Post inauguration Trump:

[Jezza]

North Korea threatens to "nuke" Australia!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-22/north-korea-accuses-australia-of-blindly-following-the-us/8464252

[stui magpie]

[David]

I expect there will be a nuclear strike coming back the other way if North Korea gets attacked. I doubt Australia would be within their capabilities, but one can well imagine much of South Korea or Japan in smoking ruins. Is that really a risk worth taking just so Trump can play big man on campus?

[stui magpie]

[Morrigu]

[David]

As I've said previously, North Korea has nothing to gain from an actual nuclear strike. They have no territorial ambitions and no capacity to actually use it as a springboard for a ground attack. All the regime wants is to exist in a perpetual stalemate in which they can issue threats to every man and his dog without being touched. There are worse things than allowing that stalemate to continue into perpetuity.

I'm happy to consider any safe strategy for eventual power transition (something that will probably have to come from China, who certainly seem to have had enough of the situation), but no sane person should want a war with North Korea. Unfortunately, the US war machine is anything but sane.

[Morrigu]

^ Animals Rule Chernobyl 30 Years After Nuclear Disaster

" I would argue that for many of those species [the effects of radiation], even if they�re there, probably aren�t enough to suppress populations to the point where they can�t sustain themselves,� says Beasley. In the zone, �humans have been removed from the system and this greatly overshadows any of those potential radiation effects.�

Essentially, this means that human populations have a bigger negative impact than radiation.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/

[Mugwump]

[David]

What precedent is there for North Korea to pursue such a far-fetched strategy? Australia and the West would call its bluff in that scenario in a second. North Korea is bound by the principles of Mutually Assured Destruction as much as any nuclear power in the Cold War era was.

Don't get me wrong: Kim Jong-un's North Korea is batshit crazy, and I'm not exactly thrilled about the idea of them having nuclear weapons. But there's a curious, long-standing double standard in operation here that has existed since nuclear weapons were first developed: that nuclear development in anti-US states is an existential threat to the world that must be stopped at all costs, whereas nuclear development in the US and pro-US states is merely rational defence policy.

That is only plausible if you believe that the US and its allies can be counted on to only ever act sanely and moderately, whereas hostile states are fundamentally dangerous. Surely even the most enthusiastic supporters of US hegemony wouldn't swallow that.

The truth lies somewhere in between, of course. Israel and Iran both have valid defence reasons for developing nukes and somewhat unhinged governments that just might deploy them one day. But to the US political establishment and conservative press, one is pursuing a responsible defence policy and the other must be stopped at all costs (up to and including military intervention). To a neutral observer, that is an absurd dichotomy. And the same approach can apply to any nuclear power: while I still have some faith in the checks and balances of the US system to prevent anything terrible from happening, let's not forget that the only thing standing between Trump and a pre-emptive nuclear strike is his good judgement.

Trump's good judgement, otherwise known as the most grimly hilarious three words ever used in combination: can we trust it? Can we trust in Kim's? Can we trust Putin's, or Modi's, or Mamnoon Hussain's, or Netanyahu's, or Rouhani's? Not really. All we have to defend us against the world's greatest existential threat, wielded by various groups of fallible humans with a range of agendas, is the world's most apt acronym: Mutually Assured Destruction. It's the concept that no political goal, however absurd or brutally ambitious, is worth getting your own country obliterated over. We may not be sure of much in this world, but as Keating said, always back the horse called self-interest. It's not much, but it's something.

Until the world commits to disarmament (the only rational long-term solution, and one the globe must pursue aggressively), the MAD principle remains humanity's best hope. No matter how much clowns like Trump and Kim may want to test its boundaries, I reckon it looks great over in the corner, don't you?

[swoop42]

I'm with David on this all the way.

North Korea aren't acting any differently than they have for the last decade or two.

They like to talk tough and have always been bat shit and yet in reality they take no action.

While having a nuclear capacity is a new ingredient in the mix I suspect it's development is more about determent against outside political forces than hostile intent.

[Mugwump]

The Australia case is a thought experiment, but extortion threats toward SK or Japan would fit with North Korea's long and concrete history of economic extortion.

Regardless, you are writing as though Trump is massing for an invasion of NK. In reality they have been pressuring China, as NK's Godfather, to make NK stand down its nuclear programme, using trade as a lever. A perfectly sensible policy, and practically the only sensible policy available.

You may consider a cold war with North Korea a state of affairs which must be quiescently accepted. I think a balanced observer without an anti-US bias would consider it the thing most likely to result in nuclear war, far, far more dangerous than the Cold War we worried about in 1980. When the regime moves toward collapse, as it very probably will one day, the risks are too great to contemplate with equanimity.

Certainly not worth going to war over, but well worth pressure on China.

[Mountains Magpie]

IMO, the only way that the world will willingly disarm itself of nuclear weapons is if there was one global government. On that basis, I'll happily take my chances with MAD every day of the week.

MM

[Mugwump]

[Skids]

https://youtu.be/2ibmi8CX4p8?t=27s

[David]

I'm all for putting diplomatic pressure on China, but I think Trump and his administration have been using much more militaristic and threatening language than you suggest. From here it just looks like a game of chicken between macho boofheads that nobody else needed or wanted.

The biggest problem with MAD lies in your statement above, Mugwump: "once someone bad has them...". It goes without saying that North Korea sees the US as 'bad', just as Iran views Israel, Pakistan views India and so on. And so each side continues to stockpile weapons, bringing us closer and closer to the day when billions of years of human evolution, art, science, philosophy and exploration of the universe come to nothing.

And why? Because the world is run by irresponsible morons who say things like, and I quote, "the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes". As if the US somehow sat apart from the world and as if its own aggressive nuclear development program wasn't a key factor in the world's collective failure to come to its senses.