North Korea, Nuclear Missiles, and Passive Agressive Behavior
So, as everybody now knows, North Korea tested a nuclear device. Or maybe they just blew up a bunch of TNT. Or maybe they tried to test a nuclear device and failed. In any case, none of that matters, because they claimed that they tested a nuclear device. Now remember Bush said that if they ever did that, there would be serious consequences. Well now the rubber meets the road. The North Koreans, not wanting to be outdone in the baseless threat department came out with this beauty:
“We hope the situation will be resolved before an unfortunate incident of us firing a nuclear missile comes,” South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted a North Korean official as saying. “That depends on how the U.S. will act.”
Um… sorry! Didn’t mean to launch that nuke! Well, given everything we know, there is no way that they could launch a nuke right now, but there is also no way that we could really make them suffer serious consequences for threatening it. Why not? Because it doesn’t matter whether they have nukes or not. Why use a nuke? To put the equivalent of thousands of tons of explosives on a city. North korea is so heavily armed at this point, that they can do that to Seoul within an hour of giving the order to attack with just conventional weapons. Without moving any artillery pieces, the North could sustain up to 500,000 rounds an hour against Combined Forces Command defenses for several hours.
And that is also the reason our threats are baseless as well. North Korea could effectively destroy south korea and end countless thousands of lives within hours. So the fact of a North Korean bomb is unimportant. It is only the political implications that matter. And by swaggering we have given those political implications traction. Now how are we going to be able to keep Iran in line?