Should the US Nuke North Korea?

GuanYin

China will most likely follow its previous stance of backing any UN resolution against NK with respect to nuclear testing, but will as always, refuse to engage in trade embargoes.

China has too much invested in NK.

Nuclear bombing of NK isn't on the agenda.... the US wouldn't risk angering China... the one country we probably couldn't defeat (infact, most recent RAND studies show we'd probably lose).

Highsider

Yes they should. I'm sick of hearing about British MP's and the pedo priests at this stage. Need some real news for a change :pac:

Capt'n Midnight

Manic Moran wrote: »

Are we? Last I heard, the head of the US Air Force's nuclear branch was complaining that they had no money to modify the systems to use chips instead of vacuum tubes, and nobody was making vacuum tubes any more to replace the ones which malfunction.

NTM

valves are more resistant to EMP.

Capt'n Midnight

Overheal wrote: »

cuckoo...
Try several hundred B52s.

The yield was around 1.5Kt

With the Big Belly mod a B52 can carry 60,000Lb's of bombs ( over 27 tonnes in real money )
So 56 planes.

The bombs have a steel cover but the explosive inside could be more powerful than standard TNT


/more trivia

Bard

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

The real question is, should the US leave all matters of foreign policy up to the users of after hours. I say yes, think how entertaining it would be.

Well it'd certainly be better than leaving it up to the U.N., wouldn't it?

Overheal

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The yield was around 1.5Kt

With the Big Belly mod a B52 can carry 60,000Lb's of bombs ( over 27 tonnes in real money )
So 56 planes.

The bombs have a steel cover but the explosive inside could be more powerful than standard TNT


/more trivia

The MOAB's dead weight is 18,700 lbs. Correction: 22,600 lbs, or 9.5 tons. So again, a B52H, can carry, at most, 3. Despite its carrying capacity of 70k lbs, not 60k.

also

Although its effect has often been compared to that of a nuclear weapon, it is only about one thousandth the power of the atomic bomb used against Hiroshima: it is equivalent to around 11 tons of TNT, whereas the Hiroshima blast was equivalent to 13,000 tons of TNT and modern nuclear missiles are far more powerful than the atomic bomb used against Hiroshima. However, the MOAB bomb's yield is comparable to the smallest of nuclear devices, such as the M-388 Davy Crockett.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOAB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B52#Specifications_.28B-52H.29

Though you are right to say it could match the NK nuke much easier, which was about 1/10th the yield of Little Boy if the estimate is true. It would still take about 100 MOABs, 85 of which don't exist

Riddle101

Bard wrote: »

Well it'd certainly be better than leaving it up to the U.N., wouldn't it?

I thought After Hours was the UN:D

mega man

i say nuke north korea and all its allies before its to late. There means of government have been tried and tested before and have failed.
One man calling all the shots in any country is a bad idea.

WoollyRedHat

I say we nuke everyone and everyone thing. Let's wipe each other all out, then all our problems will be sorted once and for all!

Question: If you were North Korean/lived there, would you have voted yes? I somehow doubht it...

Overheal

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

I say we nuke everyone and everyone thing. Let's wipe each other all out, then all our problems will be sorted once and for all!

Have fun,

http://www.carloslabs.com/node/20

Though this app, and Tsar Bomba's wiki page, don't appear to see eye to eye: according to the wiki page it would be much more catastrophic than what the app leads you to believe.

The original U.S. estimate of the yield was 57 Mt, but since 1991 all Russian sources have stated its yield as 50 Mt. Khrushchev warned in a filmed speech to the Communist parliament of the existence of a 100 Mt bomb (technically the design was capable of this yield). The fireball touched the ground, reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plane, and was seen and felt almost 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) from ground zero. The heat from the explosion could have caused third degree burns 100 km (62 miles) away from ground zero. The subsequent mushroom cloud was about 64 kilometres (40 mi) high (nearly seven times higher than Mount Everest) and 40 kilometres (25 mi) wide. The explosion could be seen and felt in Finland, breaking windows there and in Sweden. Atmospheric focusing caused blast damage up to 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) away. The seismic shock created by the detonation was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth.[7] Its Richter magnitude was about 5 to 5.25.[8] The energy yield was around 7.1 on the Richter scale, but since the bomb was detonated in air rather than underground, most of the energy was not converted to seismic waves.

