘clear message’ to Pyongyang.
Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said it underlined the range of military options available to the US.
U.S. knows ‘for sure’ it has A-Bomb, foreign minister says
Korea, Japan, China, Russia may suffer if things get violent
North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons is preventing the U.S. from launching a first strike against the rogue nation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview.
“The Americans won’t strike because they know for sure — rather than suspect — that it has atomic bombs,” Lavrov said Sunday on Russia’s NTV television. “I’m not defending North Korea right now, I’m just saying that almost everyone agrees with this analysis.”
Lavrov said the U.S. attacked Iraq “solely because they had 100 percent information that there were no weapons of mass destruction left there,” refuting arguments the American government made at the time.
Tensions between the nations ratcheted up this weekend as President Donald Trump and North Korea Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho traded threats. On Saturday, U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers flew over international waters east of North Korea.
Lavrov said thousands of innocent people will suffer, in North Korea and in bordering South Korea, Japan and even maybe China and Russia, in the absence of a diplomatic solution.
Turning to another source of tension, Lavrov also added that he can’t rule out that the U.S. plans for Syria go beyond fighting terrorism. The Americans “swear that they have no goal in Syria other than eliminating terrorists,” he said. “When it happens, we’ll see if this was true or the U.S. nonetheless pursues some political goals, which we yet don’t know of.”
Recent earthquakes near North Korea’s nuclear test site have raised questions as to how far radioactive material would travel if an underground atomic explosion triggers a leak.
A magnitude 3.2 earthquake was detected near the test site on Saturday, according to the Associated Press. The U.S. Geological Service (USGS) registered the quake at a magnitude 3.5.
“The quake is small enough to suspect that it could have been caused by a tunnel collapse, and satellite data shows there have been many landslides in the area since the nuclear test,” Hong Tae-kyung, a professor at the department of Earth System Sciences at Yonsei University, told the AP.
However, Korea’s Meteorological Administration believed the earthquake to be natural.
This string of earthquakes raises questions on how far the wind would carry dangerous radiation if a leak occurs.
Non-tropical systems would be the driving force for where radiation would travel. These systems generally travel in a west to east manner with some fluctuations to the north and south.
“As a weak front passes through North Korea early this week, winds around 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) will begin to pick up from the west to northwest at 20-30 mph,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alan Reppert said.
Any radiation that would be released into the atmosphere during the second half of the week would push towards northern Japan, possibly towards Hokkaido and far northern Honshu, to the north of Tokyo.
Reppert added “The only major city this would affect is Sapporo, as this would be north of Sendai.”
Any radiation would likely stay fairly close to the ground for the first day or two following a possible leak, before gradually rising higher into the atmosphere.
Beyond the passage through Japan, any possible radiation could travel close to southeastern Russia, the Aleutian Islands or head into the North Pacific Ocean away from any land masses.
This general steering flow will likely persist through the week with slight day-to-day variation.
If a leak occurs, health hazards would not only be limited to those who are outside without the proper protection.
“The big concern is the underground water will be contaminated, polluting the plants and animals, and finally the people who consume animal meat will be seriously impacted,” Wei Shijie, a former worker on nuclear weapons in China, told The Telegraph.
The area where the earthquake struck is not known to experience natural earthquakes. As earth-shaking booms are a natural feature of underground nuclear weapons testing, the quake led to suspicions North Korea had detonated yet another model of nuke — as it did earlier this month, sparking fears it had successfully developed a hydrogen bomb.
“This event occurred in the area of the previous North Korean Nuclear tests,” the United States Geological Survey wrote on its website. “We cannot conclusively confirm at this time the nature (natural or human-made) of the event. The depth is poorly constrained and has been held to 5km by the seismologist.”
According to the Washington Post, China’s state earthquake-monitoring agency initially believed the test to have been an explosion, although South Korean officials told the Associated Press “the analysis of seismic waves and the lack of sound waves clearly showed that the quake wasn’t caused by an artificial explosion.”
Per the AP, the 3.4-magnitude quake would be much smaller than previous nuclear tests, the weakest of which generated a magnitude 4.3 quake and the strongest of which, the test this month, resulted in a magnitude 6.3 quake. One possible explanation is the region is undergoing aftershocks in the wake of the previous nuclear tests.
