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A North Korean Hydrogen Bomb?
North Korea says it’s successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. It will take days or even weeks to confirm what it really was. Something certainly does seem to have blown up: There was a 5.1 seismic event near Punggye-ri, which is where the past three nuclear tests were conducted.
There’s good reason to be highly skeptical of DPRK propaganda. It’s more plausible, as Jeffrey Lewis pointed out a few weeks ago, to imagine they’re experimenting with fusion fuels to boost the yield of a fission explosion.
But whether it was a fourth fission bomb or a hydrogen bomb, no one’s treating this as a joke. South Korea is holding emergency meetings, as is the UN Security Council. Shinzo Abe’s comments suggest that Japan is certain that this was, at least, another nuclear test:
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe condemned North Korea’s announcement that it had carried out a hydrogen bomb test on Wednesday, calling it a “serious threat” to Japan and a “grave challenge” to nuclear non-proliferation efforts.
“I strongly condemn this,” Abe told reporters.
“The nuclear test that was carried out by North Korea is a serious threat to the safety of our nation and we absolutely cannot tolerate this,” he said.
Given the North’s improvements in missile technology, there’s no way any American can view this as merely a “regional concern.” It’s not clear whether they know how to mount a nuclear weapon on a missile, and the conventional wisdom has long been that they have no clue how to build an H-bomb. But it would be a big mistake to think they’ll never be capable of it.
As Jeffrey Lewis noted,
One of the major themes of the early part of China’s nuclear program is how committed China was to matching the other nuclear powers in the possession of intercontinental-range ballistic missiles armed with multi-megaton thermonuclear weapons. A lot of Americans had trouble accepting this idea. We thought of China as being too backward to have such aspirations. That was, I argue, precisely why China wanted such weapons: because China’s communist leaders had a different vision of China’s place in the world and the development of thermonuclear weapons was a way of achieving that vision.
I think something similar is happening with North Korea. We think of the country as impoverished, both in terms of economy and leadership. Well, that’s not how the government in North Korea sees itself—and anyone who does, keeps such thoughts to himself. Pyongyang’s propaganda apparatus argues—and this is what Kim was saying—that North Korea is a technological powerhouse. The North Korean propaganda line argues that this power is demonstrated by a series of achievements culminating in space launches, nuclear weapons and, yes, even thermonuclear weapons.
So, while a staged thermonuclear weapon is likely more than North Korea can, at the moment, achieve technically, it is a mistake to rule out the aspiration by Pyongyang. An H-bomb might not conveniently fit our perception of North Korea, but perhaps that is Kim’s point.
So, Ricochet, how do you think the United States should handle this? It’s not reality TV. It’s just reality.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, Science & Technology
I don’t know there is anything we can realistically do. I guess tighten the sanctions, but the general population in North Korea is already starving there, and the supreme leader doesn’t seem to give a crap about them anyway. I don’t think tightening the sanctions does anything. The only avenue I can see is through the Chinese. Perhaps they can put pressure on him to…to do what? He’s not stepping down. Can the Chinese curb his appetite for N. Korea’s aggression? If they’ve tried, it certainly hasn’t worked yet.
Weird, there’s nothing on Drudge about this, but it’s all over the Japanese news.
My money is on the fusion-boost of a fission bomb.
There used to be a time when the U.S.’s nuclear umbrella meant something, but at this moment I’m not sure.
I don’t believe he has one now. The size of the tremor doesn’t suggest it.
Give these guys a break, will ya. Unless you have some idea how we could have staved off NK and Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions. These are very difficult problems and we shouldn’t denigrate the efforts of others without offering up alternatives ourselves.
Who needs a search engine when we have Ms. B. Nice link.
A re-militarized Japan. With nukes. What could go wrong with that?
The US lacks the courage to deal with North Korea. But it is really not that hard to fix the problem.
1: Drop an insertion team to go through the known nuclear facilities, and make them unusable. Might well be combined with other platforms. This approach would take some casualties, to be sure – but it is much smarter than a telegraphed invasion. At that point, the end of the Nork Nukes is a fait accompli and any Chinese protests start there.
2: Broadcast our media. Drop wind-up radios to receive our media. Occasionally drop care packages to remind the people of how great it is in South Korea: chocolates, cigarettes, delicacies.
3: Arm the civilians. Drop millions of handguns, all over the land. Give the citizens the ability to defend themselves against the midnight jackboots at the door.