Since 50 Mt is 2.1×1017 joules, the average power produced during the entire fission-fusion process, lasting around 39 nanoseconds, was about 5.4×1024 watts or 5.4 yottawatts. This is equivalent to approximately 1.4% of the power output of the Sun.[9]

mega man

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

I say we nuke everyone and everyone thing. Let's wipe each other all out, then all our problems will be sorted once and for all!

Question: If you were North Korean/lived there, would you have voted yes? I somehow doubht it...

Ya i think your rite. But if i was in north korea, i wouldn't have a say, would I?

Manic Moran

Overheal wrote: »

The MOAB's dead weight is 18,700 lbs. Correction: 22,600 lbs, or 9.5 tons. So again, a B52H, can carry, at most, 3. Despite its carrying capacity of 70k lbs, not 60k.

I don't think a B-52 can carry a single one. It's not an issue of useful payload, it's an issue of hardpoint capacity. None of the hardpoints were designed with a single bomb of that weight and size in mind, the useful load of 500lb bombs is distributed amongst many hardpoints. You can drop MOAB out of a C-17 though.

NTM

mega man

Manic Moran wrote: »

I don't think a B-52 can carry a single one. It's not an issue of useful payload, it's an issue of hardpoint capacity. None of the hardpoints were designed with a single bomb of that weight and size in mind, the useful load of 500lb bombs is distributed amongst many hardpoints. You can drop MOAB out of a C-17 though.

NTM

are you guys in the military or something?

Capt'n Midnight

darkman2 wrote: »

Whether they have the technology to match is another point. But if there was a war it would be the biggest since WW2 I reckon....it would also be the first time ever that two countries with a nuclear capability engaged in conflict.

What about India Vs Pakistan ?

or China's boarder skirmishes with Russia / India ?

Or Israel vs USA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

I've heard that Indonesia had a nuclear air force crewed by the Russians back in the early 60's and there was fighting with the Malaysians who were supported by the British.

Overheal

Manic Moran wrote: »

I don't think a B-52 can carry a single one. It's not an issue of useful payload, it's an issue of hardpoint capacity. None of the hardpoints were designed with a single bomb of that weight and size in mind, the useful load of 500lb bombs is distributed amongst many hardpoints. You can drop MOAB out of a C-17 though.

NTM

That was my original understanding. I was simply using the B52H for the sake of argument.

...how many can a C-17 carry I'm guessing the weight isnt the issue with the C-17 rather than the size of the weapon.

mega man wrote: »

are you guys in the military or something?

NTM is a Tank CPT as far as I know with the US Armed Forces. The only thing I'm a warrior of however is my keyboard

Capt'n Midnight

Overheal wrote: »

The MOAB's dead weight is 18,700 lbs. Correction: 22,600 lbs, or 9.5 tons. So again, a B52H, can carry, at most, 3. Despite its carrying capacity of 70k lbs, not 60k.

also


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOAB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B52#Specifications_.28B-52H.29

Though you are right to say it could match the NK nuke much easier, which was about 1/10th the yield of Little Boy if the estimate is true. It would still take about 100 MOABs, 85 of which don't exist

YOu must like MOAB's
they are great if you want to knock down trees or asphyxiate people but to destroy buildings and fortifications just do what they did in WWII

To destroy a large areal drop a few earthquake bombs to shatter things then drop smaller bombs and then when the structures are opened up you drop the incenderies - nasty business.

The more accurate a weapon is the smaller you can make the warhead because it will be closer to the target. So to take out NK's ability to supply their troops would be easy enough. And at this stage it's fairly safe to say that they won't have air superiority and that is kinda important in a modern war.

Overheal

Well im not a military man. But you asked me about conventional equivalents of nukes and the MOAB pops right up on the list. According to the test yield one of those can level 9 city blocks.. as far as conventional weapons go it has the highest weight-to-yield ratio that im aware of.

But again, lessons learned from Tsar Bomba and since applied to weapon theory:

the advent of ICBMs accurate to 500 meters or better made such a design philosophy, obsolete. Subsequent nuclear weapon design in the 1960s and 1970s focused primarily on increased accuracy, miniaturization, and safety. The standard practice for many years has been to employ multiple smaller warheads (MIRVs) to "carpet" an area. This is believed to result in greater ground damage.

The cost of things like the MOAB is just crazy. They won't get used, especially when things can get done much more safely, accurately, and cheaply, with things like Bunker Busters - iirc thats the toy that got used when a building needed to be leveled when we went into Iraq. Civilians got hurt, but not nearly as many that would have if we decided to start fcuking MOABs and Carpet Bombing runs all over the place. A difference in philosophy between the use of Tactical and Strategic weapons if I'm not mistaken.

