North Korea threatened on Sunday to carry out a “new form” of nuclear test, a year after its third nuclear test raised military tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula and prompted the United Nations to tighten sanctions against the North.
The North’s Foreign Ministry did not clarify what it meant by a “new form” in its statement, carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. But Washington and its allies have long suspected the country of trying to make nuclear devices small and sophisticated enough to be delivered by intercontinental ballistic missiles it was also developing.
Just what is that "new form?" As I've understood the situation, North Korea has blown nuclear devices. These could be used against us if we would roll a division over the test site and wait patiently until the thousands of technicians can detonate the device.
That's less than useful technology unless the North Koreans build a large wooden badger and leave it at the DMZ.
Assuming that this means a warhead that can fit on a missile, this is a bad thing for Japan.
North Korea will still lack a missile with the range to nuke a major American city.
And Seoul is already subject to destruction by chemical bombardment or even just high explosive bombardment from lots of North Korean artillery within range of their capital city. So a nuke is bouncing the rubble in Seoul, really.
Ultimately, if North Korea can nuke Seoul or Tokyo (getting past missile defenses) we are still free to respond with nukes against North Korea without fear of being targeted ourselves. So our deterrent is not in question, thus far.
We still have time to isolate North Korea and work for their collapse before they gain the ability to target our cities.
The immediate problem of this nuke test is that it gets Iran closer to the day when it can buy a North Korean nuclear warhead and designs for more. That has long been a worry of mine:
Iran has a couple routes to bomb-making materials coming on line.
The problem from Iran's point of view is that they can't know if crossing one of these lines could trigger an American or Israeli preemptive strike out of fear that further delay in attacking would be too late to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And if I was an Iranian nutball, I wouldn't assume the Americans and Israelis couldn't knock out my infrastructure.
Were I an Iranian nutball, under those circumstances, I'd want at least a few atomic warhead on hand before I announce capabilities to produce atomic weapons-grade material. Which would mean I'd have had to have bought some from either North Korea or Pakistan--or possibly even from some broke custodian of Russia's arsenal.
If Iran can announce both the ability to make nuclear bomb material and the possession of actual nuclear weapons--perhaps by detonating one in a test on their own territory--Tehran would quite possibly deter an attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure.
We're not dealing with idiots. If the Iranian mullahs believe there are red lines that trigger Israeli or American action, why wouldn't they take counter-actions rather than just blindly cross those lines and provide a pretext for military action against them?
I worry that the "new form" might indicate something that ties the nuclear test to Iran. Could we see Iranian technicians filmed at the facility pressing the actual button?
And Iran is half way through the negotiating period with us that the Iranians know means we won't strike Iran's nuclear facilities. If Iran can get a warhead or two installed on missiles, they gain an instant deterrent and can afford to tell the West to take our interim talks and shove them, expecting us to just run away.
Iran will then believe they are free to pursue enrichment to whatever levels they want, without adjusting their stockpile of enriched Uranium to make it appear that they are far from having the raw materials to build an atomic bomb.
Have a super sparkly day.
