Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

North Korea Announces 3rd Nuclear Test, Anti-US Aims

Posted by timothy on from the state-vs-state-and-state-vs-man dept.

As reported by Reuters, The New York Times, and Fox News, among others, North Korea's nuclear saber-rattling has reached a new peak. North Korean officials have made clear their intent to conduct a third nuclear test (earlier tests were in 2006 and 2009), as well as further rocket launches specifically designed to demonstrate missile reach extending to the U.S. From Reuters' story: "North Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States, although its December launch showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range, according to an intelligence assessment by South Korea. 'We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States,' North Korea's National Defence Commission said, according to state news agency KCNA."

15 of 597 comments (clear)

  1. A strange game.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I understand the monetary interest North Korea has in appearing to be a credible threat to peace. But someone over there needs to look at the end of this game.

    If they launched something no more damaging than a dishwasher at San Francisco, their great defenders, the Chinese, would tell them "you're on your own." They have to know they wouldn't last 3 weeks against a U.S. military onslaught. Hundreds of thousands of good people on both sides would be dead, for nothing. No one in the US wants any resources North Korea has. There isn't even the weak excuse of fighting over oil (sorry, "energy security").

    It's just so tragically pointless.

    1. Re:A strange game.... by Antipater · · Score: 5, Informative

      If I were China, I'd already be backing away from them.

      They already are. All this hubbub is in response to a UN vote censuring them for the December rocket launch. The vote was unanimous - China did not back them up or even abstain.

      --
      Everything is better with chainsaws.
    2. Re:A strange game.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In the long run, they have three options:
      1) cave to foreign pressure, which eventually means the end of the regime
      2) rattle their sabers enough that they continue to be a threat worth placating/negotiating with, which keeps food coming in and the regime in place
      3) overplay their hand, and end up absolutely leveled by superior forces.

      They've done pretty well with (2) so far, but the trouble is that they actually have to keep hobbling themselves to make it work. If they're not seen as a genuine threat, they don't have a position to negotiate from. If they become an immediate threat, they will be destroyed. They have to occupy a medium position, where they are perpetually a few years away from being a major threat, but also constantly held back by the concessions they make in exchange for aid and trade.

      It's the aid and trade they want to keep the regime going. If the U.S. stops negotiating, they have to either put up or shut up, which either ends the regime with a bang or a wimper.

    3. Re:A strange game.... by realityimpaired · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Why is that? Right now, North Korea is a nice bargaining chip for China. The US doesn't want a direct conflict with China so cannot directly attack North Korea. When the time is right, China will reign in North Korea (for a time) in exchange for some concessions from the US. It is a poker game with an element of risk, but North Korea is a high face card in China's hand.

      China tried reining them in 2 months ago, when they were getting ready to do the missile launch test. They still fired the missile, which is why China voted in favour of the current round of sanctions.

      NK knows that China doesn't want US military presence on their borders, and that the US will not leave SK as long as NK is still a threat to the south. Thus, it's in NK's interest to be just annoying enough that SK still considers them a threat, but not annoying enough to trigger an attack. And yes, they are a credible threat to the south, with the amount of artillery they have embedded in the hills. They don't need nuclear weapons to do a lot of damage to the South, and are doing this for the attention.

      As long as they don't do anything that would cause China to attack them, they're safe. (personally, I think that's how it's going to play out in the long run, btw... they'll piss China off enough that China attacks them, possibly with UN support, and then the US leaves SK). That means that they can ignore China's warnings and chidings all they want, as long as they don't actually do anything that directly affects China. Sadly, their current administration appears to be aware of this.

      Interestingly enough, I was listening to a discussion on the radio this morning about Munchhausen syndrome, and can't help but wonder if NK's behaviour is a form of it.

    4. Re:A strange game.... by Nethemas+the+Great · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Losing China makes me all the more nervous of the nature of the DPRK's behavior in the future. While in some ways frustrating, the fact that China was playing big brother with North Korea served the purpose of making them more comfortable. All on their own they're far more likely to switch from a temper tantruming baby, to an animal backed into a corner. Any military action on North Korea's part will result in grave consequences for South Korea.