“It could be a natural earthquake that really was man-made as the nuclear test would have transferred a lot of stress,” Yonsei University in Seoul earth system sciences professor Hong Tae-kyung told CBC. “The quake is small enough to suspect that it could have been caused by a tunnel collapse, and satellite data shows there have been many landslides in the area since the nuclear test.”
Other than the disquieting pace of North Korean nuclear weapons development, one immediate concern from the ongoing tests is seismological data suggesting the test site might be about to cave in.
Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province concluded earlier this month another test at Punggye-ri could cause the overhead mountain to cave in, potentially releasing large amounts of radioactive material which could drift far beyond the region into neighbouring countries including China.
According to South Korean paper Chosun Ilbo, sources said after the September 3rd test, residents in the area were prohibited from travelling to the capital, Pyongyang, due to possible radioactive contamination.
Quiet energy revolution underway in Japan as dozens of towns go off the grid, Japan Times BY AARON SHELDRICK AND OSAMU TSUKIMORI REUTERS, 24 Sept 17, HIGASHIMATSUSHIMA, MIYAGI PREF. – A Miyagi city’s efforts to rebuild its electrical power system after 3/11 mark a quiet shift away from Japan’s old utility model and toward self-reliant, local generation and transmission.
After losing three-quarters of its homes and 1,100 people in the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, the city of Higashimatsushima in Miyagi Prefecture turned to the government’s “national resilience program,” with ¥3.72 trillion in funding for this fiscal year, to rebuild.
The city of 40,000 chose to construct microgrids and decentralized renewable power generation to create a self-sustaining system in Tohoku capable of producing an average of 25 percent of its electricity without the need of the region’s power utility.
Nuclear phase-out puts burden on S. Korea’s export drive By Kim Eun-jung SEOUL, Sept. 23 (Yonhap) –– South Korea’s nuclear phase-out policy may create a boom for the renewable energy initiative and allay public safety concerns, but it may also send an unwanted signal to the outside world that could hurt the country’s push to expand into the global atomic power generation market.
Since taking office in May, President Moon Jae-in has scrapped plans for new nuclear power plants and vowed not to extend the life cycles of 24 existing reactors, in a bid to end decades of reliance on the controversial energy source.
The latest move was aimed at addressing safety concerns after the 2011 Fukushima disaster and is in line with actions taken by other advanced economies that are turning to renewable energy sources, including the U.S., France and Germany.
This drastic turn from past administrations’ pro-nuclear policies, however, raises questions over South Korea’s status in the global nuclear market, which has seen spike in competition with the rise of state-backed Russian and Chinese companies in recent years.
Seoul policymakers have pledged continued support for overseas projects separate from its domestic energy policy, but industry insiders worry that less enthusiasm for nuclear power could shrink investment in advanced nuclear technologies and give South Korea less bargaining power on the global stage…….http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/business/2017/09/22/0503000000AEN20170922008800320.html
Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) Chairman Shunichi Tanaka held his final press conference in Tokyo’s Minato Ward on Sept. 20 before officially stepping down from his role.
Reflecting on his five-year term in office, Tanaka said, “I tried to maintain independence and transparency,” adding that, “I have absolutely no doubt that I’ve made judgments from a scientific and impartial standpoint, and taken actions based on (the NRA’s) philosophies. This is something that I am proud of.”
However, he also stated that, “The distrust of the public who experienced the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 is an issue that cannot be easily rectified.”
Tanaka became the first chairman of the NRA at the same time the organization was established in September 2012, having previously served as the deputy director general of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute and acting chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission.
During his time as NRA chairman, he led efforts to draw up new regulatory standards based on the lessons learned from the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster, and carried out nuclear power plant screening.
Originally hailing from Fukushima Prefecture, Tanaka says he is planning to live in the prefectural village of Iitate after stepping down as NRA head. “It would be great if I could contribute to the recovery of Fukushima (using my experience at the NRA),” Tanaka said.
The head of Tepco Electric Power company Holdings Inc. promised Wednesday to institute a safety pledge as requested by nuclear regulator, as the company seeks clearance to reactivate undamaged, idle reactors located far from its plant crippled by natural disaster in 2011.
has been calling for the company to make such a pledge part of its legally binding reactor safety program because it operates the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the site of a major nuclear disaster in the aftermath of the massive earthquake and tsunami.
