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talkpolitics2017-08-09 03:55 pm
halialkers) wrote in talkpolitics2017-08-09 03:55 pm
Entry tags:
And lo, the shit doth hit the fan:
Well, in the last few days, things have escalated very rapidly indeed with North Korea, illustrating ultimately that the world escaped the tragedy of a Cold War nuclear crisis to get the farce that may well finally end the nuclear taboo with North Korea and Donald Trump's America.
First, North Korea genuinely stunned me with this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-missile-ready-nuclear-weapons-us-analysts-say/2017/08/08/e14b882a-7b6b-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?utm_term=.94f1bc1e8200
The Cold War superpowers took a decade or two from developing the simple Hiroshima-Nagasaki and Joe-1 kind of bombs to developing first ICBMs and then putting atomic bombs on them. North Korea has done so in record time, even if the bombs are no larger than those used in WWII, meaning in relative terms they're rather crude and primitive by comparison to the continent-annihilating weapons the USA and Russia, at least, have. In doing this, North Korea has profoundly changed the nature of the crisis with its weaponry and for the first time is a rather crude and cumbersome small state with the potential power to menace a big one.
And as is illustrated here, the gap between the WWII-style bombs North Korea has and those same continent annihilating weapons of apocalyptic scale and power is a real one:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a23306/nuclear-bombs-powerful-today/
The Castle Bravo test and the Tsar Bomb set records, but they're actually relatively speaking par for the course with modern firepower.
What this in turn means is that North Korea gets one bite out of the USA, assuming the missile hits or doesn't hit (and even a failed nuclear launch still ends the 'nobody actually uses the damned things' taboo for the duration). That bite will be ironically proportionate to the USA's own use of the weapons at the end of WWII in devastation. The USA will hit North Korea back (and if it fired one at China or Russia or the UK or France or Pakistan they too would do this exact same thing) with a weapon far more powerful than that fired at it.
North Korea can give the USA a nuclear tick bite, the USA can literally annihilate every human in North Korea. Does this make the situation less threatening? Hell fucking no, it makes it far more deadly.
In retaliation for North Korea developing these missiles, however, in standard fashion Dorito Benito made a statement that makes things still worse and is why frankly I had trouble sleeping last night:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/politics/trump-fire-fury-improvise-north-korea/index.html
He promised 'fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen' (and insofar as nobody has used modern nuclear weapons in war, yet, he's actually telling the truth for once).
This statement should be very familiar because it's an echo of Truman's statement at Potsdam in 1945 about 'prompt and utter destruction':
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Hiroshima/Potsdam.shtml
Nuclear war with North Korea, and a President who was a source of satire for old cartoons and the basis of the villain in an 80s sci-fi film.
This would be the scenario of a grimdark satire in any other reality, but it is the one that actually exists.
And the worst bit is that it would literally matter not at all who won the Presidential election in the USA here. North Korea was developing these weapons since the George W. Bush years. It ended the armistice of Panmunjom in 2013, at one stroke ending all diplomatic possibilities it could use in favor of a cycle that ultimately only ends in a nuclear exchange. Other Presidents wouldn't use Trumanesque rhetoric posturing about nuclear weapons, perhaps, but the broader geopolitical picture would be no different, nor would the existential threat of a nuclear war.
And when, not if, the cycle continues to escalate unless somehow it's broken and neither Trump nor North Korea seem to care overmuch to do that, the nuclear taboo will finally be shattered.
And when it is, the chain leading to a global nuclear exchange of some sort shifts up tremendously quick as the Chinese are unlikely to accept a US nuclear strike next to their border without flexing their own arsenal, and the Chinese lack the military ability to deal as much damage to the USA as it can do to it. Scary times, to be sure.
First, North Korea genuinely stunned me with this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north-korea-now-making-missile-ready-nuclear-weapons-us-analysts-say/2017/08/08/e14b882a-7b6b-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?utm_term=.94f1bc1e8200
The Cold War superpowers took a decade or two from developing the simple Hiroshima-Nagasaki and Joe-1 kind of bombs to developing first ICBMs and then putting atomic bombs on them. North Korea has done so in record time, even if the bombs are no larger than those used in WWII, meaning in relative terms they're rather crude and primitive by comparison to the continent-annihilating weapons the USA and Russia, at least, have. In doing this, North Korea has profoundly changed the nature of the crisis with its weaponry and for the first time is a rather crude and cumbersome small state with the potential power to menace a big one.
And as is illustrated here, the gap between the WWII-style bombs North Korea has and those same continent annihilating weapons of apocalyptic scale and power is a real one:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a23306/nuclear-bombs-powerful-today/
The Castle Bravo test and the Tsar Bomb set records, but they're actually relatively speaking par for the course with modern firepower.
What this in turn means is that North Korea gets one bite out of the USA, assuming the missile hits or doesn't hit (and even a failed nuclear launch still ends the 'nobody actually uses the damned things' taboo for the duration). That bite will be ironically proportionate to the USA's own use of the weapons at the end of WWII in devastation. The USA will hit North Korea back (and if it fired one at China or Russia or the UK or France or Pakistan they too would do this exact same thing) with a weapon far more powerful than that fired at it.
North Korea can give the USA a nuclear tick bite, the USA can literally annihilate every human in North Korea. Does this make the situation less threatening? Hell fucking no, it makes it far more deadly.