4: Offer every North Korean official a simple choice: defect, and live out your days in a safe and nice-enough place, or have a price put on your head. Offer a US Passport and citizenship papers and 7-figure money to anyone who kills someone on the most-wanted list. Everyone would go crazy looking over their shoulders.
Cheap, easy, and with the exception of the initial strike, no US blood on the line.
All that is needed is a little courage in the White House.
Oh, right.
There are many other sides to this relationship beside the (unlikely) military confrontation. We could roll back some trading privileges if they don’t rein in NK. We can do this now with more and more outsourcing destinations for US businesses via TPP or other.
iWe, I wish it could be that easy.
Of course it can be that easy. But it requires creativity and courage. Since those attributes are not found in the bureaucracy, they must be promoted from the Oval Office.
There are three problems, if I’m recalling correctly, with North Korea:
So what can we do? At this point nothing which is why we used to be concentrated so hard on keeping people from getting nukes in the first place.
To really put a stop to this we’d need to effect regime change. I have no doubt that either due to propaganda or fear of crimes against humanity tribunals and possible execution or murder most North Korean high command officers would fight to the death.
Somehow we’d have to secure Chinese permission which is unlikely at best, set up robust missile defense, evacuate 50+% of the population of South Korea to the south of the peninsula to protect them from retaliatory strikes and then stage an invasion that devastated the only thing holding North Korea together from full-on barbarism.
Then we’d have to make sure the Chinese stayed out of North Korea while we staged the most expensive reconstruction and humanitarian effort since World War II to try and rescue and help as many North Koreans as possible while rebuilding the probable ruins of Seoul – the second largest city on Earth.
It would cost trillions of dollars and plunge the world into an economic depression so it won’t ever happen. Get used to a more dangerous world.
Not at all. Please see my comment above.
There are other ways to change the world besides invasion. America’s influence is outsized because our ideas are outsized.
Sadly I saw your comment – I just don’t have that much faith in America anymore.
Based on this 2006 analysis,
“The relationship between the seismic magnitude and the yield of a nuclear explosion varies according to local geological conditions.1 Nonetheless, the following equation is generally applicable in the interpretation of the relationship between seismic magnitude and yield of nuclear explosion (less than 120 kt of TNT equivalent2) in a hard rock underground nuclear test.3
Mb = 4.262+0.973 logY
Where, Mb: Richter seismic scale, and
Y: yield of nuclear explosion.
The U.S. Geological Survey has published a reading of 4.2 on the Richter scale at location of 41.294°N and 129.134°E for the DPRK nuclear test. The Complete Test Ban Treaty Organization announced that it registered at 4.0 on the Richter scale.4
A reading of 4.0 and 4.2 on the Richter scale would correspond to a nuclear explosive yield of about 0.5 and 0.9 kt of TNT-equivalent, respectively, according to the above equation. Thus, the most easily obtained estimate of the size of the explosion is 0.5-0.9 kt. This is a yield given for small tactical nuclear warheads formerly in the American arsenal; and is a small fraction of the yield of first tests of other countries (19 kt U.S., 25 F.S.U., 25 U.K., 60 France, 22 China, 12 India, ~9 Pakistan).5 It led some pundits to wonder whether the DPRK even conducted a nuclear explosion at all at the test site. ”
Technical Analysis of DPRK Nuclear Test
I think you are right.
With a reported quake of 5.1, if my (shaky) math is right the yield is about 8kt ( fits with a prior yield of 0.5 to 0.9kt with a quake of about 4). Not in the H bomb range.
Useful analysis. Can you game NK’s response while we are doing these things. First order of business here.
Why we keep coming back to Ricochet, for these nuggets of information. Thanks!
They will freak out. But if they lack nukes, then their options are quite limited – a few non-nuclear missiles toward Japan. A suicidal charge into the teeth of massive American defenses on the border.
But even here, propaganda will be very powerful. The entire regime could simply fold, if soldiers get the idea into their heads that everyone else might also quit. Especially if you air drop the small arms, making soldiers able to hope, for the first time, that their families are not defenseless.
Nuke Pyongyang taking out the tin pot dictator. Claim they blew themselves up. That is what happens when people play with toys they do not understand.
I would like to see the comment in bold expanded a bit. NK’s military might is formidable. If they decided to attack SK conventionally, what would the final tally be in casualties, damage, etc.? In the 100’s of thousands of lives maybe? > $1 trillion of dollars damage maybe?