President Tomoaki Kobayakawa told the regulator on Wednesday that will stipulate a pledge to build “safety culture” in its program developed for ensuring safe operation of the Nos. 6 and 7 reactors at the company’s power station in Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of coast.
promise will pave the way for the regulator’s safety clearance for the two units — boiling-water reactors that are the same type as the ones that experienced meltdowns in the disaster.
The regulator will soon compile a draft document for the two units that will serve as certification that the utility has satisfied new stricter safety requirements implemented since the nuclear disaster.
It will then consult the economy, trade and industry minister, who oversees the nuclear industry, to confirm that is fit to be an operator. It will also solicit comments from the public before formally giving safety clearance.
Even if the reactors clear the safety checks, local governments in the area on which the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant sits remain cautious about their resumption.
Niigata Gov. Ryuichi Yoneyama, for example, has said it will take “around three to four years” for the utility to win the required local consent for a restart.
said last week was “qualified” as a nuclear plant operator, but that it wanted the utility to express its resolve to ensure safety in a legal document, not just in words.
Safety programs drawn up for reactors need to be approved by the regulator and if it finds a grave violation, it can demand a halt to nuclear power operations from the utility.
“We intend to tackle the unending mission of improving the safety of nuclear power and to complete the decommissioning and compensation of the Fukushima Daiichi complex,” Kobayakawa said at the regulator’s meeting on Wednesday. “We will also make efforts to maintain qualification” as operator of nuclear reactors, he said.
The Nos. 6 and 7 units at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant are the newest among the seven units at the plant. The complex is one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants with a combined output capacity of 8.2 million kilowatts.
For a reactor to be restarted, it first needs to clear the safety requirements introduced in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis. filed for safety assessments of the two units in .
, which is facing massive compensation payments and other costs in the aftermath of one of the world’s worst nuclear crises, has been desperate to resume operation of its idled reactors so it can reduce spending on costly fossil fuel imports for non-nuclear thermal power generation.
While some reactors run by other utilities have resumed operations in by satisfying the new safety regulations, has been under close scrutiny by regulators on whether it is qualified to once again operate a nuclear power plant.
How We Got to North Korea’s Pacific Nuclear Test Threat and What Comes Next It would be the first above-ground detonation in decades and would send tensions into uncharted territory. The Drive BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK, SEPTEMBER 22, 2017 In ever escalating war of words between the United States and Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime in North Korea has reached an entirely new level since President Donald Trump threatened to “totally destroy” the Hermit Kingdom in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. It seems all but guaranteed that the rhetoric will lead to new North Korean provocations, but what’s unprecedented and potentially game-changing is that they could potentially include a full demonstration of a nuclear-armed ballistic missile, or at least an above-ground nuclear weapon test, either which in turn would similarly demand some form of American response.
This latest escalation in tensions between the U.S. government and North Korean officials began on Sept. 19, 2017, when Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly for the first time with fiery remarks, lashing out at not only North Korea, but also Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and other critics of American foreign policy more broadly. He vowed to put the United States interests first in all matters and encouraged the other assembled leaders to do the same. But he reserved some of the most incendiary comments for Kim, who he has now nicknamed “Rocket Man,” and his regime.
“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” he declared. “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary.”
This particular statement drew “audible gasps” from some of the world leaders in attendance, according to The Associated Press. The North Korean delegation had already walked out in protest before Trump even began speaking……..
The string of threats, especially Nikki Haley’s comments, suggest the United states and its allies could easily handle the increasingly worrisome situation with military force if it runs out of other options. This of course is entirely untrue and major conflict with North Korea would be devastating for all the involved parties.
Not surprisingly, this has not prompted a change in the behavior of the North Korean regime or Premier Kim. As we at The War Zone have noted for months, these statements feed into the country’s existing paranoid and propaganda that the United States and its allies are actively looking to destroy it and forcefully eliminate its government.
It has only appeared to give North Korea more of a reason to continue to develop advanced ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons to achieve some relative parity with the United States in order, if nothing else, to preserve the regime’s very existence. Kim said as much himself in a televised rebuttal on Sept. 21, 2017……
Trump continued the cycle on Sept. 22, 2017, as part of a series of Tweets on various topics. “Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn’t mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!” he posted on the social media site.
If his remarks in front of the United Nations seemed likely to generate a North Korean response, the Tweet sounded closer to a direct challenge. Given Kim’s immediate response to Trump’s threat of total destruction, it seems he will have little room but to make a provocative move in response to this new “test.”