In retaliation for North Korea developing these missiles, however, in standard fashion Dorito Benito made a statement that makes things still worse and is why frankly I had trouble sleeping last night:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/09/politics/trump-fire-fury-improvise-north-korea/index.html
He promised 'fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen' (and insofar as nobody has used modern nuclear weapons in war, yet, he's actually telling the truth for once).
This statement should be very familiar because it's an echo of Truman's statement at Potsdam in 1945 about 'prompt and utter destruction':
http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Hiroshima/Potsdam.shtml
Nuclear war with North Korea, and a President who was a source of satire for old cartoons and the basis of the villain in an 80s sci-fi film.
This would be the scenario of a grimdark satire in any other reality, but it is the one that actually exists.
And the worst bit is that it would literally matter not at all who won the Presidential election in the USA here. North Korea was developing these weapons since the George W. Bush years. It ended the armistice of Panmunjom in 2013, at one stroke ending all diplomatic possibilities it could use in favor of a cycle that ultimately only ends in a nuclear exchange. Other Presidents wouldn't use Trumanesque rhetoric posturing about nuclear weapons, perhaps, but the broader geopolitical picture would be no different, nor would the existential threat of a nuclear war.
And when, not if, the cycle continues to escalate unless somehow it's broken and neither Trump nor North Korea seem to care overmuch to do that, the nuclear taboo will finally be shattered.
And when it is, the chain leading to a global nuclear exchange of some sort shifts up tremendously quick as the Chinese are unlikely to accept a US nuclear strike next to their border without flexing their own arsenal, and the Chinese lack the military ability to deal as much damage to the USA as it can do to it. Scary times, to be sure.
no subject
My bet is that this time, like every time in the recent past, the can will yet again be kicked a little further down the road. What that will buy us this time, other than a few more years without a Korean peninsula blown into a bazillion pieces, is unclear. But when there are no good options, maybe status quo is the way to go. Being able to make a nuclear bomb is one thing. Then being able to miniaturize that bomb so it can fit on a missile is a second. Being able to build an ICBM is a third thing. Those three things, the DPRK seems to have achieved. But, the most important stuff is still not demonstrated. One, they have to have reliable ICBMs. You can't go firing off an ICBM and have it just go "plop" into the Yellow Sea. That is bad business. Second, you have to be able to target that missile reliably. Sure, there is a bit or horseshoes and handgrenades to nuclear weapons, close does still get the point across, but aiming at Anchorage and hitting some random moose in the arctic won't give you the satisfaction necessary to make the utter annihilation you are about to receive from the USAF worthwhile. Third, you have to have a robust enough weapon that it can survive the reentry heat and pressure as it plunges into the atmosphere from space. That is no easy feat, either. So, there is still enough road to kick the can a few more times.
Of course, we could probably buy a nuclear free North Korea by giving the Chinese Taiwan, Sudetenland-style, and agreeing to their terms in the South China Sea. Total capitulation is always an option.
no subject
The stage was set for a massive, terrible internal collapse of North Korea by the collapse of the USSR and subsequent problems in China. The overt warmongering of the government at the time was directly correlated to their loosening hold on power at home. The people were beginning to starve to death en masse, plundering the infrastructure of the economy to survive. The regime knew it couldn't publicly blame China (for dropping the ball with aid) because China had nothing to give, and was too close at hand. Chine could walk in (more or less) and disassemble the NK government, and that would be it for the regime. So: Talk up the evil of a foreign power an ocean away, then clamor for a bargain of some kind. Look, folks at home! We faced down the devil! Sorry you're starving, but, you see how necessary all those concentration camps were now, right?
The same deal is happening again. North Korea's own citizenry has been in a state of slow, horrifying awakening to the depth of it's own psychosis for the last dozen years, and the leadership needs to prove its own legitimacy again. They will threaten a strike at anyone who seems willing to negotiate so that they can look like glorious victors.
In a way, they've met their match with Trump.
They know better than to actually hit anything, for that would be instant lights-out, and no more big state dinners and back-room high-roller sex parties with the daughters of starving patriots.
You know what I'd really like to see of this? A negotiation of ""total surrender"" to North Korea, without any actual terms, followed by a series of economic agreements so that trade goods can pour into the country. With luck, in a generation or so, the citizens will get wired in to the internet well enough that they start asking each other a lot of Difficult Questions. A fanciful dream, I know...
no subject
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared
It's a funny cold war book, but rather of its time.
Edit. Published 1955. My copy isn't a first printing, alas.
no subject
I mean the dictators aren't exactly the kind of people to rely on professionals not beholden to ideology who might tell them brutally when they're full of shit. They clearly have invested in making nuclear ICBMs and once they openly speak of targeting US territory they will have a hard time walking that back and keeping the scam going. Once they rescinded the armistice they were in a grave of their own digging.
They can either walk back the suspension and forfeit the threat of war that still means they have to be taken seriously or they keep it suspended and eventually bite off more than they can chew.
no subject
You know that, and I know that. Does that Stalinist dictator with yes men generals know that and after he purged them would any of them risk their very literal lives by telling him?
no subject
Tillerson is going to have to be in perfect "Sir Humphrey" mode though....
"With greatest respect, Mr President...."
Oh gods. Lets go and write this. If the world goes up in flames, this could be a Black Mirror moment.
no subject
hopepray that the stupids will keep each other busy with rhetoric without causing actual carnage amongst the innocent.Fingers crossed, but I am gripped by a cold clammy feeling.