Articles 
PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT NSW
HUMAN SURVIVAL PROJECT
SANCTIONS? NO USE AT ALL!
THREATS? MAKE KIM JONG UN WORK FASTER
MILITARY ACTION? MILLIONS WILL DIE.
DIALOGUE? MIGHT BE WORTH A TRY.
(AND ANOTHER TRY AND ANOTHER AND ANOTHER...)
Kim Jong Un has conducted his 6th nuclear test. Whether it really was a hydrogen bomb is uncertain, but it seems likely that the blast was 4-6 times the size of the last one. If it wasn't an actual hydrogen bomb its likely to have been 'gas boosted', which is a kind of way station to a hydrogen bomb. There doesn't seem to be, and most likely isn't, any way to stop him. Hyperventilating, sanctions, threats of military action, aren't working. Military action will kill millions, and lead to the very thing we are trying to prevent – the actual use of nuclear weapons.
In the complete absence of any prospect whatsoever of success from any other quarter, it seems as ifdialogue without preconditions and based on mutual respect, which is what any relationship with any state whatsoever whether we like their 'regime' or not – should be based on anyway – might just be worth trying. And trying again. And trying and trying and trying.
The first thing we must do, as this author has said repeatedly, is to take down the temperature. If we do try dialogue it must (to repeat) be entirely without preconditions. Talk for the sake of talk is, in this context A VERY GOOD THING. Keep talking even if it seems in the short term to be going no-where. Just keep talking. And talking. Jaw jaw jaw is better than war, war, war.
Its clear that the harder 'we' (whoever 'we' is) try to force Kim Jong Un to give up nuclear weapons, the more his determination to cling on to them and to develop more and more of them. Dialogue too, if he thinks its just a more subtle way to get him to give up his nuclear weapons, will not work. But dialogue that is aimed at setting relationships on a more stable basis, and aims first of all simply at establishing a relationship in which further talk is possible, is at least helpful. We must give up any attempt to 'punish' Kim Jong Un. That too just isn't going to work, and serves to perpetuate the current toxic standoff. We may think he and his regime are wicked. He thinks WE are wicked and must be resisted and he's quite prepared to die (and take millions with him) to prove that he is virtuous and that it is us who are wicked. There is no way out of this kind of death spiral.
Sanctions have not worked so far and there is absolutely no indication that they are suddenly going to work. They do however serve, as many things do, to poison relationships.
Threats and upping the ante in various ways merely serve to ensure Kim threatens back, and ups the ante on his side even more. Threat and counter threat ultimately lead to only one place – to the deaths of millions.
Military action will lead to the same place. The least that the Kim 'regime' will do is bombard Seoul. Its more likely that they will incinerate Guam and Okinawa. Let's not fool ourselves that THAAD or missile defense will stop them – even in the artificial conditions of US tests it has a less than 50% success record.
It entirely possible that they may succeed in incinerating not only Guam and Okinawa but also Tokyo.
And its just possible though by no means certain that even as they are being reduced to rubble themselves they may be able to hit San Francisco and LA.
And if they can do that they are also going to be able to hit Sydney.
Please please lets stop the threats, stop the chest thumping and hyperventilating, stop posturing, and do the one thing that has a snowballs chance in hell of working.
Without preconditions, lets talk.
John Hallam
United Nations Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner
People for Nuclear Disarmament/Human Survival Project
Surry Hills, Sydney NSW Australia
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m61-411-854-612
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