      --
      Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
    5. Re:A strange game.... by khallow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So the guy who had Osama killed is not going to do anything about the latest Kim to rule NK if he steps over the line?

      I seriously doubt that.

      With bin Laden, Obama just had to approve the plan. No real risks would be taken since bin Laden is just a thug in hiding with little power. Here, if Kim Jong-un steps "over the line", any world leader has to consider what consequences would come, such as a bloody attack on South Korea or some sort of nuclear strike.

      Obama just doesn't strike me as the sort of politician who likes to take such risks.

    6. Re:A strange game.... by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Obama carried out a black-ops strike in a supposedly "friendly" country without informing them at all. That was incredibly brazen. He regularly conducts drone attacks, though it appears always with approval of the countries involved. Nevertheless, it is a fairly aggressive posture. He wasted very little time at all going into Libya.

      He might not talk like Bush, but he acts a lot like Bush. The main difference seems to be European acceptance. I don't see anything to make me doubt that he'd respond appropriately.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    7. Re:A strange game.... by rastilin · · Score: 5, Funny

      I was thinking why not use the stealth bombers to drop a little cloud of leaflets with the american flag on one side and the word "boom" on the other over their major city?

      --
      How do you kill that which has no life?
    8. Re:A strange game.... by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      At the end of the day it isn't because Beijing are big fans the NK regime. They likely hate the Kims as much as anyone. What wakes up the Chinese leadership in cold sweats late at night is the idea of a regime collapse (whether internal or external factors) and millions of North Korean refugees flooding over the border.

      The Chinese may be more willing to use open lines of communication to voice their disapproval of the regime's conduct than in the past, but until someone can come up with a credible plan to wind the regime down with as little violence and upheaval as possible, they will continue to back it.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    9. Re:A strange game.... by jonadab · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > If they launched something... at San Francisco, ...
      > the Chinese, would tell them "you're on your own."

      Very likely, yes.

      If they launched a *Nuke* at San Francisco, China would actively participate in dismantling the DPRK.

      > They have to know they wouldn't last 3 weeks
      > against a U.S. military onslaught.

      I'm not sure exactly what the Kim family knows. If they had even a basic grasp of macroeconomics, for instance, they wouldn't be running the country the way they are. And economic differences are the main reason why they wouldn't have a prayer, militarily speaking, against a first-world power.

      Isolationism always leads to economic stagnation, and people who grow up under it usually are not fully aware of the extent to which the world is passing them by. When we think of the development of nuclear weapons, we think of the WWII era, which for us in the first world seems like a very long time ago, technologically; but that's because we've lived all our lives around modern technology. living in isolation, you don't necessarily *notice* all the changes taking place in the rest of the world. Time slows down, and the WWII era doesn't seem so different from today. Yes, the Kim family knows about some advances that have been made. They know about the internet, for example, and they have at least a passing awareness that cell phones exist; but those are just specific examples of a much larger trend, a trend they very well might not be aware of at all. Like I said, if they did understand this stuff, it's unlikely that they would be running the country the way they are. I would lay odds ten to one that Kim does *not* realize that low-income six-year-olds around with hand-me-down cellphones over here, and even if he did find out this fact, he would not understand its socioeconomic significance.

