This morning around 4:30, as I often do at about that time, I woke up. My allergies were bothering me. I took one of those little white, generic antihistamine/decongestant pills I get from Walmart, and went over to push the button on my iPhone so I could note the time.
As the lock screen lit up, I saw this alert from the AP:
March 07, 4:19AM: Ahead of U.N. sanctions vote, North Korea vows pre-emptive nuclear strikes against U.S.
Yeah, right, OK. I went back to bed sort of muttering the way Rob in “High Fidelity” did after, in a fantasy sequence, throwing the insufferable Ian out of his shop: That dumb mother…
Thinking, of course of Kim Jong-un.
I mean, who does that? Who actually threatens a nuclear attack against the United States? Real countries don’t do that. The Soviet Union never did that, in so many words. We knew they had the capability to do so, the real, existential threat was always there. But they were never so uncool, so nekulturny, as to say it.
Only the sort of ridiculous loser who keeps his people literally in the dark, the country is so far behind — who develops nukes instead of anything useful? — blusters like that. (OK, technically his father did that, but I sort of look at them as one administration.)
I went back to sleep, and didn’t think about it again until mid-morning. When I tried to look it up, I found it on my Washington Post app, as the seventh headline on the screen: “N. Korea threatens nuclear strike,” two items below “Obama invites Paul Ryan to lunch.”
Of course, maybe The Washington Post and I are wrong to be dismissive. Maybe it’s the crazy blusterer, rather than a superpower with full MAD capability, that we need to worry about. But it just doesn’t feel like, say, a Cuban Missile Crisis.
Oh, and guess what? The U.N. went ahead with the sanctions. No mushroom clouds yet…
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Since “Best” Korea has now vowed a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States, shouldn’t that give us enough justification for pre-emptively striking them?
It would seem like with the technology available today, we could broadcast a message to the Korean people from the President that specifically stated that the United States was not interested in doing really anything to Korea- and that their own leader was a nut job holding them hostage.
I think big brother China would smack some sense into North Korea before things escalated to this level. China has way too much to lose to not get involved with a problem they could crush in a matter of weeks. North Korea would roll over if Chinese forces started across the border.
Any launch by DPRK would be instantly traceable to the source of launch. In an early year of its FBM submarine program, the U.S. had a normally stealthy Polaris sub surface within site of an outdoor government event of an African nation — just for effect. Such drama is hardly beyond the current administration, but then so is the actual threat from DPRK’s continued nuke development.
It certainly encourages other small nations as a “bad-boy’s” role model for actors around the globe (i.e. Iran, now, and someday soon, depending upon succession, perhaps Venezuela and Brazil.
They don’t have the capability to deploy a nuclear missile that can reach the US. This is pure political theater for domestic (and some international posturing) political consumption. Now, striking South Korea or Japan is another matter altogether. Still, like Iran, crazy though they seem, most everything they do can be seen through the prism of strengthening their position and in the interests of self-preservation. That is, bluster and threats do the job they want them to do, I don’t think they are crazy enough to actually launch a nuclear attack because the cushy lives the party apparatchiks lead (and the power they exercise) would immediately come to an end in the nuclear retaliation that would annihilate them entirely.
Phillip – While you are correct that this is political theatre for domestic consumption, there are ways to attack the US or US interests that don’t require an ICBM. There are plenty of US interests in Japan or South Korea that are in range of their likely capabilities. Even if they haven’t minaturized their device or turned it into a warhead, they could put it inside a shipping container or civilian naval vessel and deliver it to Long Beach, Oakland, Hawaii, etc. The same trick could be performed with a chartered civilian airplane or diesel electric submarine. It wouldn’t be that difficult to pull off a false flag operation and get into the continental US.
I also don’t think that the administration is going to jeopardize their cushy lifestyle either, though. It’s probably mostly bluster.
And what is North Korea is most freaked out about? That the US got China to go along with the sanctions vote in the Security Council to make it unanimous.