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North Korea Accused of Testing an ICBM With Missile Launch Into Space (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Reuters reported that North Korea launched a long-range missile that is said to have placed a satellite into space. The launch happened much to the consternation of North Korea's neighbors, South Korea and Japan, as well as the United States. Pyongyang claimed that the missile launch was part of that country's peaceful space program. But, other countries are pretty sure that the launch was a test of an ICBM capable of placing a nuclear weapon on any target in the world, particularly the United States.
They will be tolerated in so much as they keep a buffer between them and South Korea. They do not want another democratic neighbour to stir up trouble.
The limits to this arrangement are of course in question.
China will quite likely end them swiftly or "secure" their nuclear facilities, when they get something that resembles an operational ICBM, because even the slightest chance of this getting out of hand would hurt them the most in any aspect, regardless who is or isn't hit in the end.
From what I've seen, even China is getting sick of North Korean antics and have started applying political pressure behind the scenes for them to chill out. Unfortunately, it seems as though NK is ignoring it and going rogue, which is a really bad idea as it's really only the influence that China wields that keeps them from getting steamrolled by any of several other countries or groups.
In my opinion the most iconic example of that is the Soviet R-7.
World's first ICBM.
Launched Sputnik.
Launches Soyuz and Progress to this day.
That sounds logical. The only other reason I can see is that they are letting NK force the West into developing more advanced ICBM counter measure technologies because they are confident that they will then be able to steal it and thereby undermine the West's ICBM capabilities. Ask yourself what would Sun Tzu do?
Yeah, they should. They should also bring in more nukes into Japan and South Korea. Oh wait, they already did that. Maybe the US and South Korea and Japan could be launching more ICBM missiles and rockets on a regular basis. Oh wait, they're already doing that too. They should also bring in a few million DU bombs into South Korea, and use South Korea as a storage facility. Oh wait, they already did that. Maybe fly a few b52 and stealth bombers and bring a few nuclear submarines all over the Korean peninsula. Oh wait, they're already doing that. They should also expand their already massive joint military war games being held a few or so times every year year in and year out at the North's border. Oh wait, they're already doing that and they've included simulated nuclear attacks to the drills too. I can't possibly imagine why North Korea would want to build up their defenses! And I can't imagine why western media and now especially Slashdot is throwing such a hissy fit over a satellite launch, when you can basically launch your own satellite via kickstarter now. The extreme hypocrisy and the ignorance in general about Korea is so fucking ridiculous.
That sounds logical. The only other reason I can see is that they are letting NK force the West into developing more advanced ICBM counter measure technologies because they are confident that they will then be able to steal it and thereby undermine the West's ICBM capabilities. Ask yourself what would Sun Tzu do?
Interesting thought and the US was/is (?) developing that tech with variing results and more for propaganda reasons against russia, which upset them on hillarious levels, even with the knowledge that they have enough firepower to overcome any of these systems.
Beside their wanna-be nuclear ordenance NK has also enough firepower at the DMZ that they can easily shell Seoul into ground zero with conventional weaponary which seems even more dangerous, because MAD (without the M in NKs case) is not really effectiv as they still can fire at billions of people even after the capital was nuked to the ground.
Probably the only acceptable answer to them firing an ICBM would be return fire by the 5 permanent members of the security council, with total annihilation of NK damn the consequences, because if one gets to fire it and nothing happens afterwards, others will try as well (looking at you India/Pakistan/Israel/Iran).
China already mentioned quite public that they don't like NK acting up, but in contrast to my statement above they also might not be in the position to intervene without a major incident and are now between a rock and a hard place:
- Keep that shitty dictator and send him enough money to keep his kingdom and hope that it destabilizes from inside and stays inside or
- actively act against him and try to explain why half SK would look like the eastern french border after WWI
Would be interesting to see how Sun Tzu manages this one.
It's more that the US isn't willing to do anything about it because it guarantees thousands to hundreds of thousands of dead allies and unpredictable results for geopolitical balance in the region. By chiding them publicly, it sets up a history of warnings in case something does happen, but lets all those people keep living for now.
Also, South Korea doesn't want to fight over it, preferring to wait until the regime collapses on itself and then figuring out how to clean up that mess, which would be easier than cleaning up that mess plus the leftovers from a war.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
It's not about actually attacking the US. It's about perpetuating the propaganda. Our media hypes the threat for him. All he has to do is the NK version of shouting "ooga booga" and we all jump. I'm not saying there isn't a credible threat here, but it actually benefits NK to keep us all wondering. they can spin the hell out of it to their citizens.
All NK has to do to fuck the planet is loft some high explosive packed around a tonne of sand into a retrograde orbit and blow it up.
Goodbye trillions of dollars of fancy hardware once the debris cascade starts. Asymmetric warfare is a bitch ain't it.
What is the purpose of this discussion? Who cares if the most rockets had a military use? NASA's drive was always directly related to the Cold War; when the Cold War ended NASA's funding got cut over and over again. So frankly anything NASA did had a military use behind it.
And quite frankly, just about everything has a military use behind it to. We're currently writing on computers that likely use the same or similar hardware to power military weapon systems. We're using the Internet that has it's genesis in DARPA. I just drank some orange juice from frozen concentrate that was initially designed by the military in order to cram more supplies sent to troops into a single shipment. I'll be driving later today and need some directions, so I'll use my cell phone to access the GPS system that was initially set up as a missile and military unit guidance system. Hell I buttered my bred with a knife today; I'm sure some "military" invented that way back in the day.
So while the facts are all interesting, the question is why is this even coming up?