North Korea Now Making Missile Ready Nuclear Weapons

[Brian37]

No shit, Einstein. That's the point. N. Korea has built for itself a credible military threat to deploy in the event that they are attacked and invaded. Kim has no intention of launching a preemptive attack on S. Korea, the U.S., or Japan because that would spell the end of his regime. Looked at from the vantage point of a despot desperate to maintain his grip on power, the N. Korean military buildup and nuclear program is a rational move. This has always been about preserving the status quo, his sabre rattling notwithstanding. To dismiss Kim as irrational or an 'overgrown pouting schoolboy' is to completely miss the point.

He's ruthless and brutal and the world would be better off without him, but that doesn't make him a loose cannon.

Finally, someone who agrees with me. North Korea's not building nukes so they can bomb their enemies into oblivion. They're doing it so it LOOKS like they can bomb their enemies into oblivion. It's clear that if they actually use them, their days as a nation-state are numbered, except maybe if China decides to do their usual thing of negotiating some sort of truce between North Korea and their targets so the cycle can start once again (which they tend to do whenever North Korea actually hits something with their sabres) , and I can't be sure that they'd do this even in the event of a NK-initiated nuclear attack. Perhaps Kim Jong-Un is really so unhinged that he believes he can somehow come out on top in all this clusterfuck, but, from what I've been able to tell, even he isn't.

And I honestly cannot see the situations Anomalocaris  considered "Use it or Lose It" situations as likely to happen. Mere international pressure does not tend to convince tyrants on the order of the Kim family to make nice, a military raid is unlikely to actually happen, and given that the majority of the North Korean population has been living in a Platonic Cave for Sixty-some years, I cannot see a massive uprising threatening the Kim's power happening.

A military conflict is only unlikely to happen if we put a leash on Un's orange counterpart. Did everyone forget the two unfunded wars Bush Jr started? At least Bush Jr contained his bullshit to a non nuclear conflict. If anyone thinks 45 is even close to that stable you are fooling yourselves. 45 makes Bush Jr look like Ghandi. 

There is no way 45 can conduct a limited strike or a conventional ground war without any sort of domino effect, nukes or not.