RE: BREAKING: North Korea Has Just Fired Another Ballistic Missile
November 30, 2017 at 11:47 am
(This post was last modified: November 30, 2017 at 12:00 pm by Anomalocaris.)
While a nuclear attack by any nation takes the world into uncharted territory, and certainly introduce the possibility of unanticipated reaction by the players and unexpected escalation, there can be absolutely no doubt whatsoever that an unprovoked nuclear attack by the United States on North Korea will have vastly more far reaching consequences and unpredictable effects than an unprovoked nuclear attack by North Korea on the US.
This is simply that the US has the nuclear arsenal to annihilate any country in the world. Demonstration by the US that it’s threhold for unleashing the nuclear arsenal is much lower than previously expected would likely immediately provoke many nations with the capacity to build their own nuclear deterrence to immediately cross the line and actually build that deterrence. It would also commit China, whose nuclear arsenal is currently just a minimum deterrence, to embark upon a program to match American nuclear arsenal. During the Cold War mutual assured destruction was stable, because each side has only antogonist. China has both the technology and industrial power to match or surpass America and russia’s Cold War scale nuclear arsenal. If china were to enter the fray, the world could within 5-10 years see 3 nuclear superpowers each with the capacity to destroy all the others. I am not altogether clear how stable such an arrangement can be. We saw during the Cold War that despite muturally assured destruction, each side still invested enormous treasure and effort to try to gain small and in the grand scheme of the things inconsequential advantages over the others’s Nuclear arsenal. If there are 3 super powers, being able get one of the other powers to align with oneself to all gang up on the third is hardly inconsequential, and all three powers will move heaven and earth to try to do this. How stable would a MAD arrangement be with 3 players?
North korea’s Nuclear arsenal is on the other hand small, and does not create existential threat to many nations other than South Korea, and perhaps japan. On the other hand, North Korea is unlikely to survive to continue having any impact on the world if it were to attack the US. So impact of North Korean first nuclear use might be painful, and if they hit South Korea or the US east coast might result in 10s of millions of casualties, but it will be be limited to just that.
This is simply that the US has the nuclear arsenal to annihilate any country in the world. Demonstration by the US that it’s threhold for unleashing the nuclear arsenal is much lower than previously expected would likely immediately provoke many nations with the capacity to build their own nuclear deterrence to immediately cross the line and actually build that deterrence. It would also commit China, whose nuclear arsenal is currently just a minimum deterrence, to embark upon a program to match American nuclear arsenal. During the Cold War mutual assured destruction was stable, because each side has only antogonist. China has both the technology and industrial power to match or surpass America and russia’s Cold War scale nuclear arsenal. If china were to enter the fray, the world could within 5-10 years see 3 nuclear superpowers each with the capacity to destroy all the others. I am not altogether clear how stable such an arrangement can be. We saw during the Cold War that despite muturally assured destruction, each side still invested enormous treasure and effort to try to gain small and in the grand scheme of the things inconsequential advantages over the others’s Nuclear arsenal. If there are 3 super powers, being able get one of the other powers to align with oneself to all gang up on the third is hardly inconsequential, and all three powers will move heaven and earth to try to do this. How stable would a MAD arrangement be with 3 players?
North korea’s Nuclear arsenal is on the other hand small, and does not create existential threat to many nations other than South Korea, and perhaps japan. On the other hand, North Korea is unlikely to survive to continue having any impact on the world if it were to attack the US. So impact of North Korean first nuclear use might be painful, and if they hit South Korea or the US east coast might result in 10s of millions of casualties, but it will be be limited to just that.
