North Korea Nuke Test

I had to laugh, you've got a point. That'd be like hondurans being illegal aliens in Mexico.

The big 7 (8): USA, Russia, China, France, Israel, Britain, India and Pakistan. We throw Israel in there because we know they've got them, they just won't admit it.
 
i dont know why korea are wasting money on nuclear, when they have Tae kwon do.

The russians dont seem to be to worried about them do they?
 
They'd still be condemed if his people weren't starving though. I don't think that is the issue.
 
Perhaps not directly, but it gives a clear indication into the mindset which is seeking to develop nuclear weapons technology.

People will pay alot of money for a viable nuclear threat.

Lets just say that N. Korea doesn't intend to destabalise its local region and has no plans to launch an attack on US interests.

What is it going to do with the technology? Despite earlier mocking comments on the thread about the apparent feebleness of the test they have claimed to have performed, if they have performed their first succesfull test, they have made a massive leap forward.

The rate of development of such devices tends to be exponential, with a steep learning curve to get the first device to blow *safely*.

Now, lets say a group of people who have made it abundantly clear that they wish to harm US interests at home and abroad, and who have a significant reserve of hard cash to draw on, were to make our *noble* leader of N. Korea an offer he couldn't refuse.

Do we really believe he'd think twice about selling them the technology?

The world just got a whole lot more messy last night.

I watched some of the coverage of the story this afternoon and saw GWB's response. I was quite shocked. It wasn't his usual tirade of cowboy cliches and gung-ho "go get 'em boys" rhetoric which we've come to know and love. It was subdued and he came accross as someone waking up to the fact that a great big problem just landed in his in-tray and there was no 'quick-fix' on the shelf which was going to make it go away.

So, anyone got any ideas about how the world should respond to this one?
 
I wouldn't say there is much danger of N Korea using a nuclear weapon any time soon, the real danger is if South Korea and Japan feel threatened enough to start up their own programmes. Thats where the real trouble will begin.

Besides the dear leader is gonna get spanked by his boss in Beijing very shortly. He cant start a nuclear war when he's standing in the naughty corner.
 
Hah, no one could possibly afford it! The program (with stops and starts) has taken decades of work, work that has been very expensive. If it was money the DPRK was after, they would have accepted a settlement long ago.
 
i sincerely hope you are right, but its a risk that has to be considered.

peel back the layers of how a dictator's mind might work and you end up with some very unsettling scenarios that have a disconcerting logic all of their own.

for example;

any leader with any level of intelligence at all must realise that to deploy a nuclear strike is nigh on suicidal.

if N. Korea did hit one of its neighbours, the rest of the world would have some serious decision making to do.

what are their options?

1. sanctions? its a bit late once south asia is getting radioactive rain.

2. nuclear retaliation? the war games from the cold war would pretty much rule out that option, as would N. Korea's neighbours lobbying in the UN to prevent futher poisoning of their local region.

3. conventional strike? probable, with the sole aim being regime change.

Now, assassination is against international law, but if you were in the decision making chair, would you be overly concerned about ok'ing such an operation if a rogue dictator had just gone mushroom crazy? I personally wouldn't lose any sleep about it under that set of circumstances.

Now, if i can sit here and throw a rough analysis like that together in five minutes, i'm damn sure N. Korea's military strategists will have gone over all such options with a fine tooth comb.

So, what would a rogue dictator, with a grudge against captialism be considering is the value in using his countries resources in such a way?

one reason would be to join the nuclear club and thus be able to exert more pressure on the world stage.

but another would be to come up with a means of hurting his enemies. If N. Korea launches a nuclear attack, that would pretty much mark the end of N. Korea. But if N. Korea shared its new toy with a borderless organisation with both the means and the will to deploy a device against a common enemy, where is the comeback for N. Korea?

They can go to the UN and claim the technology was stolen, they could even call the US and her allies on the dodgy arms dealing we have been involved in for god knows how many generations.

Basically, unless N. Korea's nuclear program is terminated there is a very real risk of that technology being exported to people who would have no qualms about using it, because, to all intents and purposes, they remain off the radar.

Again, it comes back to the question, what is the UN going to do?

This is nightmare land.

Sanctions? They will only really hurt the people of N. Korea and their dictator has shown he has no qualms about them suffering at all.

Military action? We're all stretched pretty thin right now what with all the other strife we've decided to get involved in.

I'm only glad that it isn't my job to find a way out of this mess. But I'm sincerely hoping our illustrious leaders have the capacity to find some means of keeping this situation under some sort of control.

If they don't, then the future's bright, the future's orange
 
Personnally I believe that no one should have the capabilities to construct weapons of such power though, saying that, I know there'd always be one faction who wouldn't live with this and construct them anyway.

If N. Korea attacks the US... well... they've really signed there own death wish - as well as that of quite a large portion of the world's population (the countries in between)



It's inevitable that the cold war will occur again. The only questions are when and who/what triggers it...
 
i personally doubt this will lead to another cold war, the cold war came about because both sides were very close in the level of nuclear threat they possessed.

This in more like a madman in a shopping mall with a handgun being covered by a SWAT team.

He'll get taken down, but the risk is whether or not he'll get a round off into someone before he falls.
 
True Xen, but that buildup would be part + parcel of the deal. having the backup ready to seize control. It would still be cheaper / safer in the long run than letting a nutjob have nukes.
 
couldn't agree more.

the dangers soon start to balloon outwards though.

who is going to do the hit?

China or the US?

Because they will be the ones who put the resources behind the new regime.

Now its getting interesting isn't it?

Do we have China supporting a new regime in N. Korea?

I doubt the US will be too happy with that, but would China want the US poking around in what is effectively her jurisdiction?
 
As Slip said above, the problem is only partly that "yet another country have nuclear weapons" - it's mainly that Kim Jong-Il is as mad as a hatter which makes him a very dangerous man to be wielding explosives. Far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein who was a scumbag military dictator but still in posession of his mental faculties, whereas Kim is, by all accounts, a total fruitcake.
 
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