Did I say it was a paradise? What I said was that North Korea has engaged in a tried-and-true tactic over the last couple of decades (since the mid-1990s), first with nuclear weapons development, then with ballistic missile development, and it's been very successful in squeezing billions of dollars from West -- most of which no doubt goes into the pocket of the favored Kims and the other power centers of the regime. The money -- call it whatever you like... "aid," "foreign aid," "aid to disestablish nuclear power plants," and so forth -- is something that the North has learned to stamp its feet and hold its breath over, until it gets what it wants.

Anyone who follows the doings of the Kim family and the DPRK has understood this for years. I'm mildly shocked that this is such big news here among the intelligentsia. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

That would be an incredibly fortunate resolution for the US. But, I doubt China wants the economic disaster that is NK.

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If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. - Will Rogers

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I can appreciate your concern. I'll go on with my blind view of us beating the war drum against yet more opposition we don't anticipate giving us much struggle. Gotta make that loot!!!

Does anyone seriously think that NK would use nukes against the US knowing that total obliteration of their country is the end result?

Yes. Many.

I get that they can track them and figure out destination pretty quickly and accurately. My question was whether there is more? I.e. Do they determine it's not a real nuke based purely on the fact that's it's pointed at the ocean and not a city, or do they have other means of distinguishing an armed ICBM from an unarmed one?

Let's say NK decide to step it up and start firing test missiles that set out towards San Francisco or Tokyo and then abort them before they get there. At that point does the US have to treat it like a serious nuclear attack and try whatever options it has for shooting it down, and start evacuating people or getting them into shelters?

There's a story about the run-up to WWI that many of us military officers learned during stints at this-or-that advanced training course or in getting a graduate degree in national security studies or similar. They used to teach it at the Command and Staff College, as well (though I don't know these days if they still do).

It has to do with the German monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm, and his military's chief of staff. After the archduke was assassinated and all the various countries who'd end up belligerents in the world war to come had invoked various treaty obligations and subsequently armed themselves and begun moving men and materiel close to what they anticipated to be their initial fronts, the Kaiser had a moment of what we'd now call sanity and inquired of his military chief if it would be possible to pull back or even call the entire operation off.

Remember: Germany was vastly well-armed in both men and armaments and long trains of troops and supplies, including artillery cannons and other weapons of war were even then making their way west, towards France, Belgium and other nations on what would become the Western Front.

The Kaiser's military chief informed the nation's monarch that, no, it wouldn't be possible to recall the troops and all their arms and that they'd have to proceed with war.

"But why?" asked the Kaiser.

"Because it would be impossible to mobilize such a huge machine of war again in the near or even mid-term future" the German military man replied, pointing out that the reserves had been issued equipment, that the trains couldn't be unloaded again and then quickly re-stocked if needed and should their enemies decide that negotiations had failed and war would need to be waged.

All of that machinery -- both actual and metaphorical -- could not now be stopped, the Kaiser was told. War it would have to be.

The Kaiser relented and ordered the military to proceed with with all haste, lest one of their enemies catch them unawares. And all because it was nearly impossible, in their view, to stop something so huge once it had gotten rolling.

What I'm pointing out here is that, in some ways, both the US and the Norks may feel that once the locomotive has gained such speed it would be impossible to stop it in its tracks.

This is probably why the Orange-Haired Wonder's response to today's missile launch has mostly been a restrained "We'll handle it" rather than an Indian chief war cry. You have to be careful that you don't add too much steam to an already rolling locomotive, or risk it gaining too much speed to stop it before it runs off the track.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

AFAIK, there's no good way to tell if an ICBM has a nuke inside.

The window of opportunity to take out an ICBM has to be pretty small. Once it gets going, it's moving really damned fast and really high. The time to take out the ICBM is in the boost phase. And that creates another problem. In order to take out a missile during boost, you have to have all the detection, interpretation, and anti-missile resources in place and functioning. That's the kind of stuff we can do pretty well, if we have a mind to. What we don't do well is making decisions in a hurry.

