The crisis over North Korea’s nuclear missile programme continues with both sides threatening each other with fearsome rhetoric. After US intelligence agencies suggested that North Korea might have perfected a nuclear warhead for its Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), US President Donald Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on the nation. In response, the Kim Jong-In led Government of North Korea has announced that it is drawing up plans for a ballistic missile attack on the US base in Guam.
North Korea’s new “ICBM” Hwasong-14 takes flight. Courtesy: DPRK government via Ankit Panda/Twitter
The failure of past US administrations to prevent North Korea getting nuclear weapons technology has resulted in a race against time to stop it getting a practical nuclear weapon. Except that it may already have one. For while intelligence analysts are vexed as to whether the “rogue nation” might have succeeded in miniaturisation, guidance and re-entry technologies to convert a nuclear bomb into a warhead for a missile with a long enough range to threaten USA, in truth, such technology is not really needed for an air dropped weapon.
However, it would not be the USA which is threatened by such a nuclear bomb as the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) does not really have an aircraft with enough range to succeed in a long range nuclear attack – well assuming that they do not repurpose a civil airliner for a one-way nuclear strike. Nevertheless, North Korea’s nearest neighbours South Korea and Japan would be in range of a low level nuclear strike by North Korea’s aged but still very fast and effective Mig-21 supersonic fighter-bombers. Such a strike on Seoul would be nearly impossible to intercept given its proximity to the border. Even without that, in the event of conflict, Seoul will be subject to a massive conventional artillery barrage.
Nevertheless there may yet be some relief to shattered nerves in the region. For while the Kim Jong-un regime may be an atheistic equivalent to the evil of extremist Islam, thankfully unlike the latter’s keenness for suicidal martyrdom, there will still be some logical reasoning and even a basic survival instinct in Pyongyang. In other words, if USA were to offer South Korea and Japan a formal “nuclear umbrella” promising US nuclear retaliation in the event of a North Korean nuclear strike on those nations, such deterrence might yet make North Korea may pull back from the brink. Let us hope that they decide to do so and engage in real disarmament negotiations.
Time is running out. For while USA will try diplomacy first, President Trump and his administration may want to fight soon as they knows that if they wait for much longer, North Korea will soon have the technology to hit continental USA with a true nuclear armed ICBM.
While such conflict might be unavoidable many US citizens might just be wishing that they had a different leader to take them into war. Likewise, despite the extreme adulation Kim Jong-un receives at North Korea’s many national public celebrations (by the way, sarcasm is officially banned there), the people of the not-so-Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea might have similar concerns about their leader too.
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