The Al Lad

shamblertine wrote: »

I'm sick of living in fear of those bastards,

Same here, I walk around all day looking up wards to see if a nuke is gonna land on me

I'm terrified:mad:

Capt'n Midnight

The Al Lad wrote: »

Same here, I walk around all day looking up wards to see if a nuke is gonna land on me

I'm terrified:mad:

If it makes you feel any safer no one will be dropping nukes on us.


They will just ship it in a container, put in storage in the target country and wait, virtually untraceable.

The Al Lad

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

If it makes you feel any safer no one will be dropping nukes on us.

They will just ship it in a container, put in storage in the target country and wait, virtually untraceable.

Thank fucck, my necks been in bits from looking upwads the last few weeks

Irish Guitarist

I'm not really a fan of genocide so my answer would be no.

conbhui

Riddle101 wrote: »

What you're saying is so illogical and appalling that i'm starting to think that maybe you are either a mad scientist or George Bush in disguise, the latter I hope is not true.

By the way you're contradicting yourself with that comment so I think you should think things over if I were you.

whos side are you on? Are you a terrorist or something?
How do you expect to beat North Korea in a war? With one arm tied behind your back. You must fight fire with fire.
They started it. So give them a taste of there own medicine.
Using nuclear weapons as a defensive measure is A OK with me.

Riddle101

conbhui wrote: »

whos side are you on? Are you a terrorist or something?
How do you expect to beat North Korea in a war? With one arm tied behind your back. You must fight fire with fire.
They started it. So give them a taste of there own medicine.
Using nuclear weapons as a defensive measure is A OK with me.

Yes i'm a terrorist. I'm a sleeper agent sent here by the North Korean special forces to infiltrate this tiny nation, and observe Western politics. From my secret headquarters, I give word back to my commander in Pyongyang about what's going on in Europe:rolleyes:

Anyway in answer to your first question. No i'm not a terrorist, I just don't want to see a nuclear war is anything. It's not so simple to just nuke a country or countries for that matter.

Also in relation to your other statement. It's ok with you because you don't live in North Korea and never felt the threat of a nuclear bomb, but what about the millions of innocent lives you want to sacrifice in North Korea just because you have a problem with the regime in charge, honestly with your attitude, your no better the Kim Sung Il if you think Genocide is the answer to our problems.

conbhui

Riddle101 wrote: »

Yes i'm a terrorist. I'm a sleeper agent sent here by the North Korean special forces to infiltrate this tiny nation, and observe Western politics. From my secret headquarters, I give word back to my commander in Pyongyang about what's going on in Europe:rolleyes:

Anyway in answer to your first question. No i'm not a terrorist, I just don't want to see a nuclear war is anything. It's not so simple to just nuke a country or countries for that matter.

Also in relation to your other statement. It's ok with you because you don't live in North Korea and never felt the threat of a nuclear bomb, but what about the millions of innocent lives you want to sacrifice in North Korea just because you have a problem with the regime in charge, honestly with your attitude, your no better the Kim Sung Il if you think Genocide is the answer to our problems.

Well thats the price North Koreans may have to pay for having a lunatic as its leader. He is the one who is threatening war. This problem could be solved through simple dialogue. he doesn't want that.
I only agree to North Korea been nuked strictly as a defensive messure.
Kim Jong fits the profile of a Suicidal Cult Leader and he's determined to take alot of people with him before he dies.

Amalgam

Angry Titch is just ramping things up for Angry Titch Jr. to take over. His turd son, what happened to the other two is anyone's feckin' guess.

Agamemnon

I hope the nordie Koreans attack the south and start a bit of an aul' war. The south is very high-tech so they probably have giant robots armed to the teeth with lasers, particle beams and the like. Watching them zap commie human wave attacks would be cool. It would be something good to watch on telly anyway, now that most tv programmes have finished up for the summer.

javaboy

conbhui banned for using a second account to get around a ban.

Capt'n Midnight

conbhui wrote: »

Well thats the price North Koreans may have to pay for having a lunatic as its leader. He is the one who is threatening war.

Actually the Korean war never ended. Officially it's still happening since there wasn't a formal peace treaty.

So no real suprise that they are threatening war, they've been doing that for the last 50 years.

