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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 agree. But getting started by removing their nukes would still be merited.
iWe, all your ideas assume air superiority. To achieve that we would already be involved in a full scale war.They have been preparing for war with us for 60 years. They have serious defenses and military. This is not to say they can’t be defeated ,but they no doubt would be aiming those hand guns at us not each other. In no way would this be done without a total war.
There was a guy releasing balloons with windup radios. It worked from the border, and it would work off-shore.
We could disperse all the goodies via UAVs – the Norks would find it impossible to successfully keep tabs on them. No air superiority needed for this part.
Remember: this is NOT a nation that actually trains. They can’t afford it. So their pilots are lousy, and so are their radar guys, etc. The equipment is mostly ancient and does not function well.
The hard part would be the insertion to take out the nuke facilities. That might well require active suppression during the mission – but again, not complete air superiority.
Yes and no. On paper, Saddam also had a massive military.
The nation is starving.
I doubt this. If the Norks did not fear an armed populace, they would not tightly control arms. It is possible that we would reverse the sequence: Propaganda and small arms first – nukes later (if then).
Again: even a total war now is MUCH better than the Norks having the ability to nuke Seoul or Tokyo and trying to win a total war later.
North Korea is a disaster, both for its neighbors and the areas where its missiles can reach, and I believe that includes the US East Coast. This is serious, and several administrations have tried to deal with this country, with terrible results – they lie, do not honor any agreements put forth, and the leadership is in a nutshell, bonkers. I feel terribly sorry for the people who suffer under the current and past regime. They have no freedom, not even heat in winter, no information about the outside world – horrid. It is amazing to me Claire, that several administrations and SoS have failed to contain this threat – didn’t we at one time have 6 countries on board including China, to help with the North Korean threat? Didn’t this regime hack parts of our country’s Internet system (remember Hollywood and the movie thing)?
Yet another blind eye by the current administration to the seriousness of world affairs and thugs with serious weapons – what is wrong with the leadership of the western world that they cannot effectively contain, or undermine these dangerous menaces – so so sad. Even the daughter of Google’s CEO did an amazing documentary not that long ago – one of the few allowed into the country:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/21/google-execs-daughter-details-weird-truman-show-like-conditions-in-north-korea-after-trip/
iWe, war plans change when the first shot is fired.
I am well aware of this.
I still think that our insistence on viewing this through a standard military prism is missing the basic fact of war: to win, we need to defeat their strategy, not their army. And their strategy is to use the threat of missiles and artillery on Seoul (and later, nukes), to extort from the West.
I once read an amazing short story about the impact of US Care Packages dropped on starving Japanese soon after the Japanese surrender. The civilians were absolutely blown away – and then won over.
I gotta back iWe up in this argument. We have a known threat; North Korean bombardment of Seoul. Whatever we do we can assume they’ll have the capability to rain some destruction down on the civilians. We have a potential threat, North Korean nukes. They may or may not be able to deliver nukes right now, but they’re actively working on ICBMs.
We can either accept damage from their artillery now, or wait until they have the ability to do real damage with an ICBM. If we can take them out now then we still have to suffer the same casualties that’s baked into the cards for any violent resolution, but the sooner we do it the less likely that we’ll also have to face nuclear fire.
There’s also the possibility of a resolution to the conflict that doesn’t involve open war, much like the end of the Cold War. We can wait for the country to crack up, for the regime to topple under it’s own weight, or for China to decide that maybe they don’t want crazies with nuclear capable missiles right next to Beijing. The question then becomes “Do we expect any of those things to happen before they get ICBMs and we’re in an even worse position?” I don’t think those are likely bets to pay off.
Of course, we’ve got to filter this discussion through “How much will China allow us to do to their client state?” and “How much are the American People willing to allow us to do?”, not to mention “How little does Obama care about this threat?” It may be that we have no option but to watch bad go to worse, at least until this sniveler gets booted out of the white house.
Umm, no it’s not like Mexico at all.
This is something that is troubling to me as well. Another time that “never again” term comes back to haunt. Everyone knows what is going on there and the cost in lives it is taking and everyone ignores it. The end result seems to be that we now aren’t going to do anything serious to destabilize the regime there, let alone actually invade, because who wants to deal with their 25 million people? The South Koreans don’t, the Chinese don’t, western countries don’t. Easier to just let them starve and be killed.
Good points all. We are morally derelict, at best, to let such a purely evil regime continue to exist. This is not a mere dictatorship, or “normal” oppression, or about feelings or micro aggressions. North Korea’s crimes are unspeakably awful and horrific.
I believe we are morally obligated to save those people. And I favor doing it with propaganda delivered by and through packages of Western Food. If feeding people triggers a war, then that is a reasonable casus belli.
Yes – we’re talking about a huge country – millions – and they have nukes. Yet we give the green light to the leadership of Iran. The fate of millions of innocent people in the hands of a few thugs – I’m sure that some of these steps are being taken – trying to get info into the country by unconventional means – and there have been defectors who have spoken out. Those ghost ships that washed up in December that floated into Japanese waters were from North Korea and they stated there is a food shortage so they are now pressured to venture out further to fish.