Your information is quite dated. When I was there in the early aughts, there were a few U.S. Army bases with fighting forces close to the demilitarized zone. Since then, at the request of the U.S., the South Koreans built bases south of Seoul for most of these U.S. Army forces. I’m pretty sure that there’s still a token force of American soldiers at select places near the DMZ, but the South Koreans have full responsibility for their defense along the DMZ.
The fact that North Korea has road-mobile ballistic missile launchers greatly increases the risks related to your proposed course of action.
They might have two or three extra nukes hanging about – unless you were sure that the insertion team (?) got all the nukes at first go it’s a bit of a risk for Seoul and Tokyo (and certainly for the world economy).
Iow: frustrating and somewhat opaque, but the better option is still jaw jaw.
Probably some North Korean nuclear scientist who was under the gun (ahem) to produce a bigger bang for the buck put a cylinder of hydrogen next to a normal nuke and set it off. Bingo! It’s a bomb, its got hydrogen, it’s a hydrogen bomb!
Anything to keep from having a date at the dog park with Dear Leader Jr.
Nope, I am unable to give them a break. The same person who negotiated the “agreed framework” with North Korea is the same person B.O. put in charge of the Iran agreement. There are choices – standing resolute on Non-proliferation ought to be one of them.
iWe has a better idea. More cowbell from the Obama administration isn’t one of them.
The automated and artillery defenses on the border are substantial, and deep. If North Korean attacked today, I’d reckon they would not break through.
In order for North Korea to take out Seoul or Tokyo, they would need to have a nuke on a warhead – which is highly unlikely today, but much more likely as time passes.
So the US would do well to act earlier rather than later. Again: we do NOT need to invade. We just need to take out the nuclear facilities, and then send in treats, small arms, and ideas. An armed Nork citizenry, incentivized properly, will cripple or kill the regime.
Doing nothing is the worst option, which means it is what Obama will do.
Any Nork attack would be ugly. They have a huge, well-fortified artillery and rocket arsenal. They’d unleash it on the Seoul metroplex and whatever US and ROK installations they could hit. I’d bet on at least one big breakthrough.
The big question is what happens when we counterattack. I find it hard to believe they’d melt away the way Afghan and Iraqi regulars did.
This seems absolutely right from what I have read recently. It is striking that we (the west, myself especially) are completely ignorant of the reality in N.K. For God’s sake people are born, live a brutal life, and die WHILE IMPRISONED in their gulags. The few North Koreans that do make their way to the South are given quite a bit of assistance from the government but have great difficulty integrating in society there. Not saying it would be impossible to integrate but I believe we don’t begin to realize the difficulties.
The thing is, you can do a proof-of-concept of a fusion-boosted fission bomb without greatly increasing the yield. Basically, you’d do that by building your H-bomb and only putting in a small amount of whatever you were fusing, then measure the radiation output.
Two benefits: First, you could test the device in a smaller capacity (shallower hole, less risk), and second, you wouldn’t have to expend that much tritium/lithium/whatever.
This in fact is/has been our strategy, and it may be the only viable one long term. (I am discounting the apparent lack of any “coherent strategy” anywhere by the current administration.) The idea is we have a economic relationship with China that allows us to lean on them to control their puppet state. The wild card is no one knows exactly how much control they have because N.K.’s leadership is, at some level, insane. N.K. ceases to exist economically without China however so we hope they can be kept on a leash. China has no interest in N.K. imploding, not because they fear a united Korea but because they don’t want an uncontrolled influx of refugees and soldiers crossing the border.
This is WAY overblown. Weapons systems often don’t actually work – especially when the nation is unable to train with real fire, and when everyone is starving. It is like the Russian Navy, with all those “show” missiles that fizzle when released. Except that the Norks are much worse off than the Russians.
This “it will be huge” scenario reminds me of all the serious analyses showing how Gaddafi would militarily destroy all his opponents – a few days before everything collapsed, and he was shot.
The Norks rely on bluster because they have no real teeth besides waves of humans who will suicidally charge because they know their families will be killed if they do not. And those waves can be dealt with – both directly (mow them down) – and indirectly (propaganda and small arms to their families back home).
Do the Expected Value! Chance of the US defeating the Norks this way are basically 100%, with a 2-5% chance of serious-but-not-crippling losses in Seoul. Chances of it being nuclear NOW are basically 0%, because the Nork Nukes are not mobile.
If we wait until Nukes are on warheads? We could lose entire cities.