It's just like the way China keeps threatening Taiwan

Mrmoe

lets nuke them with love

nacho libre

The North Korean Nuclear Test and Geopolitical Reality

May 26, 2009


By Nathan Hughes


North Korea tested a nuclear device for the second time in two and a half years May 25. Although North Korea’s nuclear weapons program continues to be a work in progress, the event is inherently significant. North Korea has carried out the only two nuclear detonations the world has seen in the 21st century. (The most recent tests prior to that were the spate of tests by India and Pakistan in 1998.)

Details continue to emerge through the analysis of seismographic and other data, and speculation about the precise nature of the atomic device that Pyongyang may now posses carries on, making this a good moment to examine the underlying reality of nuclear weapons. Examining their history, and the lessons that can be drawn from that history, will help us understand what it will really mean if North Korea does indeed join the nuclear club.

Nuclear Weapons in the 20th Century

Even before an atomic bomb was first detonated on July 16, 1945, both the scientists and engineers of the Manhattan Project and the U.S. military struggled with the implications of the science that they pursued. But ultimately, they were driven by a profound sense of urgency to complete the program in time to affect the outcome of the war, meaning understanding the implications of the atomic bomb was largely a luxury that would have to wait. Even after World War II ended, the frantic pace of the Cold War kept pushing weapons development forward at a break-neck pace. This meant that in their early days, atomic weapons were probably more advanced than the understanding of their moral and practical utility.

But the promise of nuclear weapons was immense. If appropriate delivery systems could be designed and built, and armed with more powerful nuclear warheads, a nation could continually threaten another country’s very means of existence: its people, industry, military installations and governmental institutions. Battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons would make the massing of military formations suicidal — or so military planners once thought. What seemed clear early on was that nuclear weapons had fundamentally changed everything. War was thought to have been made obsolete, simply too dangerous and too destructive to contemplate. Some of the most brilliant minds of the Manhattan Project talked of how atomic weapons made world government necessary.

But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the advent of the nuclear age is how little actually changed. Great power competition continued apace (despite a new, bilateral dynamic). The Soviets blockaded Berlin for nearly a year starting in 1948, in defiance of what was then the world’s sole nuclear power: the United States. Likewise, the United States refused to use nuclear weapons in the Korean War (despite the pleas of Gen. Douglas MacArthur) even as Chinese divisions surged across the Yalu River, overwhelming U.S., South Korean and allied forces and driving them back south, reversing the rapid gains of late 1950.

Again and again, the situations nuclear weapons were supposed to deter occurred. The military realities they would supposedly shift simply persisted. Thus, the United States lost in Vietnam. The Syrians and the Egyptians invaded Israel in 1973 (despite knowing that the Israelis had acquired nuclear weapons by that point). The Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan. India and Pakistan went to war in 1999 — and nearly went to war twice after that. In none of these cases was it judged appropriate to risk employing nuclear weapons — nor was it clear what utility they might have.

Enduring Geopolitical Stability

Wars of immense risk are born of desperation. In World War II, both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan took immense geostrategic gambles — and lost — but knowingly took the risk because of untenable geopolitical circumstances. By comparison, the postwar United States and Soviet Union were geopolitically secure. Washington had come into its own as a global power secured by the buffer of two oceans, while Moscow enjoyed the greatest strategic depth it had ever known.

The U.S.-Soviet competition was, of course, intense, from the nuclear arms race to the space race to countless proxy wars. Yet underlying it was a fear that the other side would engage in a war that was on its face irrational. Western Europe promised the Soviet Union immense material wealth but would likely have been impossible to subdue. (Why should a Soviet leader expect to succeed where Napoleon and Hitler had failed?) Even without nuclear weapons in the calculus, the cost to the Soviets was too great, and fears of the Soviet invasion of Europe along the North European Plain were overblown. The desperation that caused Germany to seek control over Europe twice in the first half of the 20th century simply did not characterize either the Soviet or U.S. geopolitical position even without nuclear weapons in play. It was within this context that the concept of mutually assured destruction emerged — the idea that each side would possess sufficient retaliatory capability to inflict a devastating “second strike” in the event of even a surprise nuclear attack.

Through it all, the metrics of nuclear warfare became more intricate. Throw weights and penetration rates were calculated and recalculated. Targets were assigned and reassigned. A single city would begin to have multiple target points, each with multiple strategic warheads allocated to its destruction. Theorists and strategists would talk of successful scenarios for first strikes. But only in the Cuban Missile Crisis did the two sides really threaten one another’s fundamental national interests. There were certainly other moments when the world inched toward the nuclear brink. But each time, the global system found its balance, and there was little cause or incentive for political leaders on either side of the Iron Curtain to so fundamentally alter the status quo as to risk direct military confrontation — much less nuclear war.