I wish to remind everyone that the last time we were fighting in Korea , just five years after defeating both Germany and Japan, we lost 35,000 killed and another 100,000 wounded. It ended in a tie. I am sure no one expected these results at the time. I have family and friends that fought them. A picnic basket will not win this.
Can anyone think of a logistical reason why this couldn’t be done? We pulled off the Berlin airlift, after all.
No, but feeding people is a meaningful gesture, and people don’t forget it. iWe’s right about that. My grandmother was a small child in Germany during the First World War. Whenever I asked her about her memories of it, her first word was “hungry.” To the day she died, she revered the Quakers. They came with food. Beyond being the right thing to do, it’s an unforgettable thing, especially to children.
If the propaganda is explicit, and not implicit in the provision of aid, then the leadership would block the aid, wouldn’t you think? Or find some way to delete the offending material. Also, any aid provided would have to be issued to the government, who would then turn around and distribute it to their own credit – after sating themselves with it first of course. I am pretty sure SK used to provide assistance on a regular basis, until in recent times they concluded it was counterproductive.
My point is that we do not have to make up a failed state of Canada to do our what ifs with. We already have states to the south of us that are failed or on the verge of failing and repercussions of those failures. Korea has it DMZ. We are trying to build our “wall”. etc. Obviously there are differences in that DPRK seems to be the most extreme case of a failed state on the planet but some of our southern neighbors are not too far off either. At least in DPRK there seems to be a working government where in Mexico and other places the government seems to answer to the criminal elements more.
Past performance is not an accurate predictor of future results. Technology has changed a LOT. And it is much, much easier to defend a border than it is to conquer another land.
Why??? Just airdrop MREs, with beautiful little American Flag parachutes. Do it over the city, over the countryside. This is a great mission for cheap UAVs, which, even if they are shot down, will still hold their cargo.
North Koreans are hungry enough to risk their lives for food. Especially once they hear how amazing it is.
No comparison. Check out what the DPRK does to its own people. The barbarity is absolutely stunning.
It would be nice if you didn’t exaggerate so much. I have had family members living in Mexico for decades. They are not, in case you wondered, working for the drug cartels. Life is good down there.
Fine, let’s do it…but maybe let’s consider the consequences first. What does the regime do in response, do you think?
They might start a war. If so, better now than when they have nukes mounted on missiles.
Or they play whack-a-mole with the UAVs. Which would sap their resources.
Or they might roll with it: tell their citizens it was actually all the regime’s idea, or some such. That would be great for us.
Waiting for the Norks to be better armed has a low Expected Value.
He’s suggesting dropping it from the sky.
I thought there were two ideas, one just sending in humanitarian aid by usual channels, the other by UAV which is very novel in conception, but probably not terribly efficient logistically. When Christian SK groups use balloons to send in radios and information, the NK leadership goes ballistic:
All these clever ideas are charming and compassionate, but the SKs will have to bear the brunt of NK artillery shelling, etc.. I am not saying not to do it, only make sure the SK people sign up for the consequences.
Wars are much easier to start than they are to finish. Everything that has been proposed here would be considered an act of war by NK. Probably the best way to liberate NK would to use tactical nuclear weapons on their military.
I’ll tell you what, if they build a couple of these hydrogen bombs I say we go in there and drop a big old oxygen bomb and flood the whole lot of them…
It seems like an excellent way to start a war actually. We try to feed their people, with UAVs and balloons and American Flags. They bombard South Korea. We hit their artillery with counterbattery fire. They either stop firing artillery or escalate with ground operations. At which point we’re in a shooting war, only we’ve got a lock on the propaganda war. The wildcard is if they can escalate with nuclear weapons, which again is less likely now but gets more and more likely as time goes by.
Assuming we were willing to do it we could use the buildup period for drones, MREs and flag parachutes to evacuate what parts of S. Korea we can too.
Point taken, and point about casualties sustained the last time we went to war in Korea. The thing about starving your country is, it doesn’t make it any stronger. They’ve spent the last 50 years as a communist hellhole. We’ve spent the last 50 years downgrading to a merely socialist heckhole. I don’t think we’d have the same amount of trouble with the North Korean military that we did last time.
They’re not the problem though. What’s China going to do? If they get in it’s not going to end quickly or cleanly.
Not really an exaggeration so much as a perspective difference.
I am glad your Mexican family members are doing well. Every place has people that figure out how to do well in about the worse of situations. I am sure I would find people thriving in DPRK and loving every minute of it. I am happy that your family can do the same in Mexico. Good for them for not working for the cartels or the corrupt government or any of the many entities that makes money doing business with them. But I really was not wondering or worried about it.
Yup, that is why people want to build a wall. Because life is so good in Mexico that millions of its citizens are willing to break US law and risk their and their family’s life to work the worse jobs the United States can provide. Jobs that Americans do not want to work for wages that are too low for Americans to take. Not sure why they would do so for this great Mexican life you describe but who am I to question?
Just curious, if things are so great in Mexico why does everybody get so upset when we suggest sending its citizens back?
The DPRK is not really the issue. They can be dealt with if they are on thier own. The problem is that they live under the protection of China and Russia. Anything done involving DPRK that has suggested involves going to war with China and maybe Russia. Do we really want to start down that road?