Will USA nuke North Korea with the risk of major mishap that will affect China and possibly others in the region?
It appears USA has no option. USA has boxed itself in a corner with its North Korea policy and the example of Libya.
Libya demonstrated that even if the ruler complies with USA demands for weapons relinquishment they can still be subject to attacks from USA for which they will have no defence after relinquishing their weapons.
http://atimes.com/2016/09/will-weve-to-nuke-asia-to-save-it/ Quote:Will we have to nuke Asia to save it?
BY PETER LEE on SEPTEMBER 16, 2016 in ASIA TIMES NEWS & FEATURES, CHINA, KOREAS
I can pat myself on the back for predicting back in April that, sooner or later, US nukes would return to Asia to counter the relative decline in America’s military advantage. That moment seems to have come sooner, rather than later, thanks to the ingenuity of North Korean bomb builders.
North Korea’s most recent nuclear test elicited considerable anxiety among the cognoscenti, as it appears to have been a successful test of a warhead with a big bang that has been miniaturized so it can be placed on a ballistic missile.
A piece by Jeffrey Lewis, America’s go-to expert on North Korea’s nuclear program, pretty much says it all: North Korea’s Nuke Program is Way More Sophisticated Than You Think: This is now a serious nuclear arsenal that threatens the region and, soon, the continental United States.
In other words, North Korea appears well on the way to becoming a legitimate nuclear weapons power, one with the ability to churn out nuclear warheads in bulk and possessing the delivery systems to get them to where they can do the most damage.
North Korea is a major problem for US non-proliferation strategy. It’s a major problem because US policy toward North Korea is burdened by, if I may put it this way, three original sins.
First, George W. Bush designated North Korea as one of the three members of the “Axis of Evil”, reportedly because he needed a non-Middle Eastern baddie to challenge the “War on Muslims” optics that would have governed if he had named Iraq, Iran…and Syria.
In response, the North Koreans hastened to demonstrate their nuclear program to outside observers. We’ve got deterrent!
Second, the Bush administration engaged in a covert program of economic blockade and financial sanctions that was intended not to change the regime’s behavior but to overthrow it. Message: US is North Korea’s existential adversary!
Third, the Obama administration, at the urging of Hillary Clinton, pitched in with a third blunder: backing the deposition (and eventual murder) of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. It is little remembered today, but Qaddafi’s dismantling of his WMD programs (and the payment of over one billion dollars in indemnities) was a signature victory for the aggressive Bush counter-proliferation policy.
With Qaddafi’s fall, the North Koreans extracted the lesson that if they disarmed, the US could turn on a dime, renege on the deal, and go full regime change. Message received: Hold on to those nukes!
When one considers that North Korea has been trying to reach out to the US as a balance against the PRC and South Korea for two decades, the US achievement in turning North Korea into a belligerent nuclear-armed adversary is rather impressive.
Perhaps US strategists were lulled into complacency by the thought of US military omnipotence, and by racist assumptions immortalized in The Interview that the tyrannical dingbats of the Hermit Kingdom couldn’t hack the science needed to become a genuine nuclear threat. And, to be honest, a hostile North Korea was a useful excuse for pumping military capabilities into North Asia to contain China.
With this context, the Obama administration realized the futility of denuclearization-themed engagement with North Korea and opted for “strategic patience” i.e. doing nothing. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared the US had washed its hands of dealings with the North Koreans and “would not buy the same horse twice” i.e. would not negotiate in circles for the same concessions again and again. A more accurate analogy might have been “The horse we tried to shoot three times is not going to walk up to us hoping for a lump of sugar”.
Well, North Korea was actually a pretty high-functioning industrial state until the collapse of the USSR deprived it of the energy subsidies it needed to maintain its model of mechanized agriculture and urban industrialization. So its ability to survive sanctions and develop a viable nuclear weapons capability is not totally unexpected.
US embarrassment at its inability to keep a lid on the North Korean nuclear weapons program is accentuated by an extremely important fact: the US monopoly on nuclear weapons capability within the circle of its allies in Asia is the key US advantage when it comes to leading the anti-China containment alliance, excuse me the pivot. If the locals have their own nukes—and arming up with nukes has been an open topic of discussion in Japan and South Korea and even Taiwan for decades—and their own deterrent, they’ll have their own security policy and much less incentive to follow Uncle Sam’s lead.