North Korea has little interest in being a member of the international community, in having allies or in collective security. Trade is dumbed down to a series of bargaining transactions, and sneers at international standards of behavior. Some argue that North Korea wants nuclear weapons for regime security, an analysis that would suggest that North Korea is simply warning predatory states to stay away or else.
While South Korea and Japan are protected by their alliances with the U. Would the South Korean people believe in a certain U. Would proliferation stop with South Korea and Japan? What about Taiwan? The Non-Proliferation Treaty would quickly be reduced to tatters, and so would the sense of security in the region.
And if North Korea fields a deliverable nuclear weapon that could reach the U. The dangers of a preemptive strike. By Gregory F. More than one American President has been tempted by some form of preemptive attack on North Korea. Since the beginning, the country has hidden key facilities, and as its missiles become more mobile, they are harder to target. And it is hard to imagine Kim Jong Un doing nothing while the U. Seoul lies within artillery range of the North.
Kim could retaliate even without using nuclear weapons. That would mean any attack on nuclear facilities would have to be accompanied by attacks on other installations threatening the South. In other words, the war would widen even before Kim retaliated. The other set of preemptive options, ones designed to overturn the regime, suffer their own set of imponderables. If Kim were killed, would the regime come apart or rally around the family?
War gaming suggests a dangerous stew of violence, refugees and a race to control those nuclear weapons would ensue. In that stew, the gaming suggests, allies, not to mention China, would be as much of a problem as opposition from residual North Korean forces.
So regime change looks more and more attractive. But better that it come from within. So is the chance that an insider will finally get angry enough to take him out, never mind the consequences. Treverton, the former chair of the U. China needs to get serious. VOA Africa Listen live. VOA Newscasts Latest program. VOA Newscasts. Previous Next. East Asia. October 05, AM. William Gallo. North and S. Korea Restore Cross-border Hotline.
More Asia News. The Day in Photos. November 11, He also implied that this missile system could be used in the future for a potential tactical nuclear weapon delivery role. Cruise missiles are also functionally different from ballistic missiles - which the North tested just two days later. The UN Security Council sanctions actually forbid North Korea from testing ballistic missiles - but not cruise missiles. This is because it considers ballistic missiles to be more threatening because they can carry a bigger and more powerful payloads, have a much longer range and can fly faster.
But unlike ballistic missiles, which have a limited ability to manoeuvre in the final stages of their flight, as their payloads hurtle down to the earth, cruise missiles can swerve and turn through the majority of their flight, allowing them to attack from unexpected angles.
Meanwhile, their low altitude flight means that ground-based radar systems will often only detect these missiles in the final stages of their flight, when it may be too low to successfully attempt to intercept them. Cruise missiles aren't a fundamentally new technology for North Korea. For years now, it has tested and refined Soviet-derived anti-ship cruise missiles. The recently tested missiles, however, exceed the range of those older cruise missiles by an order of magnitude.
But these cruise missiles are but one part of this broader effort by North Korea. As the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency recently assessed, Pyongyang has also resumed operations at the gas-graphite reactor at the Yongbyon complex, implying the resumed production of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. The test of ballistic missiles in the days after the cruise missile tests underscores the possibility of North Korea resuming a sustained campaign of missile development, testing, and evaluation.
North and South Korea test missiles hours apart. North Korea's missile and nuclear programme. Image source, KCNA. North Korean state media put out images of the new cruise missile.
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