So through it all, the world carried on, its fundamental dynamics unchanged by the ever-present threat of nuclear war. Indeed, history has shown that once a country has acquired nuclear weapons, the weapons fail to have any real impact on the country’s regional standing or pursuit of power in the international system.

Thus, not only were nuclear weapons never used in even desperate combat situations, their acquisition failed to entail any meaningful shift in geopolitical position. Even as the United Kingdom acquired nuclear weapons in the 1950s, its colonial empire crumbled. The Soviet Union was behaving aggressively all along its periphery before it acquired nuclear weapons. And the Soviet Union had the largest nuclear arsenal in the world when it collapsed — not only despite its arsenal, but in part because the economic burden of creating and maintaining it was unsustainable. Today, nuclear-armed France and non-nuclear armed Germany vie for dominance on the Continent with no regard for France’s small nuclear arsenal.

The Intersection of Weapons, Strategy and Politics

This August will mark 64 years since any nation used a nuclear weapon in combat. What was supposed to be the ultimate weapon has proved too risky and too inappropriate as a weapon ever to see the light of day again. Though nuclear weapons certainly played a role in the strategic calculus of the Cold War, they had no relation to a military strategy that anyone could seriously contemplate. Militaries, of course, had war plans and scenarios and target sets. But outside this world of role-play Armageddon, neither side was about to precipitate a global nuclear war.

Clausewitz long ago detailed the inescapable connection between national political objectives and military force and strategy. Under this thinking, if nuclear weapons had no relation to practical military strategy, then they were necessarily disconnected (at least in the Clausewitzian sense) from — and could not be integrated with — national and political objectives in a coherent fashion. True to the theory, despite ebbs and flows in the nuclear arms race, for 64 years, no one has found a good reason to detonate a nuclear bomb.

By this line of reasoning, STRATFOR is not suggesting that complete nuclear disarmament — or “getting to zero” — is either possible or likely. The nuclear genie can never be put back in the bottle. The idea that the world could ever remain nuclear-free is untenable. The potential for clandestine and crash nuclear programs will remain a reality of the international system, and the world’s nuclear powers are unlikely ever to trust the rest of the system enough to completely surrender their own strategic deterrents.

Legacy, Peer and Bargaining Programs

The countries in the world today with nuclear weapons programs can be divided into three main categories.
Legacy Programs: This category comprises countries like the United Kingdom and France that maintain small arsenals even after the end of the threat they acquired them for; in this case, to stave off a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. In the last few years, both London and Paris have decided to sustain their small arsenals in some form for the foreseeable future. This category is also important for highlighting the unlikelihood that a country will surrender its weapons after it has acquired them (the only exceptions being South Africa and several Soviet Republics that repatriated their weapons back to Russia after the Soviet collapse).
Peer Programs: The original peer program belonged to the Soviet Union, which aggressively and ruthlessly pursued a nuclear weapons capacity following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 because its peer competitor, the United States, had them. The Pakistani and Indian nuclear programs also can be understood as peer programs.
Bargaining Programs: These programs are about the threat of developing nuclear weapons, a strategy that involves quite a bit of tightrope walking to make the threat of acquiring nuclear weapons appear real and credible while at the same time not making it appear so urgent as to require military intervention. Pyongyang pioneered this strategy, and has wielded it deftly over the years. As North Korea continues to progress with its efforts, however, it will shift from a bargaining chip to an actual program — one it will be unlikely to surrender once it acquires weapons, like London and Paris. Iran also falls into this category, though it could also progress to a more substantial program if it gets far enough along. Though parts of its program are indeed clandestine, other parts are actually highly publicized and celebrated as milestones, both to continue to highlight progress internationally and for purposes of domestic consumption. Indeed, manipulating the international community with a nuclear weapon — or even a civilian nuclear program — has proved to be a rare instance of the utility of nuclear weapons beyond simple deterrence.

The Challenges of a Nuclear Weapons Program

Pursuing a nuclear weapons program is not without its risks. Another important distinction is that between a crude nuclear device and an actual weapon. The former requires only that a country demonstrate the capability to initiate an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction, creating a rather large hole in the ground. That device may be crude, fragile or otherwise temperamental. But this does not automatically imply the capability to mount a rugged and reliable nuclear warhead on a delivery vehicle and send it flying to the other side of the earth. In other words, it does not immediately translate into a meaningful deterrent.