      Bring it around to warfare, we're so far beyond Hiroshima that we consider that kind of weapon primitive, and I would bet money that Kim doesn't understand this. Even as nukes go it was primitive (we developed H-bombs just a few years later, then submarine-launched nukes, and so on and so forth), and even the most advanced nuclear weapons have been thoroughly obsolete (as an indicator of real military power) for about a quarter of a century now. If we actually thought North Korea was considering launching a nuke at us, we would not respond with nukes of our own, because that would be clumsy and ineffective and old-fashioned and politically unpopular and have unnecessary civilian casualties, among other things. No, we would respond with much more precise and effective methods of warfare that have been developed in the intervening decades. We wouldn't do Shock and Awe the way we did in Iraq, obviously, because that was ten years ago, and limiting yourself to ten-year-old military technology isn't how you get to be the most powerful military on the planet. To you as a first-world citizen this is so obvious it probably wouldn't have occurred to you to even mention it; but to think that way you have to have a feel for how fast technology can develop, and you don't really get a feel for that when you live as a hermit, never leave your house, and barely ever receive any visitors.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    10. Re:A strange game.... by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The main difference seems to be European acceptance.

      you can do absolutely anything you want in the world as long as your allies agree. because the will of the world is the will of the world. nothing has been violated if a thug like osama bin laden is taken out, no one serious on the world stage stands with this thug. pakistan can go fuck itself, because pakistan had elements of its government protecting bin laden

      and the reason north korea is so advanced nuclear wise is because of a pakistani scientist who copied dutch technology when he was in the netherlands, then sold it to north korea, iran, libya, and other regimes. this scientist is seen as a hero in pakistan. so fuck you again, pakistan

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan

      "thanks" pakistan

      why are we allied with this country?

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    11. Re:A strange game.... by tranquilidad · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't quite see it like that.

      He's actually more like Clinton than Bush when it comes to responding. Clinton used cruise missiles and Obama uses drones. Though drone attacks started under Bush, Obama has increased their usage. Clinton relied much too heavily on cruise missiles rather than other tools available to him in responding to crises. Many of the troublemakers accepted that they could do something and the cost would be a cruise missile that would be unlikely to find them specifically. Sadam Hussein said as much after he was captured - he believed that that his failure to acknowledge the weapons inspectors would only result in some more cruise missiles and that the U.S. was bluffing about an actual invasion. Clinton's response to Bin Laden in Afghanistan was also cruise missiles. Bush changed the rules of the game, for better or worse, by committing ground troops. Obama appears to be flowing back into Clinton's strategy of using drones tactically rather than committing ground troops. That's why I believe that Obama's military strategy is more akin to Clinton's than Bush's.

      I disagree with the characterization of going after Bin Laden in Pakistan as being brazen. Imagine that your entire national security team has been coming to you for months claiming that they have finally tracked down Bin Laden. The intelligence infrastructure has placed assets on the ground in houses near where Bin Laden is believed to be and they also believe that Bin Laden is in the house. The only real voice against going after him in Pakistan comes from your Vice President. You ran for office highlighting that Bush's failure to capture or kill Bin Laden hurt the stature of the United States and, unlike Bush, you would bring him to justice. You also turned over responsibility for the final recommendation to the head of the CIA and he comes back with a "let's go for it" kind of recommendation.

      What would have been brazen would have been to ignore all of that and NOT go after him.

      What would have been even more brazen would have been to go in and taken Bin Laden alive and never say a word about it.

  2. Good idea. by MachineShedFred · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hey North Korea,

    That country holding the other end of your leash just voted for the Security Council resolution against you rather than abstaining as they have done in the past. Maybe before you talk a bunch of shit about lobbing a nuke at the US, you should worry about China giving that leash a big yank.

    Also, don't you guys only have enough nuclear material for 7-8 weapons? Please continue nuclear testing in your own country and use up all of your weapons grade material as fast as possible on making holes in the ground a lot bigger.

    Cordially,
    The Rest of the World.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    1. Re:Good idea. by yurtinus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The more I observe, the more I come to the conclusion that all of politics is a tragic high school shouting contest. North Korea is just somebody's obnoxious eight year old brother that nobody wants to claim.

      --
      +1 Disagree
  3. The new, friendly leader by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When Kim Jong-Un came to power, I was soundly modded down for expressing skepticism about his being a reformer. I was insulted for being an "old man" stuck in a cold war mentality. Now he is dancing Pyongyang Style.