If some LT Cdr in a CIC in some ship off of S. Korea has the authority to launch something that can take out the ICBM seconds after it launches, then we might knock out the ICBM. But chances are, the Lt Cdr doesn't have that authority.....he probably has to contact higher to get approval. At each level of contacting higher for approval, someone has to go fetch the boss out of bed. Once boss gets to the phone he asks "are you sure?" That starts a cascade of "are you sure?" all the way back down to the originator of the request. Approval can take forever unless the Lt Cdr has the authority to hit the red button.

I was on the Korean DMZ for much of 1990. We, the platoons that patrolled the Z at night were supposed to have Bn Mortars in "Direct Support". That is to say, they were totally at our disposal. But......"Release" of those mortars was retained at "Army" level. That meant that the Plt Ldr who decided he needed mortars would have to call to Battalion who would call Brigade, who would call 2nd Infantry Division HQ, who would call 8th Army. At each level, we imagined, the "Are you sure?" would go down the chain of command and a "Yes, for christ's sake, I'm sure. Release the damned mortars." would go back up.

Me and my fellow Platoon Leaders figured that there was no way that all those leaders could get located, woken up, ask and receive answers to their questions, and direct Release of Indirect Fire, any quicker than 24hrs. So having the people, analysis, commo, and weapons systems all in place isn't enough if you don't give the guy at the red button approval authority to fire at his/her discretion.

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"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

I can give Trump a thumbs up on this particular response. I have no idea what it means, but it doesn't matter. I'm happy he didn't stoke the fire even though if he did, it will still leave me with zero fear NK strikes the US. It was as reasonable a response we can expect from Trump.

Okay, so they got virtually nothing, except good ole corruption, while we got much slower development of their nuclear program. BTW, that approach pretty much went out the window in 2002 with the "axis of evil, .... Hey , let's invade Iraq!!" policy, which continues to pay real dividends in so many areas. NK sees nuclear weapons as their only way to survive, and we don't have any plausible policy that can dissuade them of that.

Let's say NK decide to step it up and start firing test missiles that set out towards San Francisco or Tokyo and then abort them before they get there. At that point does the US have to treat it like a serious nuclear attack and try whatever options it has for shooting it down, and start evacuating people or getting them into shelters?

Evacuate where? What shelters? We'd have maybe 30 minutes tops, maybe not even that much time. Best plan would be to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

Jump ahead to about the 2 minute mark

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I miss YaHey

Can you explain what they get out of that? They are intent on developing nuclear capability. they can show full capability by hitting a mark in the ocean. Sounds like a plan for ....

You know that he'll unleash the Super-Duper, Double-Dog, All-Out Twitter fire and fury on the North Koreans.
I'd hate to think of the harm his tweets will cause the regime.

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

That's probably not very smart. You realize North Korea is adjacent to Russia too? Real likelihood it'd start WWIII. Russia and China might not actually attempt to a nuclear retaliation to against the U.S., but they'd sure as hell form a very legit military alliance and take the opportunity to seize the the Korean peninsula (what's left of it), Taiwan, Ukraine, etc. If that triggered the activation of full NATO defenses then there'd be almost no conclusion not involving full-scale WWIII.. You'd be toying with hundreds of millions of lives with that adolescent-macho view of geopolitics.

No, decapitating North Korea would be a much more narrowly focused military operation, and there'd be quiet negotiations in advance with China so that neither side started the sort of chain reaction that could lead to open war between superpowers, which no one wants.

Put away the nukes and let the adults handle this before you fuck up the world.

Was really just using that scenario to illustrate the question I was asking, don't think it's particularly plausible.

Though I'm not sure I would want to base military strategy on Kim Jong Un behaving rationally...

North Korea is a very small plot of land. Taking them out is not the issue. China is very aware of the pollution implications of any nuclear conflict. The USA and China are obviously too intermingled to risk any differences. Kim has reached a point where his bluffs are pretty much used up.

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sometimes

Your solution might be of lower risk. Might not.

