A Fissile Missile Pissing Contest

Donald Trump has all but completely flunked Syria at this point, handing the country over to the Assad regime at Putin's request with "safe zones" bringing the "peace" of dictatorship to the rubble-strewn cities while anti-Assad rebels supported by the previous administration are exterminated under the guise of US-Russia cooperation against Islamic State.

Now North Korea continues to be the big new international crisis as two man-children suffering from arrested development scream at each other and threaten nuclear destruction, and while the US nuclear arsenal's power to reduce all of human civilization to ash dozens of times over remains without doubt (hooray!), it's looking like North Korea may be far more able to deliver on the nuclear missile threat than previously believed.

North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.

The analysis, completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency, comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The United States calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts think the number is much smaller.

The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials concluded last month that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the American mainland.

President Trump, speaking Tuesday at an event at his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., said North Korea will face a devastating response if its threats continue. “They will be met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” he said.
Earlier Tuesday, North Korea described a new round of U.N. sanctions as an attempt “to strangle a nation” and warned that in response, “physical action will be taken mercilessly with the mobilization of all its national strength.”

Although more than a decade has passed since North Korea’s first nuclear detonation, many analysts thought it would be years before the country’s weapons scientists could design a compact warhead that could be delivered by missile to distant targets. But the new assessment, a summary document dated July 28, concludes that this critical milestone has been reached.

“The IC [intelligence community] assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles,” the assessment states, in an excerpt read to The Washington Post. Two U.S. officials familiar with the assessment verified its broad conclusions. It is not known whether the reclusive regime has successfully tested the smaller design, although North Korea officially claimed last year that it had done so.

Considering that Trump hasn't even nominated an ambassador to South Korea yet, we have zero diplomatic personnel on the ground right now and that's even if this State Department wasn't in complete shambles under Rex Tillerson.  Apparently we're farming that out to our neighbors to the north as Ottawa is at least nominally interested in not having a giant nuclear death party.

Meanwhile, North Korea state media is happily reminding Trump that Guam is a lot closer to Pyongyang than the mainland US is, and that it would be a darn shame if something happened to it.

North Korea said on Wednesday it is "carefully examining" plans for a missile strike on the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump told the North that any threat to the United States would be met with "fire and fury".

North Korea has made no secret of plans to develop a nuclear-tipped missile able to strike the United States and has ignored international calls to halt its nuclear and missile programs.

The strike plan would be put into practice at any moment once leader Kim Jong Un makes a decision, a spokesman for the Korean People's Army (KPA) said in a statement carried by the North's state-run KCNA news agency.

"The KPA Strategic Force is now carefully examining the operational plan for making an enveloping fire at the areas around Guam with medium-to-long-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong-12 in order to contain the U.S. major military bases on Guam including the Anderson Air Force Base," the spokesman said.

The plan would be reported to the North's Supreme Command soon, the spokesman said, without citing a date.

I'd say at this point cooler heads would prevail, except we're talking about Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump here, two guys with nuclear toys not exactly known for their reasonable levelheadedness.

Yeah, I know, we were a lot closer to real nuclear destruction 55 years ago over Cuba and Soviet hardliners almost starting World War III twice in 1983 over a missile detection radar glitch and then NATO's Able Archer military exercises in Europe, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried now.

We'd be nuts not to be concerned.  The reality right now is that we have several military options, and the option of continued attempts at containment.  None of them are good options, and all of the military options would almost certainly lead to the deaths of millions, maybe tens of millions, on the Korean Peninsula and Japan. 

But acquiescence to a nuclear North Korea risks a far greater global conflict down the road, a road that this intelligence assessment report this week makes very clear.  With nukes and the time they can buy his regime, Kim can start making more and more belligerent demands, and we either meet them or choose to ignore him and risk his reponse. Again, there is no good option here, only the least awful (which is containment and diplomacy).

I remind you the person now in charge of that decision is a failed reality TV show host who may be a Russian agent, with a State Department all but crippled and the very real possibility of facing a constitutional crisis sooner rather than later over his numerous misdeeds.

Good luck, America and the world.

We're gonna need it.