For that, a ruggedized, reliable nuclear weapon must be mated with some manner of reliable delivery vehicle to have real military meaning. After the end of World War II, the B-29’s limited range and the few nuclear weapons the United States had on hand meant that its vaunted nuclear arsenal was initially extremely difficult to bring to bear against the Soviet heartland. The United States would spend untold resources to overcome this obstacle in the decade that followed.

The modern nuclear weapon is not just a product of physics, but of decades of design work and full-scale nuclear testing. It combines expertise not just in nuclear physics, but materials science, rocketry, missile guidance and the like. A nuclear device does not come easy. A nuclear weapon is one of the most advanced syntheses of complex technologies ever achieved by man.

Many dangers exist for an aspiring nuclear power. Many of the facilities associated with a clandestine nuclear weapons program are large, fixed and complex. They are vulnerable to airstrikes — as Syria found in 2007. (And though history shows that nuclear weapons are unlikely to be employed, it is still in the interests of other powers to deny that capability to a potential adversary.)

The history of proliferation shows that few countries actually ever decide to pursue nuclear weapons. Obtaining them requires immense investment (and the more clandestine the attempt, the more costly the program becomes), and the ability to focus and coordinate a major national undertaking over time. It is not something a leader like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez could decide to pursue on a whim. A national government must have cohesion over the long span of time necessary to go from the foundations of a weapons program to a meaningful deterrent capability.

The Exceptions

In addition to this sustained commitment must be the willingness to be suspected by the international community and endure pariah status and isolation — in and of themselves significant risks for even moderately integrated economies. One must also have reasonable means of deterring a pre-emptive strike by a competing power. A Venezuelan weapons program is therefore unlikely because the United States would act decisively the moment one was discovered, and there is little Venezuela could do to deter such action.

North Korea, on the other hand, has held downtown Seoul (just across the demilitarized zone) at risk for generations with one of the highest concentrations of deployed artillery, artillery rockets and short-range ballistic missiles on the planet. From the outside, Pyongyang is perceived as unpredictable enough that any potential pre-emptive strike on its nuclear facilities is too risky not because of some newfound nuclear capability, but because of Pyongyang’s capability to turn the South Korean capital city into a proverbial “sea of fire” via conventional means. A nuclear North Korea, the world has now seen, is not sufficient alone to risk renewed war on the Korean Peninsula.

Iran is similarly defended. It can threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, to launch a barrage of medium-range ballistic missiles at Israel, and to use its proxies in Lebanon and elsewhere to respond with a new campaign of artillery rocket fire, guerrilla warfare and terrorism. But the biggest deterrent to a strike on Iran is Tehran’s ability to seriously interfere in ongoing U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan — efforts already tenuous enough without direct Iranian opposition.

In other words, some other deterrent (be it conventional or unconventional) against attack is a prerequisite for a nuclear program, since powerful potential adversaries can otherwise move to halt such efforts. North Korea and Iran have such deterrents. Most other countries widely considered major proliferation dangers — Iraq before 2003, Syria or Venezuela, for example — do not. And that fundamental deterrent remains in place after the country acquires nuclear weapons.

In short, no one was going to invade North Korea — or even launch limited military strikes against it — before its first nuclear test in 2006. And no one will do so now, nor will they do so after its next test. So North Korea – with or without nuclear weapons – remains secure from invasion. With or without nuclear weapons, North Korea remains a pariah state, isolated from the international community. And with or without them, the world will go on.

The Global Nuclear Dynamic

Despite how frantic the pace of nuclear proliferation may seem at the moment, the true pace of the global nuclear dynamic is slowing profoundly. With the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty already effectively in place (though it has not been ratified), the pace of nuclear weapons development has already slowed and stabilized dramatically. The world’s current nuclear powers are reliant to some degree on the generation of weapons that were validated and certified before testing was banned. They are currently working toward weapons and force structures that will provide them with a stable, sustainable deterrent for the foreseeable future rooted largely in this pre-existing weapons architecture.

New additions to the nuclear club are always cause for concern. But though North Korea’s nuclear program continues apace, it hardly threatens to shift underlying geopolitical realities. It may encourage the United States to retain a slightly larger arsenal to reassure Japan and South Korea about the credibility of its nuclear umbrella. It also could encourage Tokyo and Seoul to pursue their own weapons. But none of these shifts, though significant, is likely to alter the defining military, economic and political dynamics of the region fundamentally.

Nuclear arms are better understood as an insurance policy, one that no potential aggressor has any intention of steering afoul of. Without practical military or political use, they remain held in reserve — where in all likelihood they will remain for the foreseeable future.