China and Russia haven't gotten along all that well in 50yrs. China is bound very tightly to us because they own our debt and we buy most of their products. They are bound to us much more tightly then they are bound to the Russians. All it would take is big trade sanctions between us and we'd both suffer badly. All that's keeping the Chinese Communist Party in power is that the people are comfortable enough to be docile. The Party has to worry that in the event of a serious economic crash, the people could rise up and take them out in a day.

The Russia angle is weak. They aren't going to seize NK because China wouldn't allow it. China could block Russian access to NK with a platoon of girl scouts. Nor will Russia see our action as a direct threat to them. Sure, they might use an attack on NK as an excuse to pull some shit elsewhere, but they could just as well to that tomorrow. If one wants to fabricate an excuse for aggressive action, no sense on waiting for some external trigger.

Knocking out NK's nuke potential with a conventional strike is risky. It would be very hard to be certain we knew about all targets, killed all targets, killed everyone with enough authority to initiate launch, and killed enough C^3 that the remaining leaders couldn't issue launch commands to the remote sites. Just takes one flaw in an otherwise conventional plan for the NK nukes to launch.

Re. negotiation with China. Of course.

I'm not saying that a nuke strike are a slam dunk. I'm saying that the various conventional ideas have serious warts because the targets are hard, dispersed, and our intel is probably not that strong. At some point a judgement call might have to be made. On the one hand a nuke strike will put great strains on our relationships with China and Russia. No matter the negotiations, they will not want us to strike, nuke or conventional. So it's not like the charm of a massive conventional strike is that China and Russia will be good with it. On the other hand we have to weigh the risk of a conventional strike that isn't 100% effective and as a result a nuke blows away Seoul, and/or Tokyo, and/or San Francisco.

I did admire your "let the adults handle it" snarky tone tho. See what you can do to get laid tonight. You'll have a sunnier outlook tomorrow.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

Out of curiosity, any sign of Tillerson on this topic?

Yes, that would be of great comfort in the event the DPRK regime launches a nuclear-tipped ICBM capable of hitting Japan, South Korea, Guam, Midway, Hawaii, Alaska or the mainland United States. Or simply launches a non-armed ICBM toward any of those areas and regions. As others have said, there's no real easy way to tell if a ballistic missile is nuclear-tipped or not for most of its flight path, and we can't take the chance that they're sending a missile and dummy warhead, only, our way. But at least it took them some time to get there, right?

My guess is if they're really crazy they'll launch on Japan first. Of course, that would trigger our response, though I don't know if we'd go nuclear, at least initially. Maybe we could degrade the North purely with conventional arms, though. That is, if China doesn't enter -- which they did when our forces crossed the Yalu River in 1950. No doubt, they'd look at any US or Western roll-up of the North as an unacceptable provocation, and they'd respond accordingly.

Seems to me all we did was kick the can down the road to the point where now the can is loaded with nitroglycerin and the next kick may blow it up. We can thank a succession of presidents going back 20 years for the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't choice we're now confronting.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Yes, but in 2002 we irredeemably filled the can with nitroglycerin with the biggest strategic error of a generation. For all of the problems of past efforts, we basically burned all bridges. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, except that way too many folks had foresight. While you are thanking various presidents, you can pretty much thank everyone who applauded those moronic choices at the time. There was too much stupid, and far too little actual regret and remorse. Luckily, I'm not bitter ;).

That's when I worry about little fat rocket boy.

The one thing the chinese leadership have demonstrated themselves to be is pragmatists (hypocrites?)

The person in NK is valueless. Kim goes they can get another one. The value to the chinese is trade and debt

I am sure that in the event kim wont take a long vacation in the maldives i am sure the chinese would be amenable to an outcome that does not pollute them (any more than they are already) and leaves NK as a communist state.

You owe the bank 5 dollars you have a problem. You owe the chinese 1.2 tn they have a problem.

What happens if they drop the MOAB type conventional weapon as opposed to a nuke?

How much real difference would their be in the damage inflicted

MOAB 11 tons TNT
Little boy 15 KT tons (15000)
Modern nuke is 1000x greater (TSARA 50 MT) 50000000 tons TNT

So 1000000x+ less powerful

No, not bitter in the least. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

So you don't trust your boy Trump to handle this?

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?