After Kim’s own televised address, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho had already said the North Korean response could include detonating a hydrogen bomb in or over the Pacific Ocean. Earlier in September 2017, North Korea tested what experts believe to be a working thermonuclear device…….
In the future, North Korea may simply need to conduct nuclear weapons tests outside of its own borders since the Punggye-ri underground test site may simply not be able to survive the strain of more powerful thermonuclear designs. The nuclear test earlier in September 2017 appeared to cause the tunnel containing the device to collapse, highlighting the limits of underground testing.
Even if the atmospheric test went as intended, it could be difficult to be entirely sure there would be no inadvertent casualties and the resulting fallout could easily fall on civilian mariners or populated areas……..
despite Nikki Haley’s and H.R. McMaster’s insistence that there are available military options to respond to these growing provocations, as well as Trump’s vague threats, any direct action would be fraught with its own dangers. One of the most likely courses of action, shooting down the missile, carries significant risks as the impact of the interceptor could trigger the device or the radioactive debris could fall over populated areas.
Perhaps more importantly to the viability of America’s still largely unproven ballistic missile defense shield, if the intercepting weapon misses or otherwise fails to achieve the desired effect, it would expose a serious vulnerability to not just North Korea, but the rest of the world…..
In particular, systems that engage the missile as it comes falling back down to earth, such as the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system, have a very narrow window to achieve a “kill.” Furthermore, this means that personnel manning the interceptors would likely be in the direct path the incoming weapon, and if it was fully armed, a nuclear test.
There is very little room for failure in any of these scenarios. Even if the shoot down were to go smoothly, it is possible that it could trigger a larger and immensely destructive conflict on the Korean Peninsula or throughout East Asia. The War Zone’s Tyler Rogoway has highlighted these various issues previously in a deep dive into the United States’ available options in responding to North Korea’s continued provocations……..
All of these options still come with their own risks, though, and there’s still no indication that they would convince Kim to change course. If the North Korean regime’s primary goal is its own survival, it is perfectly rational for them to continue to demonstrate their resolve to respond in kind to American threats.
And despite his comments, Trump’s first step, on Sept. 21, 2017, was to sign a new executive order penalizing any individual or business doing business with North Korea. This follows a trend of steady sanctions against actors and firms outside of North Korea that the United States accuses of enabling the reclusive country’s government.
Trump and other members of his administration repeatedly question Kim’s mental stability, but as we at The War Zone have noted before, he clearly has a coherent plan. We’re still not sure that U.S. government has developed a thought-out strategy to dissuade him from his chosen path.
North Korea ‘threatens Pacific nuclear test’ Sky News, , 22 September 2017 North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho says he believes the North could consider a hydrogen bomb test on the Pacific Ocean of an unprecedented scale, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports.
Mr Ri was speaking to reporters in New York when he was asked what North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had meant when he threatened in an earlier statement the ‘highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history’ against the United States.
North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test, Mr Ri said, although he did not know his leader’s exact thoughts, Yonhap reported.
In an earlier statement Mr Kim said Mr Trump was ‘mentally deranged’ and his comments were ‘the most ferocious declaration of a war in history,’ Mr Kim said the US president’s UN speech on Tuesday confirmed Pyongyang’s nuclear program has been ‘the correct path’.
‘His remarks … have convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I have to follow to the last,’ Mr Kim said in the statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency, promising to make Trump ‘pay dearly for his speech’.
Mr Trump had warned the North Korean leader in his UN address on Tuesday that the United States, if threatened, would ‘totally destroy’ the country of 26 million people and mocked Kim as a ‘rocket man’ on a suicide mission………
He offered more vitriol for Mr Trump, saying he was ‘unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command of a country, and he is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician.’
Moon and Trump agree on South Korea purchase of state-of-the-art US weaponry during summit
Hankyoreh Sep.22,2017The deal is reportedly set to include nuclear powered submarines
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump agreed on Sept. 21 on a plan for South Korea to introduce state-of-the-art US weaponry or develop its own to counter North Korea’s recent nuclear and missile provocations. Later the same day, Moon had a luncheon and trilateral summit with Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, where the three agreed that the entire international community “must apply the maximum intensity sanctions and pressure so that North Korea cannot withstand it anymore and must come to the table for dialogue.” ……http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/812155.html
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
nuclear-news 