Happy Birthday, America!
The North Korean missile that soared high above the Sea of Japan on Tuesday was hailed by state-run television as a “shining success.” But to U.S. officials, it was a most unwelcome surprise: a weapon with intercontinental range, delivered years before most Western experts believed such a feat possible.
Hours after the apparently successful test, intelligence agencies continued to run calculations to determine precisely how the missile, dubbed the Hwasong-14, performed in its maiden flight. But the consensus among missile experts was that North Korea had achieved a long-sought milestone, demonstrating a capability of striking targets thousands of miles from its coast.
Initial Pentagon assessments said North Korea had tested a “land-based, intermediate-range” missile that landed in the Sea of Japan just under 600 linear miles from its launch point, Panghyon Airfield, near the Chinese border. The State Department later confirmed North Korea had launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. Government and independent analyses showed the missile traveling in a steep arc that topped out at more than 1,740 vertical miles above the Earth’s surface.
If flown in a more typical trajectory, the missile would have easily traveled 4,000 miles, potentially putting all of Alaska within its range, according to former government officials and independent analysts. A missile that exceeds a range of 3,400 miles is classified as an ICBM.
“This is a big deal: It’s an ICBM, not a ‘kind of’ ICBM,’ ” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “And there’s no reason to think that this is going to be the maximum range.”
Anyone with even one ounce of sense in their brains understands that we urgently need to replace our commander in chief. So, let’s get on with it.
This shit is not a reality show.
What does it say about our current reality that one of the first things I though upon reading this was “I hope to God Putin can talk Trump out of tossing a nuke on North Korea.”
It says that you are a small-r realist.
Both Russia and China apparently are on the case.
And ICBM doesn’t necessarily have one specific target.
Draw a 4000 km circle around North Korea and see how much of China and Russia are within that circle.
The problem for Russia, China, and any other nations dealing with North Korea diplomatically is that the US really doesn’t have a capable interlocutor diplomatically.
I meant a 4 sorry.
North Korea’s Nuclear And America Has No Plan to Stop It
that writer criticizes Obama for not being warlike enough, but it’s not like there’s any obvious solution.
any strong action by U.S. against N Korea requires Chinese cooperation or at least acquiescence, which will require U.S. acquiescence in turn to various obnoxious Chinese actions like the South China Sea land grab.
>>if Beijing had so much sway over North Korea, Kim wouldn’t have sent to two assassins to rub VX in the face of his half-brother living under Chinese protection
Kim understands the situation and knows he can afford to annoy the Chinese now. If they spank him they’re doing the U.S. a favor for free.
Lewis isn’t a war hawk at all. Especially not when it comes to North Korea. Here he is in February 2016 arguing for diplomacy:
link
Dennis Rodman, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
Trump’s in no position to ask the NBA champs to go on a goodwill tour of North Korea.
And then this happened:
http://ijr.com/the-response/2017/07/912245-watch-confused-trump-wanders-away-limousine-gets-directed
-back/
This is bad no matter who the President is. That its Trump makes it exponentially worse.
Questions to consider: Does NK have anything left economically to the extent that sanctions are an option? is Kim crazy enough to decide on a first strike at some point? Is there an opening for covert action to change the regime from within?
A nation that intentionally sends an ICBM in a high arc instead of actually carrying out a first strike is disciplined, not crazy. Just an observation.
North Korea was content to live under IAEA inspections until W constructed his Axis of Evil to justify regime change. The IAEA has proven inspection capabilities that neo-cons have systematically dismissed to further their aims of regime change. Iraq exposed their insistence out of ignorance.
It will be interesting to see what the Russia-China opening deal is.
Everybody’s interest is served most by ending North Korean isolation from international relations and diplomatic courtesies. The regime has existed for close to 70 years; time for the US to get real.
Full diplomatic relations come with an embassy and a CIA station, which can in competent hands reduce conflict. South Korea looked at the experience Germany had integrating the GDR and looked at the economic gap between North and South. South Korea decided that a two Korea policy is acceptable on a denuclearized peninsula with economic relationship and some control over immigration. The Sunshine policy that W’s rashness scuttled was based on those premises.
But there’s no American chestbeating involved; so it must not be tough, say the neo-cons.
At some point we need to acknowledge that South Korea has agency if its the US that needs to get real. If we are the obstacle to a denuclearized peninsula then we should either stay out of it or they should seek to sideline us, no?
I think Russia and China are the best solution at this point as we have decided to cede our diplomatic responsibilities and credibility.
What the freakout is about apparently is that the U.S. will no longer have the ability to nuke North Korea with complete impunity? That seems to be a standard U.S. response. We see it with right-wing blathering about Iran’s nuclear weapons program too.
Here’s what actually happened:
In short, North Korea allowed their conventional military to decline because it’s more difficult and expensive to maintain, so they’re now vulnerable to U.S. aggression. They try to counterbalance this vulnerability by developing Nukes, and the U.S. freaks out and talks about “first strike options” as if “first strike” wasn’t a monstrous war-crime.
Meanwhile, the North already has nuclear weapons and also medium range ballistic missiles capable of wiping out South Korea and has had them since 1994 – the No-Dong 1 Missile:
Yet, somehow they haven’t wiped Seoul or Tokyo off the map yet. Maybe there could be a way to get along with these people instead of saber-rattling. Is this a dangerous development? Sure. But, the U.S. is not able to do anything to solve the problem through violence, and since we refuse to negotiate in good faith as other texters have pointed out, the best thing we could do is NOTHING.
Yeah… You’re a moron.
The deterrence from doing anything to North Korea has for more than 40 years now been the 10’s of thousands of artillery pieces pointed at Seoul in South Korea as well as the South Korean Nuclear power plants near Seoul.
There has never been a plan to just nuke North Korea off the face of the map. Ever. Those artillery pieces could make most of the South Korean part of the Korean peninsula uninhabitable for at least hundreds of years before any nuke could take them out.
So for the past 40 years there has never been a realistic plan to take out the North Korean government by force in a first strike. The plans have always been about retaliation and assured mutual destruction if the North Koreans struck first.
This bullshit that they are vulnerable to US aggression is laughable. North Korea has had the US and South Korea over a barrel since the Armistice. American citizens, beyond the military, may not have been directly vulnerable to North Korean weapons, but the US has been tied so tightly to South Korea economically that the resulting financial ruin to the US and global economy of the destruction of South Korea would kill about as many Americans from the resulting economic collapse as South Koreans from the direct attack.
North Korea doesn’t need nukes for their self protection. North Korea needs nukes to bully their way into doing whatever they want with China and Russia. Or do you think that Kim Jong-un having his half brother killed in Kuala Lampur while said brother was under the protection of China with VX nerve gas was the act of someone who just wants to get along with the rest of the world too?
Those ridiculous tweets referencing North and South Korea/Japan/China!! Let’s remember we have been told by the Trump Administration that Trump Tweets are documents which represent official U.S. Administration policy.
So, official U.S. foreign policy is now the vomit of right wing talk show hosts which the President caught in his cupped hands and hurled at the world. Lovely.
This comment thread seems to be defective: nobody yet has remarked that putative President Pence would be worse than Trump because he’s an evangelical ideologue.