PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

SEPT 9 IMMEDIATE USE

PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
HUMAN SURVIVAL PROJECT

NORTH KOREA WILL PROBABLY TEST AGAIN...AND AGAIN...AND AGAIN

A 'WICKED' PROBLEM WITH NO IMMEDIATE SOLUTION


The DPRK test today is obvious bad news, triggering as it does the possibility that the DPRKs neighbors Japan and South Korea might also go nuclear.
But not only is there no immediate solution to the problem of a North Korean nuclear weapons capability that seems to grow daily, but every 'quick n easy' supposed 'solution' to that problem seems likely only to make it worse, and worse.

In the longer term, it might be argued that solutions lie in 'coming to terms' with North Korea – if that is at all possible – and even that is by no means guaranteed.

Sanctions and confrontation will merely solidify the DPRK regimes determination to strengthen its nuclear deterrent. Sanctions have been ineffective so far and there is no reason to assume they will ever be otherwise.

And the more pressure is put on the DPRK to cease from testing the more they will test.

The same is true in spades for threats of military action which will in any case be likely to create immediate conflict with China.

It has been said that the US unofficial but real policy now is in fact 'regime change'. Regime change from within looks about as likely as hell freezing over. Externally imposed regime change will involve another Korean War, and will likely trigger a war between the US and China that would be utterly catastrophic.

Responding to the DPRK test (if you are South Korea or China) by acquiring a nuclear deterrent of your own is no better, escalating incalculably the likelihood of a tit-for-tat nuclear exchange in Korea or Northeast Asia.

There really are no good immediate-term options whatsoever.

There is one grimy silver lining to this ugly dark cloud however.

The DPRK test and the growing DPRK nuclear capability is not actually the end of the world.

That particular capability belongs to the US and Russia. While the DPRK test is bad – indeed very bad – news, a US or Russian nuclear test would be apocalyptic news.

The real downstream danger to all of this is that in response to the DPRKs tests, South Korea and Japan will decide they have to leave the NPT and themselves acquire nuclear weapons, placing the entire Korean Peninsula and all of NE Asia on a hair-trigger.

And while that too is not quite the end of the world, it is bringing it an awful lot closer.

Let us all take a deep breath.

John Hallam
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